Dru seemed to suppress a smile for a second, then let it free, an almost evil grin. “Ready? Okay!”
Amie narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “Are we going to have to get into protocol, here?”
“Sorry.” Dru looked utterly unrepentant, and suddenly very much like the girl Amie remembered from college. “Won’t happen again.”
“It better not. Take that robe off.”
“You really did sound like a cheerleader though—”
“Now.”
Still snickering, Dru untied the belt and dropped the robe in one easy motion, standing as comfortably naked as she had covered. She’d gained a few pounds, adding more curve over the years, which emphasized her waist. She’d stopped waxing her bush and apparently now opted for trimming. And she had a small tattoo of a bluebird on her ribs, a few inches below her right breast.
She looked spectacular.
Amie dragged her eyes away and pointed to the spanking bench. She wanted Dru kneeling, leaning over, facing away from her . . . so she could gawk unobserved. “On the bench.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The rear view was, if possible, even more fabulous than the front. Amie cleared her throat once Dru was in position on the bench, with her ass displayed perfectly for whatever Amie cared to do to it. Those curves . . . Dru’s butt had always been spankable, but now it was ridiculous. Perfectly padded arcs, but with the ideal hint of muscle at the top of the thigh, suggesting the sweet spot would be less insulated—and therefore more sensitive—than the rest.
By focusing on that ass, Amie could mostly avoid thinking about that pussy, which was a whole other level of temptation she knew she should probably avoid. At least for now.
Legs already shaking slightly, clit humming in anticipation, Amie selected her first weapon and stepped toward the bench.
The club was cooler than usual without the full complement of warm bodies in it, and Dru shivered as she anticipated Amie’s approach. The shivering was all about exposure to the temperature, and had nothing at all to do with exposure to the woman walking toward her defenseless backside with some sort of implement of . . .
What had Amie called it, that first cane she’d bought and been so proud of?
Weapon of Sass Destruction.
Dru stifled a giggle, not wanting to layer that potential infraction on top of her brattiness about the cheerleader thing. Once upon a time, Amie would have laughed too, although once she’d left school, her sense of humor about many things, including kink, had vanished under a mountain of anxiety and sudden responsibility.
Footsteps. The sound of leather being snapped gently in the air or against Amie’s denim-clad leg. Softly, lots of falls. Dru knew it was the flogger before it hit her ass. Palming the grips at the sides of the sturdy spanking bench, she tried to relax her shoulders as the strokes began to fall into a rhythm. God, how long had it been? Years—literally about two years since she’d been on the receiving end of this. She’d gone to The Slice on an off night—Padma had been feeling under the weather, they just hadn’t known why yet—and done a scene with Trip. Also “for old time’s sake.” A bullwhip, tears, laughter, a dose of forgiveness between her and the man who’d topped and fucked both Dru and Padma for close to a year before deciding it “felt too much like a relationship.” Probably because he’d sensed, as both women had, that there was a real relationship forming—but it hadn’t included him. Except as a continuing business partner, of course, since he and Padma co-owned the club.
Dru squeezed the grips until her hands ached, forcing the thought of Padma from her mind. The flogger continued to drum on her ass and thighs. The pain was good, grounding. And Amie’s technique had matured into mastery over the years. Her strokes deepened as she warmed up, as Dru’s skin warmed up. Then Amie switched to sharp, random flicks. Back of one thigh, over the ribs, butt, shoulder. It went on until the serendipity of the blows became its own meditation, carried not on the rhythm but on the waiting, on the breath. Helping Dru slip sideways into the part of her mind where the pain turned into something else.
Helping, but not taking her there fully.
Amie stopped and stepped closer, leaning against Dru’s tingling ass, pressing one warm hand to the space between her shoulder blades, then sliding it up to squeeze the top of her right shoulder next to her neck.
“You’re one big set of knots, you know that?” She did something with her fingers, sought and found a pressure point over Dru’s collarbone, and dug in until Dru whimpered. When Amie released, a wave of cold radiated down Dru’s arm and chest on that side, but some of the tension seeped from the muscles. Amie repeated the trick on the other side.
“Is this sensual massage time?” Dru stretched her neck from side to side, willing the muscles to loosen even more. “That’s new. Good feature.”
“I don’t just make people buff for a living, you know. Are you going to be able to relax and enjoy this?”
“Okay, you’re literally hitting me with whips and sticks and shit, Ames, it’s not exactly—”
Amie smacked her butt sharply, putting a little English on it—more evidence of her expertise. “You know what I meant.”
Oh, Dru knew. She was surprised Amie was slowing down long enough to notice. Dru didn’t want to slow down. “I don’t want to talk, okay? It’s fucking with my headspace. I’ll be fine once we’re rolling. It’s great so far.”
Amie stood up, and Dru heard her sigh. Quick, irritated. Then she laid a hand flat on Dru’s ass, like she was considering it.
For a second or so, Dru expected her to bail. But finally Amie lifted her hand and brought it down again hard. Then again. Then switching, using her dominant hand, striking hard enough it had to hurt Amie almost as much as Dru. Unless her palms, too, had toughened up over the years.
It was nothing like the flogger; it was hard and sharp and personal. Dru gave up trying to anticipate the blows, fell back toward subspace. By the time Amie seemed to have worked through the spanking phase, Dru’s ass was on fire. As she waited for the next round of blows, some tiny, critical twist of muscle near the base of her neck unfurled, releasing the headache that seemed to have taken up permanent residence there over the past few weeks.
“Okay, on your feet!”
Amie’s voice had gone from cheerleading to aerobics teacher. Dru pushed away from the bench slowly, her legs wobbling slightly as she climbed down and stood next to it with one hand resting on the top for balance.
Amie put a hand to her waist. So thoughtful, so considerate. And she was smiling. Happiness always turned her into Kink Barbie.
“You good to walk?” asked the world’s perkiest sadist.
“Yup.”
“Over to that scaffold, let’s move it!”
One notch of anger in her voice and it could’ve gone drill sergeant. But somehow Amie never hit that point. She’d always been good at cheering her subs into doing whatever horrors they’d agreed to; she didn’t need to get mean with them, because they always wanted to comply. Dru always had, despite herself. Despite her loathing for things like aerobics classes, and her indelible Goth-like disdain for the enthusiasm of cheerleaders. Amie had an energy that was contagious.
Dru eyed her ex while Amie tested the chains and attached the cuffs to Dru’s wrists. Amie didn’t look quite the same as she had in school, but it was hard to put a finger on the difference. The change wasn’t in the visible new elements: some fine laugh lines, some darker-than-remembered tanning that didn’t look like the bottle or spray kind. Amie had always liked to spend time outdoors. She was always doing things. Mountain biking, rock climbing, running in races for charities. Dru liked some of that too, and had always chided Amie for neglecting the sunscreen when they went together. Amie’s bronzed and leanly muscled arms, clearly visible in her white tank top, suggested she hadn’t changed. Of course, the Pilates classes she taught probably didn’t hurt. It certainly hadn’t hurt her ass, which her faded jeans were hugging so tightly it ought to have been ille
gal. Dru wanted to bite it.
Amie lifted Dru’s hands above her head, clipping the cuffs to the chains at a comfortable height. Not lifting her to her toes, not stressing her feet, which was thoughtful. Dru realized, with some remote, observant part of her brain, that she was viewing Amie through sub-goggles at the moment. But she didn’t care. Amie was gorgeous and sexy and attentive and considerate and all the good things, and that was all that mattered.
Dru smiled at her as she returned from the bench with a long, hardwood stick in her hand. “You’re so pretty. I forgot how pretty you are . . .”
“And yooouuuuuu are flying. Spread your legs.”
Dru obliged, knowing what would result.
Smack, right to the inner thigh. Yep. As predicted. As desired. Only way harder than she’d actually anticipated. The tingling sting shot straight to her pussy, and by the time Amie left a matching sting on the other leg, Dru was already squirming. She followed the movement of the wooden stick with her eyes.
“What is that?”
“Lignum vitae.” Amie held it up for her inspection. It was about eighteen inches long, an inch or so wide, flat . . . and didn’t look capable of what she’d just felt. “Hardest wood in the world. And the heaviest. Looks innocent but packs a wallop and also, smell . . .” She lifted it beneath Dru’s nose, and Dru caught a hint of fragrance almost like patchouli or incense.
“My God.”
Amie grinned and pulled the stick back, attacking the same spots on each side. She worked them until they’d gone through sting and heat to delicate agony to Oh god please don’t to nearly numb with a deep, throbbing ache beneath it . . . then she found another two spots lower down and went through the same process. Then again, a few inches lower, until Dru’s legs were shaking from the endorphins, and she was having to fight the impulse to close them, to dance away from the next blow.
But it wasn’t a blow.
Instead, Amie pressed the stick to the inside of Dru’s knee, then drew it upward slowly, over the viciously aching spots, right up until it was resting in the fold between her inner thigh and her outer labia. Close. So close. Oh, and she was wet, she could feel it on her pussy and the tops of her thighs. Amie would have to clean it off that stick. Dru had been wet since they’d started. She’d needed this so badly. And now she needed Amie to finish it. Amie was breathing as hard as she was—they both needed it.
Then—curses, curses—Amie pulled the stick away. “We forgot a category when we were negotiating.”
“What? God. No, just. Do it. It’s. God.” Words, what were those? This was no time to try to talk. This was time for an orgasm. Or to be denied one and given more pain. No other options existed.
“I shouldn’t try it with this. Some people have, like, an allergic reaction to the oil in the wood. But really I shouldn’t. You aren’t in any condition to consent to something extra right now.”
“Are you fucking with me?” God, that was shriller than she’d meant it to be.
Amie was still beautiful, but now she was beautiful and terrible and cruel, like Galadriel in Lord of the Rings, and Dru was primed to worship her if that was what it took. But Amie wasn’t actually trying to play head games; she’d never been great at that.
“I’m really not.” She shrugged and stepped away to put the stick back into her bag. She picked up something else from the bench before returning. “You’ll thank me later.”
Dru groaned. “I’d rather thank you about sixty seconds from now.”
“It’s really tempting, but . . .” Amie swung her arms around. She had a Wartenberg wheel in one hand; Dru was no longer interested in that.
“We said ‘get it out of our systems,’” she reminded Amie. “My system includes orgasms.”
Amie chuckled and flicked the wheel, watching it spin. “What, you have one, like, stuck in there? With my name on it?”
Dru reached for her with one foot, wrapping it around Amie’s calf, trying to pull her closer. She only succeeded in knocking her off-balance, but Amie was athletic as hell; she recovered quickly and shot Dru a look, shaking her head. She walked around to the back of the scaffold, tsking when Dru tried to turn around to watch her.
“You stay where I put you,” she chided, rotating Dru’s head back to the front with one stern finger on her chin. She traced the edge of Dru’s ear, then her hairline down to her nape, drawing a shiver and a needy sigh from her. Then she flipped the long ponytail forward over Dru’s shoulder and rested her hand against the skin she’d bared. When she rubbed her thumb over the spot on Dru’s neck that had relaxed earlier, the sensation caught her off guard with a memory. On the couch, with Padma, cuddled under a blanket. Bending forward for her glass of wine, and Padma reaching out before she sat back to stroke that same spot, where all Dru’s worries seemed to live.
But Dru had promised, because Padma had made her. She had to move on, find somebody else, at least try. After a year, that’s what she’d promised; it had been over a year. And bottoming wasn’t where these memories ought to live. This should have been safe. Because whatever Amie did, whatever they’d done together, it had never seemed to involve that many feelings. It had mostly been fun and easy; so many things had been, back then.
Amie ran her hand down Dru’s spine and cupped one cheek firmly. Squeezed a worked-over spot until Dru winced and started to relax again. It was almost enough, if the pain didn’t stop, if she could stay in that soft, hazy, zoned-out fog the entire time.
A gentle prickling sensation on her shoulder bisected her attention, splitting it evenly between the pain being inflicted on her ass and the slowly increasing pressure of the spiked wheel rolling down her scapula. Hours, she used to spend using a wheel like that on Padma. Or it had always seemed like hours. Padma’s skin was dark enough that the marks barely showed unless Dru actually broke through—and the wheel she used wasn’t sharp enough to do that accidentally.
Dru exhaled and tried to focus on what Amie must be seeing now, the vivid pink spots that were probably already spreading to form a solid-looking welt in a meandering line around her shoulders, over her back. The pain was sweet, and the double front of attack made it difficult to process. Well-trained, her mind did its trick of shunting all energy to concentrating on channeling that pain, turning it into arousal.
Amie worked her way down slowly—she must have knelt at some point, but Dru wasn’t sure when—until she could pinch the deep marks on Dru’s inner thighs while she rolled the wheel over the well-whipped skin of Dru’s ass. The pain, intense already, grew to fill Dru’s mind and, before she could pull back, pooled and swirled and concentrated between her legs.
If Amie kept going, Dru would come, whether Amie touched her pussy or clit or not. The pain had gotten to be too much, and at a certain point that was enough. Gasping, legs tightening, Dru braced herself against the pressure of the wheel, the sting of Amie’s pinch, and the slow explosion of something like pleasure behind her clit. With no stimulus, nowhere to focus, it lingered in shuddering, nebulous waves that never peaked high enough to satisfy. When they finally ebbed, Amie was standing behind her again, pressing her firm body against Dru’s shaking one.
“You came, didn’t you?” Accusation. Disapproval. But nothing like surprise.
Dru liked to top for all the reasons Amie didn’t: getting into people’s heads. But she liked bottoming because of the pain, pure and simple. Or filthy and complex. Whatever form it came in, really. Amie was well aware of that. She’d helped install that. “Maybe . . .”
“Cheater, cheater, punkin-eater.”
Dru would have laughed if Amie hadn’t reached around to palm one breast and pinch her nipple, twisting and pulling hard. When Dru cried out, startled, Amie snickered in response and put her other arm around Dru’s waist, yanking her close with one leg between Dru’s, and pressing Dru’s hip closer still so she could work her pelvis against the butt she’d spent all that time marking.
The switch in sensation was too sudden, the fresh pain at her ni
pple too sharp and brutal for Dru’s overworked nerves. She whimpered and moaned, squirming, and Amie laughed, breathing harder against her neck. She was turned on, by the sound of it, by the feel of it. One particularly hard pinch, one final thrust, and Amie’s cry echoed Dru’s with a shuddering fall. She hitched a few more times, making a soft, high-pitched sound that had always seemed so at odds with her toppy demeanor, then her whole body relaxed at once.
It was the only time Amie ever sounded vulnerable—when she came.
Dru let her head fall back against Amie’s shoulder, and Amie’s hand gentled from harsh to soothing. Petting, stroking. Unclipping the cuffs, unbuckling them, helping ease Dru down to a fluffy blanket Amie had magically procured from somewhere.
To Dru’s astonishment, Amie sort of . . . tucked her in, wrapping the blanket around her carefully and putting her water glass into her hands, even kissing the top of her head and asking if she was okay before moving away to start packing up.
Aftercare was apparently another area that had seen marked improvement. In that now there was some.
Back in college, they’d both been too stupid to know anything other than that they belonged in the kink scene somehow. They recognized their own people. But Amie mostly learned only what Dru taught her, and Dru foolishly let Amie think she knew as much as she pretended to. They’d both been so painfully green, it had been a miracle neither of them had gotten seriously harmed or done permanent damage to anyone, physically or emotionally.
More recently? Who knew what Amie had or hadn’t done?
Dru snuggled deeper into the plush blanket, appreciating the warmth and softness against her aching parts, and sipped her water. The cool wash over her throat told her she’d been louder than she thought . . . or they’d gone longer. But scenes always existed on their own time frame. In their own reality.
Only one thing was certain in Dru’s mind, and she glanced over at Amie to see if she could get any visual evidence that Amie felt the same.
Amie was finishing up, tucking the rest of her toys into her bag, zipping it, looking around to make sure she’d gotten everything. Her face bore a fresh, healthy-looking flush. If it hadn’t extended down to her chest, one might never have suspected it was the glow of orgasm. She might have spent a brisk few minutes on a treadmill, or jogged around the park a few times, or heard a risqué joke.
Top to Bottom Page 5