by Roxy Harte
The cane swats against my thigh, making me jump and squeak with both surprise and pain. He admonishes me, “Pay attention, Cassiopeia. This is punishment for leaving, oui?”
“Yes-s.”
“Yet you are enjoying it too much, I think.”
“No,” I lie.
Another swat falls and another. A third in rapid succession, making me gasp. “The truth now?”
“Yes, Master, I am enjoying it too much.”
Four more lightning quick swats make me jerk, my ass cheeks clenching tight. I swear, “Fuck!” making him laugh. He says, “Now it is starting to feel like punishment?” The cane falls four more times before I can answer. He asks, “How many has that been, Cassiopeia?”
“Thirteen,” I say through gritted teeth.
He rubs his hand over my ass and thighs. “This is so very nice. Do you feel the welts when I rub my hand over them?”
“Yes-s.”
“These are going to leave beautiful marks; they are showing up already.”
I wish I could see them.
“Do you remember how you used to stand in front of the mirror for hours, looking at the marks I’d leave on you?”
“I enjoyed having your mark on my body.”
“Oui,” he taps the cane gently against the welts, making my legs quiver. He strikes, making me gasp and jerk. He says, “That one was hard.” He strikes again. Again. Again. Again. Again. That felt like the punishment he intended. He kneels beside me, turning my face to look into his. “You will not leave me again.”
I am panting … pain, need, desire, doubt … all of it mixed up and rolled into one nameless emotion. My ass and thighs are on fire as his hands smooth over them. I want to promise him I will stay, that I will not leave, but I have others to think about. This isn’t just about me. I can’t allow myself to be the selfish hedonist I was before.
“How can we ever make this work?” I beg, wanting him to make me believe we can. “I’m a paralegal. I’m a mother.”
“Do you want to make this work?”
I nod, closing my eyes, because I want it so badly my raw need brings the sob from my chest the caning did not. His lips close over mine, promising me without words.
He stands, leaving me kneeling on my hands and knees I watch him undress. He is older, we both are, and his age is reflected in a softening in his limbs, the black hair covering his chest is now peppered with gray, a slight paunch to his middle … but to my eyes, he is even more handsome, more sexy than he ever was in his prime. I watch him open a condom foil, then unroll the protection over his length. He is secure in his body, standing before me strong and sure of his sexuality. My lips curve into a soft smile, realizing time has changed so little.
When he moves behind me, I arch my back, pushing my hips toward him, begging with primal body language. I need you.
Feeling his strong erection as a caress against my welted thigh, I wiggle my hips. Take me. Now! Please!
He leans over me, kissing me gently over the back of my neck and shoulders. His gentleness makes me cry because I have tried so hard over the years to not miss him, to not reminisce about what I shared with him. I loved him so and even the slightest thought of him brought such longing ache and I could bear hurting for him. I refuse to even consider the consequences of this night or even consider I might still love this man.
“Please, Frankie.” I beg, pushing my hips back.
“Please, Frankie?” He asks.
“Please, Master.”
He rewards me with a thrust. I gasp. Remembering. John was not well endowed and for my naiveté I once thought Frankie was average. Frankie is anything but…
His thrusts are forceful, rough, rape-like on the concrete floor, but my welt covered ass cheeks welcome the brute honesty of his need. His hand wraps around my middle and his fingers find my clit easily. He remembers my body so well … and I’ve forgotten so much. I used to cum this way for him … I always came for him. I don’t climax as he holds me tight, and I know he is holding back his own release, waiting for me. I sob, “Please come inside me. Please.”
“Not yet,” he says.
I scream with frustration, my body responding to the pleasure but refusing to climax. He continues to thrust into me, whispering into my ear in French. I only understand half of what he says, but it is not the words that matter. His voice teases through me, stroking to life all of the forgotten memories I had locked away. He makes me cry. So much time has been lost; time I dare not regret but instead mourn. He whispers against my ear, “Welcome home, Cassiopeia, maison bienvenue,” just before he explodes inside me.
Chapter Six
I love the sound Master makes when he cums, half-growl, half-surprise. When he collapses over me, he is still holding me tightly against him. We fit so well together and I am disappointed I didn’t peak. I thought with everything feeling so right … I would have; I didn’t, I feel robbed. I am disappointed and force my face under control so that how great my disappointment is not evident.
“You did not orgasm for me, Cassiopeia.”
“No,” I whisper.
“When was the last time you had an orgasm?”
“The night you sent me the gift,” I answer softly, admitting the truth that I masturbated while wearing the bustier even though such an admission in the past would have brought me intense punishment. I am surprised when he chuckles, rolling me beneath him so I am on my back facing him. “I’m glad you did.” He wipes a tear from my cheek and asks, “But tonight, you did not surrender yourself to me, and I want to know why.”
“I—mm,” I close my eyes; there is no hiding the truth, no excuse, so what can I say? I say nothing.
“Open your eyes.”
I do as I am told and he gazes long and deep into them, until long after it has become uncomfortable for me to have him keep doing so I look away.
“It has been a long time since you have allowed yourself to be pleasured by a man?” I remain silent, not looking him in the face, no excuse sounding appropriate. It isn’t that I haven’t wondered myself. With John, I stopped having orgasms after I learned he was having affairs and he stopped having sex with me once he realized I wasn’t enjoying him. After the divorce, the two men I dated whom I was actually attracted to enough even to consider getting naked with them turned out to be huge disappointments. But Frankie…
Master is not a disappointment.
A sob catches in my throat, making it seem impossible to breath. I think he feels my desperation because he pulls me up, helping me sit, telling me to “Relax,” and “Just breathe for a moment,” as he kneels beside me. Holding me, he strokes me. “What has happened to you over the years?”
“Nothing. Happened.” I tell him. I do not know if that is a truth or a lie.
Standing, he pulls me up with him and leads me to a textured wall. Into the wall eye bolts are attached in an eight foot diameter. I know without counting there are twelve anchors. Hanging at ten o’clock and two o’clock are wrist restraints. “Remember this wall?”
“Yes, Master.” I hated this wall, but I don’t reveal my feelings to him. I would bet he remembers I did. He jiggles the leather restraint hanging at twelve o’clock, his eyes challenging me, left eye-brow arched with wicked intent. I swallow, mouth dry, arm pits suddenly wet. I. Do. Not. Want. Restrained. He encourages, “Come, come.”
“It’s late,” I say.
He chuckles. “You have someplace else to go?”
“No,” I squeak.
He does a Vanna White, motioning at the bondage wall with both hands, requesting, “Please?”
I can only stand stunned because he actually used the word please. Oh hell. I step up onto the small platform, not believing I am. I lift my right arm over my head to be cuffed at twelve.
Frankie caresses my wrist and palm before buckling the cuff down tightly, his touch sending need racing through my veins. I’d forgotten this feeling: anxiety, curiosity, impatience. He moves over to the cuff hanging at two o’cloc
k and I lift my left hand. His touch devastates me, leaving me tingling from mere fingertip-strokes over my wrist. Caught, I tug both wrists, knowing I’m not going anywhere.
I am insane…
Two decades could have turned this man into a murderer; I could be in absolute peril at this very moment; but two decades haven’t been long enough for me to let go of my complete and absolute trust in this man; so I will soon see how big a mistake I have made.
I watch him as he moves around the room, collecting paraphernalia. Some I recognize, some I don’t. He comes toward me carrying a length of rope, some tubing, and a power screwdriver. I fidget, reminding myself I trust him. Telling myself he isn’t going to hurt me … or at least won’t hurt me so much I can’t enjoy the rest. Above all else Frankie is a sensualist. He wants me to enjoy what he is doing to me…
When he attaches my collar to the board so I lose all neck movement, I start to rethink all of my former reasoning.
The spreader bar he puts between my ankles is an old friend … I just hope he realizes my body probably doesn’t bend at the same angles it once did. With the tubing, he makes a sling to help support my hips and thighs, a suspended seat of sorts, then uses the rope to start lifting my legs off the ground. I tell myself I trust him for about the hundredth time as I realize my weight is being supported by tubing and rope. My hands have already wrapped around the chains holding the wrist restraints to keep my weight from damaging my joints. I know how this works; he knows what he’s doing…
I trust him…
“Relax,” he commands.
I laugh because it seems utterly ridiculous I am so tense. I used to love this. Loved this.
Yes, yes, I hated the bondage wall … because it was so damn physically taxing; because the process was so damn emotionally taxing, sometimes humiliating … but in the end, when it was all said and done … after I was basking in the post-orgasmic bliss, I admitted to how much I loved it. Hence, the impatience for it to be finished.
“You are so beautiful,” he tells me and I don’t question his view of me. Bound, stretched, uncomfortable … I don’t need his words. The look in his eyes tells me how beautiful I am to him. His eyes tell me how much he cherishes me and I can’t help but start to cry because John was never able to look at me like that.
I’ve missed being gazed upon with so much love and need evident.
I belong to Master François Rene de Hart. I always have. I always will.
“What are you thinking?” he asks me.
“Some bonds are eternal.”
“Like the one between you and me?” He asks. “Oui?”
“Yes,” I agree.
He steps beside me, so close his chest pushes into me. He pinches my cheeks between his fingers. “Are you ready to say it yet?”
“Oh God, Frankie,” I gasp, self-correcting, “Master. I need time, I need to think…”
I hear the sound of the vibrator, never see it, but know that soon it will be touching me.
“Will you at least come for me, Cassiopeia?” He asks. “Will you trust me to surrender at least that much for me?”
“I’ll try.”
I feel the vibrator roll along the insides of my thighs. It teases so close to my labia, but not touching even that.
“Tell me you will surrender to me, Cassiopeia.”
I want him to touch me, I need him to touch me; but I don’t say what I need to say to guarantee either. I am too honest when I admit, “I don’t know I can.”
He surprises me by touching the vibrator to my clit for just a few moments—long enough for heaven to rise up around me—not long enough to peak. He pulls the vibrator away, making me beg, making me gasp.
“Will you surrender to me, Cassiopeia? No more games?”
Why am I being so stubborn? One climax does not mean I am promising to stay forever…
Chapter Seven
I awake in his bed, not remembering how I got there, but slowly it all floods back. My screams of pleasure, my screams of pain … but mostly screams making promises by the light of day I’m not so certain I can keep.
“I will never leave you again, Master.”
We left the dungeon and he gave me the grand tour of the house. It hasn’t changed too much: a new couch in the main parlor, a new rug in the dining room, and a new house-slave busy polishing silverware in the kitchen. He was young … no, not co-ed young … maybe twenty-five, not yet thirty young … but holy mother of god beautiful … and as naked as I.
“Cassiopeia, this is Pierre-Louis Lefèvre .”
He stood and I immediately blushed, humiliated I had looked there, but how could I not look when he looked … That. Damn. Good. I was ashamed, especially after only moments before thinking how well Frankie was wearing his age … how sexy he was … despite his graying temples and his extra few pounds. I couldn’t stop looking at Pierre-Louis, and though my brain was screaming at me to look away … God, yes, I kept looking … and the house slave looked back at me without censure. Since when were house slaves allowed to have their eyes anywhere except on the floor?
It seemed to me Pierre-Louis Lefèvre was overly bold, but it was not my place to take action against him, and obviously Master had no intention of correcting his behavior. I wondered what his slave thought, seeing me there, obviously the recent recipient of Master’s attention, as evidenced by my many welts and bruises. I had forgotten the pride connected to wearing another’s mark.
Embracing my pride, I’d lifted my chin a notch and locked gazes with the man. A flashback of memory erupted in my brain at the wrong moment for me to remain too arrogant though; I remembered how it felt to be in his place, serving Master and another, wondering what I had done wrong to deserve such treatment as to be replaced and knowing the answer was nothing. Master could keep me, use me, replace me at will. My heart would be breaking in two as I watched Master caress the other … and the other wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence.
I acknowledged him. No, I didn’t stick out my hand to shake along with the introductions, but I did soften my gaze from one of competition and hostility to one of acceptance and equality. I hitched my chin up as I said, “Hello,” and smiled, wondering how long Pierre-Louis would be sticking around. If I was lucky, he would finish doing his tasks quickly and be dismissed. It never dawned on me he might actually be staying.
Behind me, Master chuckled. “I’m glad you approve. I would hate to have to ask Pierre-Louis to move out.”
“He lives here?” I croaked.
“Oui. He lives here,” He says. “He has his own bedroom suite, but we are lovers.”
Thankfully we stood near the kitchen table and I sat in the nearest chair to keep from falling. Make him move out! This wasn’t part of the Cassiopeia-Comeback. I was still looking though, tongue not working, but how could I not look? The two men were opposites. Whereas Frankie was dark; Pierre-Louis was fair: his blond hair cut almost military short, his blue eyes the color of a brilliant winter sky … and he was tall, several inches taller than Frankie … and more muscular than Frankie. The man was a walking wet dream from the top of his tow head to the tips of his perfectly bare toes. As I watched, Pierre-Louis went to the wine closet and retrieved three bottles of French Bordeaux. Without being asked he started uncorking and filling glasses with the deep ruby liquid. I accepted a glass and very unsophisticatedly downed the contents in one long swallow, no sniffing, no swishing, just swallowing before holding the glass back out to him. He kindly poured more without comment. When he handed me the glass our fingertips touched. A zap of electricity wouldn’t have been more powerful. My world shattered in that moment.
I am still Cassiopeia.
Where have I been hiding all of these years? I thought I’d stayed the same person … but clearly I haven’t. I’ve kept myself, my need, all tightly reined in. I allowed myself to forget want, need, desire. Lust. It was an odd realization. My sex drive hadn’t died with my marriage.
Maybe it only went dormant for a little while
because, being across the room from Frankie and Pierre-Louis, I was filled with a lust greater than any I’d ever known before, and I gave myself permission to feel it. The woman I was yesterday would have shuttered it back behind some false propriety; some suburban morality … Cassiopeia had no such codes.
I didn’t ask then what Frankie was thinking. I didn’t know what I was thinking. Or rather, I refused to admit to what I was thinking because what I was thinking was too obscene. I was wondering what it would feel like to wrap my nakedness around the lean, firm body of a young man in his prime. And I didn’t even feel dirty thinking it. Pierre-Louis looked as though he was born to fuck.
Frankie sat down at the table, as did Pierre-Louis. Sitting nude at the table, we drank wine and Pierre-Louis was forward enough to start talking, his French accent making all of my nerve endings tingle. “I have been so desperate to meet you.”
My eyebrow rose at his admission.
“Master has told me so much about the old days.”
Obviously, Pierre-Louis talked too much…
I turn my head to face Frankie and find he is awake, too.
He reaches out to touch my face. “You’re still here.”
I smile. “I have no idea why. Last night was—”
“Incredible?”
“I was thinking humiliating.”
“You enjoyed yourself,” Frankie excuses.
“Oh god, I had sex with him?”
“No, not yet.”
“Thank God.” I bury my face in my hands, doubly embarrassed as I considered it could have happened, and Frankie believes at some point it will happen. For now I am thankful the images filling my brain are just the memory of an erotic dream caused from too much adrenaline, too much Bordeaux, and two sexy men. I know I’m projecting my own insecurities onto Frankie when I accuse, “He’s too young for you!”
“No. I am French. Too young for your American mind.”