The Scarlett Letters

by Jenny Nordbak

  Dom had put vampire gloves on, which had tiny sharp spikes covering the fingers and palm and soft leather that covered the top side of the hand. He slid the backs of both hands down my body, almost making me purr at finally being touched. Then he flipped to his palms and gently brushed the sharp edges up my thighs and across my ribs, eliciting a shiver. He kept this touching going in a continuous motion, leaving me guessing which sensation would come next and where. I was panting within moments, needing something but not sure what. He removed the gloves and followed the same lines with his bare hands, which felt like heaven. The man knew how to touch a woman. He traced a fingertip between my breasts, up and over my chin, and teased my bottom lip. I caught it between my teeth and sucked it into my mouth. He let me keep the gentle suction going, but pulled the earplugs from my ears and leaned over me, laughing sensuously.

  “You’re a bad girl, Scarlett. Breaking the rules of the Dungeon by making me penetrate you with my finger.”

  The way he said “penetrate” made me moan for more. I had gone from a professional in a learning environment to mindless hedonist in seconds.

  “Stand up carefully and lock your hands on your wrists behind your back.”

  I still couldn’t see and was a little off-balance, but did as I was told.

  I heard what had to be rope hit the floor as he unwound a coil. I stood perfectly still as he pulled the rope over me and knotted it into an elaborate bind. I soon realized that in the hands of a Master like him, rope wasn’t just about rendering someone powerless, but about the sensual experience of the fabric sliding across the skin, the feeling of slightly less control as each knot is tied into place. He pulled a length up between my legs and secured it through a knot that was resting between my breasts. As he pulled it tight, I could feel that he had knotted the rope precisely in the spot that it crossed my clit, so now there was pressure against it. If I moved even slightly, the knot rubbed over it, and I gasped at the shocking pleasure of it.

  Once he had finished his bind, my wrists were secured behind my back and there was rope crisscrossing the rest of my body in what felt like an elaborate design. Not to mention his naughty knot that I was hyper aware of. He led me to the leather spanking horse by pulling the rope at the front and I straddled and bent over it, finding a rolled up towel to lay my head sideways on, resting my knees on the padded leather supports on the sides. Once I was in this prone position, it would have been almost impossible to get back up without his assistance, so I felt momentary panic. I reminded myself that it was Dom and I trusted him. I could always use the safe word.

  He ran his fingertips up the back of my thighs and over my ass and then brought his palms down on each cheek with a loud smack. I jerked in surprise, but he didn’t leave me time to anticipate the next blow. He gave me a good warm-up that covered the tops of my thighs and both cheeks. It stung when he hit me, but was quickly replaced by a glowing warmth in that entire area. There was a brief pause during which he must have picked up a cane.

  For such an innocent-looking implement, the cane can knock the breath out of you in a flash. There is a sting as it smacks the skin, but the real pain takes an instant to sink it. It’s deeper and radiates up through your spine. He was using it like a paintbrush to lay perfectly measured strokes across the back of my thighs and ass. He never struck the same spot twice.

  I was breathing heavily and shaking, but managing to hold back my tears. I kept telling myself it was just pain, that I could retreat deeper into the cool, dark place in my mind and detach from it if I needed to. But Dom seemed to know that’s exactly what I was doing and found ways to jar my senses and pull me back out to full awareness. He changed to a pair of floggers and I relaxed beneath the sensual rhythm of them across my back and shoulders. I could picture Dom, in his element, swinging them in perfect alternating unison, and the image was extremely erotic. The eroticism became confused with the pain when he started to strike harder and land his blows across my tender ass and thighs. I was still turned on, but I didn’t want it anymore. I wanted to stop, but needed to know what came next. I pressed my lips tight to hold back the safe word. As he gently ran his hands down my back, I arched into the touch, begging for more. He roughly took me by the wrists and lifted me up from the spanking horse. I could feel burning bruises forming where his hands had been.

  I stood as still as I could where he had placed me, but I still couldn’t see and I was unsteady.

  “Stand perfectly still or I might miss,” he said with quiet menace.

  I jumped as a whip cracked inches from my right shoulder.

  “I said, ‘don’t move.’ You wouldn’t want me to miss and hit the wrong spot.”

  This time the whip cracked as it brushed my left ass cheek. I screamed in pain and my knees buckled. My instinct was to put my hands out to break my fall, but they were still tied behind me. Dom was there to catch me. He stood me back upright and stepped back again.

  The whip cracked inches from my skin three more times. I was trembling. I had felt enough. Just the sound made me want to run screaming from the room.

  Whips fucking hurt. Got it. Check. Lesson learned.

  “Take a deep breath, Scarlett. You’re going to take one more strike from the whip.”

  I wanted to protest, but I wanted to please him. I didn’t want him to think I was a sissy, but I felt like a sissy at the idea of another blow. He paused and stood very still. I hyperventilated in anticipation, not knowing where or when it was going to fall. He didn’t even need to hit me and he knew it. He cracked the whip to my left and I screamed and lost my footing once more. This time he let me fall gently to my knees and helped me to balance there as he started untying me. He rapidly slid the ropes back and forth until I was free, his dexterity another display of his control. When I was completely untied, he paused to see whether I would stand or remove the blindfold myself. I didn’t. I stayed on my knees awaiting his direction.

  “Good girl,” he said as he slid the blindfold off my eyes and helped me up. I was simultaneously terrified of him and purring in his arms as he hugged me. It was a head-fuck.

  Women read about Christian Grey and lose their minds, but they are reading the fantasies of a woman who I don’t believe has ever experienced what it’s really like to be controlled by a man like Dom. He was magnetic.

  “Thank you, Sir,” I said quietly when we were finished. And I meant it.

  After I got back to the dressing room, the floodgates opened. I couldn’t explain it, but I just started to sob. I didn’t know how to handle the depth of what I had experienced. Dom had found a deep, dark place within me—that dishonest place where we hide things from ourselves—and ripped it open. He came to check on me after cleaning the toys and was alarmed to find me in a sobbing heap.

  He didn’t say a word, but sat on the couch and wrapped me in his arms. The intimacy I felt nestled there was akin to the passion that can ignite out of grief: that need to connect with another human being to feel tethered back to life again. He must’ve felt the same energy because his fingers stroking my back turned from the reassuring rub of a friend into the caress of a lover. He tilted my head back and gently kissed the tear that had just spilled down my cheek. I wanted to fuck him right there in the dressing room just to feel in control again. Like I belonged in my own skin. Raven spared me the embarrassment of getting fired for doing so by walking in and interrupting.

  “What the fuck happened to you? Do I need to castrate someone?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so Dom answered for me, “Sub space for the first time.”

  “Oh … got it. With whom?”

  “Me,” he replied.

  I managed a laugh through my tears at her look. “But don’t castrate him. It was amazing. He was awesome. And I needed to learn. I just … I don’t … didn’t know what this could feel like … how intense it could be.”

  “Why don’t you come sit outside with me? Dom’s clients are here and it looks like you need some more aftercare.”


  I sat across from her at the table and took a few deep breaths, but tried as I might, the tears kept streaming down my cheeks.

  “Why would anyone want to feel like this?”

  “It’s what they crave. For a sub, it can elicit the same level of emotion that you’re feeling, but it’s all positive. It’s euphoric. A release. A sub yearns to surrender control and go to that place in their heads. The magic you’ll discover is that as their Domme, they’re throwing that energy at you. You feed off the glazed, dopey, adoring look in their eyes. It’s an incredible rush to have someone trust you like that and know that you’ve taken them there. You might hate some part of what you’re feeling right now, but you’d never have really understood the power of it if he hadn’t taken you there.”

  “I know. I get it, I do. I just can’t seem to stop crying.”

  “It can be a lot to process for you tightly wound control freaks. Most of you need it. Feel amazing after it. You just happen to fall in the category of control freaks who aren’t turned on by giving up control. Not as common as you might think.”

  We sat in silence for long moments and I started to feel a little more level and clearheaded, which let me take a good look at Raven. She didn’t really look like herself either. I didn’t want to pry, but when she let out a shuddering sigh, I couldn’t help asking, “Is everything okay with you? Seems like you’ve got some shit on your mind too.”

  She looked up at me and for an instant I could see the unmasked pain in her eyes.

  “I’m good. Or I’m not good, but I will be. It needed to happen. I got an abortion this morning. Don’t really know why I’m so torn up about something I didn’t want, but it’s hitting me harder than I thought it would.”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I had never been there. I believe a woman has the right to make decisions about her own body, but given the number of birth control options that are available to us today, I had a hard time understanding how pregnancy could happen accidentally … especially to someone as intelligent and scientifically inclined as Raven. I dismissed that line of thinking, though. If the Dungeon was teaching me anything, it was that I had absolutely no place to judge anyone. Instead, I just tried to be there for her.

  “That sucks. I’m sorry … do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really. I don’t know. I never thought I would be this girl. It’s not like I don’t know how babies are made. I just fucked up one weekend. Or I was fucked up and just didn’t think.”

  “Who’s the guy?” I asked and then immediately felt like I had crossed a line.

  “He lives in Hawaii. We were down there for a surf trip. He said he loved me and wanted to try to make it work, but there’s no way. In what world was that going to work? He doesn’t even know I’m a Domme. And I don’t need some macho fuck in my life telling me what to do.”

  “So you did the only thing that made sense.”

  “Ugh, nothing fuckin’ makes sense anymore,” she said, and a tear spilled down her cheek.

  I got up and hugged her tight, but feeling her shaking with tears started my own waterworks again. Our crying turned to laughter when we realized how silly we must look. But our superficial friendship had become something deeper.

  I cried on and off most of the drive home. I didn’t want to worry Amelia, and I thought it would be hard for her to understand, so I went straight to my room and crashed for the night.

  When I awoke the next day with a clearer head, a line of Ovid came to mind: Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. Persist and endure. This pain will be useful to you someday.

  I stretched and smirked. Oh, it would be useful …

  At the Dungeon, I told Harvey it would be the last time we played together. After playing with Dom, I didn’t think there was much more that Harvey could teach me, and I was coming to loathe his sessions. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have told him until afterward. He told me we were playing for thirty minutes, but when I was in the back grabbing implements, he paid the desk Mistress for forty-five minutes.

  By the end of the session, I was usually over it and responding minimally. He desperately wanted me to be a whiny, disrespectful schoolgirl, so since it was our last time, I decided that I would mouth off for the last minute or so of the session just to get him all hot and bothered, but not have to deal with his retaliation. I kept an eye on my watch, and as the end of the session was upon us, started to act like a bitch.

  “You’re a pathetic excuse for a headmaster, and a filthy old man,” I said in my brattiest voice. I further prodded, “You hit like a sissy! Maybe you should be a headmistress next time, so that I don’t have to pretend you’re a man. Maybe people will respect you more if you just give up and become a girl! You’d have to be a lesbian, though, because everyone knows you’re a big pervert! We all talk about it in the locker room, and we laugh at you when you’re not there!”

  I planted that one to make him think later. Did she really mean it? Were all of the subs laughing at me in the dressing room? He looked stunned. I had never mouthed off before in all of our sessions. Then he got a look of grim satisfaction. I’m sure in his mind I was egging him on, looking for a harder spanking. I was going to enjoy watching that look fade to dismay when Lady Viv called the session in five, four, three, two …

  Nothing.

  The son of a bitch grinned.

  I realized something was off when she didn’t call, but initially thought maybe my watch was off. For the next six minutes, I took one of the hardest spankings of my life. I could have told him to back off, but my pride got the better of me. I simply took it as a challenge to accept whatever he could dish out in total silence. He was layering bruises on top of what Dom had already done the day before. I eventually had had enough and broke character to stop him.

  “I think maybe the intercom isn’t working. We’re past time.”

  “I changed my mind and paid for forty-five.”

  “Harvey! We agreed to thirty.”

  He lifted his hands and shrugged innocently.

  The wily bastard got me one last time.

  * * *

  Later that week, Viv handed me a postcard when I arrived at the Dungeon. It was from the Paris hotel in Vegas. Curious, I flipped it over. It read:

  “I’m in Paris. The one in Vegas. The bathrooms here say Homme and Femme.

  Missing you, Harvey”

  It was such a bizarre gesture. He was obviously thinking about me, but didn’t quite know what to say. It’s not as though he knew anything about me or we had anything in common. I was surprised at my reaction, but it made me kind of sad. I had never given any thought to who Harvey was outside of the Dungeon, and it suddenly occurred to me that he must be lonely. And then I sat down and felt a little less bad when I remembered what he had done to my ass with his devious ways.

  18. COLIN

  I had been working at the Dungeon for four months and had managed not to see very much of my mom at the jobsite since she had been all over the country handling other projects. It was now Halloween, her birthday, and there would be no avoiding her. Amelia, Colin, and I were going to the house she had rented nearby for her annual costume birthday party. Amelia and I were then going to find a way to separate from Colin so that we could meet Wes at a vampire-themed fetish party in downtown L.A. where the girls from the Dungeon would be performing. Not wanting to alarm my family, I had toned down my vampire costume for my mom’s party and was almost entirely covered by a flowing dress and cloak. Underneath, however, was a costume suitable for a Dominatrix vampire: a miniskirt with a slit up to my hip bone and the corset that had ensnared Slave Trainer Tom.

  My mom’s Halloween birthday has always suited her. When she was little, the other children were told that the fairies had brought them, but my grandma told her that she had been brought by the witches. With her jet-black hair and electric-blue eyes, she definitely has a witchy look about her.

  Since my family is from Scotland, when we were growin
g up my mom insisted that we adhere to Scottish traditions on holidays. That meant that Halloween was all about “guising” rather than trick-or-treating. The tradition follows the pagan holiday of Samhain, the eve on which the veil between the spirit world and our world is at its thinnest and the spirits can walk among us. The idea behind guising was to dress the children up so they could disguise themselves among the spirits and go door to door getting protection from the members of the community. My mother compromised and gave out candy rather than protection spells, but where we come from you don’t just get candy for showing up, you have to do a “party piece” to earn your reward. This generally means singing a song, doing a dance, telling a story, reciting a poem, or showing off a talent. As a child, I dreaded this part as I don’t have any talent as a dancer and people think I’m mimicking a dying animal when I attempt to sing. It was also mortifying when she would force my initially confused American friends to perform for their candy, but she eventually developed a reputation as the crazy Scottish lady and they delighted in her eccentricities. The other Halloween tradition we had to do every year was dooking for apples. No one has ever given me a satisfactory explanation for this tradition in which you dunk your head in a bucket of water that also contains apples and have to try to grab one with your teeth. As a fully made-up twenty-three-year-old, I felt I should be exempt from dooking that year, but one look at my mom told me that resistance was futile.

  I got down on my knees, held my hands behind my back, and made a good show of attempting to gouge one of the apples, while putting as little of my face in the water as I could. I wasn’t really trying, so I choked when I accidentally stabbed one with my fangs, flailing and knocking the bucket, splashing water all over myself.

  “Jenny’s the next one to get married!” shouted my mother, clapping her hands.

  I had forgotten that part of the tradition. Strangely enough, of the guests in attendance that night, I would be the next to wed … but we don’t want any spoilers just yet, now do we?