by Joey Hill
She sidled up to Josh, one casual step at a time, until she was close enough for him to smell the exotic oils she had rubbed on herself. She drifted a finger along the slippery line of his neck, down his collar bone. "Are you nervous, Josh?"
A quick jerk of his head.
"But not scared of me, I hope." Her voice was soft, sensual, teasing, but with an undercurrent of seriousness. It was so easy to do this, so easy to do this with him.
The faint musk odor of his oil teased her senses and she indulged, her eyes roaming appreciatively over the slick muscles and flanks. The lighting in the room had been adjusted so the recessed spotlights were positioned to reflect off of the glistening thighs. Lauren swallowed at the sight of his stiff cock, so aroused the glans brushed his belly. It had not been oiled, cloaked in only its natural satin-over-steel smoothness, a bit of fluid leaking from the tip glossing the top.
"No, Mistress." It was just above a whisper. He was scared, but she knew by instinct it was his own soul, and the shadows that were rising from it, that were frightening him. A Dom had to bring the nightmares out, let them loose, so there would be nothing between Master and sub but trust, and pleasure, mutual devotion.
The thought brought an ache to her throat and tears to her eyes, and she felt a moment of true sadness. This time, there was no familiar sour taste of bitterness, or the taste of Jonathan. There was only Josh, and the pain and desire she felt for him.
She moved closer to Josh, and very gently stroked her knuckles across his lips, framed by the mask. It was a reassuring touch, though her proximity brushed her thighs against his arousal and made them both quiver.
"You know what I think about when I'm scared, Josh?"
He shook his head, then remembered. "Butterflies, Mistress."
She smiled. "You are so good. Just remember that. Okay?"
He swallowed. He was doing that a lot, and she found the nervousness charming, and arousing. She laid a soft kiss on his lips, which trembled under hers with his uncertainty and passion, and she murmured against them. "I'm here, Josh, and I'm going to make it all right. You're going to give me everything, and I'm going to heal it, and put it back inside you. Okay?"
She had no doubt of it, certain of her power, her role, dressed the part, in the right surroundings.
He shook his head, too overcome to speak, and she stepped back from him. "Are you doubting me, Josh?" She allowed enough ice to creep into her tone to make sure he felt the chill as solidly as a touch from her hand. One slight flick, and the whip end coiled around his ankle, just a whispering touch, then it was gone again. He jerked, his breath catching in his throat.
"You will hold nothing back from me, Josh. Try all you want, but you know who is Mistress here. Marcus," she tilted her head toward the other man. He was watching them both, a morass of things she could not read moving behind his expressive eyes.
"Josh is going to find it very difficult to control himself," she warned. "I don't want to have to be too cruel to him. Please put this on him, and make it as tight as he can stand it."
She lifted her other hand, which held a web of straps, and silver chain. Marcus's eyes flickered to it and then back up to her face. She waited. Would he refuse? Josh was his friend, and he had already warned her he would brook no unreasonable measures against his friend. Could he read her intentions?
Lauren took a step, laid the device in his palm and closed his fingers over it, then her hand over his, tightening her grip. It's okay, she mouthed.
Whatever he saw in her eyes satisfied him, for he nodded, curled his fingers briefly over hers, and took the device from her hand.
Lauren stepped back so she got a good view of her subject again. "Marcus is going to put a cock harness on you, Josh," she said. "I want to see your cock on display, and I want you to stay hard for me."
"I suspect," his voice was thick, "I could oblige you in that, regardless, Mistress."
She laughed, a light caressing sound that floated close then drifted away. "But it's like a favored piece of artwork, Josh. I want it framed, mounted for my pleasure."
Marcus dropped to one knee and coated his hands with the oil from the bottles he had used to slick Josh down earlier. His hand closed, with gentle admiration, over Josh's erection. Josh jumped, though he was unable to move his hips more than an inch because of the straps holding his thighs apart and his waist immobile. Marcus oiled the shaft as Josh's breath clogged in his throat, his color rising to his exposed jaw line.
"It feels different, having a man handle you, doesn't it?" Lauren asked. She circled to his right, distracting him from Marcus by making him search for her with his hearing and his nose. "A strong touch. His hand is sure of what will pleasure you, in a way a woman can learn but will never truly feel, or understand. She just enjoys when she gets it right and sees your body quiver under her palm, or feels your cock jump under the moist flick of her tongue, inside the deep recesses of her mouth, as she takes you in, sucking, drawing out your response."
Marcus chuckled as Josh groaned and attempted to thrust against his hand, then jerked in shame. Red color rose along his exposed neck.
"My dear," Marcus said, "you are supposed to soothe the beast until you get the cage on him, not tease him into a rage while he's still unfettered."
She laughed, a delighted sound. "My apologies, Marcus." But her grin was unrepentant.
"Laur — Mistress —" Josh's distress was palpable and she shifted gears, made her voice softer. She came closer to him.
"Women are so much luckier than men. We grow up used to touching each other, in affection, and friendship. It's easy to explore one another, enjoy a woman's knowledge of what feels good. Society doesn't give you guys as much of a break on that. We're free to learn from the beginning that just because we can enjoy what a woman can give to us, it doesn't make us a lesbian. Any more than," her finger reached out, stroked the side of his corded neck, "You responding to Marcus's touch makes you gay."
Marcus slid the tunnel of straps over the engorged and slick cock, and Lauren moistened her lips, her fingers curling into a scrape of nails on Josh's neck. Marcus was aroused as well, visible to her eyes in the loose pants. He fitted the straps evenly over the velvet flesh, a noticeable quiver to his hands as he tested the snugness, ensuring the tightness around the scrotum. He rose and moved behind Josh to buckle the harness just below the restraining strap on Josh's waist. The belted waist served the dual purpose of keeping the harness from slipping, and keeping Josh's penis in an erect, perfect angle for sliding into a woman's heat. Marcus's fingertips caressed the small of Josh's back, the dimples on either side of his spine. Josh's breath was rasping, his cock leaking more semen, and Lauren had to stifle her own raging desire at watching them. She wanted to tease him past bearing, and she was heading there rapidly. Maybe too rapidly.
There was a chain attached to the base of the cock harness, with the links dividing into two separate strands that went to the floor. Marcus came back around to Josh's front and fastened the ends of the chain to each link in the cuffs at Josh's ankles. The chain's weight pulled down on the harness and its contents, keeping it at that desirable angle, which made Josh's now half-mast erection even more impressive. Some distraction might be necessary or she suspected he might explode, regardless of the constriction of the harness. Lord knew, she was close enough herself.
"Josh, would you like Marcus to describe what I'm wearing?"
"Yes."
Crack!
He yelped in surprise, not pain, as the popper snapped at his upper thigh, just below his bound testicles. Marcus's head jerked up, having been just below the whip's path. She gave him a playful grin and reined the whip back in.
"Yes, Mistress," Josh corrected himself.
"Good." She drew close again, shifted the whip out of her left hand and kept the riding crop she had been holding with the whip in her palm. She dropped the tip of the crop; let it play a bit beneath his balls. He tried to strain at her touch, and could not. "Marcus?" she ask
ed.
The art dealer bowed, settling in on the step of the dais that held the St. Andrew's Cross. He leaned back indolently; reaching for a glass of wine he had somehow procured, putting the final touch on the look of an indolent, sensuous Prince of Egypt. He took a sip and considered Lauren, who raised her brow, giving him a slight curve of her lips and a coquettish pose.
Marcus smiled. "Were you not so delightfully restrained, my friend, your body would explode at the sight of her."
Lauren strolled onward, her spike heels punctuating his words. She rested the crop on her shoulder and loosely flicked the bullwhip along the stone floor with her other hand, as he continued to speak.
"Your beautiful Mistress is wearing a tight gold dress, some sort of Lycra - cire cross. It has long sleeves and a just barely ass-covering skirt. The cloth of the dress is sheer, woven with sparkles of gold dust. At different angles you can see a momentary shadow of her pubis, the dark press of her nipples, the cleft of her buttocks, but they are tantalizing impressions only, sure to drive a handsome slave mad, trying to look without being caught looking."
Lauren chuckled.
"The neckline of the dress, always the most important thing to a man," Marcus grinned over his glass, "is a straight line from armpit to armpit, just barely above her nipples, and when she takes a deep breath, you see just that faint crescent of mauve over the nipple. I believe she's rouged them to make it more noticeable.
Lauren gave him a nod of pleased acknowledgment.
"She's made her lips wet as an aroused clit, with a burgundy shade. Her beautiful blue eyes are outlined in black and shadowed in gold. The sleeves of her dress hook with a gold chain between the thumb and forefinger like a medieval gown."
Marcus's gaze descended, and his voice went to an appreciative sensual thickness. "She's wearing gold thigh high boots with a three-inch spike heel and a gold chain circling the ankles. She's slicked back her hair and scattered gold dust across it and her cheeks. She's also carrying a very wicked crop, as you felt, and what appears to be a very long bullwhip.
"She's beautiful," he concluded. "A golden goddess." He ran his fingers along Josh's calf, teased his ankle just above the cuff. "Aren't you pleased to be courting her pleasure?"
Josh nodded, a slight movement all that his head could manage.
"You'd like to see her, wouldn't you?"
Another nod. Marcus tilted his head to Lauren, only ten feet away from her charge.
"Maybe in a moment," she said calmly, though she felt far from calm.
Her mother had once told her that the difference between love and all the lesser imitations of it was so startling, so powerful in its contrast, that once she had actually felt it, she would never mistake anything else for it again. Lauren hadn't known what she was talking about, because the perversity of love was, until you experienced it for the first time, there was no way to distinguish it from the other versions.
To have someone so willingly surrendered to her, open to her like this, was something she had never had, and it was so different from how Jonathan had made her feel that she couldn't imagine why she ever gave the sadistic prick the time of day.
She felt an incredible melding of power and tenderness, craving and worship. She had felt it in small doses throughout the past two days, but this was far more. This was utter, voluntary surrender of one human to another, and it humbled her in a way too powerful to explain in words. Marcus had been right. Such trust, such devotion was meant to elicit the heady flood of protectiveness and desire she felt now, the absolute worship for the one surrendering, cherishing their devotion and trust for the gift it was.
To honor it, to find it and keep it, she would have to risk losing it. That was a lesson Jonathan had taught her as well.
She stepped forward, the heel a loud punctuation on the stone floor, like the snap of a starting gun.
Chapter 17
"You must prove your devotion to me first, before you can see me," she said. The edge of the crop drifted along the line of his pectoral. The skin quivered beneath it, and she suppressed the urge to lean forward, bite warm skin and muscle.
He swallowed. Unbound, but bound by her orders, he had shown occasional flashes of humor. Here, he was helpless, focused on her and vulnerable, and she was about to tread into even more turbulent emotional waters. She thought about calling a timeout to be sure things were okay. It might break the tension that was building, tension that might be important.
She glanced down at his stiff cock. The head was full of blood, a flushed cap for the column of black harnessing straps, and she knew there was no doubt she had him in a high state of lust, when the psyche was more open to being pushed. She wanted answers. She had to have them, to be sure she could take them where they both seemed to want to go.
"Okay," he whispered, before she could open her mouth to ask him again.
She came even closer, brought her scent and nearness to him for reassurance. She caressed his bare neck, traced his lips gently with her fingers. She let him catch them in his mouth and suck on them greedily before she took them away and rested them on his bare chest, tracing the moistness he had left on them across his nipple while his breath caught harshly in his throat.
"Tell me what happened, Josh. What happened with Winona to drive you here, to make you hide here?"
His body went rigid. Whatever he had been expecting her to ask of him, it was apparently not that. Marcus's eyes narrowed on her, but after a moment, his expression became thoughtful and he nodded, tentative endorsement of her direction. Be careful, his eyes warned.
She knew. She suspected the danger of this path, and knew it all too well herself, and maybe that knowledge was part of why she dared.
"Can you tell me, love?" she turned her hand over, stroking with her knuckles now, more soothing than provocative. Blindfolding him should make it easier for him to speak of it, just as it had been easier to tell them of Jonathan while staring at the ocean, as if they were not there. But she couldn't be entirely kind.
"Tell me. I'm your Mistress. You're not to hide anything from me." Her hand descended, and closed over the harness, her lower two fingers capturing the chain and giving it a sharp tug. He groaned, trying to thrust into her hand, but she stepped back from him abruptly, leaving his hot skin exposed to the chill of her withdrawal.
"Anything," she repeated. "Tell me. If I decide you need to be punished," she sidled up close again, pressed her full length along his body, let his captive cock slide between her thigh muscles. It was like embracing a board; he was so rigid with hunger and heat. "I'll take care of it. Or perhaps you need a punishment now, to remind you who you obey, who you tell your secrets to?"
"A punishment worse than not being able to see you?" He groaned out the question. He tried to fasten his teeth on her throat, but she eluded him with a chuckle and a sharp strike of the crop along his inner thigh, the left one this time, and a quick flick over his testicles. Then she withdrew again. She took her time walking back, five paces, to the throne Marcus had vacated. She turned, took a seat, and considered him, a whip in each hand.
"Tell me, Josh. Tell me what happened. I'm going to sit here in this chair, and wait for you to tell me. Until you do, you will not be punished as you deserve. You will not touch me or suckle my breasts, or get to plunge that steel cock of yours into my pussy. Do you know how wet my pussy is for you, Josh? It's drenched. I could come just by sitting like this, watching you bound on display for me, as beautiful as one of your sculptures."
He made a noise, part plea, part animal sound of pain. Lauren refused to let herself soften, even though she saw concern flit across Marcus's face. She sharpened her tone.
"Tell me, Josh. It starts with one sentence. You said you trusted me completely. Prove it to me."
She watched and waited. It would have been a nice moment to simply indulge herself in the heartbreaking beauty of his restrained body, but the rasp of his breath and the intensity of his internal struggle came off his body in emotional
waves that swamped her. She didn't need to see the visual chaos of his expression to know he was in anguish.
She wanted to know who had caused him such pain, protect him, heal it, kiss it away. Forgive him, if he suffered because he had caused pain. She thought she would forgive him anything.
"Start with one sentence, love," she said, softly, so her voice was like the murmur of his own consciousness. "I came here because I couldn't look in a mirror. Why are you here? What eats at your soul, Josh? It's just us here, and there is nothing outside this room."
"I'm a monster." It came out a whisper, but the raw pain in his voice made it even more potent than a declaration delivered in a shout. She heard accusation, judge, jury and conviction in his resigned tone, the sound of someone trudging off to hellfire with no hope of reprieve.
"Why are you a monster? What did you do, Josh? Tell me."
"I… can't. It's too bad."
She swung the whip, snapped it a hair's breadth from his ankle, so he felt the air a moment before the noise and jerked. Even Marcus started, surprised by the force of the move, his look of uneasiness quickly replaced by admiration as she brought the whip back in a sweeping, controlled curve around her calves. She was, for a moment, the image of the unrepentant Lilith, in the garden of Eden with the sly serpent coiled around her body.
"You have been bad, Josh," she said. "Bad for holding back on me, and Marcus, who cares for you so much. So you need to be punished."
She considered him, then rose, came to him. "So you will be," she murmured, a silky purr as she slid one fingernail down the center of his chest, depressing slightly to leave a red welt, scraping a line down his belly, stopping just below his navel. She lowered herself to a feline crouch, her breath heated, tickling just above his glans. Josh's arms became cords of iron, pulling against the restraints, and she wondered if there was anything more erotic than watching a powerful man strain against manacles.