by SM Johnson
He set the switch on the table beside her, stepped in closer, and, using thumbs and forefingers, reached to pinch both her nipples at once. Hard enough that she gasped.
Her left nipple hardened, instant and total arousal. But the right one was inverted, had always been inverted, so it didn't. Pretty didn’t care. She was thirty-six years old, looked as good for her age as she was going to, and was long over being self-conscious about one defective nipple.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Yeah, right, like she was going to fall for that.
And then he tilted his head, almost so he was looking up at her, and the expression on his face was open, his eyes clear and so light blue it was like looking into Lake Superior on a sunny day. His long hair fell across his cheekbone, and he looked endearing, appealing, as young as he'd been when they'd first met. The corners of his lips lifted, and his voice was soft, so soft it was almost a whisper. "Don't be embarrassed."
She could have laughed. She had so many flaws she wasn't afraid for him to see this one.
"I'll fix you," he said, and lowered his head.
A prettier lie had never been told.
He sucked gently at first, a teasing pull, and then hard enough to make her gasp and to force the nipple to a point. It wasn't sensitive and she knew the peak wouldn't last. It never did, but every male she'd ever been sexual with had to try.
He let his teeth scrape across her nipple before he let go, then gave her that endearing look again, peering at her through his hair, his cocky grin so utterly forgotten, yet immediately familiar, that Pretty raised her arms without thinking and wrapped them around his neck, pulling him closer so she could sigh his name against the hollow of his throat.
Chapter 6
She.
Her arms are delicate around my neck, and she smells, oh, of fear, and herself, and half-forgotten desperate clutching, of begging me not to leave… and I forget for a little bit of time why I'm even doing this. I should carry her to the house and remember her properly with the sort of love-making we'd never had a chance to accomplish. Slow and sweet; as gentle as her lips… tender and pretty as her skin… as soft and careful as her hair.
Her breath is warm against my throat, and her lips feather across my skin in an erotic dance that feels like my name.
I raise my eyes to the ceiling, second-guessing myself, until I see the remains of the black scarf tied to the rafters, the one I sawed through with a knife.
And it all rushes back into me, then – how important it is to recognize pain for the character-building exercise it can be, and to know I'm the only one unafraid to teach her, and she is afraid, yes, but still she…
…wants this.
I turn her, bend her over the table again, and push her down, face first, my hand cruel against the faint marks on her back. She's really made much too much of her "beating," and the thought of beating her for real makes me smile. But before that can happen, I'll hold her trust in my hands, have her will aligned with my own, dependent, co-dependent, immersed so far in me that she'll never be a thing apart from me, ever again in her life. Mine, for always.
I speak to her."Forty," and watch the line of her back tense and twitch. And then, lowering my voice, infusing it with kindness, I let her off the hook. "Forty bare-hand to bare-ass smacks," I whisper into her ear, and use my feet to kick her legs apart.
She is silent, rigid, and I suspect furious, as she waits for me to hit her, so I set my hands free to roam over her back, decorating the switch marks with pretty red half-moons that I gouge into her flesh with my fingernails.
The line of her back somehow communicates her anger, her pure defiance.
Oh, really? We get to play this way?
The rush of pleasure I get from this thought curls my lips even more.
Chapter 7
Pretty clamped her lips, clenched her jaw, waited for him to start spanking her so she could start waiting for it to be over. She understood his purpose. By never telling her exactly what punishment she was earning, he'd be able, at times, to force his 'punishment' onto her arbitrarily, meaning there was no meaning to the numbers.
Ten could be strokes, or spanks or minutes or hours. It could be almost anything, really, completely dependent on the spin he chose to give it.
Completely dependent, like she would become.
She had no doubt he would prevail, would obscure her ability to reason and muddy her sanity, but he couldn't make her hate him, even if he tried.
She waited for him to hit her, but he didn't. He smoothed his hands over her flesh, stroking, then pinching, pinching then stroking.
It felt like a long time.
But then, there it was, the smack and the shock of heat all at the same time. Not exactly pain, not yet, but a rush of uncomfortable warmth, the press of her body hard against the table for just that instant.
There was just that one.
She… wanted to look back at him, to see what he looked like, try to guess what he was waiting for, but before she could decide if that was a good idea or a terrible one, his palm hit her ass again, harder this time, and she had to argue with her throat to be quiet.
And then came a flurry of blows, some harder than others, and she hoped he was counting, because she wasn't – she was trying to breathe through the sudden surprising strength of him, the pressure of the table against her abdomen, the sudden warmth of her buttocks that was building to pain.
The pain part, the moment of omg, I hate this, make it stop seemed very sudden. One smack was tolerable, the next and every one after utterly intolerable for the next, oh, minute and a half? And then the strange thing happened, the thing she'd read about but never quite believed was real.
The pain started to feel good. Like… blissful sort of good. Her brain releasing endorphins.
And her hips were pressing toward him just a tiny bit, moving into the connect of flesh on flesh, and she was fighting off a moan. Silence was nearly impossible.
When the spanking stopped and his cock nudged between her legs, she was already wet, and her body welcomed him.
He filled her utterly, as if he belonged inside her, seeking and claiming, a perfect fit. His attention was total. She'd say adoring, but no, his hands started those tiny little pinching fires again, playing with whatever marks the switch had left in its wake. It wasn't a loving act, and probably had little to do with Pretty at all. It was maybe even an avoidance maneuver, manipulating his own desire because he didn't enjoy hurting her as much as he'd thought he would.
He paused the fucking of her, keeping himself deep inside, and she felt a whisper of movement above her, his upper body reaching for something, doing something with purpose, though again, whatever it was didn't seem directed at her.
He pulled out of her, then pushed in again, but… different, wider somehow, and she wanted to squeak, groan… make some kind of unhappy noise, and ended up panting instead, clutching at the edges of the table, breathing, breathing…
Something clattered on the table next to her face, the length of the switch, the wider end right in front of her eyes, missing the handle.
And she knew then what was inside of her, why it felt different. She clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, breath held and chest tight, because some forbidden noise was trying to rise up, trying to escape, and she could do this, damn it, even if he wasn't being fair.
He kicked her legs further apart, and she felt him stretching her even wider, as if forcing himself into her alongside the switch handle, and it was too much, too riveting a pain, and when the groan came out of her, it sounded like a wail.
And yet there came a rolling liquid folding sensation in her belly, and a wet rush to her cunt as her body reacted to the pain, to him, and attempted to open to him more.
His fingers ran lightly up her back, almost as if to soothe, but then he had a fist in her hair and wrenched her head back, and she felt him close to her throat, mouth hot, his voice a low growl behind her, primal and harsh. "Like this, Sunshi
ne Girl? Ahh, if you were allowed to talk I'd make you tell me how it feels. Don’t worry, there'll be a time for that."
He let go of her hair and pressed her against the wood, his hand going between their bodies, tugging until she whimpered, until she mouthed silently against the wood, "Please," and there was a sharper tug, and the horrible stretch seemed to have an end.
Until she felt the handle against her anus, hard and too-big. She wriggled against the thing, not because she wanted it, but because she was still angry, more than ever, and just wanted it over.
She wanted to talk to him, wanted him to hold her and soothe her, and tell her the stories of his journey. She wanted him to teach her ideas, not pain. Could she take it all back? Were there any safewords here?
"Open for me, Sunshine Girl."
His voice was a caress, silk in her ear, and the pressure increased until she felt the inevitability there, that he was going to sodomize her with the switch handle, and she could make it better for herself by helping him, or she could make it worse by keeping herself stubbornly clenched.
Either way, it would hurt.
Pretty had been a frequent and chronic manipulator of her own body since early childhood, locking herself in her room, hiding beneath blankets, exploring those parts of her that would surely be made off limits to even her own touch, should anyone find out.
Dirty. Pervert.
Sometimes thinking such words made her cringe in shame, wondering what was wrong with her, why being dirty felt so delicious. But mostly those words, and others like them, made her want to touch herself more.
She couldn't even guess how old she was the first time she masturbated, only that she was young enough that there were few landmarks in her memory to indicate the time or circumstance.
She remembered standing on the flat surface of her vanity table. It was the sort of little girl's vanity with a large mirror attached by ribs of one-by-two pieces of wood screwed or bolted to the back of the dresser itself.
When she stood on the vanity, she was tall enough to curl her hands around the top edge of the mirror. If she stood on it naked, she could walk her bare feet, which were mildly sweaty with the fear of being caught, up the mirror, as if she were a climber scaling a wall, and then, for as long as the strength of her arms held out, she could stare at her own parts.
She was a small child, tiny and birdlike, but couldn't have been more than four or five or the weight of her body hanging from the mirror would have brought her, and it, crashing to the floor in a pile of nakedness and broken glass. But this never happened.
Later that same year, Santa Claus or some beaming-but-still-cloying adult, gave her a delightful accessory kit called a "vanity set", that contained a brush, a comb, and a mirror with a handle. She held the kit in its box, staring wondrously at the mirror through the clear cellophane window. It was the best gift ever. She could look at herself while lying in her bed, or, because the bed springs were squeaky, while lying on the floor. She could explore what she saw with her fingers.
Which she did, obsessively.
Eventually she touched herself with objects. The bristles of the hairbrush were almost too intense, but the tines from the comb not enough. A necklace chain could be settled deep between her buttocks, then pulled slowly or quickly from back to front. The scrape of it against those mysterious folds caused a tingle all the way to her toes. Made them curl, in fact, and brought her hips off the floor in a desperate straining for something she was too young to name. The smell of her fingers, afterward, was another pleasure; a secret naughtiness she could indulge in even in front of other people.
No one talked about these things, and she somehow knew it was a secret. She was torn between thinking she was the only one who touched her private parts when she was alone, or that everyone did, and it was just one more item on the list of Things We Don't Talk About. Like her father's drinking, and her mother's unpredictable and very often irrational rages.
What would the neighbors think?
Indeed.
At some point she found a chain of linked balls. She remembered it very clearly – it was the sort of chain she'd seen attached to not-so-lucky-for-rabbits-feet, but this one was oversized. The chain itself must have been eighteen or twenty inches long, the steel balls nearer in size to her mother's pearls than her brother's BBs.
When she floated them over her folds, the end few spheres disappeared.
That had never happened before.
She was lying on the floor on her back, knees tucked to her chest. She could see what her hands were doing, but only sort of, and it was awkward to hold her neck up for very many minutes at a time.
She watched her hand lower the strand until all but the one she was holding between thumb and index finger were out of sight.
They weren't hiding between her butt cheeks. She checked.
Wherever they went, they weren’t hurting her, and she didn't think they went into the place where pee came out. She stretched her free hand under the bed and felt around for the hand mirror. The mirror showed the chain, and a small dark opening into which most of the chain had fallen. Well, that was curious.
She pulled the chain out. The opening was still there. She dropped the chain back in, still holding on to the end because she was afraid of losing the whole thing.
She removed the chain and poked the opening with her finger. It opened more and her finger went in, and nothing hurt. She hadn't been able to feel the chain in there, but when she moved her finger, it felt like a feathery brush inside of her, like the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, but gentler and more private.
She was delighted. This opening in her body promised to be great fun, and it was hers. No one else would ever have to know.
Later in childhood, someone's older brother had to be taken to the emergency room because he'd poked a bobby pin into his butt and somehow misplaced it there.
Pretty had found many interesting things to put into her vagina, but it had never occurred to her to poke anything there. Especially bobby pins. So that bit of gossip, intended to further the glee little girls feel over the humiliation of an older brother, sent her into a whole new direction of exploration.
She knew the particular press of muscle that, combined with the acceptance of inevitable submission, would allow her to open for Jeremiah Quick.
The humiliating ache of subjugation lived in that barely there place between the object and her flesh. The fact that Jeremiah already filled her cunt was part of it.
His tone lost that soothing quality and took on command, and he said, "Come on, Sunshine Girl, take it."
A strangled cry wrested out of her throat and she pushed back, opened.
It was… too large and too hard, and not round, but had indentations for fingers to grip, the odd shape of it impossible. Uncomfortable.
It was inside her, now, and so was he, and Pretty forgot how to breathe.
Her breath was coming in choking gags, gasping sounds, and some sort of keening noise that was forbidden but rising in the room anyway. Coming out of her, this sound, against her will.
She didn't hear his voice at first. One of his hands rested on her upper back, holding her down, the other manipulated the awful thing inside of her. The stretch and the burn, and... trying to be quiet, but it was all hurt hurt HURT, and it took a few minutes before she could make out his words.
His was talking to her. "Ah, there. You feel me. It's… ahh, it's perfect, like I belong."
Pretty was gritting her teeth, the taste of blood in her mouth, crying. He pulled her by the hair. "Stop crying. Your tears are mine. Save them for me."
But she couldn’t stop.
There came a wrenching loss, emptiness, the loss of his cock from her cunt, and he was standing in front of the table, leaning to eat her tears again, tongue tracing her cheeks, poking at her eyes.
This she hated. It felt like he was stealing from her.
Her anus contracted, fighting the thing he'd left inside of her, wanting it out
, wanting it gone.
"You’ve earned at least another ten. But that can wait, for now."
Eating her tears made him softer.
"Perhaps next time I'll tie you down and listen to you scream," he mused out loud, more to himself than to her.
If his purpose was to frighten her, it worked. She had no doubt now that he was capable of doing such a thing, and, based on everything she could see in this room, he would enjoy it.
He leaned a hip against the table and stroked her back with one hand. "In my plan, I tucked you into the cage every night, from now until the end.”
She glanced back at him, then looked where he was looking, following the turn of his head with her gaze around this… dungeon, or play room, whatever he called it, to the hated cage. She shook her head, at first slowly, and then with a violence that bordered on frenzy.
She didn't want to sleep there ever again.
The bed was on the other side of the room, just a shit-brown plastic mattress on a frame. She was so tired that it almost looked comfortable.
Jeremiah’s eyes flicked to the ceiling.
Pretty still followed his gaze, now upward, to where hooks were set into the rafters, some of them holding chains, some rope. And a frayed scrap of black fabric, there, too.
This seemed to be where his eyes settled, and his eyebrows drew down, his lips tightened, and that muscle in his jaw twitched.
But just before that hardened look was a lost look, sad and desperate, there and gone in an instant. Had she been allowed to speak, she would have said something sweet. If she had chocolate, she would have fed him some.
His eyes returned to Pretty, and softened as if he knew what she was thinking.
He touched the top of her head, then let his hand drop to cup her cheek, with an unexpected measure of gentleness.
Then he walked around the table, fingers traveling on the wood surface, as if tracing a chalk outline around her.