He tapped her thigh with the switch. “Don’t tense. We’ve talked about this. It doesn’t help and it makes you mark worse.”
She managed a “Yes Sir” through clenched teeth as seven and eight fell. The fire spread out and throbbed from her buttocks down to her pelvis and thighs. She wanted to beg for mercy as much as she wanted it to continue. She had a safe word but she knew she wouldn’t use it, not unless he was killing her. She wanted nothing more on earth than to endure this pain for him. And then afterward, when he held her and soothed the pain away…
She choked back sobs and danced on her toes as nine, ten, eleven, twelve fell in quick succession. Tears were running down her face, frustration and desperation in liquid form.
Please, please, please, please. Please be finished soon. Please let me live through this. Please let me make you happy.
He set the switch aside after fifteen. She slumped forward against the wall in relief as she heard him lay it across the bureau. Her ass was on fire. She could feel each of the fifteen stripes aching individually in a lattice, and underlying that, the humiliating sensation of the plug still lodged between her ass cheeks. He always made her stand for long moments afterward knowing he watched her, letting her wonder what he was thinking.
At last, when her breath slowed and her spine straightened again from its relieved slump, he came to her side. He gave her aching ass a quick slap and pushed the plug deeper, drawing a groan from her. He shed his clothes. She heard them drop to the floor one after the other. Shirt, jeans, the whisper of boxers drawn down over long thighs. She needed his touch, she needed him close. After Barry used to whip or punish her, he would send her to stand in a corner or lock her in an isolated cage for hours.
Dave always made love to her.
His arms came around her from behind and she gasped with the same convulsive pleasure she always felt when he touched her. “Ohhh…” The quivery sigh escaped her before she could bite it back.
“Okay, baby,” he said against her ear. “Who do you belong to?”
“You, Sir. Thank you for punishing me. I’m so sorry I was disrespectful.”
“You’re forgiven. You’re my good girl, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes, Sir. I love you.”
“I love you too. You’re my own girl. You belong to me, and I’ll always take care of you.”
She turned her face into him. He turned her in his arms and caught her heartfelt thanks with his kiss. As he lifted her and cupped her bottom in his hands, she kept repeating, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” until he shushed her with a gentle nudge.
“I’m going to fuck you now. Open.” She wrapped her legs around his hips as he guided her arms around his neck and backed her to the wall. “And I think I’ll leave that plug in your ass to remind you that I’m the one in charge here.”
“Yes Sir,” she said. He braced her against the wall and released her throbbing ass to open the package in his palm and roll on the condom. When he nudged against her pussy she arched her hips to accept his thick length.
God.
God.
She was filled to bursting as he slid it in. Sensations overwhelmed her—his cock sliding into her hot, slick passage, the answering pressure of the plug filling her ass, the strong hands that squeezed her stinging, striped cheeks, the hard pelvis that ground against her swollen clit. The iron-hard abs that slid against her front, and the arms that held her safe and protected. The hot lips at her ear and the stubble against her cheek.
“Mmmm…oohhhh…” The transported sounds she made blended with his animalistic grunts. He varied the speed and force of his thrusts, fast, slow, rough, gentle. Shallow, teasing, and then so deep. “God, Dave. My god!”
“You like that, girl? You like taking my cock deep? You’re stuffed full, aren’t you?”
“Yes! Yes Sir.” She groaned into his chest as he manipulated her on his cock. The shimmering tingle in her clit reached a peak and then broke wide. She bucked in his arms, thrashing in the throes of her orgasm. He held her tight, then yelled out his own release, pressing her hard against the wall and pumping against her hips.
When they finally came back to their senses, they both laughed at the sound of Cerby’s frustrated whine on the other side of the door. Dave let her down slowly, and Sophie felt so loose and satiated her legs barely worked. Even the intrusive plug barely registered. Dave kissed her until she was a mindless puddle, then sent her off to the bathroom to clean up.
She took care of the toy, showered quickly and dressed in comfortable clothes for hanging out. They had standing Saturday night plans for pizza delivery and a movie, so she doubted they’d be going out. She decided to forgo makeup and just applied some light gloss instead, staring at her reflection. Sometimes, after their sessions, she didn’t even recognize herself. Who was that happy, loved-up-looking girl in the mirror? It was her. Lucky, lucky her.
Her reveries were interrupted by Dave’s peal of laughter from the bedroom. “Soph. Come see this.”
With one last smile at herself in the mirror, she followed the sound of his laughter to find Cerby waiting for her beside the bed, chewing and gnawing the switch into twisted, slobbery bits.
Chapter Five
Dave mixed chemicals in the darkness, a process he rarely did anymore. How long had it been since he’d crouched over the enlarger with sheets of photographic paper? Since he’d mucked in development and stop baths? Darkrooms always felt slightly oppressive to him, especially the tiny one he’d created in the unfinished basement of his house. He had chased the light from one small corner, banished it with special, filtering walls, sodium vapor light bulbs and a double door that took up half the space, forcing him to creep around the closet-sized area where he could touch both walls with his arms outstretched.
He had processed the hundred or so negatives after tucking Sophie into bed. He could have gone to sleep next to her and done all this work on a lazy Sunday, but no. He couldn’t wait. He had picked out the most interesting shots from the contact sheet, the ones with the most striking composition and best focus, although part of him wanted to print all one hundred so as not to miss even the smallest nuance. Bah. He was sure he would eventually print them all. But not tonight. Tonight he would print just five or six. Or seven. Okay, ten at most.
He put his mind to the process, exposing the paper, slipping it into the tray of developer. The image appeared slowly over several moments, a magical-feeling process he’d missed since the advent of digital photography.
Hello, beautiful girl.
She was made for black and white. Her pale skin contrasted beautifully with her dark hair, and those eyes… He grew so distracted enjoying her image that he nearly overdeveloped it. He slipped it into the stop bath with a stifled curse and then into the fixer. He placed it on the screen shelf to dry and repeated the process. Beautiful. Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Each print was more beautiful than the last. Her wide eyes looked somber but not unhappy. There was a hint of humility, or perhaps submission, that he recognized. The pairing of the hiding in the bush with her cloaked expression was perfect. And aside from all that, she was just gorgeous in every way. Not photogenic, my ass. He wanted to examine them more closely, pore over every detail, but that would take time and the chemicals were aging.
Focus.
The screen filled with drying prints. He worked on a couple of the shots he’d taken at the crest of the steep path, when she’d stopped and seemed to experience déjà vu. They weren’t great. He’d snapped them on the fly, in a hurry, but there was something in her expression that compelled him to print them anyway. Finally, he decided to print only three of the nudes where she was standing, the ones where he’d asked her to expose herself. He’d debated whether or not to ask it of her, but she had handled it well. If she’d balked, he wouldn’t have gone through with it. As it was, she had been endearingly brave, baring herself in public. And God knew she was still sensitive about those scars.
The corners of his mouth drew down in a frown. Those scars. If they remained an issue for him, they would remain an issue for her. He was determined to convince her the scars didn’t matter. They didn’t matter to him, at least not in the way she feared. No, it was just the idea of what she had endured to bear such markings. He thought, as he always did, how badly he wanted to maim Barry. Hopefully Barry would be wise enough to stay away, if he was even in the area any longer.
Anyway, Dave could make the scars go away.
He adjusted the settings on the enlarger. He would underexpose the prints just a little. It would give them a fuzzier, softer aspect, and it would minimize or perhaps even hide the scars completely, make the most obvious ones fade into her light skin. It took a few tries in the developer to get the exposure where he wanted it. When he was happy with them, he put them beside the others to dry. The rack was full and it was late, after midnight. He decided to look at them tomorrow when he could study them in natural light. He stowed the exposed film and then cleaned up quickly under the faint red-orange light. Just as he was rinsing out the last of the trays and laying it in the sink, he heard Sophie cry out.
He dropped the tray with a clatter and bolted up to the bedroom. She was wailing, he could hear it even from the stairs. He burst into the room to find Cerberus licking Sophie’s face as if to soothe her, but she was caught in a nightmare, her face a canvas of grief. He looked at Dave and whined softly.
“It’s okay, boy. She’s okay,” he reassured the troubled animal, who slunk over to his bed and curled up with a sigh. “Sophie, honey,” Dave whispered, lifting her in his arms. “Sophie, you’re dreaming. Sophie, sweet…” She fought him, still in the throes of whatever monsters haunted her dreams. At last she seemed to come to her senses and wake a little, and then her frantic cries turned into something even more disturbing…heartbroken sobs. “No, no, no,” she sobbed over and over. “No. No!”
Dave rocked her, holding her close. He ached for her distress, but knew she would calm down eventually. This wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with this. In fact, the nightmares had come so frequently at the beginning of their D/s relationship that he’d almost broken things off with her, fearing he was the one triggering them. She had pleaded with him not to release her.
The nightmares will go away. I know they will.
And they had soon afterward, but every so often, out of the blue, another one arrived. At last, he felt her breath grow more even and her sobs quiet. Her trembling subsided into a tired slump. She turned her head into his shoulder.
“Okay now?” She nodded. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes in the faint moonlight. “Really okay?”
Her gaze slipped away from his. “That was a bad one.” One last shiver racked her small frame.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. I don’t even remember what it was about. I was just really…”
“Scared?”
“Yes.”
He caressed her cheek. “This isn’t…it wasn’t…this afternoon—”
“No. God, no, Dave. No. This afternoon was fine. It was lovely. Please, don’t think I’m having nightmares about you.”
“What are they about then? You never tell me what you’re dreaming.”
“Because I don’t— I don’t really know. I wake up and they just—” She threw up her hands, invisible disappearing dust. “They go away. I’m fine, really. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“I wasn’t sleeping yet. I was just coming to bed. I developed some of the photos from today.” He went on, feeling her relax by degrees, soothed by casual chitchat. “They turned out beautifully. I think I printed at least twenty, although I only intended to print ten or so. We’ll look at them tomorrow.”
“When are you going to show me how to use your darkroom?”
“One thing at a time. I think I enjoy our martial arts lessons more.”
Sophie laughed. “Yes, because I excel at them so brilliantly.”
“You do pretty well for a newbie. You almost took my legs out from under me last time. Your problem is that every time I grab you, you go all gooey.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
She looked up at him, smiling. God, if only she knew how he felt when she looked at him that way. He squeezed her affectionately.
“I love you, Sophie. From now on, I want you to have sweet dreams. Only sweet dreams.”
Her hand was tracing over his pecs and down his stomach. His groin tightened as she looked up at him in invitation. “I don’t know what on earth might induce me to have sweet dreams. Maybe if something really, really wonderful and relaxing was to happen to me just as I was drifting off to sleep—”
Her voice cut off in a yelp and giggle as he tossed her down on the bed. Words, commands, orders crowded his mind.
Lie back. Spread your legs. Open for me.
In the end, he just took what he desired without words, pulling off her panties and tossing them across the room. He spread her thighs and held them parted wide with his palms, an unspoken order to expose herself to him. He leaned down to taste her, sweetness and heat. She tensed, already moaning. She was so sensitive that oral undid her. It completely broke her down, and not in a good way. The sensation was just so strong for her so as to be almost painful. Even though they weren’t in role right now, even though this was only playtime, the sadist in him couldn’t resist holding her down and making her squirm, at least for a little while.