“You’re going to beat me up first, right?”
“Oh, Thorny,” she said as she locked the dungeon behind them and they walked down the hall arm in arm. “I’m going to do such things to you...”
“Good things? Bad things?”
Nora smiled at him.
“Good bad things.”
Thorny kissed her again right in the hallway.
“My favorite things.”
He abruptly stopped kissing her and took a step back.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re not going to get in trouble with Kingsley for this, are you?”
“No, of course not. As long as he doesn’t find out.”
“Good. Just checking.”
“I’ll tell you what Kingsley told me once when he and I did something we weren’t supposed to do—what he doesn’t know won’t hurt us.”
“What if he finds out?”
“He’ll hurt us.”
“Can I ask one more question, Mistress?” Thorny said as they headed to the exit.
“Sure thing. What’s the question?”
“Why do you have a coffin in your dungeon?”
28
A Mirror Image
NORA PICKED UP her Lexus at Kingsley’s and drove her and Thorny to her house in Connecticut. The dog days of August were earning their bad reputation today. The clouds hung in the sky heavy, dark and low and the air simmered with heat. The electricity in the atmosphere made the hair stand up on her arms. Her clothes clung to her skin and it seemed everyone, herself included, wanted nothing more than to be naked inside an air-conditioned room. A few drops of rain fell presaging the coming summer storm, the sky heady and swollen but waiting to burst open. Even the sidewalks steamed.
When they arrived at Nora’s house, Thorny whistled his appreciation while Nora turned off her cell phone. Last thing she wanted was Kingsley calling and interrupting her night off.
“Looks like the kink trade pays better than the flesh trade,” Thorny said.
“You know what they say—if you want to afford a house in New York City, you move out of New York City.”
She let him in and took him up to her bedroom. Luckily her cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house looked and smelled clean and pleasant. Thorny looked around appreciatively. She liked this, bringing guys home to her place. It would be a crime to have such a nice house and no one to share it with.
“This is my bedroom,” Nora said. Sunlight streamed in through the sides of Roman blinds against the window.
“Sexy,” Thorny said. “Nice bed.”
Nora patted the iron footboard. The bed was a bit medieval-looking, and anyone who’d been in Søren’s dungeon would see it looked a bit like his. She had such good memories of that bed...
“You’re not the first client who offered me something in trade for my kink. One of my boys owns the largest furniture store on the Eastern Seaboard. He told me if I could beat him until he passed out, he’d let me have the pick of his showroom. Voilà.”
“Passed out? Jesus,” Thorny said, tugging off his jacket. “That’s too rough for my blood.”
“Don’t worry. I only hit as hard as my boys want to be hit. You like floggings, right, but hate whips? They feel too much like switches?”
“You remember that?” He grinned, obviously pleased.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” She walked to him where he stood at the foot of her bed, leaning against the post. She put her hands on his chest and kissed him again. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Søren. She guessed his height at about five-ten. In her three-inch heels she could easily reach his lips. His kisses were sweet and gentle, affectionate, but with a hint of the passion she knew he hid within him. She could taste it on her tongue. Copper. The same taste as the electricity in the humid August air.
“So you’re going to give me the Boyfriend Experience?” Nora asked.
“I am.”
“Then I will give you the Submissive Experience. How does that sound?”
“Does it involve you putting me into subspace and getting me off so hard I can taste music and smell stars?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds perfect. But...we’re doing this in here?” he asked.
“Why not?”
“Well...it’s a bedroom. Just a bedroom.” He glanced around the room and she saw what he saw—a spacious bedroom with a recessed sitting area, an iron bed, a few novels on the nightstand and a lamp, and not much else but an ornately carved cheval mirror standing in the corner. Apart from two potted plants hanging from the ceiling by the mirror, there was not much else...
Or was there?
“Looks, my boy, can be deceiving.” She winked at him and pulled away. On her way to her closet she glanced back over her shoulder. “You should be taking your clothes off right now. In case you didn’t know.”
“Yes, Mistress.” He yanked his shirt off and she saw both of his nipples were pierced with silver hoops. Lovely. She did her best to ignore his body while she set up the room. From her closet she took out a black step stool and two lengths of rope. She threw a two-foot chrome spreader bar on the bed and found her favorite fawn-colored wrist and ankle cuffs. They were padded with soft faux fur on the inside. She wanted Thorny to feel coddled and comfortable, even in bondage.
“I’m only going to flog you, but you’ll be cuffed so you won’t be able to move much until I let you out. I’ll monitor your pain. If it’s good you say green. If you need me to back off a notch or slow down, say yellow. If it’s bad say red. Red won’t stop the scene. It’ll just stop the flogging until you’re ready again. Your safe word will end everything. What’s your safe word?”
“Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second.”
Nora looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Thorny aimed at her one of the sexier grins that had ever been aimed at a woman in the history of sexy grinning.
“I don’t safe out often,” he said.
“Queen Liz it is then.”
From the top of her closet, Nora pulled out a black bag. She tossed it onto the bed and unzipped it. Thorny wasn’t naked yet. He still wore black boxer briefs but she didn’t scold him. His interest in stripping had no doubt been diverted by what Nora took out of her bag.
“Suede,” Nora said, pulling out the first flogger. It had fourteen-inch scarlet-red tails. “Very soft and sensual. The bright blue is next. It’s deer-hide. The leather is buttery. Feel?”
She held it out and Thorny ran his fingers over the tails.
“Nice. Very smooth,” he said.
“This black one is bull-hide. Much sharper edges. The yellow-and-black one is rubber. It’s stingy like a bee so we’ll leave that one alone. It would feel a little like a whipping. But this one...” She held up a hunter-green-and-black flogger. “This one’s elk. Heavy and thuddy.”
“I like thuddy.”
“I thought you would.” She pulled out one last flogger but didn’t remove it from its red leather case. “This one’s special. I’ll save it for last.”
She lined them up on the bed in order of lightest and softest to heaviest and hardest. Thorny gazed at them with heat in his eyes.
“Why do you like floggings?” Nora came to him and ran her hands over his chest, shoulders and arms.
“Floggers are beautiful. They can feel soft one second and hard as steel the next. Takes an expert to wield one the right way. And you can get hit with them all over your body. Arms, legs, feet, anywhere, without doing real damage. I don’t know. They’re just sexy and scary and sensual all at the same time. Just like you.”
Nora kissed him again, slipping her tongue between his lips slowly as she eased her hands into his underwear and pushed them down. Her lips left his reluctantly, but she continued her downward trajectory as she dragged the boxers to the floor and bade Thorny step out of them. She stood up and took a step back.
“Very nice,” she said of his body. He was hard already. All of him
and not just his cock. He had a hard flat stomach, a hard V of muscle on each side of his torso, hard hipbones that jutted out, and two vertical hard lines of muscles in his thighs. “You run.”
“How did you know?”
“Even blindfolded I could recognize runner quads. You have a lovely body, Thorny. I can’t wait to use it and abuse it for my amusement and pleasure.”
“That’s what it’s here for, Mistress.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. And now to show you the secret of my bedroom. Go stand facing the mirror.”
He did as ordered. Nora picked up her ropes and her step stool and carried them over to Thorny. Now there were two Thornys—the real one and the mirror one.
She put the step stool by his left foot and climbed it.
“Excuse me whilst I put my ferns away.”
“I don’t think you get enough light in here for ferns, Mistress.”
“It’s okay. They’re fake,” she said. “I had to tell the contractor something to get him to install two hooks in the ceiling of my bedroom, didn’t I?”
Thorny glanced up at the J-shaped hooks screwed into the plaster above them.
“I told the contractor I needed two hooks for my plants and that he should make sure they could hold two hundred pounds each.”
“Those would be some big fucking plants, Mistress.”
“That’s what the contractor said.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I like my plants the way I like my men—hanging from hooks on my bedroom ceiling. He didn’t ask any more questions after that.”
Nora looped her rope over the hooks and came down from the stool. First, she buckled the padded cuffs on Thorny’s wrists, then she hoisted them above his head and secured them with the rope. Next she cuffed his ankles and bound them to the two-foot spreader bar. When she finished, Thorny stood immobile, naked and hard three feet from her mirror with his arms tied to the hooks on the ceiling and his feet rooted firmly to the floor.
“Relax for me,” Nora ordered as she made a circuit around his body, dragging her fingernails lightly over his stomach, sides and the small of his back. “Go as limp as you can.”
He closed his eyes, and she saw him sagging in the bonds.
“This is as limp as I’m going to get,” he said and Nora paused in front of him, looking meaningfully at his erection. Only looking. Not touching. That would come later.
“Excellent.” Even going limp, Thorny had barely moved. The spreader bar, rope, hooks and cuffs held him firmly and safely in place. Nora touched his face and let their eyes meet.
“The name Thorny suits you. Like a hawthorn bush you’re a little dangerous to be around, but you are very lovely to look at.”
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“Are you blushing?” she asked, smiling at him. “Did I make a whore blush?”
“You did. Can’t wait to make a domme beg.”
“Wait your turn,” she teased. “You’re all mine now. You must spend a lot of time taking care of your clients. It’s good you’re taking some time to let someone else take care of you.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Taking care of me?”
He pushed his hips forward, but she didn’t scold him for it.
“I want to take very good care of you,” she said, slipping a blindfold over his eyes. The mirror in front of him was for her, so she could watch his face and his reactions. She wanted him utterly lost in sensation, seeing nothing, feeling everything. “You’re in my hands now, in my bedroom. This is the safest room in the world right now. Nothing and no one will harm you here. Your body will be honored. Your desires will be honored. Your trust in me will be honored. Do you believe me?”
“Yes, Mistress.” He whispered the words. Good. The spell was already taking effect. She ran her thumbs over the arch of his cheekbones, over his lips. She outlined his ears and caressed his collarbone with her fingertips.
“I’m going to enjoy flogging you very much,” she said, running her hands up and down his sides, over and around his rib cage. “I love flogging beautiful men. Worse ways to spend a hot August afternoon, right?”
“I can’t think of a better way, Mistress.”
She took her suede flogger off the bed and combed her fingers through the velvety tails.
“You’re with Mistress Nora now. Nothing bad ever happens when you’re with Mistress Nora. Only good things. Wonderful things. Things like this.” She brushed the tips of the flogger tails over the tops of his bare feet and toes. Thorny smiled. With a light back-and-forth motion, Nora brushed the flogger across his shins. She worked her way up his legs, gently caressing him with the flogger, letting the tails lap and lick at his skin. Holding the flogger high over him, she ran the tips of the tails over the full length of his penis.
As she swept the flogger over his erection, Thorny’s hips undulated in rhythm with it, a sight she found terribly erotic. She looked forward to when it was his turn showing off his special skill set. But now all she wanted was to give him the flogging of his dreams. Nothing else mattered.
When Thorny’s breathing grew heavier, Nora moved to his backside, not wanting him to come until after the beating. She whisked the flogger over the back of his legs now and between them, licking at his inner thighs and testicles. She did nothing that hurt, nothing that caused pain. She wanted only to wake up his body, put his nerves on notice.
“Best ass I’ve seen in a long time,” Nora said, gently slapping the ass in question with her flogger.
“Thank you, Mistress.” Thorny gave her a little wiggle.
Nora stepped back and used a wide swing now on Thorny’s back and arms. She was careful to keep the pressure as light as possible. Nothing would jar him out of the safe space in his mind faster than a hard hit when he wasn’t prepared for it. No...this moment was all about pleasure...teasing...tickling...caressing...the soft stroke of suede on bare skin. Thorny was a vocal submissive. His sighs and gasps of pleasure filled the room. When she’d touched every part of his body with the flogger, even running the tips of the tails over his face, she stopped and tossed it on the bed. She came back to Thorny and put her hands on his hips, rubbing them to bring more blood into his pelvic region.
“On a scale of one to ten in the realm of impact play,” she said, “that was about a one. A whip can get you to a ten. I’ll take you to about a six or a seven and bring you back down again. We’ll go there together. You won’t be alone.” She spoke in a low voice and kissed the back of his neck between sentences.
When she returned to Thorny, she had the second-lightest flogger in her hand. She tickled his back with the tails and she saw a shiver pass over his body.
“You like that? It’s the deerskin. I’m going to start easy, at a two, but I’ll move up to a three quickly. Thighs, ass, middle and upper back and shoulders. No kidneys, no head, no neck. You will enjoy this, Thorny...almost as much as I will.”
Once again she started slow, lightly brushing, lightly sweeping the flogger over the back of his body. She caught the tips of the tails and released them in her first real strike. It wasn’t a hard hit but hard enough that Thorny stood up straight at the impact. She struck again across his back, spacing out the hits so he could brace himself for the next one. Soon his skin started to turn pink, then red.
“What color?” she asked. “Green means keep going. Yellow means we take a break. Red means we stop.”
“Green.”
“My favorite color.”
With the elk flogger she concentrated her efforts on Thorny’s back, hitting the same spot over and over and over again, raising the level of pain from a four to a five to a six and back down to a four again. Up again to a six and back down to a four. She teased him with a minute of easy light flogging and brought him to attention with a series of sharp hard raps that had him gasping with each hit. With the bull-hide flogger she gave him the roughest treatment yet. She aimed high then low, high then low, striking the back of his thighs and the center of his shoul
ders in quick succession. The sound the flogger made was a heavy thudding sound, not sharp but thick and powerful. Thorny’s back gleamed a bright fire-engine red. She did love the color red.
She loved the red, she loved the scene, she loved all of it. When she had a flogger in her hand she felt like herself, like her real self. There were days she wanted to quit working for Kingsley. The more clients she took on, the more money he made, and she would rather top for pleasure than for money most days...but even if she did quit being a professional someday, she would always be a dominant. How could she give this up? She couldn’t. She couldn’t stop being a dominant any more than she could quit being a writer, quit being Nora.
After a long series of rapid-fire strikes to Thorny’s middle back, Nora stopped and dropped the flogger on the floor. She let him take a moment to catch his breath. When she put her bare hands flat on his back he inhaled sharply. In the mirror she watched him, watched his skin ripple as she caressed him, watched his lips part as she pushed her fingers into his fresh welts.
“Lovely welts,” she said, pleased with her work. “Here and here and a big one right here. Does it hurt when I touch them?”
“A little. Don’t stop.”
“No chance of that.” She picked up her elk-hide flogger again and gave his back another once-over followed by one hell of a twice-over. Then she started pulling back, bringing the pain level down. She switched from the elk to the bull-hide and then down to the velvety deer-hide. Instead of finishing with the suede, she brought out her very special little flogger.
“This flogger will hurt but in a fun way,” she said, making a few practice throws that didn’t connect with Thorny’s body. “I haven’t used it on anyone yet, but you seemed to be the perfect person for a trial run.”
“I’m all yours, Mistress,” Thorny said, his breathing slower now as he came down off the rush.
She hit him square in the back and he flinched. She struck him there a few more times, but his back wasn’t her primary target. Once the flogger felt completely comfortable in her hands she aimed at his upper arms, the left and the right, the left and the right, until both arms were dotted with round red welts. When she finished Thorny was panting again. Short lovely breaths, the sounds of a man lost in sensation, lost to the world. She walked around his body and stood in front of him.
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