breasts and from her corset producing a leather strap. “Fuck.” He sighed.
“Eventually,” she said, and wrapped the strap around his
testicles and the base of his penis. Cock ring. Pleasure and
torture all in one.
“You have a beautiful cock,” she said, massaging it with
both hands. The leather of her gloves abraded, and he quickly
grew hard from the bite of the seams against his most sensitive skin. She grasped his cock by the base and slid her hands
up and down the shaft. Fluid appeared on the tip and dripped
onto her gloves.
“Eager, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t had sex in two weeks,” he confessed. “Eager is
an understatement.”
“It’s such an impressive erection, I’d hate for you to lose it
before I had time to enjoy it.”
“You’ll enjoy it,” he promised, as she traced the edges of
the leather strap. Blood pooled and pumped into the shaft,
and he closed his eyes tight.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” he said.
“Good.” She grinned at him. “It’s a start anyway. Now
stand there, don’t move. I’m going to take your clothes off.
I’ve heard rumors that Kingsley Edge had one of the better
male bodies in the city. Time I find out for myself.” She pulled his jacket off his shoulders and pushed it down
his arms. When she had it off, she walked to the armchair and
laid it carefully over the back. He knew better than to think
she was showing respect for him by showing respect for his
clothes. No, he had a cock ring on and a painful erection. She
would undress him as slowly as possible, dragging the process
out until he was in agony.
“When was the first time you submitted to erotic pain?”
she asked as she unbuttoned his vest.
“Eleven years ago.”
“You’re so young,” she said. “How old were you when you
started doing kink?”
“Sixteen.”
“Domme?”
“Sadist,” he said. “Male.”
“Sixteen’s awfully young to be submitting to a sadist.” “He was seventeen, Maîtresse.”
Mistress Felicia laughed. “I wish I had gone to your high
school instead of mine.”
“You couldn’t have. It was an all-boys Catholic school.” “Catholic,” she said as she removed his shirt. She didn’t
f linch at the sight of the scars on his chest. She’d likely seen
worse in her work. “I should send the pope a check. I get half
my clients from his church.”
Lifting his feet to let her tug his boots off sent pain shooting into his stomach. He hated cock rings. He could keep his
erection without one. But the pain did what pain always did
to him—cleared his mind, pulled him out of the past, obliterated the future. There was nothing but now, right now, and
the pain that held him in place, unable to think, unable to
dream, unable to want anything but more pain.
Mistress Felicia tugged his pants down, folded them neatly
and laid them across a chair with his other clothes. He appreciated that she treated his clothes with respect, unlike Søren
who’d taken perverse pleasure in dropping them on the f loor
and traipsing over them.
Kingsley focused on her face as she moved. A lovely woman
in her late thirties, she had an imperious air to her, a proud
set to her face and no mercy in her eyes. In that regard she
reminded him very much of Søren.
“When did you start dominating people, Maîtresse?” he
asked, curious what else she and Søren had in common. “I’m going to punish you for speaking out of turn.” “As you should.”
“But to answer your question,” she said, standing in front of
him, “I was eight when I started bossing around all the boys in my neighborhood, fifteen when I tied my first boyfriend up and nineteen when I took on my first client. He was my
college chemistry professor.”
“You had good chemistry, then?”
“I was going to be gentle with you,” Mistress Felicia said.
“Because of that joke, I’m afraid now I’ll have to destroy you.” Kingsley’s heart galloped in his chest. The cock ring had
made him hard. The threat of pain made him harder. “Good.”
Mistress Felicia bent down and from a long leather bag produced two sets of leather cuffs.
“You haven’t had sex in two weeks?” she asked. “The two longest weeks of my life.”
“I’m going to leave two weeks’ worth of bruises on every
inch of your body. It’ll take them that long to heal, which will
give you two choices. You can either not have sex for another
two weeks until they’re gone, or you can come to me every
day and serve at my pleasure until they’re gone. And then, if
you beg nicely, I’ll give you more.”
Two weeks as the property of Mistress Felicia? It was June,
wasn’t it? Had Christmas come early?
“I’ll take the second option,” he said.
Mistress Felicia took a step forward and grabbed him
roughly by the right forearm, pressing his hand to her chest.
She strapped the cuff on his wrist and buckled it.
She released his right arm, and buckled his left. From her
bag she produced a long metal clip. She ordered him to raise
both arms. As soon as they were up, she cuffed his wrists over
the top bar of the bed canopy. Once cuffed into place, he could
do nothing but wait, not moving, and want her.
Mistress Felicia stood so close to him now that he could
count her eyelashes. She had the tiniest beauty mark under her right eye. He longed to kiss it. He longed to kiss her, to
taste her full lips, her skin, her body inside and out. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?” she asked.
“So much, Maîtresse.”
“Your mouth has to earn it.” She raised her riding crop
and slipped it between his teeth. He bit it and held it in place.
“I’m going to bruise the front of your body first. You keep the
crop in your mouth the entire time, and you’ll get your kiss.” He nodded his understanding and clamped his teeth even
tighter on the crop. As sadistic as this task was, he appreciated
the consideration. With the crop in his mouth, he wouldn’t
be tempted to cry out. And the last thing he wanted was for
anyone in the house to know what he was doing right now.
He needed this city to fear him. If they saw him like this—
tied up, naked, vulnerable—he would never be seen the same
way again.
From her bag she produced a cane—two feet long and
made of rattan.
She raised her arms and brought them high. With a quick
and vicious f lick, she struck Kingsley’s forearm two inches
under the cuff. She hadn’t been kidding. She intended to
bruise his entire body from his wrists to his ankles. Down his right arm she worked, striking him in even intervals, one inch and then lower an inch, and then lower an
inch. The pain surprised him every time. Sharp, stinging and
deep… He knew he’d have red welts for a day from the cane
and bruises for at least a week if not longer.
From his right arm she moved to his left, hitting him again
with controlled but brutal strikes. Søren had never hit him
or
struck him on this part of his body before, on the smooth
skin from his elbow to armpit. But he’d cut him there one
night, short shallow slices with a razor blade on the inside of
his upper arms and inner thighs. They’d fucked afterward, face to face, chest to chest…it was one of the few times Søren hadn’t tied him up before sex. Kingsley remembered wrapping his arms around Søren’s shoulders, his legs around his back. Blood had covered them both. When it was over Søren even had a streak of it on his face. He’d looked primal as a wild animal with the slash of crimson across his cheek and the firelight glowing behind him—a wolf in a cave unafraid of fire. In that heated, sacred hour, with his eyes nothing but pupils, his hair slick with sweat, Søren had appeared to him like a beast, a demon, or a god. Kingsley hadn’t cared which as long as he could worship at the altar of the blood-stained
being who’d made a sacrifice of him.
“You do love pain, don’t you?” Mistress Felicia asked, her
voice low and sensual. As he had the crop in his mouth he
couldn’t answer in words. His ragged breathing and erection
surely told her all she needed to know. “I can tell. You lose
yourself in the pain.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as she ran her
fingers over the welts on his arms, renewing the pain. “Lose yourself, then,” Mistress Felicia said. “Go wherever
the pain wants to take you—into your mind, into your past,
into your darkest dreams. Go as far away as you need to. I’ll
come for you, and I’ll find you and bring you back.” If he could have spoken he would have thanked her. They
were the words he most needed to hear, especially now as she
worked his chest over, striking even the scar tissue left by the
bullet wounds. She had no fear of the damage done to him by
the violence of other men, and for that he would have kissed
her feet could he have reached them.
He closed his eyes and let himself fall away into the crucible of pain. It burned. He burned. Everything burned.
And through the fire he walked, barefoot and heedless of the
f lames. The path of the fire led him into his past, back to the first night Søren had him. When he came through the f lames, he was sixteen again and running through the woods outside his school. He heard twigs breaking under his feet, the crunch of leaves, the soft thud of his soles on bare ground. And Søren was behind him, gaining on him. Why did he run? For eleven years he’d asked him that question. Yes, he’d run in fear. When he’d seen the look in Søren’s eyes, he knew what was coming.
But what Søren intended was everything Kingsley wanted. Why did he run?
He ran for the pleasure of being pursued. That Søren wanted
him so much that he would run after him even through the
minefield of sharp hills, quick descents, grasping tree branches,
tearing thorns. But was that why he ran? The true reason? The fire caught up the half truths and burned them to ashes. And then Kingsley remembered something he’d forgotten
ever since that night. He’d wrenched himself from Søren’s
grip and taken off again. But he’d paused once, turned around
and smiled at Søren. Come and get me, that smile had said. Søren had come and gotten him.
“Where are you?” Mistress Felicia whispered in his ear.
She took the crop from his mouth. “Tell me where you are
in your mind.”
“A forest,” Kingsley said. “I’m sixteen. And I’m running,
and I don’t know why.”
“You know why.”
“He’s chasing me.”
“Who?”
“The boy I love.”
“The sadist.”
“Yes.”
“If you love him, why are you running?”
“I want him to catch me.”
“Has he caught you before?”
“No…the night in the forest was our first time.” “You wanted it?”
“More than anything,” he said, speaking the truth from his
heart. “So, why did I run?”
“Because you weren’t running from him. You were running to you. The real you.”
The words sank in to his soul.
“I was,” he breathed.
“Good boy…” Mistress Felicia said, taking his erection in
her hands again and stroking him. “Now, run to me.” Slowly he opened his eyes. It took a few seconds for the
haze of the past to clear completely. He smiled.
When he looked down he saw that the entire front of his
body had turned red. He had welts on his chest, welts on his
sides, welts on his hips and stomach. A hundred welts decorated his legs in a pattern like tiger stripes. Mistress Felicia had
been merciless with him. His skin throbbed from the injuries
she’d inf licted on him. No wonder she could command billionaires to kiss her feet. Pain like this was worth any price. She took the crop from his teeth and laid both her hands
on either side of his face. She tilted his head so that his eyes
met her eyes. For a long time she did nothing but hold the
eye contact, forcing him to see her. In her eyes he saw power
and strength, intelligence and compassion. Compassion? For
what? For his suffering? Yes. He saw that. But which suffering? The pain she’d inf licted on him? Or all his other pain that
she sensed he carried within? It didn’t matter why he moved
her that way, only that he did. For when she kissed him, he
felt real tenderness, affection. She kissed masterfully, her lips
teasing his, her tongue caressing his tongue. She didn’t force
The King Page 28
