by Frost, E J
I have no idea how long it’s gone on. It could be ten minutes or ten hours. I tried to count the minutes but I lost count. That’s not what Daddy wants me to be thinking about anyway, and I try to focus on his words, but everything is occluded by the pain.
I can only feel.
And what I feel is so very, very awful.
Shame, burning like bile, bounces from my stomach to my heart and back. I’ve done everything wrong. I was supposed to support and distract Daddy while Miranda was here. I broke his rules, when he’d told me again and again how much my submission meant to him. I promised him I wouldn’t let her get to me. He asked me over and over if I was okay. I told him I was when I wasn’t. If I had been, I’d have handled her better. I’d have ignored her, like he told me to. Instead, I’ve made everything worse. I’ve made him angry. I’ve made him worried. I’ve made him scared.
The distant, hissing rumble filling my ears, the sound of waves on a pebbled shore, becomes noticeable only in its absence. Daddy’s warm palm slides up and down between my shoulders, slick with my sweat.
“Give me a number, Emmy.”
A number? There’s no way to categorize the pain I’m feeling. It keeps swallowing my mind, gagging, spitting it back up, only to convulsively swallow again. Water-boarding my brain.
“Eh-eight, Daddy. Eight-point fuh-five.”
“Good girl for being honest with me. And have you thought about why you weren’t able to walk away from the confrontation with Miranda?”
“I-I—” I shake my head helplessly. “I can’t th-think, Daddy. I’m stupid.”
“You are not stupid, Emmy.” Daddy presses his lips against my clammy brow. “It’s hard to think through intense pain. After this, the only stupid you’ll ever feel again is stupid happy. We’ll get there once this is over.”
I reach back in my mind and remember that feeling. The encompassing happiness. It’s right there, behind the shame. It fills me up. For a second, it’s all I feel. No pain. Nothing but the joy of bathing in my daddy’s love.
“That’s my girl.” His lips brush my forehead again. “Lift onto your tiptoes and get as stable as you can. Push your legs out until your ankles press against the ropes. That will help.”
He’s right. The tension against my ankle cuffs increases as I slide my feet out away from the horse. It’s much easier to stay on my tiptoes pushing against that support. My leg muscles stop shaking. “Bu-but the timer?”
“I’ve ordered you onto your tiptoes. I’m going to flog you until you drop back on your heels. I’m doing this because I want to, not because you’ve asked me to. The timer keeps going. Understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I tug against my cuffs, wishing my hands weren’t bound so I could grab his hand and kiss it. I’m so very grateful to him in this moment. I know he put me here and it’s my submission to his will that’s keeping me on Satan’s own hobbyhorse, but I’m still so, so grateful.
“Count backwards from five so you know when to expect the strike.”
Anticipation makes my body tighten, but I force my muscles to relax. Daddy doesn’t like it when I tense before impact. It shows I’m resisting rather than submitting. I take a breath in and let it out as I count down, concentrating on the momentary relief in my groin, keeping my balance, and submitting to my daddy.
The sting of the rubber across the side of my breast snatches my breath and makes me wobble on my toes. I gasp, quick grabs of air in and out, trying to get on top of the pain and regain my balance. Just as I do, he hits me again, on my other breast, another explosion of smarting heat. Fireworks shower across the backs of my eyelids. Back and forth, he works from breast to breast, side to nipple to top to underside. Wetness slides under my blindfold, cold down my cheeks, cool splashes on my burning chest. When just the evil tips catch my left nipple and the pain’s so sharp, I’m sure he’s ripped my nipple off, I shriek and once I start, I can’t stop. Scream after scream pours out of me, yanking on the muscles of my belly like Daddy’s sunk hooks in my tummy and is pulling with each strike.
“That’s right, little girl,” he growls. “Give me your screams. Give me your tears. They’re mine. They belong to me.”
I give him every ounce of my pain. He stops flogging me when I drop down onto my heels, but I keep screaming from the fresh pain as the cruel wood presses into my excruciatingly tender pussy. I scream until my throat is raw and nothing comes out but harsh gasps.
Something hard and slick touches my lower lip, puncturing the haze of pain.
“Take a sip, sweetheart. Wet your throat.”
I pull the straw between my lips and drink. The water slips down my throat and I croak my thanks.
Logan’s lips press against my sweaty forehead. “Give me a number.”
The pain’s not really less. It still swamps me in waves, hot-cold-hot-cold. But it beats against the burning of my chest, and instead of redoubling, it breaks. It draws back, hissing, and gives me just a little space to catch my breath.
“Suh-seven.”
“Good girl. I’m going to put the headphones back on now. Same rules as before. You can go up on your tiptoes, but it stops the timer. You can ask me to flog you, but it stops the timer. I know you’re hurting and the longer you’re on the horse, the more it hurts, but you’re doing well and I’m very proud of you.”
For that praise, I’d endure anything. “Tuh-ta, Daddy.”
He settles the headphones over my ears, and the rolling hiss of waves echoes the pain as it works up and down my body.
Pain makes time slip. Stretch and contract. I know the time is passing, because my heart keeps beating and my lungs keep emptying and filling. Each of those things takes time, but I lose all sense of it. There’s only the next wave of pain, and the next. The flavor of it is slightly different depending on whether I’m resting on my butt, my pussy, or my pubic bone. But it’s all pain.
A noise rises over the hiss in my ears. It’s a broken, keening noise. Harsh and red-raw. I know I’m making it because I can hear it inside my head, but it doesn’t sound like any noise that could come out of my throat. It’s the noise of some deep place inside me breaking open like a rotten egg and spilling out all the green, stinking stuff inside. There aren’t any words. There’s just feeling. A desperate, primal need for the pain to stop and for me to be forgiven.
My throat catches on that awful noise and I cough, jerking forward onto my clit with a soundless scream. The straw presses against my lip again and I gulp down the cool liquid. It brings back the memory of sitting in the yard with the rain misting my face and Daddy coming out to cuddle me. I cling to that memory as I submerge again into the pain.
I don’t know if it’s a long time later or a short time, when Daddy lifts the headphones off me again. I only know that I’ve gone limp from the pain. There’s no strength left in my legs. Even if I wanted to go up on my toes, I’m not sure I could. My body keeps jerking even though I’ve run out of tears. The muscles in my stomach shake as though I’ve done an hour’s worth of sit-ups. My spine’s all that’s holding me from slumping on the rail and increasing the pressure on the spot where I’m sitting. The spot that feels like a dozen nails are being slowly hammered into me.
“Emmy, give me a number.”
“N-n-nine,” I gasp.
“Nine, or nine point five?”
I don’t know if the pain can get any worse. I suppose it can always get worse, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now. “Nuh-nine, Daddy.”
“Tell me why you walked away from Pence but not Miranda.”
“I-I didn’t care what Pence said.”
“But you care about what Miranda said.” He doesn’t make it a question.
“I’m sorry!” The words come out in a broken cough.
“Do you think Miranda still means something to me, little girl?” he asks.
Does she? Doesn’t she? I don’t know. When I first met Logan, I was sure he was still in love with her. Now, I’m not sure he ev
er was. I just don’t know.
“Y-you were with her for such a long time, Daddy.”
“Probably not even six months, if you added up all the days. But it doesn’t matter how long we were together, Emmy. What matters is how I feel about her. Yes, I cared about her. Yes, I let myself get drawn into a stupid competition with her husband and, during that, I asked her to marry me. Thank God she rejected me, because marrying her would have been the biggest mistake of my life. When I look at her now, do you know what I see?”
I shake my head.
“I see a rapist. What’s rape, little girl?”
He really thinks that about her? Consent is a huge, big deal for most Doms. For Daddy, it’s the biggest deal. He’s calling Miranda the worst thing he could call a person.
“Having s-s-sex with someone without their c-consent,” I say, fumbling to form the right words through the pain. “Or, when they can’t give consent.”
“That’s right. When she had her IUD removed without telling me, when she had unprotected sex with me, knowing that breached my hard limits, that was sex without my consent. I look at her and I see a rapist. I see someone I could never trust. Is that the person you think still matters to me?”
“I d-d-didn’t know you felt that strongly, Daddy.”
“I do, little girl. I feel that strongly. I don’t want her near me. I don’t want her near you. I don’t want her in your thoughts, but I know she is, so we’re going to talk about the things she said and you’re going to understand how she twisted the truth to tap your insecurities and you’re going to let them go.”
I hate that Miranda was able to hurt me so easily. I should never let her fill that much space in my head and heart. I want to be impervious to her. I really do.
“Yuh-yes, please, Daddy.”
His hand settles in my hair. “Up on your toes while we’re talking. I want you focused on what I’m saying, not the pain. Timer keeps going.”
I sob with relief, and then with despair because my legs won’t hold me. I try to go up on my toes, but my calves and thighs cramp and I drop back on the wood with a strangled scream.
“It’s okay, little girl. I’ll lower the horse.”
The cessation of pressure, of that driving nails sensation, makes me sob and wobble. I remember to push out against Daddy’s ropes, which hold me and after a moment, I get my balance.
“Keep your legs straight, Emmy. Rail’s only about an inch below your groin. If you feel like you’re going to fall, warn me.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I feel him checking the ropes and my cuffs. He kisses my hip before he stands. His body warms my left side, even though he’s not touching me.
“Now, little girl, we’re going to talk about Miranda’s lies.” He settles his hand on top of my head. “First lie, you’re nothing but my maid. Are you my maid, Emmy?”
“If you needed a maid, I’d be one for you,” I offer.
“Thank you for that, little love. I know you’d be whatever I need. But stay focused on my questions. Are you my maid?”
“No, Daddy.”
“No, you’re not. You’re my submissive and my lover and my partner.” He kisses my forehead and his tender gesture and words push the pain even further away. “You do a lot around the house, probably more right now than you should because of my injury, but you are not my maid. Next lie, you’re a doormat because you don’t fight me for your submission. Are you a doormat, Emily?”
“I-I don’t think so, Daddy. I have opinions.”
“You have strong opinions, baby girl. Interesting opinions. You express them respectfully. That doesn’t make you a doormat. You gift me your submission. I don’t treasure it any less because it’s a gift. Fighting my bottoms for their submission, proving over and over that I’m Dom enough for them, exhausted me. You give me peace, Emily. No one else has ever given me that. Do you have any idea how much I value the gift of your submission? How much it means to me?”
I nod. He’s told me over and over how important my submission is to him. I should never have let Miranda’s words make me doubt it. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Good girl. Next lie, I yo-yo in and out of love. Am I that fucking shallow, little girl?”
I don’t even have to think about that question. “No, Daddy.”
“Thank you for that. I do not fall in love easily. I don’t say those three words carelessly. Yes, I fell fast for you. That doesn’t mean I’m shallow, or fickle. You’re special to me, sweet girl. So special. Nothing matters more than having you in my life. Nothing scares me more than the possibility of losing you.” He stops and I hear him swallow hard. “Of everything Miranda said, I think that hurt the most to hear, Emmy, because if you believed her, if those words drove you away from me, it would be my own bloody fault for not letting you know, every minute of every day, how much you mean to me.”
“Daddy—” There’s that sense of rupture again. Of the rotten egg bursting. It all spills out of me, in huge, ugly, wracking sobs that would throw me forward onto that godawful rail again, except my daddy catches me. His arms close around me and he holds me against his firm chest as I cry and cry and cry.
When I finally run dry, he wipes a cool cloth over my face, pinches it over my nose until I blow, and kisses me before standing me upright again.
“Do we need to keep going, angel?” he asks me gently.
“No, Daddy,” I say. My voice sounds quiet and calm. It echoes my insides.
“Good girl. I think we’re done here, too. I’m going to release your cuffs and then guide you off the horse. If you can’t walk, just tell me. Ten and I will help you to the bed.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
As he starts working on the ropes, I grow light-headed, but not from pain. I’m hollow and floaty, almost like subspace. Subspace is complete mental relaxation. I hurt too much to achieve that right now. This is emotional relaxation. A disgorging of all the hurts, big and small, scoring my heart. It’s ironic that a pain so grinding and dirty could scour me so clean.
I share that thought with Daddy. He takes my freed wrist and presses his lips to it, right over my pulse. I shiver with how good that feels, the first good feeling, other than the cessation of pain, I’ve felt in what seems like forever.
His warm arms around me are another good feeling. He guides me forward, step by shaky step. Four steps and Daddy tells me I’m clear of the horse. I try to bring my legs together, but that makes the pain so much worse that it forces a scream out of me. I hobble, bow-legged, the five steps to the bed and sink down on it, curling onto my side, pulling my knees to my chest, gasping and hiccupping from the pain.
“Emmy, I’ll let you curl up in a minute, but first I need to check you.”
Check my battered privates, he means. I’m really glad I’m still blindfolded, because I do not want to see what my bits look like right now. Raw hamburger, if they look anything like how they feel.
It’s probably the most uncoordinated, unsynchronized movement I’ve ever made, but I hump over onto my back and let my legs fall open with a whimper.
“Good girl.” Daddy’s fingers touch my pussy lips, moving them gently. His fingers feel slick. With blood? I hope not, but I hurt so badly that I should be bleeding.
“I don’t see any splits.” That’s Master Javier’s voice. Cool and unconcerned. Is he examining my privates, too? Great.
“Skin’s not broken, but I don’t like this spot right here.” A light brush over an area on my perineum that still feels like it still has a nail driven into it makes me flinch.
I hear Daddy rummaging around in his bag. Then something cool and slightly tingly smooths over my labia, down over the flat, burning skin of my perineum, and all the way up my crack. The dark world behind my blindfold wavers to gray for a second. A shiver starts from the bruised flesh between my legs and spreads all over me until my teeth chatter in my head.
“Easy, my baby,” Daddy says. His hand curves under my knee and he urges me back over onto my side. When I
curl into ball, he spreads something soft over me. My fuzzy. I grab it and pull it tight. The straw presses against my lip again and I take grateful sips of cool water. “That’s it. Good girl. Drink all the water and then you can have some juice.”
I sip, sip, sip until air burbles in the straw. While I’m drinking, Logan takes my blindfold off, instructing me to take my time opening my eyes. The room lights are dim, but still hurt when I crack my eyes open. I blink until the pain goes away and focus on the people in the room. Logan stands over me, holding a carton of apple juice. When he sees me blinking up at him, he sits on the edge of the bed and rubs my back through the fuzzy while he has me drink the juice. Other than his soft directions to me, and his movements, there’s no sound or motion in the room. Mistress Maude and Master Javier sit in chairs turned toward the bed, while Master Ten stands behind them with his arms crossed over his chest.
They’re all watching me; none of them look happy. Did I do something wrong? Maybe they didn’t like me crying during my punishment. I tried to be quiet, but when Daddy flogged me and asked me those questions, I just couldn’t hold it in. Did I make them uncomfortable?
“Thank you for monitoring my punishment,” I offer, around sips of juice.
“You’re welcome, Emily,” Master Ten says. “Anything you need?”
“No, sir.”
“Logan.” He lifts his chin at Daddy. “We should talk in a day or two.”
“Sure. I’ll give you a call.” Logan returns the gesture, still rubbing my back, and Master Ten stalks out, pulling the door shut behind him.
“Is Master Ten mad about something?” I ask.
“I think the scene had too many feels for him,” Daddy responds, giving me a grin.
“Any scene with more words than screams has too much emotion for Ten,” Mistress Maude says. “Emily, how are you doing?”
I take stock of my body. I am sorer than I can ever remember being, and not just between my legs. My stomach muscles and calves feel like they’ve been beaten with a baseball bat. Even my toes hurt.
Despite the soreness, I feel floaty, and slightly disconnected. I’m not in shock or, at least, I don’t think I am. Maybe it’s just my mind trying to insulate me from the pain.
