“Had enough of the cane?” he asked.
I nodded in the direction of his voice, trying to look apologetic. I’ve learned my lesson. Surrender only from now on. No more rebellion. No.
I felt the bed dip. He traced each of the ten cane tracks while I tried to collect myself. “Are you ready for the paddle now?” he asked when he finished. “It’s going to feel pretty torturous on top of those welts you already have.”
No. I didn’t want torturous. I wanted more stroking, and his reassuring weight beside me. He rose from the bed and I braced, squirming, whining, tensing my ass cheeks like that might protect me.
It didn’t.
I screamed through the gag as he gave me five hard paddle cracks in a row. The sting erupted in the shape of a big painful rectangle, rather than the razor fine line of the cane. Either way, it was unbearable. I needed to be untied. I wanted to be left alone to nurse my aching ass and my aching psyche.
“Are you letting go?” he asked. “From here on out, are you going to accept the fact that you like to surrender? That you live to surrender?”
It wasn’t surrender I lived for. It was his voice and his force and his capability. Even now, the more he hurt me, the more I wanted him. I was tired of trying to understand. I supposed that was surrender enough. I moaned behind the gag and nodded.
“Are you going to show me your fucking tits when I want to see your tits?” he asked. “No more sulking and whining and behaving like a brat?”
I nodded as hard as I could, making urgent sounds behind the gag.
Another spank, another shriek. “I’m happy to hear that.”
He might have been happy to hear it, but he paddled me some more anyway, at least a dozen hard, steady strokes on my one-thousand-degree butt cheeks. They felt like they were on fire, like flames must be licking up into the air and setting off his building’s fire alarm. I pictured the sprinklers dousing us, although I doubted even a deluge of sprinkler water could put out this fire. Ow, ow, ow... I understood now why he’d shoved so many pillows under me. I probably would have injured myself otherwise.
I’ll do better. I’ll try harder to surrender. Please...
My muscles strained within the bondage. I couldn’t turn my body, but I bounced up and down with every stinging blow. My face was damp, my eyes streaming with tears behind the mask. When he stopped, I kept crying, because I was afraid he’d start up again.
“I’ll take the gag off if you promise to be quiet,” he said.
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know if I could be quiet if he paddled me some more, or God, started in with the cane again. I felt his hands in my hair, pulling it tight between his fingers. “Are you listening? Will you be quiet?”
I just moaned, a plaintive, animal sound begging him to stop.
He left, walked across the room. I heard water running, probably in an adjoining bathroom. I wondered if I was bleeding, if he would have to patch me up. My ass felt swollen and numb and throbby, like he’d opened some spurting artery. He came back and unbuckled the gag, and wiped the drool from my mouth and chin with a damp cloth.
“Am I bleeding?” I asked in a broken voice.
He chuckled next to my ear. “You’re not bleeding, my little drama queen. You’re just a hot, deep shade of red.” He rubbed my ass. The abrasive contact made me cringe.
“Ow,” I whined. He rubbed harder. “Ow. Owww.”
“Hush, or we’ll start all over.”
I pressed as close to him as I could, still blind and caught in my bonds. Surrender, Chere. Surrender. A shivering sob shook me every few seconds. He’d gotten me so worked up, I couldn’t calm down.
“Pain and sex,” he murmured, stroking a finger up my spine. “Such a potent combination. Do you like when I hurt you, baby?”
My shiver turned to a shudder. I answered truthfully, trying not to feel ashamed. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Sir, I like when you hurt me.”
He stroked my shoulder blades, my hair, my nape, his firm, possessive touch making me fall deeper in love or lust or whatever the hell it was I felt for him.
“It’s okay to like it,” he said. “Say it: It’s okay to like it.”
“It’s o-okay to like it,” I stammered.
“You’re going to get fucked now. You’re going to take it in your sore, red-hot ass to learn a little more about surrender, and I’m not going to use very much lube. I think it should hurt you a little. Don’t you?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whimpered, even though I wasn’t sure how much more hurting I could take.
He parted my cheeks, depositing a scant amount of lubricant around my clenching hole. His body covered mine, a warm, masculine weight that would be pleasant if he wasn’t positioning himself to drive into my ass. I wanted to beg him to be gentle, to be careful and go slow, but I was afraid he’d be rougher on purpose, so I kept my mouth shut. Soft, strained panic noises escaped my throat.
One of the hardest parts of being the submissive member of our twisted relationship was that he kept me so helpless. I wanted to be fucked, yes, my pussy was dying, aching with lust, but it was so hard to be trapped at someone’s mercy. I had no recourse, no choice. I was tied hand and foot, with my ass propped in the air by a pile of pillows. He was going to fuck me and I was going to deal with it. I loved being overpowered by him, and it was okay to like it, but oh my God...fuck...
The head of his cock slipped against the lube at my entrance, pushing, poking, not quite making it in. He pushed harder, stretching me open by pure physics. Hard cock, steady pressure.
“Ow, ow, ow,” I chanted as the pain intensified. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, please...”
“Let me in.” He sounded so much calmer than I did. “I’m getting in either way.”
I panted as he stopped just inside me. I felt so full, just from the tip. My “ows” had become low, pleading groans.
“Does it hurt that much?” he asked.
“Yes!”
His thighs were warm against the insides of my tied-open legs. He grabbed a handful of my hair along with the mask’s strap, and yanked my head back.
“Ask for the rest of me.”
Holy shit. The harder he pulled, the louder I whined. My ass clenched around him, trying to push him back out.
“You’re hurting me,” I cried.
“Ask for the rest of me.”
“Please...”
“Please what?”
Surrender, Chere.
“Please give me the rest of your c-cock,” I said, my voice faltering over the words. “Please push it deep inside me. I want it. I like it.”
He made a satisfied noise and proceeded to jam his length into me, inch by excruciating inch, until I felt his nut sack brush against my sodden slit. By then, the acute pain of entry had passed. Now there was only the feeling of being split in two, of being filled with something way too large in a space that was way too small. I pursed my lips and lay absolutely still.
“Is that better?” he asked. “Is it deep enough inside you to hurt?”
I whimpered. “No, Sir.”
He let go of my hair and parted my ass cheeks, holding each in a firm, painful grip. He thrust the last inch or two into me, hard enough to push me down against the bed. My clit slid across the pillows as I clenched around him. My dark, surrendered world was filled with his dominance, and a fine edge of pain.
“Are you rubbing your pussy on my pillows?” he asked.
“Yes. I can’t help it.”
“You filthy fucking whore.”
He may have called me a filthy fucking whore in that growly voice of his, but the only thing that registered was that he hadn’t told me to stop. I gasped in time to his thrusts, like he was fucking the life out of me, and rubbed my clit against his soft designer pillows for all I was worth. The pleasure was so hot, so exquisite, because Price was being so mean to me and it was okay to like it. Sometimes I thought I was a shitty submissive compared to Andrew, that my heart
But now, tied down with Price’s cock plowing my paddled ass, my heart was in it. I was surrendered, one hundred percent. The more I ground against the pillows, the harder he fucked me. Each time he pressed deep, I felt so, so close to coming. He let go of my ass cheeks and held my hips, drilling me. I lost myself in the steady fuck, and the feel of his hands grasping my skin, forcing me to take him, and my God, the pounding felt so...good...on...my...clit.
“Please, please, please,” I murmured over and over. I meant Please don’t stop, and Please keep hurting me, and Please let me survive this. Please never untie me. Please fuck me like this every hour of every day.
When I could hardly bear it anymore, my orgasm exploded, unraveling in an agonizing series of pulses, hot pleasure constricting my pussy and ass. I wished he had been embracing me. I needed someone to cling to, someone to shudder against. His cock felt wonderful deep inside me, but he wasn’t holding me, and it didn’t feel like enough.
I guess that was the punishment part of it. Good girl. Bad girl. Play these games with me and I’ll make you orgasm, but only on my terms.
Now he was coming too, nice and deep and firm. Since I’d already come, I let myself lie there and experience his power and his own harsh gasps.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he said. “Holy fuck.”
He collapsed on top of me, twitching through a few last shallow thrusts. My body still clenched around him in intermittent pulses, unwilling to let the last throes of ecstasy fade.
“Are you alive?” he asked, when I didn’t move for long moments.
I pressed my face against the bed. “My ass hurts.”
“An occasional side effect of surrender. You did great though. You were very…determined,” he said, borrowing a word from my evaluation.
I could hear true pleasure in his voice, and it gave me a warm, trembly feeling. He kissed my shoulder as I blinked behind the mask.
“Star-shadows shine,” he said beside my ear. “How many stars in your bowl? How many shadows in your soul?”
“I don’t know.” My voice sounded quavery compared to his. “Whose poem is that?”
“D.H. Lawrence.” I felt him stretch, felt his ab muscles slide against my back. His wet, warm tongue traced my skin from earlobe to jaw. “He was a pervert. Most poets are perverts,” he said when he finished with the tongue bath.
I shivered as he pulled back and left me. I always felt so empty after I’d been assfucked. Not empty enough to beg him to do it again, but still.
“Are you going to untie me?” I asked when I heard him return from the bathroom.
“When you answer my poetic questions.” I felt the bed dip between my legs, and then his palms running up my thighs. “How many stars in your bowl, Chere?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
He traced his fingers back and forth over my ass cheeks, over the lines he’d put there earlier. They still ached, a sharp reminder of his power, and my hunger for it. He asked me again, in an insistent tone that demanded an answer. “How many stars in your bowl?”
“Let me think about it.”
I closed my eyes behind the mask, and thought about all the things I had to be happy for, and all the things that challenged me, and my intimate circle of trusted friends. “Eighty to ninety stars. Maybe.”
He laughed at that. “Am I one of them?”
I wiggled my ass. You’re my sun, I thought. My main star. No matter how I wish it otherwise, everything in my life revolves around you.
That was a scary thought, because, surrender aside, I still didn’t know if he could be trusted. I didn’t know if the violence or the tenderness was his true face. He was being so tender now, stroking me, soothing all the places he’d hurt.
“How many shadows in your soul?” he asked.
“Shadows?” I thought a bit longer about that one. Simon, for sure. Cantor? Kind of. My parents, definitely. My old clients? How many of them had there been? Hundreds over the course of a decade? “I have a lot of shadows,” I said. “Maybe four or five thousand, if you’re talking about my entire life.”
The bed creaked. He shifted, then pressed his lips to the base of my spine. He kissed me there, a soft, tentative kiss that was over too soon.
“I’m sorry I have to hurt you to get off,” he said. “Thank you for being brave enough to surrender to me. It means more than you know.”
This sudden, and no doubt fleeting, show of sincerity made me feel shy. He was like a star and a shadow, light on one side and dark on the other.
“I want to see you,” I said. “I answered your questions. Now you have to take off the mask.”
“Oh, do I have to?”
But I felt his fingers at the back of my head, undoing the buckle. He took it off and I blinked. Every light was on in his room. I strained to watch him as he disappeared to the foot of the bed to untie my ankles. A moment later, he sat beside me to untie my wrists. He was quiet, his expression somber as he manipulated the black rope. Was he disappointed in my answers to his questions? Was I not poetic enough?
When my arms were free, I sat back from the pillows and watched him. My ass still hurt, and I wasn’t sure of his mood. I couldn’t tell if there was going to be more sex, or an argument, or kissing and whispering and making out.
“Shower?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. Please.”
His bathroom was as beautiful and luxurious as the rest of his place. We stood in his huge glass enclosure, a marble and glass structure that raised hygiene to a fine art. There were two shower heads, but he kept me under his, half washing me, half groping me. I closed my eyes when he started to kiss me.
All the time I’d spent tied to his bed, I’d been blind and wanted to see, but now that I could open my eyes and look at him, I wanted to retreat into touch. He held me close, stroking up my back, and then trailing down to squeeze my sore ass. He massaged my nape, a caress and then a grasp to draw me against his muscled front. The kiss deepened, went on for so long I lost myself.
I was drowning in him. It wasn’t only the kisses—although he was great at the kisses. It was the way he held me and stroked me, like he could never have enough of me. It was scary and thrilling, and dangerous to my psyche. Don’t fall in love again.
I pulled away and looked at him, brushing back a wet strand of his hair. “Why does my surrender mean so much to you?”
“Because you’re a fighter,” he said, without thinking about it at all. He tried to kiss me again, but I held him off.
“I answered your questions. Now I want answers,” I said. “Why do you prefer pain instead of love? What happened to you to make you this way?”
“Jesus, Chere,” he said, turning away. “Shut the fuck up.”
“No, answer me.” I nudged him until he turned back to me. “Why do you say you can’t be with me? I know why I don’t trust love, but what happened to you?”
I couldn’t make anything of his expression. It looked like too many emotions at once, shuttered into a concealing mask. “Love lies,” he said.
“Someone lied to you?”
“Everyone lies.” He forced a laugh. “You and your questions, your stupid girly shit.”
“How many stars in your bowl, then? How many shadows in your soul?”
He shut off the water and got out. The question-and-answer session was apparently over. He’d withdrawn from me in that whiplash manner. One minute he was there, engaged, smiling and caressing me, and the next he was a ghost, impossible to touch. While I sat in his room and brushed my hair, he lay back on the bed with his arms crossed behind his head. He didn’t say anything to me, or glance my way.
How many shadows in your soul? He had to have a lot, none of which he seemed willing to discuss. I stood to get dressed, but before I could grab my clothes, he held out his hand.
“Where are you going? Come here.”
“It’s late,” I said.
“Come here.”
Our eyes locked. His gaze drew me to the bed and into his arms. He enveloped me in a hug, this confusing man who’d just finished pushing me away. His hands moved over me, drawing me right against his body. Did I love him or did I fear him? Did I want to get closer to him, or should I be running away?
“I don’t understand you,” I whispered.
His lashes flickered, darker golden-blond than his hair. “Is it so important to understand?”
“Yes. For me it is. After everything with Simon, it’s important.”
His languid look wavered into irritation, as it always did when I mentioned my ex’s name. He lifted my arm, stroked his palm up the underside, across paler, sensitive skin. He brought it to his lips and bit the inside of my forearm. I watched his mouth open, watched his teeth close and bite down.
It hurt. I whined and he let me go, and bit my wrist instead. He licked over the place he hurt, and sighed.
“I want you to sleep here with me,” he said.
“Are you going to keep biting me?”
“Biting is the least of my crimes against you. Will you stay?”
I wanted to stay. He was warm and comfortable, and the surrender part was over. For now.
“I used to hate leaving,” he blurted out, before I could answer. “I used to hate the time thing. The sessions. It was so fake.”
“You could have paid to stay with me all night.”
“It still would have been a session. It would have ended. We would get so heightened, you know, physically, psychologically, and then our time would be up. I hated it.”
“You don’t have to leave, not anymore. And I’ll stay.”
He touched my fingers, tracing them one by one. “Remember that time you left? The time you just fucking took off and left me?”
“The Standard Hotel. Yeah, I remember. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that session. That was the first time I realized you were a stalker.”
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