by Kitty Thomas
The bench pressed tight against her mound, quickly warming from her body heat. He pressed a button and vibrations started. She let out a surprised moan. No spanking horse she’d ever been on, before the island and after, had ever vibrated. She pressed harder against the vinyl.
He chuckled. “I have attachments for penetration, but let’s not overwhelm you today.” She shivered. “Is that a good shiver or a bad shiver?”
It made her feel bizarrely safe that he noticed everything about her. Each nuance of expression, each tremble, each goose bump that popped out over her flesh in response to him. At least he was aware of what was going on, which meant anything delivered by him would be deliberate.
“Good shiver, Master,” she said, blushing. Already he was making her forget her anxiety, and she was almost back to thinking maybe she could trust him. Though Asher was demanding and insistent and never treated her like glass or like she was a special case to him, she’d somehow been okay.
Perhaps it was the utter helplessness of her situation. With no hope of ever gaining her freedom and a master who didn’t seem intent on harming her, her brain had moved quickly into Stockholm mode and along the path to acceptance. Somehow she was able to tolerate and even love his touch: his hands, tongue, and cock on her and inside her.
Her submissive instincts had answered his every demand, as if the two of them together created a perfectly choreographed dance. Of course he would make this tolerable as well. But then, the hitting hadn’t started yet, so maybe it was a little soon to be making those kinds of judgments.
Her head turned toward the sound of the trunk opening. He seemed to be getting lots of things. Bad shiver. A few tears slipped out along with a little whimper.
“Grace––I haven’t even touched you yet.”
He began methodically placing objects on the table: a flogger, a riding crop, a paddle, a cane. She shut her eyes, unable to deal with a table laid out so much like the one in the dream.
“Please . . . ” She didn’t know what else to put with that sentence, so she just dropped her head back onto the bench. Her begging wouldn’t sway him. The time she’d spent with him had already proven that. If Asher said something was going to happen, it was going to happen. And it was going to happen on his timetable. Very often that certainty brought a measure of comfort and safety. But not this time.
He came to stand beside her, his hand resting on the small of her back. The light pressure and warmth of his skin settled her. Then he moved his hand downward to press across her ass. Her muscles clenched as she waited for him to raise and then drop his hand on her, but his intention wasn’t to spank. He pressed down, causing the vibrations to pound between her legs more strongly.
“Just focus on this. Ignore the rest until you can focus on the rest.”
She nodded, squirming and rubbing herself against the bench.
Then his hand came down on her. She jumped at first at the sensation, but then relaxed again. Instead of calling up memories of Lucas, it made her think of the 24/7 she’d lived in before the island. It had felt like playing, but she remembered their sessions. Her master had warmed her up, not just hitting for the sake of it, but gradually coaxing her body to reinterpret sensation according to his whims. It was the same as what Asher was doing.
He went through each of the spanking implements: the paddle, crop, and flogger. But not the cane. The cane sat untouched as he slowly brought her to the tolerance level he wanted her at.
“You have a higher pain threshold than I was led to believe. That fucking idiot,” he muttered.
She knew he was speaking of Lucas. Lucas didn’t warm her up. He’d just thrown pain for the sake of pain at her, randomly delivered at the highest intensity right off the bat. He’d had no reason to care about her experience or her body’s ability to take the pain and turn it into something pleasurable. Her cunt had dripped from it anyway, much like it was doing right now.
As Asher brought the pain level up, he moved the power of the vibrations up as well. She no longer felt tethered to the table. No bonds could hold her right now. She was soaring. She bucked like a wild thing, one moment thrusting her ass up at him, her body begging for more of the pain that had started an opiate-like reaction in her brain. The next second she was pulling away, pushing her pelvis against the vibrations so she could come again and again. Each sensation was equally enticing, and she couldn’t stop the fight to have them both.
The tears came in earnest then, a catharsis. Things she’d held onto and kept buried deep inside, places in her soul where Lucas had touched her, which she’d never been able to get clean. All she’d been able to do was repress, bury. Now it all flowed out of her. The blows Asher was landing weren’t even hurting her; she was too deep in, her brain releasing too many pain-diluting chemicals. But it was permission to cry, to let it out in ways she hadn’t given herself permission to until this moment. Asher was right. Somehow she knew the nightmares would go away. Maybe not forever, but each time he could, and most likely would, bring her back here to the dungeon to purge her demons.
A moment later the vibrations stopped. She thought he was finished with her, but then a sharp crack landed on her ass that made her scream and fight to catch her breath. She turned toward him, the fear back in her eyes, but Asher had already laid the cane back on the table.
“Just a taste of punishment, kitten. I don’t want you to think all pain with me is good pain. I don’t want to encourage misbehavior. If you want good pain, all you have to do is ask. Never misbehave for it. I promise I won’t make punishment pleasurable.”
Grace was offended he thought she’d be a brat. Didn’t he understand how grateful she was to be in his care instead of Lucas’s?
He ran his hand lightly over the welt the cane had left. “Now tilt your hips so I can get inside you.”
He left her strapped to the spanking horse while he fucked her, his hands spanning her waist, making her feel somehow even more vulnerable. He didn’t ask her questions or intrude upon her thoughts as she cried. He must have known the tears weren’t something he needed to ask about. Not pain or hurt . . . relief. For once he let her have the private moment inside her own head.
She didn’t come again, already spent from the spanking horse, and her master didn’t ask her to. He just used her body for his release, no words passing between them. Looking on, a stranger might have thought she was being abused. Unless it was someone like her. Other subs would know; they’d understand a merging was taking place that went far deeper than tab A in slot B.
Grace hadn’t thought she could feel more completely his or that she could love him any more for all he’d done for her, but she’d been wrong. Somehow with Asher, she didn’t feel judged or wrong anymore. Her history was a bad dream and her present wasn’t something she had to feel ashamed for.
After he’d had his fill of her, he unfastened the straps and carried her upstairs to the bedroom. She fell asleep in his arms almost the moment her head touched the pillow and didn’t dream again that night.
Ten
Asher watched through the window of his study as Grace worked in the garden and chattered on his cell phone to her friend. His hand hesitated over the old-fashioned window latch while he considered opening it and calling out to her, but he decided to leave her to her chat.
She was doing remarkably well. She’d had a few more dreams of beatings from Lucas, and each time Asher had taken her to the dungeon to remold and reshape the things running around in his pet’s brain.
The second time she’d had a dream, she didn’t fight him or show fear when he took her downstairs. She seemed grateful and relieved for the catharsis. Each nightmare only strengthened their bond as she came to count on and depend on him more. The nightmares had been gone for weeks now, though he still whipped and fucked her regularly.
Darcy had faded to the background of his mind, her death a bad mistake and bad dream of his own. He still found himself comparing the two women, which only brought on fits of guilt.
How could he allow his last pet to shrink even the slightest bit in his memory after what he’d done? It felt wrong to care for Grace so much, as if he was somehow cheating on Darcy.
No matter how long he’d lived on Eleu under its rules, a part of him would always frame things in the old vanilla way, with the old rules of how relationships were supposed to be done. In reality, he wouldn’t have been cheating on Darcy even if he’d had both her and Grace at the same time. That idea made him feel worse, because somehow he knew Grace would have been the favorite. He pressed his fingertips against his temples to block out the thought.
He couldn’t imagine the kind of bratty fits Darcy would have thrown to get his attention off Grace and back onto her. In this alternate reality, he imagined he would have sold Darcy to another man before he would have let her hurt Grace in any way. He would have ensured the new master was good and decent, but she still would have lost if it had come down to it. How could he let himself think this way?
Asher pulled the book out, and the dungeon door creaked open. Grace had come to trust he wouldn’t use the bullwhip on her, though it seemed to confuse her more as to its purpose, since he’d said the cane was for punishment. The symbol of what a foolish decision could cost had become too much to look at.
The whip was the last piece of Darcy that had been left in the open. All of her things had been packed away a little at a time in the months following her death. Most of that time was still a blur as he’d spent the majority of it so drunk the gaps in his memory resembled Swiss cheese.
His hand trailed lightly over the leather. He still couldn’t look very long at the blood on the tip. Every time he saw the weapon hanging on the wall, he thought of Darcy. At times, it took several minutes to get his mind on Grace. The person who was here. The one who actually needed him. The one he loved most even though it made him feel bad to compare. It also scared him. If losing Darcy like that had caused him to spiral so far downward, what would he do if anything ever happened to Grace?
He had to bury Darcy. For good. It was too much having her memory hanging over everything. At first he considered putting the bullwhip in the bottom of the toy box. But every time he went to get something, it would be there, poking its little snake-like body out at inopportune moments as he pawed through the other items in the trunk for a riding crop or paddle or nipple clamps.
No, it couldn’t stay in any space that was meant for him and Grace. The possibility of throwing it out or burning it crossed his mind, but he didn’t feel ready for that step. Instead, he stuffed it in the back of a hall closet––out of sight, out of mind.
Determined to not think about it anymore, he stopped by the kitchen, then went outside to meet Grace in the garden. She was so adorable he could eat her, and probably would a bit later. She was on her hands and knees on a quilt, digging in the garden. He was surprised by how good at it she was.
She’d taken the garden design books William brought her and created something that was nothing short of a work of art, with colorful patterns and designs more intricate than the patchwork quilt spread beneath her. She’d even taken into consideration how the garden would look at different times of the year. Though they didn’t have full seasons, a few of the plants went through various changes. She’d managed to make the garden flourish even though there hadn’t been as much rain and the crops weren’t doing as well as most years.
She wore a fitted, cotton top with thin straps that were falling off her delicate shoulders. Her denim shorts had been specially made with a small hole in the back through which a butt plug with a tail could be, and had been, inserted.
A headband with kitty ears held her hair back away from her face. He didn’t make her dress like a kitty anime girl all the time, but seeing her mildly humiliated did something to him. Asher kicked his sandals off and came to stand beside her. She leaned against his leg like she always did, and he stroked the back of her neck. Her limbs were so glowing and tanned it was hard to believe this was the same thin, pale woman he’d bought months before.
“Kitten, you need to drink something. You’ve been out in this heat too long.” He handed her a glass of lemonade he’d brought from the kitchen.
“Thank you, Master.”
He sat next to her while she drank, stroking her hair. “Lie down on your stomach,” he said when she handed the empty glass back to him. Her eyes didn’t even question anymore. Whatever he asked her to do, she just did it. And he never got tired of that lack of resistance. Her fear of him had largely disappeared, but her manner more than made up for the shift. Though she didn’t live in an active state of terror, there was an air of fragility around her that he wanted to protect.
When she was stretched across the quilt, he opened a jar of shea butter she’d brought with her but had failed to put on. “Are we falling behind on moisturizing?”
“I’m sorry, Master.” And she sounded it. The tiniest mistake, and he could practically hear the self-recrimination bumping around in her head. “I meant to, but I got distracted by the garden.”
His eyes shifted to the cell phone lying on the blanket. “And maybe talking on the phone?”
Asher hadn’t physically punished her with the cane yet. So far her minor infractions had resulted in writing lines or standing in the corner. Once he’d put a gag in her mouth with something foul tasting, but harmless, when she’d slipped and spoken a little too casually with him. It had been an effective punishment.
But he hadn’t used the cane, which kept her on edge any time she did something wrong, wondering if this would be the infraction that brought the full reality of punishment on her.
“I’m not upset with you. I didn’t give you a specific time to do it by,” he said. “Still, I like your skin soft for me. You know the sun dries you out, and I don’t like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
He started rubbing the shea butter over her legs and feet, and smiled when she let out a moan and squirmed. She’d be wet, of course. Any time he touched her, in even the most innocent way, her body responded, eager and ready to be fucked.
“Grace, I have something important to talk to you about.”
She got very still, the combination of his tone and the use of her first name causing her to grow wary. There was no sense dragging it out. He might as well just say it.
“I’d like to brand you.”
Her head snapped around as she twisted to face him, that scared, pleading look in her eyes. God, it was so wrong, but he missed that look. It might be time to move them into edge play. His cock hardened, and if he didn’t want to actually talk the issue out, he would have fucked her right here.
“Please . . . Master, why? What did I do wrong to deserve . . .?”
He gently but firmly pressed her head back down so that she was lying on the blanket again and started rubbing the cream on her other leg. “It’s not a punishment. I know I said I’d never leave permanent scars. This isn’t something I’ll make you do. I’ll let you choose. But it would really please me if you did it.”
She twisted so she could see him and bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know if I can take it.”
Asher laid her other leg down and started massaging the cream into one of her arms. “The type of branding we would use on you is called strike branding. It will hurt, but probably not as much as you think. We’ll heat hot enough to kill the surface nerves but not enough to reach the deeper tissue. It’s not a pain that will linger like a minor burn does. It’ll be sore during the healing process, but it won’t feel like a burn afterward. I’d hold you while the brander did it.”
He finished with her other arm and shoulders, then closed up the cream and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket onto which he’d drawn his estate symbol. “This is the symbol on the front door. Each estate on the island has a different one. The symbol is sometimes branded into slaves so others know which house she belongs to.” He wasn’t sure if she’d been exposed to enough other slaves to have seen a brand before. They weren’t all that c
ommon on the island. “A master only brands a slave if he intends never to sell her, because you get very little out of a girl that’s been branded by another man’s symbol. Do you understand what this means, Grace?”
“It’s like a promise? That I’m always yours no matter what?”
He smiled. She understood. “I won’t ever break a promise to you, kitten. Ordinarily I’d just do it, but I already told you I wouldn’t leave permanent scars. So think about it. I can get you some reading material so you understand more about what will happen and what the healing process will be like––”
“I want to do what pleases you.”
Asher pulled her up off the blanket and held her. “You’re such a good girl.”
***
Grace fidgeted in the back of the limo. Asher sat beside her in a crisp, white shirt with the first couple of buttons unbuttoned, jeans, and casual shoes that the islanders were fond of wearing. He seemed at ease; meanwhile, she was falling apart on the inside.
Why did I agree to do this?
From the moment he’d first mentioned branding, she’d loved the idea of it, but feared the reality. In theory, it felt like the strongest bit of protection he’d ever given her, the most firm oath that she would always be his, and she’d always be safe and cared for. But the reality of the pain involved had caused her to wake in cold sweats thinking of it.
Asher had believed it was nightmares of Lucas again, and Grace hadn’t corrected his assumption. She was afraid if she did, he wouldn’t make her go through with it. And she needed to. She needed to see his brand on her forever, as if that one carefully placed mark could erase all of Lucas’s careless marks.
Each time she woke in terror over the branding, he took her to the dungeon. She let the flogger fall over her, cried out her fears, and allowed herself to be taken where her master wanted her to go. She felt guilty he didn’t know the real reason for her upset, that he thought he was spanking her for a different reason, but she kept the truth inside.
