Best S&M, Volume 3 (6 page)

Poor thing. She’d so loved her fur. It was typical of the Essex Club. Everything was sensational and coarse, skimming the power trip, missing the sacred place of the white light where people like Genevieve danced.

I hefted the black leather cuffs and winked at Victor.

Victor laughed. “May I watch?”

I bowed. “By all means.”

Victor took a seat in the easy chair to the side.

I motioned and Genevieve stood. Her hand was cold as I led her to the fireplace. The embers were warm.

“Let us begin. Show me what you have.” She looked down as the emerald green caftan slipped off. Her body was milk white, marred now by more than three moles and my cutting. There were several old scars and burns. She was pierced too on her cunt lips and left nipple. I wasn’t sure if I was more angry at the abuse or pleased to find a little seasoning.

I gestured her to turn. Her waist still rode the rising swell of her hips. That last night I had lined up the paddle on her ass and she had whimpered. The moment the paddle lifted she moaned, turning it into a great cry when it landed on her red flesh. She liked me to make her count. She would forget so I kept starting over.

I was angry with her for bringing me to this. I lifted a cuff. She proffered her hand and I placed the leather around her wrist. There was a scar there now, bad rub.

I had searched where I could, pulled in what favors I had. Nothing. I let it lie then, figuring she hadn’t
wanted
to be found. But there was always that question, did I do enough? And now knowing where she’d been … I was the first to drop my eyes.

I gestured roughly with the other cuff and she obliged with a triumphant tilt of her head because I had looked away first. I buckled the cuff and snapped the two together with a decisive click. I shook them a little and looked to her, smiling.
Yes? Is it like that?

I snapped the leash onto the other end of the clip, ran the leather through the carving on the mantle, and snapped it back to the other end. The cuffs weren’t really necessary. It was all part of the symbolism, the trappings of the scene, rife with meaning, heavy with the weight of shared understanding.

I nudged her legs apart with my foot and allowed my coat to brush against her back. She shivered and I smiled. She loved wool.

“Keep your legs spread just like this,” I said for Victor’s benefit. “Say, ‘Oh, sir,’ if you become fatigued or require. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was hoarse. This too was the same. I was angry when I turned to Victor. “May I have water?”

He got up. “Sure, sure.” I’d reinforced his belief in the value of the sculptures and was now doing the same for his harlot. He poured a glass from the bar and placed it on the table.

I picked up both floggers. The deerhide was thirty or so half-inch wide falls for a total lashing power of about nothing, too soft for much more than a tactile toy. Genevieve’d always loved those toys. I could spank her crimson and she’d moan and offer her ass up for the heaviest blows I could muster as long as some softness stroked her periodically.

The moosehide flogger though, by her own admission, was like being hit by a two-by-four. Very thuddy, very good. I would warm her up with a thorough taste of it as a prelude for the paddle and the moment waiting for us. I slid the heavy flogger over her back, lightly flicking the thick fall of tails across her back, her thighs, her ass. When she began to sway, I hooked it around her neck. She groaned and I ran my hand down her side and stepped away.

She took the glass when I handed it to her. “I will flog you,” I said. “You’ll show me where you desire the strokes by how you offer yourself. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she replied, handing it back. Behind us, Victor grunted.

I lingered, letting her immerse herself in the ritual we were going to enact together. When the wind and the kinetic energy snicked out of the lashes next to her, she froze. The falls snapped in a fury around her, gauging weight and aim. I paused and rolled my neck on my shoulders. There was a series of pops and that tension rose up and out the top of my head.

The first stroke landed exactly across the center of those perfect apples. She hissed and I laughed. I followed up with a volley of light strokes designed to reacquaint us.

Dancing lightly on the balls of her feet, her hips swayed. My dick was rock hard and my feet remembered the rhythm of their dance. She offered her ass to me. When it dropped, I stepped in and stroked those smooth, hot cheeks, whispering, “Good little bottom, good, good Genevieve.”

She moaned deeply, almost sobbing. I moved back, beginning to flog her in earnest with the deer hide. I chastised her back, flailed down her thighs, up the inside, and pressed the stock up between her legs. She moaned, riding it extravagantly.

She’d always been a fine slut. It made public play such a pleasure. I leaned in on her now. She pressed her tender ass against the wool of my pants. When I reached around, I discovered the glow of the fire had made the nipple ring warm. My hands remembered her beautiful, small, tight breasts and my fingers slid up to pinch the pegs of her nipples.

She groaned and her ass lifted up against my crotch. My dick pressed against her. I pinched harder and she whimpered, beginning to make the high, thin little cry that came with tit play.

When I allowed her to stand again, I lifted the moosehide and laid the deerhide in its place. The heft of it brought out a remembered rhythm. She would know this was the final preparation for the paddle and the moment we were building up to.

I gave her sets of five and seven and nine, stopping between to stroke her flesh or run my hand up into her sex and knead that hard knob. She was sopping, begging for release, the first of as many as the sly harlot could get from her bottomless jar.

I stood back to appreciate the even blush along her firm cheeks. I laid into them again along the midline. She danced, offering herself and accepting my touch, drinking in the heat, the sizzle between us. I could have swung all night.

She was not going to ask. She moaned when I finally laid the flogger across her shoulder. I picked up the glass. Her eyes were glazed and she was limp in the cuffs. She always said she never remembered to ask for water because her soul sipped the ambrosia I served up.

I made eye contact with Victor. He nodded, tipping his glass at me—a good show.

The paddle was oak, thin, and lightly varnished. I tested it against my palm. She heard and sucked wind. She’d be glad of the warm-up when I used it on her. It was not too heavy, stingier than the thuddy paddle that precipitated her flight from me a year and a half before. That one had been bigger, heavier. I’d promised her seven and by three I could tell she didn’t like it. But she didn’t offer a word and I’d stubbornly refused to ask, trying to force her to own her power.

This is where that refusal had brought her. A savage wave of anger washed over me.

I aimed her straight for it again tonight. She would act in the scene and none of the last year and a half would matter, or I could put the whole thing to rest at last. My breath was hot on her neck and the paddle was cool on her ass as it slid around and around.

“I’ll give you nine blows with this paddle. If, at any time, you wish to stop, you’ll say, ‘Oh, sir.’ Do you understand?”

I knew why she was with Victor. It wouldn’t do any good to ask him to stop, to say to him, “I’ve had enough.” So she was relieved of the necessity with no need to fret about it. But that’s not a scene, that’s a free-for-all and I wouldn’t have it.

“Do you understand?” I growled in her ear. “Answer me, now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The paddling would play out here and now in front of Victor, who understood nothing. The fire popped loudly. I jerked.

“I understand, sir,” she said snippily. Those little sparks always flared in her eyes when she saw my humanity, the crack in her view of the perfect top.

Or was it that she couldn’t express those feelings herself and it was too much when others could?

“Very well, then. You will count. Carefully. No mistakes. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Her tone signaled that she acknowledged the memory behind the question.

“Then we’ll begin. Take the position.” She bent over, proffering her ass.

The first hit was solid. A loud crack split the room. She sucked in breath and expelled it with an, “Owww,” and then, belatedly, “One.” It sounded sincere. Victor laughed. I stroked her ass gently and whispered in her ear, “Good Genevieve. Good, sweet bottom, no need to be brave now, dearest harlot, just be honest.”

In answer she presented for the next stroke. Her hands clenched in the cuffs and the tendons stood out on the back of her thighs. She cried out at the next, which brought more laughter from Victor. “Two,” she said tightly. I took a breath, held it, as I considered her now scarlet ass.

The third was a loud crack on the midline of her cheeks and she leaped forward. “Oh, three, ow, ow, ow,” she sobbed. I stepped in and stroked her ass. It was hot and tight under my hand. The fire was warm on my face.

I gripped her arm tightly and spoke closely to her ear. “This is a scene, meant to be played, Genevieve, now enough of the theatrics, act.”

Stepping to the other side, I laid the paddle on her ass. She moaned a little in anticipation and I lifted it, bringing it down solidly on the top of her cheeks. She would bear that mark for some time. “Oh, oh, four,” she wailed and I thought she would do it then, prayed for her to say it. I covered her flesh with my pants, put an arm around her tightly as I reached across to pull on the steel ring in her nipple.

I drove my hips against her crimson ass and pinched her cunt lips together. She was still wet and her clit stood up under my fingers. She writhed under my touch and I let her bask in the knowledge of where I could take her. She was close to coming and I backed off to stroke her ass and remind her of where we were now.

She barely had time to get into position before I gave her the next. Victor clapped his hands, impressed. “Five,” she said, sobbing.

I had never
asked
for it. I’d always insisted she be the one to
offer
it. Could that be the key? That I had to require her to act, instead of expecting her to act on her own?

I stepped back, swinging the paddle sharply behind her. The air whished and she sucked breath. I stepped in tight to her, coat rubbing roughly against her skin. “Yes, little slut, little bottom, this is what it does,” I whispered in her ear, my fingers tight on that nipple ring. “Genevieve,” I whispered urgently. “Meet me.
Own your power
. I require it.”

We were frozen for a moment and I ran the paddle over that bruised flesh, the testament to our struggle. She groaned and offered herself to that gentle touch, dancing a little to tell me that she wanted this, asked for it, laid herself open to it and, by extension, me. But it wasn’t enough. It was only one side.

My anger lifted the paddle and brought it down with all the weight of lost time. “Six, oh six, oh,” she cried and, “Oh six, oh, sir, six, oh, sir, oh, sir,” she kept repeating as if once said she could not stop.

She’d acted and the bottomless void acquired edges and limits and I could know her, now, truly and in depth.

I held her from behind, my cock driving against the hot, tender flesh of her ass. I took that nipple ring in my left hand and her clit in the other and brought her off in a gush that flowed over my hands and onto the carpet. She kept coming—all the months, the anguish, releasing, cleansing themselves in the hot flood of victory. I unhooked the leash and picked her up, made the few steps to the couch. The afghan that lay on the back enfolded her smoothly. I handed her the water.

She sipped gratefully, her eyes never leaving my face as I undid the cuffs and laid them aside. I took the glass back and only then did she relax. I stood, dried my hands on the towel Victor offered me, and finished my wine.

I let him lead me toward the door.

“I’ve never seen her like that; even at the club.” He clapped me on the shoulder, caught between amazement and jealousy.

“Well, Victor, I’d like to thank you. It’s been a very pleasurable evening.”

“No, thank you. And if you know anybody else that might want those heads.”

“Sure.” I shook his hand and nodded to Genevieve, now staring at me over the back of the couch.

“Thank you.” I left, got to my car, and flipped open my phone. “Cleebourn,” I said, sitting back until he picked up.

“Dalton,” he said, “why’re you calling? Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem.”

“Did he have them?”

“Yes, all twenty.”

“I knew that shit stole them.” Cleebourn paused. “So, again, why’re you calling?”

“I want a favor.”

“A favor? You’re already well paid. Why should I do you a favor?”

“Because it’s small and I’ll give you a referral to make up for the inconvenience.”

“Speak, I’m busy.”

“There’s a woman named Genevieve there. I want her treated good and taken out.” Genevieve’s old friend, Dame Vicky, would be happy to see her again until I had cleared my calendar.

“What’s the referral?”

“I have a buyer. Guy named Blake. He’s got money and a taste for antiquities that’s not so refined it needs clean provenance.”

There was a pause. Cleebourn knew I was good. That’s why he retained me so often. It was no skin off his nose or his profit. “Okay. Anything else, Dalton?”

I paused, remembering that marble head with its flattened cheekbones and the livid bruise on Genevieve’s face.

“Tell him I don’t like his work.”

There was silence. “Okay, I’ll make sure he knows before they’re finished with him. Go on, tell ’em whatever you want. I’m busy.” I dialed another number. A man answered.

“It’s me, Dalton. There’s been a little change in plan.”

I’d have time to gather the tools that delicate and subtle work demanded to fully smooth over the damage done. Then I’d explore Genevieve’s new shape.

Down Below

By

Jean Roberta