Faithless (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (114 page)

“Dalton, don’t be ashamed,” I murmur in a coaxing tone. “I wasn’t sad because of how you look. I was sad because I know how you will look once you get yourself healthy- I wish you were there right now, that’s all. I know where these marks came from, and who marred your flesh, and it is not your fault.”

“Just make the pressure go away,” Dalton whines, sounding pitiful. “My skin feels so tight that I fear it will burst
, and I will bleed out.”

“Relax and slow your breathing and heart rate. I’m not starting with pain. Fall into the repetition of the impact, and I will slowly build the intensity until it pulls you from your darkness,” my voice falls into a lulling chant, it’
s my master voice.

The handle of my braided leather flogger feels at home in my palm. During my training, I found out that I was proficient with the wh
ip in its varying forms: bullwhip, floggers, and cat o’ nine tails- similar to the flogger but with nine straps, that may or may not have objects that impact or impale the flesh. I even enjoyed the power of the leather strap- belt. The feel of a paddle or a cane didn’t suit me. A wooden stick, while painful, just didn’t feel very badass to me.

I shower Dalton’s back with the flogger’s soft leather tails. His starved muscles quiver beneath the pleasurable sensation. I loved it when Dexter did this to me. It reminded me of being a little girl and sitting on the porch on hot and muggy night. Aunt Amelia didn’t mind that I’d run around naked to keep cool. We’d sleep on the porch’s daybed, and Amelia would trail her fingernails down my back in soothing circles to help me fall asleep. It would tickle and make my scalp feel prickly. The motion does the same for Dalton. Slowly his muscles relax, his head droops on his neck, and he lets out a long, mournful sigh.

The first thwack is not harder than a pat on the back during a hug. The leather tails make hollow sound against Dalton’s back. My technique depends on the submissive I am serving- and that is the only way of looking at this. This isn’t play for me. This isn’t about sex. If it were Wil and me joking around in my bedroom, it would be different. But this is psychological in nature, not sexual. My ability to serve pain is for my submissive’s benefit, not mine. My mental release is a side-effect. There is a selfless quality in pain-dealing.

Never working Dalton before, I don’t know his capacity for pain or the speed in which he likes the experience to progress. Devlin gave me some valuable information. I decide
a slowly building pace with a steady increase of intensity is the way to go, especially since Devlin said Dalton needed pain to break free of his thoughts.

By the time I hit a level four on a scale of ten- ten being the most pain I’ve ever taken from Dexter, Dalton is already living inside his mental nightmares. He whimpers, but not when the strike of the flogger makes contact.
Dalton’s body shakes as tears flow down his hollow cheeks to pool at the floor.

The intensity
of the session beads sweat along my upper lip. My hair mats to my forehead. My arm doesn’t get tired because Dexter made me work my wrist, forearm, and upper arm for hours at a time.

When I hit a level seven, Dalton’s pale skin is tinged red, and the marks of the individual tails are visible. A few lashes leave welts but do not break the skin. My arm is continually moving in a perfectly timed motion. The sound of one thwack doesn’t register until after I’ve made my next strike. The music of my flogger slicing through the air and hitting Dalton’s back and rear, makes my eyelids heavy with a dreamy sort of pleasure.

My body feels different this time. A fog rolls over my mind and pours down into my system. I feel light- free. Never have I reached this headspace. I’ve seen Dexter in the throes of a Sadist mindset, and I was starting to doubt my ability to ever reach that height. My heart should be pounding in my chest with the intensity of my movements. But it is sluggish, pushing my blood through my veins as if it is filled with a pleasure-inducing drug.

Level ten comes and goes, and still Dalton is stuck in the misery of his past. My arm hangs at my side, f
logger tails swinging around my lower leg, as I look down at the red ruin of Dalton’s back- no skin is broken, but it is one continual welt. Dalton’s position reminds me of a man in prayer- praying for absolution. He is muttering
désolé, désolé, désolé, désolé
underneath his breath. Tears soak the inky strands of silken hair around his face.

Not having the energy to swing the flogger, I fall to my knees beside the broken man. I try calling his name, coaxing him out of the subspace he’s entered- but it is unlike any subspace I’ve ever witnessed. It’s as if he is trapped within the confines of his own memories. I grip a fistful of his impossibly silky hair and yank until his
face is revealed to my sight. Jade green eyes slit open, pouring tears down his cheeks in a river, he stares sightless into the abyss of darkness.

“Dalton,” I shout in his face, and he doesn’t show any signs of life. He doesn’t even blink. However, he does kneel before me and embrace me, as if he needs the support.

My mind panics, clearing the sadist fog that had settled over my body. What a shitty sadist I am that I put a masochist under and I can’t figure out how to pull him back up. I spin solutions and come up with nothing. I’m going to have to let my ego go and call Dexter if I don’t think of something soon. Pain, Devlin said pain. I hit a ten on my personal pain scale, short of blooding Dalton, I’m at a loss.

Dalton hangs on me, weighting next to nothing but managing to become dead weight in my arms. He whimpers and moans as his memories progress. The sounds become continuous
, and change from agonizing groans of pain to an entirely different sound- the moans of lust-filled pleasure.

Creeped out and uncomfortable, I experience something I thought I’d never witness. Something huge grows between us, getting larger and larger as the seconds tick by. I don’t dare look. I’m might be tiny, but I didn’t shrink enough that it should be poking me in the left breast. Dalton is only a
few inches taller than me. It’s impossible that he is that monstrous. If… if that is what I think it is, then it makes Dexter’s look like a pinky.

I whimper when it gets bigger, and Dalton starts to groan deep from his chest. PAIN! We need some pain to stop this session from Hell. Level ten did nothing. I can’t bleed him.
I do the one thing that is guaranteed to leave men sobbing like babies. I reach a hand between us and twist his sack.

While Dalton screams in misery, I try to ignore the fact that my palm
can’t even cup one of his balls. I ignore how warm and velvety soft he is beneath my fingers. I ignore the fact that Dalton is my sister’s husband, and my husband’s brother… but one thing I try to ignore… and can’t… is that as Dalton screams in misery, he comes back to the world of the living… by orgasming all over my neck, chest, stomach, and hand.

Gob after gob of gooey, hot semen splats on me. I try not to jump up and down screaming
get it off me… get it off me… it’s filled with bacteria… and brother sperm.

“I’m so sorry,”
Dalton sobs out, equally mortified as I am.

“It’s okay, Dalton,” I use my bedside manner voice that patients seem to find reassuring and nonjudgmental. “That always happens, just
… not usually on the sadist,” I slowly enunciate the words. It’s either that or get skeeved the hell out because that cooling, sticky fluid belongs inside Dalton, not on me.

“Mon dieu,” Dalton cries, skittering away from me on all fours to my bathroom door. The sound of him vomiting has me in there within the blink of an eye. Devlin’s parting words fill my mind-
and be prepared to offer some serious aftercare.

“Well, I can’t say that’s the first time a guy has thrown up after jizzing on me,” I honestly say without a hint of sarcasm. Over the years, Wil has met the porcelain god after orgasm. “And I can guarantee it’s probably for the same exact reason.”

“Doubtful,” Dalton says as he searches for a washcloth.

“Well,” I d
raw out, “since the other guy is my husband, and his evil grandfather molested the both of you, I’d say I know a thing or two about why you’re gagging up your guts… and we don’t ever, and I mean
ever
, have to talk about this. This is
never
to leave this room. And if I ever serve you again, I’ll stay at your back,” I promise.

“I warned you that I…” Dalton trails off.

“My fault,” I admit.

After getting Dalton tucked in on my sofa with a can of energy drink in one hand and a candy bar in the other, I shower and change into fresh clothes. By the time I reemerge, I can pretend I’ve never seen my brother-in-law in the throes of orgasm… that I don’t know that he is the biggest man I’ve ever seen… with the softest flesh… and that I’ve never, ever seen his spooge… ever.

I pull Dalton into my lap, sloshing the drink a bit. There isn’t much more intimate than what we just went through, aftercare can’t compete with that. I hold Dalton and pet his silky hair. I make sure he finishes his drink and candy bar. I watch his vibrant eyes flutter shut.

I speak
, barely above a whisper. “They can’t hurt you anymore, Dalton. You killed them. Only you can let them haunt you.”

“You don’t understand- it was my grandfather,” Dalton chokes out. “I murdered my grandfather in cold blood after Devlin and I tortured him. We left him to bleed out. I… I also slit a man’s throat. I’m a murderer,” he admits, voice filled with shame and regret.

“So am I,” I readily admit. Dalton’s body jolts in my arms. “I’ve killed two people: one out of mercy- my momma- and one out of necessity- my grandfather. I feel your pain, Dalton. I live with the same pain on a constant basis. Did I do the right thing, I wonder. Should I have found another way, I think. But the one question that absolves it all… is the world a better place without Mitchell Meyers in it? My answer is yes. You need to ask yourself the same thing. Is the world a better place without Pierre Fontaine and Jon Wilson? I believe it is, but the answer is for you to decide.”

~Chapter One Hundred~

They never cease to amaze me… or amuse me. The boys found a way around my ‘mine’ edict. I said if it was a gift or purchased with their own money, then it’s theirs. Side-by-side, Torian and Zane sit on stools with their eyes glued to their telescope eyepieces, as they gaze out Zane’s bedroom window at The Edge Building.

The boys never earned Stanton’s telescope back
. It’s now in my bedroom, spying in the same direction. But I’m never the one snooping- it’s Wil’s favorite hobby. If the boys are glued to their telescopes, Wil is making sure they see nothing perverted… and I’m happy to note that the bedroom the Ezes share with Katya always has the blinds drawn. It took twenty-three highly detailed bitch notes and me sending Ez a set of draperies before he got the hint.

Zane and Torian
pooled their resources and bought a pair of identical telescopes, padded stools and all. When in trouble, they say I can’t take them away. I was a devious shit at their age, too, which makes me an even more devious momma. Their last punishment, I blackened out every window facing The Edge Building with black plastic sheathing. They’ve been surprisingly well-behaved since.

It hurts my heart, and many a night I find Wil with tears glistening in his eyes. We both know how Zane feels
, and it even impacts Torian in an emotional way, too. Wil was raised by a wonderful woman, but she wasn’t his birth mother, his stepmother. I was raised by a wonderful woman, also not my birth or stepmother, but my aunt. Wil is a wonderful father, and we know that no matter how much love he gives, it doesn’t lessen the ache Ez puts into Zane’s heart.

Do I resent Ezra? Absolutely.

Is it irrational that I want to blame Katya? Absolutely.

Knowing this doesn’t change how I feel inside when I watch my son and his cousin longingly stare into their telescopes. Naughtiness and scheming aside, it’s a serious matter. They are no longer watching Ez while he works and sleeps. Zane had been frightened for his father’s safety- keeping himself safe from his insanity. Now they watch for another agonizing reason, and it hurt
s me as much as it hurts them.

I don’t need a telescope to know what they are seeing through the lens. The defeated slope of my son’s shoulders says it all. Ez is on his sofa, holding his daughter, holding his future wife. They are creating the family without Zane.

Does Katya know about Zane? No.

If she’d known, would she have wanted Zane
to join their family? Her behavior points to a big, fat NO.

Cortez is on that same sofa, playing games and teasing the girl. While sickeningly sweet, it shreds my heart. Cortez was my friend- my best friend- and he has never touched my son. He has
never spoken to him other than to make demands. I feel like we are the throwaway family, and that isn’t even my father rubbing his new life into my face- I can’t imagine the pain Zane feels. We were first, but we come in last. We literally get to watch, looking inside their lives from outside their window.

I’ve provided a loving, stable, and structured life for our family. We are happy, and we respect one another. But no matter how wonderful our lives together may be, it doesn’t take the wounds away. Torian is wounded by his selfish parents as much as Zane is wounded by his selfish father and his new family. My boys ache, so Wil and I ache all the more.