Hard Lessons (14 page)

I gasp as, without preamble, he sinks his middle finger deep into my arse. The creamy juices from my pussy seem to be enough lubricant, and he works me open quickly. There’s a slight squeeze around my clit, quickly released as he removes the clip. I lurch forward as he slides his cock balls deep into me. He uses the finger still sunk deep in my arse to lift and angle me for his penetration, then he simply goes for it. He plunges deep and hard, the sheer force of the thrusts taking my breath away. I start to come immediately, and he stops. “I’ll tell you when you can come. Hold on until I give you permission.” He resumes his firm thrusting, fucking me long, deep and extremely thoroughly.

I struggle not to unravel. I’m not sure what all this ‘don’t come until I give permission’ is about, but I know he means it. So I clench my body around him, absorb his length again and again as he withdraws right to the tip just to surge forward once more. Each thrust fills me completely, stretching my body and hitting that inner sweet spot with just the right amount of friction to send me back into orbit if only he’d allow it. I can’t help myself, I start to lose it. The sharp, painful slap on my buttock pulls me up sharp. I glance indignantly at him over my shoulder.

“Ask permission, slut.”

I frown then blow him a kiss. He smiles, rubs my smarting buttock. “That’s better, you’re getting the idea. Okay, you can come now, Freya. Enjoy.”

And I do. My orgasm is there instantly, and I squeeze his cock gratefully as he delivers the final powerful strokes to send me hurtling back into oblivion. He’s only moments behind me, and I feel the twitch of his cock as his balls clench ready to expel his semen. It’s liquid heat, filling me, dribbling and mixing with my own juices as he finally buries himself deep in me and goes still. We both sink into the padded fuck-floor as he slips his finger from my arse but makes no attempt to disengage his cock. And I rather like his cock right where it is, so I snuggle back against him. I swear, if I could, I’d be purring as he loops his arm over me to pull me in close against his chest, his fingers trailing across my still swollen but no longer sore nipples.

“Christ, Freya, I’ll have to find reasons to punish you more often. It’ll be worth it, for the makeup sex.”

I’m not entirely convinced, but he might be right. I’ll definitely stick around to find out, but somehow I doubt that my nipples will thank me for it.

Chapter Seven

I wake late the following morning. The sun’s streaming through the open curtains, and Nick’s watch on the bedside table tells me it’s already after eleven o’clock. Of him, there’s no sign. I make a quick visit to the loo then grab my robe to go looking for him. I have a favor to ask.

A quick tour of the house comes up empty, and I eventually find him outside, enjoying his coffee as he leans on his garden wall at the back of the house. He seems to be staring at empty space. Clutching my robe tight across my chest I walk barefoot across the cropped grass that makes up the back garden and lean on the wall next to him. Nick casually loops his arm across my shoulders and hands me his coffee cup.

“Morning, gorgeous.”

I’m surprised. I hadn’t expected that. The easy familiarity, the intimacy. Which makes my current confusion even more painful.

Yesterday seemed like a turning point for me, a pivotal series of events, of highs and lows. Especially lows. Yesterday, the stark reality of a BDSM submissive lifestyle came home to me. It hit me right between the eyes, so to speak. Nick taught me a hard lesson, and an incredibly painful one. I’m honestly not sure I could ever face that again, no matter how mind-blowing the makeup sex afterwards. Can I really grant someone, anyone, the authority to do something like that to me? I need to think this through. And I need to do that alone.

First, though, I ask him what he’s looking at.

“Skydivers. Over there.” He points up into the sky ahead of us. I follow the line of his arm and see the small plane circling high, about five miles away, and the trail of small dots pouring from it to dangle suspended in the air in its wake. I’ve seen them many times—it’s a popular weekend pursuit, especially in the summer.

“Do you skydive?” I ask him. He seems the sort who might.

“Occasionally. I like to keep my hand in. That’s my plane.”

I turn to him in surprise. “Your plane!”

“Yup. I own Lakes Sky. My plane, my airfield. My parachutes as well. I franchise the running of the business out these days, but I do occasionally fly when they’re short of a pilot. And I do tandem jumps from time to time. Fancy a go?”

I stare at him, and the image of David Carnegie, that ultra-cautious wealth manager from the Euro-millions who lectured me about the dangers of extreme sports, flicks back into my head. He’s there, admonishing me, I can hear his careful, considered voice advising me against foolhardy decisions and thrill-seeking even as I nod and sign that I’d love to go skydiving with Nick Hardisty strapped onto my back. I’m not sure which of us is the most taken aback at my ready acceptance of his offer, but he smiles, a genuinely happy, beaming grin, and hugs me again.

Our easy friendship this morning makes this next part harder, but I need to ask.

“Can I go home?”

He turns to me, his turn to be surprised. I notice that his arm stays around my shoulders, though. “You want to go home? What, to pick up your clothes for racing?”

I nod. “Yes. And to think as well. I’d like to be on my own for a while if that’s allowed. In my own place.”

He turns me to face him, both his hands now loosely resting on my shoulders as he catches my gaze, holding it. His dark gray eyes are warm, tender even, so different from yesterday. “Is this to do with what happened yesterday? When I punished you?”

I nod, and much to my disgust my lower lip is trembling. I don’t want to cry, damn it—all I’m asking for is a chance to be alone for a few hours, to regroup and to think things through. It’s the realization that he may refuse permission, that if he chooses he can just send me inside, order me to strip and wait for him in the dungeon, whether I really want to or not, that finally opens the floodgates. I lose it, suddenly sobbing into my hands.

I hear “Holy fuck,” then I’m pulled up hard against his chest, sobbing into his soft sports shirt as he holds me close in his arms. He waits until my sobs subside before setting me away from him, taking my hand, and leading me inside. In the kitchen he pulls a chair away from the table and gestures for me to sit down.

I do, still sniffling and trying to wipe my face with the back of my hand. Nick grabs a box of tissues from the sunny window sill and plonks that in front of me. I grab a handful, do what I can to make myself presentable. Only when I’ve finished, only when I eventually look up at him, now straddling another chair in front of me, does he speak again.

“You can go. Of course you can go. You’re free to leave at any time, you know that.”

I stare at him, then, my hands signing nervously, I ask the question that scares me most, “Will you let me come back?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes. If you choose to come back, I’ll be happy to see you.”

Relief washes through me, and he sees it. Relief that he’ll allow me the time I need to sort out my head, and relief that I still have my choices intact. He shakes his head, a wry smile quirking his sexy mouth.

“Take as much time as you need, Freya. But before you go, you need to listen to me. You need to properly understand what the deal is, with me, and probably with any other Dom you might have a relationship with in the future.”

He leans forward, his eyes holding mine. “Our lifestyle involves discipline, physical discipline. A Dom demands submission and total obedience, absolute honesty from his—or her—sub.” His voice has lowered, he’s deadly serious. “That’s non-negotiable, and it’s enforced by physical punishment when the rules are broken. You broke the rules, so what I did to you yesterday was done deliberately. I meant it to hurt, and it did. I chose something that I knew you’d hate because I wanted it to be a deterrent. I wanted you to learn from it, to remember it and not make the same mistake again. Punishment has to hurt, it has to be unpleasant. And it will be again. You’re not perfect, although I do know how hard you try. Despite your efforts you will screw up, sometime, and when you do I’ll punish you again. Or maybe not me, maybe it’ll be someone else in the future. But as a submissive living a BDSM lifestyle you
will
be punished. Maybe not very often, but it will be there, a part of your life. If you stay in this lifestyle.”

I’m gazing back at him. I know what he says is true, on some level I always knew, but I’d convinced myself that I could manage a few spankings. Hell, I’d welcome a few decent spankings, that’s what drew me to this. To him. What happened to me yesterday was different. It was extreme and it was horrible, and it frightened me. I’m not sure I can live with being afraid, afraid that some inadvertent mistake will see me reduced to a quivering mess collapsing at my Dom’s feet.

“Tell me, Freya. Explain to me what you’re thinking. Tell me what’s going on in your head.” His voice is low and sensual. Gone is the stern and commanding Dom voice. Now I’m dealing with the kind, patient teacher, and I find I can tell him. Or at least I can try.

My normally fluent signing is halting, stumbling and broken as I grapple to find expression for my strange, complex and confused ideas. I manage to get across the gist of my problem, though, the worry that I’ll be constantly in fear of making a mistake and bringing that sort of retribution down on myself.

Suddenly, a nasty thought occurs to me. “Would you tell them? Him? My next Dom. If I have one. Would you tell him what to do to, to…?”

“Would I tell your next Master what works as a deterrent with you? No, I wouldn’t. That would be for him to discover. Or for you to tell him. The perfect, obedient submissive would tell him, you know that, don’t you? When you eventually meet the Master who’ll claim you and who you want to accept you’ll want to please him. You’ll want to learn how to please him, so you’d welcome his discipline and want it to be effective. So you’d have to tell him. Do you see that?”

I do see that. I see it very clearly. And here’s the thing—I’ve met my Master, the one I want to claim me. And the fact that he knows perfectly well how to discipline me, that he can inflict a punishment I’ll probably never forget and is quite comfortable doing it, is what unnerves me the most.

* * * *

Back in my apartment, I meander through my cluttered space aimlessly, fiddling, touching and moving things around. I’ve only been away from home for four nights, less I suppose if you count my ‘unauthorized’ visit to pick up my sewing machine. That was my first misdemeanor and earned me the first punishment in my training program, and led to my meltdown in the dungeon. Yet another indication that perhaps Summer was right all along and I’m not really cut out for this. But if that were true, how come I feel so bloody miserable now? Such a failure?

But my thoughts are at their most tangled when I try to work out how I feel about Nick. I’ve only been away from him for a couple of hours, and I miss him terribly. Whatever mood he’s in, whether he has a spanking paddle in his hand or a cup of tea, I just want to be with him. Even though he scares me half to death sometimes, I still want to be with him.

There’s nothing stopping me. I could just hop in my car and head back to Cartmel. I’d be there in half an hour, and in another half minute I could be fucking Nick Hardisty.

My pussy clenches at that delightful thought. Or maybe I could practice my oral skills a bit more. Maybe I could be the aggressor for once, if he’s in a mood to permit it. I could straddle him and sink onto his wonderful cock. I could do all those fabulous things, and more, if I accept the other part of the deal. If I accept his authority, agree to submit to it.

Can I do it? My instincts tell me to surrender, to take what I can have of him for as long as it lasts. But my fear of his discipline holds me back. Can I trust him? More to the point, can I trust myself? In fairness, Nick offers no surprises. His position is clear. Do as he instructs, obey him, and I won’t be punished. He’ll challenge my body, he
will
cause me pain, but it’s a good sort of hurting, the sort of hurting I love. The sort of hurting that makes my body tingle and slips my mind into that wondrous sub-space zone, the sort of hurting that can make me stretch and purr and beg for more. And when it’s not pain, it’s pleasure. Pure, uninhibited pleasure—orgasms that absolutely rock me to my core. That’s what a Dom offers, and that’s what I want. That’s what I came into this looking for. And Nick did deliver, he’s always delivered. And I suspect he always will, though perhaps not to me.

And that
is
painful. More painful even than the nipple clamps from Hell. The thought that he might just finish my training and send me on my way, leaving him free to scene with other more experienced, more obedient submissives. I can become experienced, and I can learn obedience. Hell, he can certainly teach me it—that became perfectly clear yesterday. So why not me? He likes me, he said so. He said I make his mouth water. Why shouldn’t he claim me? Why won’t he?

I slump onto my sofa, push a pile of quilting magazines aside to make the space to curl my legs under me. What would I have to do? What would I have to be to make him want me and no one else? And I realize, in a blinding moment of epiphany, that this is at the root of it. If he were mine, really mine—he my Master and I his submissive—I’d accept anything. Everything. He was absolutely spot on earlier when he talked to me about wanting to please my Dom, about wanting to learn how to please him. As my Master, Nick might punish me again, but never without cause. And not often, because I would obey him. I would work to please him. And with every act of discipline, I’d learn to please him more.

Simple. Now all I need to do is make him want me, and only me, as much as I want him.

* * * *

It’s dark when I wake up, disorientated and confused. Why am I sleeping on my sofa? Why does my neck feel like someone wrapped a steel collar around it? Why am I cold? Something seems to be wrong, something amiss. Something missing.