Mouse was gone. His friend—
The scent of leather reached him. Softness danced over his shoulders and stroked down his back. He opened his eyes.
The Mistress was teasing a black, multi-strand whip across his shoulders, his chest, his ass. Soft and fragrant. The flicking of the falls across his back was as light as a spring rain.
The strands slapped over his torso and legs in a rhythm that matched the beat of the country music.
Slowly, the slapping sounds grew louder as the blows increased in force. His skin seemed to glow with the heat.
When she stopped, he was almost disappointed, in the same way a person regretted when a massage ended.
She studied him for a minute, and her lips curved up slightly. “Better.” Her hand flattened on his chest, and she leaned against him as her tongue ran over his lower lip.
Then she fisted his hair and took his mouth roughly, driving her tongue inside.
His body heated with a rush. She tasted of chocolate and peppermint, like sex and sin, and he breathed her in, feeling as if the sun had shot a ray of sunlight through the darkness.
Her hands held his face in that way she had, so she could look into his eyes. Hers were a clear gray-blue, like the starkly bare sky after a winter rain.
“I’m going to hurt you now, Benjamin. If you move, if you tear loose of your restraints, I’ll be disappointed in you.”
“I won’t, Mistress.” The words emerged before he even thought about them.
“Your safeword is red, subbie. Use it if you need to.”
“I won’t.”
Her hands stroked down his chest, riffling his hair. When she pinched his nipples with sharp fingertips, his blood started to race as if someone were cranking open the floodgates.
And then she reached between his legs. She cupped his ball sac in her warm palms, squeezing lightly. And forcefully. She rolled his actual rocks between her fingers, increasing the pressure until he felt sweat breaking out on his skin. Felt his cock stir.
“Such a bad cock, not jumping right up for its Mistress.” Her disapproval made him hang his head. Want to apologize.
She slapped his limp dick—slapped it, for God’s sake—with the tips of her fingers. To the left, to the right, each smack stinging. Shocking.
Jesus. He tensed his legs, trying to stay in position as the blows increased to the point of pain.
To his disbelief, his cock filled and rose.
Curling her sure fingers around him, she stroked his dick, up and down. The heady reward lasted far too short a time.
She picked up the flogger.
The first hits landed on his shoulders, worked down his back, avoiding his spine and kidneys. His ass took some serious pounding. And his skin went past the glow to a burn.
After a while, she stopped and slapped his cock.
“Fuck!”
“Silence, subbie,” she murmured and smacked his dick again.
He bit back a curse and was rewarded with a long, wet kiss. Jesus, she could kiss. His arms ached to hold her.
He lost track of how many times she went through the cycle. His back and ass felt as if he’d backed into a furnace; his cock stung and throbbed.
His hands gripped the black chains as if he were fused to the metal.
“Time for something new.” She smiled at him sweetly and picked up a…thing. An evil, steel, ring-like device filled with a couple of dozen metal studs. It looked like a fucking miniature iron maiden. A mouth with teeth.
His own teeth clamped down on his protest.
She opened the hinged band, closed the damned thing around his shaft, and screwed the studs inward until each steel point barely poked his dick.
Not too bad. He realized he’d frozen in place. Carefully, he exhaled.
And then she reached past his shaft to scrape her fingernail over the sensitive skin between his balls and asshole.
As the searingly sharp pleasure scorched through him, his cock thickened …and the fucking studs hurt like hell. His hands fisted around the chains as he fought the need to yank the torture device off.
And somehow, the agony only made him harder…which made the pain worse. “Fuck.”
Her eyes were bright with pleasure. “That’s what I want to hear.”
She flogged him again, ruthlessly. Pain upon pain.
And yet, the murky swamp air that had been suffocating him was lightening into a sunlit fog. His cock didn’t…quite…hurt, but felt surrounded by a dense heat, as if a wet mouth held him sweetly. Each stroke of the flogger sang across his skin with a heavy liquid pressure like a warm tongue.
He realized…eventually…that she’d stopped.
“What a good Benjamin,” she was murmuring, her cool hands stroking over his body, easing the fires.
She kissed him, long and slow, even as he felt her hands on his distant cock, removing the steel ring.