CHAPTER SIX
(Charlotte)
“Do you want to go again?” Matt asked, smoothing his hand over my aching ass. “Another cycle like that?”
“Um…” I considered everything we’d done. All of it. “Will you spank me again?” Quickly, I added, “My dragon?”
I heard the amusement in his voice when he answered, could imagine the smile he tried to subdue. “Is that a request? Or is it something you don’t want?”
My pain receptors screamed no, but my horny, horny endorphins shrieked yes. “What happens next time?”
He moved away, then came to stand where I could see the implements dangling from his hand. The tasseled whip and the paddle. “You choose. Paddle or flogger?”
“Um…” The leather-covered paddle would hurt as much as a hand, I thought. The flogger would also hurt, but probably in a different way. “Flogger, please, my dragon.”
“Excellent choice.” He tossed the paddle aside. Every thump of his cane on the floor made me flinch as he walked behind me. I didn’t know when the first strike would come.
“We’ll do five again,” he said. The leather tails trailed over my backside. They prickled like freshly sharpened cat claws on my already burning skin. “You’ll count them, like before. And at the end, you’ll get a reward.”
I wondered if I was allowed to suggest rewards. Because right then, I just wanted him inside me.
“Are you ready?” The way he smoothed his hand over my burning ass when he said it made me think he was trying to call attention to the pain I’d felt and the pain to come.
“Yes, my dragon.” I didn’t brace myself. There was no point, no knowing when the lashes would come or where they would land. I heard the whistle of the tails in the air and knew, in the split second before the leather tore across my skin, that he wouldn’t take it easy on me. That it would hurt.
It did.
The tails felt like they were cutting into me individually, a bunch of electric knives scoring my flesh. I choked out a scream.
“You’re supposed to be counting, princess,” he reminded me. “I would hate to have to add more strokes to the total to remind you.”
“One.” My voice shook.
“And you remember that this can stop at any time,” he reminded me.
“I know, my dragon.” I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to take everything he had for me. Another whistle of promised pain, another stinging lash, and this time I screamed my pain with, “Two!”
“Good girl,” he said, and I melted.
My hands clenched to fists at the third strike, but I counted that one aloud too. I could do anything, endure anything, to hear those words from him. With every burst of agony, I craved his approval more. The fourth left me trembling and sweating. The fifth whipped across my vulva, and I burst into tears. “Five!”
He came to stand in front of me and lifted my tear-streaked face so he could look me in the eye. “Is this too much for you, Charlotte?”
Not “princess,” but Charlotte. It was a time-out in our game.
I swallowed thickly and nodded. “I want to keep going. I just don’t want any more pain.”
He kissed the top of my head and murmured, “You’re doing so well, princess.”
My cunt clenched.
“You’re doing so well,” he went on, “that I think you deserve to come again.”
I do! My libido screamed.
Then he said, “Ten minutes, this time,” and I thought my libido might need to reconsider. Five minutes of that slow, steady torment, that endless orgasm that had wrung all the strength from my body, had been more than enough. While I’d enjoyed every second, the intensity had nearly broken me. How would I last?
I heard a scraping and realized he was moving the chair to settle himself behind me. Then, something touched my clit. It wasn’t a finger.
“My hand is a bit tired,” he explained, a note of playful malice in his voice. “I thought this might be better.”
Something butter-soft pressed against my labia and slipped inside, and whatever was on my clit pushed more firmly against it. No, around it, cupping me.
A button clicked, and the toy pulsed against my clit with a sucking pressure. I made a surprised sound that was somewhere between gasping and choking.
“We’ll turn this up a bit,” Matt said, and a few more clicks intensified the pulsing rhythm. Another button press started the part of the toy inside me vibrating, a hard thump on my G-spot. I jumped.
“Hold still. I don’t want you to drop this. The timer is set… Why don’t you count your orgasms this time?” He paused. “At least, while you can.”
His hand had done a great job bringing me to a slow, steady climax, but the toy had no such artful skill. It didn’t try to tease me or work me up gently, and the combination of sucking and throbbing was going to make me come a lot sooner, with way more time left on that timer.
“My dragon?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Hmm?”
I gritted my teeth as I tried to convince my body to resist the inevitable. If I came now, I would be so supersensitive that each following orgasm would be absolute torture, not the sensual ebb and flow that I had experienced before. “How much time is left?”
“Nine minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“Oh…oh…” I tried to finish my sentence. The toy was too efficient at its job. Forty-five seconds was all it took, and I came hard, twisting to get away from the relentless sensation.
“You’re supposed to count, princess,” he reminded me. “You don’t want to have to start over, do you?”
“It’s too much!” I humped my hips against the leather beneath me in an effort to dislodge the toy, but he put his palm firmly over my vulva, holding it there.
“It isn’t too much. I know you can take it. You can take anything I give you.” His lips brushed over my ass.
“It’s…fuck!” I swore, coming again, my clit screaming for relief from the stimulation.
Matt clucked his tongue. “You’re not counting. I suppose I’ll have to add another minute—”
“Two! Two, my dragon!” The muscles in my thighs shook uncontrollably.
“Very good.”
But he didn’t move his hand away. With the other, he adjusted and tightened the strap around my hips, pinning me down tighter. I couldn’t move at all, no matter how I tried to kick and twist. All my fighting made the third orgasm more powerful. While I managed to choke out the number, I didn’t think I would last the entire ten minutes.
I tried to do mental math in the short time between climaxes. The first had taken forty-five seconds. Rounded up to a minute, that would be ten orgasms. Could I handle ten? This wasn’t the same as before, with one gently blending into another. These were distinct, violent. And they got more intense every time. I might actually die.
But whenever a doubt entered my mind, Matt would say something like, “You’re doing so good, princess,” and I wouldn’t endure the next climax. I would ache for it. Want it desperately, with all my soul.
When I got it, that was another story.
One per minute…that’s ten…but forty-five is… I never got far in my private story problem. Another brutal climax would take me over, and I would lose my train of thought. Maybe two a minute…that’s twenty…I’m at seven…but…but…
“Eight!” I screamed, a burst of wet bathing my thighs.
“Oh, look at that,” he marveled. “I’m going to make you taste that, princess.”
I could barely lift my head. My shoulders ached from holding myself up, but the fact that I was restrained severely impaired my ability to adjust position.
“You should see how beautiful this is.” He ran a finger around my opening, on the seam between my flesh and the toy. “You’re so wet, you might as well have just gotten out of the pool. God, I love seeing you spread open like this for me. Thank you, princess.”
I shuddered through another orgasm, no longer strong enough to try to fight.
“Please…” I whimpered. “Please, no more, my dragon.”
“But you’re so close. You’ve only got three minutes left. You don’t want to give up now,” he encouraged me. Or taunted me. It was difficult to tell the difference at the moment.
“I do! I…” Too late. “Ten! Ten! Please make it stop!”
“Are you going to use your word?” he asked. “Are you going to beg for mercy?”
I gritted my teeth. It was only three minutes. Did I want to quit now? What was so different between this and exercising, pushing myself to finish that mile or that rep, knowing that sense of satisfaction at the end would make it all worthwhile?
“No, my dragon,” I sobbed.
Three minutes. Three minutes of the most utterly unpleasant, painfully overstimulated orgasms I’d ever felt in my life. I will never want to come ever again after this, I vowed to myself. Forget a sex island. I would make him buy me a celibacy island.
“Did you lose count?” Matt asked.
“I…” Did I? Where were we? Forty-five seconds…seven… “There are too many!”
And then, there was another. And another. And he counted them for me, waiting until I screamed and convulsed my way through each one, until the timer dinged, and he withdrew the toy.
I moaned in relief, slumping against the headrest.
“Seventeen,” Matt said, his voice full of wonder. “I’m so impressed by your stamina, princess.”
“Did I do a good job?” My teeth chattered uncontrollably.
“A very good job.” The sound of Velcro interrupted him. “Let’s get you out of this.”
My entire body was racked with shivers as he undid the straps and helped me down. My legs didn’t hold me up. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hold me up, either, without tipping sideways, so he pulled me into his lap and we both fell heavily into the armchair.
“Glad I made that decision,” he said with a laugh, stroking my hair.
I snuggled close, fully aware that my bodily fluids were ruining his trousers. I was too exhausted to care. “Did I please you, my dragon?”
“You pleased me very, very much.” He tilted my face up, and I thought I would get a kiss. Instead, he slipped two fingers into my cunt, making me gasp and recoil. They weren’t inside me for long. He withdrew them, held them up to show me the thick, shining juices coating them. “Open.”
I obediently opened my mouth and let him lay those fingers against my tongue.
“Suck them clean. Suck them like you’re sucking my cock.”
I closed my lips, swirling my tongue around his fingers and drawing them deeper. It wasn’t only arousal on my tongue, but my sweat. My skin was damp with it all over, my hair dripping.
“How does that taste, princess?” he asked, pulling his hand back.
It tasted like proof that I’d made him proud of me. Proof that he wanted me. That he’d chosen me. But those were strange things to say. A lot stranger—and way more intimate—than just, “Delicious, my dragon.”
“I think you need some water, some ibuprofen, and a hot shower.” He gave me a little nudge.
“What about fucking me?” I whined. I couldn’t quite believe myself, suggesting such a thing after all of that when I’d so recently decided to take holy orders and never indulge in sins of the flesh again.
“Do you want me to fuck you?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “Or do you think you should let me fuck you?”
“Um…” I considered. “The first.”
“I don’t ever want you to assume that because we did something like this, I expect intercourse in return,” he went on. “Believe me, I would have no problem jerking myself off and thinking about this.”
“But it wouldn’t feel right to me.” I stopped to collect my thoughts. “No, not that it wouldn’t feel right. It wouldn’t feel complete to me. If I’ve done a good job, then I should get to take your cock, right?”
He grinned down at me. “If that’s the way you see it, who am I to argue?”
I craned my neck up to kiss him. Knowing what I wanted, he slipped a hand behind my head to relieve the strain on my neck and leaned down, his mouth covering mine. It was a deep, thorough kiss, but a brief one. He raised his head and said, “You need that water. And the painkillers and a shower. Do that, and I’ll reward you with my cock.”
I got to my feet, still shaky, and he rose and gave me as much support as he could while balancing with his cane. We went into the bathroom, rather than back to our bedroom.
Our bedroom. What a weird sentence to think.
The facilities in the guest room were no less lush than upstairs. The glass-fronted shower had the standard optional rainfall head in the ceiling and the alternate detachable head against the wall. Plus, there was a bench, a feature I was growing fond of. It made shaving so much easier than Captain Morgan-ing on the edge of the tub at home.
Since I was already naked, I limped into the room-sized, tiled space and sank onto the wooden bench. Matt leaned in and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature while I scooted away from the initial rush of cold water. Then, he disrobed himself and came in to join me.
Generally, I tried not to stare at Matt when he was walking, but I had a strange compulsion to study him now. Without his cane, he walked slowly, carefully, testing out his balance on the slick tile. The scars from his surgery and the jagged lines where the bear had ripped open his leg were dark purple and shiny. There was no pattern in nature I could liken them to; they were somewhere between lightning and a gnarled tree.
He caught me staring, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I know. I’m walking like an elderly man.”
“An elderly man?” I snorted. “That’s not what I was thinking.”
“It’s what I was thinking.” He made his way over to the bench and lowered himself awkwardly to sit beside me.
“I was looking at your scars,” I admitted. “I was trying to figure out what they remind me of.”
“They remind me of the time a bear attacked me,” he said with a grim downturn of his mouth. “Can I be vulnerable for a second?”
My heart leapt. I hadn’t realized how much the idea of emotional intimacy would excite and terrify me. I was glad he was going first. I nodded solemnly and waited for him to collect his thoughts.
He sighed and leaned his head back on the shower wall. “I know I’m supposed to think positive and not be ashamed of having a disability. But there are times I wish I could pick you up and fuck you against the wall.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do that in here, anyway.” I tapped my toes in the droplets of water collecting near our feet. “The danger of slipping. That would be a super embarrassing reason for the paramedics to have to come.”
“Our paramedics have seen worse,” he said with a half-smile. Then, sitting up straighter, he changed the subject. “Did you have a good time, princess?”
I couldn’t answer him at first. I was too busy being shocked at how easily he’d gone from open and sharing to totally in control again.
His brow furrowed. “If there was something you didn’t like—”
“No, that’s not my…” I waved my hand in the air. “you did a one-eighty from who you were out there, and then completed the three-sixty like two sentences later. It threw me.”
He flinched. “I’m so sorry. That wasn’t cool of me.”
“It wasn’t uncool. Just confusing. You’re good at playing a character, I guess.”
“When we do something like this,” he began, leaning forward and angling himself to face me, “we are playing roles, and it can take time to come down. I shouldn’t talk to you about my heavy feelings right after we’ve finished. Your emotions and well-being have to be my primary concern.”
I didn’t tell him that it was okay and I understood, because I didn’t think I was part of that particular discussion he was having with himself. Instead, I told him, “I know what you mean about playing roles. At first, I felt like Charlotte playing a silly game. Then, I did feel like that princess in the story you told me over the phone that night. And it felt really good to make my dragon happy.”
He grinned. “I knew it.”
I tilted my head.
“I knew you had a praise kink.” He booped the end of my nose with his finger.
I rolled my eyes at him and laughed. “Yeah. A praise kink. Because I’m so needy for your approval.”
“I never said that.” He turned serious. Too serious for my liking. “I don’t think you want to hear anything positive about yourself, from anyone. Even me.”
“False. I like to hear that you think I’m hot,” I pointed out, trying to keep things light. Dread built up in the back of my mind. Dread of what, I couldn’t guess.
He leaned close, studying my face for a long moment, as if he would see past the emotional guards I constantly put up. Obviously, he had, while I’d been strapped down on that bench, eager to suffer anything for him.
He kissed me, soft and gentle and slow, then pulled back and said, “I think you aren’t comfortable hearing anything positive about yourself unless you believe it’s pretend.”
The fact that he’d hit the mark so dead center almost felt like a violation. I dipped my head to hide the tears that inexplicably sprang to my eyes. Why did it feel like a failure, like my darkest secret had escaped, because the man who loved me learned something true about me?
How messed up was that?
“Hey.” He drew my head to his shoulder and cradled it there. “It’s okay. It’s not a bad thing, I promise.”
“It’s embarrassing. Sex has never been serious for me. It’s never been with someone I loved and trusted. Or who was creepy observant.” I try to laugh. It sounds bitter and wrong for the moment at hand.
“Charlotte. Look at me.”
I lifted my eyes hesitantly.
“Does it make you feel good to hear that you’re a good girl? That you’re my princess?”
I flushed at how silly it sounded out of context. “You know it does.”
“Then keep enjoying it,” he said. “And I’ll feel good knowing that I’m saying these things to you and you’re hearing them, even if it makes you more comfortable to think it’s a game.”
Laughing through my tears, I kissed him again.
“Come on,” he said with a nudge of his elbow. “Let’s get you cleaned up, princess.”
I got to my feet, feeling every single one of those ten spanks and every muscle-straining orgasm. Maybe Matt was right. Maybe I did need to hear that praise from him in a state where I could deny it was authentic in order to accept it.
I supposed we’d have to keep testing his theory. Again and again and again…