Chapter Twenty
Roos
Crack. Mother Maria’s riding crop strikes me again. It stings. It burns. It aches.
It heals.
Each snap of the thin leather sears something into me. Relief. Hope. Surrender.
My skin is red and raw and vibrating with heat. My thighs and butt are nothing but alive nerve endings, singing for it to stop while also praying for the next strike.
This is what I needed today. This is what I needed after the last few days of…Mari and Lex. Of the highest highs and yet again, the lowest lows.
It would be reductionist to say that my highs were at the hands of Mari and my lows were all Lex.
It would also be a mistruth. Because no matter how good Mari has made me feel – and not just in bed – one of the sweetest moments of the past weekend was when I had Lex on my sofa apologising, explaining, wanting to make it better.
It’s what I’ve spent the last six months not wanting and yet craving despite myself.
I deserve this pain for thinking that meant something.
I deserve the scars that stripe my skin for clinging to it even when xe said xe would call and xe didn’t. Xe didn’t. Lex has disappeared again.
I deserve the burning ache each snap of the crop leaves behind. I deserve to feel this pain for a long time. Maybe only then I will rewire my brain. I will learn that Lex is not who xe says xe is. Lex is who xe shows me xe is.
Crack.
I scream. A swallowed high-pitched yelp of pain that I’ve managed to hold back since Mother Maria tied me up to the X-Cross on the stage and began striking me.
But my skin is sore, raw, and open, I suspect, in places, and when her cracks cross over those that are still red and stinging on my backside, it brings a new level to the pain.
Yes, endorphins are flooding my brain, making me more and more aroused with each hit, but nerve endings are still nerve endings, and that thin leather crop is as sharp as a blade in a hand as experienced as Mother Maria’s.
But even my scream gives her pause.
“Want me to ease off?” she asks at a volume only I can hear.
“No,” I say, my breathing rough and ragged. “I need this.”
“Ten more, and then we will invite others to play with you.”
“Yes, Mother,” I hiss and close my eyes again, readying my body for more. More pain. More release. More surrender.
I wish I could see Mari. I wish I knew what they were thinking, feeling.
But I’m fixed to the cross with my back to the audience – at my request – and when I’ve turned my head towards their table, the darkness has swallowed them up.
Besides, I don’t want to see who else is watching.
I like knowing eyes are on me but not seeing their reactions.
That way, I can fill in the blanks myself.
I can tell myself that this show Mother Maria and I are performing is turning everyone else on.
That blood is pumping, hands are roaming, and others have started to play.
Nothing turns me on more than knowing I turn others on by submitting, by being who I am, by presenting myself as I am to them.
I often wonder where I’d be without QISS.
If Joel hadn’t brought me to this place as an anxious and apprehensive young woman.
Would I still harbour all the fear, all the dysphoria, all those feelings of being out-of-place, of being unwanted, of being not enough – not sexy enough, not good enough, not woman enough?
It’s a question that remains unanswered for certain, but as I gasp my way through several more strikes of Mother Maria’s crop, I say thank you over and over again that I do have QISS.
I didn’t tell Mari that this is my first time returning to QISS since Lex.
That we’d become something of a recognised couple here, even if we did almost always come specifically to play with others.
That was why Joel had given me such a big hug in the lobby.
He knew it was a big deal for me to return without Lex on my arm.
I suspect it’s also why Mother Maria immediately invited me up onto the stage.
So often I’ve played up here, but with Lex watching at a table because that’s what gets xem off as much as it does me, did me, and every single time, it added to my arousal. Imagining what xe would do to me afterwards, or occasionally while I was still tied up on stage, that was half the fun.
Tonight, I feel some small measure of guilt that I have substituted Lex with Mari – deepened by their own shared history that haunts me more than I’ve admitted even to myself – not because it happened organically but because I planned it deliberately.
I want to know if thinking about Mari watching me turns me on as much as it did when it was Lex.
I want to know if this connection with Mari feels as strong as I think it does, if it hints at being as real as my bond with Lex became.
I want to know if Mari really is okay with me doing this, being this way.
Because this absolutely is who I am. No, more important than that. It’s who I want to be, and after a lifetime being told I’m not who I am, I need this. I can’t live without it.
“Still with me?” Mother Maria asks in her sultry voice. I open my eyes to catch her gaze.
“Yes, Mother.”
“Good girl.” She winks at me, a playful expression she would never offer the crowd when she stands tall in front of them. “Let’s see if anybody else wants to play.”
Goosebumps erupt all over my body as more of my blood spreads around the rest of my body, not just the back of my legs and butt and between my legs.
I love the anticipation before a stranger comes and dominates me as much as I do the reality.
The not knowing. The possibility. The potential for more pain and more pleasure.
“Ladies, theys, and gays!” Mother Maria taps her cane on the floor to get everyone’s attention.
She’s moved to stand directly behind me, at the front of the stage, so I can’t see her, but I don’t think for a single second people aren’t listening and watching carefully.
There’s barely a noise in the room; the only sound I’m aware of is my shallow breath and my heartbeat thumping in my ears.
“Roos would like to see what you have to offer her. Who would like to come and play with our sweet girl? She is still very much in need of some attention.”
The silence seems to stretch and deepen. Panic rises inside my throat at the possibility that nobody will come forward. That nobody wants to play with me. But I squash it immediately; I’ve done this too many times before to know that somebody will step forward.
Maybe Mari.
I banish that thought just as quickly. They made me no promises. This is their first time at QISS, in any kind of place like this. Even sitting and watching me is probably pushing them far out of their comfort zone. I shouldn’t be greedy.
But I am greedy. I want Mari.
Or maybe I really want Lex. Maybe I really wish Lex was here. And I’m projecting that desire on Mari.
Oh, fuck.
I tell myself it’s endorphins making my head spin and shaping these unwanted ideas.
As soon as someone has a paddle in their hand, or a rope wrapped elegantly around my body, I will be free of such fantasies and confusions.
“Anybody?” Mother Maria demands, and it very much is a demand.
There is some mumbling in the audience that I don’t catch. Mother Maria’s cane stamps across the stage as she gets closer to the voices.
“You want to play together with Roos?” she asks. The aches in my wrists and arms from being in this position for what must be approaching an hour suddenly dull.
My ears prick up, and my heartrate speeds. “Very well. Let me ask our pretty little plaything.”
She approaches me again. “We have a couple – both femmes – who want to play with you together. The Dominant wants to put their submissive to use with you.”
“Yes,” I gasp, that potential making more blood thicken my genitals. “Yes, Mother. Please.”
“They’ve requested you stay in this position,” she explains. “That okay with you?”
“Yes. Thank you, Mother.”
And so the couple comes to the stage. I don’t see either of their faces, and for some reason, that turns me on even more.
The Dominant stands to the side, and I only hear their voice.
They talk to their submissive in a sly way that edges more on degradation than praise, and I feel my nipples tighten when I hear what they want her to do.
“Eat her out, my dirty little whore. Kiss her welts better and eat her ass until I tell you to stop.”
It’s not what I was expecting. And possibly not what I thought I needed – pain, I wanted more pain, more mind-numbing pain – but as soon as I feel the submissive’s soft lips on the back of my thighs, I sigh.
My body loosens and sags against the cuffs as she licks across the open welts and newly blooming bruises.
When she reaches my ass cheeks, she starts to nibble and bite, and it’s the perfect amount of salt in my wounds.
After minutes of these soothing kisses, I’m pushing my backside out for more, for her tongue.
I deserve this, I tell myself. I deserve to feel this good, I find myself thinking over and over again as the submissive’s greedy tongue flicks and licks and laps at my hole. I’m so lost in the mantra, it takes a moment for me to recall who used to say this to me.
Lex.
I stop thinking it. I also stop feeling the pleasure in the stranger’s mouth on me. My body tenses, and I stop writhing. And Mother Maria notices. There is hushed whispering off to my right side, and then the Dominant’s authoritative voice calls out.
“Enough.” The submissive stops immediately. I imagine a faceless person sitting back on their heels, head downturned. “You’ve eaten enough. Now, crawl to me, slut.”
There are more muffled sounds, and conversation picks up in the audience. I hope this isn’t the end for me. I hope somebody else wants to push me that little bit more. I hope somebody can see I need more.
Lex would know that I need more.
I squeeze my eyes shut so hard it hurts. Fuck Lex. Fuck Lex for entering my mind so confidently, it’s like xe is in the room with me.
Lex isn’t here. Lex will never come here with me again. Lex is not mine, and I am not xirs.