Chapter 10 #2
He guided me down. My hips landed first, square on his thigh.
He arranged me with both hands—one at the small of my back, one at the nape of my neck, pressing my arms forward so that my hands landed on the tight white duvet.
My feet touched the floor, toes flexed. I felt my ass go up, bare and so vulnerable I thought I might scream.
His palm rested on my skin. Warm, rough, a heat that soaked straight through.
He didn’t move. He just left it there.
After what felt like a minute, he asked, “How many do you think is fair, Angela?”
I thought about lying. I thought about saying five, or two, or zero. But the part of me that had signed the contract said: ten.
I whispered, “Ten?”
He rubbed a slow circle over my skin. “Good girl. Ten it is. You’ll count them with me.”
His hand left my skin and I braced, but even then I wasn’t ready.
The first blow landed with the sound of a gunshot, sharp and perfect and final.
The pain was astonishing—not a slow build, not a dull ache, but a slap that ricocheted from my tailbone to my scalp in a single electric arc.
I gasped so hard I almost bit my tongue.
I felt my body rock forward on his knee, the duvet twisting under my hands.
He let his palm rest on the spot, like a brand, and this was the worst part—he didn’t move, didn’t do a thing to ease it.
He just waited. Let the pain bloom, let it radiate out and fill every bit of me with heat.
I tried to keep my back straight. I tried not to hide my face in the blanket.
But when he lifted his hand for the second strike, I flinched so hard that my toes left the ground.
He paused, just long enough to make me dread it. To make me want it again, even as the skin on my ass burned. I could feel it—my entire body tuned to the anticipation, to the next hit, the promise of it suspended in the silence.
I gripped the duvet so tight my knuckles went numb. My heart pounded in my ears, and underneath it, a different kind of pulse: the slick, desperate throb between my legs. I didn’t want to notice it, but I did. I was soaked, and the air on my skin was cool and humiliating.
“One,” I said.
The second strike landed lower, right where the thigh met the curve of my ass. It was harder. I flinched. The tears came up immediately, pricking the inside of my eyes, but I kept my voice steady.
“Two.”
He waited. I felt the next one before it landed—my skin already hypersensitive, the heat from his palm making a map of everywhere he had touched.
“Three.” The voice sounded raw, like it belonged to someone else.
He moved his hand to the other cheek. It was not random. It was careful, precise, as if he was trying to color in a picture with just his hand.
“Four.”
The pain was mounting now, each one building on the last. My face was wet. I didn’t even remember when the tears started. I didn’t care.
“Five.”
He paused. He rested his hand on the center of my back, just below my shoulder blades. I felt him breathing, deep and steady, the way you did when you wanted to keep yourself under control.
He said, “We are halfway. You are doing so well. You are being so good.”
It hurt. It really hurt. But what hurt more was the thing I realized, right then: I would have done twenty for him. Thirty. I would have taken anything.
The tears were not just from the pain.
I was so fucking good, and I wanted him to see it.
The second half was different.
He let his hand rest in the center of my back, right on the ridge of my spine, until the air between us settled again.
Then he slid it down, fingers splayed, tracing the line of my waist and the raw, burning skin below.
He cupped it, squeezing—not hard, but enough to pull a gasp out of me.
He was measuring me, mapping the heat, the places where his handprint had already begun to rise.
He held it there, palm open, until I began to feel the pain transform into something else, a buzzing under my skin that made my whole body want to arch.
Then he lifted his hand, and I tensed. I tried to brace, hips locked in place, but there was no way to prepare.
The sixth strike landed dead center on the spot he’d just squeezed.
My body convulsed, thighs clenching, a full-body spasm that nearly made me lose my grip on the duvet.
This one didn’t bloom the way the first few had—it detonated, all at once, like a live wire pressed to bare flesh.
I shrieked. There was no hiding it, no way to swallow it down.
The tears that had been threatening since the third blow broke loose and streamed hot down my face.
I said, or tried to say, “Six.” But it came out warped, a choking half-cry, half-question. I wasn’t sure if I was asking for it or asking him to stop.
He didn’t say anything. He left his hand exactly where it was, fingers loose, thumb stroking a small circle over the sorest part of me.
The comfort was worse than the pain, because it made me want to collapse into it, to give up and beg him to forgive me.
But that wasn’t the deal. I stayed where I was, arms locked, legs trembling, soaking in every second of the punishment I’d earned.
He waited so long I thought maybe he’d lost count, that maybe he was letting it sink in, or giving me a chance to come to my senses and back out.
But he was just making sure I felt it, all the way through.
When the seventh blow landed, it was lower, closer to the crease at the top of my thigh.
The skin there was untouched, and the difference was torture.
The new pain layered itself over the old, sharp and fresh, and the sound I made was beyond words—a howl, a whimper, a surrender.
My hips jerked against the pressure of his hand, and I felt the wetness that had been simmering under my embarrassment finally break free, slicking the inside of my thighs.
It was mortifying, and perfect, and so much worse knowing he could feel it, the damp patch blooming into his joggers.
I pressed my face into the blanket, tried to breathe, tried not to sob. I could feel the tremor in my voice when I whispered, “Seven.”
He didn’t say anything. He just put his hand back, palm open, and stroked the spot he’d just struck. There was no malice in it, no anger—only the precision of someone whose job it was to keep order.
The eighth landed, not quite on top of the last, but close enough to send a lightning bolt through my spine. I sobbed, full-throat, and for the first time I didn’t try to muffle it. There was no point.
“Eight.”
I was gone, wrecked, the muscles in my legs shivering with each breath. The tears were everywhere—nose, mouth, even my chin. I wanted to reach up and wipe them but I didn’t. I just let them fall.
He said, “Almost done. You’re nearly there, Baby. Just two more.”
The ninth was sharp, not even the hardest, but it made me curl in, folding my knees and clenching the duvet. It wasn’t pain anymore. It was something bigger, something that came from somewhere deeper than just skin.
“Nine.”
He paused. He laid his hand flat across the small of my back. The warmth of it was a kindness that I could not bear.
He said, “One more, Angela. The last one. Take it for me, my good girl, my angel.”
I nodded into the duvet.
The tenth landed square in the center, a perfect line of fire. My whole body clenched, went rigid. I tried to say the number but it wouldn’t come out. I was sobbing too hard. I was so far past composure that it almost felt good.
He didn’t ask me to say it. He just pressed his palm to my skin and let it stay there, covering the mark, holding in the heat.
I didn’t move. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay exactly like this, pinned and held and finished.
He rubbed slow, lazy circles on my back. He said, “It’s done. It’s all done. You took every one of them. You were so brave. Such a good girl.”
The words unlocked something. My breath went shallow, then deeper, then I started shaking. He said it again, lower, right at my ear: “You are forgiven, Angela. You are forgiven.”
It was like a gun going off inside my chest—no ramp-up, no warning, just a detonation that took me apart.
An orgasm. Out of nowhere.
One instant I was there, every cell tuned to the fire in my skin, the next I was gone: a white-hot blankness that eclipsed everything else.
My muscles seized, locked, then snapped loose, every part of me convulsing at once.
I felt myself grind down on his thigh, hips moving on their own, helpless to quiet it.
My head snapped back and I screamed, an animal sound, not even language, not even close.
The shame didn’t even have time to register before the second wave hit, harder and longer, wracking through me so violently I was sure I’d pass out or throw up or both.
My nails ripped into the duvet, then into my own palm.
My body went to jelly, limp and boneless, every limb trembling.
The only thing I could feel was the tight burn in my ass, and the slick, humiliating heat pooling between my legs.
The orgasm had wiped my mind completely clean.
For a long second, there was nothing—no thought, no memory, just the bright blank of being totally emptied.
Bliss, if that’s what bliss was. Obliteration.
When I came back, I was still sobbing. Not from pain, not from the shame.
It was something else. Something sweeter and more poisonous, a fullness in my chest that ached for release.
I was hyperaware of every part of my body—legs splayed, panties gone, my bare skin burning and wet, his hand heavy and warm on my back.
Every breath shuddered out of me like I was breaking down for the very first time.