Chapter 7 #2
I hope he doesn't expect me to do the new pas de deux with him, because I know I won't be able to focus on it. I put on the blindfold and stand at the barre, one hand braced against it as if I need it for balance just to stand. And I wait.
A few minutes pass, and he is there, standing behind me, his chest pressed against my back, his hand resting on my hand on the barre. He leans in close to my ear.
“You're going to be punished, and you're going to be waxed. And then you will dance the pas de deux with me without a single misstep. Do you understand, Ms. Lane?”
“Y-yes, Sir,” I gasp.
“Thirty-two errors,” he growls. “It's unacceptable. You're better than that.”
I need him to touch me. If he touches me, I can meet his demands for perfection. I can handle the pressure. What I can't handle is the thought that he might grow bored with me before I can prove I'm not a waste of his time.
Suddenly, his hands are in my hair, taking down the bun I so carefully put up. He runs his fingers through the long chestnut strands, letting my hair fall in loose waves around my shoulders. He pulls off my leg warmers and the soft canvas shoes.
I stand completely still as he slides the straps of my leotard down my arms. He takes the tights as well as he rolls the fabric down and off my body. When I'm naked, his hands reach around to cup my breasts. He tweaks my nipples, hard.
“Ow!” I cry out. But even though he just delivered pain, I'm even more aroused than before.
“Shhh,” he says. “You have to be punished.”
I wonder if that counted as punishment for one of my errors. Are there now only thirty-one small agonies left before he moves on to the next thing on his sadistic to-do list? What is wrong with me that I crave any touch from him?
He takes my hand and guides me away from the barre. “Kneel and spread your legs. Forehead on the floor. Arms stretched out in front of you.” He helps and guides me into the position he wants me in.
“Stay,” he says.
I take a deep breath as he walks away. I've spent the last week obsessing about him, fantasizing about him, wanting him to touch me.
But now, the reality of my situation crashes into me hard.
And I'm suddenly reminded just how fucked-up this is.
He's going to hurt me. Conall hurt me. I thought this man was in control, but now I'm not so sure.
If he isn't, what does that mean for me? And suddenly I'm crying again.
He returns, and I hear something heavy being set down on the ground near me. Then he sits next to me and strokes my back and that sweet spot on my neck, the same way he touched me in the shower two weeks ago.
“Shhh, you're safe,” he says. Which is so completely ridiculous.
I am not safe. The police are asking questions.
I'm kneeling naked on the stage of an abandoned opera house waiting to be punished for minor dance mistakes by a man I don't know.
This is as far as I can possibly get from safe.
But if the words put the blindfold on make me aroused, Shhh you're safe makes my entire body relax and press against his hand for more comfort.
Sensual piano music begins to play over the sound system. He lays something on the ground next to my hand.
“Explore it with your fingers,” he says.
This isn't a sexual command, but I swear everything he says now sounds like the dirtiest thing any human being has ever uttered. I move my fingers over long strands of leather, interspersed with ribbons. Both the ribbons and leather end in knots.
“It's a flogger,” he says.
He takes it away, and then I feel him standing behind me. I tense.
“Relax,” he says. “Just surrender to this.”
Why haven't I tried to fight him? Is this threat of blackmail really so powerful that I wouldn't fight at all? That I would barely plead? I haven't even done that tonight. I can't bring myself to.
I feel guilty for the thirty-two errors, even though they don't personally affect him. They displease him. I want to erase them. I want to be perfect.
I cringe at this thought, reminded of the movie I watched with Henry and Melinda. Suddenly I’m that neurotic girl on the screen. What would my friends think if they could see me now?
Drink. And then they'd toss back a shot in my honor.
I'm jolted out of my thoughts as he drags the flogger across my back. A tickling whisper of touch. This feels sexual. Intimate. And I realize I would rather he do this than not touch me beyond dancing.
The way he dances with me is intimate, but it's not enough. It's only a tease. Suddenly, I wonder about the women who have danced with him. Did he take them as lovers? I think it would be cruel to them if he didn't.
The flogger strikes in a stinging kiss across my back.
“Count,” he says.
“One.”
It hurts, but in a way I want to move closer to. It's complex, like a finely aged wine. There are layers and notes. Flavors. Like peach and vanilla if peach and vanilla were tactile sensations instead of tastes.
He falls into a rhythm with the flogger, and I fall into one with my answering count.
I assume there will be thirty-two. It isn't painful enough for that to seem like torture.
Each strike, followed by a number, followed by an echoing throb from my pussy.
The longer this goes on, the more excited I get, the more desperately I need him to rut into me like an animal in the middle of the stage floor.
All I can think about is that long, thick, hard cock pounding inside me in yet another dark rhythm.
When will he fuck me? When?
“Count!” he says.
“Twenty-seven,” I say. Five more.
Except that the flogger doesn't fall against my flesh again. Instead, he walks a few steps away. I hear some things moved about, and it finally occurs to my addled brain that the heavy thing he set down was some sort of box that he's searching through.
He returns and lays something else beside me.
“Touch it,” he says.
Again, my mind goes to a dirty place even though I know he means for me to touch whatever he took from the box. It is long and thin, hard.
“It's a cane,” he says, as if I would never have divined this on my own.
I understand on a certain level that this man could make any implement hurt if he put enough of his power behind it.
Likewise, he can use each implement in a gentle way—in a caress—no matter what that implement is.
But a cane is... serious. A cane is meant to hurt.
In countries that use these in punishment for crimes, it often scars people for life.
Tears that didn't trouble me during the last few minutes, stream down my face in fear and anticipation of this abrupt escalation in my punishment. He pries the cane from my questing fingers and presses it lightly against the top of my head which still rests on the floor.
“Raise your head and kiss it,” he says.
I do this, my lips pressing reverently against the bamboo as if this act can appease him, as if this obedience will make him say the magic words, I think that's enough for tonight—words I didn't want to hear two weeks ago, but desperately want to hear now.
“Please,” I whimper.
“Thirty-two errors, Cassia,” he says as if this explains everything about why we're here. “You will count. Start at twenty-eight.”
I feel the brush of air as he moves behind me.
A moment later, the cane slices through the air to land against my ass. I cry out.
“Count,” he demands.
But the breath has left me for a moment. “T-twenty-eight,” I manage when I catch my breath again.
“Good girl.”
This praise irrationally pleases me. I should be angry. What is this man doing to my suddenly fragile mind?
Before I can think about that, the cane falls again, just below the first strike. I shriek. I know he's holding back. He's not trying to actually harm me, but still it's an intense screaming sort of pain. “Twenty-nine,” I say, tears coming faster.
After the next one, I beg him to stop. But he is implacable.
“Two more.”
I count the thirty-first and beg again. “Please... please... I can't take anymore... please...” I'm sobbing now. Even though I know it's just one more, one more is still too many and seems impossible.
The cane falls again, this final sting feeling as though it grips me and shakes me and breaks me apart.
“T-thirty-two,” I gasp out.
“Good girl.” He sits beside me, pulls me into his arms, holds me, strokes my hair and my back, runs his fingertips lightly over the welts he left, and just lets me cry it out. A hand slips between my legs, his finger pressing into me.
“You are so fucking wet. So perfect,” he growls against my ear.
I cling to him, my hips moving in answer to his exploring fingers. He presses his lips to my forehead, then tilts my chin up, claiming my mouth in a searing kiss.
Yes, my mind sighs.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes, Sir.” And I am. The cane hurt. It was intense, but I know he hasn't damaged me. And he wasn't angry. This wasn't anger. This was controlled. I can feel his erection through his pants. What just happened was as stimulating to him as it was to me.
He stands with me in his arms and carries me a few feet, then he gently lays me down on the dance tarp. The vinyl material is cool against my warm back and ass.
He leaves me for a moment. I'm dimly aware that the piano music is still playing. He returns and spreads my legs wide. I feel my face flame, knowing he will get a close-up visual of just how aroused I am. But he makes no comment about this.
He just quietly waxes me. I've had this done so many times that I just lie there, soaking up the warmth of the wax.
I'm so used to waxing that the pain of it doesn't bother me.
It's kind of soothing in a strange way. It's usually a huge endorphin rush, though I can already feel the endorphins flooding me from the flogger and the cane.