Chapter 3 #3
“A good-girl flogging level of proud?” I ask, wishing I was wearing my cat ears this morning. Daddy would immediately agree to a good-girl flogging if I was wearing cat ears.
“Is that what you want?” he asks. “Because I was thinking that we might do that breeding scene I mentioned.”
“Breeding scene level of proud,” I whisper, delighted from my nonexistent cat ears down to my toes. “That’s really proud.”
“It is,” he agrees.
I toy with a crust of my whole wheat toast. “You, um, also mentioned, maybe, giving me the second brand while we were doing a breeding scene.”
“I did,” he says.
My breath catches as joy fills up every cell. Daddy’s going to brand me again. It’s Christmas and every birthday rolled up together. I know even some of my fellow submissives don’t understand why I’d want to be branded, or why Logan would want to give me such excruciating pain.
It’s hard to explain but nothing Daddy and I have done together except my collaring felt more intimate, more spiritual.
I had an out-of-body experience when Daddy gave me the two-moon brand.
My soul was subsumed in Daddy’s: consumed, uplifted, floating somewhere up among the stars.
I’ve never felt so submissive, so completely in Logan’s control, as that moment when the red-hot metal touched my skin.
It was overwhelming, agonizing, sublime.
I’ve seen art that captures a moment of spiritual fractioning, like Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” But even in subspace, I’ve never felt it.
Until Daddy branded me.
After Daddy and Master Mac leave, I head up to the third floor with Bren.
We’ve got everything for the book spread out in what we’ve all started calling “the studio.” It’s next to the area Daddy walled off for storage and too small to be another bedroom.
We’ve squeezed a desk with a drawing board and lots of shelves into the space and Bren’s taken it over as her workspace in the house.
Currently, it’s covered with sketches and proofs for our book.
I stop and take a minute to admire one of the finished plates.
It’s the moment Olivia meets the Bunny Queen, with the crowned rabbit peeking out from behind a tree as Olivia sits under a rainbow toadstool.
The colors of Bren’s art are so vibrant, and she’s perfectly captured the mutual delight of the rabbit and little girl on meeting each other.
The piece brings a happy tear to my eye.
I run my fingertips down the framed edge of the plate before I turn to where Bren’s standing beside the messy desk.
If I didn’t know Brenna better, I’d say she looks . . . embarrassed. She stares at her wool-socked toes, twisting the hem of Mac’s dress shirt between her fingers. Her cheeks are so pink it looks like she has a fever.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Look, you don’t have to wear it, okay? I don’t even know why I had it made. You’ll probably think it’s stupid.”
I sidle over to her and slide my arm around her waist. “You had something made for me?”
She rolls her eyes. “You and the baby.”
“You had something made for me and the baby? Like matching outfits?”
She clears her throat. “I heard you talking with Logan, about how you wanted to take Livvy to baby swim class. That it’s good for babies to learn to swim really young so they never develop any fear of the water.
I, um, wish someone had taught me when I was a baby, because swimming’s still hard for me and I just thought, well, whatever. ”
“Whatever?”
“Ugh, I hate you.”
Bren moves to one side, revealing a long box sitting on top of the pile of galleys.
I drift over to the box, admiring it. The paper wrapping is blue and purple and silver, patterned to look like scales.
I carefully untie the blue-green metallic ribbon.
I’ll save it and add it to a scrapbook I’ve started making.
Logan has me writing a journal for him once a week, and I’ve kept my own journal for years but my scrapbook is more for impressions, little keepsakes, things I want to remember forever. This ribbon is definitely going in it.
I open the box and peel apart the tissue paper inside.
Shimmering, silvery fabric fills the box.
I lift out the first piece, admiring the way the warm, morning light sparks highlights of pink and blue in the fabric.
There’s a bikini top, a bottom with a long skirt and trailing, filmy, blue fins.
Underneath is a baby’s one-piece swimsuit in the same fabric with a detachable skirt of the same filmy fabric but in purple.
I hold the swimsuits up, my eyes filling so they merge into a silver blur. “Bren, these are so perfect. Livvy and I can be mermaids together.”
Bren blinks. “You really like them? You don’t have to wear them if you don’t.”
“I love them! Did you get yourself one, too?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I, uh, well, I’ll show you.”
She pushes around some of the sketches on her drafting board and holds one out.
It’s a delicately rendered silhouette of a mermaid, her hair and tail flowing behind her as she surfs a rolling wave.
In her arms, she holds a baby mermaid, its tail curling into the foam of another wave.
The figures are black, with color on their tails and in the waves, blue, green, purple, and bright points of orange like the sunset over the ocean.
“Bren, it’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah? I thought I could get it on my back, kind of where Mac’s mermaid is, although this piece would be smaller than his.”
“That’s so perfect. But don’t you want to be in it, too?”
“Naw, I’ll never be a mermaid. That’s for you and Livvy.”
“Bren, you’ll always be a mermaid,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. “Let’s look at these galleys.”
I hug her again before I replace the swimsuits carefully in the box and set it aside.
I can’t wait to show it to Logan. Daddy’s mermaids. He’ll love that so much.