“Why did that girl let them hurt her like that? That’s just plain crazy.”
“When a person joins the club, he or she agrees to certain conditions. Discipline is one of them.”
“Doms, too?”
“To a lesser extent, but yes. Everyone needs to respect the rules of the club. They’re there to keep it safe and enjoyable for all.”
“If it’s such a serious transgression to ignore a safe word, why’d they let that Dom continue?”
“It was a complicated situation but normally a person doing that would automatically be kicked out. To ignore a safe word… well, it amounts to a criminal assault and the sub could have reported it to the police and brought the house down on the club. But he chose not to.”
“He? The sub was a he?”
“Mmmhmm. From what I gather, the Dom in question had a long-time sub—his girlfriend—to whom he was very much attached. The male sub somehow connived to get the girl to leave her Dom—I don’t know the exact details. Needless to say, the Dom was pissed off, to say the least. He ran into the male sub one evening at the club, told him he deserved a whipping, and the male sub agreed to take one. I suppose it began as more of a negotiated scene than an assault. When it started getting rough, the sub used his safe word and instead of stopping everything, the Dom gagged him and kept going. It took a while for someone to hear him using the safe-word signal for a gagged sub.
“What the male sub did, getting between a Dom and his sub, was rather inexcusable and since the male sub didn’t care to pursue it, the club owners gave Jared—that’s the Dom’s name—the choice. He opted for the whipping.”
“Must have been horrible. Was it done at the club?”
“Oh, yes. They scheduled it for a Thursday, so the club wouldn’t be full but when the news went out, everyone and his brother showed up for the spectacle. It was packed to capacity, so I hear. Not only that, my friend told me it was the first time in his experience that all other play stopped so everyone could watch the whipping. Had to be intense.”
“Why would they all want to watch it? Does everyone dislike Jared?”
“Not at all. He’s popular at the club.” He pauses. “To answer your question, it probably drew a crowd because it was a Dom getting whipped, as opposed to a sub. It’s unusual enough to make a stir. Plus, whippings never happen without a safe word so that made it highly unusual.”
“Were there any rules?”
“Probably just the common sense ones that there should be no permanent scarring and obviously it had to stop short of the mark of requiring a hospital visit or medical intervention of any kind.”
Ella shudders. “I thought the pony was disgusting. What diseased mind thought that one up?”
“Actually that one, with variations, has been around since the Roman Empire—of course the one they used ended up being fatal, with limbs being dislocated and that sort of thing. Our Roman friends were a bloodthirsty bunch—lead in the water will do that. Then a similar device was popular during the Inquisition. There was one used doing the Colonial War. They called it riding the rail. Another one used in the Civil War was employed in conjunction with weights to increase the fun. The one in the club is fairly mild in that the sharp edge is just the narrow part of the wood, rather than an actual point, the way the torture was originally intended.” He glances at her. “Still must be rather unpleasant, no doubt.”
Ella smiles impishly. “How do you happen to know so much about it, Ian?”
“I was probably as disturbed as you when I first saw it—prompted me to do some research on the device. Luckily, it’s not often used at the club.”
She puts her plate on the coffee table. “Well,” she says, snuggling up to him, “Thank God for small favors. Now, let’s talk about something infinitely more pleasant, such as how it’s possible for a man to be as beautiful as you are, Mr. Blackmon?”
Chapter 12
I hear his sharp intake of breath when I ask why he is so beautiful. Did he really expect the same shy girl of last year? So much life has happened to me in the last twelve months—that girl is no more, not that she really ever was.
Will he like the new me? In truth, I was never really that shy, easily flustered girl he thought me—it was just that he completely intimidated me. Still does. His is a very commanding presence. In addition, he’s rich, handsome, powerful, and smart. Oh, and tall. How could someone not be intimidated? In addition to all of his other overwhelming attributes, his dominant tendencies tend to cower me. It’s up to me now to ensure he doesn’t know the effect he has on me—he may try to use it against me. But all alone with my private thoughts, I can admit how much his dominance turns me on. And I sort of hate that it does.