Not much with her scent so close, her taste in his mouth, but enough to give him some focus.
“Please, Mistress, let me bring you pleasure.” He met her look, aware that his own was defiant, challenging, but there didn’t seem to be anything else he could do. The fear was pumping too hard behind it. It was the last defense he had.
Violet moved across the room from him, to the wall. She chose a braided crop and threaded it through her fingers, her back to him. She put it down, chose a cat with metal tips. She shook it out, testing its weight on her arm, nodded to herself.
Mac waited, his breath clogging in his throat, thick with the fury of a cornered, dangerous animal and the lust of a powerful man. He wanted loose. He wanted to bend her over the chair, take her ass with hard thrusts that would have her screaming for mercy and more. He didn’t want her beating him.
Violet turned, walked back to him. She left the cat on the chair, squatted, unsnapped the leash holding his cock tethered in its harness to the floor, giving him some relief. Then she moved around him, removed the ankle shackles, lowered the taut line holding his wrists above his head, loosened the cuffs on his calves.
“Free your hands.”
If she was thinking of walking out on him again, she’d have been smarter to leave him bound. Knowing he wasn’t thinking rationally, but unable to help the violent bent of his feelings, Mac nevertheless remembered to stay where he was, though he wanted to struggle to his feet and seize her. His cock ached like fire, screamed for release on a couple different levels. His back, shoulders and thigh muscles had hours of tension in them, and yet he was sure sinking into her body would make all of that go away.
She stepped away from him, in front of him, four steps past the chair. She kept her back to him and he watched, stunned, as she shrugged the clinging material off her shoulders. With the black wig in an upswept style, it exposed her nape, emphasizing the beauty of her bare upper torso, the sweeping line of her shoulders, arms and back.
Her back was smooth and golden, the spine a shallow valley drawing his eyes down to the beginning rise of her buttocks, visible because she pushed the dress low on her hips.
He saw that tiny mole on the inside of her shoulder blade.
“Mackenzie?” She tilted her head so he could see her profile just above her right shoulder.
“Y-yes, Mistress?” He cleared his throat. Why had he thought she was green?
Because she didn’t have much experience? He had forgotten the wisdom that all subs knew, that great Mistresses were born, not made, and the really great ones relied as much on intuition as training to do what needed to be done.
43
Joey W. Hill
Most Mistresses had respected his boundaries, would have good-naturedly moved past the sticky point of his pride and gone onto something they both found pleasurable.
Not this one. She wasn’t here for recreation. She wanted to crawl into his soul, or rather make him crawl into hers. Hadn’t she as much as told him that?
“Mackenzie?”
He froze. He’d done the unthinkable. “I’m sorry, Mistress. Can you repeat that?” Her lips curved, but he wouldn’t have called the expression a smile.
“I said, pick up the cat, and lash me with it. Ten strikes.” 44
Natural Law
Chapter 6
This time he bit down on his tongue before he asked her to repeat the question. He had heard her clearly enough, but shock made him want her to rewind, play it once more.
“I’m waiting.”
“Mistress. I can’t.”
“Did I or did I not just give you a direct command?” Her tone sharpened.
“But I’ll hurt you. Forget it. I won’t hurt you.” He felt his loins tighten along with his heart as she turned her body several degrees, showing him the curve of one bare breast. The silver ring of the nipple chain glittered in the light. A small tassel of sapphires and silver beads hung from it, beneath the stiff peak.
“Then I’ll show mercy, and reduce the count. You will strike me once, and put all your strength behind it, or this will be the last time you’ll ever see me. You’ll leave this club and never come back to it. Do it.”
She turned away from him again, folding her arms at her waist in front of her.
Mac closed his hand on the handle of the cat o’nine. Nine lash ends, all tied in knots with a fringe of tiny pewter tassels, a variation of the metal-tipped cat some favored here at The Zone. He’d been lashed before by Mistresses, but had never done it himself.
“Put your back into it,” she said quietly. “Like an overhand throw.”
“Mistress—”
“Mackenzie. Do as I tell you.” Soft words, but steel underneath.
She would leave and he would never see her again. Did she get off on being whipped? He’d not heard of a Dominant who did, though many did it as training for themselves to learn how it felt, how to do it without hurting their subs in irreparable ways.
“Just do it, and it will be over. Three seconds. Now,” she snapped.
Mac jerked forward, and put his strength behind the strike, though everything in him told him not to do it.
He had misjudged her height. The lashings struck her shoulder in a sparkling fan and then curled over, the metal tips slapping her front sharply, so that he felt the tug of her flesh as he reflexively jerked back.
He knew the signs of pain, heard it in the cry she bit off, the indrawn breath through her teeth, the tightening of her shoulders and buttocks beneath the dress.
He dropped the flail and lunged forward, catching her by the shoulders and turning her around. “Ah, Jesus.”
45
Joey W. Hill
The metal tips had bitten into the soft upper curve of her right breast, leaving tiny tracks of welts, nearly half of which were welling up blood. But the ones that horrified him most had struck and drawn blood on the areola of that beautiful mauve nipple.
“Violet, what the hell were you thinking? Fucking Christ, I’ve never flogged anyone in my life. I didn’t know—”
She reached up, put her hands around his neck, and brought his mouth down to her lips.
He was quivering with fury at her, and she played havoc with his senses, bringing softness and sex into the equation. His hands slid to her bare waist, brought her closer, groaning as her thighs pressed against his still-harnessed cock. Due to the circumstances, it had lost some of its power, but her moist lips drove it back to painful rigidity almost instantly. She was in his arms, her body all his, and she was as small and delicate and precious as she looked. But even though she trembled with the pain he had caused, he felt the core of strength she possessed beneath it all.
He gladly would have stood forever with her there, his tongue stroking hers, his hands holding her waist, itching to go lower, grip that round beautiful ass and squeeze her, hold her tight against his cock, make her feel his need, his desire to possess and be possessed all at once.
She pushed him back a little and he sucked in a breath. “I could break your stubborn little neck,” he growled.
“I could say the same for your big thick one.” She touched it with her fingertips.
“The way you feel at this moment? That’s how you make me feel when you let me hurt you. I can take care of you, cherish you, and not consider you weak.” Her gaze was hard, at odds to the softness of the mouth and body he had just sampled. “I know you’re a strong man, Mackenzie. Everything about you fairly screams it. But you’re vulnerable to me, no matter how hard you play a game to try and pretend you’re not.
You won’t play games here. This place isn’t about games. It’s about getting past the games.”
She reached down, unbuckled the harness. Mac stifled a groan of relief and winced as she gently peeled back the straps. He was torn between lust and pain as she traced the deep red marks ringing him.
“You’re tearing me into pieces, sugar.”
“And I’ll know how to put them together,” she returned. “But now I hurt, and I want you to make it better.”
She rebuckled the harness, restricting his cock again, though one notch looser than before. Before he could orient himself to the surprise of that move, she put pressure on his shoulder, and he understood what she wanted next. Mac dropped to one knee, putting his face level with the damage he had inflicted and that pretty areola, marked with a purple welt and swelling for all the wrong reasons. He placed his lips over it gently, with no sucking pressure, and simply laved her, like a wolf giving succor to his mate’s wounds, offering soft caresses with his tongue. His hands at her waist gripped 46
Natural Law
flesh, the softness of her dress, his thumbs sliding across the hip bones he knew were bare of panties beneath the skirt.
Violet closed her eyes and he felt her relax in his grip, let him take over, take care of her. Emotion swelled in him, surpassing even his physical reaction. He moved from one welt to another, tenderly offering his mouth to soothe her needs, and her quivering lessened. It told him that the marks had to hurt like a son of a bitch, even now.
“You should get those tended,” he said at last, staying on his knees before her.
“With something topical.”
Violet ran her fingers through his hair, brushed it from his temple, slowly, meditatively, as if she were calming him as much as herself. “I think it’s time to give you some attention,” she said.