Yes, Justin (6 page)

When the kiss ended, he held her against his heaving chest. She felt like no boundaries existed between them. He twisted his fingers in her hair, tightening to pull lightly. Trish mewed, breaking the spell.

Justin turned her around and pointed her toward the living room area. The entire decor indicated a dungeon. Even her dining chair had contained places where rope or bindings could be attached. With his hand on the small of her back, he guided her to a piece of equipment she knew to be called a St. Andrew’s cross.

The heavy wooden structure featured cuffs attached to eyelets. Justin ran his hands over her skin, caressing from her shoulders to her feet. When his forays led him back up her body, he lifted her right arm and secured the padded leather cuff around her wrist. He tested the tightness by slipping a finger between her wrist and the cuff. Then he did the same thing with her left arm.

“How does that feel, Trish? Tug on them a bit. See if they dig into your wrists too much.”

She tugged as hard as she could. The wide cuffs dug in a bit, depending on how she moved her hands, but she didn’t find it to be unreasonable. “It’s fine, Sir.”

He swept her hair out of the way and planted a string of kisses along her neck and shoulder. A couple of strategic pulls of her hair told her he had put it up in a ponytail, shortening it enough to keep it off her shoulders.

“Widen your stance.”

Trish hesitated. If the plug slipped out, she would be mortified. The sharp sting of a smack on her ass got her moving.

“I owe you two punishments, Trish. You will do what you’re told immediately and without question.”

One for not listening and one for touching herself in the bathtub. She knew the rules. Oasis had sent her a list, and they’d required her to pass three quizzes on them in the past two months. She wondered whether or not Justin had been made to meet the same requirements.

“I’m sorry, Sir.” She spread her legs and prayed the plug stayed put.

Justin ran his hands down the outsides of her legs and up the insides. When he reversed directions again, he secured the cuffs to her ankles. “I’m going to whip your back, Trish. I know you indicated an interest in having your breasts and your pussy whipped, but that’s something we’ll save for when you’re a little more used to being whipped.”

She sagged a bit in relief, transferring a bit of her weight from her feet to the cuffs holding her wrists. The fantasy of being whipped had brought her to a self-induced orgasm many times, but she’d never actually heard falls whistling through the air or felt the sting of them against her skin.

He continued to move his hands over her skin lightly, coaxing every nerve ending to the surface. She shivered and tried to lean into the heat emanating from him. A maddening few inches separated his chest from her back, but the restraints prevented her from moving.

When he reached under her, she whimpered. The lips of her labia had already parted because of her wide-legged stance. He fiddled with the clip on her clit, opening it and lifting it away. Blood rushed to that tiny bundle with a vengeance. She cried out at the pleasure-pain mix and arched her back to escape. Her body went nowhere. She half wished Justin would touch her clit, massage it until the strange sensations disappeared, urge it toward pleasure. Unfortunately, his hand had dropped away.

She felt him near her, and she knew he watched her reaction. She neither tempered nor prolonged her reactions, giving him honesty with every inch of her being.

She felt the plug ease from her ass. Mortified, she gasped and hoped he didn’t hold it against her. The electric feel of him disappeared, and she heard the sound of running water. Relief rushed through her as she realized she had heard no thump to indicate it had fallen. Justin had removed it.

With him gone, though he was just across the room, she relaxed against the smooth wood of the cross. She hadn’t recognized the tension created by the impending promise of a whipping. That promise hadn’t vanished, but she saw that Justin wasn’t going to hurry it. He was going to make her wait. She didn’t think he intended it as a punishment. Oasis guidelines had demanded a clear identification of a punishment prior to its administration.

The slap of bare feet on wood announced his return. Reaching under her, he zeroed in on her clit with an accuracy that came from familiarity. He pressed hard. She yelped.

“Sore?”

The swollen nub throbbed under his finger. “Yes, Justin.”

He traced a circle around her clit. Shivers raced through her body. “Sensitive?”

“Yes, Justin.” She struggled to form words because she knew he would add to her list of punishments if she didn’t respond.

He plunged two fingers into her slick wetness, thrusting against her sweet spot. He fingered her hard. Cries and pleas poured from her mouth, but he didn’t vary his pace. No matter, the tension coiling inside her didn’t need much more to burst. Just before she fell over the precipice, he stopped.

“Punishment number one, my sweet slave.” He leaned over her shoulder, pressing his bare chest against her back, and she watched him lick her juices from his fingers. “No orgasm.”

He kissed a path down her back, drawing his fingertips lightly over her skin. Tiny tingles feathered from each point of contact. He worshipped the rounded cheeks of her ass before making a return trip. By the time he nibbled at her earlobe, her whole body shook.

Justin always had the power to make her tremble, but so much time had passed since they’d done more than grope each other in the dark. She had forgotten how good he was with his mouth.

“We’re going to start slow, Trish. Feel free to cry out as loud as you like. I won’t stop unless you use the safe word. Say it for me now.”

She breathed in through her nose, using the deep breath to gather her courage. “Oasis.”

“Good girl. Tell me you want this.”

She needed this. “I want this, Justin. Please whip me.”

The heat of his chest moved away. She heard the slap of the flogger against something. His jeans? She couldn’t tell, but she was proud that she hadn’t flinched, and she didn’t flinch again when he tested it a few more times. She knew Justin too well to think he’d start without any kind of warning.

Soft leather brushed across her shoulders as he trailed the falls along her skin. He teased her back where he had sensitized the skin just by kissing it reverently. Shivers made her body jerk, but the cuffs buckled to the cross held her in place.

“So responsive. My Trish, always so responsive.” He stepped back, taking the softness of the falls with him. “This shouldn’t hurt yet, honey. Relax into it.”

That he kept dropping the whole dom demeanor didn’t upset Trish in the least, and it didn’t ruin the fantasy. Having him here, administering her whipping, far outstripped any of the fantasies she’d imagined. The fact that he behaved the same way he always behaved around her meant he was comfortable with what they were doing, and she hoped that meant he would want to continue this at home.

The first slap of the whip startled her away from those happy thoughts. The sting she had read about in all those novels was curiously absent. He had said it shouldn’t hurt, but she didn’t really think he would know one way or another. She couldn’t quite decide what it felt like.

Another blow fell. They came rapidly, but they didn’t hurt. If anything, it felt a lot like a massage. Trish relaxed into the rhythm as he moved up and down her back. Before too long, he extended his territory to cover her ass and thighs. By the time his whip dropped away, she felt liquid.

Hot cream dripped from her pussy, but the urgency she thought she would feel wasn’t there. If he took her down now, she would be ripe for making slow love, not for quick, hard fucking.

His fingertips trailed down her back. Where he always felt a little like fire touching her skin, he now felt like ice. She shivered.

“How are you doing, Trish? Your skin is the loveliest shade of pink.”

“I feel relaxed. A little floaty.” Her words came out slow and a bit slurred. Now that she thought about it, she felt like this after having a drink or two. Justin always teased her about being such a lightweight.

He laughed softly. “Good. This next part will feel different.”

An eternity seemed to pass before anything happened, but she knew only moments elapsed. Her relaxed state played with her mind, messing up her sense of reality. Vaguely, she wondered if this was the subspace she’d heard so much about.

The falls of the whip whistled through the air, but she paid them no mind. Though they hadn’t made this sound last time, her groggy brain didn’t see a real difference. Once the falls landed, her back definitely distinguished the sensation. Tendrils of fire raced along every place those falls struck and pulled her far away from the nice, relaxed place Justin had sent her.

Stunned, Trish couldn’t cry out. The whip fell again and again, alternating on each side of her back. She lost count of how many times he struck her, but the fire traveled down her back, over her ass, and onto her thighs. He whipped her hard everywhere he had massaged.

Her relaxed muscles screamed in protest, a loud sound that hurt her ears. Gradually, the noise died down, and she realized those screams had come out of her mouth. True to his word, Justin neither stopped nor slowed down.

She writhed, trying to escape the blows, but the cuffs on her wrists and ankles held her still. Because he had spread her legs and arms so wide, she couldn’t even wiggle from side to side.

“Please, please, please.” The plea fell from her lips, but she didn’t know if she wanted him to stop or to keep going. After all, she’d asked for this. She’d nearly destroyed her marriage in order to experience this. Perhaps she had this coming.

The burn and the pain morphed into something different. Her distorted sense of time wouldn’t tell her exactly how gradually it happened. One moment, she struggled to not scream the safe word. The next moment, a profound sense of peace blanketed her body and soul.

She didn’t know when the whip stopped, but eventually, she found herself enfolded in Justin’s arms. A cool cloth pressed to her eyes, and she realized she’d been crying.

“Let it all out, Trish. You keep too much inside.” He ran his fingertips down her side in an odd caress, avoiding her back.

An overwhelming sense of helplessness always made her answer “Oh” when he told her he had to work late or over the weekend. Sometimes he texted her, and she didn’t even have the chance to say that much. When he did that, she responded by not texting back.

Now, she let loose everything. Perhaps being in his arms when he was her dom wasn’t the right place to air her grievances, but she did it anyway. After all, he had asked.

“I hate when you work late. I hate when you work all weekend. I wouldn’t mind if you had something every now and then, but right now all you do is work. If you were having an affair, I could see how you would be gone so much, but you’re not. You’re actually working, and I can’t tell if it makes me angrier to know that or not.”

He said nothing while she spoke, but he continued holding her in his arms, and the area of his caresses widened. He trailed light tracks of fire over her back as he moved his hands there. She shivered, shuddering in his arms, and he kissed her temple.

“The girls keep asking why you don’t come to their soccer games, and I’m getting tired of telling them you won’t be home for dinner. I’m so angry with you, Justin. I’m angry, and it hurts. I never wanted to be mad at you like this. I love you, but we can’t continue like this.”

“No, we can’t.” He wiped some tears from her cheeks. “You can’t keep holding everything in. You were ready to go off for a weekend with a stranger rather than talking to me about what’s bothering you. If Oasis hadn’t contacted me, this would have destroyed our marriage instead of bringing us closer together. I know I can’t keep going on thinking I’m doing what’s best for our family when I’ve never asked you what you want. We take each other for granted. We’ve stopped seeing one another as people and started defining each other by function.”

He feathered his lips across hers and cupped the base of her skull to tilt her face. He deepened the kiss, apologizing and promising without words. She wanted the words, but she didn’t feel like she could demand them. Since they were just beginning to renew their relationship, she could accept this for now. There would be time for words later. beginning to

At last, he broke the kiss. “A few weeks ago, I took a voluntary demotion. I won’t be working evenings or weekends. Any extra time I’ve spent at work since then has actually been spent with a dom from Oasis who taught me how to give you what you want.”

She hadn’t seen a change in his paycheck, but she couldn’t deny his skill with a whip. He hadn’t had that skill before.

“They owed me a crapload in bonuses. I insisted on getting those now. We won’t see a change in income for another month. But you’ll have me home a lot more, and I think I’d like to keep you in instead of taking you out.”

Completely forgetting her role, she gasped. “Justin, what do you mean you took a demotion? You worked hard to get as far in that law firm as you have.”

He shrugged.

She smacked her palm into his shoulder. “Don’t you think you should have discussed this with me first?”

He seemed surprised at her reaction. “I thought this is what you wanted.”

“I do, but I…” She didn’t want him to resent her when he failed to realize his dream of making partner in the next two years. “Damn it, Justin. This whole trust and honesty thing cuts both ways. It’s your job, but it affects our lives.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t think about it in those terms. It can be temporary if that’s what you want. This is something we can discuss tomorrow, honey. Right now, I can’t get this image of you out of my head. You’re tied to the bed, spread open, waiting for me to exercise my will on you.”

As he spoke, he moved her closer to the door to the bedroom. Through the opening, she spied the massive bed and the network of hooks in the ceiling.

“Go lie across the bed, on your back. Legs up, knees bent, hands behind your neck.”