“The second condition is that you will quit torturing yourself. That’s my job now, and it’ll be up to me how much pain I want you to feel today. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes, but only if you’re very harsh with me. Sir.” I was a little breathless, and my voice shook because fear was already coursing through my veins, thick like molten metal.
“Oh, I will be, babydoll,” he replied unhesitatingly, with a threatening edge in his voice.
I was both astonished and at the same time unsurprised that he was true to his word. Without further ado, he yanked me down to the ground by my hair. He grabbed both my wrists and pressed them onto my back with only one of his hands, holding me in place with alarming efficiency. The earth felt veryhard through the blanket, little rocks pressing onto my breasts, sensitive from cold as well as from reckless excitement.
He bundled my discarded clothes single-handedly and forced them underneath my hips to raise them higher. Looking in the other direction, I could hear him unbuckling his belt with his free hand. I shivered from anticipation, feeling ablaze despite the icy wind assailing my bare flesh.
Then, without much warning, the first lick of the leather came with a sharp, satisfying crack. I whimpered, but the sound barely escaped my lips before the second stroke followed, just as brutal as the first. I could tell that Einar wasn’t using his full strength, but he was sparing less of it than may have been expected. His pacing was even more unforgiving than his force, not giving me any time to recover between the lashes. I gave up counting them at six. By then, I was no longer able to refrain from writhing like a tortured worm, pinned to the ground by his hand, its knuckles pressing solidly onto the bones of my smaller back. My gasps turned into undignified choked yelps.
“Your arse looks so beautiful with my marks on it,” Einar crooned in a strangled voice between the blows. “It’s like I’m painting a masterpiece.”
With each flesh-searing lash, I was certain I could not possibly take another. And yet the last thing I wanted was for the torment to cease. Not only because I was blissfully freed of thinking by its acute intensity. I was also deliriously excited with even greater intensity at being so completely at his mercy. At being able to trust him to cause me pain without hurting me.
Still, I would be lying if I said I didn’t welcome it when he paused after a while and massaged me, his touch startlingly tender on the sore area.
“You’re taking it well.” Despite the praise, his voice was stern and ice-cold, promising danger. “So well that I might even be persuaded to lace the pain with pleasure.” His fingers traced theswell of my hip before inching steadily deeper between my legs. “If you ask nicely enough ...”
“No,” I told him firmly, gritting my teeth, and he exhaled sharply with surprise. “Do. It. Harder.”
“Huh,” he hummed with a sound that I knew customarily accompanied the shrug of his broad shoulders.
The hand with the belt left my rear, exposing it once more to the harsh punishment, the strokes loud and regular like a heartbeat. I could feel small bruises forming on my breast from being pushed into the ground. The sting of each lash cut further and further from its source of origin, exploding through my whole body. Carrying with it an insane breed of lust that spread like a forest fire through every fibre of my being.
Not much later, though, and very abruptly, the sensation became agony, and I was very suddenly done with craving it. Even though different in terms of physical sensation, that moment was, in its nature, very similar to an orgasm, a culmination. A release that had been years in the making. I no longer had the strength to choke down on the scream threatening to escape me, and I let it slip free.
Einar stopped immediately.
“Well?” he addressed me.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said simply, too exhausted to question it or argue.
Unexpectedly, the weight that had been crushing me the whole day was gone. I hadn’t expected to be true to the promise I made Einar. I merely craved physical hurt to escape the much worse emotional one. Yet I found that I was released from my terrible guilt, feeling light as a feather. I also found that now I desired Einar’s embrace, wished to feel safe and loved in the same hands that caused me to suffer just moments ago.
Later, he would carry me home for most of the way as if I was indeed light as a feather, making me feel not for the first timeas if he knew exactly what went on in my mind. Or perhaps to compensate for his earlier pitilessness, no matter how welcome.
“Did I get too carried away?” he would ask then.
“No,” I would assure him firmly, and he would sigh with relief. “You took it precisely as far as I wanted you to. But to be honest, I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I wasn’t sure either,” he would admit with an incredulous shake of his head. “You werenotexaggerating when you said you wanted me to be harsh with you. It’s not so much about the submission for you, is it? It’s the pain you like,” he would ask nonchalantly and without judgment, only the scandalous twinkle in his eyes betraying his own excitement.
“Yes. God,yes,” I would confess out loud for the first time in my life and without feeling an ounce of shame. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“Can I handle it…” he would huff. “I’m almost insulted you have to ask.”
His words notwithstanding, his smile would be generous with understanding
“I’ll never love you more than when you put yourself at my mercy,” he would vow softly.
But that was all later. In that moment, his hands closed firmly around my waist and lifted me off the ground. It is a testament to how handsome I found his face that I forced myself to look away from the temptation that was the intimidating bulge of his erection.
Immediately, I saw cracks in the strict, commanding facade he wore for our dark game. Guilty concern showed through the tender lines around his eyes, and fear gathered in the creases on his forehead.
“Are you alright, babydoll?”
His internal struggle was written clearly in visage, his need for reassurance sparring against his fear of disappointing me by breaking out of his role to ask me for it.
