His mocking laughter rings in my ears when he steps back to admire his handiwork. I shake my head, trying to get at least some of the hair out of my eyes. His eyes, bright with that sadistic glee I’ve come to know so well, meet mine. I try to glare at him and keep at least a toehold on the floor, but a hard shot to my ass sends me spinning again.
“Fuck!” I shout.
“Didn’t you want this?” Jack asks sharply. When I don’t answer, he grabs my chin roughly. I let out a grunt as his hand on my face jerks me to a stop. “I asked you a question, brat. Did you have something to say?”
I’ve stubbed my toes in my desperate attempts to find the floor, the muscles in my bound leg are starting to cramp, my shoulders ache and my ass is already warm. But beneath his taunts and derision, I can hear what he’s really asking:Do I want to safeword?
When I first open my mouth, the first thing that comes out is a whine of arousal and shame. Jack scowls and I suck in a shaky breath. “No.”
His lip curls. Pushing aside the curtain of hair covering my face, he studies me for a few seconds. “Fucking pathetic.”
He spits the words at me, punctuating them by spitting right in my eyes. I snap them shut instinctively, which means I don’tsee it coming when he steps on my toes again. Even though it’s nowhere near his full weight, I let out a plaintive wail.
The humiliation of my position is nearly as bad as the pain, especially when Jack breaks out the paddle — and I have the mortifying realization that every fresh blow he lands on my throbbing ass just makes me harder. The next time Jack grabs my face to bring me to a halt, he lightly raps my dripping dick with the paddle. My inhale is a sharp hiss. But when he does it a second time, I’m horrified to hear myself let out a hoarse moan.
“You fucked-up degenerate,” Jack snickers. When I look down, I’m not at all surprised to see that he’s hard, too. He palms the erection tenting the front of his pants as he studies me, clicking his tongue in mock reproach.
“Look at you — such a depraved little masochist.” When the rough pad of his thumb swipes over the head of my cock, I can’t help the needy sound that slips out of me. Jack shoves his thumb in my mouth. “Fucking freak. I can’t believe how hard this is getting you.”
He hums, the sound low and gravelly. When I flick my tongue over the tip of his thumb, he gives me a sharp look.
“What?” I ask.
“I was just wondering if you’re in a headspace where I could use the single-tail whip on you. Warmed-up, but not so deep into subspace that you couldn’t safeword if you needed to.”
I’m soaked with sweat, but Jack’s words make goosebumps prickle on my skin. That whip just about took me out the first and only time he used it on me. I should have used my safeword, and I’m lucky he was experienced enough to realize that.
It takes a second or two before it registers that the harsh breathing cutting through the silence of the room is mine. “Um —” My voice comes out as a croak. I swallow hard. I’m a little ashamed to realize that I’m secretly hoping for Jack to cajole or coax me into it. I want him to help me overcome my hesitation.
But the seconds tick by until I realize he’s not going to do that. He’s making melook myself in the face and acknowledge how much I crave this twisted, brutal painall on my own.
I sink my teeth into my lower lip to stifle a pitiful sound when a cramp seizes the calf of my unbound leg. When I try to ease it by shifting my weight, I lose my balance. Suddenly suspended from my arms again, I let out a sob as I flail to find purchase for my smarting toes.
After I re-anchor myself to the ground on one trembling leg, I glance up through sweat- and spit-covered strings of hair. Jack is standing in front of me with his arms folded and a posture so close to relaxed that I can’t keep a little smirk off my face. He raises an eyebrow at that but still doesn’t say anything.
“Are you just assuming I’ll say yes?” I hear the brattiness in my tone of voice, so I know Jack must, too. But he doesn’t take the bait.
“I’m not assuming a damn thing,” he says. There’s no inflection at all in his deep voice that might give me a window into his thinking. Dammit.
My inhale shakes. “Do it, then. I want it.” When Jack scowls, I add quickly, “Please. Please use that whip on me.”
He tips my chin up roughly. “Safeword?” he asks for the second time.
“Maple.”
Jack brings his lips to my ear. “Good boy,” he murmurs. I feel him press a kiss through the damp hair against my forehead. When he steps back again, his eyes are black with heat and hunger.
My dick bobs up, unbidden. Jack laughs and circles around behind me. My heart thumps against my ribs. I nearly jump out of my skin when something brushes my ass cheek and my standing leg skids across the floor. But this time, a strong arm around my waist keeps me from losing my footing.
I hear Jack’s low chuckle behind me. “Relax, Bunny.”
When he loosens the belt binding my leg, my sigh of relief turns into a strangled yelp as I realize my leg has fallen completely asleep. I sway and grit my teeth as fiery pins and needles race through it. That sensation is forgotten, though, when Jack lays down a couple of hard smacks on my ass cheeks.
I feel a whimper bubbling up, but my cheeks blaze when it turns into a moan. Jack laughs at that. He uses his hand for a few minutes as the feeling comes back into my leg before switching to the paddle again. I start crying pathetically as the stiff leather lights up my already worked-over ass, but it’s not long before my mind starts floating, suspended in a sea of endorphins.
With my hair in my face and my eyes streaming tears, I hear it before I see it. Even over my sobs, it registers in some primal, subliminal part of my brain that the sound is different. It’s sharper, higher-pitched —the last thought that passes through my head is that it’s like a stinging insect.
Pain explodes in a constellation of white stars behind my eyes. My scream ripples through me like a shockwave. I reel and come close to losing my footing again, but I tighten all the muscles from my abs on down as hard as I can and manage to hold myself up.
