He assumed correctly. Which makes me feel more naked than the fact that I’m only wearing lingerie.
My body is warm and flushed all the way through. I need touch. I long for it. But I can’t stand it.
Over the years, I’ve found the flogger is a good substitute. Like many leather fingers drumming down my back. Fingers that can hurt. Fingers that can heal. Fingers that can make me feel.
He’s stopped flogging me. He’s close to me again, on my right. His scent wafts over me—a rich and comforting musk. “Turn your head toward me.”
I do so immediately. My thoughts are coming too slowly for me to question him.
Something cool touches my lips. “Water,” he tells me. He’s holding a bottle to my mouth. “Drink.”
I tip my head back, and he gives me small sips, dabbing a cloth against my mouth when a few drops spill. The heat of his hand warms my skin, and my head rolls in his direction.
“More water?”
I shake my head.
The slow tread of his footsteps paces away, then returns. “Flex your fingers.”
I let my fingers unfurl.
“Good girl. What’s your safe word?”
Under the blindfold, I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. “Elyria.” He doesn’t know what it costs me to say that word.
The flogger snaps behind me, not touching me. The sharp sound throws me back to the place I want to be.
“More?” he asks.
“More.”
Please, gods, let this hurt.
He presses the handle to my back and runs it along my skin, igniting the warm marks. Heat pressing like a fist between my legs. I breathe shallowly in case the mere weight of my inhale makes the dam burst.
The tips of the flogger bite into my shoulder. I flinch and sigh as the pain scores my skin and digs its claws deep. He uses the flogger to snatch at my skin, unleashing a stinging rain.
A few more minutes and endorphins cascade into my bloodstream. I let myself be lifted up, up, up. And in my mind’s eye, I see him. My scene partner, my top for the night. He’s in a white button-down shirt, one so well fitted it must be bespoke. He’s every inch the civilized man, except he’s huge.
Thick dark hair brushes his brow, and he’s as fit as an Olympic athlete with giant muscles flexing under the Italian cotton. His waist is trim, but his thighs strain against the expensive wool of his slacks. He’s at ease, flogging the bound submissive in front of him. Every once in a while, he paces, letting her come down, letting tension build before he begins again.
Flogging is hard work, and he’s flushed. His skin is flushed and healthy. He has a strong nose and a hard jaw. The face of an emperor. The sort of face they’d carved onto gold coins.
I don’t know if any of this information is true. But it’s what I see. It could be my imagination, but experience tells me my imagination is dead accurate more often than not. Call it instinct. Call it psychic ability. But my mind can paint a perfect picture of something I’ve never seen.
There’s also something familiar about his presence. Which is impossible. I don’t recall meeting a man like him. And I would remember. I always request a different top, so there’s no way we’ve scened before. Is there?
The flogger snaps at my calves, and I drop back into my body. I flinch at the strikes. My breath shudders against the cross, misting my face. My forehead slips against the slick leather. I’m sweating, hot, flushed.
And my body is hungry. Too hungry to be denied.
For the first time since I’ve gotten into kink, I want a scene partner to touch me.
It’s not that I can’t take touch. As a ward of the state starting at the age of twelve and bounced between group and foster homes, I rarely got the touch I needed. And now it’s too much.
Too intimate.
It’s not the touch that hurts. It’s the attachment. Not the close feelings, but the loss of them when they’re ripped away.
