“Everyone will see.” My voice broke on the words. “Everyone will know what I am.”
“And what are you?” he asked, tilting my chin up so I had to meet his eyes.
I opened my mouth but couldn’t say it. Couldn’t voice the terrible, shameful truth that my body already knew.
“Say it,” Mike commanded softly.
“Yours,” I breathed. “I’m yours. Your… your good girl.”
“That’s right.” He kissed my forehead tenderly. “And there’s no shame in that, sweetheart. Only beauty. Only truth.”
But there was shame. So much shame it felt like it would drown me. And yet underneath it, woven through it like a thread I couldn’t untangle, was something else. Pride. Belonging. A dark, confusing sense of rightness that made no logical sense but felt true in my bones.
“Now go put on your suit,” Mike said, releasing me. “We’re going to breakfast first, and then the beach.”
My stomach dropped. “Breakfast? But I thought we’d eat here, in the room?—”
“No.” His voice took on a hard note.
My heart hammered in my chest as the implication sank in. He wanted me to wear the microkini in public—not just on the beach where I might blend in with other barely dressed women, but to breakfast. Where people would be clothed. Where they would see my welted bottom while they ate their eggs and toast.
“Please,” I whispered. “Sir, please don’t make me?—”
“The restaurant is outdoors,” Mike said, as if that made it better. “Right by the pool. Very casual. And you’ll be wearing a coverup.”
A coverup. As if that would help. As if sheer fabric could make the exposed, marked flesh of my bottom any less obvious, less shameful.
“I can’t,” I breathed, taking a step backward. “Mike, I can’t do this. Please.”
His expression shifted, becoming stern in a way that made my stomach drop. “Laura. We talked about this last night. You agreed not to make a fuss.”
“I know, but I didn’t—I didn’t understand?—”
“You understood perfectly.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And now you’re trying to back out. Which means you’re being disobedient again.”
The word hung in the air between us, heavy with implication.Disobedient. Which meant punishment. Which meant more pain on top of pain, more marks on top of marks. I felt tears spilling down my cheeks again, hot and helpless.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’m sorry, I just—everyone will stare. They’ll know you whipped me. They’ll think I’m some kind of?—”
“Some kind of what?” Mike’s voice was quiet but dangerous.
I shook my head, unable to voice the word that burned in my mind.Slut. Whore. Fuck toy.
Mike closed the distance between us in two strides. His hand cupped my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. “They’ll think you’re a beautiful young woman who belongs to a man who knows how to take her in hand. Who knows what she needs. And they’ll be right.”
“But the marks?—”
“Are beautiful,” he finished firmly. “They show that you’ve been disciplined. Taught. Loved.”
Loved. There was that word again, the one I’d thought I’d dreamed about last night. My breath caught in my throat.
“Now go put on your suit,” Mike repeated, his tone brooking no argument. “And the white coverup you bought. You have five minutes, or I’ll put you back over that chair and add more stripes to your bottom.”
The threat sent a confusing jolt through my core—terror and arousal mixed so thoroughly I couldn’t separate them. I turned and fled to the bathroom, where I’d hung up the little there was of the microkini, my hands shaking as I pulled it off the towel bar.
It felt even more obscene in my hands than it had yesterday. I forced myself to step into the bottoms, pulling the tiny triangle of fabric up my thighs. The strings tied at my hips suddenly seemed to represent the bow on a present: the gift of my virginity, for Mike to unwrap and take with his huge, thrusting penis.
The fabric barely covered my sealed pussy, and when I turned to check the back in the mirror, I gasped. The thin string disappeared completely between my welted cheeks, leaving them entirely exposed. Every mark was visible—the crisscrossing lines of red and purple, the darker welts where the martinet had struck hardest.
