“Look at me.”
I lift my head, tears pressing at the backs of my eyes.
One look at me and Dominus moves quickly, cradling my face in his hands and forcing me to look up at him. “Walk me through what just happened.”
I laugh and the sound morphs into a sob.
His thumbs catch my tears as they begin to fall, but I can’t find the words to explain what I’m feeling.
Flayed open.
He hasn’t even punished me and I already feel exposed and raw.
The pulse between my legs remains, a relentless demand for attention, even as tears cascade down my cheeks.
“Something is wrong with me,” I finally admit.
His fingers flex on my cheeks. “Never say that again. Do you understand me? There is nothing wrong with you.”
I strain to search his dark eyes, hating how even though there are holes in his mask I still can’t get a full look at his eyes, can barely even make out the shape of them with how limited the view is and how shadowed they are beneath the mask. “Take off your mask.”
His shoulders rise and fall on a deep breath. “No.”
I sigh, then close my eyes. “You get to see me but I can’t see you. That can’t be normal.”
“What is normal?” His thumb trails over my cheek, catching another tear. “Is it normal to ignore your body? To deny yourself what you need?” He waits for me to open my eyes. “Is it normal to berate yourself for desires you have no control over?”
I swallow around the thickness in my throat.
“Let’s look at it this way: to some, what we do here is wrong, immoral.Abnormal. But to us, to me, what we do here is the most natural thing in the world. Seeking pleasure in ourselves, in each other, what’s more human than that?” He releases me and slips his hand down to wrap around mine, then leads me around his desk and into the attached room.
“Don’t focus on this stuff,” he says, noticing my eyes go wide as I take it all in. “We’ll go over it all in due time.” He leads me to a plush deep purple couch, L-shaped and tucked into the corner.Sitting down, he motions for me to join him, and when I don’t move, he tugs me down onto his lap. “Is this okay?”
I nod, then decide to just trust my body to know what it wants, curling up against his firm chest. Tucking my head beneath his chin, I breathe deeply, catching a familiar citrusy scent that makes my stomach somersault.
“Is itnormalto start wars for oil? To murder innocent people in the name of religion?”
I shake my head, trying to get another hit of that faint scent so I can try to place it.
“No, but those are the same people that will try to tell you whatisnormal, and, frankly, I don’t think they have any fucking clue. Do you?”
“No, Dominus.” With my head tucked beneath his chin, I give up on trying to figure out what cologne he’s wearing and focus on the firm lines of his stomach. His abs are well-defined, and there’s a cluster of freckles on his left ribs that look like a triangle. I start to trace them with my finger, but his skin jumps beneath my touch and I freeze.
“You can touch me,” he says, his voice quieter as it carries through that modulator in his mask.
I resume tracing the constellation of freckles on his side, then move to trace the ridges of his ab muscles.
“Tell me what made you hesitate out there. Were you afraid of the flogger?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Were you…” He swallows hard, his chin nudging my head from the motion.
I frown, catching on his hesitation to finish that question, then lift my head and try to search his eyes, but he’s closed them.
“Were you afraid of me?” he asks.
“No,” I answer quickly. “I’m not afraid of you at all.” I laugh, then shake my head. “That’s the part that has me all messed up.”
