“More.”
“What about my strop?”
“Stingier.”
That is certainly true. The marks reflect the sting, red slashes that with a tad more pressure could easily break skin. I won’t, though.I won’t.
“Do I have your consent to go another round, harder this time?”
“Green, Sir.”
So, we do. The marks on his back go from a light drizzle to a steady rain. I check in with him again, and his degree of pain has only gone up to a four.
“I have to be able to trust you, Giovanni, when you tell me your pain level. I have to know the difference between what is a lot and what is more than you can handle.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand.”
Another round, another degree. Giovanni starts to drift. I place a hand on his shoulder to bring him back to me.
“More,” he slurs.
“You’re sure?” This is more than I’ve given to any sub before.
“Please, Sir.”
I give him more, to test his limits and my own. This is the danger in each of us feeding our addictions, why I must always be the one in control, to say when enough is enough. He’ll heal, I’ll make sure of it. I’ll only hurt him as much as he’ll allow.
I see the moment he breaks free, when his body sags against the cross as if caught in its embrace and his face—what I can see of it—takes on a dreamy, enlightened expression. He also loses control of his bladder, but with his history, I’m not too concerned about it.
And then he is bawling. I lighten my strokes so that I’m not really whipping him anymore, just barely caressing him, brushing over the streaks of red that decorate his golden skin. Some of them are bleeding—shallow cuts that should heal well enough. I stare at them for a moment, transfixed by their beauty, before setting my whip aside and lightly covering his body with my own.
“I’m here.” I nose his ear and along the soft curve of his neck. I inhale his sweat, pheromones, and the coppery tang of blood—just a little, not too much. He’s trembling now and sobbing. It’s the cross and my strength alone that hold him up. “What are you feeling?”
“Free… their hands… they’ve released me. The demons are… quiet.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I can do this. With you. I can leave it behind and start again.”
“Of course, you can, sweetheart. You are so brave and so strong. And I am so very proud of you.”
“What doyou know about a total power exchange?” I ask him the next morning. He’s lying on his stomach, naked under the covers, which are pulled down to his waist to let the skin of his back heal without any irritants. I’m sitting in a chair beside the bed, the discarded meal tray at my side. I tended to him last night, made him as comfortable as I was able and fed him breakfast in bed. Despite my ministrations, the bruises and gashes on his back are damning in the daylight—crude hatches against his golden skin. And yet, they remind me of every lash I delivered the night before. The impact of the whip against his tender flesh echoes throughout my body like phantoms of arousal, stirring my desire to hurt him again. And again. He didn’t just endure it, hereveledin it.
“I know that I want it. With you,” he says, serious and somber.
“The theoretical is sometimes very different from the reality.”
“What’s the reality?”
“It means allowing me to make most, if not all, of your daily decisions. What you wear, what you eat, how you dress and groom yourself, when you sleep, who you associate with. You’ll need to ask my permission to do any number of things, and I will have complete dominion over your body.”
“Sir, we have that already.”
He’s not wrong. I never meant for us to slip so seamlessly into this dynamic. “Yes, but that was for a very specific purpose. And for a very specific time period.”
“I still need it,” he says with a desperate edge to his voice.
“I’m not taking anything away from you, Giovanni, I’m talking about making this thing between us more permanent. A longer-term contract.”
