"Then get back on your knees." Shale's stern tone held a note of approbation. "Forehead and palms to the floor, ass in the air. Knees spread shoulder width apart."
Twenty-five strikes with a switch. That was the punishment laid out in the instructions for seeking her own pleasure. Madison suppressed a serious quake of nerves. Logan had spanked her, and while his hand had hurt at a certain point, open-palm-to-bare-buttock had a threshold. She remembered the switch in her mother's hand. Even applied with the restraint appropriate for a six-year-old's punishment, it had hurt like fire.
Something beeped and Shale stepped back. "Yes. I understand. Thank you."
She must be wearing a hands-free ear piece. Madison heard her step forward again, felt the brush of her high heel against the side of her bare foot. Kneeling the way Madison was, the soles of her feet curved up and vulnerable, she had a harrowing vision of Shale pressing a spike heel in the center of one.
"It was deemed that twenty-five is too many, just prior to the auction. We want your best assets displayed, not covered with welts. We don't want whoever buys you to spend his night having to tend you, do we?"
"No, Mistress."
"The sentence is eight."
Seven plus one. Seven failed relationships plus this one. The final one, the one she wanted to work out more than she'd wanted anything in a long time. Had Logan deliberately turned her mind in that direction by choosing eight strikes for punishment? He was so clever, she wouldn't put it past him. Being with him for a lifetime would be a challenge. She'd have to show him she could be pretty clever herself. Though the nice thing was she didn't have to be clever around him. She could be whatever she needed to be.
"Ass up," Shale reminded her. "Keep it off your heels so I can see your pussy, switch it if I want to do so."
She quaked. "Yes, Mistress." She forced herself to lift her hips higher and curled her fingers into balls, pushing her forehead harder into the floor.
"None of that. Breathe, and relax every part of your body. You don't tense up and resist your Master's discipline, do you?"
She made herself relax, one muscle at a time. And, points to Shale for noticing details, she didn't land the first blow until she'd finished, her entire body open to whatever was about to be done to it.
Yep, a switch still hurt like hell, particularly on an ass that was essentially bare. The thong didn't offer much in the way of protection. Madison bit back a cry for the first one and the second one, but on the third one it wrested free. It cut like fire, like her skin was being split, though she reasoned that couldn't be the case. Logan hadn't done a thing to break skin yet. But CIA torturers could reduce someone to a mass of jelly without even so much as a paper cut. She'd read that in a suspense novel.
Tears had gathered on that third stroke, the pain bringing the other emotions to the surface, just as before. What had Logan said? The first couple of times, it boils things up like pus, until it will run clean and you'll feel other things. Just as good, but different. Given her past, she wanted to think of it as a way of cleaning out all the other relationships. Was that why the instructions had told herself to clean herself inside and out, removing the touch of other men? That wasn't just the fantasy. This was a true clean slate, first step, and this punishment was just adding to the purging.
"God . . ." She'd lost count and that terrified her, because she needed to look forward to that eighth one, not get lost in the prior ones. That was important. Fortunately, Shale saved her on that.
"This is number five."
Madison cried out again, her thighs quivering. Shale ran her hand over the marks and gave her a little smack over them. "Very pretty. Your Master will be pleased. Three more to go."
"Please . . ." She didn't know what she was begging for, but it wasn't her safe word, so Shale didn't stop. Was Troy watching, wishing it was him, his cock getting hard even as he felt that quake in the lower belly, knowing that bearing the pain was part of it?
"Six."
When she yelped into the carpet, muffling the noise, she thought of her soldier. Standing in front of the camera, feet braced, arms crossed, his steely eyes focused on everything. How she was responding, every bare inch of flesh, every part of her, inside and out, that he intended to claim fully, all the way to her soul. She trembled harder. "Please . . ." she whispered, and now she knew what she was begging for.
"Seven."
"God." She didn't know if Shale was hitting harder, or the pain built with each one. Just one more. One more. The most important one, the one that mattered more than the others.
"Call it out, slave."
"Eight. Please."
It slashed across her hindquarters, low enough that sting burned through her pussy, like an itch she couldn't reach back and satisfy. That wasn't her job, either. She panted, letting the sting turn into throbbing, trying not to wince as Shale ran her hand over the layers of marks, nails scraping across them.
"Nice. An excellent job. Thank you, Troy. Give me back the switch and bring her back to her feet. Clean her up."
That had been Troy? She realized then that both of them flanked her. Troy had been so quiet, and w
ith the blindfold, her senses were disoriented. She'd just assumed Shale was doing the punishment.
His hand was under her arm, drawing her back up to her heels and then to her feet. She swayed, sniffled. "Close your eyes," he said with quiet firmness.
She was wearing a blindfold, so she wasn't sure why that was necessary, but she obeyed. Then he loosened the blindfold and lifted it. A soft handkerchief absorbed the tears that had fallen. Troy also carefully wiped around her mouth where the saliva had gathered from her position and stress. There was a reason the instructions had included not wearing makeup, apparently. He replaced the blindfold. "Open your eyes and tell me if you can see anything, even light. Be truthful."