“It’s okay with me,” I said, my voice muffled against his chest. “Your sadistic stuff. I work for Goodluck, which means I’m masochistic already.”
He didn’t laugh at my hilarious joke. “You don’t know anything about my sadistic stuff, Sparkles. We’ve had some intense sex, that’s all.”
“Well, what else do you like to do? What are you into?” I pushed away and looked up at him. “Let’s share. Bondage, spanking, floggers?”
“Hush. Look at me.”
I obeyed, trying to seem both sexy and submissive. “It turns me on when you order me around.”
“Does it? What if I don’t order? What if I just take, what if I just do?”
He took my arm and dragged me from the kitchen over to the couch. It happened so fast I didn’t resist. Next thing I knew I was draped over his lap, my arms trapped behind me as he yanked down my shorts and panties. I did resist then, flinching and fighting his grip, forgetting about the submissive thing as he bared my ass cheeks. He shoved my face into the cushion and made a shushing sound. “Let me be in charge for a moment. Give yourself over to a sadist. See how it feels.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, turning my head.
“Whatever I want. Nothing fatal.” He smacked my ass, then squeezed it. A hot burn rose to the surface. It stung a lot for just a hand. I squirmed as he eased my cheeks apart, exposing all of me. All of me. I was almost relieved to be spanked again, a glancing blow that caught the sensitive underside of my ass.
I tried to be still, to submit, but my whole body tensed. I shuddered as he caressed me instead, his palm blazing a warm, firm path up my spine to my nape. He gripped the back of my hair, holding my head when I tried to hide my face.
“You asked what I’m into,” he said in a level, quiet voice. “I’m into tears and power trips. I’m into capriciously hurting you because it’s unfair, and because you’ll let me do it anyway. I’m into reducing you to a sex object, and sometimes sharing you with my friends. I’m into bruises and welts on a regular basis, marks you’ll wear like a uniform because I want you to. But I’m mostly into tears, Juliet, and tormenting you.”
I stared at the diffuse pattern of my couch’s upholstery, doing my best to stave off panic. He was right. My BDSM experience hadn’t prepared me for the deeply intense and ominous speech he’d just delivered. Hurting. Sharing. Bruising.
Tormenting.
“Say something,” he murmured when the silence strung out.
I shifted my head the scant inch his grip would allow. “I just…have some questions.”
“Ask them.”
I was still bent over his lap, a weak, surrendered, edge play novice trying to process what he wanted, and why, and how it might make me feel if I kept playing along.
“Is there any caring?” I asked. “I mean, do you want to hurt your partners out of disdain? Spite?”
“No.”
“You don’t hate the women you hurt? You’re not angry?”
He flipped me over and pushed me back against the armrest, his hand on my neck. My arms flailed out. I was getting anxious from being manipulated like a rag doll. His gaze roved over my face, then locked on my eyes.
“There’s no anger or spite involved,” he said. “I deeply appreciate every woman who lets me hurt her. I admire the courage, the sacrifice it takes. I revel in my partners’ reactions.” He leaned over me, braced on one arm. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m soft, or that I want to communicate love. Dominating and hurting someone is a tactile, physiological thing for me, a physical function, a release.”
Don’t cry. If you cry, he’ll walk. Maybe I should have let him walk, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to understand. I was drawn to him as much as he was drawn to me. I wanted to see if we could work.
Maybe…maybe what he described would feel as hot as our rough, grasping work room sex. I needed release, not some serious relationship, while I got my life back together. In that way, we were a lot alike. Or was that just a rationalization, because he was hovering over me with a gargantuan erection I could make out through his pants?
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking how to convince you to…to let me try. Do you think I would be strong enough to withstand the stuff you like to do?”
“My sadism? Yes, you’re physically strong enough.” His lips flattened into a line. “But emotionally… That’s the part that worries me. I’m not a psychiatrist. I wouldn’t know how to fix you if some part of you…” He touched my head, wrapped his fingers over my addled brain. “If some part of you here got messed up.”
I looked away from him. “I know a lot of crazy people. They’re not so bad.”
“Juliet.”
“I’ll try not to be too emotional, okay?” I could feel myself blushing, because my ass still smarted, and I wanted him to fuck me right now. “Maybe I’ll get excited by your kind of pain. Maybe I’ll love it. I might be as masochistic as you are sadistic. I’ve never done any of the edgier stuff, so I have no way of knowing—”
“Look at me.”
His sharp command took me aback, but his tone propelled me to obey. I lifted my chin as he pinned my arms down on either side of me. Our eyes met, and his held mine with the full force of his dominant authority. Maybe his stare was meant to scare me. It did.
“I want to explore my fantasies with you, Sparkles. I want it very much. I want to do all kinds of perverse, painful, lustful things to you, but it will be pure power exchange. That’s it. I can’t give you love and forever after. It wouldn’t be a romance.”
“You’ve said that four or five times now.” I strained against his hands. “How stupid do you think I am? My last ‘romance’ ended up with me getting trashed and making your godforsaken acquaintance.”
He lowered himself over me, his arm snaking around my waist. Our lips almost touched. His cock felt like an iron bar against my hip. “When we go sadist/masochist together,” he said, “we’re going to have to work on that sassy mouth.”
When, not if.
His knee pressed between my legs, force and dominance, and I wondered if I actually was stupid. In my vulnerable position, I could feel how strong he was, could feel the leashed violence in his touch. He enjoyed hurting women. For whatever reason, I wanted him to hurt me and make me come again the frenzied way I’d come last night.
“So…where do we start?” I asked. “If we’re going to try this?” He still hadn’t let me go.
“We start with warnings.”
“Oh.”
“I’m into full control, Juliet. Encompassing control.” He stroked fingers down my bare hip and thigh, down to the waistband of my shorts, emphasizing my nakedness, my exposure. I pressed my legs together, hiding the heat and wetness his words had caused. “Has your BDSM research ever led you into the realm of consensual non-consent?” he asked.
I squirmed under his touch. “Is that some kind of fantasy realm?”
“No, it’s not a realm.” He let go of me and tugged my panties and shorts back up with an irritated sound. “Sit up, right here beside me. This is important—negotiation
point one. Consensual non-consent is a fetish, a sexual practice. It means that I set the boundaries in our sessions, and you won’t have the option to opt out of anything I desire.”
“What about safe words?”
“I don’t do safe words.” He dismissed the cornerstone of safe, sane, and consensual BDSM with a flick of his hand. “I need my scenes to feel real, like I’m one hundred percent in control. Consensual non-consent means that you give up the ability to say yes or no once we’ve started exchanging power in a scene.”
“But I can stop you if I have to, right? I can leave anytime?” My voice strained to the high end.
He gave me a dry look. “I’m not in the business of committing felonies. You would, of course, be free to leave our power exchange relationship at any time. But as long as you were in it with me, I would maintain complete control of you by any means I desired.”
By any means… That could encompass so many things.
“Of course, in the beginning, we’d go slow,” he said, noticing my alarm. “We’d start with short sessions, and stay within limited boundaries until we built trust.”
“Like training?”
“Like, you doing whatever I demanded physically and sexually, and seeing if you could deal with it. It’s not all sex,” he warned me. “It’s other things too.”
“Oh.”
“And that’s all our scenes would be, finite sessions of physical and sexual release. I’m telling you that because I don’t want to be like your last Dom, who led you on and wasn’t honest with you. I’m being brutally honest. I know how I am, and I can’t offer you much outside of physical sensation and control.”
His expression softened. One of his hands lingered in the air, then moved downward to cup my chin. “I know that isn’t what you’re looking for. That’s why I’ve tried to stay away, but you keep drawing me back. I’d like to explore this tension between us. If you met someone else, someone who was interested in a more traditional relationship, you could end our association at any time.”
Our association. That sounded clinical and sort of sad, but the other part, exploring this tension, sounded necessary to me. I was glad Fort was willing to usher me into this edgy new world. Hurting. Spanking. Bondage. Force. Non-consent. Maybe even anal. I imagined, with him, it would be all the things.