Then three comes, and the pain lingers a bit longer.
When the fourth strike comes, I bite my lip. After being spanked so much earlier, the sting of the belt is a little more than I’m ready to handle, but I can take it.
I can take this.
I need it.
I want it.
I love to be spanked hard. I love being tied up and played with and touched. I love all of it, and after today? I need this. Hell, after the last six months, I need this.
Only, it’s starting to be more than I’m comfortable with and I don’t know if I can actually make it through the next six slaps of the belt. I don’t know if I can actually handle that at all, but I know that I need to. Jasper said he was going to do ten, and I need to make it through ten.
I need to be strong.
Then it hits me.
Suddenly, I realize I’m doing it again. Have I really not learned anything from tonight? Have I really not been listening to anything he’s said to me? Jasper keeps telling me that I don’t actually have to be strong. I don’t have to be brave for him. I don’t have to put on some sort of false front just to impress him or to make him think I’m incredible.
He already thinks I’m incredible.
I don’t have to prove anything to him because he already likes me. BDSM is supposed to enhance our relationship: not overtake it. If the pain is too much, then I need to tell him. I need to use my safe word so we can stop the scene and talk about it. I need to communicate with him because if I don’t, he can never trust me, and I desperately want our relationship to be based on trust.
I feel his hands on my bottom, massaging me, touching me. Jasper knows exactly how I need to be calmed. There’s something about him that’s so incredibly intuitive.
He runs his hands down my spine and back to my bottom over and over, carefully playing with my body and tantalizing my skin. For a minute, I think he’s grown bored of the spanking. Maybe he’ll stop on his own and I won’t have to speak up and tell him what I want. That would save me the embarrassment and the anxiety of using my safe word.
Then I feel him move away, and I realize it’s time.
There’s no getting out of this one easy.
I take a deep breath and before he strikes me again, I whisper, “Red.”
Chapter 10
Jasper
She uses her safe word, and I drop the belt.
She barely said the word out loud. If the room wasn’t so quiet, I never would have heard her. Here, in the bedroom, her voice was barely enough to register. In the club? I wouldn’t have known she’d safeworded until it was too late.
Still, she spoke the word. We both know what that means. The scene stops and now we talk. I had the feeling that this might be a little too much for Odessa tonight. She was insistent that she could take this, but she’s been through a lot and tonight has been quite the emotional rollercoaster.
For both of us.
“Baby,” I pull her up into my arms. “Tell me what’s happening. Are you okay? Was it too much?”
“It was a little too much,” she nods. “I thought I wanted to be spanked harder, but…” Her voice trails off, and tears form at the edges of her eyes. She tried to be strong, but she accepted that she couldn’t take this, and she did the bravest thing of all: she said no.
She said stop.
She called the scene and many submissives wouldn’t have the fucking guts to do that.
Many of them would be too caught up with what their Dom wanted. They would have pushed themselves far more than they should have. They would have stuck with the scene way too long. Odessa didn’t do any of that. She’s an experienced submissive, so she understands firsthand exactly what can happen when you’re scared to speak up in a scene. There’s no room for wilting flowers in submission, but I’m still really, really fucking proud of her.
A sense of pride and pleasure fills my heart: not that we got close to her limits, but that she wasn’t too scared to speak up when she needed to. She took control of the scene and she told me what she needed. She told me she needed me to stop for her, and I’m happy to.
I wrap my arms around her tighter.