His black eyes stared down into mine, and my mind went oddly blank. I couldn't fight, I couldn't shout obscenities at him. I couldn't do anything but draw in shallow, careful breaths.
"That's better," he said softly, trailing his fingers over my lips, tracing the line of them where they surrounded the red rubber ball that filled my mouth. "Very pretty," he praised.
A fine tremor raced across my skin as a strange sense of relief settled over me. He was looking at me again, touching me. He wasn't treating me like an object. The impersonal way he'd been handling me had scared me more than Cristian's knife cutting into me. The Andrés who held me and promised to protect me in his own messed up way was back, and I was relieved to see him. Fresh tears pooled in my eyes as my toxic fear leaked out of me.
"You're so beautiful when you cry," he murmured, stroking the wetness on my cheeks almost reverently. "Don't you feel better now? You don't have to yell. You don't have to fight. Your Master is in control, and you don't have to pretend otherwise. Not when you're strapped down and spread wide for me to play with. All you have to do is submit. All you can do is submit."
Keeping his grip on my hair, he held my face in place as he leaned down and pressed a tender kiss against my forehead.
"Time for your punishment, gatita," he said, his soft lips brushing across my skin. "You've more than earned it."
I shivered, but not entirely out of fear. A shadow of it resurfaced, but I couldn't be terrified anymore. There was no point. As he'd said, I wasn't capable of fighting him in my current predicament. Surrendering was so much easier than panicking, especially when panicking was pointless.
He won't harm me, I reminded myself, playing it over and over again in my head like a soothing mantra. He won't harm me.
I'd survived his spankings, his violations. Whatever he had planned for me, I'd survive this, too.
He finally released my hair, and my head dropped forward, my cheek resting meekly against the padded bench.
His palm skimmed across my lower back, the heat of his body sinking into mine.
"Good girl. I'll be right back." He said it like the sweetest reassurance, almost as though he was reluctant to leave my side.
Or maybe I was just delusional, and I was hearing what I needed to hear in order to cope with what was happening to me.
He disappeared behind me, his heat receding. I tried to crane my head back to watch him, but he had walked outside my range of sight. Bound as I was, I could only move my head so far.
Giving up, I settled my cheek back against the smooth leather and closed my eyes. The darkness behind my lids was peaceful. Far preferable to examining the torture chamber that surrounded me.
Silence enfolded me. I couldn't hear Andrés moving, but I could practically feel his eyes on me. My skin prickled with awareness, but my body remained limp against the bench. I breathed in deeply through my nose, taking in long draws of oxygen.
I tried not to think, but my brain began firing again, wondering what he was going to do to me. Several horrible possibilities occurred to me at once, terrible images of torment flickering across my mind.
Just as I began to tense with mounting anxiety, something cool and smooth tickled my spine. My shocked yelp was muffled by the gag, and my eyes flew open to assess what was happening to
me.
Andrés stood behind me, looming over my helpless form. His black eyes glinted in the eerie crimson light as he studied my reaction. He held a flogger in one hand, allowing its multitude of thin black leather falls to kiss my back.
My eyes widened, and I squirmed in my restraints.
I wasn't entirely trying to get away. I'd been curious to know what it would feel like to be flogged. I'd fantasized about it more than a few times.
But this wasn't the scenario I'd envisioned. For one, Dex had always played the hero in my mind. The man standing behind me was no hero. He was my own personal villain.
And he was staring at me as though I was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.
"You know what this is?" he asked, trailing the leather falls down the length of my spine.
A small whimper slipped past the gag as my nerve endings crackled to life. I managed a slight nod in response to his question, never even considering refusing to answer. I couldn’t have any secrets from Andrés when I was like this: stripped bare and put on display for him. I couldn't hide from him. He wouldn't allow it.
"But no one has ever flogged you before," he said. It wasn't a question. He already knew how innocent I was.
"Kinky little virgin," he mused. "When I decide to allow you to speak again, you'll tell me every depraved thought you've ever had." He smiled down at me with genuine pleasure. "I knew we'd get along."
He took a step back and swung the flogger down in a slow arc. The falls slapped against my bottom, but it didn't hurt. He was going slow with me, watching me with the careful, focused attention of a predator as he monitored my reactions. The heavy strips of leather slid down over my cheeks. They were cool and smooth against my heated skin.
"This is going to hurt," he warned. "It's supposed to hurt. One day, I'll show you how good it can feel. But not tonight."