He didn’t wait for her approval and it made her feel good in a way. That despite having seemed indifferent to her for months he believed in her enough to be confident she’d use her safeword if she needed to. And she would—she wouldn’t disappoint him, and she wouldn’t disappoint Daddy or Papa like that either.
Sir stepped behind her and she couldn’t help but tense as she sensed him at her back, steeled herself for the deep-searing sting she knew would come. He didn’t disappoint her either, laying down stripe after stripe down her shoulder blades, the outside of her ribcage, skipping down to her hips and then out to her arms. She was going to be marked and sore from her neck to her calves and it would be a balm to look at for the next several days, to see the chance he had given her, the pain she had stood for him. Would that be enough? Would he try this again and again and again?
Cosima didn’t believe in god, not really, but she sent up a wish to the universe that she’d convinced Ryker that she was worthy of him, of them, and that in time he’d see he could love her too. Maybe not a lot, but she would take the absent-minded, taken-for-granted way he had affection for Stella.
When he’d striped her so thoroughly she thought her skin must look like a pink and red tiger’s, he was behind her again, hands roaming over her skin, fingers sinking into her pussy and rubbing and pinching her clit.
“Well done. You’ve only got the whip left to take. Now tell me, little one, how many lashes can you take for me?”
Oh no. She always hated these questions, even from Daddy and Papa. It was a wicked thing to ask of her—she didn’t want to say too few and let anyone down but she also didn’t want to say too many and not be able to bear it.
Of course Sir sensed her mind’s whirring.
“Between one and ten; you’ve taken so much already.”
She wanted to reply twenty just to impress him, but she was wobbly on her feet already and dealing with the burning bite of the whip against her already abused flesh would be a lot. There was only one obvious answer, then.
“Ten, Sir. Please.”
* * *
Ryker
Such a delightful marvel. He took back every word he’d ever said about her tolerance, every doubt he’d ever had that she would be able to handle him. Not that he was throwing his all at her but he never would when he was playing with someone for the first time. Cosima was a hardy and delicious treat he’d like to sink his teeth into over and over again.
He bit her other ear lobe before taking up the whip, running the thong through his hands, double-checking that he’d attached the cracker correctly at the end but of course he had.
Ten whip bites he’d sink into her back, bright red weals that would raise her skin, her marks things of beauty he could give Hudson and Ian a tour of after he’d had his way with her, which he would. Ten lashes was the only thing standing between his cock and her sweet and swollen pussy and he couldn’t wait. But he forced himself to focus—a whip required concentration and caution.
Carefully he counted out his steps—he’d practiced while he waited for her—and looked his fill at the gorgeous canvas of her skin, shades ranging from cream over her kidneys to lines of crimson where he’d hit her with the evil stick and now he’d use this final technique to finish his masterpiece.
Ryker drew back the whip like he had a thousand times and flicked it with his wrist. And he could tell straight away here was something off in his stroke. Before he could stop it, before he could do anything, he heard the snap, felt the reverberation work its way up from the cracker, and then there was the worst part: the scream.
Usually he loved to make women scream—the shrill, fingernails-on-chalkboard, spine-tingling sound of it could get him hard in a second flat. But that was with people he knew, had worked up to that point with. Not to mention he almost always had the benefit of having seen them play with other people. Could study their body language and responses without the distraction of balancing everything else in his mind while they actually played.
With Cosima, the sound hit him wrong. Like the crashing of fingers on discordant piano keys when you were expecting a sonata. It was fucking awful, turned his blood to ice and stopped his lungs from drawing breath.
Worse still than her scream was her plaintive cry of “sassafras.”
He knew why Hudson and Ian encouraged people to choose silly safewords. You weren’t like to say it during a scene and saying something like pachyderm could immediately break some of the tension. But at the moment, with her, it was heart-rendingly pathetic.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath as he dropped the single tail to the ground and unclipped the carabiners that bound her cuffs to the metal frame. Cosima was crying now, her ribcage heaving and he could see the offending mark through the rent fragile fabric, red and turning into a raised welt on her fair skin. And in the center of the welt, a split where a drop of blood was forming and would soon slip down her porcelain skin.Fuck.
Once she was free but still gripping the metal frame with her small fists, he hesitated.
He knew what he ought to do. Knew what Hudson or Ian would do. Take the fragile little creature into their arms and hold her, murmur to her, apologize, ask if she was okay. When she’d calmed, give her some water, food. Clean any cut with disinfectant and bandage it.
That was what he would tell anyone he was training to do. And yet the thought of being that close to her, of cradling her body and just as obviously handing her his heart—
Disgust rose in his throat. Not for Cosima. No, never for sweet, obedient, selfless Cosima. For himself. For not being able to be what she needed.
Roots had grown from the soles of his feet into the floor and he was stuck. Even as she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes wide and cheeks tear-stained, he couldn’t move. Which was when the anger flooded him.
He’d told them not to leave him alone with her, he’d told him he wasn’t capable of loving her, and yet those bastards had insisted.
When it was about members at the club or students Ian and Hudson were always spouting that “You never have to do anything you don’t want to do” claptrap. Except it wasn’t nonsense; it was at the core of everything they did, everything they believed. And yet when it came to him, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. And look what had happened.
“Stay there,” he growled, fixing Cosima with a commanding glare that had her nodding even as her ribcage continued to heave with her pathetic sobs, and her fingers clenched around the metal bars of the frame as a rivulet of blood worked its way down her abdomen.
Every organ in his body revolted as he walked out the door and pulled out his phone. But it didn’t stop him from texting his partners:
She needs you.