“Enough,” I said firmly.
The boys piped down.
Except, I heard Kit’s whisper from somewhere. “That was hot.”
I scrubbed a hand over my mouth to hide my amusement.
My threshold for mouthing off wasn’t as high as that of Greer, KC, Colt, and Reese. So when Doms like Kingsley and I—or Dean, for that matter—put a foot down, the ground shook. Because the brats rarely dared to test our limits as freely as they would with brat-loving Sadists.
It was all a ruse. For chrissakes, I was hoping to spend the rest of my life with Noa. If that didn’t clue them in to the fact that I loved men who happened to be brats, nothing would.
Reese, Colt, and Greer continued their spiel on what we could expect tonight, and Cam returned to KC and me right in time for Reese to talk about the fourth station. Pain. With the sense of touch as the theme, the sub’s job was to find out how much pain they could handle.
My boy and I had delved deeper into suffering lately. Physical suffering for the Master. Cam was discovering how that type of pain affected him, how it shoved him into a mind-set where he existed solely for me, where my pleasure stemmed from his misery.
It was nothing I wanted in large doses, but it could be an intoxicating spice to add.
I took a sip of my wine and watched Cam’s cheeks turn pink. He shifted closer to me and hugged my arm, burying his face against my sternum. He was ready to begin.
“Soon, my boy,” I assured.
The information about the event soon switched over to safety—and the importance for the Tops to make sure their bottoms consented to everything on the forms we’d already signed.
Cam was fully on board.
Greer then went on to discuss logistics. And it was clever planning on the monitors’ part to only allow the participants into the main house. Otherwise, it would get crowded quickly—and in spaces that weren’t renovated yet.
KC and Noa ended up farther down on the list of starting times, whereas Cam and I were in the first group of five dynamics, one for each room, with us going straight for the blood play station.
By then, anticipation was buzzing within me since I’d read the specifics. I knew he was about to get mindfucked by sounds, by music, by echoes, by himself, to think he was losing more blood than he was.
Our audience…they would get to watch everything unfold on the screens.
“Are you ready to head up to the house, little love?”
Cam nodded. “Yes, Master.”
Cam
I sucked in a breath as River and Master assisted each other with inserting the syringe or needle or whatever I was going to call it. I’d had blood drawn at the hospital before. I’d gotten shots and vaccines. It felt sort of like that.
I’d been blindfolded the moment I’d stepped into the kinda chilly shower room, so I’d only gotten a quick glimpse of the examination table they’d strapped me to.
I was flat on my back, with one arm extended, and I felt the burning pressure right where the needle was stuck.
“Whoa, all right, there we go,” I heard Reese say. I was fairly sure it was Reese anyway. He had less gravel in his voice. “Steady flow, not too fast.”
I swallowed. My stomach tightened with nerves.
“You remember the rules, pet.” So maybe that was River. “At the end of the session, you will guess how many drops of blood we’ve taken from you.”
A “drop” was such a vague measurement, but I got the drift. “Yes, Sir.”
I heard the echo of a waterdrop hitting the floor and immediately knew it was a recording. We had surround sound in here. This was the whole thing. The sense of hearing. They were going to play tricks on me.
I was ready.
“Lie absolutely still, Cameron,” Master commanded.
“Yes, Master.”
Deep breaths.
I could do this.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
For a couple minutes, a sense of utter peace swept through me, despite the nip in the air, despite the nervousness. Master was with me. I trusted him with my life. He’d made me discuss boundaries and expectations and soft limits and hard limits and fantasies versus reality until my ears had bled. And it wasn’t one of those conversations we had once and then we were done. As part of our TPE lifestyle, those discussions and exchanges were part of our everyday life. There was always something.
And with it, came trust. A solid foundation I knew would be the cushiest crash pad for any mistakes we made.
Did my arm feel cold?
The echoing drops sounded louder now. They came more frequently too.
“Shit,” someone whispered.
I tensed up, even as a voice in my head told me it was part of the tricks.
My arm did feel cold. Right around the spot on my inner arm where the needle was inserted.