“I’m s-safe.” Her teeth chattered.
From shoulders to hip, he did his best to soothe her with both his touch and the calm of his voice. “I am loved.”
“I’m loved.”
“I don’t need to be afraid of anything.”
Her eyebrows quirked. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. He waited while she struggled to give voice to the lie, and that was okay. It might be a lie right now, but it wasn’t always going to be. He would make sure of that.
“Good girl,” he said, once she’d repeated the phrase. Patting her hip, he raised the hem of her shirt well off the target area. She had a small bottom, clad in a thin pair of white daisy-print panties. Her spine was too prominent for his taste. So were her hips.
Eventually, he would take care of that, too.
He gave her bottom a readying caress. An experienced dom, he’d taken many play partners. Every year, he took mini touring vacations to show off his whip skills, teaching it to others in exchange for a little traveling cash and places to stay along the way. It was a great way to see the world without emptying the wallet. In the process, he saw a lot of sights, made a lot of friends, and couldn’t count the number of submissives he’d topped—place after place, year after year. Some he’d whipped, some he’d spanked, most he’d fondled—little rubs like this, the tactical pleasure of a dominant man making physical contact with the submissive in his care. It was both deeply sexual and not at all sexual, and God knew, while he hadn’t fucked all—or hell, even half of them—he was not a monk. But this touch, this first contact of his bare hand to what wasn’t even her naked ass, was instantly the most seductive he’d felt in a very long time.
Ethen, the asshole, had obviously taught her well. Her head was down, her ass up. Hips thrust back to offer her bottom with her legs widely spread. Without needing direction, she’d made herself open to him. Even with her panties still up and all the feminine parts of her still covered, she was available to him. He wouldn’t at all have minded peeling that cotton cloth down and letting it fall on top of her divested jeans. He wouldn’t have minded filling his palm with the curve of first one buttock and then the other, squeezing and molding her flesh with his grip. He wouldn’t even have minded giving her a few roving smacks, just flesh to flesh, in a way that would have warmed her up for what was yet to come and yet, this was a test. Kitty was grading him now, and soft gentle pats or even warmups was not what she wanted.
She wanted relief. She wanted absolution from the horde of sins—real or imagined—clawing at her back. If he ever met Ethen a second time, he was going to feed the man his own teeth, but for now Noah put his mind where it needed to be. Taking his hand off Kitty’s trembling backside, he stepped back into position.
“Say it for me again,” he told her, shifting his grip on the strap, letting it become an extension of his ready arm. She’d chosen the widest one, the same one she’d taken to bed with her last night. Two strokes would cover the whole of her small bottom. Every stroke after that would ignite a painful fire, building on it lash after lash, without mercy or pause until the movements of her writhing body let him know she was done. That wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He could tell by looking at her, she’d been haunted for so long she didn’t know how to let go of it. He was going to have to show her. “I want you to repeat each phrase after every stroke I give you.”
She hesitated, her brow furrowing further.
“I am a good girl,” Noah supplied, helping her remember how it started.
“I-I’m a good girl,” she whispered, and he struck.
It wasn’t his hardest blow, but it wasn’t gentle. And yet, the only sign she showed as her flesh absorbed the impact was the catch in her breath and the tightening of her knuckles against the multicolored quilt. Her bottom barely flinched, though he knew it had to hurt.
Oh yeah, Ethen had ‘taught’ her all right.
“I am safe,” he prodded her.
All the pain he hadn’t seen in her reaction was right there, trembling in the whimper of her voice as she repeated, “I am safe.”
The crack of the strap wrapped the base of her buttocks, hugging them in its painful embrace.
Her breath caught again, but she didn’t so much as arch onto her toes. Anyone else would have been squirming. Noah frowned, not at all liking what he saw.
“I am loved.” Her voice broke.
There was no help for it, but to whip where he’d already struck.
Her hands spasmed—her fingers snapping open, then clawing up tight again. She made no sound apart from a shaky exhale.
What was it with doms who robbed their submissives of the cathartic freedom of expressing their pain in movement. Bucking, writhing, crying—there was beauty to be seen in the full wallow of the hurt as it engulfed them.
“I-I-I d-don’t ha-have—” She blinked rapidly against the shine of rising tears.
“To be afraid of anything,” he said, helping her through it, and swung.
The crack of the strap filled the tiny room, sharp as a gunshot and the impact low enough to catch not only the lower swells of her bottom but the excruciatingly sensitive sit-spot as well.
Kitty’s mouth gaped in the scream she refused to let out. Her ass and thighs shook, her will fighting back against the involuntary reaction of muscles locked in a fight for self-preservation.
Noah touched her bottom again, offering caressing comfort as he checked her. He could feel the heat of her pain rising through the layers of already swelling flesh and the pale cloth of her panties. Bright swathes of crimson extended out beyond the hug of white elastic to stain both sides of her bottom and even down onto the tops of her thighs. That color marked the extent of his target, he would go no further than that. He didn’t need to.
“This isn’t a punishment,” he reminded, cupping first one burning ass cheek and then the other. “This is a cleansing. Take all the time you need. We’ll continue when you say; it’s over when you say.”
