Mistress Felicia took a step forward and grabbed him
roughly by the right forearm, pressing his hand to her chest.
She strapped the cuff on his wrist and buckled it.
She released his right arm, and buckled his left. From her
bag she produced a long metal clip. She ordered him to raise
both arms. As soon as they were up, she cuffed his wrists over
the top bar of the bed canopy. Once cuffed into place, he could
do nothing but wait, not moving, and want her.
Mistress Felicia stood so close to him now that he could
count her eyelashes. She had the tiniest beauty mark under her right eye. He longed to kiss it. He longed to kiss her, to
taste her full lips, her skin, her body inside and out. “You want to kiss me, don’t you?” she asked.
“So much, Ma?tresse.”
“Your mouth has to earn it.” She raised her riding crop
and slipped it between his teeth. He bit it and held it in place.
“I’m going to bruise the front of your body first. You keep the
crop in your mouth the entire time, and you’ll get your kiss.” He nodded his understanding and clamped his teeth even
tighter on the crop. As sadistic as this task was, he appreciated
the consideration. With the crop in his mouth, he wouldn’t
be tempted to cry out. And the last thing he wanted was for
anyone in the house to know what he was doing right now.
He needed this city to fear him. If they saw him like this—
tied up, naked, vulnerable—he would never be seen the same
way again.
From her bag she produced a cane—two feet long and
made of rattan.
She raised her arms and brought them high. With a quick
and vicious f lick, she struck Kingsley’s forearm two inches
under the cuff. She hadn’t been kidding. She intended to
bruise his entire body from his wrists to his ankles. Down his right arm she worked, striking him in even intervals, one inch and then lower an inch, and then lower an
inch. The pain surprised him every time. Sharp, stinging and
deep… He knew he’d have red welts for a day from the cane
and bruises for at least a week if not longer.
From his right arm she moved to his left, hitting him again
with controlled but brutal strikes. S?ren had never hit him
or struck him on this part of his body before, on the smooth
skin from his elbow to armpit. But he’d cut him there one
night, short shallow slices with a razor blade on the inside of
his upper arms and inner thighs. They’d fucked afterward, face to face, chest to chest…it was one of the few times S?ren hadn’t tied him up before sex. Kingsley remembered wrapping his arms around S?ren’s shoulders, his legs around his back. Blood had covered them both. When it was over S?ren even had a streak of it on his face. He’d looked primal as a wild animal with the slash of crimson across his cheek and the firelight glowing behind him—a wolf in a cave unafraid of fire. In that heated, sacred hour, with his eyes nothing but pupils, his hair slick with sweat, S?ren had appeared to him like a beast, a demon, or a god. Kingsley hadn’t cared which as long as he could worship at the altar of the blood-stained
being who’d made a sacrifice of him.
“You do love pain, don’t you?” Mistress Felicia asked, her
voice low and sensual. As he had the crop in his mouth he
couldn’t answer in words. His ragged breathing and erection
surely told her all she needed to know. “I can tell. You lose
yourself in the pain.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as she ran her
fingers over the welts on his arms, renewing the pain. “Lose yourself, then,” Mistress Felicia said. “Go wherever
the pain wants to take you—into your mind, into your past,
into your darkest dreams. Go as far away as you need to. I’ll
come for you, and I’ll find you and bring you back.” If he could have spoken he would have thanked her. They
were the words he most needed to hear, especially now as she