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"Tell me, Josh. It starts with one sentence. You said you trusted me completely. Prove it to me. "
She watched and waited. It would have been a nice moment to simply indulge herself in the heartbreaking beauty of his restrained body, but the rasp of his breath and the intensity of his internal struggle came off his body in emotional waves that swamped her. She didn't need to see the visual chaos of his expression to know he was in anguish.
She wanted to know who had caused him such pain, protect him, heal it, kiss it away. Forgive him, if he suffered because he had caused pain. She thought she would forgive him anything.
"Start with one sentence, love," she said, softly, so her voice was like the murmur of his own consciousness. "I came here because I couldn't look in a mirror. Why are you here? What eats at your soul, Josh? It's just us here, and there is nothing outside this room. "
"I'm a monster. " It came out a whisper, but the raw pain in his voice made it even more potent than a declaration delivered in a shout. She heard accusation, judge, jury and conviction in his resigned tone, the sound of someone trudging off to hellfire with no hope of reprieve.
"Why are you a monster? What did you do, Josh? Tell me. "
"I. . . can't. It's too bad. "
She swung the whip, snapped it a hair's breadth from his ankle, so he felt the air a moment before the noise and jerked. Even Marcus started, surprised by the force of the move, his look of uneasiness quickly replaced by admiration as she brought the whip back in a sweeping, controlled curve around her calves. She was, for a moment, the image of the unrepentant Lilith, in the garden of Eden with the sly serpent coiled around her body.
"You have been bad, Josh," she said. "Bad for holding back on me, and Marcus, who cares for you so much. So you need to be punished. "
She considered him, then rose, came to him. "So you will be," she murmured, a silky purr as she slid one fingernail down the center of his chest, depressing slightly to leave a red welt, scraping a line down his belly, stopping just below his navel. She lowered herself to a feline crouch, her breath heated, tickling just above his glans. Josh's arms became cords of iron, pulling against the restraints, and she wondered if there was anything more erotic than watching a powerful man strain against manacles.
She hoped the Salernos had made the bindings strong. This was no playful dungeon session. There was devotion here, and yes, intimacy, but there was also catharsis, purging and release. There was something painful in the room, and filled with rage, and it wanted its freedom.
She hoped to God she knew what she was doing, because at this point what was happening had taken on a life of its own. The reward might be a leap forward in trust and love, a binding of the souls, or it could destroy them.
They'd both been there, to that point of soul destruction. Now, whether they were fools or hopeless romantics, they were pushing the envelope again to see if they could find in each other what they had hoped to find the time before and failed. The result was going to be fire, but would it be conflagration, purification or resurrection?
"God, you are so gorgeous. " She slid the butt of the whip along the inside of his calf, the ticklish indentation behind his knee, trailed it along his inner thigh. She could almost feel the heat pulsing from his captured cock. She coiled the whip behind his leg, tightened the slack so it pressed into his thigh. She leaned in and bit him there, soothing the pain with a warm swirl of the tongue, savoring the warm taste of his skin, the quivering and bunched muscle under her teeth. Her ear brushed his cock. He rasped out her name, a plea. Her eyes lingered on the tight clench-and-release spasms of his buttocks. He could not stop his body from imitating what it wanted to do, the mindless instinct of a dog humping a leg. Instead of amusing or repulsing her, the image increased her own hunger, for they were rapidly leaving niceties behind. Responses were raw, primitive. She wanted those hips pumping, jackhammering himself into her until she screamed. But not yet.
"Tell me, Josh. Why do you need to be punished? What did you do?"
She eased herself back into a straight-backed chair Marcus brought f
or her, so she could sit closer to Josh, brush her heeled boot along the inside of his calf.
His head lifted, his eyes and cheekbones masked to her, his lips moistening nervously, somehow appearing even more vulnerable for their solitary exposure on his face. "I can't," he repeated, desperately.
She twisted her wrist and the snap end of the crop zapped his thigh just below the bound scrotum, a quick sting, meant to raise the emotional response. He jumped, swallowed, and the quivering in his legs increased. "Please, don't. . . "
Marcus made a noise, and Lauren gave him a sharp, negative shake of her head.
"Marcus is here, Josh, and I am here. But in the darkness of that mask it's just you, facing yourself. I will take care of you," she reminded him, and this time the whip's touch was a gentle caress, teasing his balls.
"Tell me. "
His fists remained clenched against his bonds, muscles unconsciously resisting his restraints still, but she knew it was only a physical manifestation of resistance to the chains that held him in his mind. She longed to let him go, but he had to put it in the open between them. It was the sacrifice that all Masters demanded before they allowed themselves to be worshipped. Complete openness, no hidden corners.
Come on, Josh. Let it go, so I can let both of us go.
"She was a sub. She liked me to really take control. " The first words were thick, clotted as if they had to fight their way free of the grip of a festering wound, choked with pus. His lips pressed together. "She wanted me to dress her sexy when we were out, make her expose herself. We'd go to a club and she'd beg me to make her lift her skirt when she was dancing, let other people see her bare ass. She'd usually have me spank it good before we went out, hard with a belt, so it would have red welts on it.
"I liked playing with her, but I was afraid of being too rough. She could drive me up, make me get so savage with her. She wanted it that way, but. . . I enjoyed how much she got off on it. "
Marcus's eyes flicked to Lauren. A frown flitted across his brow, but she shook her head, putting a finger to her lips and he sank back down on the dais near Josh's feet.
The mask would let him talk inside his head, temporarily push away his surroundings. The outside became the inside, and emotions not normally allowed the sight of day became irrepressible, because sightlessness and being helpless turned you inside out, made shields and controls impossible.
Lauren had watched many subs fall apart. A slave was supposed to have no secrets, expose his or her fears, worries and longings to the Mistress, and the Mistress would address them as she saw fit. It was the way the game worked. It was that automatic vulnerability, impossible to avoid, that gave the Dom such a dangerous edge, that made D/s walk so close to the darkness.
Marcus removed his hand from Josh's ankle, recognizing, as she did, Josh's need for an isolated dark void of space into which to spill the weight on his soul.
