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He sits back in his chair and says in a light, playful voice, “Then I’ll punish you.”
I snort. I can’t help it. “Yeah, right. You didn’t even have a paddle in that box.”
“I see that you didn’t select anything for us to use tonight. You think I would need a paddle to punish you?”
I look up at him full-on. He smiles, dimples in both cheeks, dark curls tumbling about his face. Turning his chair to face me, he sits relaxed and comfortable, like he’s having a talk with an old friend. Even if that friend is on her knees beside him.
Certainly not threatening to punish me.
His big hands rest easy, one on the arm of his chair, the other in his lap. He’s completely relaxed, not vibrating with intensity or violence. He certainly isn’t aroused. I try to reconcile this image, this Charlie, with the man who gripped my head and fucked my throat earlier today, but I can’t quite get there. That Charlie wouldmaybebe fierce enough to punish me enough that I’d think seriously about doing exactly what he said, no matter how impossible.
Even if that means I have to turn off all my natural inclinations to wait naked and chained to his bed until he returns.
“Maybe you and I have a different definition of punishment,” I finally say, trying to hedge my bets. “I can take a lot of punishment.” I let out a long breath, closing my eyes for a moment with the memory. Skin tight, swollen, red and blazing with heat. Every inch of me screaming with sensation. More, always more.
“Talon wouldn’t hurt you like you wanted.” He still talks to me as if I’m a homeless waif he’s trying to convince to come in from the cold. The kind of dominant who thinks punishment is a few whacks with a velvet-tailed flail that barely heats my skin. “Did Josh?”
“Sometimes.” Though it never came close to easing that endless need crawling inside me, sucking away at my consciousness until I can’t think about anything else.
“Who gave you the pain you needed, then?”
I shiver, trying not to remember.
“Did you give it to yourself?”
Oh, I was tempted. I thought about playing with cutting, just to see if that pain would feed the ravenous beast inside me, but I never dared. Once I unlocked that door, I was afraid I’d never ever be able to go back, and it scared me too much to risk it. If I dared to take a razor to myself, what would have kept me from slitting my wrists when Josh broke up with me?
I shake my head and force my tongue to work, though my lips are numb. “No. He took me to a club sometimes.”
“When the need became too much.”
“Yeah.”
He shifts forward, making my breath snag in my throat, but all he does is pick up his glass of wine. Then he settles in his chair as easy as before. “Who hurt you the way you needed the most?”
I watch him carefully. “No one ever did it for me. Not completely. But there was a sadist at the club who came close.”
Charlie sips his wine, his eyes dark and mysterious, gleaming like bottomless pools. But I can’t tell what he’s thinking, not at all. This isn’t the piercing glare of the Master demanding my obedience, nor even the power of the dominant. This is just…Charlie. The man who loves his dog and comes to the vet clinic.
I’m so fucking confused.
“What’d he use?”
The memory is enough to thicken my voice, and I’m sure my eyes are taking on that foggy daze that Josh hated so much. “A whip.”
Sometimes I dream about that whip, and even without the cut of pain across my back, remembering the sharp snap the leather made against my skin is enough to jerk me awake in the middle of a climax.
“How’d Josh handle that?”
“Not well.” I let out a wry laugh, shaking my head. “He didn’t like that look in my eyes for another dominant.”
“I imagine not.”
I flick my gaze up to Charlie’s face quickly, but he merely smiles wryly, still casually drinking his wine. “I didn’t think he’d take me there again, but he did once, right before he broke things off. That second time was a test, one that I failed miserably.”
“Ah,” he breathes out, nodding. “You said that earlier and I didn’t make the connection. You needed too much. Meaning, you needed pain that he couldn’t provide, not that you were too dependent on him.”
Shame burns my throat like acid, but I swallow it down. Maybe that’s the wine talking to me again. “I was too dependent on him, but yeah, he didn’t like how much I wanted pain. He told me not to approach that room. But then he left me, and I couldn’t stay away. Not once I heard the whip.”
