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“You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Master.” It’s a shamed whisper. I don’t want to make him angry.
“But you’re doing it anyway, for me. Just to please me. I love that.” I know what he’s doing, there, manipulating me shamelessly, and yet his words of praise bring tears to my eyes.
I start when I feel the whip on my back, but in surprise rather than in pain. It’s a gentle caress.
I hear the whistle through the air, and I don’t know how he’s doing it, but there’s nothing but a light sting, and he’s right—it’s highly erotic. As the tendrils snap against my back, again and again, my skin slowly warms and softens, and I moan in pleasure. The spray of leather moves up and down my back, and I’m drifting away to a place that’s pure, raw sensation.
I squirm with pleasure at each stroke. I think I could orgasm from this alone, although maybe that’s because Joshua’s daily ritual of teasing me to the edge of madness has left me in a constant state of achy arousal.
Finally, he stops and sets the whip down.
“You see, Tamara?” His voice strokes me like a lover’s caress as he frees me from my cuffs. I drop my arms and shake them, rubbing my wrists. My back is ablaze with a pleasurably achy sensation.
“Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”
He spins me around to face him, and with his thumb, gently tilts my face up to look at him.
“Now I’m going to ask you a question. When you do the rituals, you aren’t talking anymore, just tapping. Why the change?”
It’s like a bucket of freezing water dumped on my head. The abrupt change in direction startles me, and I stammer, stalling for time. “Wh-what, Master?”
This is a private part of my life. I hate when he pries into my mind like this. I’ve come to love the morning bath, every last bit of it, even the parts that felt invasive when he first did it, but this is a different kind of invasion, and it makes me queasy.
“You heard me perfectly well, Tamara.” Disappointment frosts his gaze.
My stomach curdles, and I hesitate—too long.
“Oh, sweetheart. Oh, baby. You were doing so well today,” he says reproachfully. “Now I have to hurt you. Do I need to ask you again? Do you want me to punish you twice?”
Tears of anger and frustration burn in my eyes. Why? Why can’t I just have one good day? Even one good evening? “No, Master. I stopped doing the rituals because they don’t work anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re supposed to protect me from harm. They failed. They didn’t protect me from you, Master.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my tone, and I flinch, but he doesn’t react.
“No, they didn’t,” he agrees mildly. “Which should tell you what they are. Comforting lies. You need to be able to protect yourself, Tamara, not use made-up rituals that will always let you down. Why did you start using them in the first place?”
I answer, even though I’m furious at this invasion. He said he wouldn’t rape me? I’d rather he held me down and shoved his dick in me. This prying is almost as bad as when my stepfather slid his fingers between my legs.
It’s only my fear of the pain that he’ll inflict that forces me to open up this most secret part of myself. “Because of my stepfather.” I glare up at him, tears of humiliation burning my eyes. “He was a mean drunk. He used to whip me with a belt. One day, he was doing it, and I was so terrified that I just started chanting in my mind. I don’t even know where it came from. It was like I was going crazy, and he tripped and fell over backward and hit his head. I ran out of the house and slept in the bushes. Master.”
He nods, his brows drawing together.
“So I did it again, one night when he was coming in the door, and my mother came home early from work that night and interrupted him.” I frown. “But he beat her up. Was that lucky? She suffered instead of me. It was selfish and rotten of me to feel relieved that he was hurting my mother.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was selfish and rotten of her to stay with a man like that, to sacrifice your needs for hers.”
Anger flares in me, even though I know it’s true. She was drunk most of the time, in a dreamy haze, barely able to take care of herself, much less me, but she wasmy mother. Sometimes she told me she loved me and I was a good girl, and that was everything.
“What happened to him?”
My whole body tenses up. No. God, no, I can’t do this.
“You’re about to lie to me, so I’m going to give you a free gift.” He takes my hand in his and looks me in the eye. “Don’t, and I won’t double your punishment tonight.”
Tears flood my eyes. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Please, Master. I can’t talk about these things…Master. It’s…it’s private. It’s mine.”
