Page 31 of Salt in the Wound
I was dizzy, already leaned forward against the padded cross for support, and when he flicked the flogger across my back for the first time, my eyes slid closed without me meaning for them to. He was narrating what he was doing, explaining where he’d strike and the places he’d avoid, and it was only the rough coldness of his voice that kept me somewhat tethered.
Otherwise, I might have floated right up into the air.
You cannot, I tried to remind myself.You have to keep a clear head.
But I wasn’t an actress, and even if I were, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Something about the things Mark did—it was more potent than any liquor Sister Mary Alice kept in her desk, as heady as the most euphoric, agonized prayer. Even through my bike shorts, the flogger bit me and pushed me. Reached into a place in my soul that I normally only let God see.
“After a good deal of this,” Mark said after several minutes of flogging my shoulders, backside, and thighs, “a submissive would be lost in their own world. Limp. Docile.” He wasn’t flogging me anymore, and I could hear him as he came closer. He was close enough now that I could feel his breath on my neck, ruffling the hair that had escaped from my twin French braids.
“You could flog them more,” he said, his voice low, “or get something worse, a crop or a cane. You could get them to beg you for it. You could get them to beg you for anything.”
His words were as seductive as the flogger tails had been. Maybe more.
You could get them to beg you for anything.
“What do you do?” I managed to ask.
A low noise, like a hum. “I like the begging. But now is also when a sub is the sweetest to touch.”
His hand came to my waist, large and warm, and then slid to the front of my stomach. My skin was exposed between my sports bra and my shorts, and goose bumps trailed behind his fingers.
“Of course,” he went on, “since we’re only putting on a show, I’ll only make it look like what I’d usually do.”
“And what’s that?” My voice was a whisper now.
His fingertips found my navel. Drew circles around it. “I’d reach between your legs and check to see if your clitoris was erect, and if it was, I’d begin toying with it.” His fingers echoed his words, rubbing a spot just above my navel. “I’d then see how wet you were for me. Wet enough to take my fingers, perhaps…”
Those same fingers swirled at the rim of my belly button, making me suck in a breath. I couldn’t move, I was cuffed to the cross, and anyway, Mark was behind me, a wall of Italian cotton and tailored wool and low words.
“Or maybe wet enough for a cock. Not that I’d give it to you; you’d have to show me you’d been good enough for it.”
His fingers dipped into my navel now, and I made a noise, a barely-there moan. I prayed he didn’t hear it.
“I’d make you come until that cunt was nice and flushed for me, and then I’d uncuff you from the cross and carry you to the table. I’d spread your legs so that everyone could see between them and see what you’d done.”
I could barely breathe. “And then what?”
His hand dropped from my stomach, and I wanted to cry. “It’s hard to say,” he said, his voice sounding farther away, and also a little more detached. “I suppose it depends on the sub. And the scene.”
I was too dizzy and dazed to push away the images that came to mind: Mark with his hand between my legs, Mark forcibly pushing my thighs apart for the pleasure of others. Him allowing them to touch me…use me…
“You may feel some pins and needles when your arms are lowered,” Mark warned as I felt his hands on the cuff of my right wrist. He sounded oblivious to the effect all this was having on me. “That’s normal. I won’t keep you in a position like this overlong; once a sub starts getting dosed with neurotransmitters, I find they start to sag in the cuffs, and that’s when I start worrying about circulation.”
He was talking as if everything were normal, as if everything were the same.
As if I weren’t about to topple over sideways from dizzy, delirious sensation after he uncuffed me.
Get it together, Isolde.I wanted him to think I was succumbing to all of this, but that wasn’t permission to fall over dead when the man touched my belly button—
“I think we’re ready,” Mark said, unlocking my final ankle and then standing up. I stayed slumped against the cross. “We didn’t rehearse any spanking, but I trust we’ll be able to pick it up in the moment. Do you have any questions for me, Isolde?”
I’d always been a good student, a diligent one, but I couldn’t bear to be in the lesson any longer. I shook my head—still dizzy— refused his offer of water and toast, and then practically bolted from his penthouse.
When I got home, I locked my bedroom door, laid flat on my back, and with only a second’s worth of shamed hesitation, spread my legs like someone had made me do it. My entire life, I’d thought masturbation was bad, a sin, but maybe that didn’t matter for me anymore. If I was willing to fuck a man, kneel half-naked on the floor for him in front of his friends and employees…surely this was the least of the sins I’d be committing in the name of service and sacrifice.
Not that it mattered. There was no stopping my hand as it swirled a long touch around the rim of my navel and then slid into the tight stretch of my bike shorts. I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing as I found the small pearl of my clitoris.
But I didn’t think of nothing. I thought of large hands prying my thighs apart. And of a cold, cruel voice asking me if I’d been a good enough girl to earn it.
