Page 25 of Regal Feather
He’d brought me one of the canes they had at the cabin. It was the closest to beginner level they had, and he explained I didn’t want one of the quote-unquote easiest ones because those broke easily, and dealing with splinters was the worst. I hadn’t planned to hit myself so hard that anything would break, but trusting the experts seemed like the responsible thing to do.
The cane wasn’t as heavy as I’d feared when Danny had mentioned it. It was relatively thin, too, and it wasn’t one of those that were covered with filaments and things that would make it burn ten times more. I’d read the stories.
“Scared as in you’re full of adrenaline, or scared as in you wanna bawl your eyes out and hide under the bed?”
I frowned. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.
I wrangled my hands together as I considered it.
I was full of adrenaline, of anticipation and anxiety, because CBT was not something I did often. I had done it when I was starting out and not being the most discerning. I was pretty sure the reason I didn’t like it then had to do with the Dom I’d done it with—he’d focused too much on what a man I was taking theabuse, and there was nothing about those words that had done it for me.
I kind of wanted to cry, too. I didn’t know about hiding under a bed, but…
The thing was, I didn’t want to cry because I didn’t want to cane my dick. The prickling in my eyes was all due to the shame that came with not fulfilling Sir Ismael’s punishment and what he’d be thinking of me. I didn’t know if it was rational or if it made anything better, but that was all I got.
“Adrenaline,” I managed to whisper. “And…I don’t want to disappoint him.”
Danny leaned back against the bathroom wall. “What happens if you disappoint him?”
I frowned. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah.” He snorted. “Don’t get me wrong, am I driven by the thought of making León proud? Fuck yeah. Do we use that whole don’t disappoint me shtick? Yeah. But deep down, I also know that disappointing him is not a thing I can do. Or, if it were, he wouldn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have begged him to do anyway.”
I thought about it. I didn’t have an actual answer. It might be because of the online nature of our dynamic, but I didn’t really know. I couldn’t be confident to say that Sir Ismael wouldn’t ghost and block me if I didn’t do this, just as I couldn’t say what it meant that, even though the fear was there, it wasn’t making me back down.
“Okay, I’m hitting record,” Danny announced. “You can do it, or you can tell this Dom to fuck off.”
I gulped.
Danny was impatient, but he wasn’t this impatient. I didn’t understand what was going on. He had his phone angled at me again, though, and by the eerie silence, I was guessing it was recording.
I bit my lip. The cane was in my hand, and my dick was, for some unknown reason, at half mast between my legs, with no cage keeping it confined.
Shaky breath in, I closed my eyes. I’d first thought watching would make it better, but the darkness gave me a boost of bravery.
This wasn’t about Sir Ismael, not fully. It was about me discovering my limits. Playing with them in a controlled environment because I could keep myself safe, and Danny was here, too. I wasn’t alone.
The first strike had my dick deflating almost instantly, the sharpness reverberating across my stomach because I had hit more than my dick when I swung it down.
It wasn’t…
No, it hurt, and maybe it was because it was me doing it to myself and not applying that much strength, but it wasn’t…
It was bad. Just not as bad as I thought it would be.
Opening my eyes, Danny had repositioned his stance, but he wasn’t saying anything or looking any particular way. I supposed that meant I wasn’t doing it wrong.
I just had to do it nine more times. To hold on to the tears that pooled at the corner of my eyes, too, while I was at it. After the first three, I just got into a rhythm where the strikes rained harder, where I wasn’t giving myself time to breathe through them, to let the pain dissipate. Instead, it built up, turning into this red, pulsating, throbbing heat that eclipsed everything else.
It was only ten strikes. I knew it didn’t take long. It felt long. It felt like a lifetime of that throbbing pain, of the motion of swinging the cane and hearing the rapid whoosh of air that came before I was hitting my deflating dick. The head, the underside, the base. I hadn’t done it on purpose, but when I focused on it, angry lines covered the whole thing.
No blood, though.
I breathed out. The sight of the lines had me trembling, the cane clattering as it fell on the floor. The lines would fade quickly, though. My skin had always been like this. I knew that.
“You’re okay?” Danny asked.
I sniffled. He squatted down. He’d been smart when he suggested I stay seated.
