Page 119 of Masters of Pleasure
Is it, though?
Mistress Julie clapped her hands together.Standing in the center of the room, the shortest person in the room, she effortlessly drew all eyes to her with nothing more than that simple sound.
“Submissives, sit up.Dominants, stand behind them.Everyone, face me.”
All the submissives moved, almost as one, getting into a sitting position on their spanking benches, facing Mistress Julie.Because of the angle of the ‘bench,’ the perch seemed a little precarious, but none of them spoke up to complain.Not that Nick could blame them for their silence.
“Submissives, close your eyes.Now, Dominants, I want you to raise your hand if you were worried about spanking your submissive too hard.”
Gritting his teeth, not liking he had to admit to it, Nick raised his hand.He wasn’t the first to do so, he realized with relief.Connor’s hand had shot up, Q raised his hand at about the same rate as Nick, and even Sam raised her hand tentatively.Knowing they were all in the same boat, feeling the same way, made him feel a little better about his inability to reconcile what he knew with what he felt.
“Dominants, lower your hands.Submissives, raise your hands if you felt like your Dominant spanked you hard enough.”
Not one hand went up.Freddy did a little waving thing in front of him, gesturing ‘so-so.’Sam’s face flushed red hot.Nick’s stomach sank.Looking directly across the room at Q, he saw his own feelings reflected in the other man’s expression when their somber gazes met.
The feeling of failure did not sit well.He could tell from the way Avery’s shoulders hunched forward, she didn’t like not raising her hand but was too honest to lie to spare his feelings.
“Submissives, you may open your eyes.”Mistress Julie smiled reassuringly at the subs, then raised her gazes to address the Dominants.“One of the things we’ll be working on in this class is learning limits, emotional and physical, both your submissives’ and yours.You should never push yourself into emotional harm because of your submissives’ needs, but by that same token, you need to trust your submissive to know what their needs are.I don’t think anyone in here got even close to a submissive using a slowdown word, much less a safe word.”
Well, Nick felt called out.
Unfortunately, despite what Mistress Julie said, he wasn’t sure it was going to get any easier.
ChapterEighteen
Avery
Well,that could have gone better.
Avery sighed inwardly as she watched Nick hurry out the door of the main room.She knew he had to get back to work and finish planning out the specials for the week, but she couldn’t help but feel he was running away from her.Running away from the class.Not a great feeling.
“Hey, you okay?”Iris sidled up beside her, looking at her curiously.“Did Nick start spanking really hard or something?”
They hadn’t gotten to flogging or whipping today, and Avery wasn’t sure how he was going to handle that when they did.Ifhe was going to handle it.All evidence to the contrary at the moment.Now, she did sigh aloud.
“No.I wish.”
“Yeah, me, too.Although Q did get better.”Iris’ head tilted as she looked across the room to where her partner for the evening and Connor were talking to Mistress Julie.Morgan was beside Connor, one arm looped through his, the other patting his bulging bicep comfortingly.Sam stood off to the side, looking at her phone, but she kept glancing over at Mistress Julie as if she was trying to decide whether to join them.“I can understand why Connor was afraid to use too much force.He’s built like Superman and probably could have broken Morgan in half.”
Biting back the protest that Nick was really strong, too—he was, but no one in the class was built like Connor—Avery laughed.Poor Connor.If the Doms were struggling with not wanting to hurt the submissive they were working with, he would struggle the most.He really looked like he could easily break someone in half.
“Poor Connor.”Avery shook her head and eyed Iris.“Hey, I hang out with a couple of other submissives from the club if you’d like to join us sometime.”
“Who?Maybe I already know them.”
“Domi and Rae.”
“Oh, I’ve seen them around.”Iris thought for a moment.“Domi is Master Mitch’s girlfriend, right?”
“That’s them.”
“Yeah, I’d love to hang out with you all sometime.I haven’t made too many friends at Stronghold.”Iris shook her head.“I tried, but it seems like the majority of them have banged my brother and want to bring it up for some reason.”She made a face.
“Huh…” Avery didn’t know what to say.
“I mean, they don’t come right out and say it.It’s more like, ‘Hey, nice to meet you, I know your brother,’ and it’s the way they say it, then I want to punch someone in the face… either them or him.”
“You said your brother is Andrew, right?Isn’t he engaged?”Avery blurted out.She was confused as hell.Yeah, she wouldn’t want to know about his ex-lovers, but wanting to punch someone seemed a little extreme, especially since he was engaged.Did that mean Iris wanted to punch his fiancé, too?
