"She's beautiful this way, Chris. She's gotten wet as I've bound her, because that's how she reacts to restraint. Come feel."
Sam felt Chris's fingers slide down her buttock and between her legs. She let out a soft moan and twitched against his touch.
"She knows she needs a punishment, Chris. It arouses her, even as it feeds something inside her, makes her feel better." Geoff dipped his fingers into her pussy and she whimpered as he collected her reaction there. "You think you can't do it, because you're standing outside this moment, believing this is about a man abusing a woman, striking someone you love. But holding her when she cries brings her comfort. So does this, in an entirely different way. It will release the negative feelings that have built up inside her, that have made her act so oddly tonight. Those tears you saw in her eyes a little while ago that she didn't shed? They're burning her from the inside, and she needs to let them out."
God yes. As Geoff spoke the words she hadn't known how to voice, those tears were thickening in her throat. Sam's fingers curled in her bonds.
"How do you know that?" Chris asked, his voice low. She wanted to answer it, but she wasn't sure if she could. Geoff did, though.
"It's something a Dom just gets sometimes, especially if he knows the sub well enough. Sam and I . . . well, we haven't done anything actively before this weekend, but we've picked up things from each other, the same way you and I have, the way the two of you have. It's harder for you, Chris, because being a Dom isn't your natural thing, but most of us have some topping desires. She brings those out in you. You're just wondering if they're right or wrong feelings."
Sam bit her lip as Chris's hand passed over her labia again, so deliberately she wondered if Geoff had guided his hand. "Does that feel right? Does her body language, those soft whimpers, the feverish look in her eye, tell you that you're right? You follow leads she gives you. Most times they don't involve words. You're a master at picking up subtle cues, Chris. Better than me."
She was sure that captured Chris's attention, because while she knew Geoff respected and admired Chris, he often played the arrogant know-it-all to tease his friend. But now he was being honest, keeping it all real and grounded, helping all of them.
"Look at the things your eyes and heart tell you about how she's feeling right now, what she's wanting. Talk to her, touch her. What I said to her goes for you. If it doesn't feel right, then you step back, and I'll do it for her, no shame. But I think you should try it."
"I don't want to hit her with anything."
Geoff paused. "How about your hand? You have large, powerful hands, Chris. See how her thighs trembled just now, and she lifted up some, thinking about you spanking her?" Geoff rubbed his own hand across both her buttocks, earning an aroused note from her working throat. "Talk to her, Chris."
He stepped back, and she waited. She could sense Chris thinking, struggling. Then her Master gave her the go-ahead to speak.
"Tell him, Sam. Tell him what's in your heart."
"Chris," she said, a raw plea. "I need you."
Geoff was right, about the difference between how she'd felt earlier and this. Giving them a simple, honest request from her soul, versus trying to push them into doing something, felt so much better. The results were far better, too.
Chris came to her side and dropped to his heels so they were eye to eye. If she'd seen only misery in his gaze, she would have exhorted Geoff to let him out of it, to step away from this, but she saw a different kind of conflict.
"You're such a gentle soul," she said softly. Her voice was breaking from nerves, but that was okay. "Yet you're fierce, protective. A fighter. I've also seen you get pissed, not in a mean way, when I've teased you too much or played pranks on you when you're tired and grumpy." A little smile crossed her face. "This is for every time you've wanted to paddle my butt, and I know you have, because when I've seen it in your eyes, it's made me hot all over."
His face tightened. The emotions passing through his gaze suggested he might be as swamped by them right now as she was by her own feelings. She had to look away and speak to the wall. "I'm telling you it's okay, something I want. But I can't talk about it much. I need you to understand without words, so that it's not my idea, if that makes sense. I need it to be something you want to do as much as I need you to do it. That's what Geoff is trying to say."
Chris skimmed a thumb over her bottom lip, drawing her eyes back to him. He tested the strap over her neck and ran his fingers beneath it, seeing how much pressure it was exerting. His care added a poignant element to his attention upon her. She teased his thumb with her tongue, and a muscle flexed in his strong jaw.
"Geoff was right," she said. "I wanted you both to take me over and use me however you wanted, not caring about the consequences. Not thinking about how you would both feel if you rushed this or hurt me in the wrong way, trying to do what I was demanding rather than what I really need." Those unshed tears Geoff had mentioned were scalding her throat. "It was a betrayal of what I value most about all of us . . ."
Geoff put his hand on her hip, the pressure of his fingers stopping her. "No. You don't get to be that harsh on yourself, Samantha Beth. You're just dealing with a lot of crazy feelings. You'd cut off a leg before you betrayed either of us. We know that."
She accepted that gentle reproof for the gift it was. Chris's brown eyes were reading everything she said and didn't say. She wouldn't be surprised if he knew the exact count of the tears on the brink of that dam of need she was barely containing.
"It's hard to understand, to explain all this, but you already understand so many things without words, Chris. This is one of those things. The more you think about it, the harder it is to justify or understand. So you've just got to decide if it feels right inside you. And whatever you want to do . . . Geoff is right. It's all okay."
She was running out of words, her heart pumping faster, the restraint making thought processes more difficult. "Chris . . ." But she stopped there. Everything she wanted was in how she said his name.
She let out a thready sigh as his lips touched the corner of her mouth and held there. "You do look incredibly hot like this," Chris murmured against her mouth. "You're right. I can't explain the why of it. Makes me uncomfortable. But not too uncomfortable."
She moistened her lips and he kissed them again, playing with her tongue with his own. Sliding his hands along her stretched arms, he reached her bound wrists. He caressed them, sending tendrils of sensation questing up her arms and into her breasts before he came back to her nape. When he broke the kiss, he studied her a long moment. Then he rose.
As he moved behind her, Geoff stepped back. Not being able to see either of them made her pulse accelerate. She wondered what thoughts were passing between them, what they were planning.
She jumped as Chris touched her, but settled as he began to rub her ass, making wide, firm circles, so wide the heel of his hand teased her labia. She lifted her hips up, begging for more, but he kept making those circles, taking his time, indulging himself. He'd figured out having her tied up like this allowed him to play with her as much as he wanted. And of course the flip side of her trying to tease them past their self-imposed restraint was that she was now riding a knife edge of sexual frustration. Yet she sensed Geoff's ultimate intent was to take care of that in a way she wouldn't soon forget. She didn't mean that in a good way. After all, sexual frustration could be a form of torture, too.
Whap! Chris struck his first blow. He came from below, hitting the meatiest part of her buttock. Was Geoff using hand signals to show him the best way to do it, or had they discussed it while building the bench? Either idea worked her up more.
Chris being Chris, he wasn't going to need much instruction. He stuck with that side for a couple more strikes, as she strangled on a moan and strained on her toes, lifting her ass even higher. His muttered expletive told her he didn't disapprove of her reaction. When he struck the other buttock, she cried out at the new burst of sensation. That seemed to i
ntrigue him. He took advantage of the breadth of his palm and hit both at once.
"Oh God . . ." She couldn't stop making sounds of pleasure and need. He swept a palm up her back, tightened his fingers in her hair, pulling, and her pussy spasmed when he combined that firm hold with another set of blows.
Back and forth, then across both. She was dancing on her toes, and he started hitting harder, making the sting last longer. Punishment, as Geoff had said. She hadn't realized a hand spanking could become this painful, but if Geoff was guiding him, he obviously knew how to take it in that direction. Her reaction was only encouraging Chris to make it rougher. She held back a few curses of her own, yet she couldn't stop straining for more.
By the time Chris finally stopped, she was gasping and biting back a plea for mercy. It felt bad and good, so she didn't really want him to stop, even though she was flinching at every blow.
"I'm standing behind him and have my hand on his cock, Sam," Geoff said conversationally. "He's figured out there's an upside to spanking your ass. I think he should jerk off in front of you and deny you a single taste, because you've been such a bad girl. Would you like that?"
She shook her head. Words escaped her for a moment, because she was imagining Geoff pressed up against Chris behind her, fondling his cock out of her view. "No," she said plaintively. "Please. I want to--"
"This isn't about what you want. Is it, Sam?" Geoff's snap cut across her plea. She bit back another of those sobs that rose up to try and choke her. "Answer me."
"No sir," she said in a small voice.
"That's right. Chris, it's up to you. Decision's in your hands. Quite literally." Geoff's grim humor did nothing to alleviate Sam's sensual misery. "My turn with her ass. You've warmed it up good and made it tender for what's coming next."
Maybe Geoff's suggestion to Chris had been intended to distract her from that deliberate threat. Thank God, Chris cooperated, moving in front of her. Geoff was right. He was impressively aroused against the fly of his camo pants. Her attention climbed to his face, finding so many raging, unspoken responses there, it stole her voice once again. Keeping his gaze on her, Chris unzipped his pants, reaching in to scoop out his cock. The shaft was thick and tall, the broad head baptized with glistening pre-come that made her want to taste. She licked her lips, communicating that desire, and he registered it with a glimmer of primal male satisfaction.
She cried out as Geoff struck her with something that felt like a square of flat rubber, the flexibility giving it a hard sting. She saw Chris's momentary pause, his check that her reaction was mixed with as much arousal as pain. She couldn't hide anything from him, from either of them, and she was glad of it, because it meant Chris started to stroke himself.
Geoff wrested a feminine grunt from her with each blow, and she pulled against her bonds, lifting up for more. She clung hungrily to what Chris was doing. Her pussy was throbbing, her nipples tight peaks below the press of the side piece of the bench. Her entire body was tingling, and her heart was so full of emotions she was afraid it might break her ribs. When Chris paused again, studying her, she realized tears had spilled from her eyes, and her lips were drawn back in a grimace of total frustration. Oh God, how could she want and not want something so aggressively at the same time, so it felt like she was in danger of being ripped apart?
Chris pushed his cock back into his pants, zipped them and dropped to his heels, fingers tented on the ground, his face close. She let out a strangled noise as the spatula landed again, vibrating through every needy nerve. Chris traced the tracks of her tears, and she burrowed her cheek into his hand, kissing, biting. With each hit, an excruciating arrow of arousal stabbed between her legs, all her limbs stretched and straining, her stomach muscles quivering. Yet maybe because of how Chris was touching her face, on the next blow, what was pressing inside her rib cage cracked through.
Physical desire was yanked back to a place where it hummed and heated, while her emotions shot her to another kind of precipice.
"Please . . ." She wailed it, and Geoff hit her again.
"Please what, Samantha Beth?"
"I'm sorry. I won't tease my Masters again. Not like that."
"It's impossible for you not to tease your Masters. Your very scent teases us, the way your body moves, the parting of your lips when you talk, the hint of your tongue. Chris is even now imagining it curling around his cock, while all I want to do is take mine out and shove it into this wet, pink cunt of yours."
"Please . . ." She would endure any amount of strikes from whatever horrible thing he was using for that.
"That's what you want us to do? Even though I said we weren't going to do that for the next few days?"
She shook her head, then nodded, and then started crying in earnest. There it was. The dam breaking. The erotic intensity of the moment was a contrasting rush of fire.
"But I want you both so much, all the time," she sobbed. "I can't stop. I've wanted you for so long, and now I have you, and . . . it's never enough . . . I need you so much and I don't know how to be kind, or smart, or slow, or right about it . . . I'm scared . . . scared it's going to be gone before I can hold on to it. I don't care how much it hurts, or how right or wrong it is . . . ever . . . just please . . ."
The incomprehensible words came so fast she started choking on them, her head pounding with the force of her emotions, her fingers clawing for purchase on something, anything. She'd been given a gift so large, she hadn't known what to do with it or where to start, only that she wanted to claw her way to the center of it and never come out.
Ever since the very first moment she'd met them, it had been here, waiting, deep inside her soul. These were the two men who would love her in the for-a-lifetime way she needed and wanted. It was such an incomprehensible treasure that, only by burrowing as deep inside that love as she could, would she feel safe and balanced with it. If she stayed on the periphery, gave herself a respite from the feeling, she feared she'd accidentally wander outside that boundary. It would slip away and leave her, a dream gone in a blink, too good to be true. Being captured and bound by these two was the security blanket she wanted, now and forever. But it wasn't the restraints that held her; it was the two men themselves.
As if emphasizing that, Chris released the strap behind her neck and her wrist cuffs, while Geoff did the same to her ankles. "No . . . don't. I can . . ."
"Hush. It's all right. You got to the bottom of it, Sam. It's all good." When Geoff straightened her with a steadying hand on her elbow, she burrowed into his body, curling up against him. He lifted her in his arms. "Here you go, baby. We've got you. We're here. Punishment's done. All done."
He carried her out of the humid garage back into the house. Down the hall and into his bedroom. When he pulled back the covers to slide her into the bed, Chris had stripped off his shirt and was getting into the other side in pants alone, so Geoff put her directly into his arms. Geoff removed his own shirt and joined them, the two men holding her so closely they had to have their hands on each other. Their solid bodies offered her warmth and reassurance, as did the low words they spoke to her as she cried. Geoff shifted to run his fingers over Chris's hair and shoulder, another reassurance. He would need to know that they hadn't done anything wrong.
Far from it. As things quieted enough inside her that she could draw an even breath and speak through her sniffles, she had her hands wrapped over Chris's hand where it curled against her breasts. Her lower body, her sore ass, was pressed into the cradle of Geoff's thighs and pelvis.
"I've seen that kind of breakdown happen when I was with Flo, at parties, but I've never experienced it," she said at last. Her voice was thick, raspy. Her skin was vibrating wherever either of them touched her. "I didn't realize how much I needed it until it happened."
"It was a little scary," Chris said, studying her closely. "But okay, too. Good. It was as if you opened yourself up all the way to the soul or something. The scary part was seeing how vulnerable you were."
"B
ut the two of you took me to shelter." She managed a soft smile that made her heart hurt in the right ways. "I don't think I could want to be anywhere as much as I want to be where I am now." She tipped her head back onto Geoff's shoulder. "How did you know? Did you see it happen at a club or party?"
He shook his head. "I heard stories about it from other Doms, because that kind of thing is more of a one-on-one, private scene kind of thing. They told me when a sub compresses emotions like that, such that she or he can't figure out what's going on enough even to talk about it, you have to know the best approach to crack them open. Sometimes it's to take them to climax. Sometimes it's this, the punishment thing. But a lot of it was just knowing. Feeling it. Reading your cues, the challenges. Some of the response, I thought through. But some of it was just instinct. Which was why it was a little unnerving. I'm sorry if I pushed too hard, Sam, too fast."
"You didn't. I don't think you did. Is it okay . . . Can I touch you?"
In answer, he curled his fingers around her wrist and drew her hand up to his face, letting her slide her fingertips along it as she wished. Geoff was an awesome lawyer because he knew how to project confidence in court and bullshit when needed to bluff his way into the right decision, but when he made a mistake, he learned from it. It was more important to him to actually be right than to appear to be right, especially when it truly mattered. And she mattered to him.
As much as she loved his stern Dom side, seeing the worry in his eyes now, him wanting to be sure she truly was okay, made her love the man even more. She shifted partly to her back, her shoulder pressing into Chris's chest, her hand resting on Geoff's hip, fingers curling in the pocket of his jeans to give each of them a shy caress.