Things like this.” She brushed the tips of the flogger tails over the tops of his bare feet and toes. Thorny smiled. With a light back-and-forth motion, Nora brushed the flogger across his shins. She worked her way up his legs, gently caressing him with the flogger, letting the tails lap and lick at his skin. Holding the flogger high over him, she ran the tips of the tails over the full length of his penis.
As she swept the flogger over his erection, Thorny’s hips undulated in rhythm with it, a sight she found terribly erotic. She looked forward to when it was his turn showing off his special skill set. But now all she wanted was to give him the flogging of his dreams. Nothing else mattered.
When Thorny’s breathing grew heavier, Nora moved to his backside, not wanting him to come until after the beating. She whisked the flogger over the back of his legs now and between them, licking at his inner thighs and testicles. She did nothing that hurt, nothing that caused pain. She wanted only to wake up his body, put his nerves on notice.
“Best ass I’ve seen in a long time,” Nora said, gently slapping the ass in question with her flogger.
“Thank you, Mistress.” Thorny gave her a little wiggle.
Nora stepped back and used a wide swing now on Thorny’s back and arms. She was careful to keep the pressure as light as possible. Nothing would jar him out of the safe space in his mind faster than a hard hit when he wasn’t prepared for it. No...this moment was all about pleasure...teasing...tickling...caressing...the soft stroke of suede on bare skin. Thorny was a vocal submissive. His sighs and gasps of pleasure filled the room. When she’d touched every part of his body with the flogger, even running the tips of the tails over his face, she stopped and tossed it on the bed. She came back to Thorny and put her hands on his hips, rubbing them to bring more blood into his pelvic region.
“On a scale of one to ten in the realm of impact play,” she said, “that was about a one. A whip can get you to a ten. I’ll take you to about a six or a seven and bring you back down again. We’ll go there together. You won’t be alone.” She spoke in a low voice and kissed the back of his neck between sentences.
When she returned to Thorny, she had the second-lightest flogger in her hand. She tickled his back with the tails and she saw a shiver pass over his body.
“You like that? It’s the deerskin. I’m going to start easy, at a two, but I’ll move up to a three quickly. Thighs, ass, middle and upper back and shoulders. No kidneys, no head, no neck. You will enjoy this, Thorny...almost as much as I will.”
Once again she started slow, lightly brushing, lightly sweeping the flogger over the back of his body. She caught the tips of the tails and released them in her first real strike. It wasn’t a hard hit but hard enough that Thorny stood up straight at the impact. She struck again across his back, spacing out the hits so he could brace himself for the next one. Soon his skin started to turn pink, then red.
“What color?” she asked. “Green means keep going. Yellow means we take a break. Red means we stop.”
“Green.”
“My favorite color.”
With the elk flogger she concentrated her efforts on Thorny’s back, hitting the same spot over and over and over again, raising the level of pain from a four to a five to a six and back down to a four again. Up again to a six and back down to a four. She teased him with a minute of easy light flogging and brought him to attention with a series of sharp hard raps that had him gasping with each hit. With the bull-hide flogger she gave him the roughest treatment yet. She aimed high then low, high then low, striking the back of his thighs and the center of his shoulders in quick succession. The sound the flogger made was a heavy thudding sound, not sharp but thick and powerful. Thorny’s back gleamed a bright fire-engine red. She did love the color red.
She loved the red, she loved the scene, she loved all of it. When she had a flogger in her hand she felt like herself, like her real self. There were days she wanted to quit working for Kingsley. The more clients she took on, the more money he made, and she would rather top for pleasure than for money most days...but even if she did quit being a professional someday, she would always be a dominant. How could she give this up? She couldn’t. She couldn’t stop being a dominant any more than she could quit being a writer, quit being Nora.
After a long series of rapid-fire strikes to Thorny’s middle back, Nora stopped and dropped the flogger on the floor. She let him take a moment to catch his breath. When she put her bare hands flat on his back he inhaled sharply. In the mirror she watched him, watched his skin ripple as she caressed him, watched his lips part as she pushed her fingers into his fresh welts.
“Lovely welts,” she said, pleased with her work. “Here and here and a big one right here. Does it hurt when I touch them?”
“A little. Don’t stop.”
“No chance of that.” She picked up her elk-hide flogger again and gave his back another once-over followed by one hell of a twice-over. Then she started pulling back, bringing the pain level down. She switched from the elk to the bull-hide and then down to the velvety deer-hide. Instead of finishing with the suede, she brought out her very special little flogger.
“This flogger will hurt but in a fun way,” she said, making a few practice throws that didn’t connect with Thorny’s body. “I haven’t used it on anyone yet, but you seemed to be the perfect person for a trial run.”
“I’m all yours, Mistress,” Thorny said, his breathing slower now as he came down off the rush.
She hit him square in the back and he flinched. She struck him there a few more times, but his back wasn’t her primary target. Once the flogger felt completely comfortable in her hands she aimed at his upper arms, the left and the right, the left and the right, until both arms were dotted with round red welts. When she finished Thorny was panting again. Short lovely breaths, the sounds of a man lost in sensation, lost to the world. She walked around his body and stood in front of him.
“I’m taking the blindfold off,” she said, wanting him prepared for the touch of her hands on his face. She lifted the blindfold and Thorny blinked. His eyes were heavy-lidded and his pupils wide as dimes.
“What was that?” he asked between breaths.
“Rosebuds,” she said, holding up the flogger. The tails were tipped with red leather rosebuds. Thorny grinned. “‘Gather ye rosebuds...’”
“You’re amazing, Mistress.”
“And you’re hard.” She looked down at his cock, harder now than even before the flogging. “Would you like to come?”
“Please, Mistress.”
She reached into her toy bag and produced a bottle of the finest olive oil on the market, which she poured into the palm of her hand. With her slick fingers she gripped his penis and stroked it, covering it with oil.
“Olive oil was used as lube for centuries before actual lube was invented,” Nora said, pulling on Thorny’s cock slowly and gently as his hips undulated in time with her strokes. He was a rod of iron in her fingers, so hard she wondered if it hurt to be that stiff for so long. “It still has one massive advantage over modern lubrication.”
“What is that?” Thorny was swaying on his feet, his head falling against his arm.
“It tastes a lot better.” Nora went down on her knees in front of him and took his cock in her mouth. Thorny cried out as she took him deep in her throat. As hard as he was, he didn’t come immediately, which pleased her. Pausing only to kiss and nibble at his hipbones, she went to work on him, licking from the base to the tip, swirling her tongue around the head, using her hand to pump the shaft as she sucked him with her mouth. He made the loveliest sounds while she licked and sucked him. Whimpers and gasps, whimpers and moans, whimpers and inarticulate pleas for something...release, mercy, more of this, more of that.
“Warn me when you’re about to come,” she said.
“A gentleman always does.”
“I must not know many gentlemen then,” Nora said before putting her mouth back on him and taking him deep again. Holding
him by the hips, she moved her mouth all over every straining inch of him. As she sucked him, he fucked her mouth, pumping his hips faster as his breaths grew shorter and shallower. She tasted a few drops of salt on her tongue and drew him completely into her throat. Thorny said her name as a warning and Nora pulled back. She took him in her hand again, gripped him firmly and rubbed hard. He went silent and tense and came in a series of spurts all over the cheval mirror in front of him.
Nora stood up and wiped her mouth off on a towel. Thorny had gone slack.
“Thorny? How are we doing?”
“We are so happy right now we could cry.”
Laughing, Nora unhooked his feet from the spreader bar and removed the ankle cuffs before standing and unhooking him from the ceiling. His arms fell down to his sides and she steadied him to keep him from falling. With an arm around his waist, she guided him to her bed and put him on his stomach. She picked up her olive oil and massaged it into Thorny’s muscles and welts as he groaned with pleasure.
“I have never felt so gooey,” Thorny said. “I’m a noodle.”
“Happy?”
“Blissed. You are so good at that.”
“The flogging or the blowing?”
“All of the above. Thank you, Mistress. I wish they had a Zagat guide for dominatrixes. I would give you five stars.”
“Would you like some water?”
“I would like some food and water.” He slowly rolled to his side making no attempt to hide his flaccid cock from her gaze. He seemed wonderfully comfortable being completely naked in front of her. “Can I take you out to dinner? I need to carbo-load if I’m going to fuck you all night long. Pasta is sex fuel.”
Nora grinned. “You shower the olive oil off your welts while I clean the semen off the mirror, and then we’ll go out for some sex fuel.”
“That’s the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard. And I’m a prostitute so you know that’s saying something.”
“Really?” Nora asked. “If that’s the weirdest sentence anyone’s ever said to you, you’re clearly not spending enough time with me. You should fix that.”
Thorny leaned in and kissed her, a slow wet deep kiss.
“How about I spend all night with you?” he asked.
“I do want the Boyfriend Experience at some point,” she said.
“Mistress...me buying you dinner so I can get in your pants? That is the Boyfriend Experience.”
29
The Boyfriend Experience
ON THE WAY home from the best little Italian place in Westport, the sky finally broke and hot summer rain exploded all over the streets. They ran, laughing and slipping, from the car and into her house. Once inside the door the both of them shook out their hair and shoes like dogs.
“Finally,” Nora said. “The humidity was hell on my hair.”
“Your hair looks very sexy when wet.” Thorny ran his hands through the wet waves and smiled. “You should be wet all the time.”
“Maybe I am,” she said as he kissed her.
“Can’t wait to find out.” He tugged his jacket off and hung it on the coatrack.
“Should we go upstairs?”
“Do you have any wine in the house?”
“I was raised Catholic. Of course I do. Red or white?”
“Red.”
“It is my color.”
Thorny followed her into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Pinot while she pulled down two wineglasses. He sat on the kitchen table and she stood between his thighs. They sipped from their glasses until Thorny took hers from her hand and set it down next to him.
“What is it?” she asked as he took her hands in his.
“Nothing. I just wanted to do this.” He put her hands on his shoulders and placed his hands on her waist. A perfect position for kissing. So they did.
“Now tell me if I’m wrong...” Thorny said, kissing along her jawline to her ear, “but something tells me I’m not the only one in the room with something on the brain. What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. Everything. The usual.”
“What’s the usual?”
Nora sighed. “My ex.”
“Ex-priest?”
“Ex-priest. Ex-lover. Ex-everything.”
“You’re thinking about him?”
“I think about him a lot.”
“When did you two break up?”
“Over three years ago.”
“That’s a long time to be hung up on someone.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Is there a little of the proverbial Catholic guilt happening here?” He wound his fingers into her hair, caressed her cheekbone with his thumb.
“There’s an old Zen saying,” Nora said. “‘To her lover, a woman is a delight. To a monk she is a distraction. To a mosquito she is a good meal.’ With him, my priest, I was all of the above—a delight, a distraction and dinner. He lost a lot when he lost me.”
“I didn’t hear ‘girlfriend’ in there.”
“I was his property, not his girlfriend. He was my owner, not my boyfriend. I am thirty years old and have never had a real boyfriend in my life.”
“Would you like one?” he asked, kissing her ear. Nora closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders again.
“Yes,” she said. “For a night. If you’re offering.”
He kissed the tendon of her shoulder and moved his mouth to her ear again.
“I’m offering.”
His hand slipped under her fitted black T-shirt and tickled her stomach. Nora laughed, already feeling better.
“Do you, by any chance, have any sexy lingerie in your house?” Thorny asked.
“I might,” she said as he pulled back to meet her eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“I happen to have a camera with me,” he said. “Takes pics and videos. We could do a little fashion show maybe? Maybe film ourselves having sex? One of my many perversions.”
Nora stepped back and looked at him. Then she crooked her finger at him and walked out of the kitchen.
“Oh...the crooking finger,” Thorny said, picking up the wineglasses. “I will follow that finger wherever it goes.”
In her bedroom, Thorny made himself comfortable on her bed. Shoes and socks off, jacket off, lying on his side with one of her fluffiest red pillows under him while she dug through her closet.
Thorny opened his overnight bag and took out a camera.
“You’re actually taking pics?” Nora asked.
“We can erase everything when we’re done. I won’t even pick out a favorite and ask you to send it to me. Unless you want to.”
“You fuck me all night like you promised, and I’ll consider it.”
“Start considering it...”
She kept her kinky clothes in her closet but the lingerie had its own drawer in her bathroom dresser. She chose three pairs of shoes—her red stilettos, her vintage black-and-beige Mary Janes, and a pair of good old-fashioned saddle shoes.
“Saddle shoes?” He sounded dubious.
“You’ll see,” she said and disappeared into the bathroom. She dug through her dresser drawers and found three outfits. The first one was a red-and-black merry widow that she paired with black stockings and the stilettos. She piled her still-damp mass of hair onto her head and pinned it in place, pulled down a few pieces to frame her face and applied some dark red lipstick.
She stuck one leg out the bathroom door and heard a whistle. She threw the door open dramatically and Thorny collapsed backward onto the bed.
“You look like Sophia Loren,” he said, pretending to croak. “I’ve always wanted to go back in time and fuck Sophia Loren.”
“She’s still alive.”
Thorny sat up straight. “There’s hope for us yet,” Thorny said, addressing his crotch. “Goddamn, you look beautiful. Pose for me.” He flicked the camera on and aimed it at her.
“How do you want me?”
“Every way I can have you. But for now, stand with your hands behind your bac
k and look left. Lift your chin a little and think of something sexy and elegant.”
Nora did as instructed. Thorny snapped the pic. It was a digital camera so he turned it to her so she could see the shot.