Ashen Master 1

Ash

My life was singularly the greatest life ever fathomed, for two reasons. One, I was dead inside, the events of my childhood leaving me a hollow shell of a person. I was delightfully, wonderfully empty, devoid of pain, sorrow, love, rage, and the entire rest of the spectrum.

Two, I owned and lived in a fetish club. My small apartment resided in the back of a place called Sulfur’s, where all manner of debauchery and sinful gluttony took place. My bed was a monster fetish bed, complete with a cage beneath it. I didn’t just play in the world of domination and submission. I lived it. I had my own private dungeon adjacent to my bedroom adjacent to my playground and even when I took a break from working in the midst of the night, I could still hear the lustful house music pulsing through the walls, driving the blood in my veins that never reacted to anything else. I ruled that world, teaching safety courses on play styles, driving the fringe edges happily.

You see, I was the perfect dominant, the perfect master, because of the very fact that I was forever cold inside. My patience was never ending and I adored to teach, loved to train. But this wouldn’t be a very good story if I had been allowed to stay like that, would it? My life would have stayed that perfect cold emptiness where I reigned like a god and a king. I had started branching my business out, building night clubs and dance clubs. I was always horny and never went home alone.

But maybe you’ve guessed already what happens next. Maybe you already know that life doesn’t stay that clean, that perfect, even for someone like me who had perfect control over everything including my life, submissives, and slaves in training. Control was my drug.

And then one night, my world went upside down. I’ll give you one guess what sentence comes next. It’s three words.

I met her.

————

It was an open door night. Now sometimes my brother would come and play at the club because he kind of owned it with me. He didn’t own it so much anymore because he was getting married and his interest had only ever been mostly capital to begin with. So he’d given me full reign lately because he just didn’t have the time anymore and we both knew I was more than ready to deal with the stress and decisions now. But sometimes he still played. Not on open door nights, though, because he hated those.

They were when I let people in to try to find outsiders who might like to become full time membership card owners. You see, when I kept things mostly exclusive, people could play harder and darker kinks on private nights. But that meant I had to let people come and play on light nights to get to know them. And I loved those nights. Sure, I had to watch everything for safety and heavily monitor the private rooms, but it was worth it. There was usually more people, more lust, more fun. Even more enjoyable was the fact that there was also this air of shyness on these nights. Newbies would play with their clothes on, light exhibition displays to test the waters. It made me glad to see it, happy that people felt safe enough to try out their curiosities in my safe haven.

So when I saw her dead in the center of my open play area, wearing absolutely nothing except for a sash that read “birthday girl”, I stopped dead in my tracks. Newbie shyness? Not with her. She was manacled by light chains hanging from the ceiling and her dom paced around her with a light whip, flicking her tits to make her squeal. His name was Matt and he was one of my regular players.

He gave me a look that said he was having the time of his life. And then he lifted an eyebrow and gestured with another look that blatantly said, “Hey, want to play?”

Fuck me, but I definitely did. She had this beautiful sheet of straight ice blonde hair and these eyes that looked at me with excited fear when Matt noticed me. She wanted more fun and I wanted to give that. So this wasn’t even a closed scene. This girl was open for more people.

Even Deirdre hadn’t been so bold when she first stepped foot through my doors. Even she had tested the waters first. This girl was a wild flame of pure recklessness and delight.

Matt grinned at me when I stepped to her side and pinched her nipples so that she cried out. “Oh, please! Please!”

He laughed. “It’s her 21st birthday so she just made your cut to walk through your doors.”

I smiled at her. “Barely legal and oh, so bold.” I slapped her tits, one time each, then pinched a few of the stripes Matt had already left on her thighs. He was a fun loving Dom, a light player who just enjoyed a one night stand every now and again.

“Oh, god…” She was whining beneath my touch, arching desperately for more. Oh, she was nothing at all like any other submissive who came to bow to me. Those loved to please, craved to serve my needs. This one thrust her hips in shameless chase of her own pleasure, untrained and wild in my hands.

Matt held out the whip and I took it with a laugh, swinging it up against her pussy so that she shrieked and jumped. She thrashed in her manacles so that I had to force her back to position with my arm around her. “She’s not a very still little thing, is she?” I said it conversationally and she closed her eyes, moaning to my objectification, shrieking when I flicked the whip against her pussy again. God, she had even left that bared and offered for use and play. I took advantage. If she wanted it tormented, I would certainly oblige.

Matt grinned and drove his fingers into the same pussy I had just hurt. Her cry rose in both volume and desperate sexuality so that we both laughed at her. “Definitely not. She’s untrained and greedy as fuck, but she’s a horny little birthday slut, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” She answered it breathlessly, needy for pleasure.

And that’s when I saw it, the thing that would damn me. “Look at me,” I said sharply, slapping her cheek to get her attention. Matt seemed to notice the change in my voice and tilted his head curiously, but I ignored him for a second, my focus on her. She stared at me with those sexy, desperate eyes, trembling and so very horny. And I held her by her hair and flipped the whip in my hand to tease her dripping cunt with the handle so that she tossed in my grip, her eyes rolling with wild pleasure.

And I saw it again. It was something that should have made me angry, something that was drama on a night when no one wanted any goddamned drama. “You bad, wicked little fuck.” But my voice wasn’t angry, not at all. The words came out amused from me, actually, because she put me in a little bit of a predicament.

You see, there were certain rules and protocols at Sulfur’s. As you can imagine, alcohol was a highly restricted thing. I controlled it with hand stamps and paper bracelets. Once someone started drinking they got one of each and couldn’t actively play anymore, but they could stay around all they pleased and be a voyeur because everyone got off on that. And it was actually really rare that I had people try to cheat and drink more, but when they did my bartender had a long enough memory to recognize them.

But oh, my little birthday demoness hadn’t tried to get away with alcohol. No, she was high as a kite on something that I felt pretty sure was on the line of harder drugs. I shook her by her hair. “You had to sign a fucking agreement to get in my door, girl.”

She stared at me, her playtime fun interrupted by my change of pace. I kept myself quiet though. No one needed to know about this conversation, mostly because I wanted to handle this one for myself. “What do you-?”

“Do not play the stupid card with me.” I stared into her eyes, holding her still. God, if I was smart I would send her on her way home and not consider her for a card to get in later. Ivory would kill me if he knew the thoughts I was having, what I was going to do. We had both agreed that drugs were a no-go when we wanted to allow harder fetishes. It wasn’t fucking safe and it fucked up the entire atmosphere. No one liked it or wanted it.

Evidently I wasn’t being smart tonight. No, I was being impulsive. How interesting.

She shivered when I stroked her pussy with the whip handle again, thinking and fantasizing. I didn’t want to make her leave, you see. I wanted to bring her to heel. “Don’t tell on me. Please? I’ve dreamed about this place for months and months. Please?”

I grinned at Matt. “Don’t tell on her, she says.”

He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Damn it. And that was fun too. Do I need to do anything?”

“No, you’re fine.” I looked at the girl in my arms. “Say goodbye, birthday girl.”

“Wait! But I-“

Matt cut her off that time. “He’s the owner, love. Whatever you did, you’ve already told on yourself.”

Poor Matt. I felt a little bad. He didn’t care enough to ask what was up because he fucking hated drama. So if I said that I would handle it, he was more than happy to leave her in my hands because he knew she’d be safe there. That’s why he only took light one night play stands and why he didn’t go overly hardcore, either. It wasn’t his thing, which made me sad I might mess up his night. “Sorry.” But then I brightened. I could fix it though and I rather liked fixing things. “But oh, Deirdre is upstairs and she has her cat stuff.”

He brightened and grinned. “See you around.” For his little birthday playmate, he wryly shook his head. “Good luck, bad girl.”

Easy. Awesome. Little drama and no one around really knew anything was up. It was just her and I and she looked up at me, her high fucked up with this turn of events. “Please. I’m sorry. Please don’t make me leave.”

I considered her, undoing her chains and letting her wrists down. “What are you on?”

She swallowed. “Ecstasy and Adderall.”

I winced. Great. Drug cocktail. “Clever combination, I’ll give you that. Ecstasy for the pleasure, but focused with the Adderall so you can better hide it. I almost didn’t even notice it and that’s no light playtime drugs either.”

“I gave it some thought. I didn’t want red eyes from the Vicodin or THC and I couldn’t just do the E because it makes you scatterbrained and- I should shut up and stop talking now.”

Dear lord, she was a chatterbox on the stuff and I just let her keep talking in amazement while she damned herself. “Realized what you were saying a bit too late, did you? So it wasn’t spur of the moment at the door and was thought out. That’s good to know.” Yeah, I wasn’t going to go easy on her. But God, she was a delight in this weird, deranged way. She swallowed and tried to bite her tongue while I considered my options. “Let’s see. Not just breaking my rules, but apparently you were so very eager to get in my door and yet, you wanted to be greedy on your birthday, wanted to have your cake and eat it too. What a bad fucking girl you are.”

She winced. “Please. Please, this is everything I’ve ever wanted in my life. This is amazing.”

By then I had pulled her to the side and I lifted my eyebrow. “If it’s so fucking amazing, then why did you have to enhance it with your drugs? Why not come in sober to enjoy the entire experience for what it is? And did you really just decide to walk into a den of doms and sadists and think you’d play with one while hiding drug use? How arrogant do you have to be?”

She would have been sobbing if the Ecstasy wasn’t obviously giving her a fun time. It was clear that she looked somewhere close to wanting to panic. “I didn’t think about it! I’m sorry, I really am. It just sounded good and those two together feels good and I wanted to be here and it was my birthday and-“

I held up my hand because she was working herself up. “Hush. You’ll find it’s hard to move me to anger. Alright. I believe you.” And I did actually. That level of recklessness and spontaneity made perfect sense with what I had seen of her so far. Such delicious abandon she had. Somehow, her drug abuse fit with those qualities I admired most in her. She was a wild little bundle of energy, her eyes vibrant even if they were glassy at the moment. Now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense that she would have zero control. I didn’t know her but suddenly I was very interested in knowing her. Such a brazen little creature. How wonderful would all that impulse be when it was trained to submit? I had found that the most wonderful slaves were the ones who were filled with emotion and rash behaviors.

She was more of those things than I had ever seen in anyone else. She was practically made to be a slave. I knew that from the very beginning, sensed it from that icy place inside of me where I controlled and dominated. There was this cold freezer place inside my mind where I naturally existed when I topped or trained. It was like a cool mountaintop where I observed every little detail in the world around me without ever letting it touch me.

That cold place had never been so strong than the way it was when I looked into her eyes, drug addled though they were. Perhaps that’s why I responded the way I did. Because for the first time, I responded on an impulse and did something so very unsafe.

“Let’s see. I’ll make a little deal with you, one you don’t deserve. I’m feeling generous tonight, however.”

She swallowed, staring up at me fearfully. Her eyes were a gray that was hilarious because they were a contradiction. It was such a dull color even while they shone with so much glittering, rainbow emotion. “What kind of deal?” She finally asked it softly, still naked except for her sash.

I smiled. “Ask me to punish you for being such an impulsive, selfish girl. And if you do, I’ll not only allow you to come back. I’ll give you a probationary membership card as a potential eventual vetted player. But you have to ask for it like a good girl and be sure to let me know how bad you feel and how sorry you are. If you can convince me, maybe I’ll accept and you can earn back a second chance.”

God, Ivory would have fucking murdered me. But I had to make it a really good offer for her, one she wouldn’t resist, because, you see, I really wanted to feel her body shaking beneath my hands while I taught her what real discipline felt like.

————

Jezebel

I stared up at him, working through the offer in my head, even though it was all pretense. Sulfur’s was everything I had dreamed it would be for months, since I first heard of it and been so upset to discover that I couldn’t get in until I was 21.

The drugs had been a dumb idea, I’ll admit it. But it was my birthday and Ecstasy felt so freaking good. I really had to learn to stop keeping drugs around all the time. My self control was shit so when I had them just laying in the bathroom, I took them out of boredom.

But the only thing tripping me up was the fact that this man scared me. I had chosen a light play dom for my birthday because that was my go-to type. I liked to submit… kind of. Okay, I didn’t know if that was true because I had never actually submitted, if I was being honest. The light doms were always so easy to manipulate for me. I had this youthful appearance and I’d perfected things like my makeup to be baby pink and doll-like so that when I gave my top a doe eyed glance, I could always guarantee a good few orgasms out of the playtime. They pet me and teased me and flirted with me and I could wrap them around my finger and pretend like I was submitting without actually giving up control.

The owner of Sulfur’s had such a cold gaze in such a controlled way that I doubted my sweetheart eyes would do a thing to help me. “Um. What- what kind of punishment… s-sir?” Manners. Manners were good in a place like Sulfur’s.

He lifted an eyebrow, watching me thoughtfully where I sat, still naked before him save for my sparkly birthday sash. “So manipulatively polite. And it’s a fetish club, bad girl, so I’m sure you can use your imagination and think in the right direction.”

I shivered. His voice was hard and unforgiving, like his eyes. It screamed of cold control so strong and intense that my body couldn’t help but react. I had an attraction to people who displayed self-discipline because I had none of it in my life. None at all. It was kind of a nightmare sometimes but it was also kind of fun. So while I was attracted to those qualities, I also carefully avoided them. I was scared of real submission and how it would make me feel, scared of feeling something that might be too real.

But I really wanted to stay in Sulfur’s. His deal was impossible to pass up.

“Well? I’m waiting. Is my offer kind enough or are you going to leave? My patience is long, but not endless.”

I flinched and then decided to try my sweet doe eyes. I looked up at him with my most pathetic ones, blinking just the right amount. “Please don’t be too mean. Please?”

Wrong. Fucking. Idea. He answered by grasping my chin in a grip like iron and I instantly went wet between my legs just to feel it. I lifted up to him, suddenly hyper aware of the fact that I was a submissive female and he was a dominant male who was so beyond my usual sphere that he shattered my kinky radar. I liked to think of it as my dom compass because doms always had little tells that let you know what they were. For instance, they would stare at a potential playmate and finger their belt or let their eyes linger on her throat when she didn’t have a collar. It was hard for me to get interested in anyone unless that radar went off, unless I was on drugs or they were enough of a toxic asshole to let me pretend. The owner of Sulfur’s so dominated, though, that he felt more like a god of the bdsm world. He took my flirty little compass and threw it disdainfully against the wall to shatter it.

I trembled in his grasp, shook. “If you tell me what to do again or try to manipulate me with those Bambi eyes one more time, I will escort you out myself. One fucking chance, girl, and don’t play with me again. As it is, you don’t seem at all repentant. I suggest you try if you’re so desperate to be here.”

He wasn’t mean but he was so hard. Like stone. And he was unfeeling too. There was nothing that suggested humanity in him and that’s what scared me most of all. But even while it frightened me, my body turned so aroused and needy because here was someone who could handle me, someone who wouldn’t let me get away with these rule breaks. Everyone else did, literally everyone, and here finally was someone who might be able to calm my hellish existence. That’s what my body reacted to anyway.

My mind wanted nothing to do with him and his stunning control. My mind wanted to continue having my Hunter S. Thompson fun until the LSD took effect outside of Las Vegas.

But I really wanted to stay in that club too. I really wanted that card he offered. So I swallowed and gathered my courage and tried to keep my doe expressions out of the apology. “Please, I’m sorry I disrespected you and broke your rules and caused you drama during a play night. I’m sorry for ruining a scene and that I potentially ruined my playmate’s night. Please, please punish me to teach me and let me have another chance.”

His gaze cleared of its mild irritation, though it was still like granite. “Bloody hell, girl. That was fascinatingly good.”

I shrugged and looked down. “Adderall does make me focus well and I do know how to play. I know the rules.”

He laughed. “Oh, I don’t doubt that. With your sweet little girl voice and your polite manners. No, I don’t doubt at all that you know how to play with light little doms and how to manipulate them for a one night stand to give you orgasms like someone wanting candy. But those are ones like Matt who just want a fun time and don’t want anything deeper, who never actually demand any real power exchange.” He caught my chin again and forced me to look at him. The look in his eyes made me shiver with fear running up my spine. “You look at me when I’m talking to you, girl. You see, I think you’ll find me a little less open to being manipulated. So let’s see how you fare with some real discipline lessons. If you can survive, you’ll earn a play card. I would love to punish you, wicked kotyonok. Come on.”

I followed, feeling like a scared little fool. God, it was only supposed to be a party night for a party girl. I wasn’t as bad as my flower child days where I had done a lot of LSD and hopped on trains across states out of curiosity a couple summers ago and I had thought that was something.

He made me feel like I still had a long way to go and that made me shiver. I had never been so self conscious about my distant ways.

————

“What are you going to do to me?” He led me through a back door in the upstairs of the club and I had been mortified to realize he lived in that place. God, I had fantasized about getting in the door for months, longed for it, and he lived there and never had to go home. With the sudden jealousy came a spout of drug fueled excitement, where I’d told him he was lucky and it was amazing and I wished I never had to go home. And then I’d stopped when I saw his expression, so vaguely amused and patient while I rambled on.

Every step after that had made me more and more afraid. When he opened the door to his back office, I realized there were toys even back here and they weren’t the beginners’ toys that were allowed on open door nights like that night. Canes and full whips and all manner of hard play implements lined the walls.

This was his motherfucking office. I swallowed at the knowledge, watching his steps. I walked sporadically, in nervous skips, while his walk was even, calm. Jesus. Holy Jesus. I was so far out of my league it was insanity.

Alright. You can do this. It’s just one time and he’s not that bad. Just don’t look at his eyes too much. But of course after I thought it, I couldn’t look at anything but his eyes. They were like shards of the most calming ice, soothing me and my wild edges. Even the drugs had started to become boring in my life lately, the ups and downs of serotonin use and depletion from Ecstasy becoming so predictable after I took it once a week. But those eyes… Like soothing stars. They reminded me of pictures of space, how vast and empty it looked.

“Are you even fucking listening to me?”

Shit. “I’m sorry.” His eyes narrowed and I shivered. “I’m really sorry, honest. I was just thinking that I’m scared and I shouldn’t look at you too much but looking at you calms me down so I can’t stop and I really am sorry.”

His mouth relaxed. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was something else to calm me. “Take your sash off and bend over the desk. You’ll work yourself up imagining things if I let you get that far.”

I obeyed, shaking again at the strict note in his voice. He wasn’t anything like my fun, playful dom who hadn’t taken a lot of control at all. That dom hadn’t even insisted on things like honorifics, had just wanted to lightly play. No, this man’s very voice and every mannerism demanded I call him “sir”, even while he made me shy to say that word, made me scared to draw his attention to me at all.

He was entrancing though, impossible for me to ignore. He wasn’t even an overly large person or anything like that, but his sheer self possession and exacting command was the real giant part of him. I trembled when he got a bottle of something that looked kind of like lubricant and a paddle. “Oh, God…”

“Hush.” It quieted me, that voice, and I finally closed my eyes to just let it glide over me, to feel the comfort of obedience. And it was a comfort, to be directed, to feel like I was under some kind of structure when my life continually spiraled out of my control. There had never been any structure at all in being a wealthy orphan with a trust fund. No, I was blatantly a spoiled brat who was also too smart for my own damn good sometimes. When I opened my eyes again, I felt a little more secure, a lot more collected.

Just pretend like it’s a game.

But almost immediately my mind retaliated, This doesn’t feel anything like a game.

No, this felt real. This felt like I’d trespassed against a king of some kind by playing games and was going to pay for it. My thoughts shut up as soon as he turned back to me, everything going so still it stunned me. My body waited for his orders and command and my mind followed suit, going peaceful.

I loved it.

His eyes softened at whatever he saw in my face and he came back from the filing cabinet with a stapled couple of papers, flipping to one page in particular. When he set it down in front of me, I whimpered. It was the agreement I had to sign to walk into his play bar.

My heart thundered even while my mind was still blank and blissfully quiet for once in my life and I jumped when I felt him stroke my ass, rubbing whatever was in that lubricant bottle into my flesh with a medical glove on his hand. It was cool at first, soothing, and his petting was even, circular motions. I sank into that touch, gasping when he finished off his strokes with four slaps, one to each asscheek and one to each thigh.

By the time he walked to the trash can, threw away his glove, and came back, I realized what he’d rubbed into my skin. Well, I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew what it did. The burn from

his slaps sang into my flesh and the oil he used ensured the burn went on… and on. I glanced at the paddle and had to look back to his eyes to calm myself because it had holes in it and it was long and thin, hard finished wood. He met my gaze for a moment, holding it, and then pointed to a sentence on the page.

And by that time I had a feeling I knew what that sentence would read, where this was going. This is a lot less fun than Secretary made it seem. No, the oil wasn’t in that movie and this man was pure iron control that didn’t allow for any reprieve or argument. There wasn’t a touch of lust in his gaze, not that I could see, and that’s what made it all the more humiliating and terrible. Because I was dripping, my sex swollen with need, and I could feel the amount of cum between my legs. Surely he would notice with those eyes that had noticed my drug use even though I had hidden it really well. There was no way he wouldn’t be able to tell.

If he did, he didn’t address it at first. I couldn’t decide if that was worse or not because there was no heat at all in his voice. He was perfectly collected and I was laid absolutely bare. “Spread your legs wider and read that sentence.”

I obeyed him almost automatically and I was somewhere far away from my body, in a kind of shock that I would find myself here and with this man. God, his voice was merciless. It was terrible.

It was amazing. Peace flooded through me along with the fear and a hot throbbing desire somewhere deep in my being. “There is no playing under the influence at- oh, my God!” The paddle strike shocked me with how badly it bloody well hurt. My body jarred forward with the force he could put behind it and the oil burned into my flesh, searing it. I mouth the words “oh, my God” again into my arm, even while I curled my hands into fists and tried to think.

“We’ll be here all night if you can’t even finish the sentence. I suggest you give it another shot and try harder.”

I looked back to the paper almost eagerly, dying for more and dreading it all at once. It hurt, yes, but it was so much control and my body was heating to a wildfire desire as if it knew without thinking that I was on a one way track to hell and this was the kind of discipline that I needed. Pleasure flamed from it. “There is no playing under the influ-ence! At Sulfur’s! Oh, please!” The cracks were so loud that they commanded my attention, just like he commanded it. My usually sporadic mind couldn’t even think over the sound of them. He had all of my attention.

“Again,” he said softly.

I snorted through my nose, my pussy quivering in need, and I was suddenly insanely aware of the absence of sensation on my sex. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.” I had to gasp through it, the paddle crack in the middle that time. My flesh burned and I closed my eyes, not even reading anymore, just saying the words by rote. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.” God, yes, this was what I craved. It was as if some void in my soul had been filled and I could be safe. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.” The crack took my breath away and I had to refocus, taking some discipline from his iron control, loving him for it. He had so much and I had none but he was kind enough to let me borrow it, to teach me this feeling. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.”

“Ah, you like this. Your ass is lifting back in anticipation for every paddle strike and your little cunt is dripping on my floor.” I said the words he’d given me in breathless reply and took the paddling with it. “You’ll have to clean that up with your tongue when we’re done.” I said the words again, closing my eyes, burning alive. Peace, calm, stillness. Hot, flaming arousal. I said the words again and he chuckled. “God, it’s like a transformation.” He wasn’t wrong and I said the sentence, moaning with the next crack. “Now, let’s see what we’ve taught you. What’s something we don’t do at Sulfur’s, little birthday girl?”

Fuck me, I knew the answer was only allowed to be what he’d given me. For the briefest moment my bratty personality wanted to say something different but for the first time in my life, I was too scared. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.”

“There’s a good girl.” I clenched my fists and unclenched them for some kind, any kind, of outlet for my arousal, desperate as it was. “And your pussy might be so very horny and needy, so red and swollen and in pain, but I tend to think that all that painful need will only serve as a better reminder for you to exercise better discipline in the future. I might be wrong, though. What do you think?”

I closed my eyes, knowing the answer and thinking that it was evil of him to ask it like that. It was a lot harder to not deviate from the only sentence I was allowed to say and beg for his mercy, for an orgasm. This desire hurt on a deeper level than sexual need usually did. This was a kind that was fiendish for more release and more of his safe, wonderful discipline. I swallowed, thinking that there was no way he would give me that release after what I had done and begging him for it would only make things worse. I had to force the words out with a soft whimper, miserably saying it. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.”

The paddle crack was sharp and I felt my legs shake, closed my eyes in defeated submission. I was forced to admit that if he didn’t want me to cum, then I wouldn’t. He had me under absolute power and I didn’t want to leave it. I kind of wished I never had to leave it and its safety.

“Good girl. Maybe I was wrong. That took some restraint to give me a proper answer.”

Dare I hope? “Th-there is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s?”

He chuckled, amused, and paddled me again. “There isn’t. Now, when I give you an introductory card, what’s something you aren’t going to do?”

That shred of hope for some release from the wildfire he’d started with this act that made me feel so fucking safe made me squeal the words eagerly. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s!”

“That’s right.” The paddle cracked me harder than any of the other times and my ass felt like it was in flames from the oil searing it. It felt like I should be bleeding, though there wasn’t any trickling. “You’re going to be a good girl and not make me regret this. And what’s something that good girls don’t do?”

I shouted the sentence out, realizing there were tears on the tip of my nose. “I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry!” I broke, finally, and sobbed full on tears onto the paper and his desk, whimpering in pathetic sadness that I had caused drama and messed up someone’s fun, kinky night. It was hard for me to feel empathy, but this man shoved my face in it like I was an errant dog, made me face it, and suddenly I could and absolutely did feel bad. The dom hadn’t deserved my bullshit when I got caught, had only been interested in a fun night.

The tears poured down and there was a soft sound behind me and then I squealed, feeling two of his fingers penetrate me. “What are you- wait, I- Oh!” He twisted his hand and I whimpered, pleasure assaulting me.

“I have always thought that the sweetest little slaves come from the most uninhibited, emotionally capable little submissives. I wonder what you would be like with a little collar, kneeling and eager to serve once you’ve been trained.” The thought placed the image in my head of me at his knees in that office, naked and without a shred of reserve or embarrassment, waiting for him to use me at his pleasure. 

Arousal shot through my body, coursed through my veins like so much spiky poison. It was something so much more dangerous and intoxicating than the drugs. “Ah, you like that idea.” I couldn’t hide it, not when I was drenching and pulsing around his fingers, my sex dying for him to continue talking and taunting. And yet he merely stroked his fingers inside of me. Where other doms had spanked me to work me up for a wild fuck, he was nothing like that. He left me to hump his fingers, left me pushing back against the desk, while he was so unaffected and detached. “You like that idea so much you’re close to coming for me.” He was right. The blood was starting to roar in my ears and the flames of punishment on my ass were making me wild. “This gives us a problem together. I have a general rule of training and playing that suffering, disobedient girls are never allowed orgasm.”

He pulled away and I sobbed miserably, but I didn’t fight because there was still the terrible guilt he’d forced me to feel. “Please. Please.” I mewled it against the desk, wondering if he would give me any kind of release at all or at least give me more pain to make this feel better.

“Exceptions to my rules cost you something, Pet. I do make them, but you’ll have to make a deal with the devil, so to speak.” I looked up at him, sniffling, pathetic, humiliated. God, I was on Ecstasy and my emotions were still a mess. They were all over the place, a whirlwind inside of me.

His eyes anchored me enough to let me speak and think a little more clearly. “What do you mean?”

He stroked my hair, the paddle laid to the side, and his eyes were stern amusement. Still like ice, still like protective stone that could keep me safe from even myself. “Well, this was all so you could earn an introductory card. I can make you cum, make you scream so loud it’ll hurt your fucking throat, but if I do then it will cost you, say, five more punishments. Just so I can be sure I get my message across, you understand.”

“F-five?”

That cool amusement deepened. “Five. I think a week, less a day, worth of punishment with orgasms will make up for one without.”

Five. With. Orgasms. Five more where I could see those safe eyes and feel his control, borrow it for just a little while. “Yes, please, sir! Please!”

He laughed. “I had a feeling you might agree that to be fair.” I didn’t care about his softly mocking voice, didn’t care that I had agreed to five more days of pain, didn’t care about anything besides getting his fingers or anything else back inside of me. I whimpered when he lifted the paddle instead and held it in front of my face. “Now, show me how grateful you are for my lesson. Kiss my paddle.”

God. Every degradation was another flame, another spark on an already insane bonfire. “Yes, sir.” I obeyed because I wanted these wild things. They somehow felt restrained even while they fed my need for depravity and dark intensity.

“Good girl. Now thank me for your punishment. Be a polite, good little submissive for me.”

I moaned, arching on his table. “Thank you for my punishment, sir.” My voice was breathy and didn’t even sound like myself. No, this girl sounded sweet and happy rather than giddy and insane.

“Very pretty. See how good you can be with some discipline? Let’s see how five more days will do you.”

He didn’t give me his fingers back. He used the paddle handle instead and I choked, clinging to his desk with my nails clawed into the hardwood like a lioness in a frenzy. I squealed when he filled me with the handle, sobbing and whining for more. I was facing a transparent chest of dildos and forced to acknowledge that this was on purpose. Fucking me with the object of my punishment was another lesson, a harsh one. 

And I didn’t care. No, I lifted on the table, my world narrowed down to one concern and that was finishing this, finding my release. He held me still with one hand on my lower back and pumped me so hard and fast that I could hear the filthy sound of all the cum I had dripped. And I would love to say that it was the sex that threw me over, but it wasn’t. It was the fact that he was barely even touching me. He stood distant from me and when I looked up at him, he watched with a deliberately dispassionate gaze, as if completely unaffected.

It was the fact that while he pumped me and watched with that gaze, he finally lifted an eyebrow and softly said, “Go on. Take what you need like a good little slut.”

I squealed to the sound of that voice, so cruelly cold and calm while I fell apart, the orgasm so dark and from a deeper place than any other orgasm I’d ever had. I had never felt so safe to let go, had never felt like such a plaything under such controlled hands.

It terrified me how much I loved it, scared the hell out of me. And I had agreed to five more days of it.

He pulled away when I was still trembling, only to lift me by my hair and hold the paddle handle to my lips. “Open up and clean this.” Obediently I did, still high from that intense pleasure, loving every filthy word, delighted by the fact that I was licking my own mess off the toy that had punished me. He frowned while he watched me and pulled the paddle handle away for a moment before he lifted me to stand straight in front of him, his hand still in my hair. “I said to clean it. Open up and suck, girl.” I moaned and obeyed again, but this time he took over, thrusting the handle between my lips while I closed my eyes and tried to not climb towards orgasm again. His facefucking was brutal, tickling my throat so that I choked and whined, but he made me take it, twisting it so that it was licked clean. “That’s how you clean my toys off. Now, let’s try the floor, kotik, and this time if I see any cum left on it, we’ll start it all over again without the orgasm, until you get it right.”

I dropped to my hands and knees and licked while he placed one of his Harley Davidson boots on my neck and made me bow lower.

And even after all that? He still wasn’t done. “Now, place your hands on the back of your neck, spread you legs like a horny little bitch in heat, and stay on your hands and knees in the fucking floor until I come back and get you.” And he left me just like that, placing the tear stained entry agreement beside me so that I could see that sentence for the next thirty minutes of time out.

There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.

————

Ash

Jesus, mother of fucking Mary.

That place inside of me where everything was icy and sterile, where I noticed everything as if I were standing on a mountaintop? That beautiful place that was where I had been made to rule from?

It was a hundred times more with her beneath me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because she was so obviously out of control, so clearly craving it. But it was something almost transcendent in nature with her bowed in front of me and bent for punishment. I had always felt a moment of connection with my partners because in that special clarity, I felt almost godlike, like I could see everything about them, notice every muscle tension and expression.

With her? It was like being connected on the deepest possible level. I just knew everything to say and do. I knew without considering it that I had to be cold and distant and have complete control to earn her submission. However badly I craved to fuck her, I couldn’t do it and somehow, in that state, my discipline and self possession had been something that made even me amazed. It had been impossibly easy to ignore my raging hard on. I had always been good, but no one was that good. No one could be near that heady, intoxicating scent that she gave when she was dripping cum and not struggle for a brief moment to keep a sense of restraint. No one.

And yet I had been that good. It had been something surreal, like a Chinese finger trap. However hard she pulled at my self control was as hard as it pulled back. Her temptation made me all the stronger with every breath I took of that delicious, hot scent of her.

God, the cream she had dripped. The only thing missing when she’d been bowed beneath my boot was a belt wrapped around her neck for me to pull and torment her with. I would have tugged on it while holding her down just to feel the power rush up my arm, feel the tension up my muscles, and feel that magical knowledge when I saw her back arch in panic that let me know I had to give slack. 

And when I was away from her, I didn’t even jerk off. Don’t get me wrong, my body craved the release, but I didn’t want to break her spell. Denial had never been my thing, but this feeling of powerful rush was the most exquisite hell. From the first taste of her humiliating service, I was hooked. She was the one who had been on drugs, but it was almost like she had given them to me instead. I burned for her, had to have her.

How to approach that topic with her? That brief insight and connection, as deep as it was, gave me a decent bit of knowledge. She was a wild little thing, flighty as all hell too, and obviously without many moral boundaries that most people had if she was indulging in drug use of that caliber. But more to the point she was without inhibition, a sexual creature who indulged in hedonistic behaviors, and she was a joy of emotional range.

Those were all delightful qualities in a slave and I hadn’t met someone who had them in such full nature as she did. She would be something exceptional after a month of conditioning.

You, Ash, are getting way the fuck ahead of yourself.

God, was I ever. I sounded like a narcissist, taking her as a foregone conclusion. I stopped and blinked, realizing that while I was lost in my thoughts, my steps had taken me to my own private dungeon, the one I so rarely used. I had shaped it with the intention of training a real slave sometime, as a room of pleasure conditioning, a Master’s room. I traced my hands over the locks and sighed. “Well, fuck.”

Because I realized that I’d already made up my mind, even by that point. You see, I had never really gotten to use my dungeon for its original intention. I had never gotten to have my true slave. It had taken a few years before I realized that my training dungeon fantasies might not be something I could make into reality.

That same cold place that made me the perfect master? It was the same place that ensured I couldn’t get close enough to someone to enslave them. Submissives I had been with wanted more, but I didn’t have that kind of more to give. There was no depth beneath my surface. There was only more mastery and more dominance, more of that perfect ice.

And sometime when I had her under my paddle in that light little punishment session, I had made a decision.

I was going to have my fantasy and she was the slave who was going to star in it. Like her, my moral compass did not point north and I had evidently already set my eyes on something I wanted. And my conscience was not registering that the object of my desires should probably not be taken.

This was… new.

Okay. So. Hmm. Well, I had options. She had obviously felt safe under my hands. And she was an amazing creature. Legality evidently was not a deterrent for my personality, but there was something else that I focused on. Her pleasure, her safety.

I don’t know if that justified the things I was willing to do, the fact that I knew I could calm her and make her safe and give her security. Because… if I were being honest?

I was absolutely willing to take her against her will. She made my kinky radar go absolutely batshit haywire with how submissive she was, even if she hid it. Behave, Ash. You have to be good, damn it. You knew this when you broke laws and damned yourself once that it would be easier to do it again after that. And you knew that you had to be good.

But there was another thought too. I have been good. I’ve been really, really good for years now. And this one is really worth it. She fit so perfectly to me.

Ugh. Not good. Bad Ash. Very bad Ash. The other problem with all of this was just how perfect my self control and dominance was, once again. You see, it was glaringly obvious to me that I could absolutely manipulate and ease her along a pathway that ended in my dungeon with gentle coercion and persuasion.

And I’d get away with it. There was nothing to stop me. She was just barely old enough to walk into my club and didn’t even know her way around that underworld enough to know better. She hadn’t even asked me for a safeword.

Fuck. Not good.

————

Jezebel

When he let me up that night he had made me stand in front of him, while he sat in his desk chair, and answer his questions. His gaze had been so direct that cum had rubbed against my thighs all over again and his voice was ever cool, demanding I answer. He asked me things like if I was a student, which I was. He asked me if I was off for the summer and the answer to that was yes as well. He asked if there was anything at all that was a pressing schedule that might get in the way of the timing for the punishments I had agreed to.

To which I had blushed and softly said, “I’m free to do as I wish for the next couple of months. There’s no one and nothing that has any demands on me.” And his eyes had flashed with something for just a second, the smallest second that would always stand out in my mind as the one intense lapse that made me shiver to see. Somehow it was even more terrifying than his iciness.

“You will come here tomorrow afternoon at one then and every day after that until your time is up.” God, could I be any more humiliatingly wet from his treatment? It had seemed a surreal affair when he walked me back out into Sulfur’s. He watched me dress with his gaze ever attentive and fixed my birthday sash with a wry smile. “Happy birthday.”

“It’s one of them anyway.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”

I shrugged. “The other birthday was actually a month ago, but I’ve forgotten which one is the real birthday now. When I first got my license, they messed the date up at the DMV.” Why the fuck was I telling him this? Why wouldn’t my mouth shut the fuck up? “And I didn’t want to go through the effort of changing it, so I changed my birthday with doctors’ offices and stuff and I can’t remember what places have which birthday now, but I celebrate the later one to be safe.” Motherfucking Ecstasy and Adderall.

He pet my hair. “I see, Holly Golightly.”

I blushed. “Leon the Professional.”

His laugh made me smile though, a happy smile. Freaking Ecstasy. I needed to shut up and get away from him and go someplace to let it wear off. But then those thoughts scattered when he circled me in the dressing room and my clothes didn’t do a thing to make me feel safer. “You have no idea. I could interrogate you right now and you would tell me anything at all, wouldn’t you?”

I shivered at the feel of his arm circling my waist, at the way the other hand snaked up until his hand curled around my throat. “P-please don’t do that. Please tell me to go home and sleep and come back tomorrow.”

His laugh was soft, threatening, and he held me tighter, watching me turn more afraid. “Perhaps you should think before you come to me drugged and so open to suggestion. Offering yourself like that to someone like me is a dangerous thing. I’ll take you up on it and you won’t like it when I do.” I moaned with shivery pleasure when his hand stroked down to cup one of my tits. He weighed it in his palm, as if testing the feel of it in his hands, and his eyes glittered with that cool look that sent chills down my spine.

He released me with a laugh. “Go home. I have more offers for you but I need you sane when I give them. Tomorrow at one. I would suggest you not keep me waiting, unless you’re just feeling extra flirtatious.” When he winked, it made me go weak in the knees and I was still shivering with dark desire when he released me outside his door, letting me go.

The next day. God. I hated it because I was definitely going to go back to him. That thrill of danger down my spine was like a lock on my heart and intentions. I had to go back for more adrenaline. My drug problem had never really been a drug problem. It had always been a hedonistic indulgence problem, a fact I was reminded of when he released me.

Because I wanted to go back more than I’d ever wanted any drug. It was scary how badly I wanted for more of his power and collected calmness. Maybe if I spent more time under that discipline, some of it would rub off on me.

I walked through the streets the long way home that night, thinking about him and how he had looked. He was more than anyone I’d ever met, far more of a dominant. I felt strange outside of his office. His office was where he ruled and I still felt like I was under his spell. It seemed wrong to feel that kind of magic and be outside.

Eventually I made it back to my college apartment. I didn’t know whose name it was registered under, but it wasn’t mine. I stopped by once a month to pay while I took way too many classes because I was torn between majors.

Right now, my roommate was gone for the summer and the place was all to myself. I had been so excited for that fact a week ago. It meant that I could leave my puzzle cubes spread throughout the apartment, where I could randomly pick them up and tinker with one as I willed, and no one would stop me. But now I felt lonely. It was quiet and the noise of the city outside the window only served to remind me of how quiet it was inside.

I stared around me at the clutter of my apartment and felt a little lost. His office had been so neat, too, everything in an obvious place. I mean, my apartment wasn’t messy or gross or anything but I had different books laid out on different tables, depending on what my mood would be and what I felt like reading. Cryptonomicon lay on the coffee table, God Created the Integers was in the kitchen, Descartes’ Discourse on Method was in my bedroom, and Lovecraft’s works were by the bathtub.

In the end I picked up Cryptonomicon and read myself to sleepiness, thinking of my “date” the next day like any junkie would, even while my body was so afraid of him.

He could get me under control, but what if that wasn’t where I wanted to be?

Isn’t it though? How wrong could it be? Aren’t you getting sick of the drugs every night and the ups and downs that go with them? Aren’t you getting tired of balancing the Ecstasy hangover with Lortabs and Vicodin while trying to plan out when you can take the next stack?

The weekend before that I had woken up counties away after having roofied myself so I could play a fun little memory loss puzzle with myself. I was pretty sure I’d been date raped, but the pastime had seemed like it might be worth it…

But now it was starting to seem so… dull. The memory loss puzzle had been too easy when I had Siri set to get me safely home.

God, I hated being bored, almost as much as I hated the idea of being a homeowner. Being tied down to something like that? Gross. Maybe he could keep me from getting bored? But he scared me.

That’s what’s going to keep you from boredom, you idiot. Being afraid.

Idiot was right. God, I was so confused. I had been confused since trying to decide on a major. It felt like I was deciding a final course for my life plan and I hated plans and now everything was spinning out of control and all I could do was take one drug and then the next to try to distract myself from the feeling of being a rat in a cage.

But now I could think about something else besides drugs instead. Him. I wasn’t sure if that counted as being any better but maybe sex would be at least mentally better for me.

————

He was waiting for me when I knocked on his door, feeling a strange blend of subdued calmness and leftover energy while coming down from the Ecstasy. The hangover was somewhere not nearly as painful as alcohol, but slightly more shitty than Vicodin. He studied the look on my face when I knocked. “Interesting. You almost look peaceful with serotonin depletion.”

“I’m not sure how much fun this will be for you,” I said softly.

“It’s not about being fun. What is it about, girl? Look at me when you answer.”

I met his eyes and felt that peace. He had these pale, green eyes and now that I was calmer and not riding a horny high, I could focus on the little details like that. Sadly, this kind of peacefulness wasn’t a real calm. For most people, it was actually depression. For me, it just felt peaceful in the sense that I wasn’t all over the place. It was a sad peace, but that coolness that he had anchored me again. “It’s about how I made a deal to orgasm and that six punishments with orgasm is the same as one punishment without.”

He smiled. “Ah, this makes me even more interested to see the real you over the next few days. Which reminds me. If you take anything and I notice you on it or on a hangover besides this one, I’m going to conclude that these lessons aren’t doing you a bit of good and we’ll start over until you get it right.”

I stared at him, stunned. “That wasn’t what you said!”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Unless your drugs are more important than the card you claim to want so badly to get into Sulfur’s. If that’s the case, then we can forget all of this right now and you can leave.”

I gave him a dark look. “Can I drink?”

“Lightly. I want you to exercise some fucking control and show me you can handle being in my doors. That’s the point of all this. Get that through your thick skull.” He stared down at me for a moment with something that looked close to his version of frustration, and even that was cool. But then when I glared back, his expression changed into something more wicked and playful. “How about we make another deal?”

I blinked, wary. Each deal with him felt like it should come with blood and a golden pen. And yet the last deal had ended up with me going back to Sulfur’s, even if it was through the back door. “What kind of deal?”

He led me to his office again, considering his thoughts. “You don’t strike me as a very drug addicted person. You seem more the type to take it out of impulse and boredom. Does that seem correct?”

He made me feel predictable and I hated that, but he was also right and I didn’t want to lie to him when I felt like maybe he could control me. Maybe he would be the first person I couldn’t manipulate, someone who wouldn’t put up with my shit. That thought aroused me whether I liked it or not and I couldn’t ignore that. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re already coming here for daily punishment. How about if you get bored, I will allow you to come to me to curtail your boredom? To me only, mind you, and if you can come see me while staying in possession of your senses, I’ll keep you company.”

He practically purred it, obviously wanting my agreement. I flinched because it felt like a strange kind of noose was being slipped around my neck. “Will you just talk to me or get coffee if I want?”

His smile was wolf-like and made me shiver even though his answer should have made me happy. “Of course, Pet.”

“O-okay. Wait, I’m not agreeing to date you though, right?”

He chuckled. “Scared of my cage?” It came out mocking. “No, you’re not. Just for time. Besides, if you wish to spend more time with me then I’ll be able to see if you’re behaving.”

Even while the warnings went up my spine, my mouth opened. “Okay. Okay, yes, I’ll take that deal.”

“Wonderful. Now, strip naked and sit in this chair.”

I obeyed and sat, and he started to tie me with rope to the chair while I looked up at him and couldn’t look away. His eyes threatened and calmed me at the same time. He was the Phantom and I was a lost Christine. Wandering child, so lost, so helpless. The songs played through my head but they had a nature even darker than the movie had seemed, even though the Phantom had been insane.

Sir didn’t seem insane. No, he was all the more terrifying because he seemed more like the Christian devil, perfectly aware and willing to be so evil anyway. Each rope felt like a snake curling around me and he took his time, working methodically. Each second he worked and tied made me more aroused to watch, to feel my bondage so evenly and steadily increased. “Have you tasted clamps before, Pet?”

Every time he said the word Pet it felt like he said it with the capital letter, like he was naming me that. He had never asked for my name and I didn’t have his and now that I noticed that fact, I was afraid to exchange them. It felt like it would be a way to tie us together, tie me down like those ropes. He frowned and smacked my face. “Your mind always wanders and appears to go far too fast for your own good. I asked you a question. When I top you, I am not one of your playtime doms to be a notch in your belt. You give me your attention or I’ll find ways you won’t like to keep it. Now, answer me. Have you been acquainted with clamps before?”

“Y-yes, sir. Silver ones with jewels and that kind of thing.”

“Not real ones then. Do you know clover clamps and alligator ones?”

I shuddered and he chuckled. “Only from books and stories.”

“They aren’t as fun as those make them seem. You’re about to find out. Last night I was kind because you were on a pleasure drug and I was already breaking my key rules. This punishment will be more intense and more painful. But if you behave yourself and take what I give you, I’ll make you cum as promised. Punishment will not be and should not be pleasant, as a fair warning.”

I took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I’m scared.”

He held my gaze when he approached me with a set of silver and black clamps. “Deep breaths. Hold my eyes.”

I did that and realized he knew the effect he had on me. He knew that he was disciplined and my body craved to take some of that from him. “Y-yes, sir. Please be nice. Please.”

But I wasn’t asking for less pain really. I just wanted him to… I don’t know. He inclined his head. “I’ll be however I need to  be in order to teach you your lesson.” He slapped my breasts and I whimpered, dripping on his chair, afraid.

And I wasn’t bored. It scared me a little how far from bored I actually was, made me afraid of the addiction to his presence and how much power he could gain over me if he wanted. I stared up into his eyes, clinging to that gaze again for calm. God, he was like magic. Even when I whined and whimpered while he tormented and twisted my nipples. And then he softly said, “Brace yourself.” And the first clamp fell closed.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I choked, gasping even while he placed the other one. “No! No, please!” But I was tethered tightly to the chair, with nowhere to go.

“Shh. Hush. Breathe. You can do this, Pet.” I whimpered and sat still to try to avoid moving the chain. And it did get easier actually. Oh, it still didn’t feel good, but I adjusted.

And then something happened because I almost seemed to mentally sink into his pain, seemed to fall to it. It happened so easily, so quickly, that it was as if I had been born for that mentality. I stared up at him, wide eyed, and he smiled in pleasure. “That’s a good girl. Just let the subspace happen because it’s a nice place to be. You please me when you submit to your punishment as you’ve earned it.”

Control. Discipline. Punishment. Submit. I was learning a list of words that made me drip more and more with every one he spoke. I let my head fall back and relaxed into the pain. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. You’ll receive the crop this time.”

I gasped when he started, watching him pace and strike my breasts. He snapped it against the clamps, hard, so that every single slap was a trial. He decorated my tits while I was trapped beneath him, flicked me over and over while I breathed under his calm instruction. Once again, he ruled me with that look that nothing seemed to affect. Not the tears that fell from me, not the scent of my arousal which he had to notice. Nothing moved him. He was stone, ice, and I looked up at him and thought of those things and how much I loved them.

Because I did. Deepest calm settled into me. Not the depression of the hangover, but real calm. It was as if his eyes were an eternal winter, a place where there was nothing but calm white, the absence of color in every direction. I let myself fall into that look. In his gaze came a natural focus on his desires, which was what he wanted me to focus on.

Everything faded and my mind went still again. And now I had proof that it wasn’t just the feel of the Ecstasy that had made me feel like this with him.

“Good Pet. You’re doing so well and you’re such a sweet girl when you’re being taught under punishment. Now, when you get the card, what is something that we don’t do at Sulfur’s?”

He had my attention and it wasn’t wandering anymore. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.” It was drilled into me now.

“Good girl. You’ll be glad to know that Matt had a good rest of the night with Deirdre even after your little stunt.”

He watched me, watched every reaction and I felt as if the Witch King of Angmar had kept his threat. Thy shriveled mind be left naked to the lidless eye. There was nothing hidden from that gaze. It was terrifying, the thought that there would be no lying or hiding just how much of a selfish human being I could be.

But for once, it was okay to be seen. My reaction, for the first time in a long time, wasn’t selfish. “I’m glad, sir. I’m sorry.”

Pleasure whipped through his eyes. “Good girl. So there is some empathy available to you. Good to know.” He snapped the crop so hard that I squealed, and then yelped when he managed to snap off the clamp crushing my nipple. I shook when he moved to the second one, panting while he slapped… hard. So hard. He attacked the clamp viciously and my tortured nipple with it. I pant and then squealed again when it finally snapped off with the force of his strikes.

He wasn’t quite done. He came back with a clothespin. “Tilt your head back and hold out your tongue.” I whimpered, but obeyed and whined through my nose when he clipped it onto my tongue, the spring harsh. “Keep your head back like that and think about what discipline means until I come and get you. I want you to give me an answer on what it means to you when I unclip your tongue.”

I moaned and he left me there in his office, alone and staring at the ceiling where there was duct tape above me and the words written on it. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.”

I thought of text book definitions of discipline, considered the word from every angle, trying to ignore how horny it made me just to hear his voice saying that word. It was worse than any dirty talk I’d ever heard from anyone else. When it came from him, it made me drip like a river. I could feel myself being a slut all over his chair, feel it sticky against my ass. The clip on my tongue helped me focus a little and I reconsidered. What textbook definition would he want?

I whimpered when he came back, dying a little under the clip and needy for it to come off, but scared because I still hadn’t decided on an answer. “Now, I want you to give me a real answer, Pet. If I think you sound insincere we can start over.”

He released the clip and I whimpered, worked my tongue, and blinked at him. I was afraid and aroused, but somehow calm because of his look and his icy eyes. It was so freaking confusing. And in the end every textbook definition left me and I said an answer that made sense to me, hoping it wouldn’t sound crazy to him. “I don’t know, but I know it’s something that you have and it makes me happy.”

He blinked, then smiled. “I suppose for someone like you, that would be a wonderful point of origin, wouldn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure he could possibly understand how true that was, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. Now, let’s give you some release.” I squealed when he lifted the crop and teased it over my clit, snapping it with strict, militant hits. Each one jarred me and I struggled in the ropes that held me so secure and safe. I was held tight and I loved it. Under him? It felt right, felt as if the only thing tighter than such strict bondage was his leash. My arousal climbed until I pant in greed, taking what he gave me.

“Pet?” I met his gaze again, having closed my eyes with the tide of pleasure. “I would like to give you one last thing to consider. How would you feel about wearing my collar?”

I came, screaming in a panicked frenzy, so hot and abrupt that it stunned me. The climb had been a steady thing and then he shot me over and it was terrible, wonderful, bliss so hot it was almost torture. Everything disappeared in frantic sensation at the image of wearing his collar, at the thoughts I had been having the night before after he mentioned having me in training. 

But before I even came back down, I was already fighting for everything I had. “No! No, I don’t want to. Let me up! You can keep the card, just no!” I clawed at the ropes and I didn’t know why. All I knew was something about his question made me terrified. Maybe it was that if he had me as his, I was afraid that I would never want to leave and the eternal fear of being tied down to anything held me too tightly.

“Hey! Look at me.” He slapped my face and I pant wildly, unsure of how long he’d been trying to get my attention. “Okay, you don’t have to, Pet. It was just a suggestion.” He stroked my hair and I settled down under that touch, falling back to submission because that was easier than the conflict that raged inside of me. “That’s it. Back to what we were doing.” And I realized he hadn’t taken a bit of offense to my outburst, hadn’t even faltered at it. He was calm again, as ever. I had a feeling I could rage at him in hatred and it wouldn’t deter him. “We will reconsider someday when you’re more at ease. My timing was awful. Here, clean this.”

I sighed when he shoved the crop between my lips and suckled the leather and this time I gave him what he wanted, which was a sexual display, as I had learned last time. “Very good.” And I was calm again, his voice soothing with its approval. He cut through all the rope rather than untying me and tapped the crop on the chair. “Lick it up.”

And I did, turning hot off the flavor of my own arousal while he watched.

————

His remaining four days of punishment took on a different context after his invitation. I fell readily into his subspace, but when he let me up, it always scared me how deep he had taken me under those soft waves. It was like a lulling song, falling to his domination, so soft and sweet that I never wanted to fight it. Which made it feel all the more dangerous. The day after the crop he strapped me to a cross and used a leather strap on my ass until every blow was torture and I couldn’t think beyond “yes, sir” and “no, sir”. He made me cum with that same strap against my clit, smiling with a vague satisfaction as I did. The one after that was the cane on my pussy and lower thighs. And I came, screaming in bliss, to that same cane. And still the next day, he introduced me to the tawse and I hated it… until he made me cum from it. 

That was how all of his punishments went, an implement and then coming from that same implement. Each time made me feel more and more afraid. Until the last punishment. The night before that last one I was nearing panic, unsure why. I needed to leave his influence and hated the thought of leaving his influence. Each time made me more and more tempted to his training and offer and that made me terrified, made me whimper. I needed to be out of control again, needed to forget all of that and all the conflict, goddamnit. He soothed some internal problems only to cause a lot more and I wondered how I could have been so stupid as to vaguely think he could fix me.

That wasn’t how this shit worked. Life wasn’t a fucking fairy tale and a lot of people kind of sucked. I felt like I needed to remember that, so I did something really stupid the night before his last punishment.

I went and found the shadiest BDSM club I could find and found a guy there, one who had teardrops tattooed under his eyes in spidery prison style ink, and grabbed him. He instantly came across as more of an asshole than any kind of dominant, which was perfect. He had no self control, so he wouldn’t be taking me over, or in, anytime soon. Just to be safe, I offered him painkillers and it was even more perfect when he took me up on them.

And my punishment top couldn’t be very upset, because I didn’t take any drugs myself. When I took the guy home and he grabbed me by my throat, I felt sickened and it was good. My dom compass wasn’t going on enough to make me wet, so I shoved him to make him be meaner, and he was, and it wasn’t controlled.

It was head clearing, perfect. I remembered horrible pain in ways that made me throw up after he left, remembered an almost drug-like haze to that kind of pain, and that was it.

————

My phone went off the next day, but instead of the alarm that was to warn me to go to him for punishment, it was him calling. For a brief moment, I was concerned that I had overslept, but no. It was just his name lighting up my screen. I blinked at my phone and then answered, groaning when I felt so freaking sore.

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Hello, Clarice.” And there was a charming smile in his voice. Wow, I liked that actually. So far, most of what I had seen from him had been his hard punishment version, but I remembered his enjoying my references that first night. There was some lightness underneath the seriousness and I had just forgotten about it. I don’t know why, but that fascinated me. He was starting to fascinate me, like another puzzle cube. I wondered what else was under all that cold personality.

“Are you going to at least hypnotize me to not be afraid of the crossbow? So you can kill me with it when you get bored?”

He laughed delightedly. “Oh, it is fun to meet someone who knows the book and not the movie. You’re in a good mood today, Pet.”

I was actually. I felt a lot better after my little self punishment foray to clear my head. I felt filthy as fuck, like I couldn’t take a long enough shower, but better. “You’re in a good mood, too. You’re not making me try to define difficult words.”

“Oh, we’ll get there. You have one last punishment to endure before the card is yours, but that’s part of why I called. You haven’t taken me up on my offer to go out with you. Would you like to meet me for coffee? Just once?”

Well, okay. I did like coffee and I felt clearer in my head, so it could be nice. “I… would actually like that, yes. So… um, what happens after today?”

“You get to play under my supervision for a time, until I can be certain you won’t pull another stunt like you did.” His voice was even, steady.

And fair. “Yes, sir.

“You’ve done so well. And I haven’t made this very fun or easy for you, which was on purpose. But now that you’re at the end, I would like to show you a little bit of fun that comes from when you behave. An offer, if you will.”

“I don’t want to be your slave.” I said it, sitting up abruptly.

He chuckled. “Oh, I noticed. You nearly hurt yourself, Pet. This is just for fun.”

“Yes, sir. I… would like that.” I grinned, because it did sound nice. The fun version of him. I would like to see that.

“Good girl. I’ll message where to meet me. We might have to make your punishment a little later, but I feel good about having gotten through to you. We’ll relax a stricture or two. Don’t make me regret it, though.” That last was stern as always.

I liked that, too, when I wasn’t thinking too hard about it. “Yes, sir.” The honorific had become so very easy to say after his punishments.

I went to get ready, only to realize I had a very big problem when I saw myself in the mirror. “Oh. Not. Good.”

It was bad. It was so bad. I hadn’t done drugs, but I had tortured my body in a different way. And the drugs might have been kinder to me than what my playtime “friend” had done.

I almost didn’t go to the coffee date, almost ran, but when I was crying miserably in the shower from what I had done, there was only one thought that comforted me. He could help me feel better. I didn’t know how, but he could. Even so, I was terrified of him seeing me, afraid of the anger and disappointment he might have in me.

————

Ash

I had been harsh on her, but that was because I had known she needed the harshness in her punishment. Anything less and I would have been another dom who couldn’t bring her to heel, another one that didn’t have enough self control to handle her.

But it did make my collar offer to her one of very bad timing. She had known nothing but my structured, most exacting discipline and punishment. A girl like her couldn’t just be shown that, and be expected to take it well when I offered her a collar.

My fault. For sure, my fault. But she was quite well behaved for her punishments after I reassured her. She whimpered through the belt, but she showed up at the door. Even though she knew there would be pain, she had been brave for me, and obedience like that certainly deserved reward. She was a baby player and I was taking her into a deep concept. Sometimes it felt too deep and I would pace after she left, thinking through my lessons to her. The depth I felt with her was a dangerous thing because I knew she returned that depth. I knew that it could possibly cause her terror if I took her too deep when she wasn’t used to it, worried about it actually, especially when she didn’t take me up on my offer to give her time.

I was glad she had remained so brave through it at the end, though. It gave me an opportunity to show her a lighter side without such dark sex, a playful side in the daytime and outside of my office.

She held herself fearfully when she met me at the coffee shop that I wanted to show her. It was a bookstore too and I was interested in her mind. I knew it went incredibly fast and tortured her all the time, also knew she was full of references. But I wanted to know more. I had a feeling she would like books, or at least some form of media that stemmed from books. For instance, someone didn’t have to like reading to have enjoyed the Lord of the Rings.

“Hello, Pet. I was thinking that we’ve learned a fair bit about each other intimately, but there are other ways to get to know each other.”

“Oh.” She chewed her lip and that icy place solidified in my mind, gave me that clarity. Something was wrong. My Pet was troubled by something and she wanted to come to me for help with it. But she was so afraid. When I had her slavery, she would learn to never be afraid of asking me for help with anything.

That thought was an interesting one because I realized it was true. I cared for her weird little depth. Discipline is something you have. How dare she make me feel so much affection. It was amazing. God, she was amazing. She was every color of the rainbow, and my world was black and white. I wanted to always help her, had so much interest in her that it made me pause. But that was something to contemplate another time. My attention was on her at the moment, and whatever plight she was having. “Have you ever been here?” I asked it gently, on my best behavior.

She shook her head. “No. What kind of books do they have?”

Bingo. I grinned. “What kind do you like?”

It was peaceful when I walked inside with her, with a water fountain on the bottom floor, and there were two floors of nothing but books. Her eyes went wide. “Woah. Um. I always ordered online, but I love all kinds. Neal Stephenson is my favorite… at the moment.”

“Poor impulse control.”

Her eyes lit up at my Snow Crash reference and she turned, clasping her hands to her mouth and grinning. “YT was my favorite character for the longest time. I also love the philosophers. I never agree with any of them, except maybe Nietzche most of the time. And I like puzzle books. I have lots of those. I like grid logic puzzles the most.”

“Ah. You’ll have to explain what that is for me.”

So I had been right. Her mind ran insanely fast and she turned bored easily. But when she spoke of puzzles that boredom was far away. She pulled up her phone to show me what she meant. “They’re those things that everyone usually hates, the ones that say ‘Rachel had the blue flowers but not the red notebook and Sarah had the dachshund but not the gold collar’. You’re supposed to set up a grid and work them, but I don’t like to write anything down. I like to try to untangle it in my head and make myself visualize a string. I’m not perfect yet. I have to write down my end results to test them still.”

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and that’s when my good intentioned day went awry.

She flinched.

It was such a small motion, but my eyes snapped to it, and I slid into the icy clarity easy as breathing. I looked her over, noticing everything. She was relaxed, her breathing even, so she wasn’t afraid of that touch. No, her breath had suddenly jumped, not that fearful jump, but one of… pain? I studied her long sleeved shirt and the way she clung to the sleeves.

“Interesting. I didn’t tag you as a self mutilation type, but I’ve been wrong before.” I lifted a sleeve and then inhaled, stopping. “Ah.”

Not self mutilation. No, she was cut up and bruised and battered, but it wasn’t done to herself. The angle of the cuts wasn’t correct for a tug on her own wrists. No, these were on the outsides of her arms and directed the wrong way. “Hm. This is interesting. I’m not even sure what some of these marks are from. Was that a razor?”

“I can’t remember,” she whispered, and she wouldn’t look at my eyes. “I wasn’t paying attention but I didn’t take drugs. He… he did, but…”

“Let’s see. I’m going to guess it wasn’t a fetish player at all, but someone who hid their abusive nonsense under the label?”

My words were calm, controlled. Every mannerism she gave off said that she needed it. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Y-yes. What are you going to do to me?”

I didn’t initially answer, instead tilted my head thoughtfully. “Pet, why did you agree to meet me today? Why not run?”

Her tears poured over and I slowly guided her out of the bookstore, taking her to an empty stairwell where she could have her moment. “I don’t know!” Her voice was a quiet cry of misery. “I assumed you would rip up my card or do something mean or both or be disappointed or angry and I don’t know why I couldn’t run! I don’t know why I even let it happen. I just cried in the bathroom and still couldn’t think of an answer and I’m sorry and I was so scared and I’m still so scared and I just knew that I needed someone or something that wasn’t controlled because your control is too much of a temptation and I like it but I’m scared of it because I don’t want to be your Pet or have your collar or-!”

I cut off her ridiculous run-on sentence with a gentle hand to her mouth, hugging her. “Kotyonok… Such an emotional little kotik. Breathe. Take a deep breath and then take another for me.”

She sniffled in my arms and I smiled to the sound. It was so much like a frightened kitten. Such emotion. Such heightened feeling. God, she would make a wonderful slave. She let her tears fall freely onto my shirt and I stroked her, calmed her. “Well, this is certainly not how I planned for today to go. It’s true you’ve postponed your chance at your card, but I would say I had some hand in your fear and running. You don’t have to try to solve life all alone, Pet. Come on. Let’s get you to Sulfur’s where I can do some work.”

“W-work?” She let me lead her after her emotional outburst, I noticed. But then her emotions seemed to exhaust her after they happened. They were short lived and intense, from what I noticed. “What kind of work?”

I stroked my thumb over her hand. “I need to see what I can do to prevent some scarring, and to heal you. Let’s see if any of those razor wounds need stitches.”

“Are you going to kick me out forever?”

I smiled back at her, guiding her to my car. “No. I think we’ve been making some progress, Pet. This is a setback and we’ll address it.”

Her head bowed and she whispered, “Yes, sir.”

“Did you drive, Pet?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “I hate the idea of owning a car. It’s a responsibility that has your name on a title. That’s why I live here, where I don’t have to drive.”

“I see.” But of course. And yet, it struck me that she didn’t necessarily seem like a wanderer type either, not completely. Strange. She got my curiosity with every passing conversation.

————

Jezebel

For the first time, he didn’t take me to his office. He took me to a little kitchenette area in the back of Sulfur’s, where I looked around curiously. It seemed a strange idea that he might eat right outside so much fetish equipment. What was more, even in the dining area there were toys laid in tidy little places. “Here, Pet. Sit on the barstool and rest against the counter right here. Strip first.”

I closed my eyes in shame to avoid looking at him while I obeyed. But he noticed, like he noticed everything. “Kotik, look at me. Don’t keep looking down. You messed up and it’s alright. I realize I’m an exacting master, but there’s a patience necessary for these things and I know that. You technically followed my rules, if nothing else. You didn’t follow them very well, but you did, I suppose.” He let out a low whistle when I took off my clothes. “Definitely didn’t follow them well. Ah, kotyonok, your beautiful body.”

His voice thickened at times with an accent, I noticed. He eased me forward onto the countertop and I soothed under his touch, under his accent, under his care. “Now, describe to me the thoughts that led to this, if you will.”

“I… don’t want to tell you.” Because I thought the thoughts were stupid and also thought they might upset him.

“Tell me anyway, Pet. It takes a fair amount to move me to real anger.”

“Er… I’m more worried it might hurt your feelings… and make you angry because of that.”

“Well, now there’s something I haven’t heard before.” He soothed antibiotics into my skin. “Hurt my feelings? Now, that’s a strange thing to think. You won’t.”

Why was he being so nice to me? God, I was obviously a lost cause, but he acted like I was someone making progress along a continuum. I hadn’t made anything. “I don’t think it’s a strange concept. Everyone has feelings. Even I’m capable of empathy, although it might be hard sometimes. But… well, I really don’t want to be your slave. But when you’re topping me I forget that, because you’re so careful and controlled and I’m not and it’s really soothing. So, I thought that maybe if I went to a one night stand, one who wouldn’t have those things, then they would give me some perspective or something, I guess. It’s really dumb.”

“I see. Let me think. You seem to enjoy logical flows and arguments. Let me give you one as to why that wouldn’t be the case. If you got any perspective at all, don’t you think it would just be more of an emphasis on how controlled I am in comparison to how out of control someone else would be?” His fingers were quick, even, and I remembered a different cream on my ass, a thought that made me shiver with want.

“Um. Well, I guess that does make sense. I wasn’t really thinking about long term. I was more thinking of a short term reality snap, of a sort.”

He was quiet for a while, but then he sighed. “Dearest kotik. You really need to consider the long term. It can come back to hurt you. I think I can work these wounds with cocoa butter, and soothe your skin to help it heal later. It will be a while before I can give you your last punishment, however, and I won’t give you the card until our deal is finished. For a start, I can’t hurt you over these wounds. For another, I can’t display this kind of behavior or have it displayed in a fetish club. It’s too close to self mutilation.”

“I understand.” And I really did. This place had the feel of an underground community that looked out for its own, and these kinds of mental health problems weren’t something that it needed. For its own safety. “Thank you for not kicking me out entirely.” He made a soft acknowledgment of a sound in his throat, and soothed down my stomach and torso. “I hated it. I hated all of it, what he did. It made me sick when I got home.”

At that he sat the cream to the side and washed his hands. “Oh. And what was it that you hated his doing?”

I hesitated, trying to explain, while he wiped his palms dry. “I don’t know if it’s what he did. I think it was just the way he did it. He pulled me by my hair and called me a slut.”

His eyes lit up with amusement in response and before I could even think of what he might be considering, his hand was fisted in my hair and I was forced down off the barstool, onto my knees. I stared up at him with my mouth opening up, heat flooding through my body. “Oh, you mean like this? Are you my horny little slut, kotik?”

His voice was a purr, a sexy growl, where the guy the night before had sounded sleazy. I moaned up at Sir and whispered, “He choked me and told me he hoped I liked sucking a lot of cock.”

He laughed and his other hand instantly curled around my throat, his smile playful. Wow, he was way different than his punishment mastery. This felt more like his pleasure mastery and, by God, both were hotter than hell. And so exacting… “Are you my cock hungry Pet, little kotik?” His eyes were the sexiest part of it. They were still so cool and controlled, yet somehow intense in their own way. It seemed like the way ice could burn. “Do you want to jack yourself off all night with my dick down your throat? Do you want to lick up treats of both our cum?”

Fucking hell. Yes. Yes, I really wanted that. “He shoved his fingers down my throat and told me my cocksucking was pathetic.”

He laughed at that. “Now I can’t even tell if you’re saying these things because they were what really happened, or because you want them. But I’ll humor you.” He gave me a crooked little smirk, a cocky little lift of his lip that made me shiver all over. And then he finally thrust something other than a toy into my mouth. I instantly moaned at the feel of his fingers and where the man last night had only used two, Sir used three and it didn’t feel like enough. “Open up for me, Pet. We need to widen your throat to take a nice, thick cock down it.” My moan turned into a cry and I lifted in his hands, so hot. So horny. So needy. “You’re not trained in the art of cocksucking yet, but that’s what training is for, isn’t it?”

His hand flattened against the back of my head and he took his fingers away only to press my face against his jeans, at his crotch. I opened my mouth because I could feel his hard length instantly, and I wanted it. So far this man hadn’t seemed to react to me at all. Every now and again, when he punished me, I would get a glimpse of his thick erection, but it was the only hint I was given. And now, the feel of it…

“Good girl. Such a good girl.” I rubbed my face against it and the sound coming from my throat was the sluttiest sound I’d ever made. I opened my mouth again and moved my face as if I could blow him, pressing my lips to the length, and he groaned a hot sound above me. It made me pull away for a second and stare up at him, so that he looked down at me, curious as to why I would stop.

“I didn’t think you were interested in me.”

He tilted his head. “Did you think I asked you to wear my collar while not being interested, silly kotik?”

I grinned, blushed, feeling giddy. He hadn’t displayed any sexual interests in front of me the entire time. He had been carefully detached, but those sounds of his! God, he was definitely interested. I went back to thrusting my lips against him, pleasuring him through his jeans. 

But he growled eventually and stopped me to lift me up, while he sat on the barstool instead and pulled me back against his lap. “Not interested? Does this feel not interested, Pet?” I squealed when he thrust that hardness into my thong, laughing in shock. “I have been interested since I first laid eyes on you, but I’m not led by my dick, Pet. Sex with me isn’t something you will ever be able to manipulate. It is in my way and my time. And unfortunately, you’re still not getting cock.”

“Oh, but please!” I was dancing on his lap, needy for him.

“No, I’m afraid not. Would you like to know when and how you do get cock?” I nodded frantically, still trying to reach that hardness he had even when I knew it was useless. He chuckled. “You see, I want you in my collar and you want to be in my collar. The next time I orgasm at all will be after I have you kneeling.” Fear ran through me and I gasped at the thrill. “But you can cum for me, Pet.” He slapped my pussy over my thong and the response was instant. I thrashed on his lap, crying out with more of that frantic pleasure, feeling so empty and soaking my thong while he laughed.

And then I cried. Again. I fell forward in his arms where he held me, whimpering with tears, and I didn’t even know why.

He chuckled behind me and kissed my hair. “Such an emotional little slave in denial. It’s alright, Pet. I know you’re scared, but I think I can convince you. I’m certain, in fact. Forgive me if it’s narcissistic, but I think it was my fault that you ran like you did. It was stupid of me to show you nothing but the serious side of punishment and ask you to wear my collar.”

“So you’re going to top that off with telling me you’re not coming again until you do? What kind of logic is that?”

He laughed in my ear. “The kind that is certain enough that I can soothe you back to comfort again. Now, no more of that nonsense you did. Come to me from now on. Message me and talk with me, Pet. You didn’t even let us get to know each other.”

God he was still hard as rock against my core and I shifted, whimpered, while he chuckled at my discomfort. “You didn’t let us get to know each other before you asked me if I was interested in your collar.”

“Stubborn girl.” He sighed and tightened his hands around me, even while I struggled. “Stop fighting me or I’ll hold you still with an anal hook.” I quit, too scared of that threat. “Kotik, you’re going to be mine. You just don’t realize it yet. I’ll show you what I mean one step at a time, but it’s true I might not be getting off anytime soon. For right now, don’t worry about it. Just start talking to me more, please. For right now, all of that doesn’t matter and I just want to help you. You’re one of us, one of our own. Please let me, won’t you? Let me be your friend. You seem like you could use one of those.”

I thought of his fingers down my throat and swallowed. “Just… just friends, right?”

He chuckled and stroked me. “Just friends.”

But that felt a lot like a lie because his cock was still hard against my ass and I was still thinking of his hands around my throat, in my hair.

“I like playful you,” I said softly.

He chuckled. “Funny enough, this isn’t actually playful me. But I suppose after you were so used to the punishment version, it would seem that way.” He paused. “There’s another kind of playful me, but a lot of it is a facade. Most people don’t like the version of me that you seem to accept. It makes them uncomfortable.”

I tilted my head. “Well, most people say the Ecstasy comedown feels depressing, but I think it feels calming, so I guess… I’m not most people.”

He stroked me. “I’m glad for it,” he said softly. Oh, his voice still didn’t have any emotion in it, but his words stunned me. He was expressing a gladness? “It feels like taking off a hot mask I didn’t even realize I was always wearing. It’s nice. Although I have to be careful. Whenever I was punishing you with the crop and left you in the chair, I went to meet a friend in the club and, evidently, I forgot to put my smile back on.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t figure out why he seemed afraid of me.”

“You have resting bitch face.”

He laughed. “Ridiculous little slave.” But then he reached around and stroked his fingers over my thong so that I gasped and arched. “Why don’t you cum for me again and tease me with the scent of that cunt some more since I’m being held chaste?”

I groaned and obliged, feeling a sense of danger in teasing him and secretly loving it. His self control was wonderful but it didn’t seem like anyone’s would hold up forever, and the thought of snapping his control until he took me against my will made me want to… taunt him.

God, what was wrong with me? I did want. I didn’t want. I flirted. I pushed. I flirted. I ran.

Oy vey. I was starting to hurt my own head with this bullshit.

————

Ash

I was hard as hell when she left and it was torment… again. And yet, it was this sweetest hell again. I ended up going to my bed and laying still, and I knew my words to her were serious. I wasn’t going to be having an orgasm for a long while. It was compulsory that the next time be when I had her as my submissive. Maybe not as my slave, for her fear made that seem a long way off, but as my submissive at the very least. Having her as my slave was the true ideal, the perfect version of her fall to me. Either option would be built with trust, conditioning, and acclimation to how I was, which was admittedly very cold.

But mostly, it would take a whole lot of unconditional love. And I could see that now, especially after talking with her. Grid puzzles. Philosophers. Cryptonomicon. She was far along her college career path with no chosen major, as I had learned. The more pieces of her puzzle I was given, the more the picture started to come to me. It wasn’t in full clarity yet, didn’t have everything all placed, but there was an image coming together in my mind and it was a colorful image.

And she was getting to me. Dear God, it was that Chinese finger trap problem all over again. I couldn’t touch myself, couldn’t do a damn thing, but it wasn’t because of her manipulation… exactly. It was more because of my self control riding me, ruling me with this iron fist. I lay on my bondage bed, staring at the sex swing in my room, and I was smiling with torment. It probably looked insane, probably kind of was insane. My erection throbbed and then faded to the back of my mind while I breathed to soothe myself. It was easy, so strangely easy. My willpower was something even I hadn’t experienced before. It was total and pure and a greedy thing that hungered for her at the moment. I pictured her bowed and, yes, it aroused me but it was this strange variation of arousal. It was deeper and darker in the same way that pain was a deeper and darker variant of pleasure.

What was happening to me? God, I was having emotions and I had been concerned for the day when those would show up for me, but now… Now, I wasn’t scared of them anymore. She showed them to me even while she gave me more power over myself. Feelings existed inside me, but I was in that cold place where I could hold those emotions in my hands and study them, choose to experience them, discard them as I willed. In the same way I would notice everything about my submissive, I noticed everything in myself as well.

“Kotyonok,” I said softly, happily. Somewhere inside of me, from that place where we had so completely connected, stemmed a faith and knowledge that she was mine. It was strange because I didn’t believe in things like soul mates, but I did believe that multiple people were cut from the same cloth. I did believe that there were humans out there who were capable of accepting each other, whoever they may be, and whatever their quirks. And I did believe that when two creatures like that found each other, they wouldn’t be able to part.

She was like that for me and I believed that I was like that for her. Dear God, that shit sounded romantic when I turned it in my head, and it made me grimace. I had always been a romantic at heart, but it wasn’t a quality I was proud of.

I shook myself from that reverie to get a cock cage from one of my toy chests. I had played with all manner of toys and experienced all manner of sensations, but always preferred the control of dominating. So I hadn’t gravitated toward submissive male sensations.

Well, this was far from a submissive male sensation and I was suddenly incredibly in love with my Pet for the fact that she could give me this odd experience of denial. I had always been indulgent and here was a way where I could indulge on power instead of sex and it was heady, especially for my lifestyle. She was the only person and scenario who this would have worked with, because she had no restraint and couldn’t have any power over me. If anyone else had inspired this, I would have fled the feeling, misliking the thought of someone else having that kind of influence over me. And that thought excited me, made me adore her for her nature.

I fit myself in the cage and locked it, smiling through the sensation of metal locking around such a sensitive area at the moment. Power rushed through my blood while I stared down at it. Oh, I wanted to eat her little pussy for hours while this tormented me, wanted to watch her feel the perversity of it. It would be delightful when she had uncontrolled orgasm after uncontrolled orgasm, ones I would direct her body to against her will. And I wouldn’t have that problem. No, I was the perfect master and even my arousal would be distant when she gave up to me over and over again.

It made me grin just to remember the wild look in her eyes when I had been paddling her, when I had so carefully kept any desire from my form or expression. I wore the cage locked under my jeans while I went into my training dungeon and considered all the images I would bring to life with her in that space, the forms of twisted conditioning I would do. My cock strained against its cage and I let the pain wash over me so that my pleasure was always forced to fade.

Of course, once I had her bowed and trained I would take of her as I willed, using whatever hole I wished whenever I wished. But for now, this teasing build up was far more fun than anything I could have anticipated.

————

Jezebel

He called me every day, to my shock and confusion. Why was he being so nice to me? Now that I was coming out of a drug haze, I was realizing that I wasn’t actually a very interesting person. Smart, sure, but I didn’t have friends, didn’t do much of anything besides drug shenanigans, and fucking. After that… I was lost with a lot of time on my hands. It was amazing how many hours were in a day when I wasn’t frantically sleeping off some kind of hangover. I ended up buying a Rosetta Stone course on Russian and doing it sporadically with my free time, because I was sick of him spouting off at the mouth with the language at random times. I read some more Stephenson, looked into Simmons’ Hyperion.

I flitted from topic to topic and puzzle cube to puzzle cube and remembered why I hated sobriety. See, I would pick up a cube and study it, noticing how sides reacted, how to tuck them safely away to change another side instead, and how to turn pieces back so that more would come back solved. It was easy to look at it and see the patterns unfold and I refused to use algorithms. But then, once I would see the rhythm of a side and watch the pattern be correct, I would get bored, wouldn’t even want to finish the cube. You see, if I could figure out the separate pieces, it made me know beyond doubt that I could solve the cube. And knowing I could made it boring. Why did I want to finish figuring it out after realizing my own prowess? The puzzle wasn’t there anymore once I got the gist of it so I’d just be solving the rest to have the satisfaction of seeing a finished cube and that felt dumb. 

But then, in moments like those I would glance at my phone. There was one puzzle I didn’t have all the answers to. That icy look in his eyes. I still didn’t even know his name either, but even so he was a far more interesting puzzle. Especially now that I had seen his more relaxed form of dominating. That had been every bit as strict as his other dominance and yet, somehow with less… severity, maybe? His punishment dominance was harsh and serious, while that other version had allowed me to flirt with him.

I picked up the phone and called him. Maybe I could flirt again, and tinker with him like he was my own personal Lament Configuration.

“Hello, Pet.” His voice sent desire pulsing through my clit, even soft on the phone as it was.

“Good evening, Dr. Lecter.”

He chuckled. “Ah, still on that, are we? You might want to wait for those kinds of accusations until after you try the fava beans and Chianti. They tell me I’m not supposed to take those with my medication, so it’s good I’m not on it, Clarice.”

I laughed happily. “No one ever knows the real joke behind that quote.”

His smile was quite warm. “I’m afraid you’re not alone, Pet. I enjoy Thomas Harris and do know that joke, as well.”

“Well, at least you’re only eating people and not trying to feed a stray cat to an ATM. Honestly, Lecter was sexier than Bateman.”

“I think that unlikely to be the image that Harris was going for. But I would agree anyway, relatively speaking. A controlled sociopath does seem hotter than a broken psychopath.”

Oh, this was fun. He knew his books and he kept up with even my obsessive  references. “I contend that his being hot was absolutely what they were going for in the show.”

“You’ll lose me on that one. I only know books and opera.”

“Gross. Not to the books, but the opera. That’s weird. And um… can I show you the show then? I’m bored. I… would like some company, please, sir.”

Anytime I would ask for something like that, he would chuckle with this soft way he had. “We can spend some of the afternoon and early evening together, but I will have to be back for the night, as you know, Pet.”

Oh. Right. He had to watch over the club and his kinky subjects, rule as their king and god. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Polite. Always be polite. He was inherently teaching me very good manners, and those were even more reinforced by our lack of names. He was Sir and I was Pet, so far. And those names commanded my manners with him almost as easily as breathing. Where once the names had felt like an intimate tether, they were starting to seem more like a protective guard against our real relationship. So that day, when he got to my little college apartment, I opened the door and forced myself to ask him, “What’s your name?”

The smile he gave me made me go weak at the knees. It was dark with intent. He stepped over the doorstep and shut it quickly before he caught me by my hair, and I felt sticky arousal between my legs within seconds. “I do have a name, but it is not for young, barely alcohol legal girls who show up in my club on hard drugs. It is also not for girls who show up on a fun date with me with their flesh razored and their eyes swollen red from confused tears. No, those girls get a different name for me, and it is the only name permitted to leave their lips. Those girls had better politely call me ‘Master’.”

I whimpered, drenching my thong. “But you aren’t my master and I’m not your slave.”

His wicked smile only grew. “Not intimately, but in a vague sense? I soothe your wounds and I’m a guidance figure for you, can we both agree on that?” I nodded quickly because he most certainly was a guidance figure. He was a sensei, a teacher, who commanded me in things like discipline. “Those figures often go by that name. Try it on your lips. Go on and say it, just to feel how it tastes on your tongue while looking at me.”

I opened my mouth, feeling that sensation of flirting and dealing with the devil, especially when he looked down at me with such glittering ice in his eyes. Once again, I had that sensation of a storybook. He was Joe Black and I was the daughter of the man he was sent to fetch, except I didn’t think this version of Joe had enough mercy to leave the daughter in the world of the living when he found her.

I kind of didn’t want him to, just like I kind of didn’t want the movie version of Hannibal, the one where he cut off his own arm to let Clarice escape unscathed. No, I wanted the book version where he so thoroughly corrupted her, so twisted her mind that she finally fell at his knees, and broke to feed on Krendler with him. I wanted to be the purity of Clarice and fall to his corruption.

Alright, well, I certainly wasn’t the purity of anything really, but even so. I stared up into his eyes, heart thundering, imagining that he held me hypnotized by his gaze, like the Phantom holding Christine thrall. Angel, my soul was weak. Forgive me. Enter at last-

“I’m waiting.” His voice was soft, his eyes intent, and that calmness drew me in so that I forgot my fears and fell to my storybook fantasies.

“Yes, Master.”

Hot arousal shot through me like firecrackers through my body. God, looking at him, staring into his eyes and calling him that was heavenly. It was pure eroticism that soothed me to the depths of my chaotic being. He knew, too. His smile turned into something truly sinful. “Such a good girl, with such good manners.” I cried out when he twisted my head back a little farther, his hand still in my hair, and danced when he cupped me between my legs with his others hand, stroking me with his fingertips. “Ah, having manners arouses you.” He chuckled when I blushed a little. “No, don’t feel embarrassed. It should arouse you. Why don’t you call me that again, this time while asking me to make you cum on my hand?”

Oh god. There was a reason why this should make me feel afraid, but I couldn’t remember it. “Please finger me and make me cum, Master!”

“There’s a good girl.” He pushed my yoga shorts and thong to the side, making sure I held his gaze, and then he filled me. Two fingers thrusted inside of me, working in a powerful rhythm that made me pant within seconds. He twisted his hand and I choked on pleasure.

And then his thrusts turned harder and I came apart, unable to look away from his eyes as I did. The icy wasteland in them kept me sedated and I wanted to feel more of it.

“Open up. You have a messy little cunt, and you will clean off my fingers the same way you clean off my toys.” I opened my mouth automatically and suckled, bobbing my head in the way I had learned from him. I made sure to part my lips and flick my tongue between his fingertips obscenely, made sure to fuck him with my mouth for a few strokes. He wanted a nice, slutty visual when he had me clean with my tongue. “Good girl.” He cooed it and pulled away from me, and I had to shake my head, to clear it, while he grinned ruefully. “Wicked little thing. I meant to be on my best behavior.”

I blinked at him, still lost in some arousal while he was ever unruffled. He had made it clear that he had interest in me, but how did he do that? Was he even hard? I couldn’t tell at the moment and that killed me. But he was interested. The look in his eyes had made me well aware of that.

“Um.” Right. I wanted to show him things and tinker with him like my own puzzle cube, wanted to see if there was a Cenobite waiting inside, if I could ever solve it. “Okay. Hang on, I want to try Hannibal first and see what you think.”

He tilted his head and nodded, playfulness in his eyes. He was so cold about everything but he had to have likes and dislikes, right? Everyone did. Everyone had some basic preferences, things like if they preferred one ice cream over another. He had to be the same way.

So I started something that quickly distracted me from any kind of drugs or impulsively bad behaviors. He was my curiosity. People were so rarely interesting, but I had actually always enjoyed the interesting ones. They were all their own little puzzle and I liked talking to them to figure out how they worked. See, most people were just so bloody boring. There wasn’t any intellectual backing behind their decisions. They just chose random preferences or reality shows, which were the worst. There was nothing to be gleaned from those, no information really there. I lost interest in most people. But I quickly learned that I didn’t think I could ever lose interest in him.

He did enjoy Hannibal and he clearly enjoyed it for the darkest reasons. The psychoanalysis bits seemed to bore him, which was understandable, but the manipulation, the cat and mouse play, the flirting. He loved that.

Okay, but that seemed like an “of course he would” thing, so when he left, I got curious again. He had said he liked opera. Why? I went looking through the genre that night to see what it had to offer. Once I got past those damned vocals, I could focus on what the operas were about, see their story. And I realized something.

Opera was super motherfucking dramatic, as a genre. That’s why it had those vocals, to add to the drama. If the stories in opera were ever placed on screen, it would either be ridiculous or stupid or… I grinned. I had another show to try with him then. Because opera was highly fantastical, featured romantic settings, and had an old style of lore.

I invited him over the next day and I showed him The Magicians.

My dark king of his underground world fell in instant love with the entire show, and Eliot was his favorite. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Had he called his playful face a facade? Had he said that other people became uncomfortable around him because he had little in the way of emotion? They were crazy. He gave these real laughs if you knew how to get them from him. I would watch him at certain parts, while trying to not give away that I was watching him, but if I knew something ridiculously dramatic was going to happen, then I definitely wanted to see his reaction. Eventually, after one of those moments, he said, “Would you either watch me all the time or stop doing that? You’re giving parts away.”

And I had to laugh. I hesitated and then unfurled from the chair I had been sitting on, and went to his knees. I cuddled there in the floor, wrapping up in a blanket instead. “There. Now I can’t watch you without awkwardly having to turn and see you.”

His gaze held mine for a long moment, before he smiled and stroked my hair back. “Ah, is that the reason?”

I nervously nodded. “Y-yes.” No.

He held me trapped by his eyes again, his smile taunting me. “Lying loses you privileges, kotik. Pets don’t need clothes. Take yours off.” He watched with a lazy smile while I obeyed, blushing to the feel of being naked at his knees. He adjusted the pillows to prop himself up better and relaxed, petting my hair. “You may use the blanket, so long as you let me see you when I say.”

I realized my mistake in curling up there about five minutes later. My pussy was drenched, aching, and I made a creamy mess against my thighs while I sat and shifted in silence, watching with him. 

He taunted me one more time thirty minutes later. “Your little cunt is so horny from you sitting where you belong that I can even smell it from here, Pet.”

I held his jeans and whimpered quietly while he chuckled at the humiliation in my response, but he didn’t do anything to ease my suffering. He just continued petting me, watching with me, and it was either the best or the worst thing ever, and I couldn’t tell anymore. The control of being like that and being left in that state made me feel soothed again, which made me frightened again.

Deep breaths. He knew I wasn’t his slave and this was just… like dating. It was just dating with no strings attached. That’s all it was.

Wasn’t it? Sometimes it felt like I could feel the rope being slipped over my head, feel it so slowly tightened, centimeter by centimeter. But maybe it was all in my head. Maybe it was just my stupid fears.

————

Ash

I had things I liked!

It was a novelty and oh, how fun! I had always had preferences for things like dramatic music, knew all kinds of ranges for sex club house music. That had been the extent of my personality for… well, since I’d damned myself with a few sins one fateful night. But it turned out that wasn’t necessarily all of it. She showed me different things and there were preferences there and I wasn’t even bored. I liked stories, had always enjoyed those, and it turned out that things like shows and movies weren’t always boring. I just needed a friend to see them with me, so I could talk.

And of course, it made me want her all the more. Every passing date, every evening in a book store where she would ask me questions with those thoughtful eyes, every curious new thing she wanted to show me, became something near pain. Even after she healed, she didn’t come to me for that final punishment to get her card, and I didn’t bring it up. It felt like something to be left for us, like an event neither of us wanted to start so it wouldn’t have to be over. The effect was that she didn’t end up with a card for a long time.

But that’s not to say that she didn’t end up at Sulfur’s.

I got the call one night about a week later. She had healed wonderfully and she would have minimal scarring. So it was more than a fair time frame. In fact, I should have already given her that last punishment… “Hello, Clarice.”

She laughed in my ear, but it was an anxious laugh. Her curiosities seemed to have been satisfied with me for the time being, but her emotions were still… I thought they were wonderful, but I’m sure to her they must have been torturous and exhausting. Her anxiety would shoot sky high at the slightest provocation. Her fear response was immediate when she heard a noise out of the ordinary in her apartment. Her tears came easily, but were soothed just as easily. Her anger was a fun thing, although I’d never tell her that. It burned to life and then died within 30 minutes at most.

What was more fascinating was the fact that she totally forgot what any of those emotions felt like once she was no longer feeling them. She couldn’t remember the feeling of anger when she didn’t have it. It intrigued me, because I thought that was why empathy was so difficult for her sometimes.

But all those things also meant she wore her heart on her sleeve. Her little return laugh on the phone had a world of rainbow suggestion in it. Nervousness, excitement, anticipation, some fear. “H-hello, Master.”

I leaned back at my desk chair. Expanding the clubs was fun, but there was a world of numbers and random shit that came with renovating to open. I had learned the most sporadic bits of useless information from subcontractors alone. But with my little playmate, I worked more efficiently than ever these days. I was an android of a person, a machine, and I was staring at a spreadsheet of successful accounting when she called, enjoying the fact that she affected me in these ways, stroking a hand over my still caged cock.

“How can I help you?”

She hesitated and I waited it out patiently. I had learned that sometimes she just needed a minute. “Are you only interested in me as a slave?”

I sat forward. “Only? You don’t know what comes with the interest of someone as a slave, Pet, if you have to ask that. If I’m interested in you as a slave, it means I’m interested in everything about you, more than anyone ever could be.”

“I don’t… know what that means.”

Huh. That question actually took some of my patience from me. “Ask for what you want, Pet.”

“Okay. Um. Okay. Okay, would you play with me or… not play, really. Mess around or something, I don’t know. At Sulfur’s, maybe? But, like, not in a sexual way, I mean.”

She was also not very eloquent when emotions started taking their hold. I loved it. “Well, that clears things up. Why don’t you come to Sulfur’s, and we’ll see what we can do to satisfy a kinda, sorta, not-really-playing in a not sexual way.”

Her laugh was shy and breathless in my ear. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, Pet.” And it was, actually. I considered her words, thinking of what I knew about submissives, the deep world submissives. There were those who were like the Pet I had first met, ones who chased their kinky desires for fun. But then there were ones who lived in submission. It was their state of being, their kind of therapy. And those kinds would get antsy if they went too long without a feeling of subspace. And it had to be subspace, specifically. Not sex, but the mentality of pleasing someone. It was like they would be all over the place and that magical mindset was an anchor to recenter them. And it was easy to see why. A submissive personality craved to feel approval, craved to see someone else pleased with them, so it made perfect sense.

I thought I might know what Pet needed. She showed up at my back door in perfect time for me to do it too. The dungeon monitors could handle opening Sulfur’s, but once it started to get busy, I preferred to be more hands on and personal. That gave me plenty of time to get Pet set up.

I hugged her when I saw her and she gave me a shy, nervous smile. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” she answered back softly. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what I want. I’m really confused.”

I touched her nose. “Well, fortunately for you, I’ve built my life on fetishes and needs of all kinds. I feel good enough to take an educated guess. Come on, Pet.” She followed after me and this time I took her to my bedroom.

She blinked. “Is this your dungeon?”

I laughed and pat the middle of the huge bondage bed. “No, this is my bed. Kneel in the center please.”

She obeyed but her attention was all over the place. She looked up at the suspension hook over the bed, looked at the sex swing, her eyes wide. “This is where you sleep?” It came out squeaky and I had to laugh.

“Yes, kotik. I’m sure if you thought about it enough you would realize that it’s not that shocking. Now, just sit still. Don’t speak anymore for a bit until I speak to you. Understood?”

“Yes, Master.” She stared at me then and I smiled, getting up to grab the lengths of soft rope I had, uncoiling them and delighting in the feel across my hands. She watched quietly, obediently, while I went to work, ritualistically tying her into a rope harness.

I had discovered from her punishment with the crop that the methodical layering of rope soothed my Pet. It took that terrible chaos she suffered and made sense of it, soothed out all the tangles of it, until it was something more manageable. And rope didn’t work for some submissives. It was time consuming to harness someone. The artist types were the ones more drawn to shibari. I couldn’t claim to get into the art form of it, but I knew my way around the gist well enough.

The rope started to create a type of collar, then made a knotted frame around her tits. I made diamond patterns around her torso, calmly taking my time. The quiet was an introspective kind, one that drew me into that lovely connection with her. I had her lift up so I could make a teasing little harness between her legs, framing her pussy over her clothes. I tied her wrists loosely together behind her.

When I was done, she was a sensual little creature, bound up and harnessed, and so nicely submissive. In the end, I didn’t speak to her at all, because that connection sang between us and said all that needed to be communicated. With every rope, she soothed. With every knot tied, she curled closer to my touch and I had to smile. “Now, how’s that for kinda, sorta, not really playing, kotik?”

She arched her face closer to me and I obliged her with a kiss, stroking her comfortably harnessed breasts gently, lovingly. “This is good, Master.”

I smiled when her lips pressed up again, holding her. “It’s alright, Pet. I know what you need sometimes. I know that this mind just wants to serve, to feel the pleasure of submitting every now and again. I can take care of you, and those needs, anytime you need me to.”

For the moment, her fear was fast asleep, as if I had played it Brahm’s Lullaby or Moonlight Sonata. Her gaze was totally relaxed and sweetly adoring, with all the power of that wonderful emotion. “Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”

“Now, why don’t you just relax and stay here for a while. Are you comfortable?”

“Yes, Master.” God, that look.

It let me know that I could push her a little bit, that I could put a few more suggestions into her mind, tempt her and tighten my leash on her, just a bit. “Good girl. Just stay here for a time. I’ll come back and get you, Pet, but I’d like you to wear a few other things as well.”

I fetched a light play collar and a blindfold, and she seemed to dismiss the blindfold entirely. She swallowed at the collar, though. “S-still not going to be anything more, though, right?”

“It comes off after we’re done and say goodbye for the night. I think the security of the leather being around your neck will help keep your mind calm for a time.” Soft persuasion was intertwined with perfect amounts of calm control in my voice.

She hesitated even so, but then nodded, her eyes still too soothed to feel much caution from my manipulation. So I smiled, and put the eye mask on first, then fitted the collar nice and fitted to her throat. Both were a cute, baby pink color that went with her icy hair perfectly, and fit so well that it gave me an insane amount of delight to see it. I left her there, kneeling and comfortable, and free to move and shift as she wished, while I went to tend my bar.

It served to solidify my intent on having her. I went through the play areas, stopped and played myself for a few of the scenes I could see, playfully amping the energy when it seemed like it was needed. It felt like making music, walking through this place, and I felt heightened to a different plane of existence with the thought of her bound and collared in my room. It was something heady, as if I had been drinking.

When there was enough time, I went back to release her, only to instantly have me senses flooded with the scent of her arousal. I took her mask off, cut through the rope on her wrists, and she gave me a look of the most beautiful desperation. In this state, I could push her a little, with just a small amount of suggestion and manipulation. My caged cock was a continual reminder for my intentions of having her kneel. “Suffering?” I tugged her forward by the o-ring of her collar, so that she whimpered and fell to her hands and knees on my bed.

“Yes, Master.” She was flushed, breathless, but her attention was all on me after I had so tamed her with nothing but ropes and a little loving attention. “I-“ She trembled. “I know I said to not be sexual, but…”

I smiled ruefully. “Unfortunately, I can’t at the moment.” She whimpered and I stroked her hair. “Unless you would like to stay the night with me? I’ll leave you here for some more alone time and come back and we can play as long as you like.”

Ah, for a moment she very nearly gave in to me. I was making progress and the temptation took hold in her, lit her eyes up. She shifted in the rope that teased her between her legs. Pain crossed her eyes and then she gave a soft, sad cry. “No. No, I would like to go home instead, please.”

But it didn’t feel like a loss. No, it felt very much like a victory for me. Little by little, with patience and relentless use, I knew how I’d have her. I could see it as clear as the most beautiful crystal. 

————

The bond between her and I became a dance. Draw away, pull together, dip her gracefully in my arms, let her up, draw apart… Even if her hand left mine in our dance, it was never for long.

At first she was nervous to call me for some steadying dominance, nervous to come to my arms. The second time, her voice shook like the first phone call, but her request was more direct. “Master, may I come see you?”

“Of course you can.” No, I wouldn’t dream of denying her, not when every time made her fall a little farther to the dark waters of my mastery. That time when she got there, I took up the riding crop. “Kneel in my floor. We’re just going to go over some basic commands together, Pet.”

She was so skittish at first, warily meeting my gaze while her eyes darted to the sides to look at the toys she had already seen. When I snapped the crop in a stern little flick against her breasts, her eyes stopped that wandering. It came quicker for her now, I noticed, after tasting my discipline a few times. I doubted that she was even aware of some of those small changes, but oh, I couldn’t help but notice every single one.

“Tits out and up,” I said softly. “Straighten your back and display them for me.” She had on these cute little white shorts with a gray form fitting shirt, and she lifted to my command, arching for me. “Spread your legs wider, always wide. When you submit, even in clothes, you should always display yourself openly and be available.” Her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted with a soft little desirous exhale.

“Yes, Master.” God, that breathy voice… She may have only lightly played before me, but she was born to be slave. One command, a few flicks of the crop, and all fear and conflict left her features. She spread herself, then spread herself wider when I flicked her thighs again in militant little crop licks.

“Good girl.” She inhaled and the look of bliss on her face, just to hear those words, told me worlds. It was in moments like these where I could see every ounce of potential in her, and there was so much to see. It was becoming my life’s work to show her that fact. I circled her and she turned her head to follow my movements so that I smiled and tapped her face with the crop. “That’s it. Keep your eyes on your Master. Some might prefer them on the floor in submission, as a fair warning. Different tops have different preferences, but I prefer your attention on me.” I stroked the crop across her lips and she licked it almost automatically. “Can you think why that might be, Pet?”

Her gaze was sweetly direct and she somehow still managed to blush a little. “Because you’re Master.”

I laughed. “I suppose that is a good enough reason, isn’t it? Yes, in the easiest form. It keeps your mind on my desires, what I want, and when you bow, whose desires do you serve?”

She smiled. “Yours!”

She was so excited for the answer and I found it interesting that the answer she gave was not “my master” but “yours”, specifically naming me. “Very good. Mine.” Because I certainly wasn’t going to correct that. “Now, stand up and go to the end of the bed. I want you to bend forward over it.”

When she did, I studied the outline of her pussy where her shorts hugged it, where she had gotten so wet, and I smiled. But I didn’t address that, instead striking her thighs with the crop. “Wider. Much wider. Available and open, remember?” She did spread them, but I shook my head. “Let’s give you some practice with this one.”

She lifted her head to turn and watch me, and groaned when I came back to her with the spreader bar. “No fussing, Pet. It’s for your own good. You want to be pleasing and open for me, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master.” She closed her eyes and lay still against the bedspread while I strapped her to the bar. I forced her legs as wide as the spreader would go.

“It’s okay if it hurts after a time. You’ll adjust to it with training and you need to learn to spread this wide any time I command you.”

“Yes, Master.” I smiled at the surrender in her voice and slapped the crop against the inside of her thighs, down to the backs of her knees. “Oh, Master!”

“Shh. Do you mind if I leave my marks on you? You’ll have to wear different clothes, but it would please me.”

“No, I don’t m-mind. Are you going to hurt me?”

By her tone of voice, I knew the answer she was hoping for was “yes”. Instead, I said, “It depends on how well you take what I give you. Clasp your hands at the back of your neck and do not move them.”

She obeyed and I went to work, thinking of that tone that seemed to ask for some pain. So my little light submissive was starting to like darker things with our depth together. God, I craved to have her in the dungeon, where I would have all the time in the world to learn these dark things that showed themselves as we went into deeper waters together. For the time being, I had to satisfy myself with taking little bits at a time.

She clasped her hands in a white knuckled grip behind her neck and her breath came in halting shudders as I cropped her, alternating between thighs, and enjoying the sight of the marks that started to rise. I worked the crop harder, wanting darker marks, and that’s when the first cry escaped her.

And it wasn’t a pained cry. It was a sex cry that made me curious. Masochism could stem from many sources, I had noticed. Some people were just heavily wired to take their excitement from pain, and that excitement was a form of arousal. Perhaps one of the most interesting things was how a sadist could train those fear responses in a masochist, until she craved sexual torment.

But there was another place that masochism could come from, and that was the desire to submit. And this one was the one I found the most interesting. Even if a little slave didn’t like pain, she could be trained and conditioned to adore it, to worship the sensation. If she knew it would please her master and knew she would reach the most intense subspace from the satisfaction of obeying difficult commands, then she could be heavily conditioned to cherish the thoughts of dark obedience.

I struck the crop harder, out of curiosity. What kind of masochist was she? Perhaps a little of both? I kept striking until she whimpered and broke. “Please! Please, I can’t anymore.”

“Shh. Good girl. Yes, you can. You’re doing so well for me and you have such pretty marks now. Let me give you some more. Just keep holding your hands behind your neck. Look at how sweet you are, with your legs nice and cropped. You look like a submissive in her training.”

The next strike brought a sound of such desire from her that it made me hot with pleasure. The cock cage held me captive and demanded my control, ensured I held it tight as I should. Submissive masochism. Was there anything hotter, more delightful, to train? I added it to the list of qualities to build and condition when I had her in my dungeon. “Master…” She breathed the word into my bed, bit my comforter, and moaned with soft, pained little cries. And the licks had certainly passed her sexual level and gone to be little else except painful. “Oh, please. Oh, God.”

“Hush.” She stopped speaking, resorting to just whimpers and soft cries. I didn’t go so very far after that, merely taking enough time to test her and her wonderful obedience, a light little play testing. “Good girl.” I cooed it behind her when I was satisfied. She’d earned it, and obedience was always to be rewarded. “Such a sweet girl.” I set the crop down and stroked down her thighs and the backs of her knees. Her response was beautiful, perfect. Like every other sensation and emotion that would rule her and cause her such problems, this was no different. She gave herself up to every feeling so readily and lifted to my touch as best she could. “Now, let’s go over some other lessons. What’s something we don’t do at Sulfur’s?”

She purred the sentence out while I pet her marks, pinching a few, and enjoyed the scent of her arousal. “There is no playing under the influence at Sulfur’s.”

I laughed and slapped the back of her thigh. “Good girl. Speaking of that, I’m afraid it’s almost time for me to tend to Sulfur’s. I will give you a few choices. Would you prefer to spend the night, go home now, or spend some time in the cage and collar and go home a little later?”

She hesitated while I pet her, one hand on her lower back and one hand smoothing my marks. “Will you be angry at me if I say cage and collar?”

“Of course not.”

“Yes, Master. I’d like that, please.”

I smiled and released her from the straps of the spreader, opening the cage so she could crawl beneath my bed. She lifted her hair obediently for me to place the collar on her and that time she didn’t shy away from my touch, though she was still worried.

Draw away. Pull together. Spin her in a graceful circle.

I went to her apartment to watch shows with her, but I also invited her to my own rooms, knowing that her life would start to intertwine with mine by convenience. And it did, quickly enough. First it was her Netflix and Amazon accounts so we could watch things together. Then she brought over a few books to trade with me. She always asked permission for these things and she asked permission for other, stranger moments. One time when we were watching a show together, she shifted beside me while I stroked her shoulder, and then shifted again.

Finally, she tugged on my shirt sleeve and I looked down. “May I use the bathroom?”

A better person would have reacted to that with teasing shock and playful joking, would have called her ridiculous for asking. As you can probably imagine, I didn’t do that. It thrilled me to hear little behaviors like that from her. So I touched her nose instead and said, “Yes. It’s that door. Hurry back, Pet.”

And she obeyed, scurrying. When I went to her house the next evening and cuddled with her, the precedent had taken an interesting effect. Though she had never asked permission to do that at her place, I reset the stage in the same way and curled her under my arm to hold her close. And sure enough, I had placed enough similarities so that she tugged on my shirt and asked it again.

Little by little, pull by pull. Draw together, let her spin apart, end together.

————

Jezebel

I couldn’t seem to stop myself from trusting him, from craving his commands. My life felt peaceful and wonderful. In the moments away from him, I took to quietly reading my books on philosophy and theory, books on legal argument and logic, sci-fi books, fantasy world books. And I was continually in a heightened state of arousal.

I had asked for non sexual each time and he kept to that, but I was kind of losing my mind. My whole body was heated all the time. I would wake up and think of how his hands looked when he decorated me with rope, would think of the stern, cool gaze that was becoming my axis of safety. His brow would furrow with thought and consideration when he worked, and he had this intensity that missed nothing. One night when he had me bound spread eagle across his bed, I had the thought, He’s so beautiful and godlike. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it was the way his pale green eyes were so distant and observant, the way they seemed to caress my tits when my chest rose with my breathing, or the way he would meet my own gaze and hold it with this faint smile. “Good girl. Keep your eyes on me whenever you can.” And I don’t know if it was that command, but I was starting to be unable to look anywhere else. It could just as well be my own growing infatuation.

And then there were the dreams. One night after he trained me with the crop and spreader bar again, I saw him in my sleep and fantasized about him spreading me wide again, but this time it was to fuck me, to use me as his willing vessel. I dreamed of him holding me still, with a hand in my hair, and his ever steady voice soothing me. “Always be available, Pet. Your Master shouldn’t have a problem getting to whichever hole he prefers.” And then the dream changed so that I was spread wide again, but on my back, and he was crawling like an animal above me, licking his way up my body. “You’re mine, little slave, and there’s nothing you can do, nowhere you can run. You will never be free of a collar, but that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

I woke with a cry, my legs spread as wide as the spreader had held me. I thought of going for one of my one night stands to clear my head, but then couldn’t do it. The thought of going to someone else made me think of him with someone else, which was a thought I carefully avoided for terror of some stupid jealousy. I panicked and ended up calling him instead, pouring out my fear and telling him I needed him, that I was scared of getting attached because of all the emotion.

“Such an emotional little Pet. Come to Sulfur’s and let’s see what we can do to soothe you.” Sulfur’s was starting to seem like a magical place where everything made sense. Every time I called him with panic in my voice, it was always answered with, “Come to Sulfur’s”.

When I got there, he let me in the back door like always and looked me over, smiling in approval. “Good girl. Very brave of you, too.” And his approval made me warm all over. It was like sunshine for me because he was put together and seemed to have all the answers, while I felt like I didn’t have any. “You’re going to have to keep being brave for me tonight, however. I would like to see what we find of your feelings together where I can keep them under control. I think you might find them to be something other than what you expect. And you said you would like something more sexual, right?”

That made me nervous. I swallowed, thinking his words over. My emotions scared me. They were wild things, almost painful at times. And jealousy was one that could sting and bite me, make me feel wounded and enraged all at once. I’m not confessing to having slashed an ex’s tires and messed up his car in a jealous fit when I was even more crazy, but I might know a little of how to do it.

But he could keep me safe from even those feelings. I had seen that. He had stroked me all over that day after my one night stand, petting me until I was calm again.

“I’m waiting, Pet.” His voice was soft, amused, and I looked up to his eyes, which had that same strict nature.

“Yes. Yes, Master. I’m scared, though.” The riding crop was one thing. This felt like a different kind of possible hurt, one that could cause more pain.

But he smiled his pleasure. “Such trust you have for me, Pet. I’m proud of you. Let’s see what we can do to soothe some of that fear. There’s no reason for you to suffer so much. Undress for me.” Suddenly that command made me feel shy and he laughed when my motions were a little slow. “Modesty, from you? Now that has to be a side effect of our recent games together. It’s one I don’t like, but we’ll come up with a way to balance that.” I gulped at that and hurried to pull the rest of my clothes off. It was a stupid way to feel anyway. We had spent most of our first night together with my being naked, while he punished and humiliated me.

“I’m sorry, Master.”

He chuckled. “Don’t be. I let you get too comfortable with clothes around me. Now, how did I say you should stand in front of me? Bad girl, have you forgotten already?” He lifted his crop from the wall and I stared at it, my mouth going dry with excitement. I burned at the sight of him with the crop, having come to associate it with his training and discipline. When he snapped it against my thighs, I moaned and spread them wide, so degradingly wide, and I looked up into his eyes almost automatically to see his reactions. “That’s better. Now, for your tits.” He held his hands out in front of my breasts. “Arch to me.” Obediently, I straightened and curved to reach him, so that I was displayed and posed the way he liked. “Good girl. You and I both know already that seeing you open and displayed pleases me. But let me show you why pleasing me is in your interests.” He slid a hand between my legs and I gasped, grabbing his wrist in my pleasure. He smiled and watched me, his gaze piercing and commanding. Once again, that feeling came to me of being Clarice looking into Hannibal’s gaze while he injected her with a hypnotic drug. She had seen fiery pinwheels in his eyes. I saw shards of ice in my captor’s.

Pleasure rose in me at the thought of being prisoner, at the feeling of endangerment. I fucked myself up and down on his fingers and thrust my tits out even further. His gaze went to them and his dominant delight deepened. “Master!”

“Very pretty.” There was approval in that voice and he caressed a finger over my breasts, teasing the nipples.

Once again, he appeared so distant. The Master to my slave. And just like before my body sang to that control he had, burned for it, and I squealed in his arms, my knees shaking at the effort of remaining opened for him. The orgasm ripped through me, sheer safe pleasure that he gave. Like Christine to the Phantom, I was hooked on his gaze, remembering rope being rapped so methodically around my body, remembering his teaching and training. I bucked with the wild fantasies running through me and fell still, holding his shoulders for his steady strength.

“Good girl.” He stroked my hair and pulled his fingers away while I whimpered at the feeling of movement. I opened my lips automatically when he held the tips to me. “That’s it. You remember. You clean the things you leave messes on with that tongue of yours.” Oh yes, I did remember. And I was to be a good, obscene girl about it. I wasn’t supposed to lick. No, I was supposed to fuck with my mouth and even though I just orgasmed, my body readied for more and made me hot again from his objectification. “Good girl. Now, like always, you’ll be wearing your collar tonight, but I’d like to try something new as well. Let’s see how you take to a leash.”

I swallowed fearfully when he turned away. “Um.” But he turned back with a cute, pink leash and I forgot my protests to that. I held still for it instead, and leaned to his touch when he pet me.

“Good girl. See? Not so scary, is it?” And it really wasn’t. The tug on it was comforting, calming. I felt like I was falling into the softest sand, a mental place where pleasing him was my favorite drug, even over any other I’d ever taken. “Come on.” He pulled at the leash and I followed him, watching his stride, wondering when I’d become so enamored with him. I barely even paid attention to Sulfur’s, and I had been suffering punishments to be allowed there. But I did notice that he was guiding me to one of the private rooms, something that made me swallow nervously. My trepidation grew when he turned around at the door and looked me over with a small, distant smile.

“Now that we know each other a little better, I’m going to take a little more control, demand for a little more trust, Pet. Speech restrictions, specifically. Once you go inside, no more talking and trust me to care for you and notice the emotions when they happen. It’s going to feel like I’m not paying attention at times, but that’s intentional. Can you give me that kind of trust?” He asked it directly and it made me nervous for a moment.

But then that faded really damn quickly when I remembered who I was talking to. He noticed everything, even things I never wanted him to see. “Yes, Master.”

He kissed my forehead. “Brave little kotik.”

And then he led me through the door and I started questioning my sanity in trusting him.

There were two other girls already waiting for him, both in cat masks with matching collars and ears, both kneeling while facing each other. They didn’t so much as react when he opened the door, waiting for him. I gave him a confused and frightened look while he led me to a Saint Andrews cross against the wall and he stroked me while he tethered me with cuffs at each of the four points. “No speaking,” he reminded gently when I opened my mouth and even though I thought he was crazy, my mouth snapped closed because I… Well, I was really starting to like pleasing him, my Hannibal Lecter. I blinked at him instead, concerned because I wasn’t sure if I could obey him with whatever he was going to do. But he noticed that too. “It’s hard, I know. I can offer you the gag to make it easier, but I would really rather you do this one on your own. Do you think you can do that for me, kotik?”

I shook my head frantically, but then reconsidered and nodded, clenching my teeth. I really, really wanted to give him what he wanted. It was just a command to not talk, even though he was going to play with two other girls and even though they seemed to be ones he had already played with before. I ended up whimpering, afraid of failure. “Look at you. Such an emotional little Pet. It’s alright. Try it for me and we’ll go to the gag if you can’t.”

Okay, fair. That was fair because he was always fair. I relaxed in my bondage and breathed like I had learned to do with the crop. But he wasn’t quite finished yet. No, he came back with a kind of belt harness, a dildo, and a butt plug. I forgot about fears as soon as he pressed the plug to my ass and worked it in. He was gentle, but relentless as always, even though it had been a long time since I’d had anal sex. The doms who liked it usually wanted more control than I had been willing to give. But that was before I’d fallen into Sir’s hands. I moaned at the sheer carnal feeling of the sensation, having forgotten how pleasurable it could be. And there was a pleasure in it. There was something about how violent it could feel, how it made cold sweat break across my body, how it felt so… unnatural. There was no way to pretend like anal sex wasn’t for any other purpose than indulgence and surrender. He looked up at me with laughter sparking his eyes and I stared back at him with desperation in mine. “Good girl. That’s it. Just let me have you how I want you.”

I groaned at that and he let the plug set at its base, where it felt full, but a little more comfortable. He was far quicker with the dildo, now that I was soaked from his anal play alone. But it was big enough that he had to work it inside me even so, making me feel stuffed, as if I didn’t have any room left between the two toys. He attached the belt afterwards to keep them seated inside of me. “Now, just relax and watch and enjoy the feeling.”

I whimpered once when he walked away, but he wasn’t looking at me at all anymore and he was going to the two girls who sat still, kneeling and waiting. “Hello, little kittens.”

They both looked up at him with an adoring expression that made me blink. “Hello, Master.” They said it together, too, playfully flirting with him so that he smiled back.

Except that smile made me curious from him, even while the way they greeted him made my mind race. It was adoring, yes, but it was adoring in the way I had once looked to playmates, because it was part of the game. And the way he smiled back wasn’t anything like the cool smiles he gave me. It was far more playful and I remembered him saying that he had a facade he had to give to people because they didn’t like the cool version.

Poor Master. The thought made me stunned that I would think that way, that it would be the first thing that came to mind in this moment. I was generally a self centered bitch. It helped keep my heart safe to not think of other people or their feelings. And yet I liked thinking of his, of his pleasure. And I was looking at his face like he had taught me to, watching for his pleasure as I knew it.

“This is an exhibition, understood? And you’re both going to be on your best behavior for me, isn’t that right?”

They lifted to his touch in their hair and purred the answer together again. “Yes, Master.”

“Good girls.” He went to the wall, lifted down a cane and a whip, and both of his playmates reacted to the sight of him holding them with obvious excitement and arousal. The one with vibrant red hair stared at the cane with so much heat that it made me shiver to see it.

That’s when the toys inside of me started to vibrate and it shocked me enough to make me moan, even when I was terrified of drawing attention to myself. I was right to be wary of that, too, because he turned to me and his gaze was nothing of the playfulness that he turned to his other girls. It was the cold and stern Master that I knew. He paced to me and tapped my cheek with the cane so that I whimpered in fear. “Be quiet. Trained kittens perform for me, but untrained little pussycats stay silent and watch so they can learn how to please Master.”

It was so even and strict that it made me burn all the hotter and I had to nod through a haze of lust, but I didn’t say a word, and I fell quiet. And I couldn’t look away. The only jealousy I felt was that they knew how to behave and I didn’t.

But he wants to teach you how, remember? He wants to train you even more completely than he’s trained them. And I knew that was true, knew that I would feel this subspace for the entire time that he held me in slavery. Whatever invisible leash I had been feeling around my neck suddenly seemed too tight for me to escape from it anymore.

The toys inside of me stopped right as he was pacing back to his playmates, before I could orgasm from them. I shivered and just barely kept silent.

————

Ash

“Such good kittens.” I smiled down at Deirdre and Lily and tapped Lily’s back with the cane. “Why don’t you show off how you like to please each other?”

They went to each other instantly, greedily, and I smiled. I had chosen the two of them because they were both well adjusted submissives who knew my rules and didn’t want anything more than a night of fun at a time. They were perfect for my game and neither of them were anything like Pet. Lily was a red headed masochist who had a lot of passion… and none of Pet’s insane bullshit. Deirdre was a submissive wildcat with low inhibitions… without being close to Pet’s level of impulsivity and rash behavior. She wouldn’t have agreed to six days of punishment from me, on the first day meeting me, without once stopping to ask about safewords. And Pet still hadn’t thought to ask for them.

I acted like I was ignoring her, but I couldn’t think of much else besides her. No one else could make me feel this tall, this insanely dominant. No one else could send this rush of power pulsing through my veins. I could see everything in Lily and Deirdre and I could see it clearer than ever, because Pet was there. I noticed the way Deirdre closed the kiss first and Lily arched, the more submissive of the two. I noticed the way Lily shivered and tentatively pressed her fingers to Deirdre’s thong, who moaned in desire. I noticed the way Deirdre bit her playmate’s lip with such fierceness that it was pornographic, and that was just her kiss.

And even with all of that, from the corner of my eye, I knew when Pet was ready for some more stimulation and started the controls for her toys, smiling when she arched on the cross, watching. God, she was hot, so hot in her desire at seeing my display.

I stroked the cane for Lily, who was more the masochist, and striped the whip on Deirdre, who lifted with a cry of dark delight. “You can do better than that, both of you. Let’s see, don’t you want to straddle Lily’s face, Deirdre, and eat her pussy?”

Deirdre moaned and forced Lily to the ground while looking up at me. “Oh yes, Master. That’s a good idea.”

I gave her another lick with the whip, having to keep control of my cock where I wore the cage again. With it came more of my overall control. God, this was all because of her, if I could only get her to see that she belonged at my knees. “That’s not how kittens talk, Deirdre.”

She looked up at me and her eyes were fiery with heat, alive with desire. “Meow,” she whispered.

“Good girl,” I answered with a reproving smile, turning off Pet’s toys. I paced around the both of them, striping Deirdre’s ass, and teasing Lily with the cane on her thighs so that she moaned. I laughed when I saw her lick up to Deirdre’s asshole and striped the cane against the inside of her thighs at an angle, so that she squealed. “Bad Lily. I didn’t say to rim her asshole yet. Be a good kitten for me and wait your turn for that. You know how much she likes it and that neither of you can cum yet, but since you like teasing so much…” I went to get a double ended dildo and brought it back for Deirdre to take. “Fuck Lily open with this, little kitten.”

Her eyes were glazed and she groaned at the command to torture her playmate, knowing that the dildo would only make Lily hotter when she ate Deirdre. As one grew more aroused, the other would suffer with her, and I would have them use each other to torturous levels of arousal while Pet watched. Because Pet took her orgasms from me readily while I was in chastity.

And I wanted her to feel the depravity in that.

————

Jezebel

The lessons he wanted to teach me turned more and more obvious with every command he gave the two girls at his feet. At his instruction, Deirdre and Lily tormented each other with the double ended dildo he had gotten them. And all the while the toys inside of me vibrated on and off, so that I suffered too. They never even asked to orgasm, didn’t have one without permission either, and I knew it was because he had taught them to only do so on his command. Hot, that they knew they weren’t even supposed to ask. Even hotter, that they readily obeyed every task of pleasure that he gave them.

And the third time he turned the toys on, they were on long enough for me to orgasm around them, and I couldn’t stop it. And again I felt that strange jealousy, that they had the rules and the training to follow them and I didn’t. This was nothing like what I was expecting from my emotions. But still, I didn’t speak or beg, though I wanted to so badly. And he didn’t look at me, which was arousing as well. Because the submission he had instilled in me was remaining with me. I don’t know how that worked, but even without his attention and his gaze, I was somehow calmly adrift in subspace.

“Good little kittens.” He paced them like a twisted lion tamer, with the whip and the cane. “Now that you’ve teased each other with your toy, why don’t you both use it together? Lay back and spread your legs together, you know what to do.”

And they did. They splayed themselves open and faced each other, moving close together. Deirdre placed the dildo inside of her pussy first, stuffing it, and she was so wet that I could hear her from the cross. Lily seemed to be the more submissive of the two, because she waited for Deirdre’s gesture before she moved closer and took the other end of the toy. Her head fell back when she filled herself with it, and Deirdre mewled when the motion pulled the other end from her sex. Together they worked it back and forth, looking up at Master when he cooed above them. “Good girls. Work it nice and quick together while I mark your tits.” He alternated between them, cruelly flicking the cane on Lily’s tits first, so that she squealed, and then he went to Deirdre with the whip so that Lily had to wait her turn for more pain.

The toys started inside of me and I arched, closing my eyes briefly from the sheer inferno of pleasure pulsing through my veins. But then I opened them to watch him flick the cane again, because there was nothing so hot as the sight of him using those two toys.

His arm flexed when he swung the cane back and he snapped it on Lily’s tits with that same militant exactness that had made me so wet under his crop. He paused only to reach down and pinch her nipples thoughtfully, and she whined up at him even while she fucked her head of the dildo so hard that Deirdre moaned with pleasure at the other end of it. “Look at how horny my little kittens get and yet, they still don’t cum. I wonder why that could be. Maybe they’re obedient little kittens who need to be given command to do so for me?”

Together they mewled eagerly, so hot under his toys, and he chuckled cruelly and flicked the whip against Deirdre’s tits so that she arched to him. “Well, then, you’ll have to show me how badly you want that permission to cum. Show me how well you can clean off that toy together. You know how to clean it, don’t you?”

And they did. The vibrating toys inside me drove me to another out of control orgasm that made my body go taut against my restraints. I had to bite my lip to keep from making a sound and even then a squeak escaped me, but he ignored it, and I was grateful.

But I was grateful because I hadn’t interrupted his game with too loud of a sound. I was within his rules. God, this submission was the sweetest yet, and my body was turning into nothing but sensation. Emotions ran through me, but I couldn’t make sense of them.

I watched while they sucked their ends of the dildo, turning the toy, and fucking it with their faces. They pumped the double ended dildo between them, in the same way they had fucked their pussies open in that scissor like position. The leash reminded me of the collar held around my throat, and I wasn’t even sure anymore why I was afraid of it. If I wore it, he would teach me their kind of control and discipline me in this art form of pleasure, train me to be the wanton, sexual creature that his two playmates were.

“Now, if you think you’re both done cleaning the toy, you can give it to me to let me check. But if I’m not satisfied with one of your ends, then you’ll both be punished for it. Sister kittens suffer together and are rewarded together. So, are you done?”

In answer they violently shook their heads so that he laughed, and they worked all the harder.

————

I didn’t know what I felt anymore when he finally let them cum around the toy. He had them clean it off, only to look it over, and nod with approval before he handed it back to them. “Now, fuck yourselves together again. Harder this time, like you mean it. I want you on your hands and knees away from each other and I want to see you both in pain from how badly you want to cum. That toy is long enough for you to both fuck it doggy style and have it nice and deep.” And god they did exactly what he said. They made a filthy display, the hottest scene ever, while he stroked the whip and the cane between their wild rhythm. He made them keep going until every sound out of either of their mouth was a desperate cry of need.

And only then did he hand them both a vibrator. “Hold that to your clit and you may both cum, but only when I say. Keep fucking that toy.” He watched them hold the vibrators while they both pant in a kind of maddened desire. But he made them wait even then, until he had striped them both seven more times with their respective toy.

Their scream of orgasm had been one of the hottest things I’d ever heard, and the toys inside of me vibrated harder than they had yet, so that I couldn’t keep my cry of ecstasy back, and tossed on the cross. I went still while he finished up with his playmates, while he pet both of them. He studied them for a while, watched them curl into each other’s arms for comfort, smiling. I stayed silent while he checked them over, while he spoke with them quietly to make sure they were satisfied. When he asked if they would both like to cuddle together in the bar area, they seemed all too content to leave his hands.

And that’s when I started crying, when he led them to the door and they left so easily. Because I would have never wanted to leave his side, would have held to his ankle, clingy and needy and still mewling like a kitten, unable to talk because I was trapped too deeply in his submission. He hadn’t even paid attention to me and I had been trapped during this game.

“Such an emotional little Pet.” He returned to me with his calm smile, the one that I now knew was for me to see, and he stroked my hair back. “Why these tears, lovely? You can talk again.” I pulsed around the toys inside of me just at the sight of him and nuzzled my face against his cheek as best I could. He was even more of a god in his aftercare, while he made sure he had satisfied as a top.

“I don’t know why! I don’t want to be your slave, please. Please, but I… but I like serving you and I like seeing you pleased and you make me feel safe and I don’t want to leave sometimes and I stayed in that subspace feeling when you weren’t even looking at me and I don’t know what that means and-“

“Hey, there.” He kissed my cheek and pet me again until I was still, until I sniffled. “Take a deep breath for me.” And I did because he always knew what to do and I never did. “It means you should be proud of yourself, kotyonok, because that’s not a kind of submission that just anyone can reach. It mean you’re a good girl. And don’t you see? That’s what slavery would be, serving me and feeling safe.” I shook, knowing he was right, and it made me scared that it was already too late, that I was just drawing out the inevitable because he’d already won. “And what kind of jealousies did you feel?”

That question made me cry a little more, but I answered it because he always coaxed the answers from me even when I didn’t want to tell him things. “I wasn’t jealous of you playing at all because you want me to be your slave and you said that means that no one could be as interested in me the way you are and I know that. And you look at me differently and you’re meaner with me but I know that’s because you feel like you don’t have to soothe me or fake with me and I like that. And-and-and-“

“Breathe.” He pet me, stroked down my breasts. “Think of your words. It’s alright.”

He was like a priest, a guiding Master, a strict teacher all in one and I couldn’t resist his command. “And I was only jealous that they knew the rules and I didn’t because I want to be a performing kitten!” It poured out of me, the reality that I was only jealous for the fact that I didn’t have a cat mask.

He laughed. “Precious Pet. I’m glad to hear that because…” He trailed off, pulling his phone from his pocket and typing something really quick. When he held it up to show me, it was the Russian translation of his nickname for me. Kotyonok.

It wasn’t a curse word, like I had assumed after my crazy shit. It meant “kitten”. I burst into tears and he shook his head with a wry smile, stroking my hair again. “Such an emotional little Pet.”

I hesitated, then made a soft little sound. “Mew?”

He beamed in answer. “Very good. Sweet, lovely little Pet.” Sir kissed down my cheek and I tilted my head, sighing when he took advantage, when he kissed my neck and then down to my exposed breasts. He gently slapped one, even while he sipped at the other, lovingly kneading the flesh. I moaned, arched on his cross, and for a brief moment I had forgotten that I was still tied at his mercy. I made to grasp his hair and then moaned again, louder, when I couldn’t. He moved his tongue to the other breast while I gasped and whined. When he lifted away, I met his gaze with a lot of need and desire. “Beautiful kotik. Does the thought of slavery terrify you so much, truly? There’s nothing more intense. You didn’t feel jealous tonight because a slave feels no reason to ever be jealous. A slave knows there is nothing as intimate as a relationship with her Master. No other playtime, no other sex will ever rival what that relationship can have. For me to even train you, for instance, would mean for me to know you as well as I know myself. No secrets, nothing held back.”

What he described was what I had already felt, when I knew he did not look on his playmates with the same gaze he turned on me. I shivered, hunger and desire making me pulse on the toys that still filled me. “I don’t want to, please. Please, I’m scared.”

“For a month? Would you try my slave training just for that amount of time? You have nothing to do this summer, lovely, and nothing to lose. If it’s a failure, you spent your summer having the kind of sex that most people only dream about. If it’s a failure, you leave with nothing but a greater knowledge of the depth of subspace you’re capable of reaching. Bow to me for a month and I’ll show you why you’ll never want to leave being my slave.”

His gaze was so intense and I clenched on the toys, gasping with the pleasure that rocked me at the mere thought of surrendering to him, the man I knew only as Master because he wouldn’t give me his name. Because I was not to have another name for him.

I shook in fear and shook my head. “No. No, please. Please let me down, Master, please.”

He was still smiling, undeterred by my resistance, when he released the cuffs. “So afraid, kotik.”

I was and I was terrified of falling at his knees, but I wasn’t leaving and retreating like I should have once he released me, either. Instead, I was curling closer to his warmth and comfort and safety. Crazy girl. And that felt more true than ever. He stroked a hand down my back while I wondered what was wrong with me. “You weren’t hard,” I whispered softly, saying the only other thing that had bothered me during his game.

He laughed quietly. “True, but there’s a reason for that. If you’re feeling brave, I’ll show you what it is.”

Brave? No. Impulsively, recklessly curious? Always. I looked up at him. “I want to know.”

His grin was playful and he unzipped his jeans before he grabbed my hand, and guided me down the front to…

Metal encased him and my eyes widened, even while my blood raced, and I suddenly pulsed on the toys inside of me again, but this time it was painful. I moaned and stroked him, reaching lower to cup his balls while I looked up to his eyes to watch the reaction. He hissed through his teeth, and I could feel him trying to harden from my attentions, but he closed his eyes and breathed as if fighting it. And I realized I was mindlessly grinding the back of my hand in his jeans, twisting to try to get any stimulation against my covered clit.

When his eyes opened to meet mine, the look in them was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. He was still full of iron control, but he was a dangerous animal dying to dominate and take. And I was suddenly struck by the fact that he was reacting to my fear of him, and had been the whole time. The more I struggled against the noose tightening around me, the more he wanted me. “I told you,” he said softly. “You’re the one who is going to have to give me pleasure.”

And then I realized I had been right. I was already lost and there were two decent options for me. I could run away from him and never go back to Sulfur’s, never let him in my life, which was something I wouldn’t do. Or I could bow.

Like an idiot I didn’t do either of those things. I didn’t want to. No, my blood raced in reaction to that realization that fear taunted him. I wanted to run, but not actually run. I wanted to be chased and held down, endangered and taken. Because the more afraid I turned and then more I struggled, the more controlled he became and the more like a secure wall he was for me to lean against. And I wanted that security. It was what I’d been wanting all along.

It was weird. It was crazy and convoluted and only barely made sense, like every other bloody emotion I’d had in my life. But I think he understood or at least sensed my desires. His eyes didn’t miss a thing, and he knew all kinds of fetishes.

Instead of bowing or running, I stroked his cock in his cage, teasing him until he turned on the control for the toys inside of me, until he turned them up to their most intense. I fell to my knees with the pleasure of it, and resorted to kissing him through his jeans until I cried out in ecstasy while he remained unsated, staring down at me with a faint little smile that said he knew what game I was playing, what I was doing. When he grabbed my leash, I scrabbled, whimpering to get away and he let me, watching me with that same distant look.

“Let me go,” I whispered. “Take it off and let me go.”

“Anything you ask, lovely.” But it sounded like he was saying something else, like our entire conversation had been different.

————

Ash

As the days continued, each one felt like a mark off a calendar for an event that set my blood racing. I threw myself into work, even while I messaged and talked with and had taunting dates with her. It was as if she were the female animal who was pushing and testing me, needing to be held down so she could feel the strength and power that could make her safe. It was a few days before she asked me to come over to watch a movie with her.

She chose V for Vendetta, something I had never seen, but I quickly caught onto the undertones, and felt myself pushed and taunted again. Of course, it could have been all in my head. Could have, if she hadn’t paused the movie when V kidnapped Evey to torture her, and asked me if I would eat her out.

I laid her on the floor and whatever my smile looked like, it made her quiver beneath me. I fucked her with my tongue, switching to my fingers when I wanted to bite at her clit. Her cries were like music and her scent drove me crazy, so that I strained in my cock cage. There was a dark current to her request, as if she were trying to snap my control or make me act, so I would take her and hold her captive in a cave or a dungeon.

The second time she didn’t even bother with a movie. For the first time, she didn’t call, didn’t warn, didn’t ask for permission like she always did. She knocked on Sulfur’s back door, and I gave her an indulgent smile while I stared at her from the doorway, waiting. She fidgeted and looked away from my eyes, looked behind her as if she might change her mind, my Pet. But then she swallowed and pushed past me, grabbing my hand to pull me to my bondage bed. And still Pet didn’t say a word and I refused to break the silence, refused to break at all. 

Instead I merely watched, smiling vaguely when she shoved me backwards onto the bed, when she straddled me. My cock strained against the cage but in the state she put me in, in that magical place of perfect and pure control, I grabbed her thighs and helped her grind against me. Whatever pleasure she felt was purely psychological since I was obviously limited. But it was clear that she felt a lot of pleasure. She moaned when she straddled me, grabbing my hand so she could suck my fingers between her lips. She squealed when I withdrew to shove her on her hands and knees, to hold her still beneath me. While she trembled, I gripped her chin and pointed, forcing her gaze to the dungeon door. I didn’t say a word with the threat, but I didn’t have to. Her lips parted and she moaned, bowing low in front of me and the sight of her like that was like a siren call, commanding me to take, to own. Since the night where I had tied her to the Saint Andrew’s cross and made her face her emotion she had been in this mood, pushing me and pulling away. She was like a fox pawing at something it didn’t know very well, only to prance away, but never far because it was too curious.

I let her leave that night. I held her down on her hands and knees, holding her wrists together with one hand while my other held her hair and forced her to look at the door that I so rarely got to use. But eventually I relaxed, breathed, and released her. She had been so still under my hold as if waiting, petrified, but as soon as I let her go, she jumped away and turned to stare at me from the doorway before she left me.

It was the third call that did it. She asked me to come over again and when I showed up, I changed my greeting. “Hello, Jezebel.”

Her eyes went wide and she whispered, “Hello, Master.” She had the movie waiting for us and she curled up at my knees, as she had taken to doing. She had taken to wearing a bow in her ponytail after I had told her how pretty it looked one time. I toyed with her hair while we watched, running my fingers through the silky strands. And eventually she paused the movie and turned to watch me where I played. “Did you kill someone?”

I had to smile. It was perfect, the way she asked it of me. It was without fear, without judgment, without much concern at all. It was exactly the way a slave would ask a Master about their violent past. Because a slave wouldn’t need to fear those things. As belonging to me, whatever violence I possessed would only be used to protect her. Even so, I considered my answer. My past wasn’t something I had ever spoken of, and even my brother didn’t ask questions for concern of what he would find. Ivory had guesses, I knew, but he had growing up with a different mother, one who had run from our father. Mine had stayed and I had paid for it, not that it made me bitter or anything. No, those events had forged me and I was perfectly content with that fact.

“Whatever violence I have done before, I can promise you that it took a lot for me to be driven to it.”

“So you have.” She met my gaze so easily by then, her eyes crystal clear and endlessly curious. I had learned that her mind rarely stopped once it was detoxed from her drug use.

“I didn’t say that, now did I? The details are something I’d share with a slave.” I touched her nose playfully.

She pouted. “Well, that’s me, so I-“ She cut off, blinking, eyes going wide.

And then she turned around to start the movie, quickly covering her face so that I couldn’t see her anymore, but the damage had already been done. She thought of herself as my slave and now I knew that, had the proof for it. I went back to petting her hair, but my mind was far away, in my dungeon, thinking about the pink collar I had to start her with, and the eternity collar I intended to work towards with her. Our dance had been fun, but I was done with it. She had had her time of pushing, of bratty behavior, but now I thought that was enough of that.