Chapter Twelve

Day Two …

Jack handed Jeni a beer late in the afternoon, which she drank slowly, in the time it took Jack to down three. They ate finger food, cheese, olives, grapes, salami and crusty bread they’d picked up from a local bakery when they were in town earlier in the day. That would be dinner.

Collared and naked hadn’t begun until they returned to the cottage and by the time they were finally on the porch she was ready. After all the sexual activity of the day before, she almost felt deprived now. With Jeni in clothes, Jack was pretty much vanilla. But once the collar went on and the clothes came off that afternoon, Master emerged and the sexual heat between them was immediately on the rise.

They were quiet again for a while, still drinking beer, Jeni feeling a mild buzz, when Jack jumped in with, “Yesterday, you asked about the future.”

“I did?”

“Not in so many words but that’s what you were thinking.”

“Probably so.” She knew exactly what he was talking about, though she was surprised that he even remembered the conversation.

“I’m not in love,” he said.

It took a moment for his words to register, and for a second her heart dropped to the floor. This was what he had to say? Cold, blunt and without explanation. “I’m not in love.”

“I see,” she finally found her voice, if not her rational mind. He must have seen the wounded, baffled look because he added:

“I’m not ready. Nor are you ready for love.”

She sat with that thought a moment, a tiny bit relieved. “You’re sure of that?”

“At least for now.”

“Well, if it’s not love, and I’m willing to concede that,” in fact she wasn’t sure that it was or wasn’t love she felt for him, “then whatever we have is an awful powerful something.”

“I’d agree to that.” He cleared his throat and put down the beer. “Just so you understand I’m not ever going to get married again. So please don’t think along those lines.”

“Who’s talking marriage?” she spit back incredulously.

“It’s just what men assume a woman’s thinking.”

“If you want to know what I’m thinking, just ask. I’ll tell you.”

He nodded, “Good. That’s good to know.”

Her senses were sharpened. Gone was the dreamy subspace she’d surrendered to during the last thirty-six hours. She sat up straighter, feeling a little defiant but definitely cautious. She needed her wits about her for this conversation. “So, what do you want, Jack Hawking?” she ventured at last.
He thought a long while, then shrugged. When he spoke again, he sounded pensive, and a bit befuddled. “This, you and me? Took me by surprise.”

“Me too,” she said gently.

“Still surprises me, how far we’ve gone. Which is why I can’t jump to easy conclusions about falling in love. Jumping into the fire too fast burned me before. Don’t get offended if I’m not wanting to do that again.”

“Seems we already jumped into one big bonfire.”

He considered the thought, “Yeah. You’re right.” He took another gulp of beer. “Which means, we need to be careful, both of us.”

There was a lot of masterful authority behind that warning. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to pursue. He said his piece and would end it there.

He was quite right about careful, and could have added prudent, sensible, sane – words she understood but would rather not hear. At times she felt a romantic imperative embedded in the female of the human species rising without her conscious choice involved, and driving her forward with a power that reached far beyond her. Some women, maybe most women, sought out a mate the way their lungs sought breath. A female thing that broken-hearted men resisted – until they felt safe perhaps, though she really didn’t know what men thought. The tension between them now had a familiar feeling, but she didn’t know why. There was no basis for it in Jeni’s past. With the love of her life questions about love simply didn’t exist. They were young and naïve when they met. Love was welcomed, assumed and eventually taken for granted. They knew the future because they held the same picture in their minds of the years ahead. Their hearts didn’t bleed until it was clear that it was time for him to go.

Love couldn’t be that easy now. At least not with this man. His brokenness arose, a half-healed wound she felt in her gut, in her heart and head. They’d passed by this moment before the day they met, when he was an open book to her in the matter of his broken heart; when he allowed himself to open and be vulnerable. She’d felt his pain inside her. If only she could kiss the wound like a mother kisses her child’s scuffed knee, and make it heal.

Relationships were more complicated this time around, and Jack wasn’t about to be led anywhere he didn’t want to go. At least for now, Jeni was content to back off. She had the information she needed, and plenty of her own concerns to challenge her. She’d let the matter rest.

Plus, he was probably right, neither of them had any business talking about love. Not yet anyway – even if that was not something a woman with her great passion for this relationship wanted to hear.

The next thing she knew, Jack was on his feet, behind her with the key to her collar, opening the lock and pulling it from around her throat.

“What’s going on?” she asked, surprised by the abrupt move.

“In the shower, slave. You get to scrub me down.” He smiled wickedly – the last ten minutes forgotten.

With Jack in charge again, she headed off to the shower. Maybe that’s what they needed to wash away all this serious thought and awkward conversation. Do something just for fun.

Jeni should have understood the timing of the shower long before she stepped into the big tub and felt the jets hammering away the tension in her body. Jack’s warm, sensuous hands massaged her wet skin, and that felt like heaven. She played with his cock, diligently trying to bring it to life, though this time it seemed to resist her attempts to make it hard. They slow-danced for a time with arms around each other and lips kissing, the water bouncing off their bodies. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, something changed. A warmer stream of water…and suddenly it hit her. Jack let loose – all that beer…

She backed away slightly and looked up at his smiling face, while feeling that warmth splash on her belly and cunt, running down her legs and into the drain. “You’re not, are you?”

“Oh, yes, I am.” Then he pushed her down to the built-in bench behind her, and sprayed her breasts like a lordly brute marking property.

“Oh fuck!” she laughed then sputtering with disgust when he aimed for her lips.

“Open wide,” he ordered.

She tried, she really tried, but she couldn’t stand the taste and she turned her mouth away. She fought him when he tried to force her back. First time she resisted a command.

“So, there’s actually something you don’t like,” he exclaimed, jubilantly.

“Just that—” and she spit out, “your piss tastes terrible!”

“Not my problem,” he laughed. She was laughing, too, and he was finally finished pissing and almost giddy. He pulled her up and washed her down with soap, then she washed him. When he turned so she could wash his back, she slid her fingers down between his ass cheeks, and reaching in deeper, she found his cock and gave it a few awkward squeezes.

“There’ll be time for that later,” he assured her. He turned back and kissed her again.

“I hope I didn’t displease you, Master,” she said, coyly, even as she laughed beneath that demure expression.

“Not at all, slut,” he said. He gave her cheek a light smack of his hand. “Just gives me good reason to spank your ass, whip it, cane it and fuck it. Plenty of ways for you to make amends.” Hummm. She’d heard that before. But now his words penetrated her skin, they landed in her bones, went sliding through her veins and crawling through her belly, reaching her cunt where the throbbing feeling exploded one more time. She could have cum on his hand, but he pulled it away too fast.

She sighed heavily.

It’s all about now. Now, not forever. But now, she reminded herself.

Day Three …

The cool fieldstone felt good against her skin on that warm late August afternoon. She’d been napping on the couch in the living room when Jack came in from the lab and woke her.

She saw the belt and whip in his hand before she saw his face. That morning he’d announced as soon as the breakfast dishes were cleared from the table, that he’d be working in the lab most of the day, though he was in a mood to give her one helluva beating later, so…You’d better be ready when I come get you – was what he didn’t say then.

The time had obviously arrived.

In the next sixty seconds, Jack marched her onto the porch, and pushed her against one of the thick substantial pillars of stone that would serve as his whipping post. He stopped his mission just long enough to buckle the cuffs around her wrists, then he strung them up to eyehooks that had been conveniently embedded in the concrete mortar between the stones.

“Keep those feet spread or I’ll tie them to a spreader bar,” he warned. “I want to see how well I can torture your pussy in this position.”

Despite the warning, he spent little time trying to whip her cunt from between her legs, where with just the right wrist action, the thin leather falls would curl upwards, lapping at her tender skin. She shrieked when the whip cut deep. He tried several more times to catch her clit with the tail of the whip. The results were mixed. Jeni tried not to shriek – she didn’t want to be gagged again – but then he abruptly turned his attention to her ass and shoulders. He beat her bottom with his leather belt until she was crying. She loved that leather, but so many blows all at once hurt like hell. She didn’t beg for mercy in so many words, but the way she squirmed and hollered and stamped her feet he had to get the message. When aiming for her shoulders, he used the whip to start then tried all his favorite floggers, quite a departure from previous times when the whippings were quickly over – because he was anxious to fill her mouth or cunt or ass with cock. This time, the whipping went on long enough for him to pause several times so she could catch her breath. Every time he started in again, he got rougher. Meaner. Tougher – Jack’s version of tough love. Her horny body just got hotter as she adjusted to his pace, and the rising intensity. Soon, she was there – in subspace bliss and unconcerned with how hard his whips snapped and floggers struck.

While her back took the brunt of the blows, the fieldstone caressed her pussy – a whole new kind of lover. As long as she could rub her wet slit against those cool stones – cool but growing warmer – she loved whatever he dished out.

She could have gone on for a long while. The syncopated rhythm behind the act took her to lovely places where she felt herself lifted away; and so it came as a complete surprise when the beating suddenly ended and didn’t resume. Jack was at her back, slippery liquid sliding down her anal crack, his erection banging at the back door, prying her cheeks apart, and unapologetically shoving its way inside her ass.

“Ouch!” That first shove was something to get used to. But it didn’t take long to feel the fullness in her ass and for her body to relax with the whole of her consumed by him. His powerful chest, his muscled arms, his strong, firm thighs, all added weight to the dominant authority that took her to fucking heaven. The climax was suddenly on them both, a shuddering unison, a cumming unanimity of spirit, after which a happy, and entirely oblivious world closed in around them for a long while. She knew that he had mastered her again.

“You needed that, you dirty bitch,” he scowled at last, when he finally pulled out and sat back in his chair, panting, watching her body twitch, seeing the evidence of the abuse he’d wreaked on her.

The wounded flesh – most of it would heal by morning – was sure a pretty picture now.

“So that’s what you think of me,” she snapped back at him. She didn’t like being called dirty bitch anymore than she liked being called whore, even if the word fed her insatiable lust. “Just go ahead and fuck me again!”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he snarled. “You’d probably like a whole string of cocks riding your ass all day long.”

She was still trying to catch her breath, but suddenly she was laughing. “No, Master. Just you. Yours is all the cock that I can handle.”

He rose to his feet.

“Well if it’s me you need, you’re going have to wait.” He pulled up behind her, running his hand down her ass, giving it a firm crack of his hand. Then he reached around, grabbed both breasts and squeezed them. “You like it rough.”

“Is that a question, Master?”

“No. Just stating a fact.”

“Then it’s good you know.”

His touch was softer now. He massaged where the skin was welted and hurt, where it burned, where his whip had dug deep, and she could still feel the pain rise up again from those welts.

“Wish I could just leave you dangling here,” he whispered in her ear.

“That wouldn’t be very nice.”

“No it wouldn’t. But my slave doesn’t like nice. She likes it rough.”

“And she likes you talking dirty.”

“Yes, I know,” she could sense him smile. “You just dangle here a while. I need to clean my cock.”

He left her hanging until he was finished in the bathroom and returned to release her. Didn’t matter to Jeni when he returned. She could have stayed right there for a long while, sidling up to the stones, happy in her subspace bliss.

At last there was a slap to her ass. “Think you’d better clean yourself,” he said, and with the cuffs removed he sent her on her way. When she was halfway to the bathroom, she heard him call. “By the way, how about you show off one of those fancy Parisian scarves for me. Now would be a great time.”

Scarf? Why the scarf? She thought a moment then shrugged. Why not?

Jeni had another bottle of wine to share when she finally returned to the porch. But she stopped abruptly, as soon as she came through the screen door and saw two men, not one but two – Malcolm and Jack talking away as if they’d been sitting there shooting the breeze all day. There she stood with bottle in hand, collar on and a large purple print scarf tied around her hips – all she wore. Her naked tits stood out proudly, her nipples fully erect and freshly tied with black yarn.

As the screen door banged behind her, the two men kept talking, obviously too engrossed in their conversation to acknowledge her arrival.

“I guess I’d better get another glass,” she finally announced her presence and they both looked up – Malcolm over his shoulder since he had his back to her. He quickly turned in his chair with eyes riveted to her naked chest and the collar above.

“Ah! You’re looking more like a slave today,” he exclaimed. That might have been a casual comment – like this was an everyday scene for Malcolm. But there was no mistaking the surprise in his eyes, and then the desire that quickly followed. “I understand you just got beaten.”

She blushed, replying politely, “Yes, sir, I did.”

“I’d like to see the results, if you’d care to show me.”

“That would be up to Jack,” she answered.

“How about that other wine glass?” Jack jumped in. “Then you can show Malcolm my handiwork.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The titillating thrill of the stranger’s eyes was something to get used to. She’d been warned, the threat had been out there for a while, and suddenly the reality was on her. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel. A riot of emotion swept through her in seconds, but before Jack reminded her to get moving, she headed off to grab that extra wineglass.

In the intervening minutes, within the cool of the cottage, Jeni took a few deep breaths to gather herself. Malcolm. A good choice for the first time, she thought. Safe. Easygoing going kind of guy. Nothing to threaten her. Just her hot blushing cheeks and embarrassment to contend with, both of which she’d handle.

Once the wine was poured, Jeni didn’t know what to do. There was no spare chair on the porch. Malcolm was sitting where she had sat and that was not an option at the moment.

“So, Sir, is there anything else you need from me? If not, I can go back inside and let you two talk.”

“Just wait a minute,” Jack said, amusedly, “You think you’re getting off that easily?”

“I can always try.”

“Seems your slave needs a little getting used to her place,” Malcolm chimed in.

Nothing like getting taken down again. Though this was just teasing talk, she was still embarrassed, and more than a little nervous about what would happen next. Jack finally saved her from her anxious thoughts.

“Jeni, put down the wine glass. Then turn around and let him see your back.”

The same sort of shy, lip-biting, bashful response followed that happened every time she felt Jack’s cool scrutiny – though this time, all that titillating fear was greatly increased. She visibly shuddered, then set her glass on the wooden railing that capped the stone porch. The good news was that with her back turned to the two men, she didn’t have to endure the smirks and sly glances, and feel her embarrassment increase.

“Nice stripes,” Malcolm observed as he looked at her welted back. The red was fading, but there was still enough to know that this latest trip into their sadomasochistic kink had been a rough and lengthy one.

“They fade fast,” Jack explained, “but I got in a few that should last a couple days.”

“And you feel them, Jeni?” Malcolm asked.

“A little bit.”

“How about her ass?” a question directed to Jack, that prompted him to give the order:

“Bend over. Show him that pretty butt.”

Although she’d been through this sort of inspection before, that made it no easier to exhibit her body to a total stranger now.

As soon as she bent over, Jack reached out and pulled the scarf off her ass, exposing to Malcolm’s keen fascination, her creamy skin and the rash of red streaks that were even more prominent than the ones on her shoulders.

“That was quite a beating,” Malcolm exclaimed. “Hurt a lot?”

“Yes, Sir, very much.”

“And you deserved to be punished?”

She hadn’t expected the questions, and stammered an embarrassed, “I-I guess so, Sir.”

“The point is, Malcolm,” Jacked interjected, “it pleases me to beat her and that’s all that really matters. Trust me, she wasn’t complaining when I fucked her ass. Too bad you didn’t arrive a half hour sooner.”

Thank god he hadn’t arrived a half hour sooner!

“Now, that would have been something to see,” Malcolm agreed.

The sudden sound of a phone ringing jarred the two men from their playful banter, and Jeni from her humble pose.

“That’s me!” Jack sprang to his feet, and he went inside for his cell phone.

With him gone, Jeni moved back to the porch railing, unsure about what to do.

“Maybe you should sit for now,” Malcolm suggested, “before your legs collapse.”

She couldn’t help the blushing giggle, although taking Jack’s seat seemed to ease the nervous tension between them.

Which is another thing about naked slave – especially in awkward moments like this one, where there is no master to direct the players in the game. Conversation lags, the bashful naked slave can’t think of a thing to say, and the man looking on is just about as tongue-tied as she is.

However, the clumsy moment was only brief, ending abruptly with Jack’s return. “Well, that sucks!” He ran his hand through his hair, and sighed, disgustedly.

Malcolm and Jeni stared at him, then Jeni popped from her seat. “Sorry, Sir,” expecting him to sit back down.

“It’s fine, don’t bother,” he waved her off. A weariness had crept into his face and his mood, and this wasn’t sounding good. “Looks like there’s been a change in plans.”

“Oh?” she said.

“That was my secretary. Apparently there’s been quite an uproar going on over some flagrant conduct violation and the entire staff needs to meet at seven in the morning.”

“Seven?” Jeni gasped.

“Believe me, I argued but got nowhere. I checked my messages and there are half a dozen calls I need to make. See if I can sort this out before I end up in that meeting. What they want is for me to fire the bastard, which I could do over the phone. But no, have to look him in the eye—” He stopped – like he’d already said too much. He looked at Jeni, regretfully. She looked back at him stunned and deeply disappointed, sliding fast into a dark place and feeling lost. “I’m sorry, really sorry,” he added. She felt that. Though it was small consolation given the abrupt change in plans. No trip to the falls the next day, no kink, no sex, no chance to talk about what had happened in the last three days – just the two of them riding home in silence at the crack of dawn.

“Well,” Malcolm stood up. “I’d better leave you to your plans,” and turning to Jeni, he said, “you’re a good sport about this. I hope to see you again.”

“Thanks,” she smiled. “You’ve been very kind.”

Nodding at them both, he scuttled down the steps, leaving Jack and Jeni staring at each other, neither one sure what to do next.

A cloud of emotion was rising in him fast, flustered, troubled, and pissed off, if Jeni was guessing right. He paced a bit, then looked out at the lake for several anxious minutes. Finally he turned back to her, “Listen, I’m sorry. This isn’t right. But I’ve got those calls to make,” he shook his head. “Maybe you should get dressed and packed. I’m thinking we should probably leave soon. No rush. But packing’ll give you something to do.”

“You sure you want to leave tonight?”

“Sounds better than getting up at four am.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she conceded. “I’ll see what I can do to get everything together.” She smiled grimly, waiting for him to leave, then finally added as if he needed something from her to get him moving, “I’ll be fine. Go do what you need to do.”

The collar, cuffs, whips and floggers were the first things she packed away after she got dressed.