Simone wasn’t trying to show off or anything—not really, well, maybe a little bit—but she desperately wanted to get the image of Jason being tossed around by a giant angry bull out of her head. What better way than watching some playful kink to clear their heads? And maybe Jason would get over his fear of hurting her if he could see the sort of S&M she did on a regular basis. The video she showed him was a few years old, filmed back when she still had her rainbow-striped hair, but she’d kept it up on her profile because it had been such a fun night at her club.
“So that’s Mistress Nora,” she said to Jason when a beautiful black-haired woman in a red corset and back carnival mask turned and smiled provocatively at the camera. “She’s my friend I texted about you earlier.”
“Pretty lady,” he said. “Not my type, though.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hair’s not pink enough.”
Simone grinned. “And that naked girl is obviously me.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said. “Does your momma know you do this online?”
“My videos are all private. You have to get my permission to view my page. And even if Mom did see them, what can I say? You go to a website called Kinklife, you’re going to see kink. Not my problem if someone goes looking for trouble and finds it.”
Simone pointed at the scene again. “That’s one of the dungeons at the club I work at sometimes.”
Jason leaned in to get a closer look at the screen. Simone was pleased by the look of rapt attention on his face.
“What’s that?” he asked pointing at the screen.
“That’s a St. Andrew’s Cross,” she said. “You tie people to it and flog them or cane them or whatever.”
“You get those with Amazon Prime?” he asked.
“Never looked. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could, though.”
“Who’s doing the filming?” Jason asked.
“Mr. King. My boss,” she said. “Or he was before he retired and moved to New Orleans.”
Simone studied Jason as he watched Mistress Nora cuff Simone’s wrists high up on the cross. Then she picked up her floggers—one red and one black—and began a light flogging up and down Simone’s entire backside from her calves to her shoulders.
“Nice,” Jason said and she could tell he meant it. He’d lifted up the back of her shirt and his hands drifted sensually over her lower back and sides. “You in the habit of making movies?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “But we did sometimes on request. This was for a very important client of Mistress Nora’s. He loves FemDom/femsub.”
“And that is?”
“Female dominant, female submissive.”
“I can see the appeal,” he said. “You and your friend Nora seem pretty cozy.”
Jason said that as Nora, in the video, ran her hand over Simone’s body—her back, her front, her breasts, and even between her legs.
“She and I were…um…close,” Simone said. “We played together a lot.”
“You like women?” Jason asked.
“I’m very attracted to dominance,” Simone admitted. “Dominant men and dominant women. I don’t have crushes on women as a rule but when she’s a dominant and a sadist like Mistress Nora, I get a little gooey. That bother you?”
“Bother me? That you been with a woman? Hot and bother maybe.”
Simone laughed. “When a beautiful woman tells you she wants to tie you to her bed and force you to have orgasms until you faint, what are you going to do? Say no?”
“I’d be hard-pressed to decline that offer myself,” Jason said.
“The good Mistress has very talented hands,” Simone said.
“She’s pretty tough with those floggers, too,” Jason said.
“Nora doesn’t pull her punches, that’s for sure,” Simone said. “Not that I’d want her to. I know it’s hard for people to understand why submissive masochists like what they like, but there’s just something incredibly sexy to me about submitting to someone dominant and powerful. Mistress Nora could have ordered me to clean her dungeon or polish her boots and I would have loved it. But the beatings are even more fun and special. It’s very intimate to let someone hurt you. And then there are the marks on you afterwards. They’re like prizes.”
“Prizes?”
“You ever make out with somebody super sexy and end up with swollen lips and a hickey on your neck the next day?”
“Once or twice,” Jason said.
“Did you like it?” she asked. “Having a little love bite on your body to remind you of how much fun you had when you got it?”
“Been there,” Jason said.
“The marks on a submissive from a beating are the same thing,” she said. “Only times a hundred. Or a thousand.”
Simone was glad to see Jason nod, and she hoped he was starting to truly understand her love of pain and dominance. She didn’t want him hating himself every time he left a mark on her while they were playing. She wanted him to find the welts and bruises he left on her as sexy as she did.
Back in the video clip, Mistress Nora was in full-flogging mode, striking Simone over and over again from her ankles to her shoulders.
“You can see she skips over my kidney area,” Simone said. “You don’t want to play hard around there.”
“Makes sense,” Jason said, still staring at the screen. “How much does that hurt?”
“The pain from a flogging really depends on a lot of things,” Simone said. “Certain types of floggers will hurt worse than others. If the falls are narrow—”
“The what?”
“The tails,” she said. “Those dangling leather things on a flogger. They’re either tails or falls. If the falls are narrow, they’ll sting. If they’re wide, they’ll thud. And the sensation also depends on how the flogger is being used. In Florentine flogging, it feels like you’re being slapped over and over. When the flogger is thrown…” Simone held up her hands and demonstrated how to hold the tips of the tails and snap them, “that can really sting. It can even break the skin if the thrower has a good arm and good aim. So for you, maybe you should think about learning to Florentine? Since you don’t like breaking the skin. Or a deerskin flogger. You can put a lot of power into it and you probably won’t break the skin.”
“I like the sound of that,” Jason said. “What’s she using?”
“Not sure what the material is. But those are narrow falls, probably oiled leather, so they sting like fire ants. Mister S, her master, he uses buffalo floggers a lot. You have to be insanely strong to use buffalo. It’s big, it’s heavy and it packs a wallop.”
“How big a wallop?”
Simone paused the video and pulled up a photograph on her profile. A picture of her, naked, kneeling on the floor in front of the fireplace at Mr. King’s Manhattan townhouse.
“You see those black and blue bruises up and down my back?” Simone asked. “That was the day after a scene with Mister S and his buffalo flogger.”
“Hmm…” was all Jason said.
“It’s fun,” she said. “And I heal fast.”
“That’s a lot of bruises,” he said. “You really liked that?”
“With him? Yes,” she said. “When you really respect your master, the bruises he gives you during a scene feel like badges of honor. That’s why I like taking pictures of my bruises and saving them. But only the really good ones.”
She flipped back to the video where Nora was flogging her with a new flogger, brown leather and thuddy.
“That’s her elk flogger. It’s good for a cool-down flogging. Little bit softer.”
“What’s that?” He pointed at her feet in the video.
“That’s called a spreader bar,” Simone said. “It’s an adjustable metal bar, and you attach it to cuffs with hooks. That way I can’t close my legs.”
“Can’t close your legs?”
“Not even if I tried,” she said.
“I need to start a shopping list,” Jason said. “We’re gonna need half a dozen of those, a St. Andrew’s cross, ten or twelve sets of floggers. Where’s my credit card?”
Simone grinned before remembering she’d be long gone out of Jason’s life by the time any kinky shipments started arriving.
“I have some of this stuff at home,” she said. “Wish I’d packed my toy bag. I have floggers in it, a spreader bar, cuffs and stuff.”
“If you’re the submissive, why do you have floggers?”
“I like having my own set of gear,” she said. “That way it’s there if I have a kinky friend come over, and we decide to play.”
“Play? That what you all call it?” He sounded doubtful.
“It’s fun, you know? Play time. Mr. King even calls his dungeon his ‘playroom.’”
“You feel like you’re playing with me?” he asked. Simone shut off the video and shifted on his lap to face him.
“Yes and no,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, yes, because it’s fun, like I said. No because it’s…I don’t know. More than that,” she said. “What about you? Do you feel like we’re playing?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes it feels, I don’t know, kind of real.”
“When does it feel real?” she asked.
“When you’re being my little slave,” he said. “When you’re on your knees or I’m spanking you and you’re squealing on my lap. And when I’m inside you…it doesn’t seem like it’s play then. It seems like you’re really into it. And I know I am. But maybe you’re a real good actress?”
“I’m not acting, Jason. While I’m here with you until I leave, I’m yours. For real. When you give me an order, I obey it. I want to obey it.”
He touched her forehead with his fingertips, ran his fingers through her hair. Simone shivered at the tender touch. The look in his eyes was inscrutable. She would have given anything to know what he was thinking.
“Does that scare you?” she asked.
“A little,” he said and it meant more than she could say that he was willing to admit that. “Scares me how good it feels, too. What if I can’t go back to being with a girl who isn’t like you?”
“Why would you want to?” she asked, giving him a little smile.
“Well, considering you don’t live here, and I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life sleeping alone…”
“Fair,” she conceded. “Still, a lot of women are very open-minded if you give them a chance.”
“I can’t imagine telling anyone the things I’ve told you about me.”
“I know it takes a lot of trust.”
“You’ve spoiled me,” Jason said. “You already know everything and I know nothing. If I met a girl and she was as ignorant about this stuff as I was, I don’t think we’d get very far.”
“You’d figure it out,” Simone said. “All couples have to, kinky or vanilla.”
“Maybe I oughta just tie you to my bed and not let you ever leave.”
“I’ve heard worse ideas.”
Simone and Jason met eyes. She wanted to believe he wasn’t joking. She wanted to believe he wanted her to stay. Not that she could, of course. Or could she?
No point even answering that question until he asked it.
“You want to see some more of my pictures?” she asked.
“More than I want to breathe and eat and sleep,” he said.
Simone giggled happily as she turned back to his computer and pulled up more of her photographs. Jason rested his chin on her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her waist as she showed him pictures she’d taken of her kinky friends, pictures of her posing in various submissive positions, and a few normal vanilla, i.e. clothed, pictures of her out and about in the Big Apple.
“You have a nice life in New York,” he said after she showed him a photo of her and her friend Tessa—another submissive at their club—dressed up to see Hamilton. A client of Tessa’s had given her tickets.
“It has perks,” Simone said. “And its downsides. Like anywhere you live.”
“Never heard a New Yorker yet tell me what they don’t like about the town. It’s nothing but the greatest city in the world, best place to live, nothing like it… What don’t you like about it?”
“Oh, the usual,” she said, shifting to face him. “It’s kind of loud at night. Rents are high. You’re not there.”
He raised his eyebrow at her. “And that’s a downside?” he asked.
“I’ll definitely miss you when I go back,” she said.
“You gonna post pictures of me on your secret page?” he asked. “Something to remember me by?”
“No,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You have kids who write you fan letters, remember? This is all top secret.”
Jason stared at her a few seconds before leaning forward and pulling up the picture of her kneeling in front of the fireplace again, the one that showed off the bruises on her back.
“Who took that picture?” Jason asked.
“Self-portrait. I was experimenting with lighting,” she said. The photo had turned out well. She looked like a real fetish model in it.
“I was looking more at the curves than the lighting.”
“Not the bruises?”
“I’m trying to pretend I left those on you and not some other man.”
“You could leave bruises on me,” she said. “I’d like that.”
“And I like the thought of you taking pictures of the marks I leave on you,” he said. “Like that.” He pointed at the screen.
“They fade so fast, if you want to preserve them, photography is the best way to do it.”
“Will you take some pictures of yourself?” he asked. “Private ones just for me?”
“Are you ordering me to?” she asked, grinning.
“I suppose I am.”
“I will definitely obey that order, sir.”
“I suppose I better put some marks on you first.”
“I suppose you better, Master Jason,” she said.
She loved the way Jason was looking at her right now, like a lost man looks when he stumbles out of the forest after days of wandering and sees the road that’ll lead him home. She wanted to be that path for him. But she wanted to be there when he got home, too. Too much to ask? Maybe. But maybe not.
Jason wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her to him—gently—and then kissed her—not gently. The kiss was so not gentle that Simone nearly slid off Jason’s lap. He caught her at the last second, and they both laughed.
“Whew,” she said. “You know it’s a good kiss when you almost fall out of your chair.”
“I got you, Spanky,” he said, pulling her closer and tighter to him.
Oh, yeah, he definitely had her. He kissed her again, a long kiss that neither one of them seemed willing to end. Minutes passed and they kept kissing. In the back of her mind, Simone vaguely wondered when was the last time she simply sat in a man’s lap and made out with him. She couldn’t remember. If Jason kept kissing her like that she wouldn’t remember her own name by the time he was through with her. He pulled her hair off her neck and pressed his lips against her throat. She moaned at the tug of his teeth on the thin, tender skin, moaned again as his tongue lapped at the little wound he’d made by biting her there.
“There,” he said into her ear. “That’s gonna leave a bruise.”
“I’ll be sure to take a picture of it for you, sir,” she said. “And maybe one for me, too. Tomorrow, after they turn into nice bruises.”
“Tomorrow? What should we do tonight then?”
Simone glanced around the room, looking for inspiration. She found it sitting right in front of her on Jason’s desk. His laptop still had her flogging video pulled up.
“Do you want to make a video, sir?”
That raised his eyebrow.
“That a yes?” she asked.
Jason set her on her feet and stood up. Then he took her by the wrist and pulled her out of the office and up the stairs.
It was a “yes.”