Betrayed by Love

Savannah threw off the blankets. She couldn’t sleep. It had been days since she slept and though her body dragged with exhaustion, she lay awake night after night. Stumbling out of bed, she started pacing. When that wasn’t enough she hummed to herself, hoping to drown out the memories.

Old pain, fear and anger—no less potent after all these years—churned and bubbled inside her. Giving in, she went to her computer, signing in to the email she used only when she needed it, only when the darkness was so thick she felt as if she were drowning.

Within ten minutes the plans were made.

Hating herself for wanting this, Savannah started packing her special case. Maybe this time would be the last, maybe this would be enough to let her forget the past. Forget him.

* * * * *

The room held its breath as she lifted the cane. When it landed with a crisp
crack
, reactions were as varied and wide-ranging as the observers. The watchers tried to be silent but each strike elicited a small flurry of sound—a sharp gasp from an elegant blonde curled on the floor; a high-pitched moan of pleasure and longing from a brunet strapped to the wall, his torso crisscrossed with chain; guttural sounds of fear from a mousy dishwater blonde who had curled herself around and between the legs of her Master, who sat stiff and watchful in the chair above her. For the most part the Dominants in the room were silent, the few sounds that were made coming from the submissive men and women who were with them.

There were varying degrees of understanding among the Dominants in the room as to what exactly was happening on the central raised platform. For the beginners, it seemed to be a harsh game, more severe than most. Dominance and submission, the sexual passion that united all those in the large room, meant different things to different people. What the Domme in the center of the room was doing was something only those with experience could understand.

The sub on the central platform was a laughing, gentle, forty-something man in his life outside the chains. He had a mature, open face and a body still thick with muscle but beginning to show some middle-aged padding. A likeable guy with deep-seated submissive sexual tendencies, he was familiar to most in the small community.

The woman however… She was an unknown.

His body was spread in the classic X, chains to the ceiling and floor holding the leather cuffs around his wrists and ankles so every inch of his flesh was accessible to her.

She was standing to the side and slightly behind the sub. When she moved she was a predator, her actions sharp but controlled. Most Dominants moved slowly, surely, as if showing the world how in control they were with their measured strides. Not her. She stalked around him, her body wrapped in the classic black bodysuit, but instead of shiny cheap vinyl hers had the muted sheen of leather. There was elaborate stitching, black on black. A vaguely Celtic pattern started on each shoulder, moved down over her breasts and then parted to continue down her hips and the outsides of her thighs.

A leather-and-lace mask covered the upper part of her face. Starting from her hairline, it covered her brow, nose and upper cheeks, the leather then giving way to lace that lay close to her skin. Unlike the catsuit that molded her curves, the mask sparkled, jet and crystal beads worked into the lace where it was darted into the leather. It drew the eye, causing the viewer to crave the answers the mask hid.

Some, those who had had the privilege to see her up close, would know there was a teardrop crafted in crystal beads under one eye. The contradiction, the complication, was compelling and frightening.

“Slave.” Her voice was low, smooth, but thrumming with power, tension—her concentration, her being, clearly centered on the sub before her.

“Yes, Mistress.”

The blow she landed with the cane was sudden, unexpected. The rattan cane, stained dark brown, was a blur as it arched up from below, striking the inside of the sub’s left thigh. His cry was sharp, desperate, his back arching before he hunched in on himself.

“Oh God, oh God, please, do not stop.”

His words echoed in the room. He was gone, lost in sub-space, so far into the world of darkness there was no light. And she had taken him there simply, easily.

Her voice was low now, just for him. “I will touch you once more, and only once. Your body and mind are fractured now, but you will survive. I will let you down and your mistress, your wife, will take you home and care for you, and you will love her all the more for having danced on the edge.

“Know what good fortune you have that there is someone to care for you now. When I release you and walk away I will forget you.”

Her voice was hard, cruel, cutting him in ways and places a knife could not reach. His body and mind warred between his insane and desperate need for more of her dark attention and the haven of the arms of someone who loved him.

As he shook in his bonds, his mind at war, his body foolishly straining toward her, she turned, sweeping the room with her gaze.

Let them feel true fear, true pain, and appreciate what they have all the more. Let them see what it is to truly need to punish, to need to inflict pain rather than simply using it to express desire.

When all had felt the soulless weight of her gaze, she turned back to her broken partner. In this dark moment her heart died a little—as it always did. Horror began to seep into her consciousness, easing the fog of rage and sadness that motivated her.

It was this damnable weakening, this traitorous softness in her—when she knew the world had no softness to give her in return—that made this last blow the most horrible, the darkest. She did not temper the blow. Pulling back the cane, she brought it forward with stunning force, cutting a line along the top of his ass. For a moment a white line blossomed there, straight and sure across his body. In the next breath, white morphed to red, horrible red, pain red.

And in a room that echoed with the sound of the crack there was silence, until he threw his head back, his scream at once hopeless and beautiful. Blood began to seep from the mark of the cane.

Stepping close once more, she pressed her fingers against the raw flesh and, leaning in, whispered, “Forgive me.”

She strode from the room, scooping up the pack as she went, and was gone.

Savannah dipped her sponge into the cloudy water and carefully lowered her arm into the well of the vase she was throwing.

In her mind’s eye, she could see it, a thin-walled straight-sided pot, awash in bold colors. She drew her fingers up, using slight inward pressure to counteract the outward force the wheel.

She took her foot off the pedal and the wheel slowed to a stop.

Reaching around, she used a wire to slice cleanly through the base where it was attached to the wheel and then rose. The piece was still too wet to be moved.

Her arms were wet to the elbows with clay. Moving to the large industrial sink, she turned on the faucet before plunging her arms into the cool water. The shorts she wore—purchased in the boys section because they were the only kind equipped with enough handy pockets, buckles and flaps—hung low on her hips, emphasizing rather than disguising the femininity of her body.

Casually wiping her arms against her clothing to dry them, Savannah left the concrete-floored pottery room with its high industrial ventilation ducts and entered the airier painter’s studio.

“’Chelle! Where are you?”

A dark-brown head peeked up from behind an easel in the corner of the room. “Hi. You done already?”

“Yep,” Savannah said, wandering over. “I have a good feeling about this one.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Michelle said, her attention on her canvas. Unlike Savannah, who needed silence to work, Michelle was able to talk at the same time. “Since you came back your stuff has been amazing, like totally amazing. I mean wherever you go there must be something in the water. You could probably bottle it and sell it and make, like, a million dollars. Not that you need to because you already make that as an artist, which is amazing anyway. Um, where was I going with this?”

“I have no idea,” Savannah said with a smile. Michelle was a sort of apprentice, as well as a friend. Though they were only five years apart in age, Savannah felt twenty years older than the younger woman.

Bright and cheerful, Michelle’s personality was only a thin veneer for her raw passion. She had the makings of a truly important artist. As scattered as her speeches could sometimes be, Michelle had hit on one very important truth.

Savannah’s work had been much better since she returned. Her demons exorcised, for now, her heart was able to follow the light to brighter side of life and express that in her work.

Amazing what a three-day sadism binge with a twenty-hour session as a Dominatrix could do for a girl’s mental health. Though she tried to stop it, a memory of her time with the sub flashed before her eyes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Do you want to know why I did that, slave? Do you wish to know what you did to deserve such harsh treatment?”

“Yes, Mistress… Please… Tell me so that I might not do it—”

His plea was cut short when Savannah lashed him, creating a matching welt on the inside of his thighs.

“I will not tell you.”

She’d never been told why she was hurt, what she’d done to deserve the treatment she received.

The tip of the cane traced his chest, following the pattern of the stripes she had already laid. She took a step closer to him, taking his left nipple between her finger and thumb.

“Offer me something, slave, try to please me.”

“Mistress, whatever you want is yours to take.”

She twisted the nipple, his breath hissing through his teeth.

“But I want you to offer something to me. What do you think will please me?”

Those who had a view of the front could see the poor man blinking furiously, his breathing fast and uneven.

“Mistress, if it pleases you, you have not touched my cock.”

Savannah twisted the nipple harder, wringing another cry. “Are you, slave, asking me to suck your cock? You think so highly of yourself and so little of me?”

“No! No! No! I offer it for your pleasure, whatever it may be.”

Without another word, she stepped back, moving to a small rolling case resting on the floor near the platform. There were gasps as those closest saw what she brought out. The rest of the room waited, breathless.

“Open your mouth, slave.” Instantly his lips and teeth parted. She placed the cane between his teeth, whispering, “Bite.”

Gloved fingers took the man’s genitals in hand, gathering his semi-erect cock and balls together, squeezing and manipulating the flesh until she was able to wrap her fingers around the base, pulling both cock and balls away from his body. His small sounds were muffled against the cane. With her other hand, she carefully wrapped a cock strap studded with inward-facing spikes around his genitals.