Kyle’s Bargain (24 page)

Meg realized what Rick had meant by this being more reminder
than punishment. The pain wasn’t all that much, just enough to tell Lindy that
she’d put herself into his power completely, to make sure she felt the weight
of his judgment, to tell her that he could have made this a much more serious
penalty but chose not to.

Lindy was getting turned-on by it too. The way her breath
huffed and her bottom heaved against the sheets didn’t result from pain. Meg
knew from experience how that sting could bore its way into your core and
transform into wild pleasure along the way. A curl of that same heat worked
through her, making her pussy swell just at the thought.

Rick must have seen Lindy’s arousal as well. “You will not
come from this,” he warned.

Lindy nodded in response. “Yes, Master.”

Meg told Kyle when he’d reached twenty again and watched him
set down the strap and pick up the bundle of branches. She shivered a bit in
anticipation, sensing this thing would deliver a different and possibly more
severe sort of stroke.

It only took a couple of lashes with it to show how right
she was. It made a different sound—more a series of whistles followed by small
pops rather than the whiz and thud of the paddles. It left different marks as
well. Narrow pink lines swelled into welts almost immediately then filled with
a darker rose color. A few bluish dots appeared as well.

Lindy squirmed, probably with more surprise than pain at the
first strike then sucked in a soft breath on the second, but after that she
gave no reaction. She continued to watch Rick steadily, undoubtedly drinking in
the love and pride showing so openly in his expression. The intimacy of it was
so strong, Meg had to look away.

She could feast her eyes on Kyle instead. He still struck
with the very slow deliberate pace that gave Lindy time to fully feel the burn
from each lash. A surge of fierce and possessive pride surged through Meg while
watching him manage the punishment that wasn’t. The man had the routine down
perfectly and he looked every bit the Master in control that he was. He wielded
each instrument with controlled grace and surprising precision.

She wanted him so badly she could almost taste it. Taste
him
.
Right now. Heat pooled low in her core, making muscles tighten and pulse race.
She had to fight an impulse to drag him off to another room and jump him right
then. Instead she forced herself to concentrate on recording each stroke.

Lindy had begun to moan with a few of the strokes from the
bundle of switches. The pink flush on her bottom deepened and a few darker
spots might turn into bruises. Apparently the switches could deliver a pretty
sharp blow without much force behind it. Made her wonder what would happen if
Kyle did strike harder. It appeared he had no intention of trying it, though.
He kept lashing at the same slow speed and with the same light touch.

Meg had just made the mark for the thirteenth stroke when
Rick called “Eyes”. His tone both demanded and warned. Lindy’s lowered head
snapped back up to lock gazes with his.

“This one doesn’t count in the total,” Kyle said to Meg.
That one time he delivered a much harder stroke with the bundle of switches. It
cracked across the center of both cheeks of her bottom, leaving darker lines
that rose into long welts. Several twigs broke off and flew around the room.
Lindy’s chest came up off the mattress for a moment as she sucked in a harsh
breath that she let out on a groan. She kept her gaze on Rick’s the entire
time, however.

After that Kyle returned to the slow, lighter strokes that
seemed to do little more than warm the skin. Lindy squirmed and let out a soft
cry when he slapped the bundle of branches across the tops of her thighs. Three
more strokes on that area had her letting out soft squeals with each. For the
last three, Kyle returned to her bottom. Despite the rose color and darker
lines, those affected her less, causing nothing more than a soft gasp on the
last stroke.

Again Kyle wore no expression she could discern as he came
toward her after she’d told him he’d reached twenty again. He set down the
bundle of switches—many of them now no more than broken-off stubs—and picked up
the last instrument, the crop.

Meg tried to wrap her imagination around what that would
feel like. It had to be painful as the devil, even when used as lightly as Kyle
had been striking.

“Tell me when I’m at the last five,” Kyle suggested as he
took up his position again. Meg nodded.

He continued as he’d been doing. Even though this was the
last set, he wielded the fearsome-looking, black-leather-covered crop with
almost delicate control. With its weight and whippy flexibility, it wouldn’t
take much force to make a major impression. He didn’t use much power in his
swing, but even so Lindy grunted on the first couple and all but sobbed on the
third. Each strike on her bottom left an odd double-tracked mark that started
pink and deepened to a ripe bluish-red shade.

Lindy struggled a bit more even though Kyle didn’t appear to
strike any harder than he had all along. Maybe the cumulative effective of so
many lashes made it increasingly hard to bear. Her rear end had to be on fire.
The pink flush had spread in a rose glow, covering most of her butt cheeks with
a number of darker splotches, while the new welts swelled and darkened. It had
been going on for quite a while by then and Meg wondered how Lindy continued to
take it without crying out, screaming or begging to be allowed to come.

Though she continued to jolt and moan with each stripe Kyle
laid on her, Lindy kept her gaze focused on Rick and seemed almost in another
zone or a trance. Though her bottom blazed with the results of almost forty
minutes of Kyle’s whipping, Meg would swear the sounds she made weren’t mewls
of pain but the groans of desire and longing.

Meg was getting so hot and bothered by the whole scene she
grew impatient for it to end so she could have at Kyle—or let him have at
her—whichever came first and fastest. She crossed each stroke, counting down
the number remaining in her head.

Only as they reached the last few did Kyle strike a bit
harder, enough to jolt Lindy and make her squeal as each made contact with skin
already grated and sore. When she finally reached the last set of marks on her
pad, Meg called out, “Five remaining.”

Kyle nodded. He delivered the next stroke with a little more
force, enough to leave a dark trail across her bottom and draw a prolonged,
grating squeal. Lindy rocked back and forth as though needing movement to bear
it. The next three were at the same intensity. Lindy jolted with each, yelping
and groaning in between.

Finally he dealt the last one, no harder, and Meg finally
got it. She’d expected the spanking to get harsher, for the burn to build,
stoking the raw fire she recalled exploding inside her as Kyle had whacked her
harder. It would build to near-climactic intensity, the pleasure increasing
commensurately with the pain and the force of the blows. That wasn’t what Rick
and Kyle were after.

For the sake of pure submission, they wanted her to feel the
fire of it, burn with the need it roused but not be granted any kind of climax
as a result. This wasn’t a sexual game or build-up. It was about the dynamics
of their relationship, outside of sex, about how power was distributed and
exercised.

Did Lindy understand their purpose? From the way she
wriggled and panted, Meg suspected so. Certainly the other woman was aroused.

What would they do now?

There might have been some signal between Rick and Kyle, but
if so, Meg missed it. Rick released Lindy and stood up. Kyle went to the woman,
helped her to her feet, took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. Then he
turned to Meg, and said, “Let’s go.”

Rick had taken Kyle’s place with his arms around his future
wife by the time they got to the door. She and Kyle let themselves out, setting
the lock on the front as they went.

“Will they make love tonight?” Meg asked Kyle when they were
ensconced in his car and on the way back to his place.

He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her
then faced front again. She could see a sparkle in his eye in the glow of a
streetlight. “I hoped you’d figure that out. I don’t know for sure. That’s for
Rick to decide. But I doubt it. Maybe he’ll have her bring him off or maybe
she’ll volunteer to do it. I don’t think it will go any further than that.”

“If it were you?”

“I’d have you suck me off and call it a night except for
some cuddling.”

“Would you do what Rick did if I had done what Lindy did?”

“Wait a minute and let me untangle that.” He did actually
take a few seconds to consider it before answering. “Yes, I think so. If—big
‘if’ here—we’d decided ours would be that kind of relationship.”

“Do you want it to be?”

“You already know the answer to that.” He stopped while
negotiating around a slower-moving car. “We’ve already gone partway to being
there.”

“And I think I’ve said I’d be willing to go further with the
proper precautions and limits in effect.”

“Okay. What limitations do you need?”

“Hmmm. I guess safe words first and foremost. I’ve already
said I couldn’t handle public humiliation.”

“Would you include what happened tonight in that category?”
he asked.

“No. Not at all. That was private with just the four of us
there.

“Some people would call that pretty public.”

“Oh. I can see that, but it’s really all about your
relationship with the people present. As long as it’s people I know and trust.
People who understand…what we’re about.”

“Okay. What else?”

She hesitated this time before she continued. “I don’t know
if this totally negates the point, but we’d have to agree on it. I mean it
would have to be something I would agree with you about, even if I didn’t like
it. No, I’m not getting this right. I guess what I mean is that I’d submit to
you, but if I really felt it was wrong or unfair that you’d agree to talk about
it.”

This time he paused. “I think maybe that does negate it to
some extent, although I see where you’re coming from. It does sort of suggest
that you don’t completely trust my judgment.”

“Oh. I didn’t consider it that way. But at a deeper level it
says I trust you completely. I’d be saying that when I agree to this, I put
myself under your authority, trusting that you will respect my judgment in only
asking for you to listen to me when I feel like it’s absolutely necessary.”

He laughed. “I suppose we could keep drilling down on this
trust thing forever. But I’ll stop it here. I’m okay with that. I’ll trust you
to use that out only when necessary. I’ll try not to abuse the authority you
give me. I won’t make major decisions that affect you without your input or do
anything likely to harm you. I won’t be a tyrant. I’ll do my best to be the
kind of Master who puts his sub’s needs and wants ahead of his own. But I’ll
still be the Master. Do you think that could work?”

“Probably take some refining as we go along, but I think it
could.”

She waited for him to follow it up but they were pulling into
his driveway by then.

When they got inside, he asked, “Drink before we get down to
business?”

“Just a glass of water. I’m dry, but I’d as soon get it
done.”

He nodded and got her a glass of cold water. He opened a
bottle of beer and drank while she swallowed the water. Neither of them said
anything. When she finished, he took the glass from her and put both it and the
empty beer bottle on the counter.

“Let’s go downstairs,” he suggested.

Instead of bending over the couch this time, though, he led
her to the exercise bench. “We’re going to do something different this time,”
he warned. “Undress and lie on your back on the bench.”

When she did so, he raised her legs and looped heavy elastic
cords hanging from an overhead bar around her ankles. He drew them up and
tightened them so that her legs were held almost straight up and well apart.
The position exposed the insides of her thighs and pussy not just to his view
but to easy reach of whatever instrument he chose. Kyle went to the supply
closet and emerged with a long, thin rod.

“I’m not going to do this hard but it will sting. You know
what to do if it’s too much. Reach down and grab the legs of the bench. Don’t
let go.”

She nodded and wrapped her hands around the metal supports,
fighting nervousness beyond anything she’d felt before facing a punishment. She
was so open to him, exposed, her most vulnerable areas at his reach. It was
about trust, of course. Could she trust him to take care of her, to punish her
enough but not more than she could bear?

He stood between her legs, the rod angled toward her inner
thigh. Meg shut her eyes and held tightly to the supports of the bench. The
first stroke, though, was little more than a tap on the middle of her left
inner thigh. Because the skin there was so sensitive it still sent a zing like
a tiny burst of electricity through her. As did the next strike on the opposite
side and the next half dozen or so after that. The heat began to build in that
very sensitive area as did the dread when she realized his taps were gradually
moving upward. Surely he wouldn’t… Trust. She had to trust him. And it was
Kyle, so she could and did.

When he got near the top, he paused a moment, letting her
catch a breath before he moved down and started again just above the knees. The
taps were harder this time and there was a definite bite when each landed. The
heat spread from the site of each to make large patches of grated, sensitized
flesh that fired more sharply each time the rod landed. He worked his way up
her thighs, going from one side to the other, striking about an inch above the
last each time. His rhythm was slow, steady, methodical.

It wasn’t just heating her thighs either. The fire traveled
directly to her cunt, making it swell and weep. Pressure and need grew along
with it. She gasped and moaned when a pair of strokes tapped just on either
side of her cunt. Desperate fear mixed with desperate longing. She dreaded to
feel that thing slap her slit, and yet a part of her actually wanted the
throbbing ache it would bring.