The Last Good Knight Part I: Scars and Stripes (The Original Sinners) (3 page)

“I’m just fucking with you. My dad was a lowlife, two-bit crook who never made a legal cent in his life.”

“You’re the devil, Mistress.” Lance sounded impressed.

“I might have forgotten to mention that. Glad you noticed.” She cuffed his right wrist and picked up her whip again. Pausing, she took a moment to study his back. The scar tissue ended about six inches above his back belt loop. That tissue was tough, but she didn’t want to fuck with surgical scars. Dominatrixes hurt but they didn’t harm. She pictured landing the lashes from shoulder blade to shoulder blade and down to the second-to-last rib of his rib cage. With his arms bound high up on the cross, she could see all the taut muscle of his back and arms and count his ribs. The man had a beautiful back. All it wanted for was a few dozen welts.

“We use the red-yellow-green-light system down here.” She unfurled the whip and held it by the handle in her right hand with the tip in her left. “At any point, call out any of those colors as needed. You say green and I’ll give you more. You say yellow and I’ll pull back the pace. You say red and I drop the whip and we play with a new toy. Got it?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. Also, if you want, you can say ‘Ouch.’ And that won’t stop anything at all.”

At that she let the whip fly. She struck the dead center of his back between the shoulder blades. He flinched then—everyone did—but he didn’t say “yellow” or “red.” He didn’t even say “Ouch.”

She let the whip fly again and dusted his broad back with red welts. Like a good pain-artist, she let the whip dance over his skin, not landing in the same place twice in a row. That way he would never know where the next blow would land, would never be able to brace himself. She counted in her head as she whipped him—ten, twenty, forty, sixty. By sixty she started hearing “Ouch.” By seventy it’d turned into “Fuck.” At seventy-five she hit a sensitive spot hard enough for a genuine cry of pure pain. But still she heard no
red
, no
yellow.

“Green?” she asked as she gave him a minute to breathe. “I won’t think any less of you if you say yellow or red.”

“Still green...” His breathing had turned ragged. “I just need a minute, if it pleases you, Mistress.”

“It pleases me. Read me how many minutes we have left.”

Lance craned his neck to look at the stopwatch hanging next to the St. Andrew’s Cross.

“Thirty-seven.”

“Goodie. I stopped at seventy-five. Let’s make it an even hundred. Then we’ll play a new game. And maybe get rid of some more clothing. Yours.”

“Anything you desire, Mistress.”

She desired to give him twenty-five more lashes. Again the whip danced over his skin. She focused on his sides now and his shoulders. By the time she hit twenty his back had turned bright red. One welt even oozed a small amount of blood.

“Stay there,” she said as she put her whip in the pile of toys needing to be cleaned. “We have breakage.”

Lance peered back over his shoulder.

“Much blood?” he asked, seeming entirely untroubled at the idea she’d broken the skin.

“Not much.” She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and cleaned the small wound with Betadine and ointment. “Okay, we have two Band-Aid options—Snoopy or Sesame Street?”

“Snoopy,” he said.

“Perfect.” She applied the Band-Aid, tossed her gloves, and dropped a quick kiss onto the center of his back. The beating had left his skin burning. She felt the heat against her lips.

“You’re good, Mistress.” Lance turned back to face the wall. “I’ve never been with a Domme who plays as hard as you.”

“I appreciate that. I trained under the best sadist in the world.”

“Interesting. What do you consider a good sadist, Mistress?”

Nora tapped her chin as she thought about the question.

“Talent is part of it. Takes a lot of talent to hurt someone without injuring them. A baseball bat can inflict pain, but it also breaks bones. How do you inflict real and serious pain but without causing harm? The sadist I learned from is amazing at that. He knows all the pain pressure points on the human body so he can cause you acute agony without leaving a single mark.”

“We learned a lot of those in training. Good for self-defense.”

“Good for kink,” she said. “But it’s more than talent. True, the man can kill a fly with the tip of a whip. But he can also break someone down in a way that...I don’t know.” She stopped and shook her head. “I don’t know anyone who can put someone back together by breaking them apart like he can. You leave him with your body limping and your heart soaring.”

“Is that what you’re doing to me?”

“Are you limping yet?”

“No, Mistress. Soaring.”

Nora smiled at his back, smiled so he couldn’t see it. If he kept this up she would collar him before the night was over and that would be about the worst idea in the history of the Underground. She’d left a man who’d collared her and tied her down. The last thing she’d ever do was chain someone up in the very bonds she’d escaped.

“Time check?”

“Twenty-eight minutes, Mistress.”

“Oh, good. I’m getting horny.”

“That would make two of us.”

“Really? Prove it,” she said as she unlocked first his right then his left wrist from the cross.

She stood back and waited, her arms crossed over her chest.

Lance unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down. As he stood in his boxer briefs, he smoothed and folded his pants. She took them from him as he stripped out of his underwear. Now Nora whistled. The man had the most magnificent thighs she’d ever seen. A hard ridge of muscle traveled straight from his knee to his hip. She’d bite that muscle tonight and see if she chipped a tooth.

“I could die on your quads,” she said. “Or between them. Seriously, can you crush coconuts with those thighs?”

“I’d say thank you but that’s the last part of my body I was hoping you would notice, Mistress.” He said the words with a rueful smile.

“Oh, I noticed that, too. Hard to miss it.” She stepped forward and wrapped her hand around his thick, hard inches.

Lance gave a labored breath as she stroked him. He probably wanted her to take a firm grip and stroke harder, so instead she merely grazed him with her fingertips, touching him as lightly as possible. His stomach muscles contracted.

“How good is your orgasm control?” She teased the tip with one finger and felt fluid on her skin, a drop or two. She massaged it back into the head.

“Decent. You order me not to come, and I won’t come. I can’t last much longer than a week or two, though, or it’ll happen in my sleep.”

“How old are you?” She stroked the underside of his cock with the back of her hand.

“Thirty-six, Mistress.”

“You’ve played with a Domme before?”

“My first real relationship was with a Domme.” Lance closed his eyes as she cupped his testicles.

“Really? How old were you when you were with her?”

Lance opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“Eighteen to twenty-two. College.”

“Not many college girls are tough enough to top men. Takes a few years to get to that point.” Nora wrapped her whole hand around him and tugged.

“This college girl was a beautiful, tall, dark-haired professor in her late thirties with a wicked mind and a wickeder flogging arm.”

“Fucking a professor? I love it.”

She stroked him harder to show her approval.

“She fucked me, Mistress. I might have been inside her, but it was always at her whim and command.”

“My kind of gal. Anyone since then?” She kept stroking him, testing his endurance, his ability to keep himself from coming.

“Here and there. Only professionals since then. No one in the past six years.”

“Why not?”

He sighed heavily.

“I got married. Bad idea.”

“Worst idea I’ve ever heard. Divorced?”

“Yes.”

“Good. She wasn’t kinky?”

“Just so you know, Mistress, talking about my marriage is the best orgasm control there is. If we talk about it, I can guarantee I won’t be coming anytime soon.”

Laughing, she took the hint. She could tell there was a lot more to that story, but she didn’t press him for it. He didn’t come down to her dungeon for a therapy session. Pain and sex were on the menu tonight. They’d save the getting to know each other bullshit for later.

“Since I do want you coming at some point tonight, I’ll ask you about your ex-wife another time when I’m feeling really sadistic. For now how about you follow me...” Without letting go of him, she took a step back and led him slowly and carefully to a leather-covered kneeling bench, not unlike the kind found at prayer shrines.

“I’ll follow anywhere you lead, especially if you have my cock in your hand.”

“Stay here. I’ll get the stopwatch. We don’t want to go into overtime on the pain and miss all the fucking.”

“No, Mistress, we absolutely do not.”

She heard a bit of a drawl in his words, a bit of the Old South under his clipped military tone.

“Where are you from?” She got the stopwatch off the wall and handed it to him.

“Military brat. I’m from everywhere. But Mom and Dad are from Mississippi. I went to school around Boston, but I guess I didn’t lose their accent.”

“Boston? Did you got to Harvard?”

“MIT. Did Naval ROTC there.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Nerd. Nerds get punished around here.”

“I’m also a geek.”

“Do you read?”

“All the time. Especially since recovering from the surgery. Big, thick non-fiction books.”

“An MIT graduate and a reader? Oh, you’re really going to get it. Bend over, bookworm.”

He did as ordered and Nora picked up the solid red riding crop, the one with the steel spine. She could wield it like a cane and strike him with the length of it. That would be too easy, though. The tip of the riding crop was a divided piece of leather, four inches long and forked like a snake tongue. She’d yet to find anything that stung quite as much as this particular crop did.

“You picked the number fifty earlier so we’ll let it do double-duty. You survive fifty hits of this bitch, and I might even let you come twice tonight.”

“You spoil me, Mistress.”

“Count for me.”

She brought the viper-tongued crop tip down onto the back of his thigh.

“One.”

“Hurts more than it looks like it would, doesn’t it?”

“Fuck yes, Mistress.”

“You’re welcome. Keep counting.”

By twenty, Lance’s voice had started to break. By forty, Nora started to feel a little sorry for him. But they were only ten away. The
fifty
sounded choked like it took every ounce of energy and every scrap of masculine pride to get that number out.

“Good man...” she purred as she ran her hand over his burning skin. “Very good.”

“Thank you, Mistress. I want to please you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“What’s our time now?”

“Five minutes.”

“Good. Bedroom. Now. Kneel facing the bed, hands on top of it, eyes closed.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice. Lance stood up and walked purposefully to the bedroom while Nora lingered in the dungeon gathering some bondage supplies.

When she entered the bedroom she found him doing everything as she’d instructed.

“You’re so well trained. You could turn pro, Sailor.” She sat on the bed next to his right hand.

“Attention to detail, Mistress. Something they drill into us.”

“Would you like to drill into me?”

“I’d cut off my right hand for the chance.”

“Oh, don’t do that. We’re going to need that hand. If I get in the right mood, we’re going to need all of it.”

She wrapped leather bondage cuffs around his wrists and buckled them. God damn, that man looked good in leather. The cuffs on his wrists accentuated the muscular forearms. Hitting on this guy was the smartest thing she’d done all night. Maybe she’d be smart again tomorrow...and the day after...

Once she had his wrists buckled, she flung one leg over his head and moved to straddle his hands.

“Am I wearing panties? I can’t remember if I put any on today.” She raised her hips so he could see straight up her skirt.

“No, Mistress. You aren’t.”

“Good. That’ll save us a step. Are you good at oral?”

“Isn’t that for you to decide?”

Nora cupped his chin and traced his lips with her thumb. She picked up a snap hook and, taking his hands in hers, pulled his arms down behind his back and cuffed them together at the wrist.

“Here’s your challenge,” she whispered in his ear. “If you can make me come using nothing but your mouth in ten minutes or less, then I’ll let you inside me next. Ready?”

“God, yes,” he whispered back.

She scooted her hips to the very edge of the bed, pulled her skirt up and spread her legs wider. She set the stopwatch again and said, “Go.”

Lance leaned in and stroked her folds with his tongue. He focused on her outer and inner lips, on her vulva, taking his sweet time with her. By the time his lips enfolded her clitoris, she was almost ready to beg for it. The man might be a sub, but he knew how to tease as well as any Dominant.

He continued teasing her as she’d teased him, keeping the pressure so light that it bordered on torture. But she didn’t bark any orders at him. After all, if he failed to make her come in time, it was his loss as well as hers.

After a few minutes of the tease, he licked her harder and put more pressure onto her clitoris. She let herself moan, let herself pant. They were lovers tonight, not Dominatrix and client. She could enjoy him as much as he enjoyed her.

And God, did she enjoy him. She enjoyed him so much that she came with a cry as her climax gripped her. As she lay panting on the bed, she heard the beeping of the stopwatch.

Slowly she sat back up on her elbows and looked down at him still sitting between her knees.

“Okay, I think we’ve established that you’re good at oral.”

“I’m glad you think so, Mistress.” With a posture of sincere reverence he kissed her thigh where her boot met bare skin.

“I didn’t think you were going to get me there in ten minutes. You took your sweet time of it.”