The stretchy lace catsuit would have been too hot to wear outside on a day like today. Even if it was technically porous, the elastic polyesters had a way of keeping in the heat while giving the illusion of perfectly smooth skin. Out there, in 35-degree Paris it was too much; in the cool dungeon, just perfect.
I adjusted the appliqué roses over my legs, ensuring they weren’t distorted around my rounder-than-the-model thighs. I thought I was pretty clever picking out an outfit with flowers all over it. It was a subtle nod to our midnight together in the secret garden, the night I’d realized I was falling for Renaud.
I lined up a few of my potential tools for the evening: whip, cane, flogger, paddle. I wasn’t going to use them all, but if he saw them, he might be worried I wanted to. That was almost more exciting than inflicting the pain itself.
A few minutes later, with everything in place, including my mask, Firefly was at the door.
“Bonsoir,” he said.
“Bonsoir, come,” I replied, not looking up. I didn’t need to; I would recognize that smooth voice anywhere. “Take off your shirt.”
My fingers were still moving along the leather strands of the flogger, deciding which of the items I felt most in tune with. I kept my eyes on the table but in my peripheral vision I saw him coming to the center of the room, under the soft spotlight, and pulling his shirt over his head.
Firefly was gorgeous, and even more so now that I was starting to see who he was outside of this space. Forget the tattoos and perfectly formed abs, forget the beautiful suits and charming smile. I had cried on his shoulder, ugly cried, while he said the most thoughtful things. He was an enigma of sorts, but I was invested in figuring out what we could be.
I adjusted my tight, perfectly slicked-back ponytail, letting my dark hair pour down my back, and walked over, each step of my heels making a marked ringing sound in the room.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m well, et vous?” he said searching for my eyes, which were shielded behind the velvet mask I still wore. There was comfort in the familiarity we were starting to have with each other. Even if each touch was more fireworks than butterflies.
“I’m better,”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“How’s the damage?” I said, looking at his chest. He laughed. In our last session, I’d accidentally almost ripped off both his nipples. A session I’d like to forget, except for what it led to.
“Bof, it’s fine, all healed up.”
I stood in front of him. With my six-inch heels, I was almost his height. I was covered in black lace except for my hands and head, and the mask covered part of my face. The catsuit was somewhat see-through, so underneath I wore a matching black bra and panties. I liked to be immaculate in my appearance, like a moving photograph.
Firefly took care of himself, with his well-toned muscles that undulated under the intricate and detailed ink. At the moment though, I was focused on his chest, inspecting it for any permanent damage. In normal circumstances, it would be odd to spend so much time studying someone’s nipples in a cool, dark room.
“Did you always have that?” I asked, indicating a line that went right across his chest. It was quite pink and fresh-looking.
“What?”
I brought up my finger and ran it along the raised skin, which was almost two centimeters long. He watched my finger, his gaze continuing along the lace of the sleeve, all the way back up to my face.
“Non,” he said carefully.
“Putain!” I said.
They were slowly converting me into a Francaise, instead of a Quebecoise.
“Don’t worry,”
“Don’t worry? I gave you a scar. You said no permanent scarring on your form.”
“It’s fine, it was an accident.”
I looked at it and frowned.
“Maybe it’s a reminder,” he said.
“Reminder of what?”
“Not all scars are bad.”
Bordel de merde.
I reached out and put my palm over it. I had to. My hand was cool against his heated chest. He took in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
His hazel eyes changed immediately, and I fell into them. That deep place inside him found me more quickly than usual. Often it took me bringing out the highest levels of pain in him to unsheathe this level. His spirit opened the two wells and I tumbled down, spiralling with him until we hit, I don’t know, an abyss of some kind.
My hand on his chest rose and fell with each breath, and after a few minutes, we slowly climbed our way back to earth. Without the physical suffering, I wasn’t sure he knew what to do with the connection. He gently slipped his hand under mine, leaned his head down and kissed the back of it. His lips were a tease.
“I release you, from the imprisonment of guilt,” he said with a little cheek. Only a French man with a chiselled jaw could pull it off.
“All right, all right,” I said, though I kept my hand in his a little longer than was necessary.
“On your knees, take your pants off,” I said backing up and going towards the table.
“I like the lace.”
“Did I say you could speak freely?”
“Forgive me, mistress,” he said breezily. He unbuttoned his trousers but watched me in my selection at the table of pain.
“Did you have something in mind for today, or I decide?”
“You decide.”
We were back on track. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I could still feel his lips on my skin, but I let my hand reach out for the flogger, as if I didn’t know which tool would be found. I wanted it to be the flogger. I could inflict sharp stinging pain with less fear of injury with the long leather strips.
When I turned back, he was there in his underwear, on his knees. My legs, with or without the instability of the sky-high heels, wobbled. I grabbed two Velcro bands and came back to him. The first I placed around his left arm and drew it up to one of the chains, repeating the same with his right. I could have had him stand, but I liked him below me. I cranked the chains slightly so that his arms were out, like the Vitruvian man, at 45 degrees.
“That’s better.” I looked him over.
“Are you pleased?” he asked. This was new—he never asked questions during the session. However, I had never put my hand on his chest either. I handled it like a true domme, and woman scared of her own feelings.
“What did we say about speaking freely?”
“Sorry, mistress,” he said. There was a little boyishness to his exchange.
“You’ll know if I’m displeased,” I said as I lightly slapped the leather strands across his shoulder.
I started my dance, slowly teasing his skin awake, the leather finding the contours of his muscles. Eden’s equipment room was full of everything one could want; it was a pharmacy of deviousness. But for some reason, for Firefly, I liked to pick out my own personal tools. When I had time, which wasn’t much recently. I would walk out to the kink stores of Paris, browse, imagine, and sometimes buy. This flogger was one of mine. I had taken a chance on it—it was a bit short, but that wasn’t such a bad thing, because when you swatted you only wanted the bottom fourth to hit the target. Longer than that and the tails could wrap around to parts you didn’t want to hurt. With flogging, like other impact play, there were ideal areas, mostly the meaty areas of the body. Thighs, upper back and of course the buttocks. There were different ways to strike, but as with most of the impact play techniques, it was best to slowly increase, from light teases to moderate stinging, to full-on blows.
I walked behind Firefly, draping the leather down his back before giving his skin light swats. He made low noises each time I did. The harder I hit, the more his muscles contracted. The more force I gave, the more his body reacted. It took about 10 minutes of light swatting for his skin to be red and awake. I walked around him, having him watch me decide what I would do with him. He was technically immobile, his arms bound above him. He could get up if he wished, awkwardly, but he couldn’t free himself, even if he wanted to. Not without significant injury. For the few hours we came together, he was a captive, mine, albeit a willing one.
After another 10 minutes of the leather straps finding the skin, he was on a natural chemical high, his eyes slightly droopy as he watched me come around him. We would go further though. I moved to his back, and on his shoulder blades flicked a sort of back and forth pattern, four times, this time getting more into the muscles. I stopped to let him catch his breath. Then again, two on the left, two on the right. Then stop. His body was mounting an inflammation response to the attack. There was certainly also an increasing pain that he was having to work through, physically and mentally. To give his shoulders some time, I came quickly in front of him and gave him a good swat with the leather tentacles on the left thigh.
“Merde.” He winced, dropping his head down. I did the same on the right and he grunted.
The beads of sweat started to form around his neck. His breathing was consistently faster. And I watched every sign of his body being in the place he wanted to go without it being too much.
I draped the flogger around his leg and hips, teasing the firmness under the only part of his body that was not revealed to me. With that, his head came up. He looked at me, conflicted, and almost leaned forward, but was reminded that the chains that kept him in place. He yanked on them. I had never seen anything close to anger in him, but there was frustration from the chains that fueled me. I stepped closer, but still out of his reach. I tossed the flogger over his shoulder for a light sting and dragged the strands toward me. His mouth was open and his lips were glistening. I swatted his back again over and back across the other side. He flinched but looked at me, determined, and yanked on the chains again.
“You don’t like being bound right now?”
He shook his head.
My skin erupted in tingles, making all the hairs stand up.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” I said and I let the flogger slip down his front again.
He gave me a pleading look. I quickly swatted his thigh again hard. One two, left and right.
“MER-DE!” he swore, dropping his head.
I retreated and walked around him again quickly, his head still down, but following me. He was pulling the chains, but couldn’t move much or twist even.
I went for the backs of his thighs and his ass, swatting in a counting rhythm but not letting him know when it would end. Five, six, seven, eight. Swat, swat, swat, swat. He threw his head back, and his body pulsed with each hit. I reached out and gently pushed his head back upward; I wanted his shoulders but didn’t want to risk swatting his face. He rubbed the back of his head into my palm a little. I stepped back and just went for it. A heavy swat right on his red upper back, with the full swing of my arm.
“Urgh,” he grunted. It wasn’t even loud, it was desperate. I watched the red lines of his shoulder appear almost immediately.
“Harder,” he said. Which was a strange request as he seemed to be at the upper limit of what he could take. He was panting quickly, and from white-knuckled grip on the chains, I could tell we were peaking.
“No.”
“Please,” he said looking back at me. He never asked me such things, and though it was why he paid Eden thousands of euros for me to do this, it broke my heart.
“No.”
He twisted in the bindings and grabbed at the chains as much as he could. I hit him again with the same force. He swore and shook his head. I went for it again, stinging swats without really going hard, but after five he yelled out. I wasn’t sure who was going to break first, him or me.
When I hit my next few swats to his upper back, he was gasping. We were there. I gave one final blow, a heavy one across the upper shoulder. He threw his head back and grimaced. I couldn’t stop myself though, I dropped the flogger and I came up behind him and wrapped my hands around his body. I pulled him into me, my arms crossed around him.
It was exhilarating, it was caring, it was painful, and it had me completely and utterly hooked.
The only sounds in the room were our breaths, his hard and anguished and mine steady but deep. The echoes of the gasps were interrupted only by an occasional swear word from him. We stayed like that for a while, his back against me. At first, he was fighting the sting and pain hard, trying to move as a way to deal with everything, but locked by the bindings, the sweat from his neck moistening the skin of my belly through the lace. My arms were crossed around his chest, holding him firmly. I waited patiently until the pain changed from that point of intolerance to healing. From what I knew, his body was quickly shifting into another mode, into the post-workout high. The flood of chemicals was numbing the pain and instead fueling his body with adrenaline and endorphins. What had been distress was quickly turning into euphoria.
His breath started to regulate, and I could feel myself coming back down into the room. Being about to see the table again with the other tools, the simple light above us making shadows on the bare floor, the rough concrete of the wall in front. His vocal intonations were less harsh and more mellow. And while I didn’t feel the same chemical highs, mine were emotional. In all my other sessions the comfort I offered was far less tactile.
Eventually my legs started getting tired and slightly painful in the high heels, and I started to worry that his arms were probably feeling numb, so I let him loose. I went over and got a blanket, gently putting it around his shoulders and encouraging him to get up and sit as we always did, on the bench. I opened a little carafe, poured our two teas and sat down with him.
“What’s your favourite colour?” I asked
He had the blanket around his shoulders and his head down.
“Scarlet.”
“Has it cooled off at all outside?”
“Non.”
“I’m not looking forward to my apartment in this heat.”
“It would be better to just stay here all night.”
“Yes,” I said with a soft chuckle. “It would.”
He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands.
“Can we just… sit here for a few minutes?” he asked.
Another new question.
“Of course.”
We did just that, sit there together, him a few feet from me. I wasn’t sure for how long, because nothing with him ever felt drawn out. If anything, moments flew by too quickly. He eventually moved, gingerly, putting his shirt and pants back on and giving me a quiet merci. I probably could have sat with him all night. The problem was, I not only adored my dungeon time with him, I enjoyed every other minute too; crying in cafes, midnight escapes to secret gardens, and even just bumping into each other on the stairs. I had never felt like this before with anyone. And I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be loved by him—all of him.
