The Red

  to hear her say the word. "It’s not just the cunt. The ache is everywhere. In my stomach. In my thighs. Everywhere you touch me. I ache everywhere, Malcolm.”

  "Here?” he asked, and flicked his tongue across her nipple.

  "Yes.” The word came out in a gasp.

  "Here?” He slid his hand into the long slit of her dress at the top of her thigh. He cupped her between her legs, cupped her cunt, and slipped a finger into her wet hole. She contracted around it involuntarily. Malcolm flinched and she knew he’d felt it.

  "Yes…” she hissed.

  "Here?” He kissed her chest over her heart. "Do you ache for me here?”

  "Malcolm…you told me not to love you. Don’t make me love you.”

  "But do you miss me when I’m gone?” he asked.

  "The things you do to me…I’d never dare dream them, much less do them. And yet, when I’m with you, there is no game I wouldn’t play, nothing of my body would I keep from you. You leave me and I go mad with waiting. You leave me and you are my every waking thought and my every sleeping dream. And if I knew when you were returning to me, I would count the minutes until I saw you again.” She paused. "No, that’s a lie.”

  "What’s the truth, Mona?” His voice was so soft and tender it hurt her.

  "I would count the seconds.”

  They breathed together, looking into each other’s eyes. His mouth closed over hers again and they were locked into a kiss that would seemingly never end.

  Then it did.

  Malcolm panted. He released her breast and wrapped that arm around her back again, pulling her roughly against him.

  "What you feel for me is what I want you to feel tonight,” he said. "But you might hate me after.”

  "I could never hate you.”

  "Don’t say things like that,” he warned. "Men like me take statements such as that as a challenge.”

  "Will you beat me very brutally tonight?”

  "I will.”

  "Will I like it?”

  "If you let yourself.”

  "I’ll try,” she said, scared but willing. Anything for Malcolm. Especially tonight. She’d never met a man who conformed so closely to her ideal. She felt the smooth leather of his riding boot against her bare calf. She rubbed her leg against it like a cat rubbing its cheek against a chair leg it wanted to mark. She ran her hands down the velvet of his broad back, cupped his firm backside and held it while he kissed her. Of their own accord her hips pushed into his again and again. Her sex was already open for him, wet and slick, hollowed out and waiting. If he put his cock into her right now, she’d come before he’d even bottomed out inside her on the first stroke.

  But he didn’t take her.

  "Listen to me, Mona.” He put his hands on her neck, lightly cupping it, his thumbs pressing into the hollow of her throat to force her to pay attention to his words. She dropped her hands to her sides and met his dark flinty eyes again. "You’ll be mine tonight in a way you’ve never been mine before. It’s one thing to allow a man to pleasure you. It’s quite another to allow him to hurt you. You’ll know real powerlessness tonight, real fear, true pain. And I will drink it like wine.”

  "You like my pain?”

  "I love your submission to pain. It’s human nature to race toward pleasure and flee from pain. That you would fight your own nature to please me by suffering my crop arouses me more than anything you’ve done for me before.”

  "I want to please you.” She placed her hands on his trim waist, feeling the heavy brocade cloth of his vest and the heat of his body under her hands. "After all, that’s what you’re paying me for.”

  "Oh…you will be beaten for that.” He eyes narrowed and she saw he meant it.

  "Good,” she said. "If I’m going to be beaten, I want to have earned it.”

  "You earned it when you crossed the threshold. You earned it when you sold your body to me.” He stepped back from her, putting breathing room between them. She already felt cool without the heat of his body against hers. "Show me my property. Show me what I got for my money.”

  Mona slipped the other strap of her gown off her shoulder and lowered the bodice. She gathered the fabric in her hands at her waist and pushed it all the way to her ankles. Naked but for the red high heeled shoes she wore, she stepped out of the dress and onto the floor.

  "A blank canvas,” Malcolm said as he walked a circuit around her naked body. "I’ll enjoy painting you red and blue.”

  She quaked in her shoes with fear and arousal. She’d never been with a man as beautiful as Malcolm and she would have walked barefoot across a pit of red coals to please him tonight…but he was right. Reason called to her, telling her to run from the pain.

  She ignored its voice. It sounded too much like her own. She’d far rather listen to Malcolm’s.

  "Put your arms behind your head,” he said. "Clasp your fingers and keep your elbows open. Like a butterfly’s wings.”

  She did as she was told. The move made her arch her back, thrust her breasts forward. Malcolm stood before her, inspecting her.

  "Legs wider,” he said. He touched the floor with the tip of the riding crop in two places—here and there, showing her where to place her feet. She moved her feet wider apart, a foot and a half, and stood quivering in place.

  "Very nice.” Malcolm raised the crop and tapped her left nipple with it. Then her right. He caressed the underside of each breast with the triangle of leather on the crop’s end. He ran the shaft of the crop down the sides of her body from each elbow to each ankle and back up again. It tickled and made her shiver. She would have given anything to feel Malcolm’s body against her right now. She craved it and with every passing second she craved it more. No doubt this was the intention.

  He stepped close again. It was torture to be so close without touching. He brought the crop up between them and pressed the flat side of the tip to his lips. Then he pressed the opposite side to her lips.

  "Think of it as a kiss,” he said when the leather lay against her mouth. "That’s all it is. Just a kiss from me to you.”

  "Most kisses don’t leave welts,” she said. "I prefer French kissing.”

  "Well, I’m English. This is English kissing.”

  Then stepping back again, he brought the crop’s leather tip between her legs and lightly tapped her sex. He turned it on its side and used the edge of the tip to pry her apart along the seam of her vulva. She felt the stiff leather corner against the entrance of her body.

  "It stings more if it’s wet,” he said with his devil’s grin and for a split second she wondered…what if Malcolm was the devil? With a riding crop in her cunt, she could almost believe it.

  So what if he was? She wanted him all the same.

  He dipped the riding crop’s tip into her sex again, wetting it with her own fluids.

  "Insult to injury,” she said.

  He held his arms wide, smiled, and bowed. "The name of the game, my darling.”

  She nodded her acquiescence.

  "Here are the rules,” he said. "You survive my crop, you earn my cock. A hundred strikes of this.” He lifted the crop into the air. "For a hundred strokes of this.” He pointed casually at his crotch and she could see the outline of his erection through the pale breeches. The trousers adhered so tightly to his body she could even see one long vein running from the base along to the shaft to the tip. She knew that vein. She’d licked it with her own tongue.

  A hundred strokes of his cock? She’d come after the first ten, if not on the very first.

  "Count for me,” he said. "Starting at a hundred.”

  He stood behind her and she braced herself. What was he waiting for? Was he torturing her with suspense? Taking his aim?

  "Admiring the view,” he said as if reading her thoughts. She blushed hot at the flattery and smiled. Then he wiped the smile off her face with one quick crack of the crop. It struck high on her thigh in a spot she’d never associated with agony before. It burned like Greek fire.

 
; She cried out in shock and Malcolm laughed.

  The bastard laughed at her.

  "Count, dear,” he said, his voice chiding.

  "One hundred.”

  "Did it hurt?” he asked, tenderly touching the burning welt on her thigh.

  "Yes,” she said.

  "I’m sorry, darling.” He kissed his fingertips and touched them to the welt. "So very sorry.”

  Then he kissed her lips softly and massaged her nipples. She moaned in the back of her throat. Her body was a carnival of sensations—the stinging pain, the swelling of her breasts, the tingling of her lips as he kissed her. Her head spun. Did he want to hurt her? If so, then why apologize and kiss her to make up for it?

  "There we go, love,” he said. "Only ninety-nine to go. Don’t feel too bad. When I was fifteen, I was caught buggering my neighbor’s lady wife. I would have traded my left ball for a punishment like this.”

  "Were you beaten?”

  "I was.”

  "With a crop?”

  "A bullwhip.”

  She gasped.

  "Like I said, it could be worse. So count your blessings when you count my kisses.”

  He struck her again with the crop, kissing her hip this time.

  "Ninety-nine,” she said through the pain.

  "Such a good girl,” Malcolm said, hitting the side of her neck over the pulse point. "Beautiful and brave. You can’t know how much you please me…”

  He struck her again, out of nowhere, right on the back of the calf. Her leg almost buckled from the shock and the pain.

  "Malcolm—”

  "It’s all right…” He put his arm around her to hold her up. He cupped her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his and kissed the tip of her nose. "It’s not so bad, is it?”

  "No,” she said. In his arms, it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t so bad at all.

  He struck her again. Mona closed her eyes as the pain washed through her. It wasn’t unbearable, but it wasn’t pleasant either. After a few dozen strikes, it might very well become unbearable, however.

  Yet nothing would allow her to break before she’d earned what she wanted and what she wanted was him.

  He walked around her body, striking her with the crop high and low—on her thighs, on her stomach, on her breasts, on her backside, so often and so hard she knew she’d hardly be able to sit in a chair tomorrow. But what did tomorrow mean to her when she wasn’t certain she’d survive tonight?

  The crop didn’t sting like a bee. It bit like a snake. Its fangs were sharp and burning and left sharp and burning bite marks all over her body. Malcolm was the snake-charmer and she was mesmerized by how he made the crop dance. He would twirl it in his fingers, casual, playful. Then he’d catch it quick, so fast she couldn’t see where the blow would come from and where it would land.

  It would have been easier for her to close her eyes tight and pretend it wasn’t happening, wait it out, hide inside her mind. But she couldn’t. Malcolm wouldn’t allow that. After each strike he paused to kiss her, to fondle her breasts and nipples, to massage her hips and quivering belly. After each strike he’d tell her how beautiful she was. He’d tell her what a brave, brave girl she was. He’d tell her how aroused she made him with her submission to his crop. He’d kiss her on the mouth, before suddenly stepping back to strike her once more. Then the cycle would begin again. The crop, the pain, the tender words and tender kisses. Soon she was craving the crop because each strike meant a kiss.

  Before he’d begun, a hundred hits sounded like a hundred too many. But each strike earned such affection from Malcolm, such compassion, such sympathy that she was starting to think one hundred wasn’t nearly enough. He was forcing her to fall in love—not with him, but with the crop.

  She was in love with the crop. The crop, and Malcolm’s tender sadism.

  And Malcolm too, of course. How could she not? He was inhumanly attractive. His eyes were so black and the room so dark she couldn’t tell the iris apart from the pupil. As he shifted this way and that to keep her guessing, the muscles in his thighs tensed and shone through his breeches. His boots sported gold buttons at the tops and she wanted to kiss them for some reason. The thought wouldn’t leave her head. She trained her eyes on them, on the glinting gold coins, and let them anchor her into the moment.

  "You’re staring at my boots, love. Tell me why,” he said. He took her in his arms and held her close against him. The crop dangled from his wrist as he ran the flat of his hand down her brutalized back.

  "I like them.” She panted between the words. Pain suffused her body. Her flesh smoldered like a hot sidewalk in the rain.

  "I’m very glad you do. What do you like about them?”

  "The gold buttons,” she said. "I can’t stop looking at them.”

  "I’ll tell you what, my darling girl,” he said. "If you can take ten strikes in a row without me stopping, I’ll let you kiss those buttons on my boots. What do you think? Would you like that?”

  "Very much,” she said.

  "What do you say to me?”

  "Thank you, Malcolm.”

  "That’s very nice, yes. Could you call me sir? I think I’d like to hear it from you. Everything you say sounds so pretty.”

  "I’ll say anything you want, sir.”

  "Oh, that is even better than I thought it would be. Excellent. You’ve made me so very happy tonight.” He pressed a soft kiss to her lips once more. She would never tire of his kisses or his words of affection or his pride in her. How had she ever lived without this in her life? Without the crop and the counting and the pain that earned her such rewards, would she have eagerly signed up for a thousand strikes of the crop for the next thousand years?

  "Are you ready, dear? Only ten. I know you can do it. I know you will do it—for me, won’t you?”

  "Of course, sir,” she said, and her heart welled and she could have wept with love for him. What wouldn’t she do for him? Nothing. The answer was nothing. She would take his English kisses over French kisses any day.

  She took a breath in and braced herself. Her hands were still on her head. Her arms ached but she didn’t care.

  When the strike came she was ready. It hit her on an unmarked patch of flesh on the side of her hip. The second strike came right after, in the very same spot. And the third. And the fourth. It was agony by the fifth, terrible agony by the sixth, screaming agony by the seventh. And the eighth and the ninth and the tenth passed in a haze as she wept and shook.

  Malcolm caught her in his arms again as she swayed on her feet. "I’ve got you,” he said. "You’re safe. You’re with me.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder as he stroked her hair. She put her arms around his neck and he let her.

  "I know that hurt, didn’t it?” he asked and she nodded. "I’m sorry. You’re doing so well though.”

  "It hurts so much,” she said. "I didn’t know it could hurt that much.”

  "You’re taking it like you were born for the crop. I wish I had a hundred men here to watch and see what a prize you are. I wouldn’t sell you to the highest bidder, not for all the money in the world.”

  She needed to hear that. It was a balm to her soul. "Thank you, sir,” she said.

  "Here,” he said. "This might help a little.”

  He put the crop’s strap around his wrist again and slipped his hand between her legs. He stroked her labia and clitoris while she clung to his shoulders to steady herself.

  "Isn’t that nice, love?” he asked.

  She nodded against his shoulder, looking down to watch him touch her. She was hot between her legs, hot inside. When he stuck a finger up and into her, she gave a little cry of pleasure.

  "That’s my girl.” He spoke to her like she was a child in need of soothing. So caring. So kind. It was easy to forget that he wasn’t simply the solace for her suffering, he was the cause of it. And she loved the suffering as much as the solace. What had he done to her?

  "Can I come, sir?” She wanted to climax very badly. S
he could take more pain, if only she could come. Already his fingers were bringing her close. And his hands were so well-proportioned and