The only explanation Mona could conjure up to explain the events of that night with the nymphs was that Malcolm was a very wealthy man indeed—which she’d already deduced. Only money could buy the necessary "magic” to turn the back room of an art gallery into a small grove and populate it with nubile young women willing and able to sexually service a man dressed as a satyr. She would have guessed he’d drugged her, but there was no drug in the world that caused hallucinations so vivid and solid that also left the taker of the drug feeling better the next day, not worse. The morning after she’d been sore from the dancing, tender from the intercourse, but invigorated like she’d swam naked in a cool clear blue spring on a burning red August day.

It wasn’t easy returning to the real world after her night in the grove. But she did because the real world demanded it of her. Malcolm paid her for her night with the satyr and he paid her well. The payment came in the form of a painted miniature of Queen Victoria, which he’d left on her pillow. It was appraised for another fifty thousand dollars. She was tempted to try to sell it at auction, but knew it would fetch a far better price once she could provide Malcolm’s promised unimpeachable provenance.

If that day ever came.

The weeks passed by in a crawl. The gallery kept her busy with shows and launches. A writer of erotic books came and did a reading, which allowed Mona to display many of her mother’s strange pornographic paintings out in the open. She sold two of them. It would have done her mother’s boho heart good to see the pleasure her collection brought to a younger generation.

All that time Mona couldn’t stop thinking of Malcolm. Who was he? Why had he picked her? Why did so much time pass between their assignations? What did he have planned for her next? More nymphs? More auctions? More whoring?

All of the above?

At first he’d come to her once a month, but two months had already passed since the night she played a nymph for him. He’d warned her not to expect him to come often. He didn’t seem a capricious man, but he had said the liaisons took much out of him. She imagined him in England with a wife and children he could rarely escape. He paid for women because he wanted a sort of sex he couldn’t have in his respectable marriage. It explained why he wasn’t ready to give her his last name yet, why so much time passed between dalliances, and why every night they spent together was such a production and lasted for hours and hours.

And hours.

After two long months, however, she wondered if she would ever see him again. But in mid-October, when the leaves turned bright orange and rusty red and the temperature demanded sweaters with skirts and stockings on bare legs, she entered her office to find a book on her desk, the red velvet choker marking the page again.

She smiled. It was about damn time.

This time Malcolm hadn’t marked a page in the big white book of art history. The book on her desk was the most recent auction catalog from London. She turned to the page he’d marked and saw what there was to see…and what there was to see was a late eighteenth century portrait from English Catholic artist James Sharples.

Portrait of a Gentleman, Small, Three-Quarter Length, Seated on a Chair, In Hunting Attire, A Riding Crop in His Right Hand.

That was certainly it. She saw a dashing gentleman. She saw the canvas was indeed quite small. She saw the man in the portrait was seated on a chair and that he wore hunting attire and in his hand he held a riding crop.

It was a very accurate title for the painting.

So it was to be the crop this time? He’d warned her of that, too. She’d never had a lover beat her before, consensually or otherwise. Her mother had never spanked her. She’d had her bottom pinched by a boy in a bookshop once, and she was ready to slap him when she saw he was no more than fourteen. She’d gotten her revenge by telling on him to his mother, who’d been drinking tea in the café while her son pretended to look at books. The mother had dragged him from the shop by his ear and Mona had smiled all the while. A good memory but not erotic. She didn’t imagine she would enjoy being beaten by a riding crop, but who knew? She never thought she’d enjoy frolicking with nymphs or being sold on the auction block or having a bottle stuffed inside her either. And yet she had enjoyed it.

She’d enjoyed it all.

As Malcolm had given her no instructions for what to wear for their Sunday night assignation, she wore her favorite fall dress of crushed red velvet—ankle length, skin tight, backless. She pinned her apple-red hair up in a chignon and let tendrils fall down her neck. If that wouldn’t please a man such as Malcolm, nothing would.

Midnight came at last.

Mona went to the gallery, and spent a moment petting sweet, sleepy Tou-Tou in his bed before heading for the back room. She didn’t want to seem afraid, so she opened the door without hesitation.

Malcolm was waiting.

He stood in the center of the back room, his back to her. He’d dressed like the man in the portrait. Hunting attire. White breeches, a green velvet jacket, and brown leather riding boots that clung to his thighs like a second skin. He was magnificent, resplendent, utterly desirable. His hair looked a shade longer and a shade lighter, and it was curled on his head in the consummate Regency style.

In his right hand he held a long wooden riding crop with a leather tip.

Mona ignored the crop. She cared nothing about it. She walked to Malcolm, almost ran, and he took her into his arms and kissed her passionately. His mouth was warm and tasted of spiced wine and cigars. She couldn’t stop kissing him.

"Beautiful girl,” he murmured against her lips. She wanted to tear off his fine white linen cravat and lick the hollow of his throat. She would have kissed it and bitten it. She would have drunk wine out of it. She hadn’t given that hollow a second thought until it was covered and hidden from her view.

"I want you already,” she said as she grasped the back of his coat and pressed her breasts to his chest. He kissed the tops of her breasts, swelling out of her dress. He ran his fingertips over those soft swells and she shivered and sighed. Her nipples needed sucking and her clitoris needed licking and her pussy needed his cock. She was pleased they would be all alone tonight, their first time all alone together in months. She had things she must ask him, but she knew she couldn’t until he’d spent his lust on her. It would be hours, she knew, if the pattern held.

She could wait.

Malcolm had looped the leather cord of the riding crop over his right wrist, and she felt the tip of it tickling her backside as he kissed her mouth. He lightly scored her back with his fingertips, caressing her skin along her spine, cupping her bottom before tickling his way up to the nape of her neck again. He kissed her earlobe, kissed her collarbone. As he kissed her neck, he pulled the strap of her dress down her shoulder to bare her left breast. He held it in his hand, squeezed it as he kissed her mouth. He cupped it in his palm and looked down, smiling at it like a prized possession.

"So lovely,” he said. "So young and ripe.” He teased the tender red tip with his thumb, tracing the edge of the aureole. Her nipple hardened quickly. It was a red marble under the pad of his thumb. He toyed with it to make her moan. "Tell me what you feel, Mona. Tell me what I do to your body.”

"I feel desire.”

"Tell me much more than that. How does your nipple feel?”

"Hard. It feels as hard to me as it does to you,” she said breathlessly. "A woman can feel when her nipples are this hard.”

"As a man can when his cock is hard.”

"Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that. When you touch my nipple when it’s soft, I feel pleasure. But when you touch it when it’s this hard, the pleasure is magnified. Ten or twenty times. It’s hard to stand, hard to breathe. I ache, Malcolm.”

"Where do you ache, Mona? Tell me everywhere you ache.” He whispered the order and kissed the top of her breast. His soft hair tickled the bare flesh of her chest. She would die if he made her wait for him to take her.

"My breasts ache,” she said. "They need to be licked and sucked hard. And I ache inside for your cock.”

"In your cunt.”

"In my cunt,” she said. He inhaled sharply as if it aroused him 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. She could take more pain, if only she could come. Already his fingers were bringing her close. And his hands were so well-proportioned and muscular and lovely that she could rest her head on his shoulder and watch him touch her sex all night and all day.

"Can you come?” He chuckled lightly even as he wiggled his finger inside her. "What sort of question is that? No. Not yet. You know it’s not time yet, silly girl.”

"I’m sorry, sir.”

"It’s fine. It’s fine,” he said soothingly. "I know it’s hard, but you’re doing so well. I would hate for you to give up already.”

"I won’t give up.”

"That’s the spirit.” He grinned at her and tickled her inside to make her laugh. "Now I believe you’ve earned a treat. Haven’t you?”

"If you say I have.”

"And I say you have.” He stopped touching her, but that was for the best. She was almost ready to orgasm. If she did, she knew she’d be in terrible trouble. Even worse, she would have disappointed him, and she couldn’t live with herself if she disappointed him. Not that. Anything but that.

She slowly sank down to the floor, using his body—so solid and sturdy—to steady herself. Once on her knees, it was near torture not to unfasten the falls of his breeches and take his cock into her mouth and suck it. But that wasn’t what she was here for, even though he was stiff and straining so hard against the white fabric she saw it throbbing. She rested her head for a moment against his rock hard thigh and sighed with indescribable pleasure when Malcolm caressed her hair.

"My Mona,” he said. "My darling.”

She touched the side of his calf and stroked the leather of his boot from his ankle to his knee. It was smooth and supple and she couldn’t get enough of it. The two gold coin buttons glinted in the candlelight. First she kissed her fingertips and pressed the kiss to the buttons. Then she brought her lips down to the them and kissed them with her mouth. Malcolm shuddered. She felt it go through his body and into hers. She kissed his boots again, kissed the gold buttons, kissed the leg of the boot that was warm from the heat of his body. While she was on the floor on her hands and knees, Malcolm caressed her sex again with the tip of the crop. She spread her legs wider for him and arched her back, offering her cunt up to him.

He struck it with the crop.

She screamed in sudden agony even though she knew he would do it, even though she wanted him to do it.

"Count, love,” he said. "You know you have to count.”

"Forty-nine,” she said. She’d survived fifty-one strikes already and that last one was worse than all of them combined.

"We’re over halfway there,” he said as she rested her head against his thigh again. "You’ve made it so far and so well. Are you tired?”

She nodded and whispered, "Yes, sir.”

"I know you’re tired.” He reached down and lightly brushed her lips with his fingers, lightly teased her cheek with a lock of her own hair. That made her smile. "There’s my girl. So obedient. She’s even smiling.”

"Why do you do this?” she asked, so torn between loving the crop and hating it, loving him and hating him. "Why, sir?”

"I do it out of kindness, of course,” he said. "You understand that, don’t you?”

She thought of his kisses, his sweet words, and the caring way he touched her welts. He was a kind man. Who but a kind man would give her such affection, such tender concern with her pain?

"I understand, sir. You are very kind.” It made her smile to say it, not because it was a lie but because it was true. She understood it all now.

"Now only forty-eight more. Do you want to take them on the floor or would you like to stand again?”

A choice. How kind of him.

"The floor, please, sir.”

"If you like,” he said. "On your hands and knees. You’ll be more comfortable that way. Legs wide. There. Just lovely. I love to see you like this,” he said, standing behind her. She knew he was looking at her open and exposed holes. She wanted him to see them. She wanted him to see what he owned. "I’m so very glad I asked you to play this game with me.”

"It’s my pleasure, sir.”

"Oh, I know it is, but it’s so rare to find such an eager partner. In truth, my dear, you’re really doing me a favor.”

She looked up and he had his hands on his chest. So well-mannered. So refined. So civilized. The very portrait of a gentleman indeed.

He took the crop in hand and struck her under her ribcage so hard she went momentarily blind.

He was an angel of beauty and pain.

"Count, darling,” he said. "Otherwise I’ll forget my place and we’ll have to start all over. I hate losing my place, don’t you?”

He was the devil incarnate.

"Forty-eight,” she said through gritted teeth.

"That’s right. Almost there. Carry on. That’s my girl.”

Angel.

"Oh, that hurt my hand so I know it must have hurt you. I’m so sorry, my darling.”

Demon.

On and on it went. The hits followed by words of encouragement and affection followed by more hits. Mona grew dizzy. It was hard to keep count but unthinkable to lose count. What if he started over? What if he didn’t? Even as she counted, it seemed time had stopped. The clock stopped. The world stopped. They had always played this game and they always would. That was how it should be. Heaven and hell were in this room and they had one foot in each.

"Only ten left, sweetheart. You’re amazing, you know. Simply amazing at this.”

She counted the last few strikes and by the final five she’d curled into the fetal position on the hardwood floor. Two left. Just two.

"Darling?” Malcolm’s voice penetrated the fog of her suffering. "My angel girl?”

"Yes, sir?”

"You need to lie on your back for me. All right?”

She whimpered in pain as she unfurled herself from the self-protective cocoon she’d rolled herself into. Every movement left her body in misery. She felt like an old book that hadn’t been opened in centuries and now someone had come at last, taken the book from the shelf, broken the spine and riffled through pages that had been pressed together so long their ink had turned to glue. Sinews screamed. Muscles moaned. Simply lying on her back had made her weep again. Hot tears poured from her eyes, stealing her peripheral vision, though Malcolm remained in perfect focus. He straddled her at her hips with those boots of his she worshiped, one leather ankle pressed against each side of her body.

"Perfect,” he said. He looked her up and down, one hand on his chin and the other on his hip the way he had been the first night she’d seen him. He perused her like the work of an old master. "Wait, not quite. Put your hands behind your head again. I want you to cradle your head. The floor’s so hard, I would never want you to hurt yourself.”

She loved him for his concern. Had she ever met a man more thoughtful? She placed her hands behind her head and cradled her head in her palms.

"Marvelous.” He smiled down at her. "Now two more to go. We can do this together. Ready, my sweet?”

"Ready, sir.”

"I haven’t the words to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed this,” he said. "I simply don’t have the words.”

He raised the crop and lashed it down, striking her right breast so hard she screamed, so hard she heard the swish of it in the wind like the sound of a whip.

She coughed from the pain and it was the greatest test of her willpower to choke out the number.

"Two,” she said, more tears burning her cheeks.

"Last one, darling. Then we’re all done. And won’t that be lovely?”

He lashed her again, one final time, striking the side of her left breast. She cried out the last number of her torment and rolled again onto her side, burying her face in her hands to weep.

Far away she heard movement—the rustle of fabric, boot heels on the hardwood. When she’d worn herself out with weeping, she continued to lay there, spent from her suffering and yet strangely peaceful. Though it was all over, the memory of the words Malcolm had said to her during her beating rang in her ears like the chiming of a golden bell.

You’re the bravest girl in the world.

My princess, my angel, my darling, my dear.

You’re lovelier like this than I’ve ever seen you.

You can’t know what this means to me, what a gift you’ve given me tonight.

You please me beyond words, Mona.

She heard those words in her ear again, because Malcolm spoke them again. He had come to the floor and taken her in his arms. He lifted her up, holding her like a babe in arms, all the while whispering his admiration of her, his adoration. She put her arms around his strong shoulders and held him as he carried her to the bed. The velvet of his coat prickled against her savaged skin, yet she relished the sensation since it meant he was holding her.

"Here we go,” he said, laying her on the bed. He’d pulled the covers back so she lay on the soft white sheet. For all its softness, she still winced as her sore body met the mattress.

"I know it hurts.” Malcolm sat on the bed by her side and took her hand in his. He kissed her wrist, kissed her palm, and all five fingers received their own kisses. Her knuckles too. "I’m so proud of you, dearest.”

"Did I please you?”

"More than I can ever say.”

He kissed her forehead, kissed her eyelids, kissed her lips.

"Stay there,” he said. "I’ll tend to your wounds.”

"Will you make love to me?”

He smiled, laughed softly. "All night long,” he said. "But first I must take care of you. Your well-being is more important than anything else. You know that, don’t you?”

These didn’t sound like lines from the play they were acting out. Important to him? How? Why? She was his whore. That was all, wasn’t it?

"Am I important to you?” she asked.

He brought her hand to his lips again, pressed it to his mouth, and closed his eyes.

"I have waited a very long time for you,” he said. "And tonight you’ve proven to me just how very special you are.” He put her hand onto her chest and kissed the back of it. "Rest here. You’ve earned it.”

Mona feared to look at her own body, but she did so anyway. She wanted to see what Malcolm saw. Upon lifting her head, she winced. In stripes along her thighs, and in patches on her stomach, and in whorls on her arms and breasts, she saw deep red welts. Some were pure scarlet red. Others a rusty red with black or blue cores. She imagined her entire backside from her neck to her knees looked about the same.

She wasn’t horrified by what she saw. In truth, she found the welts erotic, because Malcolm had trained her eyes to see kisses where others would see wounds.

Malcolm set the wooden chair next to the bed and on the seat of the chair he placed a bowl of water.

"Only water,” he said. "Warm water, not hot. Lie still for me.”

She nodded and laid her head back on the pillow. For him. He’d said to lie still for him and for him she would lie still. For him she would move. For him she would live and breathe. For him.

He brought his hands to his throat and unfastened the white linen cravat. He unwound it from his neck and at last there it was, the hollow of his throat, the hollow she’d craved to kiss and lick and worship. She smiled, happier than she’d been in years. He folded the linen into a thick square and dipped it into the bowl of water. Then he wrung it out, flattened it out, and pressed it against one of the screaming red and black welts on her hips. She hissed through her teeth. But soon the pain dissipated and the warmth permeated her skin and sunk into the deep layers of tissue, soothing her down to the bone.

"Better?” Malcolm asked. She gave him a tired smile. He dipped the linen into the water again, pressed it to another welt where it quieted the screaming of her skin. For a long time, he ministered to her wounds. Not a single one was missed. When he finished with the front of her body, she rolled onto her stomach and rested her cheek against the pillow. He’d asked her if she knew how important she was to him. No, she didn’t know. But she felt it. The way he tended to her welts, to her needs, with such solicitude was beyond anything she’d experienced from a lover before. She felt spoiled as an only child, treasured as a prized possession, doted on like a king’s most favored concubine. What magic was it, what sorcery that could turn an act of violence and pain into an act of adoration and affection? It was alchemy, the art of turning base things into gold.

"Would you give me permission to love you, sir?” she asked Malcolm.

"You may tonight,” he said, the slightest smile on his lips to show how secretly pleased he was. "You won’t love me next time I come to you, so enjoy it while you can.”

She laughed softly into the pillow. Hard to take such a threat seriously from a man who was using his own linen cravat to tend to her wounds.

"I don’t believe that,” she said.

"What did I warn you about saying things like that?”

"I know, I know, sir. Men like you take it as a challenge.”

"You only love me tonight because of the beating. You understand that, don’t you?”

Before tonight, she would have said "no,” that made no sense, there was no logic to it. He’d done something to her mind as well as to her body. By the end of her beating, she couldn’t tell the crop apart from his kindnesses. They were one and the same to her so that every strike of the crop was tender as a kiss and every word of tenderness made her crave the crop.

"Now I understand,” she said, because now she did.

When he’d finished with the water, he brought out a clear glass bottle of golden oil. It smelled like crushed wildflowers and warmed her skin even more as he rubbed it into her sore flesh. He massaged her entire body—back and legs, shoulders and arms—then bade her roll onto her back again so he could do the same to her front. He lingered long over her breasts, using both of his hands on each one. She gave herself up to his hands, let him mold her like clay. She had no will over her own body. She willed only that Malcolm’s will be done.

Malcolm slicked the warm oil all over her stomach and hips and thighs. He brought his hand between her legs and nudged her thighs open. He glazed her clitoris with the oil and stroked circles all around it. It swelled under his touch and pulsed against his finger. She felt that deep delicious hollowness inside her again. He filled it with his fingers when he slid them up into her sex, the oil allowing him deep penetration. It was bliss to spread her legs far apart for him so that he could have his way with her. She watched as his fingers disappeared inside her body one by one, probing and parting her from within. Mona panted through her nose. She knew she mustn’t come until his cock was inside her. If he didn’t put it there soon she’d be forced to beg him for it.

"Do you have children?” she asked.

He laughed softly. "I have four fingers in your cunt and you’re asking me if I have children. Do you think I’m checking to see if there’s room for one more?”

She grinned broadly, too tired and aroused to laugh.

"I only wondered,” she said.

"Does it matter to you?” he asked.

"I’m nosy. And you’re a mystery.”

"I have children, yes. Though not so young anymore.”

"Do you love them?”

"I love them though they’ve disappointed me.”

"How so?”

"They’re…respectable,” he said. "Respectable and well-behaved. Good citizens of the realm. They’re boring. Except the youngest. He takes after me.” His words made her grin drunkenly. "Are you happy to know that?”

"I am,” she said. "Although…I don’t know why.”

"You’re open,” he said.

"I know I am.”

"Not like that though…” He glanced down at his hand that was in her cunt up to the thumb. "I broke you open tonight. Up here.” With his free hand he tapped his temple, indicating his mind. "And here.” He tapped his chest over his heart. "You feel close to me.”

"I do,” she said.

"It’s the intimacy of captor and captive. There’s nothing like it.”

"Am I your captive?”

"You are tonight.”

"Can you keep me forever?”

"I wish I could,” he said, and she believed he meant it. At least tonight he meant it.

"But you can’t?”

He shook his head. "But…if you want, you can keep me.”

"What does that mean?”

His smile turned him back into that handsome devil she knew and loved.

"You’ll see,” he said. "Now close your eyes and keep them closed.”

She didn’t want to obey this order; it was too enjoyable to look at him. But she couldn’t refuse him. Mona closed her eyes and relaxed into the soft sheets. She heard the brass headboard rattle as Malcolm slid his body on top of hers. She sensed movement but kept her eyes closed even as she felt him crawling up the bed, over her. First he removed her pillow and laid her flat on her back on the bed. He then lifted her arms and put them over her head. Her arms were slack, her entire body loose and yielding. He was twining the linen cravat around her wrists, securing her to the brass slats of the headboard. Never before had she engaged in bondage with a lover. She should have guessed Malcolm would be her first. She heard fabric rip as Malcolm moved off of her and to her ankles where he used the other half of the cravat to tie each of them to the slats of the footboard. Nothing about being restrained by him scared her. Quite the opposite, she felt swaddled and secure. It was restful to be tied spread-eagle to the bed. She was absolved of all responsibility, absolved of all sin. What could she do? Nothing. She could only lie there passively as he did whatever it was he wanted to do to her. And whatever he wanted to do with her was what she wanted done.

Malcolm crawled over her again. She felt the naked tip of his cock graze her stomach. Her vagina contracted in hungry need for it. But he didn’t move down and push it inside her like she wanted. He straddled her head instead.

"Open your eyes,” he said, and when she did it was to find him holding the dripping tip at her chin. He didn’t have to tell her to take it into her mouth. He placed his hand under the back of her head and lifted it with all the gentleness of a nurse raising the head of a sick patient to drink some water. She did it willingly, wrapping the tip with her lips and sucking. A small burst of semen shot into her mouth and she swallowed it eagerly. It was merely a taste of what was to come. He’d been erect for well over an hour now. Surely he was as ready to orgasm as she was. He slowly fucked her mouth. The only thing more erotic than the taste of him on her tongue was the feel of his leather boots against the sides of her breasts. As much as she relished his naked body, she was pleased he’d kept his clothes on, baring only the organ he needed to fuck her. He was resplendent, and she wanted to know what it was like to be ridden by a man who wore boots for the job in question. God, he had turned her into a whore, hadn’t he? A whore with no shame in her whoring, that’s what he’d made her. He’d cracked open something in her, some dormant, latent proclivity for pain and punishment and being treated like a possession. She could never go back to the way it was before. Whatever it would take to keep him in her life, she would do it. This devil, this angel, this man. She almost wanted him to make her pregnant. It would be a tie to him, a tether. She pushed the thought from her mind. These were dangerous dreams. What had he done to her?

At this angle she couldn’t do much more than lick and suck the tip, but she gave it the full measure of her attention and adoration. She worshiped the organ in her mouth. She served it and its needs, its desires, its wants and thanked it that what it wanted tonight was her.

Malcolm had one hand on his cock as he guided it in and out of her mouth, one hand atop the brass headboard. She loved to hear his ragged breaths. He sounded like he was close to his breaking point. She craved his semen, wanted it inside her—any hole would do. But he kept fucking her mouth, not coming, torturing himself with pleasure as much as he’d tortured her.

Mona sucked it as deep as she could, pulling on it with her mouth, and Malcolm let out a groan of abject ecstasy.

"Fuck…” he breathed and Mona would have smiled if her mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied.

Malcolm slowly eased himself from her mouth and moved down her body until his knees straddled her hips.

"Wicked girl,” he said. "You almost made me spill all over your face.”

"Oh no,” she said. "Anything but that.”

"You modern girls are so hard to scandalize.”

"Is that what you’re trying to do?” she asked. "Scandalize me?”

"Is it working?”

"You’ve turned me into a whore and made me happy about it. Consider me thoroughly scandalized.”

He chuckled and it was a sinister mad scientist sound. "If you think you’re scandalized now…wait until I’m done with you.”

She said nothing to that because she never wanted him to be done with her.

Malcolm lowered his head to her right breast and suckled lightly. She closed her eyes and rested her head back, basking in the bliss of his mouth and the pull and tug on her nipple. It sent rings of heat and pleasure radiating through her chest and stomach, making her inner muscles clench again and again. Her entire sex dampened and stirred, eager for him to enter her. He seemed in no hurry to take her, so she laid there helpless to do anything but enjoy herself. His mouth moved to her other nipple. It hardened as he lapped at it. The aching of the welts had quieted. Before they had screamed at her, but now they merely whispered reminders they were there. The wounds made her very aware of her body. Whenever Malcolm touched one of her welts or bruises, on purpose or by accident, she remembered the kiss of his crop, those words that had melted her down and recast her into a new image. She remembered his twin gifts of pain and tenderness, and she loved him for both.

Without a word of warning, Malcolm lowered his hips and pressed every inch of him into her. She heard herself make a sound, a long low moan, as he filled her to her inmost parts. He rose up and took her breasts in his hands, and he rode her with deep strokes. She couldn’t move her legs or her arms, only her hips, which she lifted to meet his thrusts. She heard the wet sounds of their copulating and it aroused her even more. Malcolm seemed lost inside her. His hands held her breasts in a firm grip and his head was back, his lips parted, his eyes closed as he fucked her. He was a god to her now, a god of sex and sin. If he could have fucked her forever, she would let him. In hell where the sins of lust were punished, they said the lascivious damned tore each other apart with their desires, and the rent and bleeding pieces still found ways to meet and mate with each other. How was that hell, she wondered? These theologians had never met Malcolm.

The frenzy gripped her, gripped her around the hips and waist. She needed release and it was driving her mad not to have it. Mona rocked her hips faster, lifted and lifted them.

"Easy, love,” Malcolm said, but it was too late. She was past all reason. Wild, she bucked as best as she could beneath him with her ankles and wrists bound to the bed. She bucked and writhed, writhed and begged. But Malcolm held back, fucking her with restraint, as if striking her a hundred times with a riding crop wasn’t enough torture for her. Not near enough.

This was the worst torture of them all. She had to come. She had to. No question, no hope, no surrender. She needed him to slam his cock into her a thousand times, but he could not be persuaded. He made her suffering even worse when he plucked at her nipples again. He pinched one, then the other, then back and forth. He was giving her gentle foreplay, when what her sex needed was brutal pounding.

"Are you forgetting something?” he asked. That smile again, that evil devil’s grin.

She’d forgotten to count.

One hundred strikes. One hundred strokes. She’d forgotten she was supposed to count his thrusts the ways she’d counted the cropping.

"One hundred,” she said when Malcolm thrust into her the very next time.

"Now she remembers,” he said, still smiling.

He thrust again, harder, and she contracted inside painfully.

"Ninety-nine.”

Malcolm pumped his hips again. These were vicious, sharp thrusts, as punishing as they were pleasurable. She could barely recognize her own voice as she counted them. Ninety-eight, ninety-seven…

"By the way, darling, if you come before one hundred, you’ll see a side of me you won’t like very much.”

Ninety-one. Ninety.

The counting kept her from climaxing. She couldn’t do both at the same time. The pressure built. The muscles all along the backs of her thighs were so taut she thought they’d snap any moment. And still she lifted her hips into each thrust, not merely receiving his prick but grasping for it with her sex, taking it as it took her.

Eighty-one. Eighty.

To make it even more miserable, Malcolm continued fondling her breasts, pinching her nipples with each number she called out. Her breasts were so swollen from his attentions, they felt twice their normal size.

Seventy-one. Seventy.

She would have given anything to have her ankles free so she could move her legs. She wanted to spread more for him so he could pound her right into the base of her stomach. The very thought of it made her inner muscles twitch.

Sixty-one. Sixty.

Her throat hurt from breathing so hard. She could still taste the salt of his sperm in her mouth.

Fifty-one. Fifty.

Mona pulled on the bonds that held her wrists fast to the bed, anything to relieve some of the excruciating tension in her body. But nothing helped. She was wound tighter than a clock.

Forty-one. Forty.

Malcolm was fucking her harder now. She knew he had to be as desperate to come as she was. Her breasts bounced as he pumped into her cunt.

Thirty-one. Thirty.

He slapped her breasts lightly, reigniting the red pain of the welts. A sound briefly interrupted the counting, part scream and part sob.

Twenty-one. Twenty.

She couldn’t take anymore. It was too much. Her head swam and her eyes saw nothing even when open. Her sex throbbed and she could barely speak or breathe or move.

Eleven. Ten.

At last he gave her the thrusts she needed. Full body thrusts. The soft linen of his shirt grazed her nipples. The stiff shaft grazed her painfully swollen clitoris. She didn’t speak the numbers anymore, she gasped them. The bed rocked underneath her and Malcolm was all over her, sucking her and licking her and biting her and fucking and fucking and fucking her.

Two.

One.

The dam burst inside her. With a cry that surely someone heard out on the streets, she came at last, heels dug into the mattress, hips off the bed, and her sex clenching and clutching wildly all around Malcolm’s cock. He was coming into her, spurts and spurts of semen glazing her inner walls. Her entire body shuddered and spasmed as she was overwhelmed with the paroxysms of her climax. It went on forever, forever, and even longer than forever…

Then it was done.

Malcolm lay atop her, barely moving, though she felt a few last gasps of fluid spurting inside her. She was spent. She had never been more spent. He’d taken everything out of her. She had nothing left—no mind, no will, no energy.

"Was that enough for you?” Malcolm asked as he nuzzled her ear, kissed her neck.

Already her sex stirred back to life at the sensual tone of his voice, the kisses, the bite of his teeth on her ear.

"No,” she said.

"More?”

"More,” she begged. "More and more and more.” He started to move again, to fuck her again, to fill her again and with each stroke she said that word. More. It was her only want. Her only need.

More.

And more was exactly what he gave her.