“Oh my God,” says Melina, who leans back in her chair by my desk during Steve’s extended break. “That sounds so fun. I can’t believe he thought of such a cute date idea.”

“I know,” I say, smiling a little too proudly. It’s hard not to be proud of Damian, though. As much as I don’t want to think of him like some kind of prize, he really is. He’s gorgeous, kind, great with Dean, and when he wants to turn me on he’s like a sex god. He also has more money than he could ever spend in a single lifetime, but that doesn’t even matter. Sure, it’s nice, but Damian could be even more poor than me and I’d still be head-over-heels for him. The money is just a crazy bonus, like hot fudge on a brownie. “But there was this reporter who hassled us a little yesterday. It was really weird. I felt like some celebrity with the paparazzi coming after me.”

“Sounds kind of exciting,” she says.

“Maybe if I didn’t have Dean. But she was clearly digging for dirt, or at the least something sensational and juicy. I don’t want my little guy dragged into that.”

“Yeah,” says Melina with a frown. “What did Damian say about it?”

“It sounded like he had seen the woman before. He said he’d do anything he could to make sure it didn’t go any farther.”

“He knew her? Was she pretty?” asks Melina.

I feel a stab of ugly panic shoot through me. I hadn’t even thought of it like that, but Melina’s question makes all kinds of dark thoughts bounce around my head. “She was beautiful,” I say. “And she was dressed like she knew it.”

Melina’s frown deepens. “How did Damian seem with her?”

“I mean, he seemed pissed. His eyes didn’t wander at all or anything, and he basically told her to fuck off.”

Melina relaxes. “Pshh. You have nothing to worry about. I shouldn’t even be bringing stuff like that up. Your man is perfect, Kylie. He knows he’s got something special with you and he’s not going to do anything to jeopardize it.”

“Yeah,” I say, but as much as I want to trust him one hundred percent, there’s the smallest, tiniest sliver of doubt that still remains. If I hadn’t had three years to stew over what I thought was the truth about him, I’m sure I would’ve moved past this silly thing by now, but no matter how hard I try there’s the faintest fear in my chest, like Damian will really do anything to get this woman to leave us alone.

“Wow,” I say later that night when Damian leads me into a posh little bar near the center of the city. “I thought you had to have a reservation months ahead of time to get into this place.”

“I worked out a deal with the owner a few years back. He owed me a couple favors.”

I purse my lips. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Thank you by the way for paying to have Angie stay with Dean tonight while he sleeps.”

“Don’t thank me. It was more of a selfish decision than anything. I’m hoping if I play my cards right tonight, I may get lucky.”

I laugh, but decide to keep him on his toes at least a little. “We’ll see how it goes.”

He eyes me as we’re let in through the front entrance by two men in dark suits. “Well, I hope you remember the safe words.”

My eyes widen when I realize the inside of the club is absolutely decked out with BDSM gear. Whips, chains, and leather harnesses dangle from the walls. Full-body leather suits are on display by mannequins, and there are several areas lit by red spotlights where masked men and women are engaged in everything from intercourse to paddling. The clientele are dressed in business formal attire, but it doesn’t take much searching to find men with hands up women’s dresses, women with their hands inside men’s zippers, and even one man who is practically swallowed up by four writhing women in a corner near where the people under the red spotlights are having sex.

“I remember them, Sir,” I add at the last second.

“That’s good, Kitten,” he says. I can already see the change coming over him, like the energy of this place seeps into him and pushes all the carefree kindness I’ve come to know in him away. All that’s left is his primal urge to dominate and subdue, to make me his and to own me completely.

I wondered for the longest time how a relationship would work with a man like him, especially a man who has such exotic sexual tastes, but I think I finally understand. Just because he’s my dom, it doesn’t mean he has to be my dom at home or around Dean. He can turn it on and off like the flip of a switch, just like most couples turn their sexuality on and off. Maybe there are a few whispered words here and there or discreet touches, but every couple holds their sexuality at bay to a degree. The only difference here is the intensity of what he unleashes when the time comes.

“I still haven’t had a chance to properly punish you for all of your transgressions,” he explains. “I have my own personal room here, so I thought--”

“Damian,” says a man who comes to clap Damian on the shoulder. The man is flanked by two gorgeous women in leather outfits that are cut like one-piece swimsuits. They both wear severe, thigh-high boots decked out with metal clasps and leather straps. “It’s good to see you. It has certainly been a while.”

“Kitten,” he says, pulling me close to him. “This is Mark, an old business associate.”

“Oh come on,” says Mark, who has handsome features with flecks of gray in his hair. “Business associate? We were practically inseparable back in our hay day.”

“That’s enough,” says Damian sharply.

Mark eyes me knowingly and grins. “I see. You’re breaking in a new one, are you? Well, don’t let me spoil the fun. Come on girls, I got a strap on for you this weekend, Vanessa, and I want to watch you fuck Mindy.” He throws a wink at me over his shoulder as he leaves.

I look up to Damian, a dozen questions burning on the tip of my tongue. I know I’m not supposed to ask him questions right now, but I don’t know if I can hold them back. Why was Damian so quick to get Mark to stop talking? What was Mark about to say that Damian didn’t want me to know? Between the reporter yesterday and now this, the confident foundation of trust I’ve been building with Damian feels like it is being shaken, and that realization makes me sick to my stomach.

He looks down at me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was waiting to see if I was going to ask.

I want to ask him so badly it actually hurts, but I don’t. On one hand, I need to be a better person than I was three years ago. I need to give him a chance to make the truth clear to me instead of trusting a stranger. On the other hand, I want to know if he’ll come clean with whatever it is. If I can really trust Damian, I won’t need to be on the alert all the time. I don’t need to be his interrogator. If it’s important for me to know, I need to trust him to tell me. And if he chooses not to tell me, well, I need to trust that he’s making that decision for a good reason, too.

I think I see a flicker of pride in his eyes when I stay silent. His approval makes me swell with satisfaction at having pleased him. My curiosity still stings, but I can manage it. Knowing I’ve made Damian--my dom--happy is enough to distract me for now.

“Do you mind if I just use the bathroom?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says, motioning to an area near the back of the main room.

I step inside to a relatively crowded space with a few well-kept stalls and a small mob of beautiful women checking themselves in the mirror and touching up makeup. Once I’ve finished, I’m met outside the stall by a face I don’t immediately recognize. She’s clearly waiting for me though, with fists planted on her shapely hips and a wicked grin on her lips.

“We never properly met,” she says, extending a hand.

I shake it, even though my impulse is to slap it away. It’s the reporter from yesterday, and just the sight of her alone is enough to turn my stomach. “I’m Kylie,” I say. I’ll give her a chance, at least. When I used to wait tables I learned the best way to deal with people I didn’t like was to kill them with kindness. Maybe that’ll work with this woman.

“Monique,” she says.

“You just happened to be here tonight?” I say lightly. “That’s a pretty wild coincidence, huh?”

She shrugs. “It was intentional. I wanted a chance to have a word with you alone, and my work affords me a few helpful perks, like being able to get into this club.”

“So you’re… into all this?” I ask.

“I had better be, or I would’ve never survived dating Damian. Oh,” she says at the expression on my face. “He didn’t mention we dated? I guess that’s not a surprise. I think there might have been a little overlap. He only broke things off with me… what was it, yesterday? Two days ago?”

I feel like I might be sick, but I don’t want her to see. “That can’t be true.”

She laughs with a heavy hint of sarcasm. “I know, right? I thought the same thing when he broke it off with me. But hey, now you know and you’ll be better off without him. He’s just a player. Always will be. You’re pretty enough, anyway. You’ll find another guy.”

“I have to go,” I say stiffly, pushing past her and heading for the exit. My head is spinning. I keep thinking how much this feels like what I felt on that airplane three years ago, only it’s worse now. I let myself fall farther for him. I let it all get deeper. I let him into Dean’s life.

I close my eyes, pressing my body against the wall and suppressing a shiver. There’s a difference though. Last time I believed Faleena. I believed every word she said and I didn’t even speak to Damian before I ran. This time? I may be pissed, and I may be having trouble ignoring everything she said, but I’m going to talk to him. I’ve changed at least that much, and the trust we’ve built over the past days has to count for something.

I hope.

Damian finds me before I move away from the wall. He plants a hand beside my head, leaning down and tilting my chin up with his other hand. “What happened?” he asks with eyes full of darkness.

“I met Monique,” I say. “She said you two dated.”

Damian shakes his head. “No. She tried when she first started reporting on me, but nothing ever happened.”

“She said you were dating her until just a few days ago…”

Damian frowns in genuine confusion, and before he even says a word, I know the truth. She was lying. Every word of it was a lie. She’s jealous of me, and she wants to sabotage what we have. All the disappointment and sadness I felt boils over into a simmering hatred for that woman.

The door beside us opens and Monique comes strutting out, looking pleased with herself.

Damian moves like he’s about to stop her and say something, but I beat him to it.

“Hey,” I say through gritted teeth, grabbing her shoulder.

She turns with a look of outrage on her face.

I don’t even let her speak before I slap her as hard as I can across the face. The sound rings out but doesn’t even draw so much as a turned head, which I guess isn’t surprising since there’s literally a guy in a leather mask spanking a bare-assed woman with a paddle a few feet away. But I relish in watching Monique’s head snap to the side and the way she brings a shaking hand up to the spot on her cheek that’s already turning red.

“You bitch,” she says. She raises her hand to slap me back, but Damian is there as quick as a cat, gripping her wrist and stopping her from touching me.

“You need to leave,” he says. “For good.”

“Damian,” she says. All the hardness melts from her face and she suddenly looks like a stray dog caught in the rain, desperate and hungry. “Please. I could be so good to you. Better than her. You need me. Just--”

“Leave,” he says more forcefully.

The anger flashes back into her features as quickly as it came. “Fuck you, then. You don’t deserve me.”

She storms out of the club with loud clicks of her heels and Damian doesn’t so much as glance back at her. “Are you okay, Kitten?” he asks.

“Thanks to you,” I say.

He still runs his hands over me, checking me for marks or damage. “I’m sorry that happened. I have no fucking idea how she managed to get in here, either, but I’m going to have words with the owner about it.”

“It’s okay, really.”

He watches me for a long time, then bites his lip. “You came to me this time. You didn’t run.”

I lean into him, running my fingers over his hard body with closed eyes. “I may be stubborn, but I can change.”

“You can always come to me, Kitten. Always. And I’ll always tell you the truth.”

My roaming hands and the soothing sound of his voice are doing all the right things to me. Feeling what we have threatened makes me want him more than ever. It makes me hungry. I slide my hand down his back and grip his tight ass, grinning into his chest as I do.

“Careful,” he says in a low raspy voice. “If you want to make it to the privacy of my room before I fuck you, it might be a bad idea to keep feeling me up like that.”

“Noted,” I say. “Then you had better hurry, because I don’t think I can help myself.”

He smirks. In a lightning quick move, he picks me up and presses me to his body, carrying me toward the back of the main room as easily as if I’m weightless. We pass a group of men and women who gives us a quick, drunken round of applause and cheer. I hide my face in Damian’s shoulder, still not used to the idea of strangers knowing I’m about to have sex just a few rooms away. Even so, the exposure heightens my desire more. It’s dirty, and it’s something I never would’ve thought I’d be into, but I can’t deny the way pulses of heat are running through my body, making my hairs stand on end.

“I want you to fuck me,” I whisper in his ear. “I want it so bad.”

His pace quickens at my words. He fumbles with the key for the locked door near the end of the hallway, but drops the key in his rush. “Fucking…” he growls before stepping back, gripping me tighter, and then kicking the door in.

“Wow,” I say. “Should I be flattered?”

“No,” he says. “You should be wet.”

I chew on the side of my lip. “One step ahead of you there.”

He drags a heavy bench in front of the door to keep anyone from barging in on us and turns on me with a dangerous look in his eyes.

I barely have time to take in the room, which is elegant and classy, yet clearly designed to be a BDSM enthusiast’s playground.

“It’s time I truly break you in, Kitten. Get on your fucking knees.”

His words are so forceful that they might as well be a whip. The power of each syllable drives me down to my hands and knees. My dress rides up, exposing my wet panties to the slight chill in the air. I reach to pull the dress down, but he lunges forward, gripping my wrist so tightly it almost hurts. “You’re mine now. You will do what I say and only what I say, or you’ll pay the consequences. Am I clear?”

I nod, eyes darting to the outline of his huge cock straining against his pants.

He doesn’t fail to notice my wandering eyes and chuckles. “My slutty little kitten is hungry for cock, is she? The only way you get what you want is if you follow my orders perfectly.”

I would think being called a slut would piss me off, but it only turns me on more. It makes me feel dirty and sexy at the same time, and Damian is making me realize I enjoy both of those things very much.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

He half-smiles. “First, you’re going to show me how wet you are for me. Turn around.”

I do as he says, moving on my hands and knees so my ass is facing him.

He sucks in a breath. I hear his footsteps approach and feel him inches from me, kneeling in front of my ass. “Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”

He runs his fingers across my pussy, nearly knocking me forward with how strongly my body reacts to his touch. I hear him lick his fingers clean and another wave of arousal explodes through me. My core throbs with need, but I know he’s not going to give me what I want. Not yet. The anticipation hangs in the air so thickly I can almost feel it.

“Now. I want you to touch yourself for me. Touch yourself like you do when you’re alone. Show me how you like to rub your pussy, how many fingers you like to slip into your tight little hole. And while you do it, I want you to imagine the things I’m going to do to you.”

I tentatively move my hand between my legs, shifting my weight to my other hand to hold myself up as I rub myself through my panties.

“I want your panties off,” he says sternly.

I slide them down to my knees, but before I can kick them all the way off he stops me.

“No. Leave them around your knees. Just like that.”

A shiver runs through me. My pussy and ass are on full display for him, and the way he’s orchestrating everything makes me feel so sexy, like I’m a cherished toy he’s enjoying, like he has imagined all the ways he would want me and he’s making them a reality. I bring my fingers back to circle around the hood of my clit lightly, trying to be natural like he instructed. Except I’m not usually dripping wet as soon as I start, and I usually use my vibrator. I’m way too embarrassed to bring that up though, so I just keep rubbing myself like I think he wants me to.

“No,” he says after a little time has passed. “I want to see how you do this when you’re by yourself.” He crosses his arms, watching me thoughtfully. “You use a toy, don’t you? What is it. A vibrator? A dildo?”

I swallow my embarrassment down, trying to remind myself that he wants to know because it turns him on, not because he’s trying to embarrass me.

“A vibrator,” I say quietly.

The corner of his mouth pulls up. “My naughty little kitten. I fucking love it.” He moves to a set of drawers behind him and rummages around until he pulls out a dildo a little smaller than the one I have at home with a vibrating attachment. He puts it in my hand and moves back to sit in a chair behind me, where he kicks his ankle onto his knee and leans back with a look of satisfaction.

He says nothing else, but I know I’m supposed to resume, so I close my eyes and try my hardest to pretend I’m by myself, even though I don’t ever do this on my hands and knees. “I’m normally on my back,” I say after a few seconds.

“On your back then,” he says.

I roll over, spreading my legs out and using the head of the dildo to rub myself and spread my wetness across my entire pussy. I activate the vibrator and lean back, sucking in a deep breath as the pleasure begins to blossom from between my legs to the rest of my body. Knowing Damian’s watching me has my sensations on overdrive, and when I look back up I see he’s palming his erection, hand moving slowly as his eyebrows pull together in pleasure.

I nearly cum just at the sight of him getting off to me, but something tells me he wants me to wait. He’s greedy when it comes to my orgasms, and I know he’ll want me to cum around his cock. I want that too.

I dip the head of the dildo inside myself, taking my time with it more than I would if I was by myself, but I can hear how much Damian is enjoying the show. I drive it a little deeper each time, hips moving to meet each thrust until the clitoral stimulator is massaging my clit every time.

I want to watch Damian more, but the pleasure is getting so intense I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. “Oh God,” I gasp. “Oh fuck. I’m going to cum soon, I’m going too--”

“Stop,” he says.

He stands up and takes the dildo from me. He runs his thumb along it, collecting my wetness and then he licks it off his finger with a smirk. “You’re so fucking delicious.”

My breath catches. The idea of him liking my taste is so vulgar in all the right ways, and I can’t seem to get enough of it. I feel my walls still clenching around nothing and my clit throbbing. I need to cum so badly I’m not above begging him if he makes me.

“Now,” he says. “Stand up.”

I do as I’m told, even though my legs already feel a little weak.

He methodically removes my clothing, fingers brushing my bare skin where he can find excuses to and some places he can’t. He gets me completely naked and then takes a step back to admire me with another half-smile. “Goddamn you are so fucking perfect.”

I blush, folding my arms over my breasts self-consciously.

“No,” he says, taking my arms and putting them back by my sides. “Don’t ever cover yourself in front of me, Kitten. Do you understand? Your body is art to me. You are art. You wouldn’t put a black box over the Mona Lisa and you wouldn’t put a sheet over the statue of David. And you will not cover your body in front of me.

I bite my lip, nodding. If it’s possible for words to change me from a self-conscious woman to one who’s proud of her body, Damian is well on his way to doing it. I’ve never felt more beautiful or sexy than I do right now in this room, and losing the weight of doubt is freeing up more room for me to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

“You’re going to take my clothes off with nothing but your mouth. And you’re going to do it blindfolded,” he adds.

He drapes a black cloth around my eyes and I’m left in total darkness, with only the sound of my own breathing for company. I inch forward, reaching blindly with my hands to find him but he makes a disapproving sound.

“No hands. Just your mouth.”

I try not to think how ridiculous I must look scooting forward with my face extended slightly, but the sound of his voice gives me a pretty clear idea of where he stands. I bump into his chest a little roughly. I feel the lapel of his jacket with my lips. Taking it in my teeth and moving to slide it off his arms is easy enough, but the tie he wears is tricker.

He caresses me while I work at his clothes, pulling at the knot on his tie with my teeth as he strokes my breasts and back.

It takes me a minute to figure out the best technique for unbuttoning his shirt, but I eventually find a combination of tongue, teeth, and lips is the best method. When I reach the buttons near his stomach, I have to grip the shirt with my teeth and yank it free from his pants.

From the quick pace of his breathing, I can tell he’s enjoying this.

I undo the last button of his shirt, and while I know I still need to tackle the cuffs on his sleeves, I’m too eager to get to his pants to worry about that right now. It only takes two or three quick yanks with my teeth to get his belt loose, and then the button at his waist. I take the zipper between my teeth, dragging it down slowly. His pants slide down on their own once I undo the zipper. I move my lips forward and immediately find the hard shape of his cock beneath his underwear. I tease him a little by moving my lips across its length until I find the tip, where a small spot of pre-cum is soaking through his underwear.

I bite my lip to hold in the wild urges coursing through me. Not bringing my hands up to touch him all over is almost impossible, but my desire to please him overcomes it. I want to be his good little submissive. His little slut. I want to be his dirty kitten--the one he can’t stop thinking about. I want his dick to get hard at the slightest thought of me, but above all I want to please him.

I take the waistband of his underwear in my teeth and yank it down to his mid-thigh. His hard cock springs free and presses against the side of my face. I turn my head so my lips graze the smooth skin of his length. His body quivers at the tender touch.

“Can I? Please, Sir?” I ask.

“Fuck…” he growls. I can hear the hesitation in his voice. He clearly had some kind of plan for me, but I’m tempting him to go off-script, and I love it. “You want my cock, Kitten?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, Sir.”

“You’ll get it, but not for free. I want something too. Stand up.”

I obey, standing so quickly my breasts bounce. That would normally make me self-conscious, but it instead gives me a small rush of excitement, because I know Damian is watching, and I know he is relishing in the sight of my naked body.

“You need to trust me now, but I won’t drop you. Just relax.”

I frown in confusion. I feel his shoulder press into my waist and his arms wrap around my ass. A second later, I’m flipped upside down with my breasts and thighs pressed tightly to Damian’s body. He grips me firmly by the waist and pulls me up until I feel the scruff of his beard between my legs. It’s only then I realize what he meant when he said he wanted something too. He meant if I was going to get to have his cock, he’d get my pussy.

“Can I use my hands?” I ask.

I hear the sound of his hand slapping my ass before I feel it. It rings out sharply in the room with a loud crack. A quick sting of heat follows that slowly blossoms outward with radiating pain.

“You will address me as Sir, or you will be punished.”

“Yes, Sir,” I say. The few times I’ve been slapped in the past have always brought out an irrational sort of anger, like I can go from polite librarian to Hell’s Angels enforcer in a split second. The pain from Damian’s slap has a similar effect, except it’s somehow in a sexual context, like my already ridiculous lust was just kicked into overdrive.

“And yes, you may use your hands.”

I wrap one arm around his thigh instinctively, even though his grip feels secure on my legs, I know if he let go of me I’d fall on my head right now. My other hand finds the thick base of his cock. Because of our height differences, it’s a good thing his cock is so big, or I wouldn’t be able to reach it with my mouth in this position.

I take the head of his cock inside my mouth. Even the tip of it is so wide it stretches my lips, but after the initial tinge of pain from the stretch, my lips adjust. I use the base of my tongue to cup him as I work my mouth up and down, swirling my tongue and dragging my bottom lip along the rim of his head.

My attention is yanked away from doing a good job on him when I feel the warmth of his own tongue plunge into me. He doesn’t start slow. He attacks my pussy with his mouth, and it’s several long seconds before I even remember I still have his cock in my mouth. I get back to work, subconsciously increasing the intensity of the blowjob I’m giving him as my own pleasure ramps up, which seems to drive him even further into a frenzy. The two of us feed off each other's lust, driving one another farther and faster until my hand must be a blur of motion along his shaft and my mouth is tingling from the friction of bobbing up and down on him.

I’m starting to feel heavy-headed from being upside down and straining so much, but the tingling pain that starts in my head and is building toward my neck is doing strange things to my body. It’s like Damian said--the pain is acting like a reset button. Every time my brain registers the discomfort of blood rushing to my head, it’s like the sensation of his tongue between my legs is hitting me for the first time again.

He starts to lap at me, driving his tongue inside me in wonderful ways while he uses his hand to give attention to every other inch of me. I jerk in his grip and nearly end up falling head-first on the ground when he pulls his tongue from my entrance and drags it up to the tight ring of my ass. I’ve never in my wildest dreams thought of wanting a man to put his tongue there, but a split second of Damian’s attention has me completely re-thinking that. He starts plunging his fingers in my pussy even as he circles my ass with his tongue, probing the entrance and easing himself in a little bit at a time.

Somehow I’m still keeping enough focus on what I’m doing to keep sucking his cock, and I now have a cramping jaw and tired arm to add to the discomfort of blood rushing to my head. Instead of distracting me like I would expect, all the pain is only making his touch more explosive, like every nerve in my body is on full-alert and my synapses are firing on overdrive.

“Oh my God,” I gasp, but my words come out as an unintelligible gurgle because my mouth is full of him.

I lose track of the line between just pleasure and mind-blowing orgasm. What normally feels like a clear-cut escalation blurs into feelings that never seem to fade or falter, like an orgasm without end. Every touch, every movement of his hands and mouth against me keeps the chain reaction going until I start to feel light headed and weak.

I don’t know how long it is before he lets me back on my feet and eases me to sit on a padded table, but I sink backwards, panting and still moaning uncontrollably. He unties the blindfold from my eyes so I can see the satisfied expression on his face.

“You’re doing amazing, Kitten.”

“Thank you, Sir,” I say breathlessly.

“Now, shall we begin?”

My heart falters. Begin? I thought we began a long time ago, but I nod, because more than anything, I want to please him.

The corner of his mouth pulls up. “That’s good. Now, I know you feel weak right now,” he says, moving to the far end of the room and giving me a wonderful view of his naked body. I guess he finished the job of undressing while I was blindfolded, and thank God for that. Every step he takes makes his ass flex and relax in a hypnotic way, and when he reaches for something on the wall, it makes his broad back cord and bulge in places I didn’t even know muscles existed.

“Your body needs a reset,” he explains, coming toward me with a leather paddle. “You may have been uncomfortable, but the pleasant sensations were overpowering the unpleasant. You’ve overdosed on pleasure, in other words. Now it’s time to reset the dial.”

“You want me to overdose on pain?” I ask, feeling afraid for the first time.

“No. The pain doesn’t need to be extreme, or even more than mildly uncomfortable. The point is that the pain comes by itself, devoid of pleasure. You may find an emotional release or even physical pleasure you won’t expect in submitting to my punishment, but beyond that, this is how we prepare your body for the final act.”

“The final act?” I ask.

“Now, now, Kitten,” he says warningly. “I am allowing you certain graces because you are still not accustomed to being my submissive, but it’s not your place to question me. I’m your dom. You need to trust that I will tell you as much as you need to know. I will do as much as I need to do. Remember, my ultimate goal is your pleasure. Beyond that, you just need to trust me.”

I nod my head and close my eyes.

“Good. Very good,” he says.

I feel the familiar surge of warmth from his praise. I realize how easily I could become addicted to pleasing him, but I also can’t manage to figure out how that would be a bad thing.

“On your stomach,” he says. “I want to see that beautiful ass of yours.”

I roll over, noticing for the first time I’m on what looks a little bit like a massage chair. There’s a recessed section where I can rest my forehead on a padded area and breathe easily while on my stomach, as well as pads that are set below the bench to rest my arms on comfortably.

“Now, I don’t just punish you to enhance your pleasure. I’m also punishing you because you have displeased me over the course of the past few days. As my submissive, you need to learn that you may be afforded certain luxuries when we’re not in settings like this, but if you overstep too far, even outside our playtime, you’ll pay for it here. Remembering that will help keep you in line.”

I clench my muscles tight, expecting him to hit me with the paddle at any moment. I’m afraid of the pain, but also excited in a way I can’t explain. It feels like I’m diving deeper into this world of his, and with that dive comes a deeper commitment to him. The idea of tying myself more closely to him is as exciting as any of the pleasure he promises, because when I think of being with him now, I feel an overwhelming sense of safety, like as long as he’s my dom and my lover, nothing bad can ever happen to me.

I feel myself finally giving my mind over to this experience one hundred percent. Up until now I’ve held back just a small part--the tiniest reserve of doubt that maybe this wasn’t right for me, that a mother of a two-year-old had no business getting involved in something like this. But while it all feels dark and dirty in a sexual, thrilling kind of way, there’s nothing actually dark about this, and even if there was, who says a mom can’t have a dark side? If it makes me happy, then Dean will benefit more from my happiness than if I was repressing all my urges and unhappy.

The paddle collides with my ass harder than I expected. I jump up slightly, yelping with pain.

“Let the burn sink in,” he says. “Commit the sensation to memory and remember it. Use it. Let it make you stronger.”

I try to focus on the pain, mentally diving into the sensation until I can almost feel the outline of the paddle on my ass and the way little threads of discomfort spread from the spot, tingling and burning with gradually weakening intensity. He puts his hands into a small box at the foot of the bench and touches something before bringing them to my skin. He must have been touching something cold, because his hands are icy against me, immediately soothing away the sting of the paddle.

He repeats the process several more times, reminding me what I did to deserve each paddling before administering the punishment and soothing away the pain. By the time he’s done, my ass is tingling and slightly numb, but the cream he applies takes away the last of the sting, leaving me with pain, only the memory and the vague tingle across the surface of my skin.

He helps me to flip over and sit up before lifting me. It looks like he’s about to take me to another bench loaded with straps and harnesses, but I see from the look in his eyes we’re not going to make it that far. I’ve never seen so much heat in a person’s eyes as I see in his, and he lets out a low growl-like sound as he pushes me up against some kind of device with a vertical leather pad and horizontal metal bars overhead. My back is on the pad and my breasts are pinned between us.

Damian drives into me, lifting me off the ground and gripping my ass tightly. “I need you,” he whispers. “I just want to fuck you. No more games. No more control. I want to let go and I want to fuck you until you’re full of my cum.”

I grip the back of his head with one hand and hold the bar over my head with the other, rubbing myself against him, searching for his cock with my body.

He pulls me down by the hips, sliding his length into me as he does. I cry out. My walls stretch to fit him, but the sensation is amazing, like a perfect fullness. He doesn’t take his time getting every last inch of himself in me. He greedily pulls me down, filling me with more and more of his cock until my legs are forced apart by his hips and he’s in me to the base.

“Oh God, you’re so big,” I gasp.

“You like that, Kitten?” he asks, working himself into me at a furious pace.

“Yes, Damian. Yes,” I moan.

“Fuck,” he roars. “You’re so fucking tight.”

I don’t know how long it takes. I don’t care. Everything falls away until it’s just his body and mine moving together, like two dancers in the dark, completely in harmony. Every motion is like art and passion all blended together. When my orgasm comes, it crashes into me with the force of a tidal wave, threatening to undo me, but I cling to him, body quivering as he pounds his final thrusts into me and squeezes his eyes shut.

He lets out a groan of pleasure and his cock pulses inside me, filling me with the warmth of his cum. We stay that way for a while, joined together in the most intimate way, catching our breath while he holds me.

“Is it always going to be like this?” I ask after a while.

“No,” he says. “It’s going to get even better.”

I smirk. “Now I know you’re full of it. It can’t be better than that. Nothing could.”

“Remind me to punish you for doubting me next time. Maybe I’ll paddle that pretty little ass of yours until you admit I was right.”

“Sounds like a date.”