Just standing in that room made Michael feel better. He closed his eyes and took the first deep breath he’d been able to take in twenty-four hours. Some people relaxed in hot tubs. Some people relaxed on their sofas. He relaxed in a dungeon with every known instrument of erotic torture surrounding him.

“Do another one of those, Angel,” Nora said as she walked over to him, the thick woven rug under her feet absorbing the sounds of her booted heels. She put her hand flat on his stomach and the other flat on his back. “Breathe.”

He did as ordered. Who knew whether it was the breath or the order that did it, but he felt better.

“You need a beating?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Same rules as usual?” Nora asked.

Michael nodded and he took another long deep breath. Griffin had very strict rules for Michael’s body. Rule number one: No one penetrates Michael but Griffin. No oral sex. No anal sex. No tongue kissing. Simple. Rule number two: Beatings were allowed only by Griffin and whoever Griffin was supervising. Nora was the one exception to this rule because Nora was the one exception to every rule. Rule number three: No damaging the property. Beatings were allowed as long as the skin wasn’t broken. If anyone was going to break Michael it would be Griffin.

As for the rest, it was all on the table. Including a good hard flogging from the best dominatrix in the business.

Luckily he happened to know the best dominatrix in the business. She was playing with his hair at that very moment.

“I do like the shorter hair,” Nora said, running her fingers over his scalp. He’d let his hair grow a little on top until it started to curl. Griffin liked having enough hair to pull and Michael liked having it short enough it didn’t fall in his face while working. And Nora apparently liked it because she found it “very sexy.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” he said, falling into the old routine with her like he’d never left. Stepping into this room reminded him of his study-abroad semester in Italy. All day long he’d struggle to communicate in his bare-bones Italian. But in the evening, he’d return to the house where he and the other art students were staying, and he could finally understand and be understood. In this room, this beautiful room, he and Nora could speak in their native language to each other.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” she said, her voice soft and soothing. “You were sleeping on the bed in the white room of the club and your hair was down to your shoulders and you had a hole in your sock. Søren gave you to me.”

Michael laughed to himself. He didn’t mean to. It just happened.

“What’s that laugh about?” she asked. “Something funny?”

“That’s not what happened,” Michael said.

“It isn’t? Then what did happen?” she asked in her low sensual voice.

“He didn’t give me to you, Mistress,” Michael said. “He gave you to me.”

She kissed him on the mouth and whispered, “He gives good gifts.”

Nora slipped her hands under the front of his t-shirt and placed her palms on his bare stomach. He quivered under her touch. Then she lifted his shirt and pulled it off of him.

“Much better,” she said. “New ink?” She touched the gryphon tattoo on his ribcage. The head of the beast was on his stomach and the tail on his back.

“I got it last year when Griffin and I were going through our break. I wanted him to know that even when we were apart, I was still in love with him.”

“You could have sent a postcard, you know,” she teased.

“I like more permanent ink,” Michael said.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “A perfect target. I can’t wait to slap your little gryphon’s ass with my flogger until he begs for mercy.”

“He can’t wait, either. He’s as much of a pain slut as I am.”

She jerked her thumb at the St. Andrew’s Cross. Michael walked over to it and waited while Nora hooked her flogger over her wrist and went digging through a dark wood cabinet for cuffs.

It was then he noticed the little sign with gothic lettering hanging on the wall between the upper bars of the St. Andrew’s Cross. It was a slogan he’d seen on t-shirts, but it seemed far more appropriate in this setting than any other.

THE FLOGGINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES.

His morale had improved already.

Nora walked toward him, black leather cuffs in hand.

“Face the wall. Arms behind your back. You know the drill.”

He knew the drill.

He leaned forward and let his right cheek rest against the cool smooth leather of the cross. Heaven. Ice cream on a hot day. A back rub right on the sore spot. A kiss on the boo-boo. Who needed a day at the spa when he could have a night in a dungeon?

“When was your last good beating?” she asked, pulling his arms behind his back to buckle the cuffs on his wrists.

“Not for a while,” Michael said. “It’s been pretty crazy at home.”

“Did something happen?” Nora asked.

Michael nodded. “We’ve had a hard couple of weeks.”

“You’re going to have a hard hour,” she said. “Then you’re going to tell me everything that happened. And maybe by the time we leave this room, you’ll know what to do.”

From anyone else such a bold claim would have sounded arrogant. But Michael remembered his first night with Nora. In one hour with her, his life had changed course. She’d turned his fate like a captain turns the wheel of his ship. She’d steered him out of the rough waters that were threatening to tear his little boat apart and sailed him into the safest of harbors.

Griffin’s bed.

And if anyone could steer him toward safety again, it was Nora.

Nora lifted his arms over his head and secured his wrists high on the cross. He felt his muscles stretch and pull, his back straighten and his lungs expand. Nora kissed his shoulder blade, and Michael took a deep breath again.

“You know Sheridan was the most recent victim to hang on my cross,” Nora said.

“Sheridan?” He tried to sound innocent and casual and failed miserably.

“My Little Miss? Angel’s face, demon’s libido?”

“We’ve met,” Michael said. He and Griffin had played with Sheridan one amazing night over a year ago. His cock still remembered it very fondly.

“You know she’s got a crush on you.”

“She’s, uh…really sweet,” Michael said. Sheridan was one of the few people he’d bonded with at the club. At first he’d been intimidated by the pretty—and famous—blonde actress, but she’d taken a shine to him when she learned he was also one of Nora’s pets. Sheridan called him “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” and whenever she saw him, she hugged him and kissed him a few hundred times. One time Griffin tried to extract Michael from one of her passionate octopus hugs, and Sheridan hissed at him like an angry cat. She was, in a word, adorable.

“Sheridan comes to visit me about once every six weeks,” Nora said. “We had a little party in here last time she visited. I cuffed her to the cross, stuck a vibrator deep in her, and flogged her. I didn’t let her off the cross until she’d come in the double digits. She’d want you to know that. And picture it. She told me so.”

Michael made a sound. It wasn’t a whimper…but it was close.

“Kingsley was nice enough to help. He held the vibe in her,” Nora said. “In case you were wondering how it stayed in there while I was flogging her.”

“I was wondering, yeah,” Michael said.

“Then King flogged Sheridan,” Nora said. “Shirtless. I mean, Sheridan was naked and Kingsley had no shirt on. He does the most gorgeous Florentine flogging. It was August and it was so hot in here, Kingsley was dripping sweat all down his back and chest.” Michael made another sound. “What was that?” Nora said, her tone taunting, teasing. “Did you say something?”

“I feel funny in my tummy,” Michael said to make Nora laugh. It worked.

“You’re about to feel funny in your back, kid. Now close your eyes,” she said. “And…scream.”

The first strike was hard. He didn’t scream but he wasn’t silent either. The second strike was even harder. He liked that. He liked that Nora respected him enough not to pull her punches. She didn’t coddle him. She didn’t treat him like he was new at this because he was not. He’d been doing kink longer than some people he knew twice his age. He could take pain and lots of it, and even more, he wanted pain and lots of it. He had no time for any dominant who wasn’t going to take him and his love of pain seriously.

Nora took it very seriously.

She spared no inch of his exposed flesh. She struck his shoulders, his upper arms, his back and sides—especially the black tattoo of the gryphon, which was sensitive to even the lightest of touches. Hers were not the lightest of touches. His skin was ablaze. Sounds escaped his lips—grunts of pain and gasps of pleasure. He was hard, very hard, painfully hard and the pain of the arousal aroused him even more.

It was a rough flogging. It hurt. He loved every second of it.

And just when he thought Nora was almost done flogging him…she switched from the suede flogger to a much thicker, harder, sharper leather and went at him again, flogging him like he had a demon inside him, and she had no recourse but to beat it out of him. The demon never stood a chance.

The beating was so thorough and brutal and long that for a moment Michael simply ceased existing. It happened sometimes when he fell into deepest subspace. A human being was a matrix of wants, needs, and desires, but when the pain reached its peak, Michael wanted nothing, he needed nothing, he desired nothing and so he became nothing. It was the purest peace. What little was left of his consciousness floated near the ceiling and watched the show. Nora was a savage goddess, glowing and grinning at her own sadism. He was a body on a cross and nothing more.

The last few strikes of her flogger were so hard they jarred him back into his body. Nora always did like to end on a high note, and that high note tonight was Michael crying out in bliss-filled agony.

Then it was over.

He sagged in his cuffs, letting them hold his full weight. He felt something…Nora’s hand, maybe. It was on his back, rubbing the legion of welts, pressing them and caressing them.

“Red, red, and more red,” she said. “Red’s my favorite color for a reason.”

“How bad is it?”

“You know what a marble floor looks like, right?” she said. “Imagine blood-red marble.”

“Good,” he said, panting.

If Nora kissed his back again, he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel much of anything. Not his hands or his feet or his back or his sides. And he couldn’t feel his fear anymore or his anxiety. He couldn’t even feel Nora unhooking him from the cross.

“Let’s go sit down,” she said. “You need to rest after that.”

He let himself be led to a black leather chair in the corner of the room, in front of the window with the deep-red curtains drawn. She lit a red altar candle and set it on the table by the chair, and set a velvet cushion on the floor for him. He sank to his knees. She went to a small black refrigerator and took out a bottle of water, which she poured into a wine glass and held against his lips to drink. Oh, Nora, never change, he thought. She could make the simple act of drinking water an erotic act of submission. A drop of water remained on his lips when she took the glass away, and she wiped it away with her thumb.

After she took a seat in her chair, she tapped her lap and Michael rested his head against her thigh.

“Your back is red,” she said. “And your front is white. I like my subs to match,” she said, lifting the red altar candle off the table. “While I decorate your chest to match your back, you’re going to tell me everything that happened. You understand?”

He nodded. “Yes, Mistress.”

She dug her left hand into the back of his hair and pulled hard enough to tilt his head back.

“Begin,” she ordered.

The first drop of wax landed in the hollow of his throat.

He began.