Page 27 of Fearless
“I don’t get to punish me.”
“Why not?”
She tried to look away, but he caught her chin and brought her eyes right back to his.
“Why not?” he softly repeated.
“B-because that’s your job?”
Noah wasn’t sure if she was more afraid that she might have answered that wrong, or that she might be answering right. What he did know was the rush of pleasure that fed into him when he thought about accepting that responsibility. He patted her hip. “Yes, it is. Stand up.”
She shivered again and, hands twisting with intensifying desperation, she climbed to her feet.
“That is the first thing we’re going to stop.” He pointed at the ferocity with which she was strangling her own fingers. She looked down at them in surprise and then quickly took a hasty step back when he stood. “What are my limits?”
Her face underwent a metamorphosis of shock. “I-I-I…”
Noah stopped her, certain she wasn’t in any kind of headspace to tell him. If she’d never been allowed to have limits before, it was entirely possible she might not even know what they were. Fine. He could walk that line. “Take your clothes off. If you aren’t comfortable being naked, you may keep your bra and panties on. But first, I want you to eat a little and have a sip of tea. If your stomach doesn’t feel settled, sit down in your chair until it does. That’s going to be our signal. If at any time you start to feel sick, sit down. If at any time you start to feel scared or want to stop, use your safeword, all right?”
She nodded and Noah left the room. He went through the kitchen and down the hall to his bedroom. His play bag was in the closet. He dropped it on the bed before unzipping it and pulling out layers of contents. His floggers were on top, each set neatly encased in a long sock to keep the falls tidy. Beneath that was his bag of sensation toys—his clamps, needles, Wartenburg wheel, and wax kit. Mentally he made a tally of what was safe to use, what was suggestive, and what might walk the line or push her past her comfort zone.
How close to that line should he take her, he wondered. What would it take to banish Ethen’s touch and forever replace it in her mind with that of someone who valued her worth, both as a person and a submissive?
He pulled out a pair of cuffs. The Velcro set that attached wrists to thighs. No locks or chains required, and if panic happened, they released fast. Those went in his safe pile, along with a hair tie. In the suggestive pile, he put his baggy of nipple clamps and weights, and a small leather paddle. After a lot of internal battling, he dug to the bottom where he found his box of anal plugs and the vibrating wand, with its simple set of three variable speeds—low, medium, and according to the last submissive he’d used it on, oh-my-God. Those he put in the walk-the-line pile.
Pausing, Noah looked over his selection. Nothing in here was anything he would have considered severe. Nor was it anything he would have considered more than play. Oh sure, the paddle could be used hard enough to cause real pain. Depending on where he put the clamps, those could too. But that wasn’t his intention. Right now, the only thing that mattered to him was showing Kitty how to find her way back from the darkness now that her punishment was done. This was all about giving her ease, letting her know that she truly was safe and that she had nothing to fear from him.
Because she did have nothing to fear from him, right? He looked down at himself and the high standing erection that had, over the course of the last few minutes, turned the front of his jeans into a full-on bulge. He had to adjust himself. A few minutes later, he did it again.
“You’re keeping it in your pants,” he told himself sternly. He’d never be mistaken for a saint, not in any religion. Hell, he couldn’t count the number of women he’d enjoyed on his many vacations. Some he was pretty sure had never told him their real names. But this wasn’t that kind of situation, and Kitty had enough complications in her life without adding his cock into the mix.
Just play, he told himself. Give her release. Let her feel cared for.
Perfectly, one-hundred-percent cared for, perhaps for the first time in the whole of her submissive life.
Don’t get attached, mate, he told himself. She wasn’t a permanent fixture here. She wasn’t going to stay. No matter what, don’t get attached.
He never in a million years would have thought he’d need to give himself this cautionary pep talk. An unrepentant matchmaker everywhere he went, and here he was telling himself not to fall in love. Not with a damaged submissive, who wasn’t a citizen of his country and who would not be staying.
The only problem was, he already suspected it might be a little too late.
Chapter 10
Kitty took off her shirt, folded it with OCD compact neatness and put it on the table. Then she moved it further down to the end, in case Noah should need the space. And then she tucked it out of sight on the seat of a chair behind the table, because looking at it made her feel nervous. And she was already so very nervous.
What had she done? What had she just let herself in for? Would he really stop if she asked? Ethen never had. Ethen didn’t believe in safewords, or at least he didn’t acknowledge them. It was his way every day, and her job was to submit. What if she just made the biggest mistake of her life?
Kitty hugged her arms, rubbing her bare flesh and telling herself that Noah wasn’t Ethen. Over the last week, she’d seen that over and over again, but she was still afraid. And what she was afraid of most right now was the giant unknown of what Noah might do now that she’d asked him—practically begged him, after saying his form of punishment wasn’t punishment enough, for heaven’s sake; how stupid could she be?—to hurt her.
The words were out. They couldn’t be recalled, and the worst part was, she wasn’t entirely sure she would take them back even if she could. Awful as his punishment had been—awful in a way that didn’t put so much as a bruise or long-lasting welt on her—everything inside of her was pushing for more. She was frightened right now, yes, but she had to know. She had to know the worst that Noah could and would dish out. She had to know the full and terrible extent of how much he would hurt her. If she’d learned anything from her time with Ethen, Kitty now knew the importance of knowing first-hand exactly what the dom she was with was capable of.
In the back room, she heard his footsteps moving across the bare floor. She had to hurry and finish undressing. Take your clothes off. If you aren’t comfortable being naked, you may keep your bra and panties on. Or at least, that was what he’d said. He’d also said this wasn’t a punishment. The real test, she knew, wasn’t in what he said, but what he did once he came back out here.
Kitty shivered again, but still her hands dropped to the waist of her jeans. She took them off, folding them with the same ridiculous care as her shirt before tucking them out of sight on the discrete pile she’d made. She took her socks off, tucking them into her shoes and pushing those under the chair and out of the way. Then she stood there, in nothing but her hand-me-down bra and underwear, feeling stupid. She ought to take them off. Submissives should always be naked and available for their doms, always. To do anything less was to invite terrible discipline, but Noah had said… but did he mean it? Dared she test him to find out?
Her skin crawled. She didn’t want to test anyone. Take them off, take them off, take them off… It was the mantra that ran through her head on a perpetual loop for the entire time that she stood frozen in ill-thought-out defiance. She couldn’t even say she didn’t know how ill-thought-out it was. Defiance was what had got her locked in the Box for two days. She’d dared once to tell Ethen no.
Stop thinking about it. Stop making the comparison. Noah wasn’t Ethen, why wasn’t that the chant playing its merciless loop in her brain?
