Page 47 of Monarch
“I…I…” I stutter as I turn to look at them.
“Roos has a tab tonight. I’ll put it on that,” they explain with a kind smile. “Guests are permitted two alcoholic drinks per night, to ensure safe play.”
“Oh, right. Vodka, lime and soda, two ice cubes, please,” I say and sit back in my seat.
By the time my drink is in front of me, Mother Maria has started talking to the audience again.
“Roos here is submitting to us tonight. To me and to you. She wants you all to watch her submission. And she welcomes those disciplinarians in the room to come up after I have warmed her up and take your turn with her. She has lots of ideas for what she wants, so please ask her first. She will tell you, and she will let you know her limits and her safe word.” She extends her hand back to Roos, who takes it and joins Mother Maria at the front of the stage.
“But first,” Mother Maria says with a little more volume, “Roos is going to get undressed, and I am going to inspect her.”
I don’t realise I’m holding my breath until I go to inhale but find my lungs already full.
So. This is really happening.
And I can’t take my eyes off the stage as the woman I think I’m falling in love with unzips her bodysuit and peels it from her frame.
Chapter Twenty
Roos
Crack. Mother Maria’s riding crop strikes me again. It stings. It burns. It aches.
It heals.
Each snap of the thin leather sears something into me. Relief. Hope. Surrender.
My skin is red and raw and vibrating with heat. My thighs and butt are nothing but alive nerve endings, singing for it to stop while also praying for the next strike.
This is what I needed today. This is what I needed after the last few days of…Mari and Lex. Of the highest highs and yet again, the lowest lows.
It would be reductionist to say that my highs were at the hands of Mari and my lows were all Lex. It would also be a mistruth. Because no matter how good Mari has made me feel – and not just in bed – one of the sweetest moments of the past weekend was when I had Lex on my sofa apologising, explaining, wanting to make it better.
It’s what I’ve spent the last six months not wanting and yet craving despite myself.
I deserve this pain for thinking that meant something.
I deserve the scars that stripe my skin for clinging to it even when xe said xe would call and xe didn’t. Xe didn’t. Lex has disappeared again.
I deserve the burning ache each snap of the crop leaves behind. I deserve to feel this pain for a long time. Maybe only then I willrewire my brain. I will learn that Lex is not who xe says xe is. Lex is who xe shows me xe is.
Crack.
I scream. A swallowed high-pitched yelp of pain that I’ve managed to hold back since Mother Maria tied me up to the X-Cross on the stage and began striking me. But my skin is sore, raw, and open, I suspect, in places, and when her cracks cross over those that are still red and stinging on my backside, it brings a new level to the pain.
Yes, endorphins are flooding my brain, making me more and more aroused with each hit, but nerve endings are still nerve endings, and that thin leather crop is as sharp as a blade in a hand as experienced as Mother Maria’s.
But even my scream gives her pause.
“Want me to ease off?” she asks at a volume only I can hear.
“No,” I say, my breathing rough and ragged. “I need this.”
“Ten more, and then we will invite others to play with you.”
“Yes, Mother,” I hiss and close my eyes again, readying my body for more. More pain. More release. More surrender.
I wish I could see Mari. I wish I knew what they were thinking, feeling. But I’m fixed to the cross with my back to the audience – at my request – and when I’ve turned my head towards their table, the darkness has swallowed them up. Besides, I don’t want to see who else is watching. I like knowing eyes are on me but not seeing their reactions. That way, I can fill in the blanks myself. I can tell myself that this show Mother Maria and I are performing is turning everyone else on. That blood is pumping, hands are roaming, and others have started to play.
