Disappointment, jealousy and anything else that put Alain's submissive in a hysterical stew had to be dealt with swiftly. This time was no different. He had to leave her alone for the night and hope that she behaved herself.
"This case is important, Meredith," Alain curtly informed her, as he turned his attention back to the abduction of Kat Bloom. "Forget the dinner. Please. I
will
be back or I will call. You keep busy. Read…or whatever. Write that story you promised me."
"I'd rather paint," she countered, miserably.
"Then paint." He was growing just a little weary of her mood. At times like this, the girl sounded a little too much like a wife. If he'd been there in person, she would have been soundly spanked and sent to bed – alone.
***
The Hotel Roxy was just as seedy as it had ever been, maybe worse than the last time he'd been there several years before when a girl had been murdered on the roof. What Natalie Moon was doing in a dive like this, he couldn't say. Alain took the stairs in seconds and was rapping on the door to her third floor room when he realized that the door was ajar, not locked.
"Come in!" he heard the plaintive sound of her voice and he pushed the door wide, letting his eyes rest on a sight he never expected.
Natalie Moon was certainly in the room and alone, although she was dressed in clothes that a streetwalker might find risqué – a tight fitting lace halter and a short, tight skirt that only barely covered her rounded ass. That picture alone was enough to leave him stunned, but the metal handcuffs tightly locked around her wrists made him stop in his tracks. Natalie's arms were above her head with the handcuffs attached to a chain that dangled from the light fixture. His instinct kicked in as he swaggered officially into the room, expecting to see someone hiding in the shadows. But there was no one.
"What in heaven's name! Are you all right? Where's the key to the handcuffs?" He surveyed the room, spotting the keys on the bed.
"NO! Please. Don't!" she stopped him. "Don't what?"
"Please, don't release me, sir." Her eyes were molten with lust, filled with tears, her heart practically bleeding out onto the floor.
"Miss Moon, what is this about?"
"It's about you and me, sir. About that night nine years ago…it's become like an
obsession."
"What? Me?"
"I've tried. I've really tried to be good, to put it all behind me, but I'm failing miserably. If just once you could take me back to that place of submissive surrender, I swear, I'll be cured of this obsession."
"You called me here to…to what? Beat you?"
"Yes, sir," she softly pleaded. "Like it was before."
"So, this has nothing to do with Perry Livingston?"
"No, sir."
Only now did he see the floggers laid out neatly on a nearby chair. Hints he'd be hardpressed to ignore. "You called me here so I could whip your body? Is that it? Torture to the point of climax?" Suddenly, his rage surged to outlandish proportions as he spoke, all of which he prudently managed to squelch into a controllable form typical of his nature. Still, his indignation couldn't be more real, or obvious.
"You manipulated me here?" He moved in close to the dangling Natalie.
"I'm sorry, sir. But I—I had to."
He had the tremendous desire to slap her face. In his mind he could see his hand smacking her cheeks back and forth until she began to sob.
Instead, he sidled up even closer, speaking crisply, seething with passion he normally reserved for the most extreme circumstances, when his personal feelings were suddenly engaged by a particularly nasty crime. "You have no idea how furious I am at this. Tricking me into coming here. I do not respond well to being manipulated. I'm not a Dom for hire. Not that you don't deserve exactly what you're hoping for and more. I don't care how badly your pent-up desires are plaguing you. This was dangerous and suicidal, Miss Moon. I don't think the English language has invented adjectives that cover this foolish behavior."
Her face had paled. What desire he'd seen in her frightened eyes on his arrival had vanished. She seemed more like a lost child than a woman. "I never thought—"
"That's it. You never thought. You never thought." He circled around and whipped back in her face, ready to blast her again, but he stopped short, with thoughts coming to mind that he just as soon dismiss, but couldn't. He was too damn responsible, responsible for the whole fucking world! "You've been freed how long?" "A year."
"And in all that time have you ever been counseled about your eight years with Perry Livingston?"
"No, not really. I mean I saw someone that my parents made me go to, but—" "But what?"
Her eyes welled with tears. "Vanilla people don't understand."
She was right. Desires like these they shared were bizarre, mysterious, insane and no doubt repugnant to a world where goodness was the ultimate goal and pain was something to be avoided not exult, where the delicate balance of the sexes was not allowed to tip too far to either male or female, and slaves were those emancipated by proclamation over a hundred years ago.
His alter ego – the compassion that bred naturally alongside his sadist desires – rose up equal to his simmering rage.
"Is this what you need, Miss Moon?"
She gazed at him with hope renewed. "I swear, sir. Just once and I will never, ever call you again."
"But you know it won't be just once."
"But I need a first time so badly. I didn't know where else to go but to you." Her eyes and her smoldering body did all the pleading necessary to sway him. "I
can
move on and I will. I know this was stupid. I see that. But I'm still so…" She couldn't finish.
He thought about the matter for some time, then finally said, "If I beat you tonight, if I take you to those depths, you will agree to see someone who will lead you back from Perry Livingston, someone capable of making sure this kind of thing never, never happens again. You need appropriate professional assistance. You will agree to that?" He knew she'd agree to anything, but he'd make this stick, knowing he had power enough to do so.
"Yes, yes I promise."
"You need to accept what happened to you with Perry, not fight it."
"I'm not fighting it."
"Oh, yes you are. This behavior. This reckless behavior is a result of that fighting. If you can't see that now, you will." He circled her once, while her tears began to flow in earnest – he hadn't even laid a hand on her. Maybe this was foolish, maybe not, but he felt as bound to the act that would follow as she was.
"Sir, please, you must!" she pleaded again.
"HUSH, girl! It's time for you to stop talking." He turned, picking up a flogger from the chair.
He could almost feel the rising energy in her body as she realized what he was doing. But if she thought the simple tools of torture she'd laid out for him were all she'd have to face, then she was naïve and more manipulative than he would tolerate.
There were three floggers with sturdy woven handles. The handle of the first he grabbed went into her mouth, widening it, gagging her speech and ensuring that her cries would be muffled at best. The second handle of a heavy cowhide flogger, one with a knotted, rounded end, he coated with lubricant that was also made available for him to use. She'd planned this well.
He raised her skirt, parted her ass cheeks and coated her anus with the same slick substance, then shoved the lubricated handle into her ass.
Her body seized up tight at the impalement, but she barely made a sound.
"It's your job to keep that in your ass," he declared. "You won't want it to fall out."
He was certain that she had not planned on either flogger being used this way. The
third flogger was the only one he cared to use, and this one wasn't really a flogger at all but a braided cat of nine talons, if he guessed right, expertly woven into a handcrafted handle – nicely done. He had a similar one hanging in a locked cabinet in his den at home. This would be enough to make her suffer, he thought.
Still, he wasn't finished with his preparations.
He lifted the halter away from her breasts, seeing that her nipples had been pierced with rings. Sending her body into instant pain was as easy as pinching the small nubs until he had her squealing. She shrieked behind the gag within seconds, then he took a turn at fucking her ass with the second handle until her body writhed uncontrollably. These were only places to begin, where he could test her endurance and her sensitivity to pain. She'd taken a lot before when he dominated her in the dungeon and he expected she could take as much now. Then too, she'd lived eight years with a notorious sadist who would have given her plenty of ways to suffer.
While Natalie recovered from his first tests, he pulled the strings from a leather drawstring bag he found lying on the floor, and thread one through a nipple ring, then wound the other end around one side of her handle-gag. He repeated the other process with the other string, attaching the nipple ring to the gag in the same way. Thus, he deviously connected the movements of her head with her breasts and pierced nipples. To make certain that the gag could not be dislodged from her mouth, he rifled through her suitcase and found a black silk stocking that wound around both sides of the flogger handle and tied behind her head.
Pain comes in many forms.
Every new torture made her eyes bug out more. Regret? Maybe. Arousal peaking? He was sure of it.
"You certainly didn't expect me to follow your script now, did you?"
She shook her head, eyes aghast.
"I don't imagine Perry Livingston followed a script?"
She shook her head again.
"So, we'll follow mine." He'd known the answer without needing any confirmation from Natalie Moon. He'd known Perry fifteen, maybe twenty years before when they were fledging dominants, looking on wide-eyed at a fetish world that was so underground few even knew of its existence. What he'd heard about Perry Livingston hadn't changed his mind about the man's unpredictable sadistic streak
or
his blatantly criminal behavior.
About to pick up the braided cat, he thought again and turned, spotting a slim wood backed hairbrush lying on the dresser. Nothing could have suited him more. Cats were ruthless, wood was cruel. And tonight, Natalie Moon had kindled his cruel streak and a desire for revenge. Just something simple, something that would hurt badly and leave an impression that would secure his final plans for her.
In his hand, the simple brush became a weapon that he used to pepper against her bare pussy lips. She was prone to struggle and hold her thighs tightly together, so he tied one ankle to the foot of the bed and the other to the leg of the nightstand he pulled into the right position. No mercy, his mind repeated. Punishment. Justice. Castigation. However the mind framed the act, the effect was awesome for them both.
He started slowly, spanking her pubic mound repeatedly, then backing off, he let what arousal the pain ignited build. Then he started in again. The smacks got harder, the pain increased. Her poor throbbing pussy had to be screaming in agony by the time he finally paused for her to rest. She started to squeal even louder; her eyes glassed over and her head fell back. Even pain this hard this cruel has its pleasures for a woman trained to take it hard. He knew she resisted, for her entire body struggled for a good long while before that 'submissive something' kicked in and she began to ride the waves of subspace pleasure – at least until he knocked it out of her with a hit so hard that she couldn't absorb this stinging shock.
This would be a hard, long session. This would be torture. Maybe the last good torture he'd inflict on any woman.
He could let the sadist in him free. With every blow, every muffled scream, every grimace seen on her once pretty face, he could enjoy the powerful feelings of satisfaction. It brought back the past when his most sadistic urges played havoc on his poor subs. However years removed from those outrageous scenes, he honestly hated extremes like this, even if they did bring him an uncommon thrill. After the first exhilarating rush of energy, he could think of nothing but finally ending the scene and going home.
The tempo increased, the pain bloomed beyond her body. He could feel it in every wrenching twist and turn, and imagined that the nipple pain was as difficult to bear as the stroke of the cat. It did, however, achieve its purpose. In time, and very much despite the fact that her writhing anguish had hardly abated, he sensed her body seize up and the climax take her hard.
Grabbing the braided cat, he stuffed it into her pussy and watched as she writhed on the handle, climaxing in a series of orgasmic spasms that almost made his hard cock come.
If only he loved her. If only he could put his arms around her and love her into the rest of her life – something that would start the moment he released her body and gently led her to the bed. Natalie Moon would have to look herself in the eye now and finally admit the truth about her captivity.
But never, never again, he told himself. Never would he take a female body to such painful depths – unless, of course, that female belonged to him, and he could love her as much as make her suffer.
Natalie Moon rested in fetal position on the bed, sobbing to cleanse herself, relief moving through her punished body in waves that Alain could feel as he gently stroked her back.
While quietly speaking on his cell phone, he finally drew Natalie back from subspace.
"Ana, I need you at the Hotel Roxy on Fleet. I have Natalie Moon here and she needs you. She has a confession you need to hear. I'm sure some time with you will heal what troubles her."