He pulled on the bounds that held him to the cross.

“I can sympathize,” he said, the lightest hint of amusement in his voice.

“And worse than the net was, of course, the hook.”

With those words she pricked his back with her talons. He flinched and five tiny drops of blood appeared on his shoulder like a red constellation.

“That fucking hook,” she sighed. “Can you imagine how much it would hurt to have a hook in your mouth? And then to get dragged by that hook all the way to the surface...brutal.”

She moved her hand down and left another five bleeding pinholes in his back.

“We are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish creatures, we humans,” he said between winces. “We deserve all the punishment God has to give us.”

“I suppose that makes me an instrument of God’s wrath, doesn’t it? I kind of like the thought of that. Here’s a little more wrath for you.”

She ran her talons in a straight line down his back, leaving four shallow bleeding rivulets about three inches long. He panted through the pain and she could only smile. With her free hand she reached around his hip and felt his erection pressing against her hand. Nasty and brutish—his favorite way to play. Luckily, it was hers, too.

“Poor St. Andrew...he was crucified, too. An X-shaped cross, not a T-shaped. He didn’t think he was worthy to die on the same sort of cross as his Lord. His brother Peter had already been crucified upside down. He couldn’t go that route, either. They got very creative with their crucifying. We might have to get creative one of these days....”

The Mistress let that threat hang in the air as she unbuttoned his trousers. While she stroked him with one hand, her other hand continued to prick his back with tiny pinholes. She’d undergone this particular torture herself a time or two. Bee stings hurt worse but only barely. And at least the bee died after stinging you. No such luck with a sadistic Mistress. She wasn’t going anywhere and had nothing but more pain to give him.

“I’ve always wondered about your love of pain.” She ran a finger from the base of his erection to the tip and back down again. “Born masochist? Or made? Nature? Nurture?”

“Who knows? I didn’t know I loved it until someone hurt me the first time. After that I couldn’t get enough. Was I made? Peut-être? Then again, I didn’t know I loved Cabernet Sauvignon until I had my first glass, either. But the taste buds, they were already there....”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter how you got it. It’s here. Drink up.” At that she stroked him hard as she left four more parallel lines of blood on his back.

She removed her talons and sat them aside before stripping her victim completely naked. As she dragged his pants down his legs, she bit his upper thigh, lower thigh and calf hard enough to leave three black bruises. She couldn’t help herself—the man did have exquisite legs.

Now that she had his back bared and bleeding, she decided it might be time to give him some real pain. Of course, she’d broken the skin, which meant a few more precautions would be necessary. She opened a case that had a new deerskin flogger in it—never before used. Doing edge-play with a client meant more work for her during and after. Usually she charged through the nose for even a cut or two, but for him, well, he was a special case. Not that this was a freebie. To quote the boss: “No freebies. Ever.”

She stood behind him and examined her handiwork.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. “A lot.”

“Merci” was his sole response, the only one she expected, the only one she wanted.

“But they’re tiny little cuts. If I left them alone, they’d heal up in two days. Where’s the fun in that?”

She raised the flogger and brought it down hard onto his bleeding back. She struck again. And again. She struck high and hard, low and deep. She added welts to the cuts, bruises to the welts. The tips of the flogger tails smeared the blood and soon his entire back had turned a rusty red.

After a good—for her—half hour of flogging she dropped the deerskin and let him catch his breath.

“Have you ever safed out with anyone?” she asked as she came to stand at his side again. A few drops of semen had leaked from his cock and she caught them on her fingertip.

“Non, Maîtresse.”

“You like pain that much? Or is it pride?”

“You know the answer to that already. Why did you never safe out with him?”

“I did,” she corrected him. “But only once.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said as she wrapped her hand around his erection again and squeezed to the point of pain, “he ordered me to marry him.”

“He must be a masochist, too,” he said through gritted teeth. The Mistress could only laugh.

“Oh, you’re gonna get it big-time for that.”

Big-time meant the cane. Not the rattan cane she used to leave the hand-sized bruises on a client’s ass or thighs. No, what she needed was the little cane—white plastic, long as a conductor’s baton. In fact, it had always reminded her of a baton; one she used to conduct a symphony of pain.

She started under his left shoulder blade and left a two-inch raised welt by flicking the baton against his skin. An unassuming little toy, no one ever dreamed it hurt as much as it did, not until they felt the fiery force of it. Getting cut with a razor hurt less than this little devil.

“Breathe,” she instructed as she flicked it against him again, barely half an inch below the first welt. “Don’t forget to breathe....”

“I’m breathing,” he said although she’d seen him holding his breath seconds earlier. He’d passed out in their sessions, usually during breath-play scenes. No harm, no foul. Fainting, falling, crying, wailing, being hauled to your breaking point and left there staring into the abyss—that’s what happened behind locked dungeon doors when the vanilla world wasn’t watching and the monsters came out to play. In this room with this man, she had no one to answer to but God, and God wasn’t asking any questions right now.

“Good boy. You pass out on me and game’s over. And we don’t want that, do we? You haven’t even come yet. You take thirty more of these,” she said, flicking him once more and smiling at the searing red line on his back, “and we’ll discuss throwing a little pleasure into this mix.”

“Thirty-three welts?”

“What? I like my biblical numbers. Now shut up and breathe.” She flicked him again, working her way down his entire left side. By the time she was done with him, there would be no part of his body from his neck to his hip that wasn’t either bruised or bleeding or scoured with welts. He loved his souvenirs, as he always called them. Souvenirs from his holidays in Hell.

Up his right side she decorated him with more welts. To add a little challenge she made him count the flicks of her baton for the last seventeen strikes. His “one” sounded strong. The “five” sounded pained. By “ten” he gasped the number. At “thirteen” she could barely hear him. By “seventeen” she’d broken him. It took almost a full minute to get him to say the number.

“I’m waiting....” She ran the baton over his back, letting it tickle his savaged skin. “You want a little pleasure, don’t you? If you want a break from the pain, you have to say the number. You know I’ll let you hang here all night until you say it. I’ll get my book and pull up a chair and read. I have all the time in the world....”

He swallowed hard and shuddered. Poor dear. She’d piled on the pain today on only one part of his body—his back. Usually that much pain she’d spread out over a larger area—back, ass, thighs... Those sorts of niceties she reserved for other clients, however. Gentler clients, weaker clients, tamer clients. But this client got her best, because he paid for her best. And when someone paid for her best, she did her worst.

“It’s only one more...you can take one more, can’t you?”

His only reply was a nod. She saw that behind the mask he’d closed his eyes so she took the opportunity to simply take him in. Who was he? She’d asked herself that question since the day she’d met him when she’d only been sixteen years old. What secrets did he keep behind those eyes and inside that scarred and beautiful body of his? She could have beaten the secrets out of him, but she knew him well enough to know that in fact, she didn’t want to know....

“Seventeen,” he said in a clear voice, raising up his head.

The seventeenth flick of the baton was the hardest by far.

“That was for the ‘he must be a masochist’ crack.” She kissed his welt before dropping the baton on the floor and breaking it with her foot. She never used a toy on anyone else after she’d used it on him. It was the lone sign of respect she afforded him when he was in submission to her. Once a flogger or cane or blade touched his body, it would never touch another. She either broke it or set it aside to be used in the future on him and only him.

“I deserved that.” He relaxed in the bonds, resting his head against his upper arm.

“You did. And worse. I’m trying to decide how much worse.”

“I will submit to anything you desire, Maîtresse.”

“I know you will. That’s the problem. Too many choices. I could cane your legs. I could pour some scalding candle wax on your testicles. Hmm...so many ways to make you my bitch. Hard to choose just one.”

“Are you open to suggestion, Maîtresse?”

He turned his head and peered at her through the space between his arm and the cross. Of course they both knew he shouldn’t be making eye contact with her. This evening, she was in charge, she was the Dominant, and he was nothing but property for her to use and abuse any way she wanted. But she had trouble being angry at him for something as human as looking in her eyes. How would she see his hunger, his need, his humble desperation, if she didn’t see his eyes? She’d give him a pass on the eye contact this time. She’d only flog him a little more. Nothing vicious. She’d save the viciousness for the next time he did it.

“And what, pray tell, is your suggestion?”

His only answer was to laugh, and the laugh was all she needed to hear. A low throaty masculine insinuating thigh-melting, knee-shivering, panties-suddenly-disappear-and-end-up-hanging-off-the-bedpost sort of laugh. Glad to know he wasn’t the only one in the mood.

“Well, it is a good suggestion.”

“Merci, Maîtresse.”

“If I’m going to do it, you’re going to have to earn it.”

“I understand,” he said, almost solemnly. Nothing like a threat of having to “earn it” could put the fear of God back into a sub. She’d already ripped his back apart in three different ways. Time to give the front side The Mistress treatment.

She unlocked his wrists from the cross and turned him around, slamming his back roughly into the painted wood. He flinched visibly as his back made contact with the cross. He’d be in agony for a week at least after today. Maybe two.

As she buckled his wrists to the cross, she felt his erection pressing against her stomach. Nothing got him harder than pain. Not threesomes, not orgies, not dominating, not submitting, not anything. She knew his need for release was so strong now it had become yet another form of torture. Good.

“You’re dying to come, aren’t you?” she asked as she pushed her hip into him and he shuddered from the touch.

“Death would be a relief right now.”

“I won’t let you die. That would be too merciful. I’m not really in the mood to be merciful today. I am, however, in the mood to redecorate. You know I love your scars, the bullet wounds, all of them...but I think you could use some new designs here.” She ran her hand all over his chest. “Nothing permanent. Wait here.” With a light and insulting slap-tap on his cheek, she sauntered off. She returned with a Wartenberg wheel and her violet wand.