Author: Tiffany Reisz

“He probably lies to you constantly,” The Mistress said before taking another sip of her wine. “I would.”

“I do,” Robert admitted. “She doesn’t even know I’m black.”

“Great. Now she does.” The Mistress rolled her eyes.

“My parents are going to be shocked,” Cara said, trying to keep a straight face. “What will we tell the children?”

“We have more than one child?”

“You’re not the only one with secrets, dear.”

The Mistress sat back in her chair and studied the playfully bickering spouses. Rarely had she seen a couple so comfortably in love with each other. Something ached inside her at the sight of such easy affection. She’d had this once, this kind of perfect peace. A name she tried to never speak echoed in the empty parts of her, reverberating off the hollow walls of her heart.

“Yes, well,” The Mistress said when the cuteness reach its zenith. “This is all well and good, but if I’m here then someone has got to get their ass kicked tonight. Do we have any volunteers?”

Cara’s hand shot up straight in the air. Robert reached up, gently clasped her wrist and pulled her hand back down.

“Now that was uncalled for.” The Mistress shook her head in disgust.

“Mistress, Cara is blind. Completely. You don’t go around beating up blind women. Especially not when the blind woman happens to be my wife.”

“Your wife clearly wants to be beaten,” The Mistress reminded him. “Remember this?” The Mistress threw her arm up in the air and waved it eagerly. “You should. It happened like seven seconds ago.”

“Yes, you should, Robert,” Cara said, an edge of irritation in her voice. “I want it.”

“You only you think you want it. You’re just curious because we ran into Toni last week.”

“Toni was your kinky ex-girlfriend?” The Mistress’s ears perked up at that. “Not the Toni? Toni the sexy masochist who used to sleep with Kingsley? And by ‘sleep’ I mean anything but sleep?”

“She also used to sleep with me,” Robert admitted with a sheepish shrug of his broad shoulders. “And we did actually sleep sometimes.”

“God damn. You used to fuck Toni the Tiger. That girl scared half the sadists in the Underground. I saw her play human pincushion during an erotic acupuncture play scene once. She didn’t even bleed. You must be even more hard-core than I pegged you for.” The Mistress turned to Cara. “I mean ‘pegged’ metaphorically. I haven’t pegged your husband. That costs extra.”

“Understandably,” Cara said, nodding. “Here’s the thing, Mistress. He is hard-core. We ran in to this Toni woman and I could hear her drooling over him. I grilled him that night. I wanted to know everything. I’m not jealous at all. Really.

“Really?” The Mistress raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. I am jealous. Not that he had a relationship with her, but that he had that kind of relationship with her, and he won’t have it with me.”

“That you wanted something like that, too?” The Mistress finished for her.

“Very much.”

Robert groaned.

“None of that.” The Mistress waved her hand at him in a scolding. “The Mistress is talking to the sub in the room right now. You just sit there and look pretty. Cara, why do you want that kind of relationship? Just curiosity?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, yes I’m curious. I’ve never done it before. But I’ve had fantasies about it since I was a teenager and found my mom’s stash of smut.”

“God, I love smut. Let me guess...The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy?”

Cara’s mouth fell open just slightly. “Yes! How did you—”

“Seriously, I should start sending a cut of my checks to Anne Rice. I owe that woman half my clients. But come on now. Surely it’s more than that.”

Cara exhaled heavily and crossed her arms over her chest.

“It’s more than that. Robert...he takes such good care of me. So protective. I swear he’d lay down his jacket over mud puddles I have to cross if I’d let him. Just once in a while, I wish he wasn’t so protective of me. He loves me like a wife, yes. But sometimes he treats me like a child.”

“I have heard this story before,” The Mistress said, smiling.

“And maybe if he treated me like he did Toni, if he saw me like he saw her...I don’t know. I just want to try. I want to be a woman to him—a whole woman. A woman he’s not afraid to treat like a woman, and not like his fragile blind wife who needs to be saved.”

“Robert, are you hearing all of this?” The Mistress asked, turning her attention to him.

Robert looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Good man. Is any of this sinking in? Or at the very least, giving you a semi?”

“Yes, Mistress.” He rubbed his face and laughed. “I want to make her happy.”

“It can’t just be about her, though. You have to want to do this. You have to want to top her. You can’t just go through the motions or she’ll know it. You enjoyed what you did with Toni, right?”

Robert glanced at Cara, who clearly sensed his diffidence to answer even though she couldn’t see it.

“It’s all right.” Cara found Robert’s hand and squeezed it. “I wasn’t a virgin when we met. I had boyfriends I loved being with before you. You’re allowed to have fond memories of ex-girlfriends.”

Robert raised Cara’s hand and kissed it.

“I wouldn’t trade a thousand nights with Toni for five minutes with you, my love.” He kissed her hand once more. “But yes, I loved topping Toni in the beginning. She loved pain, loved being used and abused. The sex was never rough enough for her. At first it’s a sexy challenge. But then it got old. I love playing Dom but not every night.”

“I don’t want every night, either,” Cara said. “I love our sex life. But I do want to do this tonight. And if we both enjoy it maybe again in a week or two.”

“Do you want some help here?” The Mistress offered. The more they kept talking, the greater the risk Robert would chicken out. They needed to get started doing. “I can play wingman. The first scene’s always the hardest. I’ve got floggers with me, some cuffs and stuff. We can do this together.”

Robert put his hand on Cara’s shoulder. “Would you be comfortable with The Mistress watching and helping?”

“She’ll keep her clothes on, won’t she?” Cara asked Robert.

“I’m already naked,” The Mistress said. “Bedroom, perverts. Now. I have an idea.”

“I’m going to admit to being terrified by your idea,” Robert said as he ushered The Mistress and Cara into the master bedroom. Master bedroom was a perfect name for the room. Perhaps Robert hadn’t consciously decorated his bedroom to look like a dungeon, but it certainly gave off a darkly erotic air. The king-size bed was draped in black-and-white linens. The four-poster bed frame was constructed of sturdy metal bars tailor-made for restraining a willing submissive. The walls were painted a deep red. Low leather chairs sat under the windows that overlooked the streets. The Mistress couldn’t help but picture a naked, helpless Cara with her legs draped over each chair arm as her owner violated her with his fingers and mouth as the whole city watched.

“You should be terrified of my idea,” The Mistress said. “It’s pure evil genius, just like me. Now Cara...” The Mistress stood in front of Robert’s wife and took her hands. Cara had already begun to pant a little in both in nervousness and anticipation. “I’m going to talk Robert through this. You’re not going to hear a word I say. Once the scene starts only he can hear my voice. You’ll just ignore it. It’s background music and that’s all. You’ll only listen to your husband. You’ll do everything he tells you to do without question. You’re his sexual property. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Cara whispered. Out of the corner of her eye, The Mistress saw Robert stand up straighter.

“You love him. You trust him. You belong to him. He’s going to flog you and he’s going to fuck you. And you’re...?”

“Going to love it.” Cara’s face broke into a wide grin.

“Did you hear that, Robert?” The Mistress asked.

“Oh, I heard that. Every part of my body heard that.”

“I might help Robert. I might even touch you. But it’ll merely be an extension of him. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Very, Mistress.”

“Good. Now for Kink 101, Cara. You’re going to get a beating and it’s going to hurt. You’ll say ‘ow’ and ‘no’ and that’s fine. You’re getting flogged. It’s supposed to hurt. If you don’t want Robert to stop, you need a safe word so you can keep up with your ‘oh, ah, ow, shit, fuck, damn that hurts’ and he’ll keep on flogging. So pick a word you’ll remember that wouldn’t possibly cross your lips unless you were one-hundred-percent certain you wanted the scene to stop.”

“Um...suggestions?”

“What’s your favorite guilty pleasure food?”

“I don’t know. Popcorn?”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Okay. Funyuns.”

“Disgusting. And perfect. Funyuns it is. Let’s do this. Don’t be afraid. Just have fun.”

“Having fun already.”

“Now, Robert...what do you want Cara to call you. Sir? Master? Daddy?”

“Daddy?” he asked with some horror.

“Don’t judge.”

“I think ‘Sir’ has the least amount of baggage here.”

“Good choice. Sir is a classic. Let’s get started. Cara, take your clothes off and kneel on the bed. We’re going to leave the room while you undress. Robert will come back in and that’s when the scene will start. You’ll be safe. You’ll be protected. You’ll get your ass kicked. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“This way, Sir,” The Mistress said as she took Robert by the arm and led him from the room. Once outside the bedroom, The Mistress closed the door and let Cara have a last moment of privacy and Robert a final minutes of mental preparation. “You can do this.”

“I can do this. I can’t do this.”

The Mistress slapped him hard on the side of the arm. Robert winced and mouth an “ow.”

“Did that hurt?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Is it going to kill you?”

“No...”

“There. That’s why you’re doing to Cara. Just giving her some thwaps. It’ll hurt. It won’t cause a bit of harm. If she ends up with even a bruise after this, I’ll be surprised. I’ve got light floggers, great for beginners. You know what you’re doing. If you used to top Toni then I know you know what you’re doing.”

“I know what I’m doing. It’s just...” Robert paused and took a deep breath. His face clouded over with both love and concern. “My wife is blind, Mistress. She is blind. She can’t see anything. She can’t protect herself. When she goes out alone, I’m a wreck until she gets back. She could get hurt so easily. Anything...a break in the concrete, a piece of trash on the ground, a dog off his leash...or worse. A mugger...a rapist...anything.”

“But you let her go, right?”

“Well, yeah. I can’t make her my prisoner. She’s an adult after all. She’d divorce me if I treated her like a child in need of constant protection.”

“You treat her like an adult outside the bedroom. Now you’re just going to do it inside the bedroom. And I have something that will help.”