No Safeword: Matte - the Honeymoon (18 page)

He didn’t insist she finish her sentence, didn’t sigh
impatiently. He gave her time to put her thoughts together, and she loved him
for it. “Thank you, Sir, for forcing me to accept you as my Master. Part of me
feels I should also apologize, for not being able to give it willingly, and for
asking you to fight me for it, except I think you understand me, and I think my
strength is one of the things you love about me.”

“I accept and appreciate your apology,” he said. Sam
wanted to look up and see his face in the worst way, but she kept her eyes on
the floor as he continued. “Your strength is certainly one of the things I love
about you, but I haven’t made it a secret that I’d like to see you choose to
submit, even when it’s hard. However, you’re supposed to be telling me how you
feel right now.”

“I’m choosing to submit
now
, Sir. I know there
are times you tell me there won’t be a punishment if I don’t submit, and I know
it’s because you need my willing surrender, sometimes.” She sighed. “There are
times I feel unworthy and selfish for needing to know you’ll enforce the rules
and make me submit, even when I don’t want to. I’m not sure how to reconcile
your need to see me willingly submit with my need to know you’ll make me, if I
don’t.”

She heard the chair push back and looked up enough to
watch his feet walk towards her. He stood a foot away from her bowls for
several long moments, and on a whim she kissed the bondage tape covering her
left hand, and reached out to touch his foot.

He squatted before her, touched her chin with one
finger, and said, “Eye contact for a few minutes, Darlin’.”

The instant their gazes met, her eyes began to water
and she wanted to cry because his love and affection for her were so obvious.

“Never feel unworthy, Samantha. I knew from the
beginning I’d have to earn your submission. It’s true there are times I need to
see you give it willingly, but if I didn’t want to enforce the rules then I
wouldn’t create them in the first place. Your submission to me is a gift, and
we both know you can take it back any time you have access to a pen and paper.
No matter how much you defy me or challenge me, you’re still choosing to give
me the power to punish you for it.”

Great, now that she had permission to look at him,
she wanted nothing more than to look away. “Master, you know I don’t like the
idea of having so much control.”

He nodded. “I do, and we’ve taken some of it away by
removing the option to withdraw consent during a scene. At some point in the
future we might change it so you can only withdraw your consent in writing on
the first day of every month, but I’m not ready to go there just yet.”

Sam’s heart skipped several beats at the prospect of
only having an exit plan available twelve days a year. Yes, she very much
wanted to make it to the next step.

He smiled. “Not yet, and probably not anytime soon.
Perhaps it can be part of your second wedding anniversary gift?”

She returned his smile and nodded. “Thank you, Sir,
for understanding so well what I need.” She sighed. “I still have to explain to
you how eating this way makes me feel, don’t I?”

“Yes.” He nodded and kissed her forehead. “No
restrictions on eye contact for a little while. Look where you want.”

He walked back to his chair and Sam said, “I don’t
feel humiliated or degraded. I guess I feel as if I’ve been shown my place, a
little? But, it needed to be done. What we do is as much mental as physical,
and it could be argued the physical parts are only there to enforce the mental
bits. Pain, bondage, being fucked in any hole whenever it pleases you without
regards to my feelings — these are all used to impress upon me…to prove
to
both
of us how much I belong to you.”

She looked at him, awkwardly moved one shoulder in an
attempt to shrug, and added, “Part of me loves it when you force me to submit.
I love the caveman in you, though I’m grateful he stays away when I’m truly
sick, as I’m not sure how I’d react to him on those days.”

He smiled, put his fork on his plate, and leaned back
in his chair. “So, you like my forcing you to eat this way?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t so much that I like the
activity, as it is I’m reassured of our relationship when you go all caveman.”

He turned sideways in the chair so he faced her without
needing to turn his head. “You said you don’t feel humiliated or degraded.
Would you say you feel reassured? Give me three single verbs that describe how
you feel.”

Sam swallowed her last bite of veggies and realized
she’d eaten all the steak she wanted. She took a drink and sat up with her ass
on her heels, knees spread, and arms behind her back.

“Subjugated, or maybe subdued? Conquered? I’m not
sure which describes it best.”

He chuckled. “I’ll count those three as one, since
they mean basically the same thing.”

She didn’t argue, as she knew he was right. Other
Doms had let her get away with that sort of thing, but Ethan saw through her
verbal wrangling and held her to the spirit of his requests.

“Reassured is probably as close as I can come to
describing the comfort I derive from knowing you can handle me, from being
shown I can’t outmuscle
or
outsmart you to get my way.”

She was trying to decide how to combine her feelings
into one word when he said, “I asked for three. Can you only come up with two?”

“No, Sir, I have four, and I’m trying to decide how
to combine the next two into one.”

He smiled. “No problem. You have permission to give
me four.”

“I feel understood. You realized I was subverting
your authority when I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

His eyebrow lifted and he grinned affectionately.
“And the last?”

“I feel loved, Master.”

He stood and walked to her. “Give me your right hand,
Samantha.”

She kept her left hand behind her back, and raised
her right towards him. He pulled the bondage tape off as he spoke. “Remember
those feelings, because there will be times in the future you’ll be angry with
me for insisting you eat from a bowl on the floor. Submitting isn’t always
easy, and I expected at least one word telling me you were angry or upset with
me.”

“Not today, Sir. It wasn’t easy, and I was frustrated
and annoyed a few times, but never angry.”

He finished with her right hand, retrieved her bowls
from the floor and his plate from the island, and stepped to the sink. “Take
the tape off your left hand while I get the cane.”

She took her three strikes in the kitchen, bent over
with her arms straight, back arched, and fingertips on the counter, with
nothing to support her body. When it was over, he made her stay in position
while he washed and dried the dishes.

He allowed her to move her feet and straighten her
back a few times as she dealt with the pain, but then said, “I know it hurts,
but I’d like you to spread your legs, arch your back, stick your ass out, and
hold the pose without all of the fidgeting, please.”

When the last dish was put away, he finally stepped
to her and pulled her into his arms. It hadn’t taken him more than four or five
minutes to do the dishes, but it’d seemed like forever.

“Punishment’s over, Darlin’.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

He chuckled as he rubbed her back. “Are you thanking
me for punishing you, or because it’s over and I’m holding you?”

She snuggled into his warmth a little more and said,
“Both, Sir, but probably more the second part than the first.”

His hand caressed from her shoulder to her ass, and
rubbed over the welts he’d just left. “We’re about to start something a little
more intense, and because I had to punish you, there’ll be no orgasms for you
until we’re just about finished later tonight, so don’t bother asking
permission. I’ll let you know when you can.”

Sam had worried he might not let her find release at
all, so to be told she’d get one at the end, at least, was a relief. “Thank
you, Master.”

“You’re welcome. I think the last night of the
out-of-town portion of our honeymoon qualifies as a special occasion.” He
released her and stepped away. “Drink some more water if you’d like, and then
use the restroom. Your hair is holding up pretty good, so leave it. I’ll meet
you in the great room.”

When she made it to the great room, Ethan wrapped her
softest leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles, and directed her to the
center of the room under a metal bar he’d hung from the support beam. He ran a
rope from her right cuff, through the right end of the bar, to the other end of
the bar, and then to her left cuff. She liked the control of being able to hold
onto the bar, though she didn’t have to, if she chose not to.

Ethan adjusted the rope until she was forced onto her
tiptoes, and she gripped the cool metal to keep her balance.

“I’m giving you what you asked for, Samantha, but not
in the way you probably expected. When I finish you’ll be red from shoulders to
mid-thigh; front, back, and sides; and both of us will have very tired arms.”

Sam’s body jolted forward and her hips twisted
sideways as the rubber strands of the flogger impacted. Hard.

“Mmmmm.” His deep voice was so damned
sexy
. “That’s
what I’m talking about. I’m going to use the way your body moves to make you
turn and twist. I don’t intend to walk around you too much tonight, but to turn
you with the flogger now, and the whip later.”

Her left ass cheek ignited in pain, and when her hips
twisted away from the cruel flogger, he struck the front of her right thigh. A
scream escaped and Sam suddenly realized this would be a very long night.

“I see you understand this part, so let’s go over a
few more items. Give me a chin-up with a two second hold, followed by a pull-up
with a five second hold.”

Suddenly, the bar made sense. When she’d followed
instructions and finally let herself down for the second time, he said, “Okay,
five pull-ups. Each should last a slow count of five up, and a slow count of
five down. Make them smooth.”

These were super-slow pull-ups, but he knew she was
capable or he wouldn’t have ordered them.

The flogger caught her by surprise as she started the
second, and she dropped to her toes. “Oh, too bad. You’ll need to start over
with the first.”

Sam took a breath, gathered her control, and began
the slow climb as she counted to five slowly in her head. Ethan gave her ten
strikes on the way up and ten on the way down, and she realized he was helping
with her rhythm. She changed her counting to a silent:
and one, and two, and
three
…

“Very nice,” he complimented when she’d finished all
five. “You can stay on your toes for a bit, but there’s one last thing to go
over. Your version of
yellow
tonight is a pull-up when I haven’t told
you to. As long as you’re more than halfway up, I’ll either reduce the strength
behind the each strike, or move to a less sensitive spot. My choice.”

He landed a half-dozen hard strikes on her upper back
and paused to say, “When I’ve ordered you to do a pull-up, you can express a
desire to say
yellow
by spreading your legs into the splits.”

Another round of hard hits, this time to the backs of
her thighs. “I may choose to give you a great deal of relief, or a tiny reprieve.
If you want more of a respite than I’m giving, I’d advise coming up with
something pleasing to do with your body instead of complaining verbally.”

The flogger rained down on her right shoulder until
she tried to spin away. He caught her right breast twice before she turned away
again, and he repeated the same thing on her left side.

The flogger stopped. “It may feel as if you’re in
control, but don’t doubt for a second that you’re dancing exactly where I want
you. Sometimes I insist you stand still, but I won’t ask it of you today.”

Ethan worked her from shoulders to mid-thigh, and
managed to land around a quarter of the strikes on her front as she stepped and
jerked in circles on her tiptoes. She hadn’t understood the significance of a
single line running to the center of the bar over her head, but it allowed her
to twist and gyrate without hindrance.

He occasionally focused on her breasts, and kept her
facing him with hard, punishing strikes to the sensitive skin under her arms
when she tried to twist away. Sam strained to pull herself up to the bar, and
he kept the flogger on her stomach, the front of thighs, and all the parts in
between — though thankfully he didn’t insist she spread her legs.
Eventually, she had to let herself back down, and he once again had her
screaming with each strike to her sensitive breasts.

He maneuvered her around until she faced the wall of
windows as the clouds broke just enough to give a brilliant sunset, but he
didn’t relent with the flogger.

When the colors finally faded and the sky went dark,
Ethan used the three-tailed whip to persuade her to turn towards him. They’d
been at this for well over an hour at this point, and she felt every strand of
the leather on already inflamed skin.

Sam had strained to pull herself up while she had the
strength, but had given up trying to gain relief, and now only pulled herself
up when ordered. She floated through the pain and bliss, until she couldn’t
tell which was which.

When Ethan said, “I’m going to give you a series of
commands, and I want you to follow them carefully,” she had to swim up from her
deep headspace to parse his words.

He waited for her to nod her understanding before he
gave the first order.

“Pull your knees to your chest and keep them there.”

She tightened her grip on the bar over her head, and
bent her knees. So far, Ethan had given more or less pain based on her grace
and fluidity, so she pointed her toes and tried to emulate a dancer.

“Very nice. Now, keep your knees up, and straighten
your legs until your toes touch the bar, please.”