The Laughing Assassin [Assassin's Diary] (Siren Publishing Classic) (21 page)

Jonah didn’t think about it that way, but he knew Stein was right. Then no sooner than he had that thought, his mind jumped back to the fact that Stein said that Jaden loved it. Although she had admitted as much earlier, he would have never imagined that she could enjoy a child’s punishment. Nor would he have imagined that he would love giving it. Maybe they were a match made in heaven.

* * * *

The first day of training Jaden was in stupefied shock. She was so certain that she would never, ever understand the lure of being possessed by a man. But somehow, the tables had been turned on her, and Jonah had not only done so, but he was so good at it that she had no idea when it happened. She just knew that it had. When had she given this man so much power over her? What was the crucial moment that her body began to betray her and follow
his
will and not hers?

But no matter how she looked at it, somewhere along the line, the concept of control had become a warped, twisted thing not born of her imaginings. Why had she so stupidly assumed that she couldn’t be mind-fucked? And the worst part was that Jaden had prepared for a much different form of training than the one that she stumbled upon.

She had steeled herself for beatings with a bastinado, a stripping with a cat-o’-nine-tails, or even smacks with a cane. Those things she could withstand easily, as that was all old hat. The Rōnin had no problems with beatings of all varieties. It was one of the critical parts of their methodology. Actually, most forms of kung fu were learned by trial and error, and being beaten with a weapon was the best way to ensure that the pupil could learn how best to avoid being crippled by it. So, she could have easily handled physically being fucked with for breakfast and lunch.

But this mental game that he played with her was more than she was equipped to deal with. He had forced her submission to his hands and voice, not with fear of pain, but with the anticipation of pleasures beyond her prior imaginings. With that first training, her body for once didn’t answer to Jaden as master, but looked to Jonah instead.

How could he make her crawl to him with only lashes from his tongue on her clit and essentially naught else? But in the same vein, his tongue was more talented than any another tool others had used before in an attempt to break her.

Damn him for making me enjoy my own debasement.
That was the most humiliating part of the entire debacle.

She came into the living room for her first meeting with her master and Stein, only to find she enjoyed their training session. She found that she could appreciate the idea of the men assessing her performance, and she felt more sensual than ever before. There was something more to be said about being his woman in this way. It was as if she had a window inside of his soul that whispered his needs before he gave any command to her. The orders were just verbalized confirmation.

There was something horribly exhilarating about the stamp of ownership in their play. Like now, he gave her tiny orders, just putting her through a random batch of things to show her off. What he really needed was to show Stein his mastery of her and to publicly display that she was under his control.

But later? She was unsure about how she would feel later on. There was no way to know. She wasn’t the kind of wanton woman who was up for bondage. Or was she?

She certainly hadn’t made time to think about what she wanted. She went out of the way this week to keep herself busy and unable to ruminate over the concepts that she didn’t want to admit to herself yet. But she was forced to face her own weakness when he spanked her.

The first ten strokes hurt, not unbearably, but nonetheless they stung. After that, the sting mellowed into a cunt-tightening, clit-hardening sensation that wouldn’t go away. It seemed to envelop her in a cocoon of her own senses. Her head drooped toward the floor, and the blood rushed to her brain, not to mention the constriction of the corset took her breath away.

That was the reasoning she used to explain away her needy nature, but she knew then truth. It stared her in the face when they finished. Jonah didn’t look like the man she had gotten to know. He was someone else in these moments, and she was caught in the web of a stranger. His face was stern, and his nostrils flared as he carried her away from the scene of their mutual mental unveiling.

Her eyes focused, and she watched as a single drop of sweat ran down the side of his face. The bead of fluid teased her to taste.

Jonah bathed her along with a rubdown with fragrant massage oil. But when he walked away that night she was grateful to be left alone. She had admitted more than she wanted to already, and while she didn’t want to be enveloped in her own thoughts, it was better to be stuck within her own mind than to be lost looking at him.

* * * *

As time passed she kept herself busy with work as much as possible. The time was spent lost within development of complex combat scenarios and her attempts to understand the finer points of submission. The mornings were still spent training the home team members some new tricks. The afternoons were for her to learn more about her role, and Jonah gave her a generous gift of an e-reader. The device was preloaded with a dozen novels that he suggested she peruse to get herself in the mind state of a sexual slave.

There was the
Story of O,
which took her awhile to warm up to. Then she read the
Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
, which she thought was an interesting take on the classic fairy tale, but she was not too fond of the extreme nature of the novel, considering the reason she read the stories in the first place.

After that, she was ready for something a bit lighter in tone, and she chose to read a modern story of lust, love, and bondage called
Bound by Accident
. There were too many parallels to her current situation for her not to fathom why he downloaded that particular story, but she found that she enjoyed the light tone and chemistry the couple exuded in waves throughout the tale anyway.

Although for her personally, she had the hardest time handling the training on week four. The purpose of the week was to show how desire could be derived from physical punishment, or as she jokingly dubbed it, Beat Me 101. The first day was devoted entirely to spanking. Jonah had placed her over his lap and rubbed each buttock until she was warm and content. Then he swatted her, every strike adding to the sensations, until she was trapped in layer after layer of pleasure chasers spiked with shots of pain.

The next day he introduced his first implement, and she had her very first flogging. It was a sensual experience that she never imagined would feel so good. Jonah was as always gentle with his initiation. He let her handle the item before he used it on her, and she tested it with quick flicks of her wrist, watched the way the fronds rippled before she made contact with her own leg.

It took long moments before she noticed the strength that actually framed each blow that spiked her flesh. Every strike made onto her skin increased in intensity. The change occurred over degrees so minute that it wasn’t until he was done that she realized how heavy the strikes actually were at the end.

She was lucky. She knew Jonah could have hurt her if her wished, but he was even gentler with her punishments than he was with her pleasure.

But the night she considered as the highlight of the week was the final night in her corporal punishment training. She learned the art of caning. The cane Jonah showed her on Saturday night was small, much thinner than she expected. It was made from bamboo, but she knew she was about to be in a world of hurt from the whiplike flexibility of the item when she swung outward with it.

She tested the cane as usual, popped her wrists, and allowed the item to smack her upper thigh as a test. Jaden knew she could endure being hit with the item, but she doubted there would be anything for her to like about it, let alone find any pleasure in. But Jonah was wonderful at what he did, and not for the first time the thought struck her that he was made for just this type of sex. There was nothing greedy or cruel when he wielded authority over her, and in fact, he only fed her desire with his deliberation and patience.

Before he would touch her with the cane he prepared her with a massage that had her mind clouded. When he was done with the shiatsu caresses, he restrained her, facing the wall of the third bedroom using a set of chains draped from a mount in the ceiling.

“Calm down, Jaden.” She shook slightly and took a deep breath to calm herself.

“I’m sorry. It’s just…”

“That’s okay Jaden, but you know I would never hurt you. You trust me that much, right?” She did. Nothing he had done to her these last weeks had felt degrading or painful. In fact, the orgasms she had were the better than she ever imagined, and she well knew what it felt like to scream herself hoarse from pleasure.

“Yes, Master, I trust you.” It was in that moment the she was struck with the object, a swift merciless cut across her buttocks. The pain of the assault was numbing for a moment, but when he followed up with a series of smacks above and below the stinging welt, she felt the pain transform. The swelling hurt went somewhere else, and somehow the sensation was akin to ice over her flesh. The skin where he first smacked her was sore and hot, but the rapped series of blows there after seemed to cool her. The sensations were so unique she had no idea how to even categorize it.

“How does that feel? Good?” he asked her, but she felt foggy. It was as if she left her body behind for just a moment then came crashing back without a free fall first. This time when she shook it was from the beginnings of orgasmic pleasure, and she couldn’t stop herself.

His voice was harsher than the spark of pleasure burning at her spine. “You want to come, Jaden?”

“Yes, please!” She cried the words out with no hesitation.

“Please what?” Jonah stopped, and she was left to quake in the steamy air surrounding her.

“Master!” she said, also with no hesitance, and he resumed. The subsequent strokes bit her deeper, and he rapped the thin wand up her back. Every blow was evenly spaced and perfectly covered every inch from hip to shoulder like a warm sweater in the winter. When he reached her nape, her head bowed, and she panted for the too-thin air that she couldn’t seem to get enough of.

“You may come now, Jaden.” He used the tip of the cane with unmistakable accuracy as he slid the bamboo down her spine in one slow caress that rasped her nerves past raw. Jonah wrapped his arm around her. The knowing fingers rubbed over her soft sex and burrowed quickly within her pussy. The scrape of cane was all she needed to send her feet-first into the universe. But when his fingers plumbed her cunt, there was nothing on earth that she could do to hold back her screams.

“Ahhhh—” The ability to even grunt was stolen from her as she crash landed back into the here and now.

The two digits stole her ability to reason, and then when his thumb pressed down onto her clit, she was sent back into space with no landing gear. A dam in her lower half broke, and her legs no longer worked.

When she came to and took stock of herself, she was a mess. Jonah had released her sagging frame from the manacles. Jaden was coated in heavy sweat, and her legs dripped as if she had wet herself. He took the time to dab at her with a plush towel, and when she was mostly dry, he gave her yet another bath.

The weeks remaining before their op had come to a close, much faster than she had thought possible. She had endured many lessons and learned more about herself than she thought possible. Jonah had introduced her to a lifestyle that she had never imagined loving or liking. She was always the one in control of her life, and the crash course she had been thrown into was more than education. It was a more than mere knowledge, and the beauty of being dominated was how open she felt.

She was open to herself, to Jonah, to life. She was nose wide open in the midst of a dive-bomb to earth with no parachute and self-actualization. And if she was honest with herself, she loved being controlled, even if she would never tell Jonah as much. But after the weeks of toys and titillation, she wasn’t sure if plain vanilla was her favorite flavor anymore. Vanilla was just fine for women without issues, but she had more baggage than Louis Vuitton.

The days turned into nights, all a mesh of lust and fire, longing, desire, and cravings. So it was little surprise that when Jaden looked up from her required reading there was only one week left to go, and she still wasn’t sure about the feasibility of their recon at the auction. Not that the plan for the duration of the op was unsound, but she was sure that something was going to go wrong. It always did. The only question was what would the problem be?

But she chalked her nerves up to the fact that she wasn’t sure how she was going to go back to her life when this was over. Really, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. There was only one reason to go back, and it wasn’t the bakery. Kris was the only roots she had to real life, and she couldn’t abandon the woman that she helped foster into adulthood. Otherwise, she would have run and started over when this was done for sure.

Somewhere that she could have an endless spree of umbrella drinks and sunshine with no distractions. A place without a man so delectable that she forgot everything she had worked so hard for these last years. A place where she could just be a woman without all of the baggage she’d carried for so many years. She needed a place where she could get her mind right instead of dealing with the insufferable strain of near insanity from too many emotions.