A Subtle Fire Ch. 01

She took up the pose again and waited. I counted the beats of my heart and got to ten when I saw the flogger rise and plunge down onto the left side of my back. The sound it made when landing on my skin was a beautiful crackling like a firework bursting overhead. My skin felt like it was glowing warmly.

"Savour this first caress before I awaken your fire."

"I want to feel it, Mistress."

In the mirror I watched her arm swing up and over and in the mirror I saw the tails drift through the air as if in slow motion. I thought I could count them all as they flew toward my back. Tendrils of exquisite pain radiated through me as they landed in a neat line up my back.

"Fuck!" I shouted, unable to control myself. The pain was worse than I'd been expecting. Any experience I thought I might have had with spanking or whipping was just play acting compared to this.

I heard the swish of the tails approaching again and pain roared through me. I swore again but this time through gritted teeth. This was what I'd wanted wasn't it?

Another swish and the tails landed back over on the left of my back as she alternated the blows. I could feel the heat now, like flame flowing over my back and wrapping itself around my body. Three more blows and I was fighting to hold back tears.

She paused and through bleary eyes I saw her approach and inspect my back, looking for any breaks in the skin. Satisfied there we none she stepped back into her pose again.

"Stop twisting your body," she ordered. "The pain will be worse if the tails hit your side."

I tried to lean forward as straight as I could, taking more weight on my wrists. My back really did feel like it was on fire but I was feeling a rush in my head and my groin was tight with arousal. Every sensitive part or my body, my nipples, lips and the soles of my feet were tingling with excitement.

"Please don't stop, beloved Mistress," I managed to say.

I saw her nod in satisfaction and then the tiny whips rose and fell, lighting my body up again. The flogging continued longer this time and she kept me in a constant state of frisson, each swipe of the flogger's tails lifting me back into that place at the intersection of pleasure and pain.

Watching myself was surreal, the mirror me was grimacing and gasping with each lash, tears on its cheeks, yet the real me felt like every nerve in my body was screaming for a sexual release. Then I would swap places and I was feeling the bite of every blow while in the mirror another man writhed in the throes of ecstasy.

I felt the fire inside. I truly did. She'd promised me it and I felt her promise ignite within me. It was her gift to me, a gift that no other could offer. Even when she dropped the flogger and stood before me with her hands on my face I could feel the flame rage deep in my chest. I knew she could feel it too as she pulled my lips to hers and the fire crossed between us and around our entwined tongues.

Then she was unfastening the bar from my ankles and, with a sharp pull, released the knot that held my arms above me. I fell forward onto my hands and knees, panting and crying but exultant.

"Present," she ordered.

I looked up, confused at first but then remembering what I was supposed to do. I stood up unsteadily and adopted the position. She walked around me checking me over again for any cuts or abrasions.

"Good," she said, seemingly satisfied and led me by my tied wrists to the couch, sitting me down and comforting me against her.

"You did well for your first time," she said, stroking my face with her hand.

"I didn't want it to end, Mistress. I wanted more of you."

"It's not good for you to stand like that for too long. But I have an alternative if you believe you can continue."

"I can, Mistress. Every lash you gave me made me hungrier for more."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I could see it in your face, the lust for it."

She reached down and grasped me again, pushing her hand tightly down my shaft. I groaned at the feeling of her touching me again.

"Please me and this will get the reward it aches for."

"Mistress..." I gasped as she scraped her nails across the sensitive head of my cock.

"Kneel over the seat of the chair."

She indicated an armless dining chair with a padded seat. I knelt beside it and lay across the seat, glad that my sore back was exposed to the air. She repositioned my legs so they lined up with the legs of the chair and produced some shorter lengths of rope.

She wound a doubled run of rope around my lower thigh and the chair leg and then brought the bight up and around between them tying it off, securing my leg to the chair. She repeated the process with the other leg and then my arms above the elbow. The rope was rough against my skin and had very little give in it. She left my wrists tied but my feet were free. I could have stood up in a crouch with some difficulty if I wanted to.

After some final adjustments to the rope, making them look attractive, she knelt beside me.

"I spared your back the harness that I would usually tie your feet to."

"Thank you, Mistress."

"Don't try to stand. Use your safeword if necessary and I will release you."

"Yes Mistress,"

"Lift your head."

I did so and she pulled a hood over my eyes, shutting out all light. This was like the polar opposite of the flogging. The mirror had given me total visibility of her every movement allowing me to could anticipate the ensuing pain but here I was in total darkness, not knowing what to expect or when.

My first awareness was a sudden pain in my scrotum as she seized it in one hand and pulled down hard. She twisted it a few times making me to buck uselessly against the chair and then slapped my cock. She flicked at my hanging balls with the back of her hand, causing spasms of pain to erupt in my groin.

"Mmmm," I heard her say, "It's tempting to just take hold of those balls and squeeze them so hard."

"Please don't Mistress," I begged.

I felt her hand close around my balls.

"I could just crush them."

"No, please, Mistress"

She pulled back on them hard and then let go. I felt her reach for something else to torment me with.

"Count for me," she commanded and immediately slapped something across both my ass cheeks. The pain was intense. Different to the flogger, this seemed to be something solid and it left a lingering sting.

"Count," she repeated.

"One!" I forced out through gritted teeth. I waited for the next one. I had no idea when it would arrive and just when I thought she was going to abandon this torment, there it came. A flash of pain right on top of the previous one.

"Two!"

A pause, then another blow on my burning cheeks.

"Three!"

The fourth was harder like she'd really swung her arm as hard as she could.

"Fuck. Four!"

The fifth, when it came, landed across the tops of my thighs, catching the very edge of my balls. I screamed and shook at the restraints trying to free my arms.

"No screaming," she snapped.

"I'm sorry Mistress. It hurts so bad."

"Do you want to use your safeword?"

"No Mistress, not yet."

"Remember to count for me. Unless you want me to start over?"

I shook my head vigorously. "Five Mistress. Five."

Six, seven, eight and nine were across my buttocks again. Unlike the flogging where the pain seemed to plateau, this pain kept rising in intensity. Every strike doubling down on the previous one.

The tenth was again across my upper thighs. I screamed inside, my teeth tightly clenched, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Ten, Mistress. Enough please. No more."

"You're half way," she replied. "Ten more and you are done."

Another strike across my ass causing me to throw my head way back in pain.

"Eleven. Please Mistress. I can't."

After the twelfth I promised myself that I would endure one more and then use my safeword to end it. Then the thirteenth and I bit my lip, swearing that I would take one more slap but use the word to stop the dreaded strike to my thighs.

The fourteenth came and I let a cry of pain slip out. My ass was on fire but this wasn't like the good fire of the flogging. It felt animalistic and primal and it seemed to flow into me instead of arising from within.

She hesitated. She read my mind and knew I was going to use the word. Did she want me to say it? Did she want to hear me whimper "peach". What would happen? Would it be over. Would I be cast out, never to see her again? Never to feel her? Feel this?

The moment hung between us. Then she swung the paddle down across my thighs in an explosion of pain or pleasure, I couldn't tell any more.

"Fifteen," I heard someone say. A man?

"Five more, my love, can you do it?" Who was she talking to? The counting man?

I moved my lips and heard the man say "Mistress. Please. Don't. Stop."

I felt her hand on my back, cool and soft. Then another blow brought more fire.

"Sixteen."

"Seventeen."

"Eighteen."

"Nineteen."

The final blow was as expected, across my thighs. This time I welcomed it, a blessed symbol of the end of my ordeal.

"Twenty. Thank you Mistress," I gasped.

"Be still there. Wait for me to unbind you."

She swiftly loosened the ropes and led me to the bed, laying me down on my front. She brought a tube of aloe moisturiser and applied it to my thighs, buttocks and back, gently rubbing it in. While she massaged and soothed me I lay there unmoving, still trying to piece together what had happened during the paddling.

When she was done she lay down beside me, her face close to mine, looking into my eyes. I smiled and she smiled warmly back holding my gaze.

"Have I passed? Am I worthy of you Mistress?" I asked.

"Almost," she said. "You have one last task to complete."

She reached down between my legs and took me in her hand. At some point during the paddling I'd finally lost the erection that had raged all night, but at her touch I began to stiffen again.

She bent forward and kissed me. I held her face softly in my hands and opened my mouth to let her in. We kissed slowly at first and then more passionately. I felt the subtle fire again, passing between us and igniting itself in my chest. It warmed us and joined us.

I fumbled at the laces on her bodysuit until she pushed my hands away and sat up to unlace herself. She tossed the bodysuit on the floor and lay back beside me, naked apart from her stockings. I studied her beautiful small breasts and traced around them with one finger.

We kissed again and little lightning bolts went off in my head as I felt her lips push urgently against mine. Her hand was gripping my cock again and I moved mine down to her crotch, feeling her smooth crevice. She sighed as I slipped my fingers inside her, feeling how wet she was.

"You did that," she said by way of explanation. "The way you treated me. The way you allowed me to control what you felt. Seeing you crave even more. It was real. You made me feel something I haven't felt for a very long time."

I knew I had to taste her, to taste what inflicting that pain on me had done to her. I rolled her onto her back and knelt between her legs, my hands on her hips. Her body was as denuded as my own and she glistened invitingly.

"My beloved Mistress," I whispered and bent down to kiss her between her legs. She lifted her hips to greet me and I eagerly burrowed my tongue inside her. She gripped my hair with my hands, an urgency in her actions. She smelled charged with sex and I filled myself with it, absorbing her potency. Tasting her was like drinking a love potion, making me delirious with passion.

I wasn't gentle with her but her guiding hands still urged me on. I seized her clitoris in my teeth and pulled it before latching on and sucking and probing with my tongue. Within moments she climaxed and thrust my head deeper into herself as she battled the surging waves of pleasure that crashed through her. She swore her way through it "fuck oh fuck oh fuck" over and over until it finally subsided.

I couldn't resist any longer and I lifted up to lean over her taking my weight on my arms, the tip of my cock resting at the entrance to her pussy. She grabbed it with one hand and pulled me into her. I slid deep inside and she moaned at the sensation as our hips met.

I waited, enjoying the warm wetness of her around my cock. I knew that after the sexual build up I'd had all night I wasn't going to last as long as I wanted but her silky interior was impossible to resist. I pulled myself almost out, and then plunged back in, the walls of her vagina rubbing sweet friction on the head of my cock. I continued to thrust into her at as slow a pace as I could manage. The urge to simply hammer it and come was almost unbearable.

I felt her hands on my waist moving with me as we fucked. We kissed and I lay my forehead on hers, looking down her body at myself moving in and out of her. All too soon I felt myself nearing the point of no return and with one more deep thrust I came, spurting inside her in a series of juddering spasms. I let out a long, low cry of pleasure. All the tension of the night seemed to pour out of me through my hips and it just kept going and going.

I collapsed and rolled off of her and we lay, glowing in a sweaty, panting tangle.

"I'm sorry Mistress," I managed. "I wanted to last longer for you."

She put a finger on my lips and shook her head.

"It's fine. You passed the first test."

"I did?" I was elated.

"You did. And that means, if you continue to please me, that there will be many more moments like this one."

I kissed her, my Mistress of pain and pleasure. She kissed me back hungrily, accepting me as her willing thrall, knowing I was ready to fulfill her every desire.