One Hour of Vulnerability

(Contains graphic sexual depictions, including spanking, pinching, nipple play, a shrinking human dildo, facesitting, masturbation, edging, tease-and-denial, and group sex. This story takes place at a superhero sex club where a usually invulnerable princess chooses to explore pain, with a little help from her friends. All characters are over 18 and consenting. For the reading pleasure of interested adults only.)

***

"Miss Vulnerability! it's so good to see you," said Index, the bespectacled, green-skinned host behind the front desk of the Moaning Mask Club.

"You can call me Billie," Billie reminded him.

"Billie, of course. Will you be participating tonight?"

"That's what I'm here for."

"Usual offerings and preferences?" Index asked, hovering his pen over an open page of the guestbook.

"I'm in a punishing mood," Billie confessed, removing her coat from over her simple black jeans, studded belt, and slouchy t-shirt with the large V over the chest. "Hook me up with someone who wants to find out what pain is."

"Certainly," said the host, finishing his note with the smile of a deeply focused puzzle player making a crucial connection. "A woman all right with you?"

"Fine," Billie confirmed, cracking her knuckles and neck in turn. "As long as she has an ass and knows how to squirm."

"I can promise you the ass," said Index, with a half-smile, which Billie returned.

"I'm sure I can take it from there," she said.

Index nodded and extended an arm for her coat. "I'll arrange it. Head over to playroom seven whenever you're ready."

Billie strolled past the desk and into the plush, dimly lit lounge of the club, past people in masks, spandex, lingerie, and armor.

At one table, a woman showed off a pair of rapidly vibrating fingers to her companion, who had real, living cat ears growing out of her hair.

At the booth across the way, a man in a tight, thin, red environment suit shrank himself down to the size of a hotdog and danced suggestively on air, while a woman suspended him in front of her with telekinetic power.

The Moaning Mask Club was a place where anyone who lived the cape-and-tights lifestyle -- heroes, villains who could manage to behave themselves for the course of a visit, and everyone in between -- could go to trade favors with others like them.

There were plenty of forums for such exchanges when it came to criminal or crime-fighting behavior. This was not one of them. The club was strictly for downtime sorts of requests.

People with super strength came to find partners who wouldn't break. Energy drainers came to cuddle with living nuclear reactors. Lonely heroes came to let off steam with someone who wouldn't take it personally if they suddenly had to run off to save the world.

Billie squeezed a little too close to the booth where the man in the red suit was dancing on air, causing him to spring back to full size and plummet onto the table. She waved a quick apology to him and his date. They waved back.

Out in the world, Billie's power had very few uses other than thwarting villains. It also excluded her from any team-ups that might make that work more fun and less lonely.

At the Moaning Mask, however, hers was one of the most desired gifts.

The three-foot radius surrounding Billie -- Miss Vulnerability -- negated the effects of all other powers, completely. Her power was rare, and she was the only one of her kind to frequent the club, so for some people, that three-foot radius held sensations that could not be obtained anywhere else.

It was a busy night, with a line for the bar, so Billie proceeded directly down the hall of playrooms to number seven. She had just enough time to check the room's supplies and make herself comfortable on the bed before the door received a sharp tap.

#

"Enter if you dare," Billie called out with put-on aloofness, propping her head up on one arm.

She'd had a hunch, more of a fantasy, really, about who would be on the other side of that door tonight.

Her face probably revealed more excitement than she meant it to when Princess Aurelia of the Sylvan Kingdom -- or just Sylvan, in her superhero capacity -- stepped inside.

The elfin princess looked as enchanting as ever, towering almost to the top of the doorframe in her nine-inch heels. Her minidress of green velvet showed off her long, slender, inhumanly strong limbs.

If Billie's power had allowed her to enjoy the powers of others, she would have submitted her soul to Sylvan's legendary psychic ravishment years ago. But having the princess here, ready to submit that ethereally beautiful body to Billie's rough care... that might be even better.

"Your highness," Billie greeted her, sitting up on her elbows. "What can I do for you?"

Sylvan closed the door behind her with the extreme care she needed to avoid splintering it to pieces. "The same thing you've done for others, I imagine."

"What I do with other people is between me and them," said Billie. "So you'll have to be more specific."

The two women stared at each other for a moment. Sylvan, usually so elegant and ageless, wore an expression that made her look like a nervous college applicant. Billie, a thirty-five-year-old self-confessed burnout, lounged in the same clothes she would have worn as a teenager if she'd had the freedom to choose her wardrobe then.

"It has come to my attention," said Sylvan, "That there are aspects of experience that most consider universal, to which I am not privy."

"I see," said Billie. "And are you looking forward to finding out what makes Humans tremble and cry and gasp and shiver? Or dreading it?"

Sylvan tossed her head, sending a wave of shiny auburn hair behind her back, and scoffed as if the question were beneath her. But then the toss became a shrug, and the scoff became a word.

"Both."

Billie let her own excitement manifest in a mischievous grin. "Good. That's a good place to start. Strip down. Grab the leash from that rack over there, put it on, and come place the end in my hand."

Sylvan lifted her dress over her head and hung it on one of the empty hooks on the wall.

She was even more impossibly stunning underneath, willowy and smoothly curved, without a single blemish or scar. Her unrestrained breasts formed two perfect domes exactly the size of Billie's hands.

Her only underwear was a simple thong, just enough fabric to protect and outline her pussy, nothing more.

"You can leave that for now," Billie said, when Sylvan reached for the thong. "I like it. And the shoes. But remove the tiara."

Sylvan removed the tasteful band of silver and moonstones from behind her sharp, tapered ears, and hung it with her dress. She proceeded to the rack with the leashes, opened a leather collar, and took an extra moment to look at it in her hands. "Is this necessary? It seems... undignified."

"That's the idea, isn't it?" Billie chuckled. "A little humbling? To bring you down to Earth with all the mere mortals you want to protect? Plus, it's the easiest way for me to make sure you don't get too far away from me. We wouldn't want all that power to come flooding back at the wrong moment, would we?"

Sylvan observed her with the calmly evaluating stare that had probably served her well at many a diplomatic meeting.

"Do you mean to hold me in your radius against my will?" she asked.

"Never," said Billie, sitting all the way up to meet her eyes more directly. "I take my responsibilities as seriously as anyone else in this club."

Sylvan eyed Billie's rumpled shirt, unconvinced.

"But I am going to make you ask when you want to be let go," said Billie, "just like anyone who signs up to play sub around here, without the strength of ancient magic to protect them. Consider it part of the mere mortal experience. You know the word we use, don't you?"

"Mercy," Sylvan practiced it distastefully, clearly accustomed to hearing it rather than speaking it.

"Easy as that, you're free," said Billie.

Sylvan brought the collar to her long, graceful neck, and buckled it tight.

Billie held out her hand.

Sylvan walked resolutely forward. The moment when she crossed into Billie's sphere of influence was as obvious as if the edges were marked on the floor. Her regal gait faltered, and she looked down in horror as her suddenly vulnerable toes were crushed against the narrow straps at the front of her high heeled shoes.

A good portion of Billie wanted to laugh, and ask if the princess's delicate feet required a nice soak before they began. But with Sylvan already so uncomfortable about lowering herself, mocking her too fast and hard might scare her away. They had the room for a full hour before they had to relinquish it to anyone waiting in line. Plenty of time to ease the proud princess into tantalizing depths of indignity.

Billie kept her hand steady, accepting Sylvan's leash, and her trust, with all due solemnity.

"Join me," she said, reeling in the slack to bring Sylvan onto the bed with her.

Sylvan followed easily enough, looking mostly glad to be off her feet.

"You've never felt any kind of pain before?" Billie asked.

Sylvan shook her head.

"We'll start really small, then," said Billie. "Give me your hand."

Sylvan flexed her hand on its way to Billie, to disguise any possible shaking. Billie took it gently in hers, took hold of a tiny bit of skin on the back, and pinched.

Sylvan took in a short, sharp breath, but then let it out in relief and smiled. "That's pain?"

"An itty bitty microdose," Billie noted. "But yeah. You ready for more?"

"Continue," said Sylvan, holding her head as high as if she had already forgotten the collar around her neck.

The temptation to yank on the leash was almost too much, but again, Billie paced herself. She ran her fingers up from Sylvan's hand to her upper arm and caught hold of another delicate bit of skin.

"Different areas of the body respond with different levels of pain to the same stimuli," she explained, and pinched again.

Sylvan yelped, and then nodded with bright, wild, wide-awake eyes. Her bare nipples had hardened from subtle points to eager little daggers on the ends of her soft, round breasts.

No sight could have made Billie happier. She was usually pretty good at guessing where there was a juicy masochistic streak to be found, but it was impossible to know for absolute certain without experimentation. This would have been no fun at all if Sylvan had faced it with pure endurance and no excitement.

Billie trailed her fingers higher up Sylvan's arm and across her collar bone. She stopped just short of one of those temptingly pinchable nipples and pulled her hand away, noting and celebrating the disappointment on Sylvan's face.

"Bend over my lap," said Billie, shifting the leash to her left hand and pulling, to guide Sylvan into position.

Sylvan kept her weight poised on her elbows and her head turned to observe, as she stretched herself across Billie's crossed legs, with her ass in convenient reach of her right hand.

Billie explored the rest of Sylvan's naked back first, finding every inch of it silky and yielding to the touch.

Elves didn't need their muscles to be large in order to hold unimaginable power, of course, but even so, Sylvan's skeleton must have been unusually narrow by Human standards, for her to look so lanky and feel so soft at the same time.

Finally, Billie worked her way past the unobtrusive elastic of Sylvan's G-string to the graceful curve of her ass. It was even softer and smoother than the rest of her.

"I'm going to spank you," Billie warned. "Gently, at first."

"That's one of the safest ways to inflict pain, correct?" Sylvan asked, fresh nervousness crushed down into the very foundation of her voice.

"Very safe," Billie confirmed, still caressing her target area. "Are you ready?"

Sylvan nodded resolutely.

Holding the leash tight, so that Sylvan couldn't lift her face more than a few inches from the bed, Billie raised her hand and brought it down with a slap.

It was more noise than force. Sylvan's ass took the impact with such a pleasant springiness that Billie could hardly resist giving it another one right away.

"How're you doing, princess?" she asked.

"Curious as to what the fuss is about," Sylvan answered, nervousness replaced by calculated, taunting superiority.

"Oh, you have no idea how jazzed I am to hear you say that," Billie warned her, and brought her hand down again, harder this time, even more ready than before to enjoy that springy jiggle.

Sylvan feigned boredom for a while, as Billie slowly ramped up the force of her strikes, switching back and forth every so often between cheeks. Once pink patches began to bloom on Sylvan's skin, however, the first marks its silky, even surface had ever held, she began to stir more restlessly.

She dug her hips deeper into Billie's jeans, letting out occasional high gasps when her hand made contact.

It was clear her reaction was only half pain, at most.

Billie could have gone on like this for hours. The cushy feel of Sylvan's ass was so pleasant that her hand barely stung at all, even when she really put some muscle into it.

She waited until the gasps were coming with nearly every blow before taking a pause.

"Plenty of fussing going on now," Billie observed. "Does her highness need a break?"

"Perhaps just a moment," Sylvan answered in another set of breathy gasps.

Billie loosened the slack on the leash, letting Sylvan sit up on her knees.

The princess ran her hands over her own face and neck with a delighted sigh.

"Gets the blood flowing, doesn't it?" Billie asked her.

"It's extraordinary," Princess Sylvan answered, running her hands farther down her body, chasing glowing tingles. She tapped at her nipples along the way and then reached eagerly for her pussy.

"What do you think you're doing?" Billie asked, catching Sylvan's wrists and pinning them behind her back.

"I..." Sylvan faltered with needy confusion. "I did not intend to be inappropriate. If the interaction you agreed to was purely instructional, I apologize. Given the venue, I assumed certain sexual overtones--"

"Sexual, sure," said Billie, kissing Sylvan's neck in demonstration. "Just not on your schedule." She gave the skin she had just kissed a playful bite. "You didn't come here just for pain, did you?"

"Obviously not," said Sylvan, inching forward on her knees to rub herself subtly against Billie's thigh.

"No, not just for pleasure either," Billie teased, leaning forward and pulling Sylvan's wrists farther back. "You came to feel vulnerable. Powerless. You can stop now, with nothing but a fun little sting on your royal ass that sent your pain-virgin nerves all aquiver. You can pretend that counts. Or you can go deeper. You can stay here and learn how to beg for things you're used to taking for granted. You can struggle and plead while I drag your soft, royal fingers away from what you want and hold them there. And you can try to imagine what it would be like to have no way out."

"I understand," said Sylvan. "In that case, may I make the most of this exquisite sensation now, please?"

She tugged her trapped hands down and forward, in the direction of her satin-covered pussy.

Billie smirked at her attempt to ace her lesson in powerlessness with her dignity intact -- entirely missing the point of said lesson.

"No," Billie answered, savoring the hint of real surprise on the princess's face. "Keep your hands where I can see them, and don't you touch these panties." She let go of one of Sylvan's wrists and reached down to snap the elastic of her G-string against her hip. "Not to rub them, not to move them, not to sneak underneath. Got that?"

Sylvan nodded, face warming with her first real blush. Billie watched the confusion, embarrassment, and secret thrill pass through her as the opportunity for a regal, authoritative final word slipped away unused.

"It's for your own good, princess, I promise," said Billie, only lightly teasing. "If I let you cum, it'll kill your pain tolerance. It's the kind of thing only people who've lived with pain would know."

"I defer to your superior knowledge on this matter," Sylvan said softly.

"Good," said Billie.

"Does that mean you will hurt me more now?" Sylvan asked eagerly, with barely a scrap of apprehension left.

"Oh, I'll hurt you plenty," Billie promised.

"How?"

With the end of the leash around her wrist, Billie finally allowed herself to cup Sylvan's breasts in her hands. They were as silky and springy as her ass, and fit in Billie's palms just like she'd expected, as if they belonged there.

"Are these beauties still craving attention too?" Billie asked, though she could tell the answer by their stiffness.

Sylvan nodded.

"Would you like me to hurt them and make them feel good at the same time, in the same place?"

"That's possible?" Sylvan asked. "Yes. Please."

Billie rolled both nipples between her fingers. The roll soon became a pinch, which she tightened, slowly, moment by moment.

Sylvan gasped first with harmless surprise, and then escalated to a moan as the feeling built.

Billie let up briefly, then pressed down again, brutally hard. The excitement did not leave Sylvan's voice.

"May I?" Sylvan asked again, pointing down to her soaking G-string.

Billie leaned down to breathe in the scent of it.

"No," she whispered against the fabric.

Sylvan made a whining sound.

"Look at you," said Billie, straightening back up to Sylvan's level. "Slumming it among us fragile mortals and having such a good time doing it."

Sylvan's eyes widened, showing more discomfort than they had during any of what Billie had done to her body so far.

"Make it worse!" the princess commanded. "Hurt me until I stop enjoying it, and then thrice as much beyond."

Billie let go of Sylvan's breasts and raised an eyebrow, reassessing.

"Are you capable of that?" Sylvan asked.

Billie certainly could have pushed things much further than she had so far. She hadn't even started to play with any of the whips or paddles the playroom was equipped with.

"Sure," she answered, watching Sylvan's lower lip tremble slightly. "I can make you cry like a baby, if that's what you want. But if you stop enjoying yourself completely, I'm going to need to know why we're still doing it."

"Because I came here to understand the vulnerable!" Sylvan declared. "Not to patronize them!"

"Oh. Fuck. You're serious," said Billie.

"Of course I'm serious!" said Sylvan. "Isn't that what you give people? Understanding? Sensitivity?"

"Not usually, no," Billie admitted.

Sylvan's mouth opened with a scoff of outrage.

"This," Billie spread her hands to indicate the playroom, the Moaning Mask club. "This is a game. For fun. Like, you know how Professor Proton doesn't actually teach people a whole lot about physics before hitting them with a ruler? Or how none of the vampires actually kill or turn the people they play with here? Overpowered people come to me to dip their toes in pain, like a billionaire paying eighty dollars for a 'divey' chicken sandwich to feel like a real person."

Sylvan rubbed her forehead, as if she suddenly felt faint, slowly shaking her head back and forth.

"I mean, kudos for wanting to take a deeper look at yourself than that," Billie hurried to add. "But nothing that could happen here between you and me was ever really going to teach you what vulnerability means. You know I respect the safeword, so you know you're physically safe. And we're not..." she sighed. "We're not friends, so you're socially safe too. Worst case scenario, you don't get to come back to me for another spanking."

"That's no small loss," Sylvan argued halfheartedly.