Treason Ch. 02

The Captain kissed me on the forehead and walked away. The Prince sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled me down from the couch to sit with him.

The Prince wasn't really a boy at all. His figure and face were youthful, but when you looked into his eyes, you knew he was an old soul, and you couldn't figure out how old he actually was at all. But dear sweet mother of the saints, he was gorgeous. He was like a child of the gods, with perfectly chiseled features, blonde hair that curled just slightly, beautiful lips that looked like he was always about to laugh.

I didn't have a mental filter any more. I'd been through too much that day to be able to watch what I said. "You're so beautiful," I whispered.

The Prince smiled. "So they say." And he took my hands in his and gave them a friendly squeeze.

"Now. I heard the Captain say you've never been whipped before. So, what did he do with you? There must have been something, or he wouldn't have brought you here."

"Um," I said. I'm so eloquent in stressful situations. "Um. He arrested me. In Tull. And, um, while we were coming here, I was handcuffed, and he made me, um, it was a thing. There was me, and there was him, and I made him come, and that was it. And then, um, they said --" my mind shied away from the sentencing, I couldn't go there -- "but he said it wouldn't be as bad if I came here, so I came here."

"So. After the Captain arrested you, he made you suck him off. And he's going to whip you here. So that you don't have to be flogged."

I decided that the Prince was very smart, if he could figure that out from the jumble of words I'd just spilled. I nodded.

"For the Captain to have brought you here --" the Prince was choosing his words carefully -- "there must have been a moment where you, well, liked what happened in the carriage."

"Yes. There was a moment."

"How did it make you feel?"

I looked up at him. "I felt free."

The Prince smiled. "All right, Sweetness. Don't worry. You're going to be just fine.

"Now, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take you over to the whipping bench, and you're going to undress, and I'm going to tie you up. When the Captain whips you, it's going to hurt. Actually, with the Captain, it's probably going to hurt like fucking hell. And there's no safe word. You can't make it stop. You have to take it until he decides he's finished.

"But some people can find ecstasy there. So try to find the ecstasy. And even if you can't, it's far better than the alternative. All right?"

I nodded.

"So. Come with me."

We walked to the alcove and I stepped up to the bench. It was like a sawhorse -- a plank resting on two sets of triangular legs -- but the wood was dark and polished, and the plank was padded, and the legs had rings and ropes on them.

"Dress off, I think," said the Prince. "It has a nice bedraggled quality, but it'll get in the way. Corset off, too. You can leave the chemise."

I wasn't really thinking any more. I let the dress fall to the floor, and he unlaced my corset so I could slip it off. My chemise was short and sheer, and, rather irrelevantly, I wished I hadn't added that bit of lace to the hem. It seemed so out of place.

"Spread your legs," said the Prince, and I did, one foot pressed against each leg of the bench. He took the ropes fastened on each side, and he wrapped the ropes twice around each ankle before securing them to the rings on the other side of the legs.

Then he stood in front of me, with another length of rope in his hands, and he deftly wound it around my wrists, his hands making complicated knots with the ease of long practice. He connected the rope to one of the chains, and it was attached to the ceiling a little way in front of me, so that I was leaning forward over the bench, my chemise riding up so that I might as well have been wearing nothing. "If you hold on to the chain, it'll take some of the pressure off the ropes," he said, and then tightened the chain so I didn't have any slack at all.

The Prince adjusted the electric lamp to shine even more brightly in my little alcove, and I blinked. The brightness meant that I couldn't see out into the darkness of the room beyond, but I thought I heard the noises of people gathering.

I tested the ropes. I didn't want to look like I was struggling, but I did want to know how much give I had to work with. The answer was practically none. I was strung up tightly enough that I couldn't even bend my knees, and I could only shift my hips about an inch or so against the bench. A lot of my weight was on my hip-bones and I was awfully glad for the padding, although the irony of a comfortable whipping bench was not lost on me.

This was it. This was actually happening.

I don't know how long the Captain let me just stand there. It must have been at least ten minutes. Or maybe it was just five. My thoughts were spinning so quickly that I lost all sense of time. I closed my eyes, letting my head hang down between my arms, focusing on the feeling of the chain between my hands, the ropes around my ankles, my hips against the bench. I could almost lose myself in the peacefulness of it.

With no warning, there was a resounding smack on my right ass cheek. I squeaked and jumped, suddenly at full attention. I felt a hand massage where I'd been smacked, taking away a little of the sting.

This was it. This was actually happening.

The Captain walked around and stood in front of me. He had a paddle in one hand and a riding crop in the other. He put the riding crop in my mouth, between my teeth.

"First, the paddle," he said. "And then, when you drop it, the crop."

I shuddered all over and clenched my teeth tightly on the crop. And he walked away and I couldn't see him any more.

The paddle landed with a sharp sting, and he worked it on me evenly, first one side and then the other, in a steady rhythm. It hurt, damn him, and I let out a little cry every time it hit me. Occasionally he slapped against the tender skin of my inner thigh, exposed to him because my feet were tied so far apart, and that hurt even more. I couldn't help straining against the ropes, although I knew it was useless. And I kept the crop very firmly between my teeth.

He sped up, spanking me with the paddle both forehand and backhand, and I realized that he'd just been warming up, toying with me, even. Each individual smack was bearable, but having no time to recover between blows was torture. The pain built to a ringing crescendo. Soon I was crying, and I wanted to plead for mercy, beg him to stop, but I didn't dare try to speak for fear of dropping the riding crop. So I hung there, sobbing, as the blows from the paddle burned my backside and made my flesh feel like it was on fire.

The pain kept coming, for I don't know how long, and then suddenly, mercifully, wonderfully, he stopped. I tried to breathe, grateful beyond imagining for the reprieve. He drifted his fingernails lightly down my backside, and I jumped, startled by how delicious that touch felt on my sensitive skin.

And then, harder than I'd thought possible, the paddle landed on my ass again, with all the force of his double-handed swing behind it, and I gave a loud cry, sobbing and crying and whimpering. I was past any thoughts of pride. I could only hold on to the chain between my hands with all my might, and endure, and hope that it might soon be over.

A few moments passed, and then a few moments more. Then there was another stinging blow, even harder than one before, and I screamed and sobbed again. This new torture was much worse than the steady spanking he'd been giving me. I was quivering with fear, close to hysterical, not knowing when the paddle would fall again. Each moment of dreadful anticipation was almost as bad as the pain itself.

Again, there was a hard, stinging blow. I let out something between a scream and a sob, I couldn't help it, it was involuntary, and the riding crop fell from my mouth onto the soft carpeting below.

Very slowly, the Captain walked around in front of me, and very slowly, he knelt and picked up the crop from the floor.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"Not yet," he said. "But you will be."

I barely had time to breathe before the crop hit me, on the tender skin just above my knees. It was a different kind of pain; it hit deeper, as though it was striking me under my skin, directly on my muscles. The paddle could sting, leaving my ass throbbing with heat. The crop was going to leave welts, and bruises.

It hit me again, directly above the first blow, and then again, just above that. I realized that the Captain was going to systematically work his way from the knees upwards, and I cried, thinking of what that would mean when he got to my ass, already unbelievably sensitive from the spanking I'd just received.

It was small comfort that I could speak now. I mostly said "please, no," and "I'm sorry," in various permutations. It made no difference. I still couldn't move, and the blows still fell.

And then, right at that moment where I really, truly didn't think I could take any more, I slipped into that beautiful, peaceful space. There was nothing I could do, and that meant that I didn't have to worry any more. The pain was irrelevant. My master wanted to whip me, and he was whipping me, and everything was so beautifully simple.

I didn't know what I was doing, although the Prince told me later that it sounded like I was at climax, and I've never yet known him to lie. I only knew that I had transcended the pain. Nothing hurt any more. The riding crop hit me again and again, and part of me knew that it was hurting, and part of me knew that I was still crying, but I only felt a sublime peace.

Eventually the pain stopped, and someone untied my wrists and ankles, and I simply fell to the floor. I wasn't really in the real world. Someone lifted me up into his arms -- oh, it was the Captain, said the tiny bit of logic left in my head -- and he sat down and held me in his arms and I shook all over and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't even think. I just sat, shaking, as the fog in my head slowly lifted.

Eventually I realized that he was speaking. "Shh. I'm so proud of you. Everything's all right. Shh. I'm so proud of you. Everything's all right." He was saying it over and over, and I wanted to cry, I was so exhausted from that strange place I'd been to, but I couldn't stop shaking.

He carried me upstairs, out of the club, and then upstairs again past the little bookstore. He was Jonathan again. He took me into a bedroom, and he laid me down, and he laid down beside me.

"Marja," he murmured, "you are the most amazing woman I have ever met."

But I think I was asleep even before he laid me on the bed. So maybe I just imagined that.