What My Flowers Said Ch. 17

My eyes closed tight. I nodded, or tried to at least, tugging against his hold on my hair. Punish me? My shoulder prickled, and ached. He let go, and I bowed down again, letting his warm, muscular arms guide me into position.

What I felt in that moment could be called 'resignation,' but that wouldn't quite capture the essence of it. I was glowing still in the warm, red euphoria of my orgasm. I wasn't just resigned to his will—I was part of it. Like a puppet, like a puppy, cowering at his ankle, I lived and died by his word. I wanted him. Wanted him use me. To use me as the instrument of his pleasure. Even my soul was not my own. Right then. Right in that moment, I would've given him anything. And if what he really wanted was to punish me—to cause me pain—qu'il en soit ainsi.

He didn't leave me waiting long. In swift succession, the flat of his palm struck hard on either side of my ass. I gasped. It was so loud... The slaps stung like venom, but just for a moment, an dissolved into a dull, throbbing burn. He struck again, four this time.

"Such a lovely sound, Penny," he growled, rubbing my tingling cheeks with his palm, "Such a lovely, blushing ass."

I trembled. His touch almost tickled, the way it clashed with his blows. He hit me again, the sharp noise echoing off the floor, and windows, and walls.

"This is going to get worse," he ran an agonizing finger down the curve of my spine, "And then it's going to get better. Do you trust me, Penny?"

Yes. No. I don't know.

I honestly didn't. But I nodded meekly, "Yes, sir..." as the side of my face slid over the leather, leaving a smear of warm tears its wake.

Trust him? While he has me bent over? Beating me for the fun of it?

It seemed crazy to me. Insane. But a deep, shadowy part of me kept swelling brighter, hotter, every single time that he struck me. I didn't know at all what to call it. I don't know where it came from, or how it got there. But somewhere deep, deep down, some dim, red light inside me was getting turned-on for the very first time. Like some mysterious unlabeled switch on the circuit breaker of my brain. The blows returned, and I shut my eyes.

...Nine...ten...eleven...twelve. They kept coming, and coming. The stings themselves grew indistinguishable, coalescing to one monstrous, smoldering burn. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four...I bit down on the leather to keep myself from squealing. Forty-seven-forty-eight-forty-nine—And just as I was about to lose count, to lose control, and cry out the color of my canvas—and surely, by that point, of my backside—they ceased.

I sobbed, catching my breath in a shrill heave. And he pierced me.

I choked on raw air, staggered by the feeling—the feeling of him filling me, splitting me open. Several times he sank himself all the way in, and withdrew again all the way out, letting the tip of him caress and tease my clitoris before reclaiming me.

I quivered and quaked. I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I was so sure, so certain that every ounce want was ripped right out of me with my climax. And yet each time he filled me up, the dull throb was there again, stirring warmly between my thighs. It was like before, but different; foreign, yet familiar, dilating deeper and deeper each time he laid himself into me.

There's a strange little of euphemism for 'orgasm' in French. La petite mort... 'the little death'. I think my climax was born when Dmitri first kissed me days ago. She grew up fast, had a troubled adolescence. She ran away. She found herself. And the moment she was discovering some modicum of serenity, of self-possession, she died, tragically, inside of me. This was her reborn, reincarnated. Metempsychosis. The transmigration of souls. Just an infant, but an enfant terrible. Untamed, bestial. Struggling to survive in the wild. And now, any time now, I knew he might kill her again. I groaned shamelessly into the leather as the ache burned brighter.

"Do not come," he warned, swatting my ass.

I could hear his breath growing stormy. I parted my lips, intending to swear to him, but the sound that left them was more like a bray. I buried my face, struggling, suffering, breaking apart in the intoxicating torments of his touch.

The way he moved in me—like a piston; steady, steam-powered, merciless. I clenched my fists, whimpering as he forced himself deeper, and my eyes grew wide as his hand wrapped inward around my thigh, edging lower and lower, until he grazed, once again, the tingling tip of my clitoris.

"Oh, God!" I moaned into the leather, "Oh God, please..."

Another hard slap snapped me back to him.

"Don't beg to God, Penny," he growled, "He's not the one fucking you."

His hand kept stroking, working his lascivious, elliptical sorcery between my thighs, leaving my cheeks tingling and sore. Every muscle fiber in my body seemed taut as braided steel, strained to the limit, and about to snap.

"Please, Dmitri. Please, please let me come."

There was water welling in my eyes.

"Not yet," he rasped. "Not just yet..."

With a kind of mechanical cruelty, his rhythm ascended even higher. I sobbed, trying to contain it. My orgasm was reaching critical mass, threatening to meltdown and rip right through me. With a prickle of terror, I felt myself slipping over the edge.

"I can't, I can't, I can't—" I begged him, "Please!"

He snarled ferociously.

"Come."

Truly. I don't think I'd really screamed since I was about nine years old. And even then, I was probably holding back—shouting at my brothers, or throwing a late temper tantrum for not getting my way. But when Dmitri at last allowed me to come, I screamed. I screamed with wild, wanton abandon.

I was of two minds. On one plane, I felt my entire body uncoiling like a rope, wound to its tensile limit. On another, I was aware of Dmitri buried somewhere inside me—of him groaning, and gasping; of a second, subtler series of pulsations that were not my own, but emanated from deep inside me as he stiffened. Like a little heart that sprang to life, beat vigorously six or seven times, and perished.

Still panting, perspiring, he let go, and I collapsed in a tremulous heap beneath him. Eyes wide. Body broken. I watched him stand and peel a condom from his still-swollen member. Mon criss... My lip quivered. So big... I couldn't fathom how he'd fit it inside of me.

I was quiet. Silent. But in a very literal sense, I was hysterical. From the Greek hysterikos, 'disorientation of the womb.' Plato saw it was an animal within an animal, roaming freely through a woman's body. Getting lost, at times. Getting trapped. If that were true, in that moment, mine would have been cowering, frightened and confused, in the darkest, most hidden recesses of my flesh.

Without speaking a word, he lifted me up onto the daybed, laying me on my side. He sat, gently tracing the curve of my hip, and the inward crease of my spine. He let me lie still for a long, long time—tracing, caressing, cutting his palm on the blades of shoulders. I'm not really sure how long it went on. I'm not really sure I was awake. My head was in a fifth dimension—one cut off from the laws of physics; cut off from minutes and hours, millimeters and miles.

"You're crying..."

His voice brought me back, like a shatter like crumbling quartz. I hadn't realized it. But he was right. There were clear salt tears trickling from my eyes. I think I wept like a martyr's statue. My body maimed, my face serene. Saint Agatha in agony. Saint Catherine, spinning her wheel.

And then, the shame.

God. God... Oh, God. What? What the hell was that? What did you just let him do to you, Penny? The way he'd coerced and controlled me; the way he beat me, and made me beg—it violated everything. Everything I'd ever believed about how a man was supposed to treat me. It was despicable. It was odious. And I liked it...

I sniffled. I liked it so much. It horrified me. I shrugged away from his hand as he passed it over my shoulder, suddenly feeling scalded by his touch. Does that make you a whore? I batted my eyes angrily, trying to rid them of their tears. Does that make you weak, Penny? I shivered. Does it mean there's something wrong with you?

The way I'd felt when he got me going; the dark place my mind went to—it was so alien. I was a stranger in my own skin, like one possessed. I would have done anything he told me to. Anything at all. It was madness. And now? I frowned. What now? It happened. There's no taking that back.

Even if there was, I wouldn't. I'd lost something, yes. Some self-respect. Some memories. Some ideas about the border between pleasure and pain. A fresh cut bough of my innocence had come down in the storm. But the wound it left in me wasn't empty. It was an opening, and there was something there. Something in me, buried deep, deep down. I wanted to know—needed to, really—I needed to know where it led. I curled my toes, gazing over his lean, muscular body. I followed the hypnotic rise and fall of his chest. I watched several minutes before I could speak.

"So, that—" timidly, I covered my chest, "That's what you wanted with me," I breathed, "...Dmitri?"

He turned, drawing his blue eyes up slowly, painfully, along the length of me.

"That's 'Mr. Caine' to you," he smirked wryly, and sighed, "I hit you too hard, Penny." He laid a cool palm across my tender, blushing backside.

"You're going to bruise."