I feel his knuckles against my ass as he tucks his spent organ back into his tuxedo and fastens his trousers, and then I feel his fingers ghost appreciatively over my backside. He kneels behind me and kisses the welted skin there, his lips at once soft and searing over the abused skin.
“Hold still,” he commands, and then I look behind me to see him pulling a small tube from his inner jacket pocket. Some kind of medicated ointment.
He unscrews the cap and with the care of a surgeon, applies it onto the worst of my welts. Each and every one, he kisses before he rubs the soothing cream over it, like a priest kissing his stole, like a pious man kissing his holy book before setting it aside.
And with each and every one weal he cares for, the awful truth assembles itself in front of me.
He has ointment for the welts.
Which means he knew the welts would be there.
Because he sent the dress in the first place.
He was my date all along.
I’m going to kill Mark. Maybe he’s the former assassin, but I am going to kill him so fast and so hard, and then I’m going to kill him again and again. How dare he?
And how dare Lorne?
I lied earlier. This was why I divorced my ex-husband. Because every whiskey-sweet moment inevitably turns sour; because every moment blissfully intoxicated is paid for with nausea and pain later. Because every heady, happy orgasm is stained by its price.
I let Lorne finish; I let Lorne carefully rearrange my silk underthings and then tear free the bottom layer of the skirt, the layer that had inflicted so much pain.
I let him smooth the skirt of my dress back down. And then I turn to face my ex as he stands up.
“You were testing me,” I say quietly.
He’s already shaking his head. “There’s no test you have to pass for me, Morgan, and there never was. I was proving to you, not testing you.”
“Proving what, Lorne? That I’m too stubborn to take off a dress when there’s clearly something wrong with it?”
He touches my jaw, and I turn my head away. Petulant, maybe, but prudent too: I don’t want him to see my eyes swimming with tears.
Instead of answering my question, he asks one of his own. “Why did you really ask Mark to help you find a lover?”
I don’t answer. I’m worried I won’t be able to speak without wavering, without choking on four years’ worth of loneliness and a lifetime of pride.
“Was it because you knew he was a good enough friend to sense what you needed? Was it because you knew he would find a Dominant lover for you without you having to say the words out loud?”
I still don’t answer, and I can’t look at him. But I do finally manage a tiny nod.
Lorne lets out a long, jagged breath, pulls my face back to his and drops his forehead to mine, mask to mask. “Mark came to me because he is a good friend to you, no matter what you might be thinking right now. He came to me because he knew I could give you what you were looking for and keep you safe. And that’s what I was proving. That I could give you everything. That it could be enough, even if just for one night.”
“I feel humiliated,” I say.
“Would you still feel humiliated if it had been a stranger to give you this dress? To fuck you while you were welted up from it?”
“Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know.”
“You were wet, Morgan. The dress made you wet.”
“And that’s what you needed to prove? That I can be a switch after all?”
He sighs and lifts his head from mine.
“I was with you all night, Morgan. While you dressed, while you drove here, while you walked in. Because my touch was in that dress, because I was wrapping my desire and discipline around you before you even knew you’d see me. Yes, I wanted to prove that it could be fun and good—but only because you already wanted someone to prove that to you tonight as well.”
I don’t have an answer to that, because it’s undeniably true.
“You wanted to feel the weight of someone’s will on you,” he continues, “and I proved that I can do that with just a few nettle patches in your dress. For four years, I’ve been asking myself if there was anything I could have done, any argument I could have given you, any gesture I could have performed, to show you that you can play however the hell you like and still be the woman you need to be. I thought—”
He stops, and a muscle leaps along the carved line of his jaw. He looks down at his hands, still holding the tube of ointment, and I hate that I can’t read his gaze right now, I hate that I can’t see his whole face.
He doesn’t finish what he was saying, and I can’t think of what to say. I just came harder than I ever have; I came so good that my body is craving infinitely more. But I cannot be un-humiliated, and the sting of my pride is worse than the sting of the nettles.
And…yes. I’m afraid.
Still.
Lorne screws the cap back onto the tube of ointment and then places it in my hand, curling my fingers around it. “Hydrocortisone cream. If the welts aren’t gone in two or three days, let me know.”
“Thank you,” I say numbly.
He takes a step back, and I realize he’s about to leave. A fresh bubble of panic swells in my chest.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Do you want me here?”
Always. “Of course not,” I say instead, making my voice as frosty as possible.
I can’t let him see how much I want him, not after he embarrassed me, not after he lied. He’s plundered everything else of mine, and the fact that I enjoyed the plundering as much as him doesn’t soothe me in the least.
He nods, as if he expected this answer. “Then I’ll go. And I am sorry.”
“Sorry for which part?”
Those gorgeous eyes trace my face. “All of it. But especially that none of it was enough.”
And then he pushes through the gauzy veil separating our alcove from the ball and disappears into the lavish, glittering fray.
4
I cry all the way back to the city.
I have my Secret Service team drive me back, not Mark, because I’m not entirely sure I won’t kill him for his part in Lorne’s deception, but mostly because I need to be alone.
When I get to my hotel, I tear off the wings, the dress, the still-damp silk covering my pussy. I kick off my shoes and I throw the mask in the trash.
And it’s when I’m climbing into the shower for a nice long shower-cry that I catch a glimpse of my ass in the mirror. Those welts which feel so huge and which throb in aching time with my raw, unhappy heart—they’re so small in reality. They’re the size of peas.
Peas.
And here I was acting like my dress was the sartorial manifestation of a Geneva Convention violation. Acting like Lorne had paddled my bottom raw before he fucked me.
I nearly snort at myself through my tears. Some fierce Domme I am. A few pea-sized welts and I might as well have had a vibrator between my legs.
I hate the following week. I hate work, I hate not working. I hate being with people and I hate being alone.
I don’t go to the club, and whenever I masturbate, I think of Lorne fucking me against a wall, his stubbled jaw scratching my neck as the nettled-dress scratched my bottom. I think of the reverent aftercare—the kisses and the ointment.