“Yes, Daddy.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nora watched Søren as he opened the drawers of her curio cabinet, hunting for something only he knew he was looking for.
“If you tell me what it is,” she said, “I might be able to help you find it.”
“I haven’t decided what I’m looking for just yet. But not this.” Søren pulled a massive twelve-inch dildo out of a drawer and held it up. “Really, Eleanor?”
“That’s not mine, I swear,” she said. “I only use it on Sheridan.”
Søren raised his eyebrow. “She’s tiny.”
“She’s bigger on the inside. That’s a Doctor Who joke.”
“I went to school in England as a child. I fully understood the reference,” he said as he put the gigantic dildo back in the drawer. “My God, you have enough butt plugs to start a butt plug emporium.”
“You can never have too many butt plugs. If you’re looking for the scalpels and knives, they’re in the bottom drawer on the left.”
“I wasn’t…or I thought I wasn’t.”
“I like that you can get an erection just by hearing the word ‘scalpel.’ It’s like Pavlov’s dog, except it’s Pavlov’s erection.”
“Don’t mention dogs if you want me to keep it.”
Nora grinned sleepily. “You can slice me up if you want. I don’t mind. You’ll be hard until breakfast.”
“Blood-play? On white sheets?”
“Hmm…good point. If they were cheap, I’d say go for it. But this is Millesimo Egyptian cotton. Sheridan got them for me.”
“We’ll avoid bloodstains then,” he said. He took from a drawer a long thin carbon fiber rod—a misery stick—and set it on the bedside table by the lamp. Clearly, Søren was in a mood to bring the pain.
“Did you really not beat and fuck King tonight?”
“I did not. After last night, he’ll be needing more than a day to recover,” Søren said with a little sinister note of giddiness in his tone.
“Oh, great,” Nora said. “Now I have an erection.”
Søren lowered his head.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted his head. “Nothing. Except I’m glad you’ve decided you’ll never leave me. Because even if I could live without you, I would never want to.”
“You should kiss me after you say stuff like that.”
“I will,” he said. “But I’m going to torture you first. Adjustable spreader bar?”
“How short we talking?”
“Twelve to fourteen inches.”
“There’s a one-footer on the wall by the med table.”
“Ankle cuffs?”
“In the cabinet over the sink.”
Søren—magnificently naked—strode from the little bedroom into her dungeon. Like she’d go anywhere with that view… He returned quickly with all his little wicked implements—the spreader bar and the ankle cuffs.
And one leather strip, about a foot long and a couple inches wide. He must have cut it off her flogger with the thick fat tails.
“What’s that for?” she asked as Søren passed her the leather strip.
“You may need to bite down on something,” he said. “Turn over.”
Just like that…all the punch-drunk half-asleep joking stopped. It stopped like someone had flipped a switch, turned off the lights, turned on the pain. He could do that, Søren, with a glance and a subtle change of tone that came with the standard warning—I am not playing anymore.
She turned over as ordered and rested her cheek against the cool white sheets. Søren took each ankle in his hands and wrapped and buckled the cuffs around them. With small hooks, he secured the cuffs to the spreader bar.
Then he picked up the misery stick.
Then he grabbed the metal bar in the middle and pulled her into place as if she weighed nothing.
Then he lifted the bar, forcing her to bend her knees. Her feet were at his stomach on either side. Nora started breathing hard.
“I’d bite down on the strap now if I were you,” Søren said.
“You’re going to beat the soles of my feet, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” Nora grabbed the leather strap and put it between her teeth.
She hated foot torture. Hated it. Not the good kind of hate. Not the playful kind of hate. Not “Oh no, not that, Sir, anything but that, Sir.” She would rather take a hundred cuts from a scalpel, an hour-long session with a single-tail whip, or even red-hot wax-play that left her covered in first degree burns. Foot torture was one of her limits. But it wasn’t a hard limit, which meant she wouldn’t safe out if Søren tried it.
No, she wouldn’t safe out. But she wasn’t going to enjoy it.
She couldn’t even enjoy Søren’s thumbs on her insoles, caressing them tenderly. She was too tense, too scared, already breaking out into a cold sweat.
“You broke someone’s foot tonight,” he said. Nora didn’t say the kid deserved it. Søren knew that. “There is no one in the world that respects your sadistic impulses more than I, but I would be very disappointed if you got yourself arrested or sued. One of these days, Eleanor, you really are going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”
He caressed her ankles, all those delicate little bones. She wanted to cry. Instead, she grabbed a pillow and shoved it her under her breasts. It would help to have something to cling to during…
“Only five, I promise.” He ran his fingertips gently over the tops of her feet.
Five.
She could take five. She could survive that.
“On each foot.”
He picked up the misery stick.
The thing about misery sticks, Nora knew from experience, was that they were deceptive little toys. They didn’t look like they could hurt much. Nothing but very long, very thin metal rods. That’s it.
Except when you pulled the tip of the rod back and let it go, flicking it against the bare skin, it hurt worse than being sliced open by a knife that had been sitting in a red-hot fire.
And she was about to take five strikes on each foot.
The metal spreader bar rested across Søren’s stomach. She could flinch and twist, but there would be no getting away from him.
“Left foot or right first?” he asked. Nora shrugged. “I wasn’t asking you. Only talking to myself. Flex your feet. No curling the toes or I’ll make it ten.”
Nora had to fight every instinct in her body to flex her feet. A hot tear ran from her eyes and down onto the Millesimo Egyptian cotton sheets.
Her entire body was tense as a violin bowstring. And Søren plucked it.
One.
He flicked the misery stick once and the strike landed at the back of her left heel.
Nora flinched. She couldn’t help it. Flinched and whimpered again as her teeth dug deep into the leather strap in her mouth.
Two.
He flicked it again, half an inch down the heel, inching closer and closer to the sensitive arch.
Three.
The arch was next. She knew it. She braced herself and wasn’t surprised when the next thing she felt was nearly the worst physical agony in her life.