Tender Mercies - By Kitty Thomas Page 0,51
and let the dog . . . ” she trailed off, unable to complete the sentence.
“But now he just physically hurts you?”
“Yes, Master.”
He sat beside her and pulled her against his chest. She sagged into his warmth, even though she didn’t want to. He’d become as frightening to her again as he’d been the first day when he’d taken her out of Lucas’s dungeon. When she’d thought she’d die at his hands.
“Grace, I don’t think these nightmares are just about Lucas. I think it’s about your lingering fear of what might happen with me. The fear that you aren’t really safe yet. Once we got through the sex, and you started trusting me there, that aspect of the nightmares disappeared. We have to do pain now so we can kill him off completely. Trust me.”
She wanted to, but she couldn’t. It was asking far too much. Even if years passed in his care it would be asking too much. Part of her wanted to do whatever he wanted, but she wasn’t sure if she could make herself willingly accept what was about to happen. And then what? Would it turn into a punishment? Wouldn’t that be worse?
He stood and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, be a good girl for me.”
“What if I have a flashback?”
“We’ll work through it and go slow. Believe me, it will be different. You’ll know exactly who you’re with.”
He had to half drag her to the spanking horse anyway; she just couldn’t make her feet move and was grateful he seemed to understand. “Straddle it, kitten, and lie on your stomach for me.”
She mounted the black, vinyl-padded bench, and Asher adjusted the section her knees would rest on. The part she straddled and lay across was long and not too wide, so that her breasts pressed over the sides. She tensed when he strapped her ankles and wrists to the lower bench.
“Shhhh,” he said, his hand running the length of her back and dipping between the cleft of her ass. “It’s for your safety, so you don’t inadvertently struggle and hurt yourself.”
The bench pressed tight against her mound, quickly warming from her body heat. He pressed a button and vibrations started. She let out a surprised moan. No spanking horse she’d ever been on, before the island and after, had ever vibrated. She pressed harder against the vinyl.
He chuckled. “I have attachments for penetration, but let’s not overwhelm you today.” She shivered. “Is that a good shiver or a bad shiver?”
It made her feel bizarrely safe that he noticed everything about her. Each nuance of expression, each tremble, each goose bump that popped out over her flesh in response to him. At least he was aware of what was going on, which meant anything delivered by him would be deliberate.
“Good shiver, Master,” she said, blushing. Already he was making her forget her anxiety, and she was almost back to thinking maybe she could trust him. Though Asher was demanding and insistent and never treated her like glass or like she was a special case to him, she’d somehow been okay.
Perhaps it was the utter helplessness of her situation. With no hope of ever gaining her freedom and a master who didn’t seem intent on harming her, her brain had moved quickly into Stockholm mode and along the path to acceptance. Somehow she was able to tolerate and even love his touch: his hands, tongue, and cock on her and inside her.
Her submissive instincts had answered his every demand, as if the two of them together created a perfectly choreographed dance. Of course he would make this tolerable as well. But then, the hitting hadn’t started yet, so maybe it was a little soon to be making those kinds of judgments.
Her head turned toward the sound of the trunk opening. He seemed to be getting lots of things. Bad shiver. A few tears slipped out along with a little whimper.
“Grace––I haven’t even touched you yet.”
He began methodically placing objects on the table: a flogger, a riding crop, a paddle, a cane. She shut her eyes, unable to deal with a table laid out so much like the one in the dream.
“Please . . . ” She didn’t know what else to put with that sentence, so she just dropped her head back onto the bench. Her begging wouldn’t sway him. The time she’d spent with him had already proven that. If Asher said something was going to happen, it was going to happen. And it