Kingsley turned Blaise to face him so that Mistress Irina could see her back. At his command, Blaise hadn’t done kink with anyone in the past week. He wanted her body to be a clean canvas for Irina’s first session.

“Very nice,” Irina said. “Beautiful skin. It will look better when I’m done with it. Put the cuffs on her.”

Irina held out a set of leather cuffs. Kingsley lowered Blaise’s arms and cuffed her wrists and ankles.

“What is the rule with couples?” Kingsley asked Irina as he handed Blaise over to her.

“The couple may touch each other as much as they want,” Irina said. “They can have sex during the session.”

“And you?”

“Dominatrixes don’t have sex with their clients,” Irina said, smiling. “Prostitution is illegal. S and M isn’t.”

“Bon,” Kingsley said. “But feel free to give Blaise an orgasm if you like. If she earns it.”

“I’ll earn it, monsieur,” Blaise said, and Kingsley slapped her hard on the bottom for speaking out of turn.

Irina put Blaise on the X-shaped cross, face to the wood.

“What’s your safe word, Blaise?” Kingsley said.

“Casablanca.”

Safe word established, Irina took a deerskin flogger off the wall. Good size. Good weight. Good heft. It would hurt like fuck, just the way Blaise liked.

“Start slow.” He whispered the reminder.

He watched Irina take a steadying breath. She moved her feet into position, gripped the flogger by the tips of the tails and raised it over her head. Kingsley gave her a nod. And then Irina smiled, a wide, deep, dark sexy smile. She could play aloof all she wanted, but he could tell she was enjoying this scene as much or more than Blaise would. A true sadist—he did know how to spot one. Irina let the flogger go, and it struck Blaise in the center of her back. She raised it, let it go again—another center strike. For the next few minutes she dusted Blaise with the flogger, hitting her again and again—not too hard, not too light. Blaise’s skin turned from creamy white to blazing red. She traded the deerskin for eel skin—a smaller, more vicious flogger. Blaise gasped and flinched as dozens of tiny welts raised on her back. The little flogger struck far more sharply, and soon it looked as if a dozen hands had clawed at Blaise’s back with cruel fingernails.

As Irina rotated through four different types of floggers, he watched her work. She was sure-handed and dexterous. It was all too easy to aim wrong and hit a bound submissive in the back of the head. But Irina never missed her mark, and soon Blaise sagged in her bonds, panting from the pain and the arousal the pain inspired in her. Kingsley called a halt to it. He could see Blaise was nearing her limit.

“Did you enjoy your beating?” he whispered in her ear as he ran a hand over her burning skin.

“I did,” she said, smiling. Her face was flushed with triumph. Blaise always looked her most beautiful after a beating.

“Do you think you earned an orgasm?” he asked her.

“Only if you think I did, monsieur.”

“That’s the right answer,” he said, and Blaise beamed. When she was in the mood to submit, nothing made her happier than serving at the feet of a dominant man. Out in the real world, she single-handedly ran a controversial nonprofit group, lobbied the state and federal government and made weekly appearances at important society events to raise awareness of her causes—sexual freedom and other women’s rights issues. But the powerful, competent, dominant Blaise disappeared the second she stepped into a playroom. It was all “yes, sir” and “no, sir” and “whatever pleases you, sir.” And now, what would please him would be to please her while Irina watched and helped.

“I think,” he said, “that you need more pain. A little more. What do you think?”

“I think you know best, monsieur.”

“But I also think you need some pleasure with your pain. What do you think, Mistress?” he asked.

“I’m happy to supply the pain,” Irina said, “if you’d like to supply the pleasure.”

“An excellent idea.” He unbound Blaise from the cross and led her by the wrists to the bed. He laid her on her back, and she winced as her skin touched the silk. “I’m thinking the rope? What do you think, Mistress?”

“Good choice,” she said. “I’m thinking this.”

She handed Kingsley a vibrator. He already knew what he’d do with it.

“She has been very good tonight,” Kingsley said. “Haven’t you?”

“If you say I’ve been good, then it must be true,” Blaise said.

“You’re so good at this, chouchou,” he said to her with a wink.

He crooked his finger, indicating that Blaise should stand up again. She obeyed and let him lead her to the center of the room. He positioned her under a large sturdy metal hook that hung from the ceiling. Irina brought over a step stool and a length of black silk rope. She looped the rope through the D-rings on the cuffs and hoisted Blaise’s arms over her head, tying her wrists to the hook.

Now Blaise stood tied in place, her arms above her head and no way to escape unless he or Irina untied her. And they would untie her. Eventually.

Irina stood in front of Blaise and, with deft hands, brought another length of rope around her back. For the next ten minutes, Irina looped and knotted, looped and knotted, until she’d made a corset of the rope, binding Blaise’s chest, torso and breasts tightly.