“Good boy,” she said, slipping two fingers between her breasts and from her corset producing a leather strap.

“Fuck.” He sighed.

“Eventually,” she said, and wrapped the strap around his testicles and the base of his penis. Cock ring. Pleasure and torture all in one.

“You have a beautiful cock,” she said, massaging it with both hands. The leather of her gloves abraded, and he quickly grew hard from the bite of the seams against his most sensitive skin. She grasped his cock by the base and slid her hands up and down the shaft. Fluid appeared on the tip and dripped onto her gloves.

“Eager, aren’t you?”

“I haven’t had sex in two weeks,” he confessed. “Eager is an understatement.”

“It’s such an impressive erection, I’d hate for you to lose it before I had time to enjoy it.”

“You’ll enjoy it,” he promised, as she traced the edges of the leather strap. Blood pooled and pumped into the shaft, and he closed his eyes tight.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little,” he said.

“Good.” She grinned at him. “It’s a start anyway. Now stand there, don’t move. I’m going to take your clothes off. I’ve heard rumors that Kingsley Edge had one of the better male bodies in the city. Time I find out for myself.”

She pulled his jacket off his shoulders and pushed it down his arms. When she had it off, she walked to the armchair and laid it carefully over the back. He knew better than to think she was showing respect for him by showing respect for his clothes. No, he had a cock ring on and a painful erection. She would undress him as slowly as possible, dragging the process out until he was in agony.

“When was the first time you submitted to erotic pain?” she asked as she unbuttoned his vest.

“Eleven years ago.”

“You’re so young,” she said. “How old were you when you started doing kink?”

“Sixteen.”

“Domme?”

“Sadist,” he said. “Male.”

“Sixteen’s awfully young to be submitting to a sadist.”

“He was seventeen, Maîtresse.”

Mistress Felicia laughed. “I wish I had gone to your high school instead of mine.”

“You couldn’t have. It was an all-boys Catholic school.”

“Catholic,” she said as she removed his shirt. She didn’t flinch at the sight of the scars on his chest. She’d likely seen worse in her work. “I should send the pope a check. I get half my clients from his church.”

Lifting his feet to let her tug his boots off sent pain shooting into his stomach. He hated cock rings. He could keep his erection without one. But the pain did what pain always did to him—cleared his mind, pulled him out of the past, obliterated the future. There was nothing but now, right now, and the pain that held him in place, unable to think, unable to dream, unable to want anything but more pain.

Mistress Felicia tugged his pants down, folded them neatly and laid them across a chair with his other clothes. He appreciated that she treated his clothes with respect, unlike Søren who’d taken perverse pleasure in dropping them on the floor and traipsing over them.

Kingsley focused on her face as she moved. A lovely woman in her late thirties, she had an imperious air to her, a proud set to her face and no mercy in her eyes. In that regard she reminded him very much of Søren.

“When did you start dominating people, Maîtresse?” he asked, curious what else she and Søren had in common.

“I’m going to punish you for speaking out of turn.”

“As you should.”

“But to answer your question,” she said, standing in front of him, “I was eight when I started bossing around all the boys in my neighborhood, fifteen when I tied my first boyfriend up and nineteen when I took on my first client. He was my college chemistry professor.”

“You had good chemistry, then?”

“I was going to be gentle with you,” Mistress Felicia said. “Because of that joke, I’m afraid now I’ll have to destroy you.”

Kingsley’s heart galloped in his chest. The cock ring had made him hard. The threat of pain made him harder.

“Good.”

Mistress Felicia bent down and from a long leather bag produced two sets of leather cuffs.

“You haven’t had sex in two weeks?” she asked.

“The two longest weeks of my life.”

“I’m going to leave two weeks’ worth of bruises on every inch of your body. It’ll take them that long to heal, which will give you two choices. You can either not have sex for another two weeks until they’re gone, or you can come to me every day and serve at my pleasure until they’re gone. And then, if you beg nicely, I’ll give you more.”

Two weeks as the property of Mistress Felicia? It was June, wasn’t it? Had Christmas come early?

“I’ll take the second option,” he said.

Mistress Felicia took a step forward and grabbed him roughly by the right forearm, pressing his hand to her chest. She strapped the cuff on his wrist and buckled it.

She released his right arm, and buckled his left. From her bag she produced a long metal clip. She ordered him to raise both arms. As soon as they were up, she cuffed his wrists over the top bar of the bed canopy. Once cuffed into place, he could do nothing but wait, not moving, and want her.