“You weren’t supposed to have them on to start with.”

He would have laughed at the memory she’d conjured with those words but he was already too turned on to do anything but obey.

“My apologies,” Kingsley said and quickly—but not too quickly—stripped out of his clothes.

Once he was naked she pointed the crop at the bed.

“Bend over. Hands on the bed. Feet apart.”

“You’re welcome to fuck me,” Kingsley said as he did what she ordered. “I certainly deserve payback for sodomizing you all night.”

“I might,” she said, wrapping black leather cuffs around his ankles and buckling a foot-wide spreader bar to them to keep his legs open. “But I think I want to beat you first. No...”

“No?”

“No. I know I want to beat you first.”

“Beat me then. And don’t be afraid to hit hard. Most new Doms are too gentle, too careful. You can strike me as hard—”

Kingsley screamed.

No, not quite a scream. He was too well trained to scream. But it was the closest he would ever get to a scream.

She’d hit him so hard on the back of his thighs with her crop that Kingsley’s arms gave out under him.

As he gasped and coughed and forced his arms to straighten again, he heard Elle’s voice from behind him.

“You were saying?”

“Nothing,” Kingsley said. “I was saying nothing.”

“Good. Shut up. Stand there. And don’t talk. Unless you want to say ‘ouch.’ That you can say.”

Ouch was the least of the exclamations she dragged from him that night. She wrung every French curse and every English curse he knew out of him. The crop was as vicious as a bamboo cane and in no time she had him welted from shoulder to shoulder, neck to knees. The back of his body burned as if it had been stung by a thousand angry wasps instead of one very calm young woman who was having too much fun tearing his body to pieces.

She hit the same spot three times in a row at the bottom of his rib cage. One, two, three vicious strikes with the thin wooden crop, and he released a cry of utter agony.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped, his fingers digging into the bed. He saw red, all red. The red light of pain flashed in front of him and he’d never see any color other than red again. “Do they teach all Catholics how to hurt people like this? Or is it just you two monsters?”

“Søren’s sadism is self-taught,” she said. “And I learned from Søren.”

“No one’s ever hurt me as much as he has,” Kingsley said.

“Good.”

“Why is that good?” Kingsley asked.

“I love a challenge.”

She hit him again. By the time she tired of beating him, his back was a solid red knot of burning welts. His cock was excruciatingly hard and throbbing with the need for release. If she even touched it, he would come. He breathed to calm himself. He was still angry he’d come so fast the first night she’d hurt him. He wanted to savor his arousal, let it build to the breaking point before coming anyway and anywhere she ordered him to. On her, in her, he didn’t care as long as it pleased her.

It pleased her now to lay the riding crop on the bed and run her hands up and down his broken body.

“Your skin is hot to the touch,” she said. “The welts are on fire.”

“I’m on fire,” he said, forcing the words out between rasping breaths.

“You’re beautiful like this.” Elle pressed her palm to his lower back where she’d concentrated her most vicious attentions. “Did you know that? When you’re submissive and suffering and so turned on your cock is dripping? It’s beautiful.”

“Merci,” he said, flushing slightly. Praise like that was a balm to his soul.

“Remember that night I told you about Wyatt, my college boyfriend for like a week? Well, you and I were in the music room. You unbuttoned your vest and your shirt and put my hand against the scar on your chest. I had this fantasy right then about pushing you onto your back and riding your cock into the ground.”

“I would have let you.”

“I was a virgin.”

“Only because he saw you first.”

Elle kissed his back between his shoulders. She reached around his hips and grasped his cock with two hands.

“What do you think would have happened if you’d seen me first?” she asked, stroking him so that he groaned.

“I’ve wondered that myself,” he confessed. “I know one thing—if I had seen you first, you wouldn’t have been a virgin at twenty. You would have been lucky to make it to sixteen.”

“Lucky is not the word I would choose,” Elle said, stroking him harder now. “Would you have shared me with Søren the way he shares me with you?”

“I would have shared you, but not in the same way.”

“How then?”

“I would have let him beat you and fuck you. And then let him watch while you beat me and fucked me.”

“You want him to watch me hurt you?”

“Oh, oui.”

“So he can see what he’s missing?”

“No.” Kingsley shook his head. “So he can see who you really are.”

“And who am I?” she asked, massaging his cock so that his eyes rolled back with the dizzying ecstasy of it.

And Kingsley grinned. She might be beating him and he might be submitting to her right now but that didn’t mean he’d given up all his power.