The Red-Haired Woman

Chapter Two

Descent

People stared at the sight of her running nude after a man who seemed oblivious to her silent entreaties to slow or at least allow her to dress. She followed as though jerked along by an invisible leash, a bewildered puppy too loyal to consider disobedience. A few brave souls would take steps towards her as though to offer assistance but would also stop dead in their tracks as though Satan himself had glared at them when he would turn his head to meet their ignorant interference. Then they would see the desperate yearning in her eyes and turn away, knowing even in their dumb awareness that a lost soul had been claimed.

He led her on and on, past where the streetlights strained to keep the darkness at bay, past where she should have been fearful for her life even had she not been as naked as any prey that ever wandered into a panther's ambush. He stopped suddenly at the mouth of an even darker alley and she almost ran headlong into him as he paused. She stood there, looking at his back, the long coat almost imperceptible against the black of the night.

He turned slowly and beckoned for her to drop the garments she still clutched to her breasts. She felt her helplessness even as her fingers uncurled and they fell in a heap at her feet. He pointed at her legs and her eyes widened but she could not speak as she bent to roll the stockings down her legs and then to step out of them as well as her heels. He took her hand and led her down the alley, her bare feet feeling the smooth coolness of cobblestone paving as she went with Him.

He stopped at a steel door halfway down the alley pausing just long enough to rap sharply three times with his knuckles followed by two thumps from the heel of his hand. She heard bolts being slid back, like those she imagined a bank vault might use and the door slowly swung inward of its own accord. She caught the scent of candles, sweet waxes and burnt wicks. He pulled her inside and she felt cold tiles under her feet. He snapped his fingers and dim lines of light glowed on either side of a hallway leading away from the vestibule she sensed about her. It felt oddly gothic despite being thoroughly modern. Her emotions had calmed from her earlier trepidation, it was as though she knew she had been accepted by being brought to this place, as though she knew that whatever befell her within these walls would only further acknowledge the rightness of submission. Somewhere in her heart a wisp of doubt tried to whimper but could not.

He pushed on a door at the end of the hall and she wondered that it did not creak, it must be a dungeon, after all...but he led her purposefully into the dark. Letting go of her hand for a moment, she thought she might panic but caught herself as he lit a match and touched it to the single candle perched on a dresser against the wall. As it sputtered into life, she heard the rustle of his coat as he hung it on a hook set into the wall next to a large arched mirror over the heavy wood. In the flickering light she saw a heavy wooden table that could claim the same forest giant as the dresser.

He stepped toward her and grasping her wrists firmly he pulled her down onto the table then flipped her over onto her back. He bent, pulling something up from near the floor; she felt her wrists being secured to the legs with what had to be silken scarves. He paused to see if she would struggle, when she did not he tied her ankles to the opposite limbs of the table. He went to a corner of the room and nodded once, then reached for something leaning there that she couldn't quite see.

He turned and approached her, measuring her with his gaze and a tingle of fear suddenly lifted the hairs at the back of her neck. He raised his arm and she saw the whippet thin crop slice the air then land with a resounding crack and blinding hiss of pain across the nipple of her right breast. Her back arched and her mouth gaped fish-like as she tried to shriek out her sudden and utterly heated...

arousal

. She knew she was instantly wet, oh god, gushingly wet and she flushed as the scent of her want filled her nostrils. She turned her head towards the candle's flicker, her eyes wide as she tried to breathe, waiting for a twin blazing welt to appear on her other rosy nipple. It swelled into turgid erection as if searching for that blinding flash of pain followed by the flush of warmth as her blood roiled into the abused flesh. She yearned for that next spike to her desire, for ignition of her need for release, for Him to possess and use her passion to sate his own. She felt a slow trickle of slippery wetness seep from her cunt lips, swollen with lewd and desperate want. She wanted to pull her knees to her ears in a wanton display of her surrender but the scarves held her ankles in mocking rebuke.

Blinking, she looked up at his face to find Him studying her, the crop held at bay for the moment, evaluating the effect that the single cut across her breast had aroused within her. His gaze deepened and she knew that he could smell as well as see the humiliating signs of her surrender. She could feel more blood suffusing beneath her skin near the welt laid across her heretofore unblemished flesh, creeping upwards along both sides of her neck to turn her ears the deepest of rose red.

Her breathing slowed and a languor settled into her limbs that she dimly felt should be well-nigh impossible. How was she not shrieking in terror? How could this overwhelming feeling of trust be permeating her consciousness? She looked again at the crop, resting lightly now on his shoulder and she realized that she didn't fear it at all. With extraordinary clarity she realized that she wanted nothing more than for him to deal another slashing stroke to her flesh, and it mattered not where it landed. She began to see how the cutting pain freed her senses to expand beyond their former limits. Already, she could see the intricate designs molded into the slender taper of the crop's body. She watched his chest rise and fall and heard the air slide over his lips as it moved through his nostrils. The muscles of her arms and legs stretched and lengthened as she felt herself bowing upwards in an arch of offering. She held that pose, her eyes closed, hoping, aching for the next welt to be laid into her skin.

He did not make her wait. The crop whistled through the still air to land across the underside of her left breast. Again, her mouth opened wide in a silent scream of lust, as the dam of his restraint broke and subsequent blows rained in a staccato beat down her belly to her mons. As her senses reeled from the sharp stings she marveled at the utter control he was exercising. Each cutting strike was sharply kinetic, but there was no venom in the march of crimson lines that ended where her nether lips pulped in helpless lust. At a reprieve in the dance of the crop across her skin she dared to look at him through the tears that pooled along her lower lids in hopeless reaction to her perverse desire.

She saw the thin black rod wave and tensed slightly in anticipation. Her eyes widened as it descended towards her sex and then she felt it placed gently in the cleft between her cunt lips. He pushed it forward slowly, then just as slowly back and then forward again as she felt it slide deeper so that on the third stroke the carved rod grated along her swollen clit. The sudden sensation sent a bolt straight to her brain and her hips surged upwards as she strained against her bonds, a keening wail bursting from her lips. The relentless shaft kept rubbing against her hyper-sensitive nub as she writhed and shrieked uselessly against the searing assault on her cunt. The crop lifted from her slit and she sagged gratefully back against the hard, wooden surface only to leap in an agonized arch once again as the slender rod smacked with a wetly muffled crack against her protruding clit, standing in invitation at the apex of her core.

But the shout that left her throat was one of overwhelming rapture as she felt an orgasm roil through her in waves of pleasure, heightened by the pain of her abused flesh. As her cries modulated to moans and whimpers, she became aware that He was watching her intently. When her eyes finally opened to catch his gaze, she shivered at the burning intensity in his dark eyes. She felt another flush start in her chest and rise to her ears, knowing the contrast between her blush and the rest of her creamy complexion was obvious even in the low light of the candle's flame. She knew and felt too, that the ridged creases the crop had left across her skin matched the color in her cheeks. Yet underneath, the languid acceptance of His possession slewed through her veins like slow lava.

Opening her eyes fully, she met his scrutiny with an unblinking intensity of her own. She sensed He knew of her capitulation; how could he not with everything He had wrought upon her body and soul in the span of an hour? Was it two? She realized she couldn't tell how much time had passed since his whispered command in the bar.

As the quiet moment between them stretched longer, she wondered if he would release her back into a world she could no longer regard in the foolish adolescent way she had previously painted her reality with. Doubts began to pile into her head as his desire to claim her seemed to be ebbing. She tried to drink in the details of his face, filling in the shadows with contours burnt into her memory by her dance at the bar. She wanted to remember everything about Him if she was to be discarded, returned to a place where her body and emotions would never again reach the dizzying heights of this night. His gaze softened, the corners of his mouth barely crooking upwards, and her eyes rounded as she realized He had accepted her.

He wanted her!

She nearly exulted but somehow knew to release to him naught but a tremulous smile. She saw him nod, turning to open a drawer, and taking from it a small porcelain jar. Unscrewing the top and setting it aside, he dipped a finger into the open mouth. With infinite care he began smoothing a clear ointment along the ridge of each welt that he'd laid into her creamy skin. The initial sting eased into a cooling release for her abused nerve endings. She blinked at the turn in his treatment of her, the sudden tenderness as wrenching as the previous demand for her surrender. She held herself still as his finger dipped and smoothed, dipped and caressed, dipped and led her emotions into new turmoil.

She could feel that the delicate threads of his caring touches were binding her submission to Him around her soul; knew without any doubt that she would never again be free. She could only hope, as he held her at the edge of the abyss into which He had allowed her this glimpse, that He would not let her fall.