“No, it won’t. My apologies to you gentlemen as well,” Ben said, nothing given away in his voice. Marcie curled her fingers in the cuffs. He was taking the blame, the quickest way to get rid of them. What the hell did he want from her? She was torn between confusion and anger.

As the DM returned to his post, she heard Master L and Frank gathering their tools. “A good slave,” Master L said dryly, probably from her double-edged apology. “Thanks for the pleasure of her, Ben. You’re fortunate, despite her willfulness. If you need assistance with her punishment, I’d be happy to help.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But for now…”

“Back off.” There was a grin in Frank’s tone. “No problem.”

The two men moved away, leaving a blanket of silence around them. She wasn’t sure what look Ben had cast around them, but she had the sense that the casual voyeurs had given them a little more distance. Sounds of whipping punctuated the air nearby, followed by cries of pleasure. An undercurrent of sultry music had been playing throughout, but now it all seemed muted against the roaring white noise in her head, the red haze over her vision. When Ben curled his hand in her hair once again, Marcie clenched her teeth. “If you untie me, try to make me go home, I’ll go right back to them.”

“I have no intention of untying you.” His body pressed up against her as she drew in a breath at the size of the erection pressed against her sore bare buttocks. The deadly calm of his voice made a cold knot in her belly. “You’re such a good little researcher, Marcella. Tell me what consensual non-consent is.”

She swallowed. “It’s when the slave or sub…when her safe word is only for a medical emergency. Within the boundaries they’ve set, the Dom can do anything he wishes.”

“Are you willing to give me CNC?”

She was angry with him, frustrated beyond belief, confused. He’d had CNC with her from the very beginning. When he exercised his Mastery over her, the moment he touched her, she trusted him down to the level of her soul. It was one of the many reasons she knew what she knew. Could she set aside the hurt, the pain, to embrace that right now? Or would she tell him to fuck off and let her go?

She knew the answer to that. She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Boundaries?”

“You know them. What happened to the blonde you were going to fuck?”

In answer, he stepped away from her. A cane hit her upper thighs with the fast whipping air noise that made it even worse. She shrieked, not expecting the strike. Pressing her forehead back against the wood, she set her teeth, managing the pain that sang through her nerve endings.

“Your safe word is simple. Red. Like your ass is going to be. If you use it, I’ll make the decision, based on your condition, whether you have a medical emergency.”

He passed his hand over her buttocks, used it to slap her ass several times, warming it up anew. Whereas Master L and Frank had been cautious, he knew just how hard to hit to wake up everything he’d done to her last night. Then he picked up a switch. He wasn’t playing or going for half measures. He was aiming for pain and punishment, pure and simple. If he thought he could beat her into submission, he was sadly mistaken. As he alternated its use with the spanking and the cane, she started to feel the burn, started to crave toward and writhe away from the blows at once. Honey from her pussy was running down her legs even as she shrieked at the pain.

Merciless, he bound her waist to keep her still, and as the volume of her cries rose, he strapped a rubber ball gag in her mouth to muffle the cries. She could still manage Red if needed, no matter how garbled, but if she went into full out screaming, as she had a feeling was going to happen, the gag would keep her from overwhelming the room.

The voyeurs were back. She could see them in the corners of her eyes. The K&A men mostly didn’t do public performances, but in the past couple years, she knew Ben had done it more often. It was more impersonal, after all. Right?

The pain of that thought was replaced with another kind of pain. He brought down what felt like a thin, hardened strip of rawhide to crisscross the existing marks, rapid, light blows that raked across the nerve endings without real damage but which delivered intense pain. She was moving and wiggling her ass, trying to get away from the agony. She was screaming “no, no, no…stop, please” because it really hurt. After last night, then this morning, oh God, it was too much.

But she wouldn’t use that safe word. She went in and out of pain, struggling for that zone, but it was too much. She was crying, even as her body was stoked for a release, nipples hard, pussy wet. When he put his hand in her hair, yanking her head back, she looked up into the face of the devil himself. He hadn’t put a cloth with the ball gag, so she knew her saliva was running over her chin, her makeup smeared from tears, her nose running. Completely exposed to him, raw and vulnerable. “Five more minutes,” he said.

“No…” she whimpered.

“You can do five more minutes.” He dropped his hand to her cunt, rubbed through her slickness. “Wet and fuckable. Say it. You can do five more minutes.”

She stared into his eyes. “Yes. I can.” With the gag, the words were garbled, but clear enough for him.

It was the longest five minutes she’d ever experienced, and when it was over, she was gasping, hanging in her bindings. She let out a hoarse scream as he spanked her ass cheeks with both hands, hard, sending all the painful sensation reverberating through her. Then he pressed up behind her, clasping her buttocks in a bruising grip. Putting his mouth to her neck, he bit hard enough to draw blood. She wished there was a lower crosspiece to rub herself against, because her clit was throbbing.

He’d reacted the way he would if she belonged to him and had defied him, actively seeking punishment to reinforce the boundaries between them. There was something about that which was important, though she couldn’t wrap her mind around it right this second, fighting the storm inside her.

Now he was pulling her pants back on. He left the laces loose, and she cried out as he found her secret, sliding into the lubricated channel. She worked herself against his hand shamelessly, wishing he’d touch her pussy. But of course he didn’t.

“You came here to be fucked tonight.”

She twisted her head around enough to give him a glassy half-glare, despite the tears. “Yeah,” she rasped. “You got everything revved up, and if you weren’t man enough to take care of the itch, I was going where it could be scratched. That’s what a slut does, right?”

“You’re better than that.”

“When you fuck the blonde at the bar, are you hoping she’ll help you forget last night?”

His lips tightened. He moved his hand around to rub her clit through the thin latex. She ground herself against his erection, trying to drive him as crazy as he was driving her. He was flexing against her ass, as if he was fucking her. Then he captured her breast, tugging on her nipple.

“God…” She was gasping as he worked her up higher. Her ass and thighs were throbbing, yet the wash of heat that came after that level of punishment made her want more, which was crazy because it had hurt like hell. Her mind was coming apart.

“Ben… Master…”

He stopped, pressing his forehead hard against her hair, his fingers spasming around her breast. “No,” he said in a growl. “No.”

“Yes.” She set her teeth. “Master.” Don’t pull away.

He stepped back, hands leaving her. Retrieving her bra, he hooked it around her, positioned the cups and secured the straps. He tightened up the lacings on the pants with one jerk that drove the breath from her. Then he freed her wrists and ankles. Coiling his arm around her waist, he brought her back to the floor on the wobbling stilettos. He gripped her other hand, holding her fast as he led her out of the public play area.

When she saw they were headed toward the exit, she balked, but he simply hitched her up on his hip and kept going until she put her feet back down and let him walk her. “I’m not done tonight.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“I’m not going unless you are.”

He suppressed a hard sigh. Yeah, he was probably like Mount Vesuvius about to blow, but she was already at the eruption point. She wasn’t going to be shut down. Before she could say anything further, she was yanked through the door, and they were out on the sidewalk on the west side of the building. He was crossing the street, taking her toward a K&A limo.

“I’m…not…going.” She planted her feet this time, yanked hard, and got away from him, though she almost tripped herself doing so. She kicked the shoes away, faced him on the balls of her feet.

When he turned toward her, she didn’t give herself time to register his expression or anything else. She led with her emotions, did something she knew was wrong, on so many levels. She punched him dead in the mouth with all the strength she had.

Ben was pissed, torn up in twelve different ways. The guy he’d been a lifetime ago knew only one way to respond to a physical attack. Catching her arm and her hair, he twisted her around, slammed her against the side of the limo. He pulled his strength back at the last moment, he wasn’t that crazed, but it wasn’t that which could harm her. It was what was raging out of control in him, what had goaded him to get her out of there and into a limo, out of his sight. Now.

He hadn’t restrained himself as much as he’d thought. She stumbled, hit her face on the metal corner of the rear window, letting out a surprised yelp of pain. When she managed to turn toward him, trying to regain her feet, he saw the bloom of blood. Worse, he saw her recognize the boiling, deadly rage pouring out of him. Every animal knew when they’d pushed a predator too far. The heart would leap into the throat, and the feet would automatically try to get into motion, to run, even as the mind’s fear would slow them down, just as the predator got faster, calmer, colder.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t run. She wasn’t that smart. She was trying to take another aggressive, fuck-you stance, and say something that would be entirely unwise.