He removed his fingers and her heart sank into her stomach, knowing what was coming next. She gripped the edge of the table, bracing herself, but his hand stroked gently over her back. His mouth moved close to her ear. “Water,” he whispered.

She tried to focus on the music and relax as the paddle came down across her bottom. Harder than his hand, but less intimate. She was suddenly a school girl being sent in for discipline. His power over her was absolute.

After a few moments, the tears started rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t know why she was crying. The pain was more, but she knew he was holding back, his intent not to damage or traumatize her. She cried for everything and nothing, but physical pain was the least of it. She cried for her lost little life that hadn’t been glamorous but had been comfortable. She cried for the things she hadn’t realized were such big holes until she had the facsimile of the thing—family. And love. She cried for the fake engagement she wished meant something, for her love for Leo that she didn’t think he’d ever return, for how low she’d sunk to be so desperate for him after everything—to allow him to do these things to her when he’d given her a chance to take her freedom and go. For the shame of knowing she would allow him to debase her in any way if there was some small chance he might later love her in return.

“Let it out, sweetheart. You need a good cry.” He switched from the paddle to the flogger. She jumped when the leather cords snapped across her back, and immediately her mind went to Leo’s scars, and she tensed again.

He must have sensed where her mental trail was going because he said, “It’s not a bull whip. Relax. I won’t break your skin.”

Water. The thought stole into her mind, with his voice attached. Though he hadn’t audibly said the word, she knew he must be thinking it. For this moment she felt as if she could read his thoughts, as if some magic now flowed between them and connected them in a way that made telepathy not only possible, but pedestrian.

The sting of the flogger didn’t feel pleasant, but it wasn’t a kind of pain that a person winced and pulled away from. It was a kind of pain you moved closer to, tested and pushed, more curious to experience the sensation without judgment because it wasn’t bad enough to seek to avoid right away. The hypnotic, repetitive strikes created a sense of space around her, a solitude where she could allow the rest of her tears to flow out in safety.

By the time she’d let everything out, things she hadn’t realized she was holding in so emotionally, her back and bottom were warm and almost pleasantly numb. She still didn’t fully understand the appeal—at least not in a sexual way—but it was cathartic. She got that part. And despite the fears that had lurked in her subconscious in a place she hadn’t been able to access them before, now she knew, it wasn’t like the beatings she’d taken as a child, and never could be. Leo wasn’t him.