She unlocked his wrists from the cross and turned him around, slamming his back roughly into the painted wood. He flinched visibly as his back made contact with the cross. He’d be in agony for a week at least after today. Maybe two.

As she buckled his wrists to the cross, she felt his erection pressing against her stomach. Nothing got him harder than pain. Not threesomes, not orgies, not dominating, not submitting, not anything. She knew his need for release was so strong now it had become yet another form of torture. Good.

“You’re dying to come, aren’t you?” she asked as she pushed her hip into him and he shuddered from the touch.

“Death would be a relief right now.”

“I won’t let you die. That would be too merciful. I’m not really in the mood to be merciful today. I am, however, in the mood to redecorate. You know I love your scars, the bullet wounds, all of them...but I think you could use some new designs here.” She ran her hand all over his chest. “Nothing permanent. Wait here.” With a light and insulting slap-tap on his cheek, she sauntered off. She returned with a Wartenberg wheel and her violet wand.

“Now I know you don’t play with violet wands, and that’s fine. But I do. And the reason I do is because they can make such wonderful patterns on skin when used the right way. Or the wrong way. However you want to think of it.”

“You’re a sadist,” he said, his head leaning back against the cross. He looked up as if to seek help from the heavens. Help, unsurprisingly, did not come.

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

She plugged in the wand and held the contact in one hand and the Wartenberg pinwheel in the other. The electricity didn’t affect her as she’d made herself merely a conduit. Sparks buzzed from the sharp tips of the wheel, and with a slow and steady pace, she rolled it in a straight line down the center of his chest. He inhaled sharply as the electrified wheel left a thin raised line on his skin. She’d been on the receiving end of this technique before. The wheel never broke the skin, but the combination of electricity and sharp edges made the recipient feel like he was being sliced open.

“Only five lines, I think,” she said. “Count them for me. That was...”

“One...” he panted.

She ran the wheel down his chest a second time, then a third. She ran it over the old scars, over his nipples, across the sensitive skin of his lower stomach. When she touched his hip bone with it he coughed from the pain. He had to say the “five” twice because of how labored his breathing had become. She pretended she couldn’t understand him.

“That was five. Very good.”

He exhaled heavily in obvious relief.

“But let’s do one more set. In French. Say ‘un,’“ she ordered and ran the wheel once more down his chest.