“We use the red-yellow-green-light system down here.” She unfurled the whip and held it by the handle in her right hand with the tip in her left. “At any point, call out any of those colors as needed. You say green and I’ll give you more. You say yellow and I’ll pull back the pace. You say red and I drop the whip and we play with a new toy. Got it?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. Also, if you want, you can say ‘Ouch.’ And that won’t stop anything at all.”

At that she let the whip fly. She struck the dead center of his back between the shoulder blades. He flinched then—everyone did—but he didn’t say “yellow” or “red.” He didn’t even say “Ouch.”

She let the whip fly again and dusted his broad back with red welts. Like a good pain-artist, she let the whip dance over his skin, not landing in the same place twice in a row. That way he would never know where the next blow would land, would never be able to brace himself. She counted in her head as she whipped him—ten, twenty, forty, sixty. By sixty she started hearing “Ouch.” By seventy it’d turned into “Fuck.” At seventy-five she hit a sensitive spot hard enough for a genuine cry of pure pain. But still she heard no red, no yellow.

“Green?” she asked as she gave him a minute to breathe. “I won’t think any less of you if you say yellow or red.”

“Still green...” His breathing had turned ragged. “I just need a minute, if it pleases you, Mistress.”

“It pleases me. Read me how many minutes we have left.”

Lance craned his neck to look at the stopwatch hanging next to the St. Andrew’s Cross.

“Thirty-seven.”

“Goodie. I stopped at seventy-five. Let’s make it an even hundred. Then we’ll play a new game. And maybe get rid of some more clothing. Yours.”

“Anything you desire, Mistress.”

She desired to give him twenty-five more lashes. Again the whip danced over his skin. She focused on his sides now and his shoulders. By the time she hit twenty his back had turned bright red. One welt even oozed a small amount of blood.

“Stay there,” she said as she put her whip in the pile of toys needing to be cleaned. “We have breakage.”

Lance peered back over his shoulder.

“Much blood?” he asked, seeming entirely untroubled at the idea she’d broken the skin.

“Not much.” She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and cleaned the small wound with Betadine and ointment. “Okay, we have two Band-Aid options—Snoopy or Sesame Street?”

“Snoopy,” he said.

“Perfect.” She applied the Band-Aid, tossed her gloves, and dropped a quick kiss onto the center of his back. The beating had left his skin burning. She felt the heat against her lips.

“You’re good, Mistress.” Lance turned back to face the wall. “I’ve never been with a Domme who plays as hard as you.”

“I appreciate that. I trained under the best sadist in the world.”