“Yes.”

  Sometimes, he told her exactly what to expect. Other times, she had no clue how many, or how fast. She preferred knowing, and for quickies like this, he usually obliged.

  Not always, though, and it was totally his decision. Not hers.

  He landed the first three and she gasped at the sharp slices, trying to ride the pain out until it dulled, but the second set of three came before she’d gotten the pain from the first set under control, and she screamed through these three, took a breath when they were over, and forgot how to breathe, just froze in place, mouth open, silent, not breathing.

  The next set of three landed, a little slower than the first two sets, but also harder, more intense. She pulled more air into her lungs and her voice dropped several octaves. “Ohhh, fuck.”

  And then her body relaxed, her ass muscles unclenched, and she was ready for the last set. She wanted them. Ached for them.

  Marcus said, “That’s it,” and then she felt the next three. The pain was intense, but she kept her muscles relaxed and absorbed the fire and heat of every slice into her body. Her breathing barely hitched this time, and there was no sound.

  “Do you want more?”

  She nodded, and he said, “Okay, eight more, in two sets of four, then I fuck your ass.”

  The first set of four landed and she moaned in bliss as the heat and agony soaked into her skin and muscles — into her bones. She absorbed the pain, absorbed the fire.

  The next four came like a storm of agony being rained down on her, and then he was behind her and over her, his cock pressing in, stretching her open, invading her all at once and not even a tiny bit gently, but that was okay. It hurt, but it was perfect, and she started coming as soon as his hips slammed into her ass, his cock fully sheathed inside her.

  He fucked her like a madman, and it didn’t take him long to come.

  He stroked her forearms to let her know she could release the handles. She did, and he moved way to take care of the condom and clean up, then she heard him letting Ruby out, telling her to relieve herself and join them on the bed.

  Marcus inspected Heather’s ass, moved her off the wedge, tossed it off to the side, and crawled into bed to hold her while they waited for Ruby. When Ruby joined them, he opened his other arm, so they all snuggled together with Marcus in the middle.

  Probably five minutes later, Marcus told Ruby, “I’ll give you a choice this morning: cane, tawse, or one of my leather floggers with knots. I’ll decide which part of your body, but you can decide the implement.”

  “Flogger, Master. The black one with the purple handle, if I can choose which of your knotted floggers.”

  “You may. Retrieve it from the playroom, and I’ll put you on the cross when you return.”

  When she’d gone, he kissed Heather on the cheek. “I’ll flog her and then take a shower with her, probably order her to blow me while we’re in there. You don’t have to wake up for another hour. Want me to reset the alarm?”

  “My phone’s alarm is set. I thought I was up for the day — not so sure now.”

  He laughed, that masculine laugh guys get when they know they’ve done good sexually, and Heather enjoyed his touch, his warmth, while she could.

  When Ruby returned, he told her, “I’ve changed my mind. Bondage chair, love.”

  Marcus’s bedroom had a few pieces of furniture that doubled as a bondage device. The bondage chair was leather and looked like a normal, upholstered chair, until you noticed the extra hardware.

  He had her sit with her ass on the edge. She’d slept in her wrist and ankle cuffs, so they were handy for him to cuff her hands to the top back of the chair, and then lift her legs and tie them off to chains hanging from the wall. They looked decorative, but Heather knew from experience they weren’t coming loose, no matter how much you pulled at them.

  Marcus finally lifted the flogger, and Ruby must’ve realized he intended to flog her pussy, because she started fighting her restraints, but her fear only pushed his resolve.

  “Whose pussy is this?”

  Ruby stopped fighting, closed her eyes a second, and opened them to meet his gaze. “It’s your pussy, Master.”

  “Are you telling me I can’t flog this pussy?”

  “No, Master. I would beg for mercy, but I don’t believe it will help this morning.”

  He smiled his special sadistic smile. “No, I don’t believe I have any mercy at the moment. I want your pain — proof that you belong to me, that you are mine. Do you want to give me that proof?”

  “I do, Master.” And the way she said it, Heather believed her. Ruby was terrified, and yet, she wanted what was about to happen.

  “Then ask me to hurt you. Ask me to flog your pussy with this flogger.”

  “Please prove to both of us that I belong to you, Master. Please...” Ruby paused, as if fighting with herself, then spoke again, a little more sure of her words this time. “Please flog my pussy. Please hurt me until you’re satisfied, Master.”

  Heather watched from the bed as Marcus struck Ruby’s pussy again and again, and noted his pace picked up once Ruby’s screams filled the room, as if her pain fueled him, made him need to hurt her more, and more, and more.

  When Marcus finally stopped, tears streamed down Ruby’s face and she gasped for air — and Marcus was hard again. The chair was at the right height for Marcus to fuck the ass of whoever was sitting in it, so when he put a condom on, Heather knew the plans for a blow-job in the shower had also changed.

  Heather winced when he plowed into Ruby’s ass with only the lube on the condom, and nothing more.

  Ruby’s screams once again filled the room, but within a few minutes, she was begging to be allowed to come. She pleaded with him, told him she couldn’t hold out much longer, begged for permission, said she didn’t want to be punished and to please give her permission for release. Just watching them had Heather horny again, and she played with herself, putting three fingers in her pussy and fucking herself hard.

  When Marcus finally gave Ruby the command to come, Heather came, too.

  Chapter 37

  The foursome spent most of the weekend together, but it wasn’t all sex. They went to a bougee grocery store, and yeah, both submissives wore butt plugs, but they had fun finding items for a charcuterie board, and ingredients to use for a fancy fondue meal. Later, they worked together as a team to put their extravagant meal together, and no one said the words out loud, but to Heather, it felt as if they were a family.

  She knew Ruby wasn’t fully committed, knew they weren’t a family yet, but it sure felt like they were on their way.

  Marcus hadn’t been kidding about managing every minute of Ruby’s time, and when he didn’t have her actively following orders, she was most often caged. Sometimes, he put a notepad and pen in with her, and gave her a writing assignment — like a scene from her past that she sometimes masturbated to, and he was clear he wanted it written in great detail. Once, he told her he wanted a list of at least twenty things he’d done in the past week that had made her angry, or that she’d had a hard time coming to terms with. He also had her write a detailed description of how a normal day at work went for her.

  Kyle was only submissive to Heather during sex, meals eaten at home, their bedroom, Marcus’s bedroom, and the playroom. Could she get away with making him write a paper about what he visualized while he masturbated? Or would it be better to ask him, and have her tell him?

  No, she didn’t want to read about it, she wanted to hear it from his lips, so she’d ask him, so she could look into his eyes when he told her. Also, this needed to be when it was just the two of them, without an audience.

  The next week, Ruby arrived at the ranch a little earlier than Heather expected, and she was still putting Phantom through his paces. Jonah stood with Ruby and made small talk while Heather finished, and then walked her into the barn as Heather dismounted Phantom and fed him some apple pieces.

  “I’ll get Phantom squared away,” Jonah told her. “The ATV is charged, if you want to take it to the wall.”

  Heather had chosen an electric ATV not because it was eco-friendly, but because it was quiet and wouldn’t startle the horses. Also, it meant there was no need to store gas on the premises. They used it to pull the drag mat and smooth the riding corrals, to move around the property’s acreage, to haul equipment before they put on an event, and dozens of other uses Heather hadn’t anticipated, when she’d bought it.

  She fed Phantom another piece of apple, kissed his nose, and rubbed him a few moments.

  “Thanks, Jonah. Ruby hasn’t climbed before, so this’ll be climbing one-oh-one, before we get started.”

  Heather helped Ruby into a harness, and then put hers on and climbed part way up the wall and came back down, showing her how the safety mechanism worked. She went over the basics, and then sent Ruby up on the simplest route, which was a mid-level course. Heather had assumed she’d never have beginners, but she should probably rethink that and create a teaching route on one of the edges, with a bell situated as high as the other commercial walls placed them.

  Within an hour, Ruby had the hang of it. Heather coached her on the route to take when Ruby thought she was stuck, and once she trusted the ropes, Ruby made it nearly three-quarters of the way to the top, which was impressive for her first time.

  She made it back down and started up again, and this time, Heather didn’t give her direction and let Ruby find her own path. She made it about halfway up before coming back down, and Heather thought she could use a break to rest a little before trying again.

  “Let’s sit and talk.” Heather said. “I’d like to ask for a formal time out, so the two of us can talk outside of power exchange.”

  “Of course, Ma’am.”

  A handful of picnic tables were twenty yards from the wall because Heather had food catered in when she put on adventure weekends. Heather walked to them and took a seat, her arms resting on a table, and Ruby sat across from her.

  “I’m new to this, and I know you aren’t, and you’ll speak up if something isn’t working for you, but I need to check in with you, even though I know you agreed to these things in the contract. Sometimes, I’m not comfortable with you being caged. Also, the deal with him taking away your safeword?” She shook her head. “Marcus has explained to me that the cage makes you feel secure, and that if you can safeword out of what you’ve agreed to then you don’t feel as if you’re truly owned. He says you feel like it’s play pretend if you can safeword out of something, so once you’ve made it through an ordeal once, you lose the ability to safeword out of that particular thing in the future.”

  “And you want to hear it straight from the slave’s mouth?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do. I need to hear you’re still okay with it, after having lived with it a while.”

  Ruby met her gaze and told her, “He’s absolutely right. He owns me, and both of us are constantly pushing the limits of that ownership. If I can survive something once then I can survive it again. We’ve talked about what happens if there’s some problem that didn’t exist before — loss of circulation, for instance, and in that case instead of saying the safeword, I’ll say what the problem is. Circulation is a safeword that means he needs to check my bindings, joint pain is a safeword that means he needs to check the angle of a joint. So, if there’s a legitimate problem, something more than, ‘that hurts like a motherfucker’, I can still stop things. He hasn’t taken away all my options.”

  Heather had to suppress her smile. Other than properly using fuck, ass, and other such words within the context of a scene, Ruby wasn’t allowed to cuss when under her slave rules, and the fact she had while they were out of power exchange reminded Heather this woman was following rules she’d agreed to, and that she was a strong, successful woman who knew what she wanted and had gone after it.

  Still, Heather wanted to hear the rest of it, while they were on the subject. “And the cage?”

  “Yeah, it’s completely fucked up, but it makes me feel secure.” She sighed. “Sometimes, I hate going into the cage, and I always get punished if I show my unhappiness, which makes me hate it that much more. But...” A small shrug. “Being caged means I belong to him. I’m his property. His asset. When you’re there and he cages me, sometimes I get really pissed. I know you’ve seen it, and I hate when you see it, but I can’t always hide it.”

  She rubbed her right forearm with her left hand. “Remember when you and I first met, and you said Kyle isn’t jealous of Marcus because they give you different things? It’s kind of the same thing. Marcus can never cage you — you’d never allow it, never willingly crawl in. He owns me, and I give him something you can’t. So, even though I may hate it when he cages me so he can do something with you that doesn’t include me...” She glanced down at the table a few seconds and then met Heather’s gaze again. “Even though I may sometimes hate it, I wouldn’t change it.”

  “Thank you for explaining. Okay, next issue — Marcus wants me to take charge of you more often, to give you more commands, and he wants me to punish you instead of depending on him to do it every single time. If we’re going to head in that direction, it feels like you and I should negotiate our own agreement, but Marcus says his contract with you covers your submission to me.”

  “It does. I agreed you can punish me, and I agreed you can use me sexually in any way that doesn’t cross into my list of hard limits.”

  Her hard limits were things Heather would never want to do. Things like shitting on her, and Heather had been surprised that actually needed to be said. Also, anything that risked infection, withholding water for more than thirty minutes after it’s requested unless she’s been given water in the past two hours, withholding food for more than forty-eight hours, and no more than eighteen ounces of blood loss across a three-day period. There was more, but it was all super-extreme stuff Heather would never even consider doing.

  “I’ve never done anything sexual with a woman, but Marcus said that in your early negotiations, you said you’d gone down on a woman, and been fucked by a woman with a strap on. I’m not totally sure where I want to go in that direction, so I figured you and I could start with a conversation about it.”

  “My agreement with Marcus says he can loan me to others, and gender was never mentioned. I understood that when I signed. With you, it’ll be more than a loan, but he’s been upfront about that since the beginning. Your word is the same as his. I accept that you’re basically an extension of him. If you’re asking how I feel about being ordered to go down on you? I’m attracted to power, not gender. If it’s ordered and I know I’ll be punished if I refuse, it will absolutely work for me.”

  Heather understood that, because sex in general didn’t work for her unless there was either pain or power exchange in the mix.

  “Okay, one more thing. I’m not comfortable taking away your safeword. You’ll keep your safeword, and if I think you’re abusing it then you’ll stand in the corner for four hours a night for a week, so don’t abuse it. A safeword isn’t play pretend with me; it’s a safety thing. I’m glad you and Marcus have come to the agreement you have, but you will use the safeword with me if you need a scene to stop, and for no other reason.”

  “Okay.”

  The agreement almost seemed too easy, but Heather didn’t question her about it. If she didn’t mean it, they’d deal with it using the rules of the contract.

  Heather remembered something else she’d meant to talk about, and said, “I was wrong — there’s another thing. All four of us have clean lab results. Marcus is using you without a condom now, and I guess that means if you go down on me you won’t need to use a dental dam, if you’re comfortable with that?”

  “Sure, we’re all clean, no need for safety precautions. I’m on the pill, and you have an IUD, right?”

  “Correct.”

  She sighed. “Marcus goes bare in my ass now, but he still hasn’t fucked my pussy, with or without a condom. What’s up with that?”

  Heather shrugged. “If it bugs you, you should talk to him about it. That’s everything I wanted to bring up. Anything you want to talk about before we end the timeout?”

  “Yes. Marcus and Kyle keep talking about the four of us moving in together. Right now, it’s kind of you and Kyle together, and me and Marcus together, and the four of us get together a whole lot, but about a third of our leisure time is spent as couples. If we were all living together, wouldn’t the dynamic be different?”

  Heather sighed. “I have the same reservations. Maybe we can explore that while we’re in your three-month trial period? If Kyle and I stay at Marcus’s house for two or three straight weeks, it might show us how the dynamic will change.” It might not, though, because everyone would be on their best behavior.

  “I think that might be wise, before I sign a longer-term contract with Marcus.”

  “Okay, we’ll bring it up with the guys, and look at our schedules and see which two or three weeks will work best. Anything else?”

  “Marcus always does something when we end a time-out period, to re-assert his dominance. Are you going to do that?”

  “Do you need me to?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Heather hadn’t prepared for this, but she had an idea of what to do. “There’s a door to the left of the wall, leading to the stairway that goes to the top, for access to the equipment up there. Go in, close the door, and kneel to wait for me.”

  The floor was concrete, but she wouldn’t be there long.

  Heather washed her hands, dried them, and then went into the room. Ruby was kneeling in the dark, and Heather switched the light on. “I’m going to run my fingers along your tongue and into your throat, and I’ll slowly count to ten and pull them out. You’ll relax your throat and let me in, you’ll control your gag reflex, and you’ll look me in the eyes the entire time. If you gag on my fingers, we’ll keep doing it until you can keep from gagging.”