“I’m all yours, Mistress,” Thorny said, his breathing slower now as he came down off the rush.

She hit him square in the back and he flinched. She struck him there a few more times, but his back wasn’t her primary target. Once the flogger felt completely comfortable in her hands she aimed at his upper arms, the left and the right, the left and the right, until both arms were dotted with round red welts. When she finished Thorny was panting again. Short lovely breaths, the sounds of a man lost in sensation, lost to the world. She walked around his body and stood in front of him.

“I’m taking the blindfold off,” she said, wanting him prepared for the touch of her hands on his face. She lifted the blindfold and Thorny blinked. His eyes were heavy-lidded and his pupils wide as dimes.

“What was that?” he asked between breaths.

“Rosebuds,” she said, holding up the flogger. The tails were tipped with red leather rosebuds. Thorny grinned. “‘Gather ye rosebuds...’”

“You’re amazing, Mistress.”

“And you’re hard.” She looked down at his cock, harder now than even before the flogging. “Would you like to come?”

“Please, Mistress.”

She reached into her toy bag and produced a bottle of the finest olive oil on the market, which she poured into the palm of her hand. With her slick fingers she gripped his penis and stroked it, covering it with oil.

“Olive oil was used as lube for centuries before actual lube was invented,” Nora said, pulling on Thorny’s cock slowly and gently as his hips undulated in time with her strokes. He was a rod of iron in her fingers, so hard she wondered if it hurt to be that stiff for so long. “It still has one massive advantage over modern lubrication.”

“What is that?” Thorny was swaying on his feet, his head falling against his arm.

“It tastes a lot better.” Nora went down on her knees in front of him and took his cock in her mouth. Thorny cried out as she took him deep in her throat. As hard as he was, he didn’t come immediately, which pleased her. Pausing only to kiss and nibble at his hipbones, she went to work on him, licking from the base to the tip, swirling her tongue around the head, using her hand to pump the shaft as she sucked him with her mouth. He made the loveliest sounds while she licked and sucked him. Whimpers and gasps, whimpers and moans, whimpers and inarticulate pleas for something...release, mercy, more of this, more of that.

“Warn me when you’re about to come,” she said.

“A gentleman always does.”

“I must not know many gentlemen then,” Nora said before putting her mouth back on him and taking him deep again. Holding him by the hips, she moved her mouth all over every straining inch of him. As she sucked him, he fucked her mouth, pumping his hips faster as his breaths grew shorter and shallower. She tasted a few drops of salt on her tongue and drew him completely into her throat. Thorny said her name as a warning and Nora pulled back. She took him in her hand again, gripped him firmly and rubbed hard. He went silent and tense and came in a series of spurts all over the cheval mirror in front of him.

Nora stood up and wiped her mouth off on a towel. Thorny had gone slack.

“Thorny? How are we doing?”

“We are so happy right now we could cry.”

Laughing, Nora unhooked his feet from the spreader bar and removed the ankle cuffs before standing and unhooking him from the ceiling. His arms fell down to his sides and she steadied him to keep him from falling. With an arm around his waist, she guided him to her bed and put him on his stomach. She picked up her olive oil and massaged it into Thorny’s muscles and welts as he groaned with pleasure.

“I have never felt so gooey,” Thorny said. “I’m a noodle.”

“Happy?”

“Blissed. You are so good at that.”

“The flogging or the blowing?”

“All of the above. Thank you, Mistress. I wish they had a Zagat guide for dominatrixes. I would give you five stars.”

“Would you like some water?”

“I would like some food and water.” He slowly rolled to his side making no attempt to hide his flaccid cock from her gaze. He seemed wonderfully comfortable being completely naked in front of her. “Can I take you out to dinner? I need to carbo-load if I’m going to fuck you all night long. Pasta is sex fuel.”

Nora grinned. “You shower the olive oil off your welts while I clean the semen off the mirror, and then we’ll go out for some sex fuel.”

“That’s the weirdest sentence I’ve ever heard. And I’m a prostitute so you know that’s saying something.”

“Really?” Nora asked. “If that’s the weirdest sentence anyone’s ever said to you, you’re clearly not spending enough time with me. You should fix that.”

Thorny leaned in and kissed her, a slow wet deep kiss.

“How about I spend all night with you?” he asked.

“I do want the Boyfriend Experience at some point,” she said.

“Mistress...me buying you dinner so I can get in your pants? That is the Boyfriend Experience.”

29

The Boyfriend Experience

ON THE WAY home from the best little Italian place in Westport, the sky finally broke and hot summer rain exploded all over the streets. They ran, laughing and slipping, from the car and into her house. Once inside the door the both of them shook out their hair and shoes like dogs.

“Finally,” Nora said. “The humidity was hell on my hair.”

“Your hair looks very sexy when wet.” Thorny ran his hands through the wet waves and smiled. “You should be wet all the time.”

“Maybe I am,” she said as he kissed her.

“Can’t wait to find out.” He tugged his jacket off and hung it on the coatrack.

“Should we go upstairs?”

“Do you have any wine in the house?”

“I was raised Catholic. Of course I do. Red or white?”

“Red.”

“It is my color.”

Thorny followed her into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Pinot while she pulled down two wineglasses. He sat on the kitchen table and she stood between his thighs. They sipped from their glasses until Thorny took hers from her hand and set it down next to him.

“What is it?” she asked as he took her hands in his.

“Nothing. I just wanted to do this.” He put her hands on his shoulders and placed his hands on her waist. A perfect position for kissing. So they did.

“Now tell me if I’m wrong...” Thorny said, kissing along her jawline to her ear, “but something tells me I’m not the only one in the room with something on the brain. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. Everything. The usual.”

“What’s the usual?”

Nora sighed. “My ex.”

“Ex-priest?”

“Ex-priest. Ex-lover. Ex-everything.”

“You’re thinking about him?”

“I think about him a lot.”

“When did you two break up?”

“Over three years ago.”

“That’s a long time to be hung up on someone.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Is there a little of the proverbial Catholic guilt happening here?” He wound his fingers into her hair, caressed her cheekbone with his thumb.

“There’s an old Zen saying,” Nora said. “‘To her lover, a woman is a delight. To a monk she is a distraction. To a mosquito she is a good meal.’ With him, my priest, I was all of the above—a delight, a distraction and dinner. He lost a lot when he lost me.”

“I didn’t hear ‘girlfriend’ in there.”

“I was his property, not his girlfriend. He was my owner, not my boyfriend. I am thirty years old and have never had a real boyfriend in my life.”

“Would you like one?” he asked, kissing her ear. Nora closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders again.

“Yes,” she said. “For a night. If you’re offering.”

He kissed the tendon of her shoulder and moved his mouth to her ear again.

“I’m offering.”

His hand slipped under her fitted black T-shirt and tickled her stomach. Nora laughed, already feeling better.