The second hit was much the same, just from the other side as Nick mirrored the motion and the strike. Spencer shuddered, but this was all right. The worst about this was what he imagined people might be thinking if they knew— Crack.
Spencer jumped, but managed to stay on his knees when the whip hit him hard high up on the arse. The pain was actually bad. Really bad. An explosion of pain like getting zapped by a Taser, minus the drooling and cramps.
“Kneel up, hands on the footboard.”
That would bare his arse, his thighs, even the backs of his knees to the whip.
Spencer nevertheless obeyed when the whip cracked in the air, right next to his ear, it felt like. Damn, but Nick’s precision did impress him, though it freaked him out. What if Nick missed?
The tail bit him on the arse, hard, like an indignant, tangible response of Miss? I beg your fucking pardon? A second later, as if for emphasis, it hit the exact same spot on the opposite side.
Then his shoulders. Left one, then right. Intense beads of pain, red hot spots and stripes, formed everywhere the tail met, everywhere Nick decided to form them.
The stars are coming out. Spencer closed his eyes as his mind started sliding into that dark delirium, where the only 121
light seemed to come from the glowing red constellations that Nick brought to life one bright snap at a time.
His only connections to anything besides Nick, the whip, and the pain were the carpet beneath his knees and the cool footboard he occasionally arched into, brushing against it and drawing himself back to earth for a second or two at a time.
Those returns were short-lived. All of them.
Another strike—shoulder, arse, thigh, he never could predict where or when or how hard—would draw him right back into the dark.
Nick wasn’t holding back. Either Spencer’s sense of time had slipped, or there were fewer seconds between hits now.
Enough time for the initial bite and the deeper pain that followed each time, but the next strike always came quickly.
Sometimes two or three in rapid succession, so he couldn’t grab onto a single one of those fiery focal points.
His grasp on the footboard weakened. Muscles simply didn’t know what to do anymore. Sweaty palms didn’t help.
His hand slipped, and the whip narrowly missed his elbow, but he corrected quickly, and Nick stopped. Spencer cringed, expecting a punishment, an admonishment, something, but after a short while—thirty seconds, maybe?—the whip sliced through the air a heartbeat before its tail bit into Spencer’s arse cheek again.
On some distant, visceral level, he was aware that the pain was far more intense now than it had been with those first few strikes. His skin burned in places, throbbed in others.
Unscathed flesh tingled with anticipation, and his head spun a little faster, took him a little deeper into somewhere else every time Nick laid that tail on him.
It hurt more, but he didn’t cringe or flinch away from it now. If anything, he arched into it. Sought it out. Silently 122
begged for it. He may have even begged out loud; he thought he tasted the vibration of speech on his own tongue, and the air thrummed with something besides his heavy breathing and the sharp cracks and the whistle of leather cutting through the air, but he couldn’t remember what he’d said. Maybe he’d just moaned.
Something in the room changed. Movement? Lack of movement?
Spencer tried to open his eyes, but every time he did, the light overwhelmed his already overloaded senses, so he squeezed them shut and tried to figure out what the hell was— Gentle fingers on slick skin.
His neck. The side of his neck.
Soft fingertips sliding over sweaty skin.
That featherlight touch reverberated through him, all the way down the length of his spine.
Movement again. Leather creaking softly. Cool breath on damp flesh. And a whisper, “You’re amazing like this, Spencer.”
The words were like a soft warm glow he could sense all over his body, inside and out, and he drifted in them like in a smal , perfectly safe space. Nick’s voice. Nick who’d never been quite that gentle before. This was the difference between before and after. He could taste the affection, the extra care, the gentleness—all in a man who’d just worked him over with a whip, turned him into complete contentment. In this space, nothing else mattered.
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested like in a dream.
“You’re just not aware you did, but that’s fine. You’re beautiful like this. Riveting.” A touch to his arm, and Spencer realised he was sweating, possibly bathed in sweat. What for?
Nothing to be afraid of.
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“You did so well,” Nick said next to his ear. “I’d really like to fuck you.”
“Sure.” Spencer needed a few moments before he realised that he could possibly have said no, but he didn’t want to.
Why would he?