Finally I was jostled and forced to move off the bench. My knees pressed into carpet, my skirt still around my ankles. A heavy hand forced me to sit back, my sore ass pressing against my heels.
“I will be back for you. Do not move until then or I will spank you all over again with something much worse than a paddle. Understand?” The man pushed a finger into my forehead until I looked up at him.
“Yes, sir,” I murmured through the haze. My tongue felt thick and hard to move, but I managed to get the two words out.
“Good girl.” He turned and walked from my sight.
I couldn’t say how long I sat like that. My knees ached, my back ached and my ass burned like never before, but still the man hadn’t returned. It was a cry from a familiar voice that made me lift my head to find where it was coming from.
Everything stopped. The room dropped away and all that was left was the couple in front of me.
John was tethered to a cross while a hulk of a man unleashed a long, snakelike whip, making it snap against John’s back. His back was already covered with welts in various stages of healing, but there wasn’t an inch of unmarred skin left. Not that it stopped the man from repeatedly laying into him. Just the sound of the leather against his skin made me shiver. It had to hurt, but John simply held his head down and took it without a single sound.
I’d never seen John as a submissive and would happily never witness it again. It was a scary sight. He was no longer the strong, controlled man I loved, but one who was obviously beaten down to the point that he wasn’t feeling pain.
When the hulk dropped the whip to the floor and closed in on John, I wanted to run to him, to save him, from what was coming next. He’d had enough in my eyes. I didn’t know how he came to be there, but it wasn’t right. I couldn’t understand.
To my surprise, the man reached around and unbuckled John’s slacks and let them fall to the ground before roughly shoving his boxers down as well.
“Not enough pain, bitch?” the man growled as he slapped John’s cock.
“No, sir,” John moaned. “More. I need more, sir.”
I gaped at his words. My brain struggled to understand the side of John I was witnessing. I glanced around to see if anyone else was watching their scene, but oddly there was no one else within hearing distance, as if it was too painful to watch or they’d been warned away.
My eyes burned as I returned them to John. Tears wanted to escape, but I kept them back so they didn’t blur my vision. I needed to watch. I needed to let it sear into my brain that there was so much more to the man I thought I knew so well.
Hulk moved to a nearby table and grabbed a bottle of lube. He let some of it slide down the crease of John’s ass before he shifted his feet. I could only assume he was taking himself out of his pants, since he pressed against John while whispering words in a harsh tone. They were spoken so low I couldn’t hear them, but his stance said it all. They weren’t pleasant ones.
“You are going to take me in your body, boy. If you so much as move to escape the pain, I will tear you open, do you understand me? Do you want me to make your tender little hole bleed? Then you’ll remember me reaming you for days.”
“N...no, sir. I don’t want to bleed, sir,” John whimpered — actually whimpered. His voice sounded like a little boy’s, one who was pleading to be saved, and my heart skipped a beat. I had to dig my fingers into my palms to force myself to stay where I was. He had a safe word; he could make it stop if he truly wanted to.
The man rolled his hips before thrusting against John and from the cry of agony that left him, I knew the man was filling his ass. I audibly gasped as tears finally escaped my eyes. The man turned his head and met my gaze as he pounded into John with a hand around his throat. A harsh smile came over his face before he turned back to John.
“Even your ass can’t get it right. No matter how many times I fuck you, all you do is whimper like a little bitch. You are so pathetic. No one will love you. No one will ever care if you live or die because you are so fucking worthless. If you weren’t trussed up, I’d make you suck the shit from my dick until I came down your disgusting throat.” The man’s words made my throat work overtime to keep from releasing my stomach contents. I couldn’t stand to watch more. I lowered my head in shame. I was only an observer and yet I couldn’t handle it. How he managed to take it I didn’t know.
It wasn’t the fact he was with another man that confused me, but the fact that he was submitting, that he was being degraded without objection. I couldn’t wrap my head around how things had changed so rapidly in his world.
I focused on the burning pain in my ass and knew it was nothing compared to the pain John had to feel from the lashes to his back. I tried to tune out the nasty words spewing from the man fucking John. It seemed to last forever before I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. Glancing up, I found it was the man who’d spanked me.
“Come, little one,” he said in a soft tone. I stood and he helped me pull up my skirt before ushering me out of the room. He led me down the hall filled with doorways I knew led to private rooms until he finally pushed one open and followed me in. “Sit.”
I eyed the room, which appeared to be an office, as he sat in one of the chairs and waved a hand at the other.
“Alix, I’m Gabe. I’m the owner of Scene. Please sit. I need to talk to you. It is very important.”
I eyed him cautiously feeling more nervous than I had out in the playroom.
“If you care at all for John, you will want to hear what I have to say.”
My heart thudded harder in my chest when he mentioned John. He had information about him. I needed to know what it was. Pulling the chair a bit farther away, I sat facing him.
“Good. Now I trust you witnessed the scene going on out there, correct?” He crossed an ankle over the opposite knee, relaxing back into his seat.
“Yes.”
“John has been here every day for the last week. Sometimes multiple times a day. He’s suffering. He is punishing himself in the only way he knows how. It helps calm his demons, but it also gives him a new pain to focus on since he can’t control the other pain he’s dealing with. I don’t know exactly what is going on between the two of you, but I suspect you can help him more than he is allowing me to at this time.” Gabe dropped his leg and leaned his elbows on his knees.
“I...I don’t know what I can do.” I shook my head in denial.
“Talk to him. See if he will share what it is that’s eating at him. It’s something personal. I might know his past, but something set him off. Something pushed him over the edge and he doesn’t even seem to be trying to control it. He’s lost in his head, in his demons, his pain.” Gabe ran a tired hand over his face. “I’ve tried. Every time he shows up here, I try to get him to open up, but he refuses. He won’t talk about it.”
“You think he’d talk to me?” I shifted in my seat, my sore ass rubbing against my skirt.
“I don’t know. It can’t hurt. While it seems the two of you are no longer Dom and sub, he had a connection to you that I’ve never seen him have with anyone before. I’ve known John for quite a few years, too, so I know it’s not something to be taken lightly. Please, if you care for him, try. Try, not because I’m asking, but for him.” Gabe reached across the space to clasp my hand in his. “Please.”