He took his glasses off and laid them on the bookcase. “She tried. Man, she fucking tried. I got her to move in with me. Every day I felt it building in her. Like a volcano. But the weird thing was, the more I felt it building in her, it’s like the deader she got outside, right? She came home from work all happy one afternoon, and I saw she had a new burn on her arm.”
He looked at Seth, his eyes glistening again. “I got so fucking scared and angry that she’d hurt herself. I just lost it. She’d promised not to do it anymore. I should have known better, that she couldn’t stop herself. We got into a fight, screaming at each other. I grabbed her and hauled her into my lap, yanked her pants down and spanked the crap out of her.”
“Fuck!” Seth couldn’t imagine Kaden blowing his cool. He’d never seen his friend lose it, ever. He was the hothead, Kaden always coming to his rescue.
Kaden smiled. “I felt like shit, like fucking dirt. Then she fell off my lap, and she looked up at me and had this…absolutely gorgeous smile on her face. My hand hurt like a sonofabitch. I knew I must have bruised her a little, but she looked at me in a way I’d never seen her look at me before. She grabbed me and fucking kissed me and practically raped me right there on the couch. It was the hottest sex we’d had, and the sex was pretty damn good to start with.
“So I asked her after, when we’d finally made it to my bedroom a few hours later, what the hell that was about. She shook her head and said she didn’t know. It was like something had just sort of popped free in her when I did that. So I made her a deal.”
He frowned, working his hands again. “I told her if she could go the entire next day, just one damn day, without hurting herself, and that I would check every inch of her flesh for a new wound, I would spank her again the next night.”
“Fuck!” Seth wished he could say something—anything—other than that, but that was all he could manage.
Kaden nodded. “Right. That’s exactly what I thought. I was desperate. What the hell was I supposed to do? I didn’t even know if it would work. So I get home from classes the next day and she gets home from work later and she runs in, I mean she’s stripping her clothes off the second she gets through the door, asking me to look at her and check her over. I made her stand there and wait. She started to beg. I told her if she didn’t behave, I wouldn’t spank her.
“It’s like she became a freaking statue, just waiting for me. I finished what I was doing and told her to go lie in bed. I get there and she’s waiting for me. I start looking her over, taking my time, trying to be seductive about it, and I realize she’s fucking wet. I mean, like you wouldn’t believe. I asked her what was up with that, and she said she couldn’t stop thinking about getting spanked all day.”
“Did she ever hurt herself again?”
“A few times early on. After that, no. Not intentionally. We had a deal that if she got hurt, she would immediately tell me so I would know it wasn’t intentional. I haven’t had to worry about that for years now. That’s because we have this. Usually she doesn’t even need it every day, or just something light, not a full session. The deal was I would take care of that for her. I was in control of that. She began to beg for more. One day I had to threaten her again that if she didn’t behave, I would make her wait another day before her next spanking. That made her even hornier.”
Kaden smiled. “We’d been married for about a year when I found out about the local BDSM club and got hooked up with others. Learned a lot more. She was like a changed person since we’d started the spanking, but she wanted more. I wasn’t doing it because I wanted her to feel pain. I was doing it because she wanted me to do it. She trusted me enough to let me into her life and take charge of that for her. She literally turned control of her pain over to me, not just physical but mental. Once we started doing that, it’s like she was able to move on. It all progressed from there.”
He met Seth’s eyes. “You and me, we deal with emotional shit. No problem. She never had that, never learned it. She didn’t have a family she could go to, someone to teach her safe and healthy ways to process her emotions. She was in survival mode for most of her life, and at the hands of the fuckers who were supposed to take care of her. I was literally the first person in her life she could trust not to hurt her. Well, I mean, you know what I mean. She went through a lot. Yes, I could have forced her into a shrink’s office and made her go through years of therapy and medicated her out of her mind and maybe accomplished the same thing. What we do, she enjoys it. It helps her cope, and it keeps her happy. I love making her happy. Who am I to force her to do something we don’t even know will work when we’ve got something we can do together that she loves?”
Seth looked into his friend’s eyes. He would be the first to deck anyone who accused Kaden of not loving Leah. He’d seen their relationship firsthand all these years. Well, thought he’d seen it.
“What do you want me to do?” he quietly asked.
Kaden cocked his head to the doorway and listened, then called out. “Love, are you finished with the dishes?”
“Almost, Master. I’m wiping down the counters.”
“Very good, love. Come here when you’re finished.”
Seth noticed something else, the term of endearment. He didn’t remember hearing Kaden call Leah “love” before, although he’d heard him call her many other equally sweet things over the years.
“We have a sort of code,” he explained to Seth. “You’ll learn it. That’s another reason I need you to move in. It’s easier for you to learn it when you’re living here. She’s going to need you.”
Leah appeared in the doorway a moment later. She stopped at the threshold and looked at the floor.
“Come here, love,” Kaden said.
She walked over. He made a hand gesture. She dropped to her knees in front of him.
Seth felt weirded out, yet his cock throbbed in his pants again.
“Love,” Kaden said, “I’ve told Seth we’ll give him a demonstration.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Is that all right with you?”
“Whatever Master wants me to do.”
“That was not my question.”
“Yes, Master. It is all right with me.”
“Prepare for me.”
She stood, her entire body flushed. Seth first thought it was embarrassment then realized it was arousal.
She quickly undressed. Seth noticed she wasn’t wearing any panties under her skirt. She neatly folded her skirt and shirt and laid them on a nearby shelf, then put her shoes on the floor underneath. When she wore nothing but her collar she turned and looked at Kaden, waiting for instructions.
Kaden was unbuttoning his shirt. “Are you all right, love?” he softly asked her.
“Yes, Master.”
“Where are we, love?”
“Green, Master.”
Seth wordlessly watched their exchange, his jaw slightly gaped. Her shaved pussy looked swollen, like she was…
Fuck.
Kaden draped his shirt on a hook apparently there for just that purpose. Seth had never paid attention before to how fluidly smooth his friend could move. And now he definitely saw the tattoos were matching.
“Love,” Kaden said to Leah, “I’ll let you choose this time. You pick what you want me to use.”
Leah nodded and turned to the rack of implements. Without hesitation she reached for a coiled whip, one of several lying on a shelf.