AS MR. TROWLEGE ESCORTED HER down the hall to her activity room, Ella noticed something had changed: she was not being brought to the same room she had shared with Mr. Lamont these past many days.
“Where are you taking me?” She asked to Mr. Trowlege’s stiff back.
“One of the other rooms,” came the reply.
Ella rolled her eyes. “Why?”2
“You will see.”
A second later, he stopped in front of one of the other doors, went through the motions of unlocking it, and motioned her inside. As soon as Ella had crossed the threshold, the door was shut behind her.
She looked around. The room was filled with strange apparatuses: benches, cages, bars screwed down to narrow tables and laden with cuffs; stocks, pillories, a rack, and more perverse and frightening devices spread across the room. It looked like a torture chamber, updated for modern day. The only familiar pieces of furniture in the room were the large ornate wardrobe, and the bed, already lined up with floggers and other nefarious tools.
Mr. Lamont stood in the center of the room, looking pleased. “Hello, Ella,” he said. “Ready to get started?”
“I don’t know,” she said, eyeing all the equipment. “Does it matter?”
Mr. Lamont frowned. “Of course it matters,” he said. “You should be filled with excitement, not fear.”
His answer only filled her with a strange, hollow sadness. “I’m sorry, Sir,” Ella said. “I will try harder.”
Mr. Lamont’s frown deepened. “Get undressed,” he said. “Quickly now.”
“Yes, Sir.” Her words were devoid of inflection.
Ella undressed quickly, but without any enthusiasm or drive. Mr. Lamont pressed his lips together in a fine scowl.
“Ella, is something bothering you? Did something happen this morning?”
“No Sir,” Ella said. “Nothing happened.”
“Is that so.” He gave her a probing stare, trying to see something behind her eyes, but Ella looked back at him blandly, controlling her crisp features with her easy composure.
“Come here,” he said. “I want to introduce you to your first piece of bondage equipment.”
He pointed her to a large wooden cross towering in the corner, shaped like a giant X. “The St. Andrew’s Cross. Do you remember what I taught you about it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Good. I want you to stand up against it and face me, arms and legs against the cross.”
Ella did as ordered, feeling the first twitter of excitement. She was finally going to experience the St. Andrew’s Cross, something she had been both anticipating and dreading for a long time.
“Grab onto the handle bars,” Mr. Lamont said softly. “No, don’t look down. Keep your eyes on me. That’s it.” His voice grew thick and husky. “God, you look beautiful.” He went to the bed and picked up a flogger. “Let’s start you off with a short quiz. What kind of flogger is this?”
“Bullhide braided leather flogger, long tail.”
“Very good. And this?” He picked up another one.
“Rubber flogger. I think, ah, teak handle?”
“Very good. And this?”
“Rattan cane.”
“Ella, feel your pussy.”
“What?”
“Let go of one of the handle bars, reach down, and feel your pussy. I want you to feel how wet you are.”
Her brows creased with confusion as Ella lowered one hand between her legs, and slowly pressed it against her pussy lips. She gasped.
Her pussy was not just moist. It was slick, wet from her own juices that were leaking out of her cunt.
“Do you understand now, Ella? You see the toys of sadomasochism, and your body becomes aroused without conscious thought. It betrays you now. You have no control over your reactions.” The satisfaction in his voice was clear, and his rich smile was wide. “Now put your hand back up and grab on.”
Ella gripped the cross handles with tight fists. Mr. Lamont retrieved a short rubber flogger from the bed, one Ella had never seen before.
“We’ve done a fair amount of work on your ass and thighs, but I think we’ve woefully neglected your breasts,” he said. “Time to test how sensitive those nipples really are.”
He stepped up to her prone body, took careful aim, and flicked the whippy flogger straight at her left breast.
Ella gasped. The stretchy rubber had bit into her flesh with sharp precision, making the skin mottle and redden. Mr. Lamont whipped the flogger again, this time on the underside of her breast, and got the same gasp of shock.
By the time he moved on to the other breast, Ella knew the kind of pain she was in for, and she cringed away, letting go of the handle.
“Stand straight, Ella. Grab the bar.”
Ella fixed her stance, but still cowered in anticipation.
Mr. Lamont beat the top, curve, and underside of her breast. The flogger whipped through the air with quiet hisses. Ella dodged the last strike and stepped away from the cross, breathing hard, holding her breast, and looking at Mr. Lamont in accusation.
“I’m not hitting you that hard, Ella,” he said. “Does it really hurt so much?”
“Yes…no…I don’t know,” she replied, unable to think clearly. “It’s hard to stand still while you’re flogging me.”
“Just grip the handles tighter. You can make all the noise you want. I had no idea you would react this way to a simple breast flogging—I’m very pleased. But you need to come back to the cross now.”
With slow shuffles of her bare feet, Ella stepped back up to the cross, and grabbed the handles once more. Mr. Lamont gave her a delighted grin.
He braced his legs apart, and began to swing the flogger in wide figure eights, striking both her sensitive breasts with easy cadence, never losing his poise.
The same could not be true for Ella. She was scrunching up her face now, lifting her feet, and holding onto the handles with white-knuckled fingers.
When a particularly harsh swing brought the tips of the flogger right onto her left nipple, she cried out, and let go of the handle to shield her breast with her hand. But Mr. Lamont didn’t catch her instinctive reaction in time, and he swung the flogger right into the fleshy meat of her fingers. Ella’s intake of breath was sharp and loud.
“Why did you let go of the bar?” Mr. Lamont said, very angry now. He dropped the flogger to the floor and grabbed Ella’s hand, checking it for damage.
“Because it hurt,” Ella replied. She looked down at her throbbing and aching hand as Mr. Lamont turned it over and checked both sides of her fingers.
“I cannot risk you thrashing around when I’m flogging you against he cross. You might get seriously hurt.”
Ella continued to study her hand as he walked away. “I thought getting hurt was the point,” she called out.
“Not the parts I don’t want to hurt,” he replied as he opened the wardrobe and disappeared behind the door. When he returned, all of Ella’s concerns about her hand fled.
He was holding up a pair of leather cuffs, thick and wide. Carabiners were already attached to the rings of the cuffs to lock her wrists to the bars of the cross.
“No,” Ella murmured.
“If you’re cuffed in, you won’t be able to get your hands in the way.”
“I don’t want you to cuff me.” Ella stepped off the cross and away from her trainer.
Mr. Lamont eyed her shrewdly. “What are you afraid of, Ella?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then why won’t you let me cuff you?”
“Because I don’t want you to!” Ella’s voice rose. Mr. Lamont had taken a step towards her, and she shrank away. “Stop it!”
He paused. “You say you’re not afraid, but you sure act like it. Tell me what’s going on.”
Tears sprung in her eyes. She hated the way she was cowering, the way she was blubbering, but most of all, she hated the turmoil going on inside her head, the maelstrom of conflicting thoughts.
She did want to be cuffed: in fact, she wanted it very badly.
But not like this. This felt wrong. She could not submit in this way, not so readily…not to him. Her body was willing, but a greater force inside her head would not give in.
“I don’t want to be cuffed,” she repeated, her voice coarse. “You can’t make me!”
Mr. Lamont’s brows creased, and his lips pursed in a thin line. “It’s true, I’m not going to force you,” he said softly. “But I’m not going to continue the scene like this, either. So are we done?”
Ella was quiet, unable to look at him.
“I said, Ella, are we done?”
Ella peered at him with eyes filled with sadness. “Yes. We’re done.”
“Very well.” His jaw clenched. “I’ll take you back to your room.”
“She hit a wall today. I think I might have discovered a hard limit.”
“This is excellent news.”
“Not really: the limit was a pair of cuffs. She wouldn’t let me restrain her to the St. Andrew’s Cross.”
Mr. Bentmoore took a moment to digest this. “What happened when you pushed?”
“She snapped. She couldn’t even look at me.” Mr. Lamont’s eyes narrowed. “The thing is, I’m not sure it was just about the cuffs. I got the feeling something must have happened this morning.”
“Such as?”
“I have no idea. When she wasn’t with me, she was with Stacey. I asked her, but she doesn’t know anything. Told me all Ella did all morning was try on corsets and do laps around the pool.” He paused. “Do you want me to try to dig deeper?”
Mr. Bentmoore gave it a moment of thought, but they both already knew the answer coming. “No. I think you’re done, Mr. Lamont. You’ve made great progress with her, but it’s time to move her on to the next trainer.”
“I understand, Sir.” The disappointment in his voice was obvious. “Who do you have in mind?”
“Harden. He’s strict, but focused. I think he can gain her trust and help her forward.”
“I hope so, Sir.” Mr. Lamont sighed. “She will make a beautiful submissive…once she learns to let herself submit.”
Ella turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink and splashed cold water on her face. As she dried herself with the towel, rubbing her cheeks in deep circles, she caught her reflection in the mirror.
She didn’t know if she recognized herself anymore.
She had witnessed something that day in the barn, something profound, and she didn’t understand it. All she knew was it had something to do with that man, Mr. Cox.
What had Stacey called him? An asshole?
He didn’t seem like an asshole to Ella. He seemed…dangerous. Threatening to her senses in a very deep and primal way. He was someone she should stay away from, she decided. Otherwise, she might end up in over her head.
Wasn’t she already in over her head?
Ella took a couple of deep, calming breaths. So she was getting a little bit more immersed in this assignment than she had originally planned. That was okay; that was good. Some of the best pieces of journalism in history came out when reporters were able to get immersed in their work.
She could handle it.
But as she grabbed her notebook and began to write down the events of the day, she left out her momentous meeting with the formidable sadist Mr. Cox.
