ELLA ENTERED HER ACTIVITY ROOM the next day feeling despondent, without any idea why. She had been up the night before until early hours of the morning, writing up her notes, until she had filled up an entire notebook. But she knew her notes were unworkable for any practical use, a pointless waste of her time. They were a jumbled mess of the tangled thoughts inside her head.
Instead of focusing her notes on the machinations of the Hotel Bentmoore, she was beginning to focus them too much on herself. She was using them as a journal, to document her journey of self-discovery.
She was also filling up too many pages with her curiosity about Mr. Cox.
It had to stop. It had to. She was not some schoolgirl with a crush on the local neighborhood bad boy. And what did it say about her, that she was intrigued so much by a man like that, one who would whip, grab, grope, and paw a woman at his mercy?
Just thinking about it made her muscles tense with a thrilling pull of arousal.
As she walked into the center of the room to present herself to her trainer, she tamped down her emotions once more, and put on a pleasant smile. Only this time, Mr. Harden wasn’t so quickly fooled. He furrowed his brows as he gazed at her pasted grin.
“What is going on inside that head of yours, I wonder?” He asked, his soft voice full of sympathy. His tone touched on Ella’s deep sadness, and made it feel even worse.
“Nothing, Sir,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”
He continued to study her. “I have not done a fair job with you, Ella. I can make you walk the walk and talk the talk, but I cannot teach you what it means to be a submissive woman until I get inside your head. So that’s going to be my number one priority today.”
Nervous energy made Ella’s skin tingle. “And how do you plan to do that, Sir?”
“With this,” he said, holding something up in the crook of his finger.
There, dangling down from his fingertip and swaying slightly with the movement of his hand, was a blindfold.
It was wide and thick, with two sturdy leather buckle straps going across the back, making it easier to adjust, and (Ella assumed) harder to take off. The eyepieces were huge ovals of hard leather, padded with fleece. There was no way Ella would be able to see anything once that blindfold was put on her.
Curiosity leaped into her chest, along with a touch of disappointment. Why did it have to be such a sturdy thick blindfold? Why couldn’t it be a simple black sash?
She pushed the thought away.
“How will a blindfold help you, Sir?”
“Not me, Ella. You. It will take away your ability to see what’s coming, and help you let yourself just feel what’s going on. Then you might manage to lose yourself to me a little.”
Trepidation surfaced. The last thing Ella wanted to do was to “lose herself.” Then she might not be able to get herself back. “Sir, I’m not sure about this….”
“I’m not going to do anything that goes too far, Ella. You’ll always have your safeword.”
His words did not reassure her. Instead, they filled her with a pining ache. She gave herself a mental shake.
“What would you like me to do?”
“First thing you need to do is get undressed, of course.”
“Of course.”
Ella sighed and looked down. Despite her trepidation, a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. Some things would never change, she thought.
She began to untie her corset, but Mr. Harden tsked. “Ah ah ah, Ella. Remember your lessons. Look at me as you get undressed.”
“Sorry, Sir.” Ella looked up, maintained eye contact with her trainer, and continued to take off her corset. Once it was loose enough in the back, she slowly unhooked the front, one hook at a time, and carefully spread open the delicate satin material. Then she let the lacy corset fall to the floor.
She saw the arousal spring to Mr. Harden’s eyes as he shifted his gaze down to her breasts. “Now the skirt. Take it off.”
Ella lowered the zipper in the back of the skirt with nimble fingers and lowered the hem of the skirt, shimmying it slowly down her hips and legs. Soon, it was a puddle around her feet, and she stepped out of it gracefully.
The only things left on her were her shoes, but Mr. Harden had not ordered her to take those off yet.
“Come here,” he said.
Ella paused. She realized with a start that a part of her did not want to let him blindfold her so easily. She didn’t mind the blindfolding—that part actually intrigued her—but walking into her own trap so calmly, acting so blasé about her own possible demise, bothered her a lot. Why did she have to make it easy for him?
Oh, what was wrong with her? She was supposed to make it easy for him. It was the role she was playing. It was why she was there.
She walked up to her trainer and turned around, waiting for him to fit the blindfold over her eyes.
The fleece tickled her eyelids before it pressed against her skin, soft and warm. Mr. Harden began to fasten the buckles in the back of her head, and Ella could feel every brush against her hair, every pull and graze of his hands on the straps. It was as if the world had blacked out, and the rest of her senses were now on high alert, especially her sense of touch. It was probably what Mr. Harden had in mind all along.
She could sense him coming around her body.
He grabbed her hands. “Come,” he said, leading her forward.
“Where are we going?”
“Right here.” He stopped, and his hands lowered. Ella realized he had led her to the edge of the bed, and was now sitting on it.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll show you.”
He yanked her down, hard. With a single, panicked shriek, Ella was pulled over his lap. She put her hands out in an instinctive gesture to protect herself from falling face first onto the floor, but Mr. Harden held her tight, balancing her across his legs. He spread his knees apart a little more to better support Ella’s tense, rigid body.
“Relax, Ella. I’m not going to let you fall, believe me.”
He moved up the bed a little, so she could rest her hands on the mattress while still maintaining the lewd pose across his lap. But Ella tried again to get up from his thighs, and Mr. Harden again held her down.
“Stop struggling.”
Ella stopped her futile wriggling, but whimpered.
“What’s wrong?”
“This feels so—so—”
“What?”
“Humiliating.”
Mr. Harden smiled. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yes. Now calm down.” He rubbed his hand up and down her creamy haunches, pressing his fingers deep, kneading her firm flesh. Ella began to relax, lowering her legs and turning her head into his lap.
“That’s it, Ella,” he said as he continued his stroking, spreading his fingers wide, caressing her with lazy sweeps of his hand.
Then his hand disappeared, and Ella heard something slide out from underneath the pillow.
“Get ready,” he said.
“For what?”
“This.”
With that, he smacked something hard against her ass with a resounding slap.
Ella gasped, and her whole body twisted. She tried to scramble up from his lap, but Mr. Harden held her down.
“It’s just a paddle, Ella,” he said. “You’ve had worse by my own hand. It just feels different now because of the blindfold.” He smacked her again with the paddle, and Ella let out another soft, startled gasp.
Then he began to paddle her with quick flicks of his wrist, smacking the hard wood against Ella’s cringing bottom, getting a loud thwack and a sharp gasp from the startled female after every one.
Ella fought to maintain control over her trainer’s lap, keeping her squirms down to a bare minimum. Mr. Harden was paddling her with hard, quick strokes, but allowing her a long pause between each one, so that Ella could collect herself. He was also continuing to rub her butt down between the paddle strikes, working her muscles and soothing her ache.
Ella began to relax her whole body against Mr. Harden’s lap, feeling the pain of the paddle diffuse across her ass and thighs. Her angelic face took on a coaxing smile. With each slap, she let out a tiny sigh of contentment.
Mr. Harden noticed the change in her, and commenced with harder, faster, strokes.
Ella was soon crying out after each whack, but it wasn’t clear whether she was crying out in pain, or ecstasy.
“Ella, do you want me to go harder?”
Ella didn’t answer; she had not even registered the question. Mr. Harden repeated it louder.
“Ella, do you want me to go harder?”
This time, Ella grimaced. “I…I…can’t talk….” Lifting the words in her brain was like pulling on thick taffy; they stuck in her head and wouldn’t reach her mouth.
“Just yes or no. Harder?”
“Yes….”
“Good.” There was a pause with the paddle, as Ella felt him shift his weight to reach something across the bed.
When she felt him grab her wrists behind her, she felt nothing of it—until she felt cold steel wrapping around them, and heard the click.
“What? What?” Anxiety made her skim to the surface of her hazy state.
“Handcuffs, so you don’t try to block the paddle with your hands and hurt yourself.”
“No. No, please,” Ella whined, twisting and scissoring her hands in the cuffs. Her wriggling almost unbalanced her from Mr. Harden’s lap, but he grabbed her just in time, and held her still with his firm hands.
“Shh,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you any more than you can take. Remember, you have your safeword, Ella. Just breathe.” He rubbed her ass again, up, down, and around, allaying her fears with soft, quiet words, trying to lull her into complaisance. “You’re safe, Ella. You’re safe.”
Ella relaxed her body, but her face remained a mask of fear and torment. Mr. Harden didn’t wait for her expression to change before he started to paddle her once more. He picked up the thick wooden instrument, held her ass still with a tight grip, and let her have it.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
This time, Mr. Harden’s smacks rained down on her ass with choppy, pounding strokes. He spread his reign of torture over huge swaths of her skin, peppering her thighs, ass and hips with blazing wallops of the paddle. Soon, Ella’s whole bottom was a fiery red, glowing with throbbing heat.
But Ella was no longer struggling. She was far beyond that: her mind had drifted into a far away corner, where nothing existed but white noise and soothing darkness, punctuated by pulsing light that lit up behind her eyelids every time the stinging paddle lit into her skin.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Mr. Harden’s choppy blows continued to rain down on her body, sinking Ella into a space inside her mind she had never been before. White dots painted her view behind her eyelids as cognizant thought disappeared completely. Other sensations rose to the surface, and began to take control over her body—basic, primal responses that felt like nothing but animal instinct.
Exhilaration. Rage. Ravenous sensuality. Delirious need. And, above all else, the rapturous joy of feeling alive.
Ella jutted out her ass further as, from somewhere deep inside her, she bellowed out an echoing peal of laughter.
“Yes, Ella. Yes.”
Mr. Harden’s voice broke through the wild turbulence of her thoughts. She could not see, but she could still hear, and feel…and remember.
I reserve the right to punish you myself.
Where had she heard those words? From Mr. Cox. His voice, hoarse and thick, was nothing like Mr. Harden’s; the memory of it filled her with a breathtaking rush of excitement and terror.
But this was not Mr. Cox, whipping her against a concrete slab inside a rundown barn. And she was not tied with rope, or blindfolded with a simple black sash.
She was being paddled over Mr. Harden’s lap, naked and handcuffed, like a lewd hussy, a cheap tart, a tramp, a…
Slut.
From the deep recesses of her mind, another memory arose.
You cheap slut. You think you can just sleep your way to the top? You’ve only gotten this far because of your looks. You don’t deserve to be here.
In that moment, all her pleasure disappeared, dissolved like melted ice, and in its place jetted boiling hot rage.
“Red!” She yelled. “Red!”
Immediately, Mr. Harden’s hand stopped.
“What is it, Ella? What’s wrong?”
“Get these things off me!” She struggled against the handcuffs, twisting her wrists inside the hard metal as if trying to break through them. Her voice rose in urgency. “RED!”
“I’ll unlock you! Just calm down!” Mr. Harden quickly unlocked the cuffs. As soon as they were open, Ella stood up, shook the cuffs off her wrists, and flung them across the room. Then she pulled the blindfold off her head, tearing out some hair in the process, and wiped her face with trembling hands.
“For God’s sake, Ella, what happened?”
“Don’t come near me.” She took a step back from her trainer. “Don’t touch me!”
He put his hands up in surrender. “I won’t, I swear.”
“I’m not here to become your slut!”
“Of course not, Ella,” he said, shocked. “Nobody said you were. You’re here to be trained as a Hotel Bentmoore mistress. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know why I’m here anymore. I don’t know if I should be here anymore.”
“If you’ll just let me—”
“Don’t touch me!” Ella yelled again, cringing away as he stepped toward her with his arms outstretched. “Just—just please, leave me alone.”
“I can’t leave you alone, you obviously need aftercare.”
“Red, red, red!”
“Okay, Ella. Okay.” He lowered his arms. “If that’s how you feel about it, when you’re ready, I’ll take you back to your room.”
Ella nodded, swallowing back a sob. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, take me back. I can’t do this anymore.”
“We’ve hit a crisis. I was paddling her over my lap, blindfolded and handcuffed—and she safeworded.”
“By your expression, I take it you don’t have any idea why.”
“None. She’s experienced worse pain from my own hand. She was even enjoying what I was doing to her, at least until she safeworded.”
“It was the handcuffs, then?”
“No, I don’t think so. Once she got over her initial fear of being restrained, she relaxed completely. I got her into subspace, Sir. I’m sure of it. But then…” He shrugged, looking resigned.
“Are you triggering something else, then? A memory, perhaps?”
“Maybe.” Mr. Harden scowled. “I don’t know what’s going on inside her head. She’s not letting me in, and I don’t think she will. Sir, the truth is, I don’t think I’m the right trainer for her. She needs something from me, but I can’t figure out what.”
The confession was short and blunt. It was always a blow to a host’s ego when he had to confess he could not give a guest all she needed to grow and move forward on her journey of self-discovery and sexuality. While it was an accepted fact that not every host could be everything for every woman, it was still hard to admit.
Mr. Bentmoore tilted back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “So who is the right one for Ella?” He murmured.
“Shern, maybe?” Mr. Harden suggested. “He has a way of getting inside a girl’s head. Or Pierce? His sexual skills might be just what she needs.”
Mr. Bentmoore paused to think. “No,” he said, “not Shern. And not Pierce, either. I think…yes.” He sat up straight and pulled himself into his desk. “Please tell Mr. Cox I would like to see him right away.”
Mr. Harden’s eyes grew round. “Cox?” He whispered. “You can’t be thinking of giving her to Cox! She’s already got one foot out the door—he’ll set her running away screaming!”
“I don’t think so, Harden. I think he’s exactly what she needs.”
Mr. Harden’s eyes narrowed. “Sir, do you know something I don’t know?”
Mr. Bentmoore smiled. “I know many things you don’t know, Harden. Now please, send Cox over.”
Ella cried for hours that night. The maelstrom of emotions raging inside her, the commotion going on inside her heart, wouldn’t calm. Her wracked sobs finally did die down, not because she felt better, but because she was too physically drained to keep crying the way she was.
But the ache in her chest would not go away. She stared into space, alone in the dark, feeling desolate and exhausted. Her heart felt broken, as if everything she had worked for, all her hopes and accomplishments, had been smashed to bits and swept away, leaving her crushed.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Why, why did things have to be this way? Why did she have to be this way? She had come to the Hotel Bentmoore thinking she could slip in and out with no one the wiser, and she would have a great piece of investigative reporting to show for it, one that would help her make her mark on the world. The best thing about it was that it was supposed to be something she had done all on her own, without anyone else’s help…without anyone being able to say she somehow cheated the system.
But this place, and these people, had changed her. Or maybe they hadn’t changed her…maybe they had just forced her to see parts of herself she hadn’t recognized before.
Maybe because she hadn’t wanted to know.
She was a masochist. She accepted that now; there was no arguing it, and no going back. But she was supposed to be a submissive, too.
Ella certainly didn’t feel like one. Most of the time, she felt nothing but simmering defiance, a deep-rooted need to lash out and fight the men who were there to help her. Wasn’t a true submissive woman supposed to feel submissive all the time, especially when in the company of dominant males?
She wished she could talk to Mr. Lamont or Mr. Harden about her feelings, but that might lead to them discovering her deception. She had no doubt if Mr. Bentmoore ever found out the real reason why she was there, he would kick her out of the hotel, right on her ass, and she’d be no better off than she had been before. No, she’d be worse off, because she’d be left on her own, confused and daunted by her own perverse desires, with no one to offer her any kind of help at all.
She was better off continuing as she was, playing the role, pretending to be the stereotypical submissive female, one who would allow herself to be used through her own sexual needs. In other words, the perfect Hotel Bentmoore Mistress.
Only…how much of it was still an act? She wanted to be used, debased, humiliated, spanked and flogged and made to yield completely, with her entire being, down to her shaken soul. But at the same time, she could not give in; she could not offer herself up like a lamb to a sacrifice. Not for Mr. Lamont, and not for Mr. Harden, either. Both were good men, but neither one of them had managed to tame the creature inside her that made her lash out and challenge them at every turn.
Why couldn’t she just give in and do what they ordered her to do, instead of meeting them with defiance? Why did her chest swell with rebellion at the simplest command?
Why couldn’t she just be a normal submissive woman, ready and willing to submit?
She had come so far on her journey, only to reach a dead end. These people had taught her so much about herself, and for that, she would be forever grateful; but they had taken her as far as they could.
With a heavy heart, Ella realized they could not help her, not anymore.
It was time for her to go home.
