“Master West,” Cole said. “Hand me the cane we discussed earlier.”
Nathaniel didn’t say anything, but Cole’s simple request told me everything I needed to know. Whatever he was getting ready to do, he’d already cleared it with Nathaniel. I hated being punished with a cane, but this was for the demo and I’d been caned before. I knew I could handle it.
Though something told me it would be an entirely different thing being caned by Cole.
And there would be people watching and I wanted to make Nathaniel proud. Plus—and I knew it was crazy—it turned me on a bit to know I was being observed.
The crowd was so silent. I heard Nathaniel bring the cane to Cole and then the sound of Cole’s footsteps returning to where I stood.
“I’ll only do two. Hard and fast,” Cole said. “This is for your disobedience.”
I tensed my body for a second, then forced my muscles to relax. It hurt less that way. Cole whipped the cane through the air a few times. Damn evil Doms. I thought they did that just to get inside a submissive’s head.
“No need to count,” he said.
I curled my fingers, gripping the back of the chair as hard as I could.
I heard him take a step back. The cane whistled as he pulled back and then sang louder as it cut through the air on its downward path. I held my breath, waiting for impact.
It landed with a vicious-sounding strike and I grunted before realizing it hadn’t touched me. Instead it had hit something slightly to my right.
What the hell?
I didn’t have time to think anything else because it landed again with a hard smack to my left and I squealed.
I held perfectly still. That was two, but they hadn’t landed on me. I didn’t know if they counted or if he was simply warming up. At that moment in time, I didn’t know much of anything. I wasn’t sure I could speak my own name. Nothing made sense.
Cole lightly touched my shoulder. “Stand up and take the blindfold off, Abby. It’s over. You did a beautiful job.”
My hands trembled as I attempted to untie the blindfold, but my fingers fumbled and I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted.
“Nathaniel,” Cole said in a low voice.
Within seconds, familiar arms held me and ever so slowly the blindfold fell away. Nathaniel’s warm eyes were the first things I saw and I smiled in spite of the conflicting emotions swirling around inside me.
“Can you make it down the stairs?” he asked, and I nodded.
Once we’d made it down, he led me out the door to a side room. He sat down on a plush couch and pulled me into his lap. I rested my head against his chest and closed my eyes. When I started feeling more like myself, I looked up at him and asked, “What was that?”
“That, my lovely, was a mind-fuck.”
I opened my mouth to ask him more, but he placed a finger over my lips. “I want Cole to join us before we discuss.”
I nodded. “Is he coming in here?”
“Yes, he wanted to give us a few minutes alone.” He reached for a robe beside him. “Want to put this on?”
Even though I wasn’t naked, I was still exposed more than I wanted to be after a scene was over. Especially if we were going to be talking about it. “Yes, Master.”I slipped the robe on, but returned to Nathaniel’s lap. My shelter.
The door cracked open and Cole stuck his head in. “Mind if I come in?”
“If you’re ready,” Nathaniel whispered.
“Yes, Sir,” I said. “Please come in.”
Cole made his way to where we were. He still had on his three-piece suit, but his easygoing smile was back. He sat down on the opposite end of the couch. Close but not touching.
“I called Cole last week because I wanted to do a mentally challenging scene for the demo,” Nathaniel said.
“Nathaniel told me the two of you haven’t done much in the way of mental play,” Cole added.
I shook my head.
“It’s intense, like a physical scene, but in a completely different way. I find it utterly fascinating. With all our science and research, there’s still so much of the human brain we don’t understand. All the tiny details we take in and what we do with them and how we think.”
“Is that why you wore a three-piece suit?” I asked.
“Partially,” he said. “I knew it would surprise you and I wanted you slightly off balance. Not knowing what to expect. But this is actually what I wear to discipline sessions.”
“Seriously?” Who’d ever heard of that?
“Seriously.” He smiled. “Assuming I have time to prepare us both and it’s not a matter of the submissive needing immediate correction.”
I shivered as I tried to imagine one of his planned discipline sessions. There was no doubt in my mind it would be very calm, very controlled, and not easily forgotten by the submissive in question.
“I assume you usually use a cane in these sessions?” I asked.
“Yes, almost always.” He shifted forward, placing his arms on his knees. “I’ve found mental play is often more intense because it can force a submissive to think through her motivation.”
“Like Master giving me a command and then you commanding me to go against it?”
“Yes, rather like a catch-22. What command do you break? Which one would he want you to break?”
“Or maybe he doesn’t care, because either way you’re going to mess up,” I added.
“Almost makes your head hurt,” he said. “Of course, then you have the submissives who look for a loophole.”
I’d been thinking about the commands and decided they had been carefully worded and stated a certain way on purpose. Cole made a living with words and if he’d helped plan the scene, only one thing made sense. “You knew I’d try to take the chair off the platform.”
“I did. In fact, while you were in the side room before the scene, we told the group what we were doing and told them if you started to walk off the platform with a chair, they were to laugh.”
“You guys planned that, too?” I asked, and behind me, Nathaniel chuckled.
“Yes, Abby. We planned everything. I wasn’t completely certain you’d try to take the chair off the platform. I knew I would have to goad you a bit.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot that part for a minute, when you told me I’d been a submissive long enough to know what to do?”