An Expert in Domination (2 page)

The furniture too. It was pushed to the side, but it was much the same as she’d seen the one time she’d been in a club. Crosses, tables with rings, frames for tying people to, a sex swing.

Remy came up behind her. “Here to gawk at the show?”

She looked back to give him a kiss on the cheek, and then resumed her inspection of the room. Dylan Allison, dressed in something from another century, in this case a long velvet tailcoat, breeches, and a ruffled shirt, was helping his wife, Alex, into a chair. Sophia had met them at registration, and they seemed like good people. Alex looked like she’d injured her ankle from the way she was leaning on him, and she didn’t look at all happy.

Another man went over to help, and the woman with him, who wore a white collar around her neck, pitched in as well. Dylan stepped away reluctantly, and with one wistful backward look at Alex, he headed for the stage.

The two men consulted together in low tones. An interesting picture, thought Sophia—the leatherman and the fop. Miles apart in so many ways, but the same in a way too. Dylan’s garb said even more clearly than Colby’s that the play was the thing—how one looked and not who one was inside. There was respect between them, though. In the end, Colby shrugged and nodded. Dylan turned to face the crowd—well, some of the crowd, as it wasn’t really clear what part of the stage was front. He affixed a small microphone to his lapel, fiddled with it, and then gestured for silence.

“As some of you know, Colby Brock is here from California to show us a few things. My wife, Alex, was going to be Colby’s demo bottom for today’s impact play demonstration, but she was injured setting up the stage. I’ve asked a few of our more experienced submissives if they’d like to fill in, but I haven’t found anyone yet. So I’m looking for a volunteer. This is a scene that might leave some marks, and there’s definitely some pain involved, but Colby is very skillful with his tools. There might not be a safer person in the whole country to do this kind of play with. Anyone? Man or woman, doesn’t matter.”

Colby stepped forward and scanned the crowd like a wolf deciding which sheep to eat. It made Sophia shiver. She looked around, curious as to what brave soul was going to volunteer, when she felt Remy’s hand pushing on her elbow. The next thing she knew, her hand was in the air and Colby was staring straight at her.

“Ginger, maybe you’d—” Dylan began, looking over at a redhead who had put her hand up.

Colby stepped in front of Dylan and pointed straight at Sophia. “That one,” he said.

“I didn’t—” Sophia started and turned to glare at Remy for pushing her hand up. Dylan, meanwhile, stood back and shrugged at Colby. He said something quiet to him. Maybe it was warning Colby off the newbie.

“You looked out of place with all those clothes on,” Remy said softly. “And hey. New things.”

“Unless,” Colby said, “you don’t want to.”

Unless you’re afraid.
That might not have been what he said or meant, but that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Sophia
was
afraid. But she was even more scared of admitting her fear in public. Remy gave her a gentle push. She took the next step forward on her own. People made way for her. By the time she got to the stage, she bounded up the steps with a jaunty, carefree attitude as if the single tail were ice cream and she could hardly wait. Colby coiled the whip while she mounted the stage.

I think I’ve got them fooled.

Colby had an amused look on his face.

I’m not sure I have
him
fooled. But why did he want me?

Colby stuck out his hand. “Hi. I’m Colby. What’s your name, beautiful?” It was odd hearing him directly and hearing him from the speakers at the same time. She spotted a little lapel microphone on his vest.

“Sophia.” She shook his hand. He had a good firm grip. Did he practice that like he obviously practiced his whip?

“Good to meet you, Sophia. Have you ever been struck by a single tail before?” He handed her the coiled whip, and she took it from his hand, not sure what she was supposed to do with it. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to swing it.

“No.”

“Cane?”

“No.”

“Riding crop?”

“Never.”

“Flogger?”

She shook her head. Was he going to shoo her off the stage? It would be a welcome relief in a way, although her curiosity would go unsatisfied. At times, she had enjoyed pain with sex. She liked the energy of her lover scraping their nails across her back or even striking her with an object. She saw it as the natural human desire to fight, and struggle turned into lovemaking. But she didn’t get off on pain as much as the ferocity and the energy that could cause it. And pain without sex? She wasn’t sure she saw the point.

“Any objection to stripping down for this?”

“No.” So much for a reprieve. She had no desire to be naked in front of everyone, but as a matter of principle, she refused to be ashamed of her body.

“Good. Take your shirt off. Your bra too, if you’re comfortable.” Colby turned and looked around at everyone. “So we’re going to veer off into some different territory today. Because I’m not just going to demonstrate the use of some toys. I’m also going to teach Sophia a few things about how to process pain. Maybe she already knows. Some people come to it naturally without even realizing what they are doing. But since she hasn’t done much heavy pain play, she’ll be good for demonstrating this.”

Sophia lifted her top, and then glanced around. She was used to being naked outside, among other naked people. Today, though, most people were wearing at least some clothing, and inside in front of an audience was a different thing. People came to see Colby, but they’d be looking at her. She had a few extra pounds she wasn’t happy with. Ginger would have been a better choice. Had Colby picked her because he’d detected her inexperience somehow? She’d had lovers who’d bit or scratched. By comparison, the whip seemed cold, distant, and impersonal. Even a cane or a flogger allowed the top to be close enough to touch the bottom, but the single tail forced the wielder far away from his target. The presence of the long whip in his hand made her nervous.

Why had Remy put her hand up? She glared over at him. He grinned back at her. She decided to ignore him.

She folded the top neatly and placed it in a chair. There were plenty of people wearing less than she was. She took a deep breath and unstrapped her bra as well.
I will not be ashamed.
But she crossed her arms over her chest nonetheless.
Naked when other people are naked is different from standing in the middle of the room and being the center of attention.
She looked around. There were women wearing nothing, and at least one guy naked too. She decided to focus on them and ignore the rest of the audience. Colby kept talking. He had a nice, smooth voice, and even though she wasn’t really focused on what he was saying, it was relaxing to listen to him.

He put the single tail on a small table that shared the stage with them and picked up a flogger from his toy bag. Sophia leaned to the side to get a better view. There were floggers, she could tell, of various colors, and canes and a black riding crop. Maybe other stuff too, but she could see all that clearly.

“Most bottoms,” said Colby, “can take more pain if you give them a warm-up. And yeah, I know that most of you know this already. The point is Sophia isn’t an expert up here, and she needs some extra help. So I’m going to warm her back up while I talk about some heavier techniques.” He gave her a swat on her bottom and pointed to a wooden post near the center of the stage. “Go hug that, Sophia, like it’s your best friend. Something to hold on to will help.”

The swat stung but didn’t really hurt. Maybe I should make Remy hold me, thought Sophia. But she was pissed at him, so no. She went over and wrapped her arms around the pole, feeling silly.

Colby started talking about the technique of swinging a flogger, and Sophia zoned out. She had no intention of ever swinging anything at anyone. She closed her eyes and relaxed against the pole. Behind her, she could hear the swish of the flogger going through the air. Then she could feel the wind it created. It was getting closer. She snapped out of her reverie and tensed.

“No,” said Colby. “Rule number one: don’t tense up.”

She looked back. “Are you going to hit me with it?”

“Yes.”

“Then of course I’m tense!”

She heard a gasp from someone in the audience. Maybe one didn’t talk back to Colby Brock that way, but she’d never held her tongue for anybody. Still, she didn’t want to anger someone with a whip in his hand. Or a flogger. Whatever.

His lips slowly curled into a smiled. “Perfect,” he said. He glanced back to the audience. “She’s right, isn’t she? That’s a perfectly natural reaction. The problem is it’s a natural reaction that doesn’t help, because tense muscles hurt more when they get hit. Soft muscles squish and absorb. As does padding, which is why I like playing with a girl with a little meat on her.”

Oh, so that’s why he didn’t choose Ginger. Thanks a lot.

“So, Sophia, since tensing is indeed natural, I’m going to ask you to do something else natural. Breathe.”

“I think I’m breathing,” she said. Now that was smart-alecky, pure and simple. She had an idea what he meant. She’d taken enough meditation classes and done enough yoga. He meant breathe intentionally. Think about it.

“Breathe in,” he said. She did. “Breathe out. In. Out. Good. Keep that rhythm. Concentrate on that; focus on it. And yes, I’m going to hit you. But keep doing it anyway.”

She breathed. A couple dozen leather tails flew against her back, more a caress than a blow. Was it the breathing that caused that? She looked behind her and saw that he was swinging the flogger with only a fraction of his strength. He had said something about warming her up. She relaxed. She could take this. She didn’t need any special breathing techniques. It was even pleasurable, although she wouldn’t admit it to Remy. She was still pissed at him.

“Sophia,” Colby said sharply, “keep paying attention to your breath. Your mind has wandered.”

He was right. She breathed. He kept up a rhythm thudding against her back and started talking to the crowd again. “This is one way to use breath to help process pain, and it works pretty well, but in part it works because it moves the bottom’s focus away from the pain itself. Now, if the top gets off on just swinging a flogger, that’s one thing. I sometimes tell people who think I’m all about pain that I’m a sensuous player. The feel of the whip handle, the cool metal of clamps. Sensuous, right?”

People laughed.

“Well, it
is
sensuous on my end. But if it was really all about that, I wouldn’t need to play with another person. I could just happily caress my floggers at home. So there’s something else going on, which is that I enjoy the effect I’m having on my bottom. So if the way my bottom is processing what I’m doing to her is to ignore it or to feel it less, that defeats the purpose. It’s a good thing for a bottom to have in his or her toolkit, when things get too difficult to process any other way, but it’s not really the point of the exercise.”

What a nice way to say you’re a sadist.

“So, what I want you to do now, Sophia, is to continue to breathe, but rather than focusing on your breath, focus on the sensations you’re experiencing. Focus on the way the flogger tails feel on your back. And while I want you to breathe in and out the whole time, I want you to gather the image of each touch of the flogger building on the last, each time you inhale, and when you finally feel you’ve absorbed as much as you can, imagine yourself exhaling it all out. Can you do that for me?”

Sophia nodded. Colby had the kind of voice that made her want to please him, but what he was saying made some sense to her too. He might be a sadist, but he’d obviously thought a lot about what the people he played with were experiencing. Had he ever been on the other end of the whip?

“Good girl. Here we go.”

He built up intensity, and while he kept talking, it wasn’t to her. He was speaking to the tops now, describing the different ways to swing the flogger efficiently. She didn’t really pay much attention to what he said, although it seemed as much about saving wear and tear on the top’s muscles as it was about maximum force.

The flogger thudded hard against her back, and she decided it was time. She exhaled, but it wasn’t quiet. She told herself she hadn’t screamed. It wasn’t that the last blow had been so hard, although it had been the hardest, but that everything had built up, just like Colby had said.

“This is energy work,” Colby said to her. “Energy building up, energy releasing. That was lovely. You held all that within you and let it go. How’d it feel, letting it go?”

It felt good, she realized. It was more than just that it felt good to have the building-up stop, although that was part of it. It was like a weight off her shoulders. She didn’t know how to describe it, though. “Good. I think.”

Colby smiled. “Does that make you a masochist?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re right. There are people who just enjoy the pain, but they are the minority. Well, in most crowds.” He grinned. “Maybe not this one. But most people enjoy the release. They can learn to enjoy the energy. And that’s what this is about. We did it with breathing, but there are other ways, although I think it’s important to maintain even breathing through a scene regardless. Some bottoms wiggle the whole time, and that’s how they are letting off the energy.”

“Like dancing,” said Sophia, although she wasn’t sure she was supposed to talk. She wiggled against the post. She didn’t know if he intended to demonstrate, but she was interested if he did.

“Yes, like dancing. Any bottoms here like to do that?”

A few people in the audience raised their hands.

“It can be sexy to watch. I get that.” He stepped back. “Actually, rather enjoying watching Sophia right now myself.”

Sophia blushed, suddenly aware of all the attention, but especially Colby’s. She wondered whether Remy was getting jealous. She kind of hoped he was. It would serve him right.