Judged by Him (34 page)

“You mellowed?” His finger traced the henna pattern round and round her breasts. It tickled slightly, but she managed to ignore his distraction.

“Gradually, not overnight. By the time you came along, I knew I was after something different. I still wanted the challenge though. A buzz.”

“Little, broken me. When did you really fall in love with me, Jason. Honestly? Be a little romantic. Go on, confess,” she cajoled, poking his chest with her forefinger.

Jason paused. She remembered he had openly declared his love for her on a night that was emotionally terrifying for both of them. She had faced her violent perpetrator while he thought she had been abducted or worse, dead. The sentiment of love existed before then, it had to have done, she had felt it, seen him fight to keep it at bay. However, not neatly packaged, it had lain in pieces and had to be assembled into an affirmation.

“Not a lightning strike for me. I’ve never been in love before, even with my longer-term bedfellows. Your fragility became apparent to me when you gave me your first safe-word. When my previous subs gave me a red, I would feel disappointment the momentum had been lost and another had extinguished my thrills. I honoured their wishes but secretly resented the hold they had over me. With you, I felt compassion. Your safe-word made me concerned for you. Each time you opened up about your fears, you took me. Piece by piece. After I punished you in my office and you fretted I wouldn’t want you. When you broke down in the kitchen after I had put you through my dominating grinder. By the time the murderous Libby had her hands on you, I was a goner, Gemma. Captured.”

“Scotland? When I left you, and you released me from my submission?”

“I don’t think either of us wanted to give up on the relationship. We’re both proud and stubborn, though, aren’t we? Waiting for one of us to give in first and admit we were right for each other. I’m used to brinkmanship, risk taking, but I couldn’t let you go.”

“I don’t regret what I did in Scotland. Making you open up to me. I wouldn’t have accepted a marriage proposal from you if you hadn’t been honest with your emotions.”

“You and Mum are the only ones capable of making me talk frankly, Gem.” His face suddenly solidified. Gone was the relaxed smile lines, replaced by a distant expression. “Are you looking forward to Dubrovnik?” A new topic. He didn’t want to lead her into talking about his mother. He rarely discussed his family.

“Yes. A meal out?” she said eagerly, building on his lead.

“There is a nightclub you might like. A Latino style club.”

She sprang out from under his roving hand, onto her knees, bouncing slightly. “Seriously. You’d let me loose?”

“A reward.”

Gemma checked her excitement. “For what?”

“That flogging I’ve been promising you.”

“Oh, I can do that.” She waved her hand nonchalantly in the air.

Jason pounced, flipping her onto her back, and sat astride her. Before she could move, he pinned her wrists above her head.

“Babe. Mistake. Big mistake. Because now I’m going to have to make it more challenging for you. Aren’t I?”

His eyes dazzled her. She shut hers and mumbled a curse.

Shit! His little fucking traps surround me. Luring me with pleasant conversation and then whoosh! My Master strikes.

“As you wish, Sir.” Her pulse quickened as his weight bore down. “When?”

He shifted, moving away. “Later. It’s already nearly two o’clock, and I’m starving.”

Gemma sighed. She felt hungry, too, but not just for food.

They ate on the sundeck. Jason insisted Gemma remain naked and at his disposal. He kept her in a perpetual state of readiness. Touching her and running his smooth-tipped fingers over her body. After the meal, he lay her over his lap as he rested on the lounger and played with her. Teasing her sex, breasts, and bottom, poking in and out of her with his fingers. She squirmed and writhed under his ministrations.

“You need holding down, don’t you, slave?” he whispered in her ear.

Something hot and urgent sizzled inside her sex. “Yes, please, Master.”

What would have been humiliating to her two weeks ago was now tantalising, erotic, and extremely desirous. He had toys brought to him by Enrique, his favourites, and cruelly he took her to the brink and then withdrew them. Unable to achieve her orgasm with his constant change of direction, she whimpered. After half an hour, he grew bored and told Enrique to bring rope. They hogtied her, and Jason played with her in the small pool on the sundeck. Pushing her under and spinning her around. Pulling her up and down in the water by her nipples, making her cry out. He didn’t seem to care if they were heard. She didn’t shed tear. However, her eyes smarted from the sharpness of his tugs on her nipples. Still, she couldn’t reach a climax.

Her calf muscles tightening, she rushed her mercy word out. “Yellow!”

“Cramping?” guessed Jason.

“Nearly. No more, please,” she begged.

Maria, who had been patiently watching throughout the water play, gave Gemma a mini massage, stretched out on a sun bed while Jason relaxed in the pool. He had managed to temper his hardness, holding back from full blow sex with her. If he could wait, so would she.

***

Their conversation that morning had brought to Jason many memories of other times, other voyages on
Sublime
. Maria had commented, very soon after he had arrived on the yacht with Gemma, that he had changed. A bright, perceptive woman, accustomed to feeling tension under her fingers, sensing it slip away as she pressed down on pressure points and knots of strained tissue. Maybe she saw personalities in the muscles and tissue of her clients. He only guessed at the source of her perceptive powers.

She had massaged him, not on this voyage, but earlier ones. She had made him come with her hands only. Good, strong orgasms, which managed to invigorate him even in the state of total relaxation. In return, he rewarded her well, though not with intercourse. Enrique didn’t like Maria having sex with anyone but him, but he was happy for powerful hands to bring her to a climax.

On those distant cruises, Maria had obediently stood by, mute, during the enemas she’d performed on his chosen sub. She would stand by as Jason tormented his chosen girl. Maria had seen his mean streak, the sadistic side of him in full flight and, in hindsight, he realised it must have been hard for her to witness. That first voyage—when he came with three other Dominants and three subs—the yacht had been jointly chartered between them, with Jason paying the substantial deposit. Wealthy, though unsure how to make best use of his growing personal fortune, he came to see what play was like on a cruise. Dipping in and out of ports, constant sunshine, and never-ending warm days.

The other men were equally young. Wealthy in the own right, they’d decided to collectively have two weeks of orgies and debauchery with willing participants. They split the costs between them, allocated the private deck and stateroom as a communal playroom, while sleeping in the best cabins. Not that they slept at regular times. Carefully selecting the right girls for the trip, they had tested them out in their homes and clubs. Imposed a contractual agreement with the three young women and instructed them in how they should conduct themselves.

Sitting in
Sublime’
s pool, Jason acknowledged, that he had treated the girls like objects. He hadn’t been the cruellest of the four of them. He had refused to punish one girl. She had been struggling and constantly broke their rules: orgasm denial, speaking without permission, looking at them. Instead, to save her bruised bottom from further abuse, she had to polish all the mirrors using her breasts and a cloth. Enrique drew a fine picture of the girl with breasts squashed against a mirror.

One girl did leave. Not because she was unable to deal with the demands of their sexual appetites or the humiliating acts they made her perform. She found out she suffered terrible motion sickness. Constantly uttering yellow during scenes, especially if she was used orally, she tearfully apologised for intense nausea. Jason had on a few occasions held her hair out of the way while she vomited down the toilet bowl. She had tried the patches and pills, but nothing worked as her sensitive inner ears refused to balance out the movement of the yacht beneath her feet or knees. The girls had been made to kneel a great deal.

Jason, from outset of the voyage, had used his leadership qualities to ensure he managed the whole adventure. The other men accepted his role without question. Jason liked to keep his face expressionless when at his most controlling, his eyes bright and piercing. While the others pushed the seasick girl, Jason had taken her to one side and sat her on his lap, cuddling her.

“You’re not a failure if you go home,” he had whispered in her ear. “You couldn’t have known you’d have this problem. Go back and enjoy being fucked on terra firma. Don’t let this put you off servicing Dominants. You’re good when you’re not about to puke on my feet.”

The girl smiled, gave him a quiet thank you, and agreed it was the right decision. She left at the next port and had been replaced by a reserve girl.

“You should have pushed her, Jason,” had said one of the other Doms. “I don’t mind her throwing up as long as she keeps her legs spread wide for me.”

Jason had frowned. His natural inclination for hygiene had been one factor in sending the girl back, but in his heart, he knew he was never going to have an ailing woman submit to him.

“You’re the sick one.”

The other man thought he had been jesting and shrugged his shoulders, but Jason had been serious. Mentally, he made a big note to himself. Buy the yacht and share it with his real friends—Doms and subs he respected. After the cruise, he didn’t contact the man again.

Maria had never heard those conversations between Jason and the seasick submissive, nor the one with the unsympathetic Dom. From her perspective, the woman had been put off the yacht and sent packing because she kept saying yellow too much. Outwardly, he appeared unapproachable, harsh, and unyielding. In reality, Jason hadn’t been as severe as he seemed. He liked to keep a façade of remoteness and disinterest. He cultivated the behaviour in both his personal and public life, building his reputation for aloofness and indifference.

Gemma and probably his mother were the only two people in recent years to have breached his control mechanisms. His wife had found a way with her love and honesty. His mother in her acceptance of his lifestyle and non-judgemental views of him. With those two women, he let his face show his emotions more readily and clearly. He had let Maria hold the view he was a decadent and insensitive man for many years. Perhaps she, too, had seen past it all. Maybe she was another to accept he wasn’t a total bastard, after all.

***

Sublime
crossed the Adriatic Sea at a sedate pace. They had to pass through several busy shipping lines heading to northern Italy. Gemma slept for a brief period after Maria’s helpful massage of her taut legs. Still no orgasm, and even in her sleep, her sex remained swollen, nursed by erotic dreams. By the time she awoke, provided with drinks and other reinvigorating refreshments by Maria, she felt as pliable as play dough in a small child’s hands. Led to the stateroom, she meekly stood under the pulley and, without speaking, let Jason and Enrique bind her wrists above her head. Legs spread very wide by a spreader bar, she continued to prepare herself for the proposed flogging. Her favourite implement, guaranteed to drive her to an orgasm.

The leather tails descended rhythmically as Jason swung the flogger across her body in a figure eight pattern. Gemma visualised streams of numbers, turning them into a painting. Twos for the sky, fives for the trees, and sixes for the oceans—a swirl of colourful digits. She had a strange way of linking numbers to colours in her mind. A sensory ability she couldn’t explain to others. The breathing exercises helped until Jason, with a devious smile, covered her mouth with a ball gag.

She trembled with pain and exhilaration and tried to anticipate what was coming next. Was he going to fuck her while she hung from the ceiling?

“Open your eyes, Gemma. On me!” Jason coaxed. “Come on. You have been begging all afternoon for an orgasm. Nothing to stop you now.”

Blinking, she found a naked Jason directly in front of her, tossing the flogger around in his hands. His bronzed body relaxed in posture. He clutched his lubricated cock in his other hand, stroking the tip, waiting patiently for her to orgasm, his face calm and almost malevolent in nature, as if her pain was necessary for him. Gemma wanted to and didn’t want to come—a mess of emotional contradictions filled her head. Not just the much-needed orgasm. She was to dance in a club that night. The mesmerising image of dancing for him became her catalyst. Her jiving, gyrating body, swirling about while he watched from the side. Captivated by her hold over him.

I’m coming!

Over and over, the waves travelled out from her loins, her pulsating clitoris, sweeping across her breasts, and into the neurons of her brain. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she fought to stay conscious.

She went in a matter of seconds from an intensely physical orgasm straight into the euphoric bliss of subspace. Released from their bindings, her freed legs enabled him to thrust deep inside her, and she shrieked in her stupor, eyes bouncing back to life. From tip to hilt, he drove on and off her and his hands gripping her waist.

“Again, baby. Come again for me!”

His passionate voice filled her ears. The one she found the most erotic and she couldn’t ignore. His thumb rubbed above where he slipped in and out of her sopping sex hole. As she obeyed him and let another orgasm flood her body, he joined her. Enrique immediately untied her wrists and lowered Gemma carefully to the rug beneath her. With the dying embers of his erection, Jason continued to move inside her, making sure his seed planted deep inside her fertile body.

Spread-eagled and breathing hard, Gemma was content in her own world. Gone, her self-awareness and thoughts of decorum.

“Fuck me, fuck me,” she muttered.