Free Tell Me No Lies by Delphine Dryden

time he paused, she was practically melting into the
floor. He ran the ends of the soft leather over her back, an entrancing sensual
accompaniment that almost distracted Tess from the significance of what he was
saying.
    “You have to think of these things as having settings. Like
a volume button. That was about a one. Now we’re going to increase the volume.”
    M’kay , she thought drowsily.
    Two was a firmer massage. Tess eased into that, even
enjoying the more pronounced sensation. Three was mildly uncomfortable at
first, but then she grew used to it and didn’t mind it one bit.
    “Let’s skip up a few,” Jake suggested after a few minutes.
    And everything changed.
    Fire scored her ass in the wake of Jake’s next throw, a
burning that went below the skin and lingered in the muscle. Tess jerked
against the restraints, nearly calling out a curse word but catching herself at
the last minute.
    “That was maybe a six or seven,” Jake explained, running his
fingers over the searing mark. “Of course this is a soft flogger, with wide
tails, so it’s not going to sting that much even at full bore, but it’s good
for training. The trick is not to tense up. You have to take it. Let it in,
turn it into something else. Transfer that pain to somewhere else as pleasure.”
    He trailed down to push first one, then two fingers into her
pussy, encountering little resistance. Tess felt the brush of something harder
over her clit then realized it was the flogger handle. She shuddered and pushed
back into Jake’s touch, moaning at the sudden rush of need. Until he’d touched
her, she hadn’t known how wet she was, how empty and aching. As the sting
faded, it was replaced with ferocious arousal. The importance of being filled
was overwhelming.
    “Not yet.” He withdrew with a gentle pat on her hip, then
stepped back and let fly with the flogger again.
    A crack, a sting, a whimper. For a horrible, endless time
Tess bore that rhythm, until at last her mind and body worked out the trick,
like flipping a switch in her nervous system. The sting became feeling, pure
and simple, and the next time Jake stroked the whip against her, Tess groaned
in anticipation and cried out in pleasure as the sensation flowed from her ass
to that needy place between her legs.
    After another few strokes he stopped again, and Tess wasn’t
sure if she was panting in relief or frustration, whether she wanted it to end
or go on forever. She wasn’t even sure who she was right then, but she felt
like she might want to be whoever this was, this wild, sex-crazed woman.
Someone whose walls could be scaled, who could take it instead of dishing it
out. Someone who could be with someone like Jake.
    “Good girl.” He patted her again and she sighed, basking in
the praise like a cat in a sunbeam. She wondered what she could do to get him
to say it again. She was starting to believe she’d do anything.
    * * * * *
    Jake saw the moment it happened, that magical transition
from pain to pleasure-pain, as Tess’ body started to move in time with the
percussive music of the flogger’s blows. The swish and snap, the gasp and
groan, that give and take where time seemed to stand still. A glassy-eyed sub,
a hard-as-stone Dom, a balance between them where meaning redefined itself.
Perfection.
    It couldn’t last, he knew. But it always seemed like this time, it might. This time, there might be transcendence. Magic that
outlasted the dungeon.
    He almost resented the beauty of it, because he knew it was
only temporary. It happened but it faded, and this pattern would hold as true
with Tess as it did with anybody else.
    There was every chance his motivation here was purely
selfish, that he was dooming whatever friendship had been between them. But he
couldn’t stop himself now, because there was always the hope that he was wrong.
This time, with this girl, would be different. And for once, the girl was
actually Tess. Not merely the Tess of his imagination, but the woman