Free Bound and Initiated by Emily Tilton

trying to remember what Claudia had told her to say. “I… I beg…”
    “ I beg your forgiveness, pater, ” Claudia prompted.
    “I beg your forgiveness, pater, and I… I ask that you…” Now Sarah’s hesitation stemmed from remembering, rather than from forgetting. Surely he could see, looking down at her backside—as he must surely be doing right now, for his shoes had moved around until they were lost to her sight—how severely Claudia had whipped her just a few minutes ago. His voice sounded kind—could he really want to see her punished again? “…punish me as you see fit,” she whispered at last.
    “I shall see fit to punish you very soon, I think,” Robert said, his voice not quite as kind but somehow in its dominant quality conveying just the same the impression that the control he would exercise over Sarah would always flow from his considered judgment of what suited her best, as his possession and his plaything. To her distress, Sarah felt herself grow warm again between her legs.
    The beautiful shoes came back around her and into her field of vision again, and stopped in front of her. She felt masculine knuckles brush against her cheek. She closed her eyes. A finger under her chin, lifting her face. A voice saying, “Open your eyes, columba. You may look me in the face.”
    She obeyed, dazzled by the angle of his jaw and the blueness of his eyes. He spoke in a low murmur, as if he meant only Sarah to hear his words. “I am lucky enough to be the man who will soon begin your initiation, Sarah, because I am the senior pater here in New York. I will not be gentle with you, I am afraid, because I do not wish to be gentle and in any case my role in your new life is not a gentle one by its very nature.”
    Sarah thought she might well faint. How could he say such terrible things—things whose meaning she could hardly guess but which must mean her utter abasement and subjugation—in such a caring tone? How could her body react to the thought of the barely guessed cruelties his words evoked with arousal that almost made her emit another of those horrible whimpers she had never given forth before today but now seemed unable to contain?
    “Your role?” she whispered, knowing she shouldn’t speak but unable to keep her burning curiosity from spilling over into speech.
    “Do not ask useless questions, columba,” Claudia admonished, and now Sarah understood that the sentence had a kind of incantation about it—it was a ritual formulation, designed to instill reverence in new initiates.
    Robert, still holding her chin up to look at him, turned to look at Claudia, standing just in front of where Sarah knelt, to the left. “She’s on her way to the instructional exam?” he asked.
    “Yes, pater.” Sarah noticed that Claudia’s eyes, too, were downcast. Was she not allowed to look him in the eye, either? Had she looked Kevin and Alex—the nymphobi? was that the word?—in the eye? Sarah hadn’t noticed and she found herself berating the lack of attention.
    “The first degree beginning at sunset, then?”
    “Yes, pater.”
    He looked back down into Sarah’s eyes. “I shall see you then, columba, and, of course, I shall punish you then for looking me in the eye without permission. I’m afraid I don’t have time to toy with you right now, or I might take you into my office for a little preparation and even a preview of what I’ll be doing with your lovely young body tonight. As I said, I’m going to be a very important person in your new life—in some sense the most important person—so I advise you not to forget about me between now and when we meet again this evening.”
    “Y-yes, pater,” Sarah managed to stammer. Robert had not adopted a threatening tone, let alone raised his voice, but her whole body had begun to tremble.
    “You’re very lovely, Sarah,” he said. “I know I’ll have a good time with you.”
    Then he had released her chin and stepped past her, bound for wherever he