A Deeper Mark

Surrender to her merciful cruelty. Femdom Erotica. Episode X22.

She took his safe word away two weeks ago. She had told him she was planning to. Little hints started appearing in their conversation. He would say that a person was going away soon, and she would grin and remark, “That’s not the only thing that’s going away.”

She had told him that from now on, if he wanted her to stop, he would simply have to beg. Of course, this was just another layer of their games. How can you take away a word? His mind would still remember it; his lips would still find it to speak. What she was really saying was that she wouldn’t respond to it, which he knew was untrue. He knew she would stop if he said it, so deep was their trust. But the act of saying she would take it away changed something in him, made him feel far out over the ragged edge.

When she took it from him, she tested him. She worked him over with the kinds of pain that had gotten him close to the safe word before. Mainly clamps and her cane. When he survived that night, he felt ten feet tall.

But then he made a mistake. He broke several of her rules about his diet and worse, he lied to her about it. He eventually came clean of his own volition; he is a terrible liar, perpetually incapable of living with the guilt. It was a trait he found more than a little confusing, given his lifelong habit of lying to vanilla friends about his proclivities; lies of evasion are lies nonetheless. When he told her, he begged her forgiveness. He pleaded that without her, nothing in his life made sense. And she was merciful. She promised to forgive him, but only after he had been punished.

Now, he awaits his punishment. He is bound over her ottoman. She used rope, which she never does, and tied him so tightly that he can barely wiggle. She finished off with a pink ball gag and left him to stew in his fear.

Her return does nothing to put him at ease. Deliberately heavy steps, and something she’s holding too high for him to see.

She drags a chair loudly across the wood floor, lifts it and spins it around, placing it in front of his face. She sits in it backwards, spreading her legs a few inches from his eyes. She’s wearing a short skirt, and between the slots in the back of the chair, he can see the shadows under the skirt beckoning to him.

“So, you’re being punished.”

He nods and mumbles his acquiescence through his gag.

“Shhhh,” she says, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t speak.”

She holds up a small silver tray. He saw her buy it from Crate & Barrel and her impish look of malevolence as the object became hers.

Now the tray holds a length of metal wire, folded at the end into an x shape, and a piezo, butane kitchen blowtorch.

His eyes swell painfully in his skull. He knows only terror.

She just grins.

“As punishment for your disobedience, I’m going to brand you with this wire. I’m going to put an X on your back.”

He protests into the gag. He whines and moans. He’s not trying to make sounds, they just happen.

How could she do this to him?

He has no safe word.

“Shut up!” Her voice centers him, but he feels like he’s been plugged into a hole in a dam, an ocean of pressure building behind him.

“Since you told me what you did, I’m not dismissing you. But I want you to carry a mark for it. I want you to remember that you have it in you to fail, so you never stop trying to succeed. Complacency lies in thinking you are pure. This mark will remind you that you’re not.”

There is a cold, cruel anger in her voice.

He tries to plead with his eyes, with his breath, with his soul. He does not want this. He’s not ready. He moans into the gag. He shakes his head. He tries to squirm.

He can’t believe she would mark him so permanently with no discussion. Even though, he wants so badly for her to mark him. He wants her mark to be made out of love, not anger.

He wants to have never failed her. He wants to never fail again.

“I know you’re going to fuck up again. And all I can ask is that you’re honest about it when you do. I won’t lie, there are things you could do to end us. I’m not talking about those things. I’m talking about the little mistakes that you’re going to make. You’re going to tell me about them when you do, because when you make them, you’re going to remember this moment, this mark.

She picks up the blowtorch and the wire and clicks on the flame.

She rises, and he moans again.

“Shut the fuck up! What could you even say anyway? No more safe word, bitch. No more out. We talked about marking, and you said you were okay with it, so guess what? This is how it works. This is what it means to be a slave!”

She walks behind him, stepping out of his field of vision. Her hand touches his back, fingers trace an x at the base of his spine. A flash of pleasure ripples over his terrified mind.

His eyes water, and his breathing accelerates.

“You should thank me for gagging you. Otherwise, you’d be saying things that you’ll regret when I’m done.”

He hears her set down the torch, leaving the flame on.

“This is what it means to be a slave.”

He feels her hesitate for a moment, and then make a swift decisive movement.

How could she do this to him? He is furious. And then…

It touches his back, and his body tenses up with icy pain.

He hears a hiss and a moment later smells burning hair.

He screams into the gag.

He shrieks.

He would squirm if he could, but she bound him so tightly that he can’t move a millimeter.

The pain is terrifying.

Until it isn’t.

Actually, it seems very manageable.

His brain barrel rolls. Crazed thoughts run through his mind. Is he enjoying this that much? How far under is he? How far gone? How bad will the damage be? How broken is he that he doesn’t care?

He feels blood rolling down his side.

Lots of blood.

But it’s cold. Like water.

He hears her snickering as she walks back into his vision.

She drops a bowl of ice cubes in front of him.

She laughs.

An ice cube is melting on his back. The wire lies in a glass of water beside a lock of hair, half burned in the torch.

He is hit by a speeding train. A fearless, irresistible force of blackness. A semi truck, an asteroid. It flattens him. He is pounded like the impact plate in a carnival sledgehammer game, and then launched into the jackpot bell, high above the earth. Atomized and scattered into the stratosphere.

Weightless and soaring.

He is delivered to the deepest subspace he has ever known.

He is a puddle, thankful only for the ottoman to cling to and the gag to take away his ability to protest…

And for her. He is so thankful for her.

For her only.

He sobs into the gag.

She sits on the chair again. Legs spread before his face. Taunting.

He clings to his bondage.

“And this wasn’t actually your punishment. That will be reorganizing my file cabinets and hard drives and inboxes during the next three football Sundays. Make up an excuse for your friends.”

Believe me when I tell you this, tender reader, you have to pry football Sundays away from him at gunpoint. But here, he nods without hesitation. Like she asked if he wanted his team to win the Super Bowl.

“I’m going to open your gag, and you’re going to kiss my foot, to thank me for being so merciful.”

She releases his gag, and raises her toes to his lips.

He bawls, smothering them with kisses.

“Thank you, Mistress. Thank you.”

She just smiles.

“Shhh. You know, I’m still going to brand you one day, but not like this. This mark is much deeper.”

Author’s note: I wrote this piece a long time ago, and it was in context with several others that talked about the characters’ use of safe words. My thinking about safe words has changed a little since then, so I’m not entirely comfortable with how this story now reads. But I still love this piece and wanted to share it with you, even though I’m uncomfortable with what I now consider to be its deviation from best practices. So, for the record, I want to say here that people should ALWAYS PLAY WITH SAFE WORDS, and that once uttered, the D-type is honor bound to respect the s-type’s wishes without exception.