(no subject)

[takecourage]

Alex has never really understood Valentine's day but she's gone and got herself a boyfriend who's deeply, ridiculously romantic. For a few weeks now, she's been planning a response to Darlington's confession about wanting to be the one up on the stage.

She's sitting on the couch, wearing a pair of shorts and her corset, a pair of sleek black heels with ribbons wrapped around her ankles and up towards her knees. There's a riding crop across her thighs.

She waits.

Comments

[takecourage]

She could listen to him talk like this for hours. She picks up the crop, tracing the curved for of one shoe.

"What do you think friendly means, Danny..."

[more_magic]

"Given that I've never done anything like it before, I don't know that I could say," he says, watching the flex of her wrist as she picks up the crop, his eyes tracking the dark leather pad at the end as it runs over her shoe. He shifts his weight a bit from one foot to the other. "If I had to guess...I'll be kissing the toe of those heels. At the very least."

It seems almost too gentle compared with everything else, but he waits for her verdict--wanting, with a suddenness that makes his stomach flip, to be right.

[takecourage]

The shift of his weight is nervous, boyish, and it just confirms to Alex that she's doing everything right so far.

"Is there anything you definitely don't want me to do to you? Anything you definitely don't want to try? You'll need a safe word too."

[more_magic]

"I have to imagine you're not going to let things get too extreme, Stern," he says, his voice a low and slightly halting murmur. Still, he gives the pair of questions the kind of thought they're due. "Don't know that I want to be gagged, if that was under consideration for you at all. Nor have anything done to my ass that's not you hitting it, and even that only with the crop or the flat of your hand. Still good with the idea of the blindfold and being restrained, though. And as for safe words..."

He trails off, turning ideas over in his head, searching for a word that's both incongruous enough to suit and meaningful enough that he won't forget it in the midst of everything. After a moment, he smirks, a flush touching his cheeks at how odd and yet fitting the idea is that's come to mind. "Incorruptible."

Darlington's sure the stonemasons of the Grove Street gate never imagined their omission would be used in quite this fashion.

[takecourage]

She grins at the thought of that, the memory of him telling her that story. She sits forward on the sofa.

"So," she says. "If you were in my audience I'd have picked you out and got you up on stage and then I'd tell you that you need to strip down to your boxers." She arches her eyebrow. "Now."

[more_magic]

There's an edge that slides into her voice at the same moment her eyebrow ticks up, some kind of steel or command, and it throws him just slightly more off-kilter in a way he's not sure he should appreciate--but does. "The spectator rendered the spectated," he says, even as he's setting the bouquet down on the coffee table between them. "A fitting turn of the usual dynamic, Stern."

Balancing first on one foot, then the other, he takes off his shoes and socks before tugging his sweater over his head.

[takecourage]

She pushes up off the sofa, riding crop in hand, walking towards him in her towering heels. She stands in front of him, tilting her head. "Come on. You know what I want, and I know you want to give it to me."

[more_magic]

He hadn't expected her to get up, to come stalking towards him in those almost obscenely tall heels, and his fingers stutter a little against the buttons of his shirt. "I haven't forgotten, Alex," he says, eyes flicking to the crop in her hand, then back up to her face. He swallows hard.

Moving as quickly as he dares, Darlington strips the rest of the way, undoing his belt and unzipping his fly, dropping his shirt on the floor beside the soft heap of his sweater and pushing down his pants. He's already on his way to being hard, his cock neatly outlined beneath the thin fabric of his underwear; a flush blossoms on his cheeks, but he stays just as he is, letting her see him in full as he stands there in nothing but his boxers. It feels, oddly, like waiting for approval.

[takecourage]

"I wouldn't let them call me Alex," she says, leaning in to press her corseted chest against his back, her mouth close to his ear. "It'd be ma'am. Or mistress. If I let them speak to me at all. Might give you a free pass though." Her hand slips around, covering his cock and squeezing him through thin cotton, handling him carelessly, almost roughly. "Get on your knees."

[more_magic]

A shiver goes through him at the slide of her corset against his back, the press of her body and the sound of her voice in his ear. "The choice is yours," he murmurs, pausing a moment, considering. "Ma'am." She fondles him, easy and indifferent, and he presses involuntarily into the touch.

Once she pulls away again, he moves, sinking to his knees, his hands going to rest at the small of his back. He's not sure why he does it; just that somehow, it feels appropriate.

[takecourage]

A little shiver goes through her at the way he callls her ma'am like that, so she doesn't correct him. Moving around in front of him, she shifts her grip on the crop in his hand, using the tip to trace the line of his cock through thin cotton. "Just imagine feeling this exposed," she says. "Kneeling there on my stage and knowing that everyone can see how turned on you are. How into this you are." She lifts the pad of the crop up to his mouth. "Kiss it."

[more_magic]

Alex walks that slow half-circle around him, heels clicking on the floor, and when she stops Danny turns his eyes up to look at her. At the press of the crop against his cock, that slow drag, he has to swallow back a groan. "I wouldn't have anywhere to hide, would I?" he says. "Stripped like this. Onstage. In your capable hands." It feels like a recitation, a ritual.

Alex lifts the crop, the leather at the end brushing against his lips, and he sighs out a breath. "Of course." Leaning forward, he kisses the pad, then straightens back up again. His hands, still at his back, twitch slightly.

[takecourage]

He does as he's told smoothly, obediently, and it makes her cunt throb in her snug shorts. She tousles one hand into his hair, pulling his head back so that he's looking straight up at her.

"Pull your shorts down. You can keep your cock covered for now, but I want to see your ass."

[more_magic]

They both know already how much he likes the press of her fingers in his hair, the rough way she pulls his head up only serving to make him harder. He waits a moment, then meets her eyes with his, some spark of heat already present within the blue of them.

"Yes," he says, when she gives the order. "Or rather, yes, ma'am." Carefully, he moves his hands from behind his back, fingers hooking at the sides of his waistband to ease his boxers down over his ass. The air is a little cool against his already-flushed skin, the sensation making him shiver.

"Like this, ma'am?"

[takecourage]

"That's perfect," she says, walking behind him, taking in the sight of the perfect curve of his bare ass. "Now bend over. Cheek on the floor."

[more_magic]

It's almost surprising, how absolute her control is over him already. Danny groans softly, laying his palms flat against the floor, then leaning forward, bending until the side of his face is pressed to the wood, his ass still up in the air. He can almost feel the weight of her eyes on him, the waiting presence of her at his back.

[takecourage]

It's perfect, how he looks like that, black cotton shoved down to reveal the pale skin of his ass. She flicks the crop, making it whistle through the air, and then she snaps the leather of the pad against his skin, first one cheek, then the other.

[more_magic]

He tenses at the whistle of the crop, but when no lash follows it, Danny's foolish enough to let the delay lull him into a security he shouldn't feel. The crop lands against his ass a moment later, one strike and then another, and the surprise--followed by the sting--jerks a sharp, shocked noise out of him.

"Fucking hell."

[takecourage]

That reaction makes Alex laugh, and she slaps him again, two more sharp slaps for each ass cheek.

"What do you say, Danny?"

[more_magic]

The delight in her laugh goes through him like a jolt, something about it making humiliation settle low in his belly in a way that's not wholly unpleasant. Alex hits him again, then once more, and he huffs out a sharp breath, gritting his teeth against a groan.

"Thank you, ma'am."

[takecourage]

"Good boy," she says. "Four more will make ten, and I think that's a good number." She slaps him again, once on each cheek, and then teases the pad of the crop along the cleft of his ass, teasing. "It's a shame that you won't let me do anything else to this perfect little ass."

[more_magic]

He groans, the sound stuttering a little as she lays the crop along his ass again. "Up to eight now," he says once she's done; proof he's keeping count, evidence he's...what, being good for her? Danny's not sure of the impetus, but something about it settles pleasantly in his chest.

The pad of the crop nudges along the cleft of his ass, and he has to work at keeping still, his fingers flexing slightly against the floor. He's so aware, for a moment, of how hard he's gotten already. "It is, ma'am," he says, low and deferential and almost apologetic. "Maybe another night."

[takecourage]

She bites her lip over a smirk when she realises that he's keeping count. She keeps up the light, stroking touch along the cleft of his ass, teasing against his asshole before she moves it away again.

"Maybe another night," she echoes. "Shall we put those last two on your ass or do you want to try them on your nipples like a good little slut?"

[more_magic]

The pad of the crop presses against his asshole, and even though it's light and brief, nothing more than a sensation, the contact makes his face burn. He lets out a shaky breath. "I'll take them on my nipples," he says, surprising even himself with the ease at which he says it. "Please."

[takecourage]

"Good boy," she says, taking the crop away and walking around him so that she's standing in front of him, looking down at the line of his bare back, the flushed skin of his spanked ass. "Straighten up for me."