Under the Whip

At night, this city is hot, and bellows like a large animal in pain. Dance music shakes the old building, sirens shriek below us in the darkness. There is a scream, laughter, the rumbling of heavy traffic. I like this evidence of human life, down in the streets. We are high above the noise, and I’m indifferent to the city’s roaring. He has my full attention.

We’re in the largest room at the end of the apartment’s long corridor. Minutes earlier, we’d been entwined on the sofa, opposite the dark-wood four-poster bed that dominates the space. He’d instructed me to go to the bedroom next door and change into the short silk backless nightdress he’d bought me, and which I paired with gold silk panties and sheer black stockings. Now, I’m facing the four-poster with my wrists bound to each upper corner, my ankles to the posts at the foot. I’m stretched into a wide x-shape, on tiptoes, and I know, because he’s told me, that he’s going to whip me.

Last year, he’d asked me if there was anything I’d like to try and which we hadn’t yet explored. I, warm under a duvet and comfortable in the knowledge he wasn’t going to beat me again that day, had confided that I’d like to know how it felt to be whipped with no time limit and no preordained number of strokes, until we reached the last of my endurance. Now, spread-eagled, I consider the optimism of the me who existed last winter, writing an IOU for present-day me to honour. I’m not sure she was wise to share this fantasy of ours. The whip in his hand is light but cruel, and we have the whole night.

He lifts the back of my silk slip, and caresses my ass through my panties. He discovers the label sewn into the back of them. My standing orders are to remove care labels, but this underwear is expensive and the designer's label is discreet. I’d thought it would be alright to leave it in. “Wash at 40 degrees” he reads, disdainfully, and I’m sure it doesn’t say that. I think the label announces only Agent Provocateur, embroidered in a slanting script. I’m sure of it. Mostly sure of it. Nowhere near sure enough to argue with him. And in any case, he has no responsibility to be fair. “Sometimes the injustice is the turn-on” he once declared, and I agree.

Nevertheless, I’d been preparing for back-whipping, so his delivery of six sharp cane strokes, delivered fast across my ass with no preamble is a shock. Sometimes, pain like this, arriving unexpectedly, makes me feel as though my lungs have shut down. I gasp in air as my pulse starts to race, and in my peripheral vision, I see him return the cane to the sideboard, and replace it with the multi tailed whip. I hope he might start gently. I have no expectation that he will.

Bound as I am, facing away from him, it is impossible to predict where the first stroke will land. He’s not wearing shoes and moves like a cat— I’m not entirely sure where he is, other than that he’s somewhere behind me. Sometimes in these moments I hope that if I find the right pattern of breathing, I’ll be able to master the pain early. I’m trying, with a long, slow exhalation, attempting to calm my racing heart, when the whip claws across my right hip, surely the hardest he’s ever struck me. The impact drives me forward, arching away from the pain, but the satin ties at my wrists and ankles hold fast and there’s no escape. I make up for this in volume — I shriek, towards the ceiling, sounding momentarily like a hideously wounded animal, and for an unsteady moment I think I might faint. I will strength back into my legs and hope the next stroke will be softer.

It lands before I’ve caught my breath. Pain screams across my left buttock and I scream too. I’m briefly glad of the city’s noise, which I’m adding to. Hopefully my sounds of pain will be lost in the night’s cacophony, because now I sense this isn’t a whipping I’ll be taking quietly.