You sit across from me at the table, smiling, sipping your wine. I close my eyes for a moment and I see quite a different tableau. You are not smiling; there is no wine — not for you. You look at the glass in my left hand, and look up at my face, asking with your eyes if you might please have a sip, just a sip, to quench your thirst. I shake my head again, and slowly trace your cheek, your neck, your shoulder, your hip and leg, with the tip of the cane I’m holding in my right.

You are naked, standing, your hands bound behind your back with your fingers pointed up, forcing an erect posture. I sip from the glass again, and trace the curve of your ass with the cane before striking softly. It startles you, and before you can recover it falls again, harder, stinging. I let it fall once more, harder still, and admire the welt that is appearing. I set down my glass on the table, and pick something else, which you cannot see. I move behind you, and you feel the cold ice trace the path of the cane, cooling your hot flesh. The ice slides past the welt, and around your hip, then up and around the cheek and back down between, where it lodges and begins to melt. “Don’t,” I say, “drop it.”

You sense me stepping away, and you hear the cane before you feel it. The ice clatters to the floor.
“Tsk,” I say, and let loose once more with the cane before picking up something else from the table. I step behind you again, and tie the blindfold. “There.” You feel another ice cube tracing the new welt, then the older one. It circles around your other hip. You feel it melting, dripping, the cold water not falling directly to the floor but following the curve of your leg before dropping, drip drip drip, forming a small pool between your feet. The tip of the cane follows the path of the water, falling between your legs and then rising, gathering moisture both cold and hot, from the ice and from your own slit. I press it upward, then slide it back and swing it down, hard across both your ass-cheeks. The ice, much smaller now, falls again.

You hear me at the table again, and then feel the bite of the clamp on your left nipple, my warm tongue briefly caressing it before I step away again, and leave two more stripes. More ice, and then I stand back for a few minutes, idly swinging the cane through the air, now and then, without connecting, just to rattle you. On the fourth or fifth swing, you clench again and brace for the blow — which lands, this time, across your left breast, striking the hypersensitized nipple and causing the clamp to swing and bite harder. You drop the ice.

I remove the clamp, and then trace more ice across your stiff nipple before lodging it behind you again. You feel my mouth warm your cold left nipple, my lips pulling and tugging while my teeth bite down gently. The sensation courses through you, a loose cord connecting areola to clitoris suddenly pulled taught and strummed. You feel my finger at your entrance, my warm digit against your icy wet folds, threatening an invasion. The cord strums again, and slackens but little when I step away and swing the cane again, raising more stripes on your back.

By now the ice has melted almost completely, and you let the last chip fall with the cane. I take more ice to the welts, then free your right nipple and ice that before suddenly thrusting my frozen fingers into you, twisting to assay your state of arousal and smearing your own juices across your mons when I pull them out. I put a finger to your mouth and nose.

“Suck,” I say. “Taste yourself.” You remain defiant, even as you do as you’re told.
“Do you know why we’re here?” I ask. You nod, almost angrily. The cane flies again, striking diagonally across several of the raised welts and beginning a new mark. Each time the stick whistles in the air, I see you flinch; and each time it lands on your flesh, I smell you more. I flick the end across one nipple, then the other, and then return to your back. Finally, I rest it hard against your throat, the line touching your breast and extending past your shoulder. You feel my hand next to it, not gripping exactly but threatening, applying pressure with my fingers and the cane that suggest quickly and easily limiting your air, should I wish to. The thick scent of your musk rises, and I hiss in your ear.

“You need this, don’t you, pet? You need this even more than you want it. And you have earned it, haven’t you?”

At this, your defiant posture eases, almost breaking. Your head drops, just slightly, and I can barely catch the whisper. “Yes.”

“Very good. Again.”

“Yes, I have earned it. More than earned it.” Quietly, and without artifice.

I release your arms from the bonds, and massage some life back into them before leading you to the table. I remove everything to the floor, and raise you — still naked and blindfolded — onto the surface. I raise the wine to your lips, and allow you a few small sips before lying you down and covering you with a thin blanket, a soft pillow under your head.

“Rest now,” I say. “I will return shortly, and we will complete your punishment. For now, you may remove the blindfold. And perhaps,” I add from the doorway, “when I come back, I will consider your newfound congeniality.” You hear the door lock behind me, leaving you alone in semi-darkness.