He didn’t want to hurt her; and he wanted, badly, to hurt her.  It was their sweet spot, their shared interest.  Their communion (though neither was, in fact, a Catholic).  Her pain, and his infliction of it, was where and how they bonded.

“Eight!” she counted, as the lash fell again across her back.  He was already raising welts.  He knew he should slow down, pace himself — and pace her.  The way her skin and flesh were reacting she would never make it to fifty.  And fifty was, for today, the magic number.  Fifty strokes.  Fifty filthy deeds.  Fifty plus fifty minutes of debauchery, unfit for public eyes or knowledge.

“Twelve!”  The lash struck her back again, hard.  She stood, stretched like a figure in some Spanish Inquisition parody: arms above her head, pulled wide by the ropes that disappeared upwards; feet locked in a spreader bar that was itself chained to the floor.  She was barefoot, naked, fully exposed.  Vulnerable.

“Twenty!” Her voice was catching. He had stopped lashing her back, focusing for now on her buttocks and thighs.  He wondered what it would do to the insides of her knees; he regretted that, due to the way he had positioned and bound her, the soles of her feet — normally so tender and susceptible — were not available for this.

“Twenty seven!” she gasped.  He didn’t want to raise welts on her breasts or abdomen, but he did want her to feel the sting.  He had practiced earlier, so that he could snap the whip and catch her nipple, or the underside of her breast — just about any specific spot was his.  He enjoyed this — target practice, he called it.  It was more than that.

“Thirty!” Her energy, her defiant energy, was barely dented: oddly, she seemed to be drawing strength from an ordeal that would have flattened anyone else well before fifteen.  He would break her.  He always did.  He was focused on her back again, and the insides of her thighs.  When he snapped the whip just right he could make it strike her thigh, the tip curling in and upwards to catch her lips.  He enjoyed seeing her body tense with each stroke, and appreciated the way she pulled herself back up: defiant.  Unbowed.  Unrepentant.  But not for long, he was sure of it.

“Thirty eight!” There was less energy in her voice: she was saving her strength.  He could almost see it rising off her, in waves.  She was his; he owned her.  She could defy him, deny the truth, suffer his worst: but she belonged to him.  They both knew it.  It was their pact and their bond.  Their shared secret, hidden from the respectable neighbors.

“Forty five!”  Almost there.  She was doing well.  She always did well.  Tonight more than usual, he thought.  He raised the lash high and struck hard on her back, threatening — finally — to tear the skin, the flesh.  To make it raw instead of tender.  He wondered, have I gone too far?  He knew he could go much farther and she would not break, she would not stop him.

“Fifty!” The last word choked out of her.  He smiled.  Still grasping the whip in his hand, he approached her.  Pulled her mouth to his and kissed her, while the whip hand roamed her flesh and probed her cunt, feeling the raised marks — this would take time to heal — and her readiness.  He dropped the whip, stuck his fingers deep inside her, then switched hands so she could suck his fingers clean while he probed her still, his fingers working her puse,sy and smearing her juices everywhere.

“Well done, love.  Well done.  Next week, maybe we go for fifty three.”  He stroked her labia gently, kissed her ear, and was the model of tenderness while his cock pushed into her ass.

“Sixty,” was her immediate reply.