“This time your punishment was light, hama,” he said, undoubtedly watching as I rubbed at the stinging ache in my bottom. “Should you disobey again the punishment will be greater, and of longer duration. The switch is not the sole implement capable of teaching you your place. Do you understand?”
I bobbed my head spasmodically, still sniffling, hating myself for not daring to say a word. I didn’t want to obey him, but he was going to make me do it anyway.
“Good,” he said, taking his hand back as I heard him shift around on the cushions. “I presume that this tray of food here was brought for the two of us, but I have as yet to sample from it. Have you eaten?”
This time I shook my head, not even certain I knew what tray of food he meant. I’d seen a tray on the small table near the cushions, but I hadn’t the faintest idea when it had been brought or what it contained.
“I find myself scarcely surprised,” he said, his tone going dry as he shifted in place again. “Despite my constant urgings to the contrary, your interest in food continues poor at best. With this consideration, as well as my present hunger, in mind, I shall permit you to feed me first.”
I nearly blurted out my surprised dismay in words, catching myself just in time to avoid that leather. I was supposed to feed him while I was blindfolded? How was I supposed to find the food—or him?
“Take each serving carefully from the tray so that it does not spill,” he instructed, his attention so clearly on me that I could feel it. “I wish to eat the food, not have it draped about me.”
His faint amusement took nothing away from the implied threat—or promise—and I sniffled again as I crawled slowly across the carpeting, one hand groping blindly for the location of the tray. A small voice inside me urged me to refuse to serve him, to stand up and pull the blindfold off and then walk out of the room with my head high, but that small voice was insane. If I tried to refuse him he would catch me and beat me again, a lot harder than he had the first time. The humiliation of crawling around on the carpeting was terrible, but the humiliation of being beaten was worse—and more painful.
Just as I thought I’d never find the tray my hand touched it, banging the wood and rattling some of the bowls. I steadied it quickly and pulled myself closer, then rose up on my knees to grope for the first of the bowls. I took it off slowly, two-handed, to make sure I didn’t spill or drop it, and then jumped and gasped when fingers came out of the dark to touch my breast.
“Gently,” the barbarian’s voice cautioned, a faint hum beginning in his mind. “The contents of that bowl were nearly spilled. Do you wish another taste of the leather?”
I shook my head convulsively even as I shuddered, the fingers on my flesh sending tremors through me. He couldn’t touch me now, not when I had to be so careful! It wasn’t fair!
“Now you must find where I am,” he said, blessedly withdrawing his hand. I took a deep, raggedly uneven breath and reached out with my right hand, slowly and carefully searching for his face. My fingers first encountered his chest, hard and hair-covered, then slid up to his strong, corded neck. Above that was his chin and cheek, and when I reached them I, too, was reached. I gasped a second time and straightened uncontrollably at the touch between my thighs.
“Ah, melon wedges!” he observed, pretending that he looked in the bowl rather than at my violently shaking head as his fingers explored me. “They are properly for the end of the meal, yet have I developed a fondness for them in my short time here. You may begin with them.”
With that the touch was gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving me shaking and desperate to cover myself all over. All I could see was darkness and more darkness; being touched like that, without warning, made me feel more helpless than I ever had in my life. It was as though dozens of people stood about, any of whom might touch me without my knowing who it was. I couldn’t stand being done that way—but also couldn’t think of a way to stop it.
I could feel my arm trembling as I took one of the wedges and reached it toward him, but his teeth took it from my fingers without anything else happening. I fed him a second wedge and then a third, but when I reached out with a fourth, his hand was at my thighs again.
“You have lost the proper direction,” he told my gasp, the hum in his mind making it worse. “I do not care to stretch my neck to reach the wedges. Try again.”
This time the touch didn’t disappear, not until I’d found where he was again and had fed him the wedge. By the time I was down to the last two wedges, I’d been touched twice more and was a nervous wreck. He kept me from feeding him the last two wedges by feeding them to me, and they were more distasteful than I could possibly have imagined. Being deprived of sight is supposed to heighten the other senses, but I didn’t find a new, deeper flavor in the normally tasty wedges. I couldn’t rid myself of worry over what he was really feeding me, to find any enjoyment in the things at all.
“I will now have the spiced meat chunks,” he announced after the last of the melon wedges was in my mouth. I managed to find the tray again by the time I had finished chewing, but had to resort to sniffing before I located the bowl with meat chunks. My success was rewarded with two hands of fingers at my breasts, and the meat chunks would have ended on the carpeting if he hadn’t grabbed the bowl and steadied it. His chuckling was like a file across raw and bloody nerves, and I half wished that I had dropped the bowl. His caresses were beginning to be more painful than pain, and I didn’t know how much more I could take.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t last beyond less than half the meat chunks. The more concerned I became about locating the barbarian’s position accurately, the worse I did. His hands were on me almost constantly, one between my thighs, the other on my knee, or side, or breast or neck. I had been reduced to whimpering, needing him so badly I was almost ready to beg, and then he broke me completely. His toying fingers suddenly thrust deep within me, tearing a moan from my throat as indescribable sensations coursed through my body. I dropped the bowl and threw myself on him, finding hard-muscled arms under my hands and a hair-covered chest under my face. I kissed at him and thrust my body at him, mewling and begging without words to be taken. I was sure he’d been waiting for that, waiting until I begged before taking me, and was more than ready to be taken. Considering that, I couldn’t understand why his hands suddenly came to my arms, forcing me away from him.
“Forshame, wenda!” he said sternly, shaking me enough to stop my struggles. “Is this the way in which you see to the feeding of he to whom you belong’? By throwing down the food he wished to consume? By blatantly and deliberately disobeying? You must be taught better.”
No! I screamed, but only inside as he draped me over his thigh again. Outside I was crying, sobbing against the punishment he would give and the way he had tricked me. He’d been waiting all right, but not for me to beg to be used. He’d been waiting for me to ignore his orders and do as I pleased, just as I usually did. He’d let me get away with it more than once, but that time I didn’t get away with it. The first stroke of the leather was the first of eight, harder than the first five and with more anger behind them. I was screaming by the third and hysterical by the eighth, and not only because of the pain. He wasn’t going to let me do anything out of the way, and the humiliating punishment had been designed to teach me that. It was something I didn’t want to learn, but that wasn’t about to stop him.
This time when I was placed back on my knees, he held onto my wrists with one big hand. The tears were streaming down my face despite the cloth, and I choked on a sob when he touched me again, deeply and possessively, proving that even the beating hadn’t destroyed my need. He then let go of my wrists and thrust a bowl into my hands, a bowl that smelled of fried meat strips and vegetables. Wordlessly, still sobbing, I put my fingers into the bowl and carefully fed him, as completely cowed as he undoubtedly wanted me to be. It was his wishes and needs which were important, not mine, and I had been taught that the hard way.