Silence. As the water caressed her lips, clasped around the tube, as it moved between the spaces of her fingers, she felt the silence descend. Where was he? He said his touch would be there. In this world, five seconds could become a lifetime. The panic was immediate, seizing up her throat. She needed his touch, needed it now. She'd never done this level of sensory deprivation with a submissive. While all good Masters and Mistresses provided pleasure to the sub, it was a balance; the desire of the sub for pain or submission balanced the Dominant's need to dominate, to test the levels of submission. Tyler's need was apparently for total raw vulnerability.

She wanted this to stop. Couldn't do this. Where was he?

He'd told her to focus on touch and what else? She strained against the bonds, all the cool rationality, the total control exercised by her as a Mistress fleeing before the power of the terrifying anxiety. Was he playing with her?

She realized then how much her subs had given her. She didn't think of herself as a coward but would she ever willingly have given up control as Brendan had done had she not met Tyler? Had she not had The Zone requirement, she corrected herself. But the correction was an evasion of the truth her mind had stated baldly. She would not have done this with any other Master.

Please touch me. God, now. I'm frightened.

Her breath expulsed on a near sob as he touched her thigh. Stroked. Drew a... He drew a heart. Once, twice and then again. Then wrote, one letter at a time, big unmistakable. Upon her flesh. B...R...E...A...T...H...E.

Breathe. That was what he had told her to do. Breathe.

Some of the panic receded. She took the deep breath and recovered enough to draw in the second one more slowly, then another. His thumbs were passing over her clit now, touching her hair. He was combing the short hair, being infinitely careful, making sure he did not snag her in any way. She wasn't in a tomb. It was a womb and he was caring for her. He was here. He said he wouldn't leave her. He promised.

But she found she still needed to feel his touch every second, her mind freezing up again in the several seconds it withdrew and then came back. Heat, shaving lotion being applied. Spread out on his palms, obviously warmed between them before he applied it upon her. His fingers spreading it over her mons, her labia and even under her, parting her upraised buttocks, the pussy hair that grew back in the area of the anus.

As he touched her in what should have been a functional manner, handling her pussy as if he had every right to groom it, the anxiety coil in her stomach was twisting, shifting. Changing. She realized her breath was becoming shallow now from arousal.

The moment she had the thought, he drew the heart again. She put it together, that it was a quick symbol to remind her to keep breathing deeply, simply. She should know all this. She should be totally in control of this situation. All of it, her emotions, her reactions. She'd been a Mistress forever. There were several other parts of her life where breathing, focusing on details in extreme circumstances and keeping one's head was crucial. She also ran a business, for heaven's sake. Why was this throwing her for such a loop?

Thought fled as his breath touched her. When she realized his lips were close to her cunt, her thigh muscles reacted like a drawn bow, straining outward, a futile effort because of her restraints. What was he doing to her?

He pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh, lower down, and licked her. A tiny bite of teeth. Another drawn heart, this time with his tongue.

Breathe in, breathe out. His hand rested on her cream-coated pussy, warning her before she felt the slick glide of a razor. When he shifted his hand so it was on her thigh, he inserted a thumb between her leg and her sex to steady his strokes. All she could think about was that thumb. He shifted it over her folds to hold them closed, increasing sensation as he navigated the razor down the side of the labia just above the tender pocket between thigh and hip. Her stomach muscles quivered. Trying to lick her lips, she licked the tube inside the mouthpiece. That made her think about tasting him.

Sucking in another breath, she quelled the absurd urge to nip and suckle the thing in her mouth. The oral craving rose in her so strong and immediate it brought to mind his hard cock and one of the most potent acts a submissive could perform for a male Dom.

Was this what being treated like a sub made even a Domme feel when she was subjected to it? Or was it just Tyler and the unique chemistry they seemed to have?

She wanted to examine it further but the pulsing demand beneath his fingertips was distracting her. She meditated, practiced yoga. She knew what it was to still everything in the mind but she'd never experienced this, a silence so complete that she only had one focus beyond her jumbled thoughts and that one focus was taking even those away.

She arched as his thumb shifted, bearing down again on the outer lips to more smoothly shave a straight line from the mons down into that area. As he did so, turning his hand, he slid his fore and middle fingers partly inside her. The thumb shifted to her clit. And though the water provided lubrication, she knew she was slick with heat for him.

God, how could she breathe through this? His fingers eased slowly deeper, the thumb pushing up, applying simple, inexorable pleasure. She felt the heavy pulse of blood in that area through the pressure of his finger. Lifting her hips because she couldn't help herself, she moved into the touch as much as her bonds would allow.

He was right. She unconsciously tried to turn her head, allow that part of her to thrash, but the forehead and neck strap kept her fast. She gasped through the tube, her hands clenching on the handles he'd told her to grip before he cuffed her wrists to the marble.

Tyler watched her, his mermaid, as she responded to his touch, her cunt muscles tightening on his fingers, wanting more. He understood the feeling painfully well. She arched, her ribs smooth ripples along her sides as she fought the restraints. Her lips were working behind the mouthpiece, biting down, if her tense jaw was any indication, displaying an oral demand his cock was throbbing to appease.

Not yet. Not yet. He employed some of the same deep breathing techniques he'd urged upon her, knowing the rewards for waiting. As a Mistress, she knew them, too, but he understood that she was discovering one of the amazing pleasures of submitting.

With nothing required of her but the Master's Will, inhibiting her desires outside the requirements of his commands was not necessary. He'd thought if he restrained her, deprived her of most of her sensory ability, she could fall into that never-ending playground of sensations and instead of thinking about the boundaries, she would run from playset to playset. He'd succeeded and Christ, she was killing him.

She was soaked. He could tell the difference between the water's light touch and the heavy slickness from her body. He looked at his palm, saw her fluid had trickled down into the shallow bowl of it. But her chest was expanding and releasing too quickly now, the air sighing out of the tube in a way that easily brought to him the vision of her lying on his bed, writhing against him and moaning her pleasure as he brought her to peak, again and again.

He'd ordered her verbally last time. This time he didn't give her the chance to think or resist. Stroking his thumb back and forth across the distended clit, he found her sweet spot inside with his fingers and laid the finger of his other hand against the opening of her anus, accessible to him from her position, just teasing the rim.

The water rolled as she lunged up against her restraints. Her forehead pressed hard against the strap, tighter than the one on her throat so at this type of moment the pressure on her throat would not be hazardous. The rasping in the tube became a guttural sound, somewhere between a wheezing sob and a breathy scream. He closed his eyes, reveling fiercely in it. In feeling her pussy ripple and contract in a long, hard orgasm that he'd made her helpless to deny this time. Her breasts were tight points even as he worked her through the after-shudders. When he slowly, reluctantly withdrew his fingers, he reached for another way to keep her mind focused on only one thing. His Will, and the pleasure it could bring her.

Standing, he trailed his fingers down her belly into the water and cupped the left breast, still rising and falling rapidly from her exertions. Fitting the rubber sides of the clamp around her hard nipple, he followed her movements to tighten the screw. He stopped when he felt her tense, then let it back out one adjustment. He wanted her to wear them for a while and feel their pleasurable discomfort, but not slide into pain. He moved across, did the other one and then let the heavy chain that attached the two float down and rest in a crescent along her upper abdomen.

Marguerite could not keep up with each new sensation. Her body was still throbbing from the second orgasm he'd given her in less than an hour. When those hands drifted up her rib cage, bringing the touch of a foreign item, she had a moment of trepidation. Then reaction shot from the compression of her nipple straight into her lower belly, coiling together with the aftermath to keep her in a state of wanting.

What are you doing to me? She'd been thankful for the strap holding the breathing tube in her mouth, for she couldn't possibly have held on to it during the soaring pinnacle he'd just sent her tumbling over.

Now his hands never left her, one on her at all times. She caught a breath in her throat as he slid something thick and short into her pussy, something that had a clit stimulator. The waterproof vibrator immediately pulsed on her clit at low setting, causing her to squirm as the extra-sensitive tissues were stimulated further. No, she couldn't... It didn't feel... It was uncomfortable so soon after the orgasm but a pleasurable response clutched in her lower belly. Her restraints only intensified it, because between that and the thigh straps she could only twitch in small movements against it.

The razor was back, working on the left side of her pussy. She gnawed on the mouth tube, trying to breathe, trying to calm herself down, despite the steady pulse of sensation against her clit.

She couldn't control anything. Though she knew that was the point, she hadn't expected this. This disintegration of her mind into a million bubbles of floating torment where all she could think about was his touch, what he would do to her next.

She screamed as he bumped up the setting abruptly to maximum. No, no, no... It was too much sensation, too much. It hurt, it didn't hurt, it was just too much, taking her clit up to a paralyzed, pre-orgasmic state where it could not go further, could only do its best to withstand the battering staccato vibrations. Too fast to let her go over, too much stimulus not to. As she hung on that precipice, her body heaved against unrelenting bonds.

Then, unbelievably, another orgasm ripped through her body, too ruthless to be called pleasurable but underscoring a point she understood as clearly as if he'd spoken it. He'd take her up and over whenever he wished, until she was exhausted and could not think beyond the next wave of desire.

When Tyler gradually lowered the small vibrator's setting, he took careful notice of her spasmodic shudders. Her body was reacting to the stimulus but was otherwise nearing lethargy, worn down by the physical and mental stress of their evening together. It was time to put his baby down for a nap.

It was going to be hell to lie next to her, knowing there was no relief in sight for him. He had no intention of breaking her rule about sex, though it was obvious he could do it easily. He'd mowed over her restraint about kissing as if it had never been but he wouldn't do so again. He intended to hear the sweet sound of her begging to break all her rules before the weekend was over.

He'd caught her off guard, taking her where she didn't expect to go. Once she had time to think, she would re-Marshall her defenses and make it that much harder for him.

And he was going to let her do it, because he was going to prove no matter how thick the walls she built, he could shatter them.

* * * * *

It took twenty minutes of meticulous care to shave her completely. When he was done he eased out the vibrator, wet with her post-come honey as well as the arousal the continuing stimulation had coaxed from her. He rubbed her skin down with benzocaine gell and a lotion with the same light apple scent. He liked massaging her soft, smooth skin, looking at her nipples large and aroused in the nipple clamps. Occasionally he tugged on the chain, felt her pussy contract beneath his thumb and nodded, satisfied she had become thoroughly aroused again despite her exhaustion.

At length he pressed the controls, keeping his hand on her as the marble slab began to come up, taking her back to a level spread-eagle position. Removing the strap across her forehead, he took the mouthpiece from her lips, resisting the urge to suck the beads of water from around them. Then he unlaced the head mask, taking it off, smoothing out her hair as her pale eyes focused, sought him.

Marguerite was hungry for the sight of him. She was glad for the restraints that remained so she didn't do something ridiculous. It was odd, but the silence of the water had come above the waterline with her, so all they did for a few minutes was look at each other, his hand caressing her hair, her temple. She felt soothed, quieted by the touch. She didn't feel a need to do anything at the moment but look at him, and it seemed he was indulging in the same activity. Eventually he pressed a control. True to his word all the restraints released at once with the exception of the adjustable straps at her throat and breasts. Those he released himself, his fingers grazing her sensitive skin.

She shuddered as he unbuckled the strap around her throat. His hands stilled momentarily, his eyes studying her. Then he finished removing it without comment and set it aside.

"Stay where you are." He picked up a towel and began to dry her, starting at her feet and working up, patting her thighs, her smooth, silky cunt. He took her hand, laid it there. "Do you like the way that feels?"

She did, because he had done it and because it obviously gave him pleasure. Her fingers began to inch away but he caught them, held them on herself. "How often do you touch yourself, Marguerite?"

"I don't."

"A toy, then."

She shook her head.

"You never pleasure yourself alone? Not with a toy or your fingers?" She could answer the second question truthfully, so she shook her head.

His eyes crinkled with humor but there was something more serious there. "If I had a cunt that beautiful, I'd touch it all the time."

"Well." She wasn't sure what to say to that. "I suppose that might drive away my customer base."

"So it might. But you might get some new customers." Her gaze flitted down, rested on the very prominent cock pressing against his jeans.

"You can touch me, Marguerite."

She didn't need to be told twice, reaching out to rub her palm over the solid heat of him. When his hand became a fist in her hair, she heard him exhale sharply.

"I want my cock in that hot, wet mouth of yours, Marguerite." She wanted that, too. What's more, she wanted to be on her knees doing it. She sat up, swinging her legs to the side away from him, her world spinning both figuratively and in reality as the disorientation of her previous position descended on her. She felt his hands on her shoulders, steadying her.

"Easy," he said. "Easy now."

None of this was easy. She'd been here less than a handful of hours and her emotions felt battered. Her body was not nearly sated, though she'd had more orgasms in this short time than she'd had in weeks.

"Come on." When he threaded her arms into a satin robe, the silken fabric brushed her clamped nipples, making her pussy moisten further with need. Would this new level of wanting he'd unleashed in her ever stop?

He guided her into an adjoining bedroom that was even larger than the bathroom.

Decorated like a queen's sanctum, it had a canopy bed so high it required a velvet-cushioned set of stairs for it. A set of comfortable chairs were arranged next to a fainting couch. The arched floor-to-ceiling windows with their tapestry hangings gave the impression of a royal's chambers.

This was obviously where he spent his nights with his submissives. She was sure that the mahogany lingerie chest and dresser held a wealth of sensual aids to make those nights memorable ones for the woman in question. It didn't please her. She balked at the door.

"This isn't your room."

"No. This is our room. The room I share with a guest who honors me enough to let me share it with her."

She wanted to pull away, back into the bathroom and stay there, not bring her skin into contact with things other women who had pleasured him had touched.

But this was training. This was not supposed to be personal. She wasn't his lover or girlfriend. She was having such difficulty holding on to rationality, this was one thing she could and would stay reasonable about. She stepped into the room, knowing her posture was too stiff. "All right."

He studied her a long moment before speaking again. "Do you sleep on your stomach?"

She nodded. The king-sized bed, with comforter and pillows, looked like the most comfortable of nests. He probably shared it with women every other night.

"I'll give you five minutes in the bathroom." He opened the front of her robe, removed the nipple clamps, causing her to sway as he massaged her. "We'll put these on in the morning."

When she returned, soft lamp light filtered through the room and she noticed the fragrance of fresh flowers. A bowl of cuttings from the ginger plants was on the nightstand. Her legs were trembling as she crossed the room to him.

"Up you go." Apparently noticing, he took her hand to guide her up the steps onto the bed. She curled her bare toes into the velvet cushioning. Before she lay down, he stopped her, slipped the robe off her shoulders. When he settled her on her stomach, his hands glided along her back, the curves of her buttocks. She closed her eyes, then immediately opened them as she felt a soft touch at her wrist. Snapping a fleece-lined cuff there, he threaded the tether attached to it through the bedrails and out the other side of spindles farther down the bed. When he secured the other wrist with a matching cuff, she could bend her arms or straighten them a modest amount but not enough to free them.

"Tyler..."

His hands efficiently arranged her legs, spreading them, restraining them in the same types of cuffs, only these he drew taut so she was helplessly exposed again. He further raised her trepidation by slipping a soft blindfold over her eyes.

Tyler turned on the heating element in the pillow topper so she'd be warm without covers and then trailed his fingers down the slope of her spine, down the crevice of her buttocks, probing her where so many emotional secrets were held. He brushed a hand over her lips under the blindfold, knowing the lack of sight, just like in the tub, would increase the sensitivity of her mouth.

"No kissing," she managed.

"Not unless you beg me," he agreed in a husky tone.

He put a knee on the end of the bed and Marguerite felt the mattress depress under his weight. Had a moment to wonder what he was doing.

Oh, God. His mouth settled over her newly shaved pussy, his nose tickling in between the smooth cleft of her buttocks as he began to lick her cunt, tiny incremental touches of his tongue, his breath hot on her flesh, teeth nipping.

Time began to have no meaning. When she was in the bathroom, she'd told herself that she could and would withhold the next orgasm he tried to wring out of her. But he didn't rush, seeming to enjoy having her pussy available to him, teasing it to raging heat then easing back, keeping her jerking and gasping with the tiny kisses and explorations of his far too clever tongue. Her buttocks writhed against his jaw as she tried to press down, get away from the inexorable demand. He simply scooped his hands under her thighs, lifted her up against her restraints and easily held her struggling hips, using her movement against her, creating more friction. His tongue slid down her clit with the lingering touch of a boy enjoying a creamsicle on a hot day. One savory lick at a time, a little sucking to keep the cream from dripping off the bottom.

Then, giving in to temptation, a whole covering of his mouth over the treat, teeth nipping at the edges, tongue swirling.

As she squirmed, her sensitized nipples rubbed against the bed. She couldn't keep doing this. There was no way... How could he be drawing out of her what no sub could? Pleasure was a measured response, more intensely felt if severely restrained, allowing almost a spiritual clarity in denial. This was its opposite but somehow it was the same, the confusing chaos of sensation and color taking her far past rational thought to a place where thought and even spiritual enlightenment were not necessary. It was the childlike joy and wonder of Eden, simply felt, accepted. Only she couldn't accept this. She began to fight the bonds uselessly, pulling against the iron headboard, trying harder to break free of his grasp.

His response was to lift her higher, the full several inches the tether allowed, letting her feel the restriction of the bonds more keenly. His one hand came under her, manipulating her pussy with devilishly knowledgeable fingers while his mouth went between her cheeks, tracing her rim, unleashing an incredible euphoria of feeling, everything from terror to ecstasy.

And so it went on. It was the most merciless punishment she'd ever witnessed as a Mistress. The clock on the nightstand ticked on and on as he brought her up to a pinnacle with a mouth and tongue that never seemed to tire of eating out her pussy, of playing with her anus, of making her ass and quivering thighs tender with short bites that she suspected were leaving light marks on her skin. Again and again she almost came, but he'd pull back. He brought a bucket of ice to the bed. At times he would clamp a handful of it down on her nearly climaxing clit, numbing the reaction, drawing it back. One, two, three...seven times. On the seventh time, tears were running down her face from the frustration, her body all fire. She was coming no matter what, damn him. He couldn't take away the choice. But then she gasped as his fingers opened her and he began to gently insert round balls of ice in her cunt. Two, three of them. And then, though she writhed and screamed, he did the same to her anus. Putting the ice balls in his mouth first to suck off the potentially rough outer coating, he made them clear and slick before he inserted them, the cold instantly burning. When he finally put his hot mouth over her pussy, heat and cold warred at cross purposes.

She couldn't do anything. Every touch brought forth a cry from her lips. She was beyond the ability to form words which was a blessing, because she would have begged without shame for the climax he was holding just above her head, daring her to ask for it. And she understood that was the purpose, with the clarity that such incredible torture was bringing to her.

He'd told her he would teach her about the nature of a submissive but he was also teaching her how to be submissive to him. That wasn't a newsflash to her, but to take her rushing down a slippery slope to it so quickly... She couldn't resist at this moment, couldn't even think. All she wanted was to come, to have him make her come. Every wiggle made the ice melting in her body drive her higher, wilder with no relief. He let her thrash now, caught between unbelievable discomfort and pleasure at once, the cold searing her, demanding her compliance.

She'd said no sex. She didn't care if he broke the rule, she just needed the craven want to stop. Oh God, how could something hurt so much and feel so good? Her cunt aching from cold, screaming for his heat, she wanted his mouth even deeper.

Then she heard him unfasten his jeans, the zipper coming down. He straddled her hips, his thighs pressing on either side of her.

The wet tip of his cock trailed down one quivering buttock then the other, then up the crease in the center, teasing her entrance where water from the melting ice was dampening her, trickling down to the folds of her pussy to join the water pooling beneath her there.

He shifted, moved and she felt him applying a lubricant along the inside of her cheeks. Not the rectum itself but the inside crescents of her buttocks. As she grasped what he was about, he took hold of her ass and started to rub his long, very thick length up and down between them, holding her tight around his pumping cock, increasing the incredible sensation of the ice inside her opening. She moaned, guttural noises she couldn't stop as he used her body as a Master would to achieve his pleasure. While denying her because of her disobedience, her resistance. She was a Mistress, damn it. It was hard for her even to pretend to do this. He knew that. So why was he asking so much of her? And why did she want so much to give him what he asked?

It had been nearly ninety minutes since he'd laid her down here. She felt like her entire body had shattered into individual atoms of screaming need. She'd become a swarm, a cloud of energy with no real substance or form.

How many of her subs had cursed her and begged in the same fervent thought, the way she was cursing him and begging now?

His breath grew harsh in his throat, the clutch of his fingers becoming nearly bruising. Catching hold of her hair, he swept it to her right along the pillow, baring her nape. Letting go of her ass to brace himself with an arm on the mattress, he began to come, his thighs tightening against the outside of her hips.

As he spurted onto her, she felt the hot seed coat her back, the sensitive inside of her shoulder blades, spilling over her scars. Something broke in the shadows of her soul as she understood what he was doing. Marking her as his. Sending a message to the deepest part of her psyche, the part that thought she would never be safe, never be able to elevate herself above the dark level of her nightmares no matter how high she climbed. He was here, guarding the passageways. He knew where she was, could find her anywhere. He knew her.

Her body quivered, wanting so much to accept it, yet overwhelmed by it.

"Please." She managed it, though fear clutched at the word as it emerged from her raw throat. "Please let me come."

The tip of his cock trailed down her ass and then his head was between her legs, his hands on her thighs, forcing them more widely apart. Lifting her as his tongue thrust in, he brought heat among the remains of the ice, stroked her passageway and brought it back to warm life. The five o'clock shadow of his beard scraped her clit, her thighs.

Finally, he let her go over.

The orgasm grabbed her body in hands as ruthlessly pleasurable as his. Her abused throat could not stop what went beyond a scream and into the realm of a tearing wound. Body thrashing wildly, hands pulling at her bonds, she sank her teeth into the mattress. She thrust against his mouth over and over until her body simply gave out, the muscles no longer able to do anything but twitch. Small, painful whimpers came from her throat as the pleasure kept whirling through her.

He kept his mouth working her long after she was done and had become so sensitive she was jerking in convulsions against his touch. It told her more adamantly than words that he was making sure he'd driven the lesson home.

Whatever reality existed for her when Sunday came around, he'd taught her in less than an evening that he had the upper hand. That he could Master her.

* * * * *

At last he rose, stood by the bed. Vaguely she registered the fact that he was pulling a towel from the dresser drawer.

"Ty..." She stopped, cleared the residual lust out of her voice that made it sound so husky and intimate. "Tyler?"

"Yes, baby?" He knelt next to the bed so she could see his face, the stern set of his mouth, the gentle look in his eyes. No one could be as gentle as a powerful man. Or as ruthless. He was both sides of that coin, cloaking one in the guise of the other, changing back and forth and making her crave both.

"Will you...leave it?"

She could barely form words, so exhausted that the energy to move her lips was an effort. She wanted his mark on her, wanted to feel it dry on her skin, smell the heavy scent of him.

The immediate burn of hot possessiveness in his eyes told her she'd pleased him immeasurably. She didn't want to feel the new flood of aroused reaction in her body that came as an involuntary response to it.

"All right. Sleep, Marguerite. Close your eyes." Relieved to finally escape that direct, all-too-knowing stare, she closed her eyes.

"I want you to answer me a question before you slide off into dreams." His voice was a murmur. A lullaby. "And answer it without thinking it through. What is it about BDSM that attracts you so?"

The question rolled around her mind as if on clouds. The answer came slowly, dreamily. "People are...themselves, their real selves in sex. Particularly BDSM. Can't hide evil, good...weakness or strength. When you strip a sub down, you know who they are. They can try but they can't hide it - not if the top is good. It all comes out..."

"Good answer." She felt his lips brush her nose, her closed eyes. "Sweet dreams, princess."

"H've...you ever called someone else that?"

Another pause. "Yes. But I've never called anyone angel."

"'S okay." And then she was lost in those clouds, somehow knowing he was around her, watching over her so she didn't have to dream.