A/N: Okay I've been taken to task—and fairly so—for the dungeon scene in that no limits or safewords were discussed beforehand. It should have been—no doubt about it. In my mind it happened but I didn't see fit to write it. My bad.

Ana did know that she could stop it at anytime with a safeword though I didn't make that explicit either. In a prior chapter, Ana had read a book and talked to Minx about how everything worked so she pretty much understood exactly what she was getting into. Since CG felt as if he would be corrupting her innocence by pulling her into this kinky life, he was trying to discourage her (i.e. scare her off) without actually hurting her. Remember that pain is relative: if you're expecting it to hurt, it will. Just ask my doctor.

I forget sometimes that readers cannot read my mind. It wasn't stated; however, he wasn't using a whip on her but a belt—she thought it was a whip. She thought it was scoring her flesh but it wasn't. It was her PERCEPTION of it all that we were focusing on, not what was actually going on. This is the trouble with first-person POV. You have to decide if the narrator is dependable and even if so, is she/he perceiving things differently from reality? It's about getting into a character's head and not everyone will interpret things the way I intended. I'll try to be more mindful of that problem.

The following chapter will make that aspect clear (about her not really getting hurt) but it should have been made clear at the end of Ch. 27. And to my guest critic: I do hope you used the word literally incorrectly and that you were not actually vomiting from my little dungeon scene. That would be so terrible of me to do to a faithful reader, anonymous though you choose to be.

Finally, aftercare was on the bed after they had sex—just quiet time with gentle caressing. This is not a D/s relationship. CG and Ana are lovers first and foremost. Hope this answers all the issues raised.

Chapter 28

When we get to his bedroom, I make a beeline for the huge floor-length mirror to look at my backside. Lifting up my shift I am shocked to see nothing but faint pink stripes going up and down my buttocks. Christian comes up behind me.

"I'll put some Arnica cream on that though it doesn't look like it will bruise at all."

"I'm stunned," I say. "I thought it would be a lot worse."

"Worse?" He smiles. "Did you think I hit you hard, Ana?"

I can feel the blaze flare in my eyes. Damned straight he did. "Yes. The whip hurt. I thought at one point you broke the skin."

The look on his face is sheer perplexity. "Whip? Ana, I did not use a whip on you. Just the flogger."

I point to the pink stripes on my derriere. "Then what left these?"

He grasps my hand and pulls it to his crotch. I'm thinking he's going to put it on his fast-growing hard-on but instead he places it on his belt buckle. "This."

I pivot around. "Your belt?"

Nodding, he grins happily. "Do you really think I'd use a whip on that tender little ass the first time you venture into my dungeon? What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"Well, it hurt like a whip. And it made the sound."

"You can crack a belt, Ana. In this case the sound was worse than the slap."

"It really hurt," I can't help it: I whine.

He pulls me to him, sweeping my hair back to kiss my neck. "Sweetheart, it hurt because you were expecting it to hurt. I wanted to give you a full idea of what goes on and I did. But I wasn't going to harm you. I gave you a taste of the impact toys with the flogger, belt, and vampire glove. Then," he nuzzles my ear, "a little orgasm denial but I couldn't follow through on that—not yet at least. And you got full bondage and that was a fairly advanced position, especially with the blindfold. All said, you did admirably well considering you've never tried anything like this before."

"I would have sworn it was a whip," I mutter, disbelieving. It sure felt like a whip. If a belt hurts that much, what must a whip feel like? A shudder runs up my spine, dropping a clammy touch on the nape of my neck. "So what now?"

His eyes narrow. "So what what?"

"Are you taking me back in there ever again?"

"Do you want to go back in?"

I shrug. "I want to share it with you. If you need it, then I need it."

The expression on his face is hard to read: I see gentle amusement, confusion, and maybe even surprise all competing for dominance. He extends his hand to me. "Come," he says softly and leads me to the bed. Going to his side of it, he sits down and pulls me onto his lap, running his nose up my shoulder, neck, and into my hair. "Mmm, you smell good enough to eat, my Ana."

His hand gently brushes my hair off my shoulder. "First off, if we pursue this together, we have to go over limits, hard and soft, mine and yours. We must agree on those so we never go beyond what the other can comfortably take."

"Isn't it all about testing limits?"

His hand never stops caressing me. "You're a clever one, sweet. Yes and no. We could push at them with a finger but never a foot. The boundaries have to be comfortable for both parties."

"How could I know my limits when I've never done any of it before?"

"We'll start with what you think you might like or dislike and then tweak it from there. This will be a team effort, Ana."

"Is the safeword always red?"

"No, it can be whatever you want it to be."

"Okay. I want mine to be Mark Twain."

He laughs loudly, his eyes shining with delight. "Mark Twain it shall be then." He rubs my thigh with his big, warm hand and my libido opens one eye, rousing from its slumber. "Any other questions or concerns?"

"Not right now."

"Okay," he says, continuing to stroke my leg, going higher up now and then a little lower down past my knee. Up and down, up and down, until he touches me between my legs and my libido is roaringly awake now. "What I want you to do is make a list of things you think you'd like to try and things you definitely don't want. Also, using a scale of one to ten, with ten being intense pain and zero being none at all, rate the amount of pain you think you could comfortably tolerate. This is mostly academic, Ana, because I don't think I can dispense real pain with you in any case."

"Do you normally do it with subs?"

"It depends on the sub. Some insist on pain; others refuse it. I'll direct you to a web site that will help—provide you with more information. I do have some paperwork that I use with subs I don't know well—generally all the subs I've played with—that can help guide us." He peers down at me. "I'm in uncharted waters, too, you know."

I furrow my brow, trying to interpret that comment. "How's that?" I finally ask.

"I've never done this before with someone I truly care about. For me and I think for all my previous subs too it was all about the D/s and sex."

I think about that for a moment. I suspect he's sadly mistaken about the motivation on the women's parts. They probably would have loved to get his heart engaged but couldn't. Why me? I truly wonder what he sees in me and what his true feelings for me are. I'm not sure he even knows and if he does, he's not telling. Trying to push unhappy thoughts from my head, I snuggle in closer to him.

"Okay," I say, grabbing his roving hand and bringing it to my breast. He normally doesn't let me direct his lovemaking but this time his hand stays on target, kneading it and then tugging on the nipple till I'm keening with pleasure. "One more thing," I say while I still have language at my command.

"What is it," he breathes, his respiration growing heavy too, as he massages both my breasts and my hand snakes down to grab his erection.

"I want you to take me to Irina's next party and show me what goes on. Not with you participating," I quickly add, "but just to act as my guide. That might help further my education."

"Deal—on one condition."

"And that is?"

"We stop talking about this so I can fuck you already. I'm going to explode soon and I want to do it inside your snug, lovely…" and he whispers the rest in my ear. I draw in a long gasp. Dirty boy.

I awkwardly turn in his lap, pulling my leg up so I can straddle him and placing my lips to his ear, whisper, "Bring it on."

"Do I need to use a condom?"

I smile, shake my head, and sing "On the pill, on the pill, on the beautiful pill…" to the tune of By the Sea. He lifts me up just high enough to unzip and impales me in one fell swoop. I fall as he swoops.