M is for Measured

We cannot see them from behind the tall headboard, and they cannot see us. And by us, I mean Mistress Kat and me. She knows that her skillful hand can produce loud strikes from the kilt belt without going full swing. Every strike is stingy but meticulously mild. It’s this, or I’m still riding endorphins, and my pain tolerance is up, at par with the damn kilt belt.

“One, two three, four, five.” I count without a fault after each lick, but stop before the second part, as prescribed by Aldous. 

“Go on, thank him,” whispers Mistress Kat.

“No,” I whisper back.

“Elizabeth?” Aldous calls me by my given name. “You are forgetting something. Something that good girls never forget.” He pauses for a quick moment, but I stubbornly keep silent. “It was not a warning, go back to one.”

Mistress Kat doesn’t wait to deliver the next strike.

“One.” My foggy brain, bound to the first five numerals, refuses to yield to Aldous. Not to him, not ever.

“You have been weighed,” louder than before, Aldous recites the first part of the famous quote.

“Two.” One syllable at a time. I can do it.

“Measured.”

“Three.”

“And found wanting.”

“Four.” I count, and Mistress Kat holds a pause, but no further remarks from Aldous. “Five.”

“Just say the damn words, thank you sir,” she hisses to me.

“You will never be a good girl, back to one,” Aldous slaps his hand on the armchair rest..

“One,” I say, the same second I hear the swing of the belt.

“Wait!” Nick stops the massacre with one word. “Turn the bed around.” And they oblige, and I can even see him through the blinding spotlight. “Do you remember your safeword, Iz?”

“Yes, Sir.” I note how Aldous gasps, hearing the words flow with no hesitation when referring to Nick.

“What is it and why?” Nick yanks me from the mindless stupor.

“Don Quixote. That day I lost my freedom.”

“She cannot safeword during the punishment!” Aldous loses it.

“In my world, she very much can.” That’s Nick I know too well: this mesmerizing, unwavering modulation. “In my world, it’s lovely when she asks, but she doesn’t need permission to come. In my world, I do not punish but discipline, with love. Say the word, Iz. Say the word to stop this mockery.”

“Don Quixote.” The botched fantasy is coming to an end. 

And Nick is on stage, as before, untying, setting me free, wrapping me in the blanket. “Look at him,” he points at Aldous. “He is not real.”

“Poof!” I blow at him, and my dark magic turns Aldous into a tiny mouse. Still wearing his suit, the mouse scurries into the darkness.

“Did you have enough of this nonsense? Can we go home now?” Nick nudges me.

“Maybe.” When he puts it that way, I’m only reminded of the unfinished business. I blush and squirm and hide my face in his shoulder. “After you make me a good girl.”