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to him, she wanted this new relationship, for however long it lasted, to be based in honesty. “Please. You don’t have to do that. I look in the mirror every day. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want this. You don’t have to give me compliments. I’m good without them.”
    Bethany didn’t know what she expected Jonathan’s response to that would be. His instant anger shocked her.
    “By God, that’s enough! That is the last time you are going to say anything derogatory about yourself. Since I’ve already chastised you once for this transgression, back at the club, you leave me no choice but to discipline you.”
    “Discipline me?” A curious combination of shivers, part excitement, part dread, began to dance through her. Jonathan took her hand and led her—no, he pulled her—through the house, up the stairs and down a hallway. He stopped at a closed door, closed when the others they’d passed had all been open. Inside this room were toys and tools, some of which, in the few seconds she had to take note of them, she recognized from the reading she’d done on BDSM.
    Jonathan moved so fast she didn’t have a moment to think or protest. He pulled her over to a device that stirred a memory from a long-ago history class. Wooden, standing at waist height, it had holes carved in it. Oh, God, not carved in it, exactly, she thought as she realized what the device was.
    “But…”
    “Silence!”
    She shut her mouth as much from wondering disbelief as from the tone of command in Jonathan’s voice. As he opened the device—an old-fashioned set of stocks—she could feel tremors vibrating through him and realized, to her complete amazement, that he really was livid.
    “Why are you so angry?” Yes, he’d told her to be silent, but she couldn’t help but ask. She’d never felt more confused in her life.
    “Your safe words are ‘red light’. If you say them, this stops, permanently. I give you back your clothes, and I take you to your car. Do you understand me?”
    “Yes.” She’d done something wrong. She knew she had because she recognized the clutching in her belly, the sick feeling of dread. This feeling came in the guise of an old friend, for it had lived with her for most of her married life. The feeling always preceded one of Tim’s tirades, and while he’d never hit her, his words had been weapon enough. Friend this sensation truly was not, and she felt herself spiraling down into the horrible emotional hell she’d known so well for so many years and thought she’d escaped when Tim had died.
    He pushed on her back and she bent over, fitting herself into the device. He closed it before he answered her. “I’m angry because you believe what you just said about yourself. You believe it so thoroughly that my compliments and my assurances to you earlier mean nothing. You are the one who came looking for a master. You are the one who seeks to relinquish control, to surrender everything. Well, Beth, the first thing you must surrender is this image you have of yourself that you’ve carried all these years. That fucking son-of-a-bitch. If he wasn’t dead, I swear to God I’d murder him for what he’s done to you. Surrender his image of you, because it’s false . Trust the image I show you, for it’s not false.”
    His words jolted her, stunning her even more than the paddle he landed hard on her bare ass.
    Whack .
    “Ouch!” Bethany blinked. Good God that had hurt.
    “You get three more.” The words sounded terse, as if he’d spoken them between clenched teeth.
    Whack . The second smack stung as much, if not more, than the first.
    And then a strange thing happened. Heat began to radiate out from where the paddle landed, warming not only the flesh of her bottom, but that place low in her belly that had come awake so recently with Jonathan’s kisses and his intimate touches.
    Whack . Bethany moaned. Tears gathered in her eyes, and moisture gathered in her cunt. She flexed her inner muscles,