Power Play (Center Ice Book 2) by Katherine Stark

punishment with each lash,” she says. “Confirm that you are able to speak, you filthy rat.”
    “I can speak.”
    “Good.” She chuckles again. “If at any point the pain becomes too great, you will give me your safe word. ‘Eagle.’ Unless I hear that word and only that word from you, I will continue. Understood?”
    I exhale slowly through my nostrils. I am beyond ready. “Understood, Mistress.”
    “Good.”
    The air around me feels like it’s quivering. Maybe it’s just me. I am a live wire, letting my worn-out, battered muscles ease and prepare for whatever brand of pain she’s about to administer.
    Crack.
    The cat-o’-nine-tails splays across my spine and drags its many fingers through my skin. Fire burns down my back. I suck in my breath, but refuse to tense up any longer than my initial flinch. I’ve learned a thing or two in the past few years. For instance, the submissive’s muscles should be limber and loose, to prevent long-lasting injury. Hot showers help. Meditation, too.
    Well, I’ve got the best meditative focus I can imagine: my own regrets.
    “Thank you, Mistress,” I whisper.
    She lets the long tails make a sprinkling noise against the side of her boot. “I think you need more.”
    I exhale, soften my limbs, and prepare for the next blow.
    This one cris-crosses the first. A little weaker, coming from her non-dominant hand, but the sting is sweet as honey on my flesh. Heat rises off of my spine. If she hasn’t broken the skin yet, she will soon.
    “You fucking pathetic slut,” Victoria chides me. “Look at you, lying there and taking it like a child.”
    “I’m grateful for any pain you can offer me, Mistress.”
    “You’re damned right you are.” She laughs again. “Shall we go a little harder still?”
    Harder. Harder. Another whisper of a memory caresses me. Rajani, blindfolded and spread-eagled. Her beautiful dark hair spilled around her like a black halo. Her lips a deep shade of plum; her voice splendidly raw and hungry.
    “Yes,” I say. “Please, Mistress. I need more.”
    The lashes slice straight down my back. Now I feel the first trickle of blood starting to well up.
    With every drop that spills, I let my problems leave me with it. Coach Isaacs and my fear of getting kicked down to the farm team. Fiona and her abrupt departure. And Rajani. Always Rajani.
    “Harder.”
    Victoria hesitates. Weighing whether she should proceed. I know there’s a spreadsheet at work in her head, tallying up potential liabilities to Club Brimstone. Lawsuits.
    I grit my teeth. “I said, harder. ”
    This time the lashes crack against the soles of my feet. I hiss and suck in my breath.
    “Harder.”
    She swallows audibly. “Marcus . . .”
    “I need to pay.”
    The tails of the lash swish back and forth against the floor.
    And then, the final snap.
     

 

     

     
     
    I rush into Bar None, face burning bright red, ears and nose chapped from the cold. Immediately start scanning the crowd, which is far thicker than I’d hoped it would be. David Gresham has wavy blond hair and the sort of tanned, subtly athletic physique I’d expect from a Georgetown Law student, based on his Facebook photo. Most of his profile data was locked down, but I picked up a few clues from the pictures he’d been tagged in with Marcus: he either was dating or is still dating a guy named Adam Frick, he regularly goes sailing on the Potomac, and he does pro bono work for some refugee and asylum non-profits around DC. An all-around sweet American trust fund boy.
    I spot him at the bar, chatting easily with a slightly intoxicated-looking couple. As I hover behind them, I hear him describing the best times of the year to go kayaking upstream. “But really, nothing beats hiking the Shenandoah,” he says. “I went to college in the valley, and it’s unreal how gorgeous it is down there.”
    I smile, my cold, detached reporter smile, and approach them. “David? I’m Fiona Callahan.”
    “Fiona.” His