Grace flushed, and she knew her cheeks were turning as red as Ian would probably make her bottom if she dared to show up tomorrow.

Do I dare?

She walked out of the studio on shaky legs, not knowing the answer.

Ian waited until she'd exited the studio door before watching from the side of the black curtain that covered the front window to make sure she got into her car safely. She sat in the car with her headlights on for a moment, perhaps setting her GPS?...before pulling out and leaving his Jeep Wrangler alone in the parking lot.

There was something special about Grace, always had been. If when they were dating he had heard those breathy moans of desire as he pinched and played with her, he might never have left. He'd always cared about her-one of the reasons he continued texting with her long after they'd broken up. It was one way to keep a part of Grace in his life.

Ian hadn't meant to tell her the truth that night she texted him, but when she suggested he come over, the urge to comply, just to see her face again, was so strong that he had to know what she thought of his lifestyle. She needed to know exactly who she was inviting into her home-and it wasn't the man she thought she knew from their time as a couple three years ago.

She'd always been so conservative, so demure. Girls like that didn't walk onto his set, ever. The actresses Ricardo usually hired knew their way around a BDSM scene and weren't afraid to flaunt it. They got off on exhibitionism as much as they got off on the BDSM aspect.

Grace didn't seem like the exhibitionist type. Not with the way she kept blushing. She didn't play to the camera during her audition, or try to woo Ricardo into liking her as the other girls did, since he was the head honcho. Ian was just a hired hand, really. The whipping hand.

And he didn't feel even an ounce of guilt over lying to Ricardo about Grace not showing up to protect her from tarnishing her image permanently. Some girls loved having their face and tits, bound up tight, all over the internet. They wanted to be seen whenever someone Googled with the safe-search off, being used and sexually tortured for their own pleasure as well as the viewers.

But not Grace. Grace didn't even know what she wanted, which was attractive in its own way. Like Ricardo said, she could be the nineteen-year-old virgin type, except she wasn't. She knew enough about what she wanted to have the guts to actually come down to the studio and see him. To audition. To bend over for him...

Fuck. His cock went to half-mast, already aroused again. It was thinking of Grace that did it. Grace obeying him, doing what he said...and he could tell that she loved every second of it. She'd humped his thigh till she came, for God's sake. This was no virgin.

But she needed training. If she was willing, he'd love to be her Dom...at least for now.

She'd mentioned dating more than once, which seemed to indicate that she still wasn't the type who was interested in a purely sexual relationship. It was all he knew since he left her, though.

I'm not the boyfriend type. If I've learned anything over the past few years, it's that.

But did it have to be that way, forever? He'd have to change paths at some point, why not now, when he finally reunited with someone that stirred his emotions as well as his cock?

Ian turned off the lights and locked up behind him. He sat in his Jeep for a few moments himself, taking the time to relive the past hour he'd spent with her. The best hour of his day. Hell, best hour of his year, maybe.

If she came back tomorrow, he'd have to give her what she was looking for to keep her coming back for more. Because Ian wasn't ready to lose sight of Grace just yet.

He grinned into the night.

You don't know it yet, Grace, but after tomorrow night, you're going to be thinking of me every time you sit for the next week.

Chapter Four.

Grace watched videos of Ian for almost an hour before going to bed. Who needed television when she had bondage porn starring the sexiest man she'd ever met? And to think when they dated in the past, she merely thought of him as handsome, but not sexy per se. It was his dominance shining through, and his newfound self-confidence that made him exude sexuality now.

One clip she watched over and over before deciding if she wanted to download the whole thing. It showed a close-up of a woman's pussy as Ian slowly inserted his entire fist, one finger at a time. The full video was long, almost half an hour, because Ian took his time doing it. The video was well-edited, as all the ones on Ricardo's site were, alternating shots of the woman's face as she begged and moaned and orgasmed around Ian's large hand with shots of his thick wrist sticking out of her pussy.

That could never be her. If that was the sort of thing Ian wanted to do, then she was out, because how could she do something like that?

Well, women have babies, don't they? With heads bigger than a fist?

She shuddered. There was nothing hot about that. Yuck. But she watched the whole video, just the same. The shots all focused on the girl, on her face, her writhing, her pussy with the wide wrist sticking out of it. But Grace wanted to see more of Ian than just the few shots where he was behind the actress.

Those were her favorite videos...the ones where he came behind a woman, bound with her arms above her head, and stood behind her, whispering in her ear as he ran his hands over the curves of her body. She knew he was standing in the shot that way to give the viewer the best access to the girl's body, to see it in all its naked, beaten and caned glory, but that was almost the only time Grace got to see Ian's face.

He'd made it perfectly clear that he had no interest in dating her again, which was almost definitely a blessing in disguise. She couldn't dare risk her het heart again on Ian, much less date a professional Dom when she was a self-professed vanilla gal all the way. No way. She was meant to find a nice normal guy and settle down, have kids, a dog, whatever. Soon, too, since she would be thirty in a few years. The two lives couldn't coexist, certainly.

Having a Dom in her life would just get in the way-even if it was Ian-because while she should be volunteering at the soup kitchen or going to church or doing the bar scene or whatever the hell it was a girl like her was supposed to do to find The One, she'd be in his dungeon, getting her fantasies played out for her, one by one.

Fantasies she never even knew she had until he told her she might have them.

Like when he suggested saying "stop" and him not stopping might be a fantasy. It seemed so...rape-y and weird. But it was true, that got her hot, at least the thought of it did. If that fantasy were played out in real life, would she be scared?

But she knew Ian, knew that he was genuinely good inside, and that she could trust him. While she couldn't trust him not to break her heart again, she could definitely trust him to respect her boundaries, and her safeword, "safeword." She giggled as she closed the computer for the night. Really? She couldn't come up with anything more original than "safeword" as her safeword?

He must think she was a complete moron. Or not, since he said he wanted to see her again, even after three years of avoiding seeing her in person. Her breasts ached, and even her sleep shirt seemed to rub irritatingly against her sore nipples. She popped some pain medicine and climbed into bed with her shirt off and the blankets down around her waist, letting only the breeze from the ceiling fan touch her tender nipples.

Could she be in relationship with a man who only wanted to pleasure her with pain? A man who would never take her to dinner, who would never sleep beside her in her bed? That's the sort of thing they used to do, and look how that turned out. She'd bored him straight out of the relationship and into a kinky new career path where he didn't have to make small talk before tying someone up.

She fell asleep knowing she couldn't be happy in a purely sexual relationship-not with Ian, not with their history-but that she'd still show up at the studio tomorrow after work. This was her one chance to get a spanking and she wasn't going to miss it, even if it meant saying goodbye to Ian would be that much harder.

She couldn't fault him for being honest just because she didn't like his answers. Even if there was a part of her-a part she'd previously hidden so deep inside her she never even knew it existed-that was struggling to the surface. The part of her that wanted to be at Ian's mercy once more.

"I wasn't sure you'd show up," Ian said, opening the door for her to enter the empty studio the following evening.

He looked gorgeous, as usual. He also looked like he'd gone home and showered and then come back.

"Do you still live in the same condo?" Grace asked, stepping inside and setting down her purse. She hadn't bothered to change out of her scrubs, preferring to come straight from work before she could talk herself out of it.

"Too expensive once I quit law. Now I don't live too far from you, actually."

"So you looked at my driver's license when I gave it to Ricardo, huh?" Was that weird, or cute? She couldn't decide.

"You know me, I can't help but look at anything with words on it. I can't help it, I have a photographic memory."

"I still don't believe you about that!" Grace laughed but Ian just shrugged and raised his eyebrows as if he didn't care if she believed him or not. Huh. Maybe he really did have a photographic memory? He'd mentioned it in passing before, but she'd shrugged it off as a bragging. She'd only ever read about that before...usually people who claimed to have one really just had good visual memories, but couldn't take an instant visual "picture" they could then go back and look at in the recesses of their mind.

Another interesting tidbit about Ian. She hadn't believed the old Ian, but this new one didn't seem the bragging sort.

"What's my middle name?" she challenged.

"That's too easy. I already know it's Francelle. If you're going to test me, test me."

"Okay. Um...what's my driver's license number?" Even she didn't know that by heart.

He closed his eyes briefly, more of a long blink, as if he were looking at the back of his eyelids for the answer, and said a string of numbers.

Huh. "Hang on." She reached back into her purse for her ID. "You're right. Wasn't expecting that."

He either really did have a photographic memory, or he spent way too long staring at her ID. A hidden talent or a hidden desire to know as much about her as he could? Both possibilities intrigued her.

"I'm glad you came. I like being here, on neutral territory," he said.

"It's not neutral for me. This is your scene. Your...implements." She stuck her driver's license back in her purse. "Neutral would be a coffee shop or something."

He looked amused. "You want me to spank you at a coffee shop?"

"No. God no." Her face heated up and she knew she was blushing again. "So, um...what do we do now?"

"Now you strip. All the way. No doctor's office uniform, no panties, no socks. I want you completely naked."

Grace stood, rooted to the spot.

"You don't want to make me wait, Grace, not when you're about to get your very first spanking from me."

"From anyone, Sir," she whispered, and stepped out of her white nursing shoes, balancing precariously on one foot as she peeled off each sock.

"Not even for fun, a little quick smack on the ass as you walked by a boyfriend perhaps?"

"No, Sir. There haven't been any real boyfriends, not since you...Sir." She stepped out of her scrub bottoms, leaving her panties on, and pulled the top over her head.

"So you have absolutely no idea what it feels like to get spanked?" Ian asked. It was a tone that said he didn't believe her, and he was right not to.

She flushed and started undoing her bra and stepping out of her panties, hoping to distract him from his line of questioning.

"Tell me the truth, Grace," he said, a soft smile playing across his lips. "Tell me the truth and I'll go easier on you than if you lie to me."

This is so embarrassing.

"Okay, the truth is...after I watched some of your videos of you spanking those girls, I...I got a wooden spoon from my kitchen and hit my own butt with it. Once. Like a moron, okay? I spanked myself." She burst out laughing, a nervous laughter she couldn't control because it was the only thing keeping her from running out of there in embarrassment.

Did she really just admit to that out loud? To Ian, of all people. The one person she most wanted to seem sexy to. Now all he was going to be able to think about when he looked at her was a silly woman standing in her kitchen, spanking herself with a wooden spoon because she wanted to see what the big deal was.

"Nice," he said, chuckling. "I like that."

"Yeah, right."

"No, I really do, Grace. Because it tells me that you've got a masochistic streak in you, and you know how much that turns me on."

She dared to glance up at him, her cheeks burning. "Really?"

"Really. Now let me show you how it's really done. You're not ready for a spoon, but I've got a very hard hand for you."

Without her panties on, Grace had to wonder if her arousal would become as evident as his. Would her wetness drip down the inside of her thighs if he kept talking to her like that?

"We have a spanking bench for you to lean over, but I think I'd prefer to do this the old fashioned way," he said, sitting down on one of the metal folding chairs that adorned the set. "Come here, over my knee."

Oh my God. This is happening. She looked at his legs warily, unsure of how to lay herself over his lap without falling off or being clumsy.

"Very well," Ian said, and he stood up, grabbed both of her wrists with one of his hands, and sat down again, pulling her over his lap.

She gasped. So much for doing this gracefully. There was no way she'd fall off, at least, not with the firm grip Ian had on her waist. Her bare ass felt extraordinarily exposed. She imagined he was looking at it, inspecting it, and she squirmed uncomfortably at the thought.

Ian laughed. "I haven't even touched you yet. Do you remember your safeword?"

"Yes, Sir. I'm okay."

"You're more than okay, Grace," he said, rubbing her bottom. His hand felt so warm against her cool skin. "You're absolutely beautiful."

Grace smiled at the rubber-mat covered floor, even though he couldn't see her face. It was nice to feel beautiful, especially in such a vulnerable position. No one had ever seen her ass that close up before. And he kept rubbing her skin, kneading it with his palms as if her butt cheeks were dough.

Every second that passed as he held her over his lap without spanking her seemed an eternity. The anticipation made her woozy with desire. The thick length of Ian's erection poked into her belly, reminding her that she wasn't the only one getting something out of this experience.

Spank me.

"I'm going to warm you up," he murmured, as if he'd read her thoughts. "And once I think you're ready, we'll start for real."

She tensed, but nothing happened.

"Say: 'Yes, Sir.'"

"Yes, Sir."

With that, he brought his hand down on her ass, lightly at first, sending tingles of pleasure-pain that was almost pure pleasure through her. He patted both cheeks all over, warming her skin until heat seemed to radiate off of her. The sting was getting stronger now, and she squirmed again on his lap.

"What a beautiful pink shade your ass has now. Are you ready, Grace? I want to spank you properly."

"Yes, Sir."

The smack came hard and fast, taking her breath away with the sudden streak of pain. Without giving her a moment to catch her breath, he spanked her other ass cheek, then both, over and over, until all she could think about was his hand and her bottom and how this was what it meant to be spanked.

The idea of it was much sexier than the reality. The reality hurt, a lot. There was a reason it was used as a punishment, and Grace could see why. She'd rather be anywhere at that moment than under his hand.

Ow. Ow ow ow. Oh my God, someone remind me why I signed up for this. This spanking would last forever. She could use her safeword. Maybe she should. But instead she breathed, hoping the pain would flow through her and turn into pleasure.

And then, he stopped.

Grace looked up at him in surprise. "That really hurt."