A reverent hush fell over the room as I considered the term "subspace," a mythical place whispered about by experienced players. I'd gotten a brief, fleeting taste of it during my first flogging with Jennifer, a momentary blurring of sensation and euphoria. A week later, she and Victor invited me to explore it further. I had already given my consent and I was ready to see if I could let go enough to truly surrender to the experience.
We sat down in Victor's office, the three of us, to negotiate the terms of this new journey. "If you go deeper this time," Jennifer explained, her voice low and serious, "you may feel more floaty, more disoriented. We'll be watching you closely. Your safe words are the same, and Victor will be there to monitor. We'll increase the intensity slowly. Are you comfortable with that?"
I took a deep breath, the weight of their trust settling over me. "Yes. I trust you." The words felt weighty, but they were also a truth I had come to believe in my bones.
The scene began much like the last one. I leaned forward, my hands braced, and Jennifer's measured strokes of the flogger began. Victor stood nearby, a silent, attentive presence, his gaze a steady anchor in the room. The initial warmth, a familiar comfort now, spread across my skin. After the third set of strokes, I felt myself slipping. My limbs grew heavy, my breath slowed, and Jennifer's voice, asking "Colour?", sounded as if it were coming from a great distance. "Green," I answered, the word seeming to emerge from a place far away. My thoughts drifted like clouds in a vast, empty sky. My body responded to the impacts, but my mind floated above it all, calm and detached.
This was it. This was subspace. It was like being half-asleep and half-awake, sensations amplified and muted simultaneously. I could feel the thud of the leather and the spreading warmth, but it no longer registered as pain. I felt a profound sense of safety, held by Jennifer's steady rhythm and Victor's quiet presence. Time lost all meaning. I could have stayed there forever.
Eventually, Jennifer's strokes slowed and then stopped. She placed a hand on my back, a gentle weight that grounded me. Victor's hand squeezed mine gently, a tether to the physical world. Slowly, the room came back into focus. My body tingled from head to toe, and my head felt impossibly light. Unbidden, tears pricked my eyes, a silent release of something I hadn't known I was holding.
Aftercare began immediately, a sacred ritual following the scene. Jennifer wrapped me in a soft robe, and Victor offered a bottle of water, his presence a solid comfort as he sat beside me. Jennifer stroked my hair, whispering gentle words. "You're safe. You're here," she said, over and over, the phrase a gentle incantation that brought me fully back to the present moment.
We sat like that for a long time, the three of us, in a quiet communion of care. I didn't want to speak at first, content to simply bask in the sensation of being so completely looked after. When my mind finally felt clear enough to form a thought, I smiled. "Thank you," I whispered, the words thick with emotion. "That was… incredible."
Jennifer kissed my forehead, a gesture of affection that went beyond the boundaries of the scene. "It's a place many of us love to visit. It can be healing. But we always make sure someone guides us back." Victor nodded, adding, "And if you ever go there with someone else, make sure they know how to take care of you afterwards."
That night, I journaled about the experience, my handwriting more careful than usual, as if to preserve every detail. I wrote about how the flogger had become a metronome, its rhythm a gentle pulse that had lulled my consciousness into another state. I wrote about how my mind had drifted, and how the simple phrase "you're safe, you're here" had anchored me. I wrote about the immense trust required to let go like that and the deep gratitude I felt for Jennifer and Victor. I wrote about how aftercare was not a footnote, but a continuation of the scene, a way to honor the vulnerability that had been shared. I underlined the word "trust" several times, a visceral understanding now of its immense importance. In my notes, I quoted one of the resources I'd read earlier: "It is mutual consent that makes a clear distinction between BDSM and abuse." I understood that truth in a way I never could have before.
As I closed my journal, I realized I had crossed another threshold. I had experienced subspace and returned. I had trusted others to guide me there and back. It deepened my appreciation for the ethics that underpinned this world. Without safe words, negotiation, and attentive aftercare, subspace would be dangerous territory, a place of risk and potential harm. But with them, it became a journey I chose to take—and one I knew I could choose to avoid. The choice was mine, and the trust was ours, a beautiful, delicate bond that made everything possible.
Chapter 24 – Whispers and Secrets
Victor's office was dim, lit only by the amber glow from the desk lamp on his desk. He stood behind the glass-topped desk, his posture sharp and unyielding, the city skyline spilling silver light behind him. I'd seen that look before—Victor St. Clair in full Master mode, the kind of intensity that made people stop talking mid-sentence.
"Close the door, Cassandra," he said quietly, his voice a low command.
I obeyed, my pulse kicking up a frantic rhythm in my chest for reasons that had nothing to do with kink. His voice was too measured, too controlled. Something was wrong.
He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. It was a printed email. There was no sender name, just a generic address, and the body of the message was a single, chilling line:
Someone inside Elysium is selling you out.
I swallowed, the air suddenly thick. "Is this—serious?"
His eyes lifted to mine, and the look in them was grim. "I've been in this business long enough to know when smoke means fire. The timing isn't a coincidence." He tapped the page with a single, sharp finger. "I've already seen too much risk lately—rumors outside the club, a little too much detail leaking into the wrong conversations."
I thought of Leo's quiet panic last week, of Jennifer's unusually clipped tone at the last staff meeting. "Do you know who?"
"That's the problem." He leaned forward, hands braced on the desk, the power in his posture radiating outward. "It could be anyone. Which means until I do know, I tighten the circle."
Victor's version of "tightening the circle" was not metaphorical. That night, he doubled the security rotation. Marco, his head of security, was dispatched to review every camera feed, every guest log. Dungeon monitors were told to keep discreet tabs on private rooms. Passwords for staff-only systems were changed before midnight.
When he briefed the staff in the lounge, his tone brooked no argument. "This is not a place for careless tongues," he said, scanning each face in the room. "Discretion is our lifeblood. Anyone found compromising that will answer to me directly."
The air shifted, an undercurrent of tension rippling through the room, like the moments before a scene when you don't know if you're about to be kissed or bound. People exchanged wary glances. Even Jennifer, lounging against the bar in her crimson corset, looked more alert than amused.
After the meeting, Lena, one of the newer staff members, sidled up to me on the balcony, her hands curled around a coffee cup she didn't drink from. "You feel it too, right?" she murmured, her voice barely a whisper.
I nodded. "It's like the walls got ears tonight."
She gave a humorless little laugh. "At Elysium? They always have."
Her words clung to me long after she disappeared back into the crowd. I didn't know if she meant it as gossip or a warning, but I felt Victor's gaze on me from across the room—a silent, unspoken promise in its intensity.
Secrets were shifting in the dark. And Elysium, for all its silk and candlelight, suddenly felt like a place where one wrong move could draw blood.