Page 128

“Please what? Please could mean anything. Please let me go. Please stop. Please buy me a pony. Please, what, Maddie?”
“Please…” Then she whispers the last part so quickly I almost miss it.
I pull the knife away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.”
“Please, make me come.”
Even in the darkness I can tell her face is flaming with embarrassment at having been made to say these words to me… her tormenter, her jailer, her stalker. Her husband.
I take a coil of rope from the dresser and tie her wrists to the bars. Then I move back down her body and rip the panties off. She gasps and struggles against the rope the moment my tongue is between her legs. She thrashes under me, and I can’t tell if she’s trying to get closer or move farther away.
I grip her thighs hard and hold her in place. I tease her entrance with my tongue and then I hook a finger inside her, gently moving until I hit the barrier.
She tenses.
“I won’t rip through it tonight. I’m not taking this until you beg. But that doesn’t mean I won’t drive you crazy until then.”
She whimpers as I go back to stroking her soft sex with my tongue. Her mewling cries sound like a desperate kitten. She tries to hold back her pleasure from me. As much as she wants this, she doesn’t want it to be from me, and we both know it has nothing to do with physical attraction and everything to do with her inability to forgive me for how I’ve terrorized her up to this point.
I move back up her body, keeping my groping fingers between her legs. I grip her chin with my free hand and force her to look into my eyes. I hold her gaze, and she squeezes her eyes shut.
“Look at me,” I command.
When she does, I increase my pace. Her hips arch up against my fingers. I pick up the knife again, gripping the leather sheathe. I press the ivory handle against her clit. She’s so wet and sensitized now, I know she’s feeling every ridge in a whole new way.
“When you come, you’re going to know who gave you this release.” I see the resistance in her eyes, but her body has already made the decision. It’s out of her hands.
“Be a good wife now, and give me your pleasure.”
When she comes, I drink it in as though it could sustain my life. I drive her to the edge of her sanity. I don’t allow her a quick, sweet release that leaves anything behind, like a meal politely left unfinished. No, I want her to lick her plate clean. I push and drive her until she begs me to stop, not because what she’s experienced at my hands is so horrific, but because it’s more pleasure than she knows how to handle. She never drives herself this hard with her own toys. That ends now. She’s going to learn the capacity of her body for pleasure.
Finally at the moment where the pleasure is right at the edge of crossing over into something like pain, I allow her to stop.
She melts boneless against me, pliant and docile when I pull her into my arms. I know as she drifts back to sleep she feels the hardness of my erection pressed against her. That one, looming threat. I’ve waited this long for her. She will beg for it by the time I’m finished, and when I finally penetrate her, she will know exactly who she belongs to, and won’t make the slightest whimper of dissent.
Fifteen
Maddie
“Mrs. Stryker.”
I jolt awake at the feel of someone’s hand on my shoulder, but I don’t open my eyes. It takes me a moment to remember where I am and to recognize the voice.
“Mrs. Stryker.” It’s Cora.
The wedding day comes flooding back to me… my new reality. Aidan’s house. Aidan’s room. Aidan’s bed. My face flames as I remember last night and what I let him do to me. But the night hadn’t started out so X-rated. At first I’d thought he really was sparing me.
He’d fallen asleep, and I’d quietly slipped out of bed. He’s a deep sleeper. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do or how I was going to escape. I was well aware of the number of people in the house, the guards, the gate, the impossibility of all the challenges I would have to traverse to get out of here.
I thought about putting on a more modest robe—I was sure Aidan must have one in his closet. I could slip away to my room and make a plan. But what plan? And I didn’t think I could face the guards, knowing the things they might imagine had happened between us. I mean, it was our wedding night. I’m sure they used their imaginations.
I’d glanced up at the sword on the wall, wondering if I could just chop his head off. But it was secured by metal rings that unbelievably required a fingerprint to unlock. The fire was down to glowing embers, and I spotted the poker near the grate.
I thought I could just stab him in the heart with that. But the thing was a bit unwieldy when I picked it up, and I didn’t trust my ability to handle myself. And what if he woke and ripped it away from me?
That was when I found my Goldilocks weapon, the knife in the drawer. It was small, easy to wield. Maybe it was more of a dagger. It was handcrafted, nicely weighted, and inside an embossed leather sheath. In the light of the full moon, I could see an engraving on the sheath: Love, Mina.
I’d never thought before about the weight and balance of a knife, but this weapon felt like an extension of the person who held it as though it were the human equivalent of having claws.