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Beth drew her lip between her teeth and bit down hard, feeling the burning ache spread across her jaw as she fought it. Fought against her own body as it betrayed her, spilling liquid heat down to the bedding beneath her, cloaking his fingers in her dripping duplicity. There was a new tension tightening like a knot at the bottom of her spine, wrapping taut, coiling with each new slip of his touch inside her. Cracking the brittle barrier even further every time he slid free to torment her clit with a new wave of pleasure. Forcing her body to respond, react.

“Just call me Master and you can come, Beth.” His voice against her ear was harried. He was breathing harder, aroused, tainted with lust and need — things his rigid partner was not capable of — but humanity didn’t make him good. It just made his requests all the more monstrous.

He knew exactly what he was devouring.

“No,” she refused again. Holding onto the only power they’d left her. They could take what they wanted, they had made that painfully clear, but this? Her permission? Her submission? Her agreement?

That she would never give.

“You better ask permission then, or I’m really going to hurt you.” His fingers started to move in earnest, aggressive thrusts, strong strokes inside tha

t pressed her g-spot and made her body buckle no matter how much she fought.

“I won’t come,” she swore.

“Yes, you will.” And then he did his best to bend her to his will, to break her, playing her body with an expertise that had her whining, whimpering — and, fuck, she was even moaning softly — as her foolish body collapsed under the onslaught of pleasure. The teasing of nerves. Delirious lightning crackled over her skin, plaguing her veins with an urge to dive into oblivion… escape.

Why did it have to feel this good? This tempting?

She wanted to believe this tingling ferocity was the same as the electric shocks in the frigid room his partner had chained her down to. Wanted to equate the two in her mind so she could push the ecstasy away, remove herself from it, destroy it.

But it wasn’t the same.

It was a new torture, and as much as she wanted to pretend it wasn’t affecting her, she could feel the sweat on her skin, the delirious buzz that had her breaths shortening — and his lips on her throat were not helping.

Too personal. Too real.

Too not like the man he called his partner.

Creeping like implacable vines over all of her barriers, tearing them to pieces, holding the shreds of her sanity so she wouldn’t feel them hit the earth, so she couldn’t scream at the void of what used to be her pride.

Beth was shaking, shivering, so close to an orgasm that her muscles were nothing more than tremors and heat. Warmth. For once, she was sweating, not shivering, and there was no pain. Only pleasure, corrupting satisfaction that beckoned her to the edge of darkness like a van with candy that promised a permanent escape from everything — but it was poisoned. Every blissful inch of his fingers sliding inside her traitorous wetness was tainted. By this room, by him, by his actions, his partner’s.

Nothing was real.

And, yet, it didn’t matter, because the physical response was unavoidable.

“Say it. Call me Master.” A sinful growl against her ear, delectable. So easy to lean against his hard, muscular chest and give in. So tempting.

So close.

“NO!” she screamed. Beth pulled desperately against the soft cuffs that tethered her arms to her thighs, focusing on the hot tears rolling down her cheeks instead of the heat pulsing between her thighs.

Ignore the pleasure. Ignore it. Fight it. Please.

The man slid his fingers deep, curving, tapping at the crucial spot at her core that had her body bowing forward, unable to argue biology — and then she came all over his hand. Light exploded at the ends of her nerve endings, mind blissfully empty for a moment, so drowned in biochemical pleasure that she forgot everything. The room, the man, the poster of rules, and the wall of twisted torture devices. It was a mental escape, a trapdoor out of hell, but as it faded she tumbled into something so much worse.

Slick and wet as the tears on her cheeks, but equally as pointless.

Gently, he pulled his fingers from her and forced them into her gasping mouth, pushing in as he caught her jaw in the other hand. Smarter than his partner, unable to bite down as he held her still and slid the damning taste of her arousal over her tongue. Then he pushed too far, gagging her, and she choked around the flavor of her shame. “Say it,” he demanded again from behind her, skull trapped against his collarbone with his fingers buried deep.

“Nyyoo—” Beth tried her best to refuse past his hand, accepting the pain that was to come. Welcoming it on the discordant edge of her forced orgasm, and his growl accompanied by his next words only confirmed it.

“Oh, I’m going to hurt you, whore.” Tearing his fingers from her mouth, he shoved her forward on the bed. Weakly landing on her side as he moved away, left the bed, but she had no misconception that he was done with her. This pleasurable, horrible interlude was only the beginning.

With a jerk, he flipped her to her stomach, unstrapping her wrists from her thighs. She heard the crackling as he pressed them together behind her back. Again, they were wrapped tight, but just as she tried to worm her fingers under the velcro he wound a strip all the way around.

No chance.