Page 26

Hands under her thighs, he yanked her to the edge of the bed, hips bent, and then she heard the rattling fastenings of his belt. The whisper of leather leaving the dark pants he wore terrified her, and then — CRACK!

White hot pain in a vicious stripe across her ass, too shocked to scream with the first one, but the next loud snap of leather landed on her thighs and she managed it. Voice breaking as she screamed, begged into the sheet that smelled of her arousal as the lines of fire blistered her ass and thighs.

Over and over and over.

Agony crashed in on the heels of too much pleasure, suffocated the memory of her orgasm, drowning it along with her hopes of ever getting out.

“SAY IT! CALL ME MASTER!” he roared behind her, but her ears were buzzing from the pain, body shaking as she tried to process the feel of her heartbeat in the flesh he’d brutalized. Tears and drool soaked the sheet beneath her cheek, but she stayed silent.

Giving in won’t make this stop. It won’t.

It’s a lie, a fucking lie, it’s always a lie.

“Bitch.” The vulgar growl, and the tinkling sound of metal fixtures, overwhelmed her ragged breaths for the brief moment before he struck again. Excruciating, so much worse than the electricity. It didn’t end, didn’t stop, and left more than sore muscles behind.

He was hitting her harder now, the pain rising to some place inside where it could go no further, blurring into white noise in her head that silenced her screams, her cries, her incoherent pleading. Everything vibrated with the same tone, the same peak of suffering that he was now drawing out into a plateau meant for her destruction.

Thoughts were born and died before she could process them, catching only bits and pieces. Hints of her dissolving hope, her boiling hatred for them both, her psychotic temptation to give in and be whatever doll they wanted if only it would make him drop the fucking belt.

It was for the best that she couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t make her voice form more than low grunts on the heels of each new lash over already destroyed flesh.

When he stopped again, her head swam. Barely reacting as he wound his fist in her hair and bowed her backwards, a gurgle of strain slipping out as his knees created a place between hers. “Last chance for mercy, slut.”

Mercy?

Her brain was useless, but that one word was written in blood on the inside of it.

There would be no mercy here.

I am not merciful.

The other one’s voice made it through the fog in her head even though he wasn’t in this room. Both of them torturing her simultaneously, but there was only one with his hands on her at the moment.

When he laughed, her body twitched, an autonomic surge of useless fight or flight… and then he was inside her. Still miserably wet, the stroke stretched her open until he bottomed out, hips slamming hard against her bruised and welted ass. Pinprick spikes of pain inside the white noise, another inelegant grunt from her throat as he wrapped his hands around her hips and slid almost completely out, only to force himself deep again.

It was pure aggression. Animalistic as he thrust over and over, making her ache inside as well as out, pressing finger-shaped bruises into her hips. She tried not to react to the pounding of his cock, the way his hard flesh pushed against her inner walls, but he was at the perfect angle to punish her g-spot with pleasure — and there was no doubt that this was punishment. The slow burn of arousal was breaking through the white noise, bringing her back to her body, connecting her to the aches and sinful tremors in equal measure.

Beth whimpered, digging her nails into her palms, biting the inside of her cheek, anything to stop this from happening again. She hated herself for squeezing him inside her, for groaning into the bedding, trapped on some kind of terrible autopilot that clung to the rising tide of lust in her veins.

“See?” he gloated, jerking her backwards ont

o his cock. “I can hurt you, or I can make you like it, slave.”

Clenching her eyes tight, she prayed for the detachment to return, for the white noise to fill her once more, but it was his fingers that came back. Pressed against her clit as he leaned over her, the heat of his breath on her back, and then there was only pleasure. It stormed down the aches and pains in her muscles and skin, making her hips buck as he made each stroke count. Hard, powerful, forcing her to accept him and every tremor that threatened an orgasm.

Jagged cuts of lightning through her mind, pure bliss and ecstasy.

This was so much better. So much better than the pain, than the cold, than the other one’s icy emptiness.

“Just call me Master and I can make you feel like this every day.” Heavy, panted words, and as he focused his touch on her clit again she felt her resolve crumbling. That pathetic barrier she had constructed ground to dust, blown away by the next tempting drive of his cock.

Master.

Such a simple word, a simple thing. She didn’t even have to mean it. She never had to mean it. Never had to pretend this was who she really was.

He pushed inside her and held deep, still teasingly rubbing her clit, holding her on the edge, but it was when his other hand slipped through the collar at the back of her neck that everything shuddered.

It was a wake-up call. She wore a collar.