Page 9

His pleasure in her pain.

Slick cunt, hot and clenching tight. His mind was blurring, fuzzing — his orgasm close — but he wanted this to last just another few moments.

Capturing her chin, he forced her to look at him.

Pure desolation. Bleak, brown eyes met his as he thrust hard enough that his own hips felt the bruises he left. She was crying silently, fat tears rolling from the corners of her eyes into that California blonde hair that his customers had begged for.

Just a little more.

Take just a little more from her.

“You’re never getting free,” he whispered, their lips almost touching. Close enough to be lovers in some alternate universe. “Ever.”

She squeezed him tight as a fist as her body contorted, the agonized cry in her voice better than any moan as he took her. Forcing himself deep just as the fire she’d kindled boiled over and left his balls in pulses that turned his vision white.

His hand had slipped to her throat as he’d come, gripping hard, and the desperate gape of her mouth was a lovely thing to see. Instead of letting her breathe, he settled himself between her hips, ensuring she felt the warmth seeping around his buried cock. “You’re nothing but a set of holes, slave. Nod for me so I know you understand.”

Chest jerking with her urge for oxygen, she finally bent her head in a perfunctory nod, and he released her throat. The coughs as she tried to rip air back into her lungs made her body squeeze him inside her, a pleasant follow-up to his release. He reminded himself to enjoy it, to revel in every desperate, inarticulate sound leaving her lips.

Wordless suffering that had nothing to do with his softening cock still buried deep. That pain was over and done with… this? This was all her. Her mind, her fear, her hope dying just a little further.

Tracing her lip with his thumb, he held her chin in place so she couldn’t pull away.

There was nothing quite as good as this fleeting moment, the moment they realized they were lost, and as he slid free and looked down between them he felt a smile move over his lips.

“It’s okay, slut, you’re supposed to bleed the first time.”

5

The sound of the shower kicking on made Beth twitch against the sheets, opening her eyes just enough to confirm that he wasn’t still standing by the bed.

He was gone.

Oh God…

Everything hurt.

Wrists and ankles stung under the coarse rope, the lingering aches of the cattle prod pulsed — but none of it could match the dull, throbbing pain between her legs. At first it had been agonizingly sharp, a burning tear as he’d sawed his way inside her… and then it had faded. Or she had simply adjusted, numbed to it, detached as he’d used her.

If only she could ignore the warmth seeping from inside her. Block out the way the air cooled the wetness on her thighs, the drip of it moving down over her ass into the flat sheet on the bed.

Did I really bleed?

She was tempted to lift her head, to look and verify his claim, but she didn’t want to know. In this case, ignorance truly was bliss.

Unfortunately, there was no denying that he’d come inside her. He had been sure to make her feel that, even as he’d choked her, and now she could feel it leaking out of her.

A whimper clawed its way up her throat, escaping through clenched teeth, and she uselessly pulled at the ropes, waking up the stinging burns that confirmed she’d broken skin in her struggles. All she wanted was to curl up in a ball, close her eyes, and go to sleep. Forget about every word he’d spoken, every fucked up rule he’d made her recite — but he wouldn’t even allow her that. Still spread wide, vulnerable in her pain for the cameras that she could now see winking at the corners of the room. One shiny glass eye directly above, looking straight down at her. Staring into it, she wondered who was watching this.

What kind of person could watch this and enjoy it?

‘The ones that he wants to sell you to.’ Her mind’s answer was spectacularly unhelpful, and she cursed aloud and internally as she tried to pull one hand, and then the other, through the ropes. Too tight, only making her hands hurt, her thumbs aching as she tried to squeeze them past the loops.

Useless.

It was all so useless, but she refused to give in. Refused to just fall into this sick game of his. No. She wouldn’t be one of those women who succumbed to their captor like in Beauty and the Beast. Some version of Stockholm syndrome on fairy-tale boosted steroids. He wasn’t a prince. There was nothing good in him. This asshole was nothing but violence and cold psychosis, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of bending her to his rules. He’d already shown her that giving in brought nothing but more pain, more torment.

Maybe if she fought this hard enough he’d even give up. Let her go.