Page 70 of Stand: Part One

I furrowed my brows. “I said, what the fuck is this?” I repeated, adding some spice to my tone.

He tilted his head. “I thought that’s what you said.”

Darren then rounded the couch and snaked an arm around my middle to haul me up onto my knees, shoving my face into the couch cushion. After yanking my skort down, my ears caught the lethal sound of his belt being ripped from the loops of his pants.

Ah, fuck.

Only a second went by before I heard the sharp sound of the leather cutting through the air, followed by the loud smack it made against the skin of my bare ass. It took an additional second for the pain to finally register, that horrible sting cutting into my flesh and making me gasp aloud.

Darren didn’t even pause between strikes, just continued a constant stream of agony I had no hope of escaping. Each lash was harder than the last until I finally screamed the way I knew he wanted me to.

“There it is,” he drawled, dark satisfaction dripping from his tone.

I sucked in a breath, my chest heaving up and down as my tears began to soak the couch cushion beneath my face.

“Darren, come on. This is a bit mu—” Another strike cut me off, mid-sentence, another scream echoing from my throat.

“Why am I doing this, princess?” he asked, his voice soft, low, and deadly calm.

Panting, I tried to calm my breathing so I could answer him.

“My attitude.” Strike.

“What else?”

More panting, the obnoxious flow of oxygen clouding my brain, but at least the lash was half the strength of the others.

“I was argumentative.” Strike.

“What else?”

I bit my lip, trying to come up with more crimes.

“Cussing.” Strike. Strike. Strike.

I cried out, hating myself for every fucking tear the couch cushion below me was collecting. My legs were shaking, and my heart rattled in my chest.

It had been a long time since my ass burned like this, like it had been torched with hellfire. It was bound to happen sooner or later, regardless of the severity of my offense.

The last four months required Darren to treat me like a fragile little fawn, something he was not accustomed to. He didn’t buy me so he could pamper me with gentle caresses and tender kisses.

I was an outlet. I was a drug. I was the very thing his darkness relied on for crucial release. And he had gone without for too long. He was bound to have withdrawals, so overindulgence was expected. But I was still the one who had to pay the price for it.

When he was finished, Darren set the belt down, sighing with a satisfied hum as he gently ran his hand over my thoroughly abused skin. I tried not to flinch as his hand traveled lower and lower until his long fingers ran along the seam of my wet pussy.

Darren groaned with approval as he dragged the wetness with his fingertips all the way to my swollen clit, causing my whole body to clench with need while I fought back a moan.

“There’s my good girl,” Darren murmured as he rubbed my traitorous arousal over my clit, forcing a needy whimper from my mouth.

I shouldn’t feel the shame that came with my body’s response to Darren’s punishing dominance. It wasn’t my doing or my fault. He’d trained my dumbass body to respond this way, trained it to get off on his discipline, to need it, to crave it, and to ensure a warm, wet vessel would always be waiting for him at the snap of a finger.

There was no breaking that conditioning, no matter how hard I tried. My pussy had been trained like Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the mouth for my orgasmic reward for taking my beating like a good girl.

Like he said, I was built for endurance.

Fear spiked in my belly as I heard Darren flip a knife open, but the blade was thankfully only used to slice through the stretchy fabric of my skort and then immediately discarded to the floor.

My body shuddered as the sound of Darren’s zipper caught my ears, his cock quickly breaching the entrance of my pussy, pushing in deep and then quickly pulling back out.