Page 95 of What Blooms in Barren Lands

“I’ll scream!” I warned him, bouncing up and down against his back, his collarbone pressing painfully into my hip.

“No, you won’t.” He slapped my rear, and the savagery of the blow burned on my tightly stretched skin.

He braced me against a tree as he lowered me back to the ground and yanked my trousers down without bothering to undo them. Took them and my shoes off. My chest constricted painfully, and I could barely hear over the drumming of my heart’s blood.

“Einar, stop! Please! You can’t seriously think this is a reasonable payback for earlier.”

He unbuckled his belt, and I flinched at the sound. He pressed against me, and the tree bark rubbed my back raw. I struggled as much as I was able to, which wasn’t much at all. I couldn’t move an inch against his weight, no matter how hard I strained my muscles. Breathless and exhausted already, I realised that he had become completely motionless, fixing me with an intense, glacial glare. As if frozen, I ceased struggling, limp as a doll.

“Of course not. You’ve done nothing wrong. But I need you. Give me your fear. Give me your resistance so that I can overpower you. Give me your utter defeat.”

I whimpered feebly, but even as I did, my hips were already straining towards his in a rebellion against my better judgement, ahead of me in awareness of the situation.

“You can say no,” Einar assured me, “but if you don’t, I want you to forget immediately about ever having that option. I want to fuck you like you have no say in the matter. And I want to hear you beg only so that I can deny you. I want your complete surrender.”

My breathing had slowed down only to speed up again, shallow like a summertime puddle. I wouldn’t have dared acquiesce even had he allowed me to. But neither could I bringmyself to say no, dizzy with intrigue and desiring to be of service to him that no one else could provide.

Though my lower lip trembled, I held his gaze.

Assured of my silent acquiescence, he nodded.

“Tap the ground three times if you need me to stop.”

Despite my mounting apprehension, a significant part of me felt exhilarated, impatient as a child on Christmas morning. He was about to reveal just as much about himself as he was about me. The darkness he hadn’t trusted me with until then, raw and untethered. I swelled with pride at being at long last deemed ready for whatever storm had been brewing inside of him.

I was thinking furiously what to say when Einar took a step back to free my body from being pinned against the damn tree.

“Run!” he rasped in a voice laced with cruelty as I stumbled.

Not needing to be told twice, I bolted, the pumping of my arms jerky and wholly desynchronised from the wobbly strides of my legs. I dashed between the trees, uncoordinated in my panic, tripping over roots and slamming my shoulders hard into trunks. Needles and pinecones cut painfully into my bare feet. Einar must have loved the sight of me zig-zagging mindlessly about, tangled hair flying behind me like a cape, and the naked cheeks of my behind bouncing up and down. Too soon, the anticipated long, heavy footsteps thundered behind me, their distance from me growing shorter with each of my frantic heartbeats.

An iron grip crushed my midriff as I was jerked upward and to the side before being set back down. I flailed my arms, punching nothing but air, until sharp pain cut across my face.

Einar had slapped me. Not very hard, just enough to stun me. A bolt of excitement slashed through me the very same instant.

I stumbled, the inflicted cheek hot with pins and needles, and my ears ringing. Suspending me momentarily by the much-protesting fabric of my shirt, he tackled me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me.

He muted me. I couldn’t scream.

“No,” I gasped voicelessly.

“That’s it, be my good fucking whore and shut up.”

Straddling me, Einar slapped me again with his other hand. More pins and needles. My heart beat painfully against my ribcage, wild with fright, and yet lower below, I throbbed just as acutely with unbridled lust.

He pulled my tight, elastic top up over my raised arms, blinding me. I let out a choked, feral groan.

Just as I had managed to get my breath back, his forearm pressed against my raised arms and neck. The pressure in my head increased due to the constriction of my airways, and I saw stars as I closed my eyes.

I clenched my muscles in protest as he attempted to part my legs. The pressure on my neck increased, and he grabbed my nipple and twisted it hard until glowing red arrows erupted in the night sky behind my shut eyelids. My lips parted in a mute cry of pain.

Einar hit the ground next to me with his fist, and the volcanic thud made me flinch.

“You’re going to lie here and you’re going to fucking take it or I’ll make you bleed.” His voice was ice and gravel.

I was flooded with visceral fear, the kind that had been ingrained deep into my genes for millennia. But that fear only triggered an exhilaration that was more of an acquired taste, a jubilant joy at being able to experience such intense terror while staying completely safe.

His hips ploughed closer to me despite my instinctive resistance. His weight crushed me to the point of my internal organs bursting out through the seams of my skin. Dirt and pebbles fused with my much-abused back. I felt an irrepressibledesire to weep, but I couldn’t, as crying would have robbed me of what little oxygen I had left. What moisture I was unable to expel from my eyes found its release elsewhere, though. And as Einar finally rammed into me with the vehemence of a crashing train, there was no pain, save pleasure so exquisitely intense it was almost indistinguishable in its sharpness from torture.