Page 28 of Wicked Believer (Original Sinner #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Charlotte

I kneel on the floor of the playroom, my knees sinking into the soft St Genève pillow that’s been placed there for me. A pillow I had to earn during the first month we began this ritual. I bite my lower lip, struggling to sit still as my anticipation nearly gets the better of me.

This is how he shows his love for me. How he claims me. Body and soul.

I clasp my hands together, trying hard not to move from where I’ve been instructed to sit and wait, unable to think of anything else but when he’ll finally decide to join me.

My knees will never forget the bruising in those early weeks, the tenderness they felt from all the times he made me sit tight without the cushion, but that only makes the comfort of the pillow beneath me all the more luxurious now. All the more delicious even.

A reminder of exactly how good I’ve been.

I hear his footsteps before he enters, the sound sending an echoing hum through my chest. I settle into my position, placing my hands in my lap and lowering my head like I’m supposed to. Like I’m a good girl.

I am a good girl. Only for him, it seems.

But lately I’ve ... needed a reminder of why I should behave.

I don’t allow myself to look up as he enters, no matter how much I’m tempted to. And I’m so tempted that it feels like I can’t control myself. I’m obsessed with him.

And, at the moment, I hate it.

I hate him. I hate me.

Hate the version of myself I become when I’m with him, the way he makes me feel.

Like there’s this constant ache inside my chest that needs soothing, and he’s the only one who can possibly ease it.

I hate how much I crave what he does to me.

But I still want it.

I keep my head low, straining to stop myself from looking up until he tells me to.

The first time I made that mistake, he ordered me to sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed for nearly a week, but I’ll never take for granted what a privilege it is to sleep beside him now, wrapped up in his arms. I know our protocol backward and forward.

And I’ll never break it again.

Not unintentionally, at least.

The sounds of his steps draw closer until, from where my head’s lowered, I can see the smooth polish of his Armanis, the shine of his shoes, but still, he doesn’t say anything.

“Please, Daddy?” I whisper, defiant, cheeky. Like I used to be.

Like he sometimes likes me to be.

He growls. “You know better than to speak before spoken to.”

I lower my head in feigned obedience, and he huffs slightly.

“Sir will do for tonight.” He pats my head like I’m his creature, his pet, and I have to force myself not to lean into it because I’m just that desperate for him to touch me. “You know what to do, darling.”

My cheeks flush as I lower my head and kiss his shoes. On occasion, when I’ve lost myself in the haze of subspace, I’ve wanted to curl up and rest my head there, gazing up at him adoringly. But now, the thought of my own need simply fills me with shame.

Shame he’s going to work out of me.

Like he’s exorcising my demons away.

I try to silence those unfair thoughts, but without him, it feels useless.

I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t want this, and yet, I do.

Even when it feels like the whole world’s crumbling around us.

I crave this, crave him.

Nearly as much as I know he craves me.

The smell of his shoe polish and the Italian leather of his Armanis fills my nose as I gently lay a second kiss on his other shoe, the scent reminding me of some of the toys he might use on me this evening.

Sometimes, if I’ve been particularly good, he’ll let me choose which tools he uses as a reward, a special treat. Though tonight, I have no intention of being good.

It’s his punishment I need.

And we both know it.

He turns away from me then, not offering me the privilege, and despite all the ways I’ve purposefully misbehaved, somehow the thought that I haven’t been good for him guts me.

I want to be good.

I want to be good for him so badly it scares me.

It’s my own insecurities that drive me to test boundaries, the limits of his love. Only for his punishment to reassure me that he’ll always be there for me in the end. Nothing I could ever do could drive him away, make him abandon me like my father did.

Like his Father did to him.

I can be my most dark and wicked self with him.

And he’ll love me despite it.

The same as I do for him.

“You can look up now, Charlotte.”

I bite my lip, but I do as I’m told, lifting my gaze to find him standing a few paces away. He’s stripped off his suit coat, and his suspenders are cut across his back like some kind of shoulder holster. I watch hungrily as he rolls up the cuffs of his sleeves.

Holy fuck.

How is it possible for me to want someone so badly? For anyone to be so beautiful? For me to feel so greedy for him, even when he’s away?

I want him on me, in me, everywhere.

This second.

But I have to wait patiently. Show him how good I can be—when I want to.

My subservience will be worth it in the end.

He finishes rolling up his shirtsleeves and then steps toward me, his movements so deliberate it feels like a delicious dance choreographed just for me. “How many times did you touch yourself while I was away?”

“I . . .”

“Answer me,” he growls.

I swallow thickly. “F-four times, sir.”

“Every day ?” he says, his voice going a bit higher at the end like he can’t believe how impossibly bratty I’ve been.

I nod weakly, heat filling my cheeks.

“On the bondage table,” he orders, his tone full of reprimand. When I don’t immediately start moving from where I’m too busy sulking at how ashamed I am of myself, he snarls, “ Now .”

I scramble to my feet, eyes lowered as I head toward the bondage table, where he directed me, and kneel on top of it.

It’s smooth handcrafted wood, the top covered in a layer of lush black padding and the sides lined with gleaming silver hooks.

For a piece of furniture, it’s incredibly sexy.

Custom made. The height of luxury. Just like everything Lucifer owns.

Me included.

I bite down on my lip, trying to suppress the nervous giggle that bubbles up in my throat, but I fail miserably. It’s true, after all.

I’m the most expensive whore New York City’s ever seen.

“Is something funny?”

“No, sir.”

Lucifer appears at my side a moment later, a length of rope in his hands as he tips my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Next time you won’t be laughing if you don’t crawl for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I whisper, dropping my gaze.

“Good girl,” he purrs, though from the derisive way he says it, we both know he’s taunting me, daring me to disobey him again. “Now, spread your legs for me.”

I do as I’m told, spreading my thighs as he checks how wet I am, drawing a whimper from me. Using the rope, he starts at my wrists, binding me with an intense, methodical precision, the repetition so mesmerizing that I quickly fall into what feels like a trance.

A familiar feeling of lightness settles over me, the natural fibers brushing against my skin as any thought of the outside world, of anything beyond this , beyond us, simply fades away.

The process is so focused, so deliberate and meditative, even, the unyielding tension of the rope and his movements as he binds my hands and feet together behind my back so soothing that I feel all the stress I’ve been carrying start to melt off me.

His attention to detail and precision is overwhelming.

This is how I know that he cares for me.

Why he deserves the submission I give him each evening he’s home.

This is an act of love, an act of dominance. For me.

I stay as silent and still as I’m able, my eyes never leaving his face save for when he needs to step behind me to better secure my binding, until I feel so overwhelmed, so vulnerable with the emotion of it all, that I think I might cry, if he’d let me.

He’s making up for his absence with all the attention he’s paying me, rope by rope.

I love you, his actions seem to say. Followed by, I’m sorry.

Or as close as he could ever get to it, anyway.

I swallow down the lump that forms inside my throat, the part of me that wishes for a time when things were simpler between us, despite how connected I feel to him.

If I try to move against where he’s tied me, rope burn can set in easily, and while I enjoy a bit of pain, that’s not the kind he’s aiming for tonight.

Tonight, he wants my submission. Total control of my body.

To remind me of how I disobeyed him this week. Touched what’s his.

My sole purpose is to please him.

Take his punishment until I remember I’m his completely.

Finally, when he finishes, I can feel that the knots are more decorative than prohibitive compared to others he’s done previously, but still, I can’t move my hands or feet easily.

He takes in the sight of me bared for him before he leans forward and softly kisses my shoulder. A familiar brush of lips against skin.

Like all our shared sins have melted away.

“Forgive me,” he whispers as he pulls back.

The mood shifts abruptly, and even though I know what’s coming, I’m still not prepared for the shock of it.

Lucifer shoves me down face-first onto the table, my cheek now roughly jammed flat against the cushion so that my pussy and my ass are lifted and bared to him.

“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?” he growls against my ear. “Begging for it all week?”

“Yes, sir,” I whimper, but my cries aren’t enough to satisfy him, so he pulls back his hand and uses one of the tools he’s just grabbed from a nearby rack to paddle me.

The blow lands on my left butt cheek, the sting and then burn that follows radiating out from the impact. It charges me like a live wire, making my pussy even more impossibly wet to the point that I feel some of it smear across the leather cushion as I slide forward a little on the next blow.

Shame burns through my cheeks.

Oh God.

And to think we’re only just getting started.