Flawed

by Francette Phal

  My eyes pop open and I find myself swimming in a sea of muted violet. Everything is washed in violet hues, and it takes over my vision. I immediately squeeze my eyes shut again and give myself a minute, hoping that it’s a mistake, praying with silent desperation that it’s the nightmare that won’t leave me alone. But it’s not. It’s all too real, all too horrifying, the reality I find myself in.

  I try to remember; attempt to fight beyond the fog invading my mind. It takes another minute. There is nothing but darkness, an eternity of it before a beacon of awareness illuminates my mind and I hear the sinister resonance of his voice reverberate through my entire being.

  I’ve come to collect, Lacey.

  My body jerks, ready to take flight and run, run from the horrifying scenarios my mind labors to conjure at just the utterance of those words. But running is not possible and breathing becomes something I forget how to do when I find that I can’t move. The overwhelming panic surges, leaving me breathless, lightheaded, and feeling like my heart is going to beat out of my chest when I struggle, wildly, uselessly, against the restraints tethering my limbs. The side of my face, my breasts, and my stomach are pressed to the cold, unforgiving concrete that feels like a layer of ice beneath my shockingly naked skin. Naked. The realization of my nudity is another blow to my already pounding chest. I don’t even have the modesty of clothes to protect me from this.

  My arms are behind me; my forearms pulled parallel on my body. My wrists to my elbows are bound tightly together. There’s another restraint that runs across the tops of my naked breasts, binding my upper arms to almost touch each other on my back for good fucking measure. Jesus. A rope, that’s what it feels like against my skin. The coiled, course fiber biting into my flesh, wrapped around my wrists and split into two parts. One piece tightly fastens my right ankle to the back of my right thigh and the other binding my left ankle to my left thigh. I’m barely on my knees, suspended from the ground at the waist with my ass tilted upwards, left completely exposed. Twisting my body, trying to see anything beyond the mind-numbing haze of purple has my muscles screaming in protest. I feel him before I see him. I know it’s him because no one else has this atrocious ability to deaden the air around me like he does. I quiet my breathing, soften the noise in my mind and strain to hear. His footsteps are barely audible, just the quiet swishing of pants shuffling along the ground as he approaches.

  It’s an unhurried progress; it’s the slow, menacing gait of a hunter who has caught his prey. He’s the predatory wolf and I’m the trembling, whimpering lamb. My mind instantly rebels at the portrayal. I am not weak. I have never been weak. I fight. Despite the odds, I always fight. And I refuse to play his victim. Whatever he has put in my mouth has temporarily taken my ability to speak but I thrash, buck, twist, and grapple with the restraints, needing him to know that I will not meekly take whatever the fuck he has planned for me. What I’m doing doesn’t help however, it only makes it worse, hurts me more. The more I struggle, the tighter the ropes seem to get, cutting off my blood circulation, almost numbing me completely until I fall limp, my face to the ground, gasping for breath, greedily inhaling the coldness of the concrete floor into my burning lungs. I only just catch my breath when I feel the excruciating grip of his fingers through my hair, it clenches at the roots to gain better purchase before he wrenches my head upwards to meet his expressionless face.

  “I like that you’re fighting,” he says quietly, with eyes like black holes, ready to consume all of me. “It lets me know that I’ve chosen well.”

  I meet his gaze unflinchingly, the fear that is growing inside me like a garden of weeds is hidden temporarily by the fuel of defiance coursing through my veins, set to resist anything he will do to me. A small imperceptible lift disrupts the straight line of his beautifully cruel mouth, as if he knows how truly terrified I am. And he probably does because he is the architect of all this. I should’ve fucking known what a sick fuck he was when he molested me with my own knife.

  God, what I wouldn’t do right now to have my knife.

  “I can imagine you have a lot of questions, so let me answer them by simply saying that you are here bound as you are because nothing else will do. This is how I choose for you to repay me. There will be twenty-five sessions. They will last for as long as I want them to. I will treat you like a favorite toy and break you simply because I can. In this room, you are an object, my object. You have no voice. You have no opinion. Your wants, your needs, are inconsequential to the pleasure I will reap from your pain.”

  He brings me closer to him until we are sharing the same air and then I feel the hot, wet slide of his tongue up the side of my face before he breathes against my ear. “And make no mistake, I’m going to savor every second of your agony.” He releases me without warning so I can barely brace myself for the instant my face smacks against the ground. Light shatters behind my eyelids at the explosion of sheer agony that ricochets through my skull upon impact. My teeth gnash down on whatever is lodged between them, like a mouth guard, it absorbs some of the pain, but not much of it. I’m howling on the inside but only the simplest whimper vibrates in the back of my throat.

  “I’ve watched you, Lacey, but I think you already know that. I’ve followed you, studied you, and took notes on all aspects of your life. I’ve come to admire your spirit, your tenacity. Do you know how rare, how appealing your resiliency is to me? Have you ever looked at something so beautiful, so utterly alluring that you just wanted to destroy it? That’s what you are to me. You are this beautiful thing I want to destroy.” A violent shudder runs through me at what he just revealed. At the implication that seems more like a promise, an act that will occur with or without my consent.

  My eyes are tightly closed, my breathing long and slow as I try to lessen the pounding in my head. But when the air shifts around me, causing my skin to pebble, a reaction that has nothing to do with the sudden draft and everything to do with his disappearance and what is to come, my eyes pop open and despite the crack of pain ripping through me, I lift my head in a desperate search for him. I’m limited on what I can see. The haze of purple light bathing the room doesn’t help. His silence is an entity of its own that slithers along my skin and injects me with terror more powerful than the pain.

  There is no warning, nothing but my muffled screams as the full impact of the wood cracks against my ass. I twist and fight once again against my restraints, the need for escape has never been greater. I can feel my bones cracking, my muscles screaming, begging me to stop struggling but I can’t, I don’t want to. I need to get away. This cannot be fucking happening to me!

  But it is. Dammit, it is, and I can’t escape when he strikes again and again, two consecutive whacks that send my body forward with the impact and provoke my tears. The hot tears sting my eyes, and fall in wet, fat droplets down my cheeks. There is no break in between rest and his punishment as he lands another blow, this one aimed for the tops of my thighs and my exposed pussy. My back dips, my hips thrust upward, arching as the explosion of pain overtakes my clit. I let out a choked scream and a sharp gasp. The fierce heat that flares instantly melts into an unbearable burn. He does it again, aimed for that sensitive area, and my forehead is pressed to the concrete, the short huffs of air escaping my clogged nose come back hot against my face, mixing in with the drool and tears. The unexpected light brush of his hand across the inferno of my ass is more agonizing than the slaps of the wood. I immediately flinch, and my body stiffens, dreading what’s to come but set to withstand the next hit. It never comes.

  “You did well.” Those words wash over me like a giant wave and something I can’t quite describe but that feels like a gust of wind sweeps through every fiber of my being. It’s almost too overwhelming to take, but it touches a part of me that I never knew existed until this very second. It’s that same part of me that has my body buckling, collapsing like he’s cut my tethers, and I hear myself whimper, mewl like a damn animal under his gentle touch. I’m mortified to realize th
at I like hearing he’s pleased with me. Bile burns a path up my throat, makes me gag on the cotton in my mouth, ready to expel the nauseating thought. What level of fucked up was I if I just enjoyed what he did to me? What the hell sort of person did that make me? Hate, pure, unadulterated hatred should be oozing out of every pore of my skin, and there is something about this numbing calmness that is extremely disturbing.

  “I told you before that not all men want to fuck you.” He speaks and my mind quiets. I suck in air through my nostrils as my teeth bear down on the cotton in my mouth. He’s palming my ass with his warm, large hands, the burning heat from the welts pulsing with the blood flooding beneath the surface. I try to flinch away but it’s no use. Puffs of air escape through my nose as he spreads my ass cheeks apart. “There is so much more one can do with these two beautiful holes than simply shoving a dick in them.” My pussy tingles, pulses at his words, at the heat of his proximity, and a violent shudder rips through me as he works one long, thick finger slowly up the slick, wet V of my lips. My hips push back unconsciously toward him, and he hums quietly, in appreciation? Approval? Why does it matter?

  “There is much you have yet to understand about yourself...but you will learn soon enough.” My eyes nearly pop out of my skull and my mouth drops open even as another scream rips through my throat at the swift, unimpeded thrust of his cock tearing through the tight rings of my ass hole. It’s almost too unbearable, my body a throbbing shell of pure agony as it tries to accommodate his size. Too thick, too long, too fucking unlubricated, but he fills me to an almost sickening level, buried to the balls. He’s covering me, his weight pressing down on me, my mind and my body screaming louder than the noise escaping my throat. If I could’ve begged him to stop, I would have. I would’ve done anything to make it stop.

  “Lesson number one, never expect gentleness from me here.” His breath is so harsh against my ear it’s like an insult. He grips my hair, fisting a handful around his hand so that my head tilts back, almost touching his shoulder. “Expect cruelty,” he pants, with a brutal forward lunge. “Expect agony,” his teeth scrape along my neck before he clamps down on flesh and I can do nothing but moan at the added pain. “Expect to crave my brutality.” His every thrust coincides with a tug of my hair. He takes his time, makes sure that it hurts, that I respond, that I groan. Forcing me to arch back to meet those long, painstaking thrusts.

  He fills me with his cum, hot, wet, gushing globs of it empties into me in spurts, floods me with it before he leaves me limp on the ground gasping for breath, weak and whimpering with his cum leaking slowly from my used body.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Knox

  Dead calm. That’s the only sensation I have to compare this to. That feeling I get, that absolute moment of tranquility that settles my mind after a kill is what having her in my home feels like. It’s a marrow-deep rightness. Like another piece of the puzzle has been put into place. Any reservations I had about her age are now completely gone. Not that they would’ve stopped me from carrying out this plan. I wanted her. So I took her. And it has been worth it so far. She was exactly as I’d imagined. Better even. I close my eyes and see her again, just as she’d been on the floor of my vault. Her pretty little mouth stuffed, gagged with her own panties. Her nude, lithe body curled in on itself in a hog-tie restraint, the fiber of the ropes gnawing into her supple flesh every time she’d struggled. It had been fascinating watching her. And then I’d touched her, and I was unable to stop until I heard her cry.

  My cock twitches in my pants, growing hard as I remember fucking the tight little ring of her ass, how beautifully my cock had entered her. I’d carelessly stretched that beautiful hole, and then plunged into her wet heat, her forced arousal my lubricant. It was a rush of euphoria. I was drunk off the agony she radiated from my own special brand of pain for her. That almost incestuous blend of sex and dominance had come together in making my control over her complete as I fucked her to the tune of her whimpers and muffled cries.

  And still, I want more.

  Sitting in the dark, I watch her sleep. The spider and his fly. She’d fainted so I cut her free and brought her here. Into my bedroom. On my bed. On my sheets, beneath my covers.

  Naked. Naked, the word is a call, an incitement to that part of me that is greater than anything else. The part I cannot suppress, that I don’t want to overpower. I’m not troubled by a conscious, so I can do what I damn well please. There is nothing I want more than to creep into that bed with her. My desire for her is too damn strong. And so I do it. The bed makes no noise as my weight settles. There is a night lamp on the desk behind me, the soft glow it emits touches her in a flirtation of light and shadows. Showing me just enough, but I want to see more. Her beauty draws me in, has me raising a hand to her face to brush away a curl of hair. My fingers ghost over the dust of freckles beneath her eyes and over the bridge of her pert little nose. She has lips made for sucking cock, my cock. They’re slightly cracked now, dry from being stretched open by her gag, but still undeniably fuckable.

  I pull back the blanket completely from her. My mouth quirks up. Satisfaction goes to my head as I take in the imprints of my brutality. The ropes have marred her skin like tattoos, not so permanent, but the effect is still just as lovely. She is shaped beautifully, her breasts perky, stomach flat, hips flaring slightly to two well-formed legs, with one upraised and the other resting flat on the bed. She is something I can’t deny myself and her taste is something I want badly enough to take. Lowering my head to her breasts, I sweep my tongue over her right nipple. She twitches, releasing a gentle breath but doesn’t wake. I flick the tip of my tongue over it this time and it tightens in response, the dusky little bud erecting, begging for more. Taking the nipple into my mouth, the wet sinuousness of my tongue wraps around it and her body arches into me. Still asleep but wanting what is being offered.

  Driven solely by my own instincts, my hand journeys down her stomach, past the thatch of curls that make me frown for a second. I’m going to have to get rid of her pubic hair. It’s not something that appeals to me. My frown disappears when I set a hand on her pussy. She’s wet. Hot slickness greets my fingers. I play in it; stroking my index finger slowly between her lips, up and down her weeping clit. She moans and writhes, unconsciously moving her hips when I insert both my middle and index fingers inside her sweltering heat. I thrust in and out of her, fingers scissoring, delving in deep. But I put an immediate stop to everything when I hear the change in her breathing pattern.

  I know the instant she’s going to wake up. And I’m gone before she even realizes what has happened. Returning to my seat in the shadows, I bring my fingers to my mouth. Her taste is everything I imagined, clean, salty pussy that has my mouth watering. I lick my fingers and then lick them again, because she’s the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth. Her taste lingers on my tongue long after I’ve sucked my fingers clean, but I savor her delectable flavor like a favorite meal.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lacey

  I don’t know if I lost consciousness or I just simply checked out, but the next time I come to, the mind-numbing purple is gone. I blink blearily, the lighting is dimmer here, but my eyes adjust quickly and it takes my mind a little bit to catch up as it works to decipher between reality and the achingly physical dream I just awoke from. Was he here? Did he touch me while I slept? Or did I dream it? Was it another one of those viscerally erotic nightmares about him? My mind can’t reconcile. All I know is that I’m not home. I’m not in my room. I’m not in my own bed. But at least I’m not on the floor of that room anymore. That thought has me jolting upright and I’m able to do so without effort. No ropes. Free. Escape is the first and only thing that rings true in my head when it dawns on me that I’m no longer tied up. In a flurry of movements, I draw back the thick blanket covering me and jump off the bed. I don’t make it two steps before everything spins around me, the ground I’m standing on is unstable as it threatens to drag me to my knees. I try to shake
it off. I inhale deeply before I continue. I’ll have time to feel sick later. Right now, I need to go. But my body won’t cooperate with my mind. It doesn’t have the energy or strength to take me another step.

  I double over and wrap an arm around my stomach even as nausea surges, gripping and twisting my insides like it’s on a permanent spin cycle. Sweat pearls across my already clammy skin, making me feel colder than I am. It’s a chill that seems to freeze me from the inside out, the tremors it provokes rattle my bones and teeth and I have to bite down on my bottom lip to keep myself from trembling.

  I don’t know where I am. But it’s not the torture chamber I was in before. A bedroom. I’m in a man’s bedroom. His. Knox. That twisted fucker. My head pounds as though unconsciously protesting against me calling him that. But that’s what he is. A seriously deranged sicko. A mental snapshot of me, bound, gagged, and helpless on the ground in that room while having him on top of me, inside me, invading me, hurting me, viciously taking and taking, heedless of my cries takes over my mind and the world around me feels like it’s spinning. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. There won’t be a repeat performance of what happened in that room. Fuck him and what he says. Fuck him and the money he paid. Fuck him.

  I dive into my anger headfirst, it drives me, empowers me, and prompts me to move. I don’t think I can walk. But I can crawl. The room is huge but I’m not too far from where I was on the bed. My freedom is just directly in front of me. The door—I can crawl to it. I’m still naked. I don’t know where my clothes are, but that is something I’ll think about later. Right now, escape is the only objective. Crawling doesn’t come easy. It feels like I have no bones, my limbs liquefied. Pain and more pain shoots out in all directions of my body, making for a torturously arduous progress. But relief soon floods me as I stare with vast hope at the giant, matte-black door in front of me. My vision blurs as I rise to my knees and I waver unsteadily, panting, shaking worse than before. Escape. The word seduces me, pushes me to reach up with trembling hands for that silver finish handle.