Trust Me

by Annabel Joseph

  His closeness comforted me in some way, but it also made me more frantic, because now I was struggling against him and he was still hurting me, almost more than I could bear.

  Through my cries and my drool, the cock gag remained fixed between my lips. In between blows, when he let me rest and suck air through my nose, I worried at the gag with my tongue, but I couldn’t push it out. I couldn’t take it out on my own. Only he could do that, and it involved so much loss of control that I was frantic with it.

  At last he stopped, holding me while I heaved in my efforts to survive all the pain. The clamps came off, and then the manacles came off, so I could stretch my arms and rub the ache out of my shoulders. The gag stayed on, even though I begged with my eyes to be released.

  But he wasn’t finished yet. I was hauled over to the bad girl horse, with the blunted triangular top. He made me straddle it and ordered me to keep my feet on the floor, even though that made the unforgiving ridge dig into my already hurting clit and pussy.

  “Hands up,” he ordered, as I tried to push myself up off the horse and give my pussy some relief. “Lace your fingers behind your head and leave them there.”

  He left and returned with a whip, the short, black, evil one he favored when he wanted to deliver pain on top of pain. He whipped my ass, my flanks, my back, my breasts, each stroke raising a pink, burning welt that felt too sharp to deal with. There was no rest in between, no time for me to concentrate on how much my pussy smarted as I jerked and jumped on the horse. A few times, my hands came down to shield my body. I was sorry afterward because he whipped me harder, until I put them back where they belonged.

  Through all of this, he made me look at him. Every few blows, he’d stop and gaze into my eyes, and I understood why. I knew by now why he insisted on that rule. He was taking me as far as he could without breaking me. In some way it made me feel cherished, that he was being careful and closely monitoring me as he carried out this torture. In another way it made me feel like I was slowly going insane, that I was even allowing this to happen. Why didn’t I jump off the horse? Why didn’t I run?

  I only wanted to help Simon. Why are you hurting me so bad?

  But the hurt went on. He was hurting me for yelling at him, and hurting me for lying. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  There was no sex, not even a blowjob. I prayed for a blowjob. I would have given him the world’s most ardent and salacious blowjob if he would only stop, but no. I’d been punished before, but never this long and this hard, with no sex and no respite. My body heaved with sobs, not that I thought they might move him. I simply couldn’t hold them in. There was snot everywhere.

  When I started to choke on the gag, he took it off and wiped my mouth, and made me lie face down on top of the padded bondage table. He cuffed my wrists, waist, and ankles so I couldn’t move. I gritted my teeth together so I wouldn’t start pleading please, no, no, no more. My whole body felt bruised and bloodied, even though I knew there wasn’t any blood. He was an expert at keeping hurt on the surface.

  He flogged me with a heavy leather flogger all over my back, until everything hurt the maximum amount possible. Ass, shoulders, calves, thighs, back, everything burning, and then he turned me over and bound me again, and made everything on my front hurt. Breasts, hips, stomach, thighs. He made me spread my legs and brought the flogger down on my pussy in a fiery punishment that made me arch in agony.

  I wept for mercy. I couldn’t talk, but I wept, and finally, when my pussy felt like one big center of throbbing pain, he put the flogger and everything else away, and let me rest.

  I lay just as I was, arms bound over my head, waist bound, legs bound apart with my pussy on display. For all I knew, he might begin again. If he did, I’d have to accept it. That was our deal. I belonged to him, to cherish or to hurt, to nurture or destroy.

  At the moment, I felt destroyed.

  When he returned from putting everything away, he checked over me, touching all the places he’d hurt me. I knew he enjoyed examining the welts and bruises. He released me and made me stand while he inspected my back. Then, finally, after he’d touched and caressed all the marks, he pushed me to my knees to assuage the hunger my pain and suffering had created in him.

  He was rock hard, straining at the front of his pants. When he undid his fly, his cock flopped out and whacked me in the face. It was something we might have laughed at in other circumstances. Now, I clutched at him and opened my mouth, and sucked him with frantic concentration, my eyes fixed on his face to make sure I was pleasing him.

  Because when someone had just punished you that severely, you pretty much wanted to do whatever they demanded. As he pushed into my throat, yanking my hair, banging my tonsils over and over, I felt myself relax. My body still hurt, but my punishment was over, and I could take this violent blowjob if that’s what he wanted. I was his, absolutely, one hundred percent his to use, which I supposed was the outcome he’d hoped for after beating me for almost an hour.

  He came in my throat with a growl, jamming himself into me as I choked and tried to swallow. As soon as he released me, I coughed and collapsed on the floor. I hurt everywhere. I didn’t want to move.

  “Look at me,” he said, pulling me back to my knees.

  I stared at him, biting my lip. Please, no more punishment. Please, I feel like I’m about to die, and if you’re still angry with me...

  “Who owns you?” he asked.

  “You do,” I rasped through my sore throat. “You own me, Sir.”

  “Who makes the rules in our relationship?”

  “You, Sir.”

  “I do, and I punish you when you break them. I punish you when you treat me with disrespect. You don’t get to sleep in my bed tonight. That’s a privilege for good slaves who obey and show respect.”

  I pressed my face against his hand, but there was nothing to say. He wasn’t asking a question. He wasn’t asking my opinion. He was telling me I had to sleep alone tonight, in the guest room, the horrible room that made me feel conflicted and isolated. It pretty much meant the punishment was going to continue all night.

  A few tears squeezed from my eyes, but when he led me out of the dungeon, I went to the guest room as I’d been told. He didn’t bother with a chastity belt. There was zero chance of me touching my clit after everything it had been through, and I was too depressed to feel sexy anyway. Orgasm denial was only fun when you wanted to orgasm. I would rather have died.

  I took a shower even though the water pressure hurt my welted skin, because I needed to wash this day off me. After that, I crawled into bed, eager to find refuge in sleep. I still didn’t know what to do about Simon. I didn’t know if Price would forgive me. I’d reset our already negligible levels of trust back to zero. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Price and I had plenty of happy moments, but at times like these, when everything looked bleak and frightening, I would start to think, I can’t do this anymore. I liked the good, sexy pain we shared most nights, but the punishment pain slaughtered me. Not the marks on my body. Not the manacles and clamps and drool and snot and shame. I mean, those were bad, but what really killed me was the loneliness, the rejection, the feeling of failure, when all I ever wanted in life was to succeed at something and be proud of myself.

  Men all over Asia would soon be wearing my accessories. I was creating a gold and diamond set for an A-list actress to wear to the Oscars. And yet here I was, curled in a ball of self-hatred and doubt. I wanted Price to love me. I wanted the questioning and jealousy to go away. I wanted us to fix each other, but some days it felt like we were only making each other more broken.

  I’ll never be enough for him. Why do I even try?

  I started to sob, and it wasn’t the sobbing from earlier, triggered by sustained and agonizing torture. No, these tears were from emotional pain. Oh God, it hurt. Everything fucking hurt, and I felt so fucking alone.

  * * * * *

  Shit. Fuck. Fuck.

  Fuck.

  I lay in my bed and wat
ched her on my tablet, because yes, there were cameras everywhere. Yes, I loved her that much, and yes, I’d beaten the shit out of her in the dungeon. I had to. Our relationship had rules. We had a fucking dynamic to follow. I was the Master and she was my slave, and she wasn’t allowed to be around hurtful people or get herself into hurtful situations.

  Even if I felt like maybe I was the most hurtful person in her life right now.

  She was crying, really crying. Unlike the smaller cameras in her studio, the guest room camera had audio, and I could hear the misery wailing out of her throat, even though she tried to muffle it in her pillow.

  I put my hands over my ears. I could still hear. Sometimes I loved the sound of her crying. Sometimes I licked her tears off her face like they were expensive wine. Sometimes her tears got me hard and made me want to fuck her to oblivion, until she cried another kind of tears, from sheer exhausted pleasure.

  Sometimes, like now, her tears made me feel like throwing myself out a window.

  I got up and started to pace. I couldn’t go to her. Tonight was about teaching her to appreciate the connection we had by taking it away from her. Our connection, our relationship, our dynamic. My beautiful, sad Chere wore my collar even now, while she lost her shit in a fetal position.

  Fuuuck.

  I buried my face in my hands and then stalked back to the tablet. I could mute it. I could close out the camera feed and go to bed. Even then, I knew I’d hear her, like a dog could hear its owner’s car from two blocks away. Instead, I went and stood outside the door. Maybe I could just stand here. Maybe that would be enough. I thought I’d just stand here until she stopped sobbing, but while I was making those plans, I’d already turned the knob and stepped inside.

  She was so naked, so sad and pitiful. I thought, she understands our dynamic. She knows that when we aren’t together, we’re lost.

  I knelt on the bed and pulled her into my arms. She turned into me the same way she’d curled into her pillow, and erupted in more tears.

  “Please don’t leave me,” she said, clinging to my neck. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hush.” I just wanted her to stop crying. I thought I would die if she didn’t stop crying, me, the sadist who reveled in tears. “You need to settle down,” I said.

  “I can’t live if you don’t love me,” she whispered against my neck. “I know that’s weak. I know it’s stupid.”

  “Shut up.” I held her against me and rubbed her back, and traced the welts on her ass. “I love you, which you already fucking know. But Chere...” I brushed the tears from her trembling cheeks. “I can only endure one kind of love. I can only have all of you. I can’t share you with anyone else, do you fucking understand that? Especially not him.”

  “I wouldn’t. I wasn’t...”

  I put a finger over her lips. I didn’t want another argument, not now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I’m trying. I want to give you all of me.” Her voice sounded strained. “But not all of me is...perfect.”

  Fuck, I thought to myself. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I was the most imperfect person in the universe, and somehow I had this slave who wanted to be perfect for me, and I fucking wanted to fling myself from a window because I obviously wasn’t enough for her.

  “You’re fine,” I said. “You fucked up, you were punished, it’s time to move on. You need to calm down now. You need to sleep.”

  “Please don’t leave me,” she said again.

  “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not telling. I’m pleading.”

  I sighed. “I’ll stay here until you calm down.”

  But I stayed longer than that. I stayed until she finally fell asleep in a twitching, shuddering heap of exhaustion. Even after that, I stayed to watch her sleep, and tried to convince myself that it was okay to love her even if I hurt her. Did all my love for her cancel out the control, the sadism, the pain? Her apartment across the street haunted me. Someone else was renting it now, but should she have been there instead? Would she be happier there? Should I have stuck to my binoculars and let her find her own way?

  What if she’d ended up with Cantor? Or back with Simon, or some other asshole who didn’t take care of her? At least I cared. I told myself that in the silence, repeated it like a mantra as a nighttime of minutes ticked by.

  Then it was breakfast, and Vera was there, and Chere was dressed for work so none of her marks or bruises showed. In some way, the housekeeper was a chaperone, preventing things from getting any worse between us. I hoped things would get better. I slid a paper across the table.

  You’re so beautiful, I’d written. It was shorthand for a longer phrase, a poem, a piece of our past. Look at what you do for me, I’d told her once, as she regarded her wrecked reflection in the mirror. You’re so beautiful. Now it stood for all the sacrifices she made in our relationship, and my acknowledgement of them. She gave a soft sigh and placed it beside her plate. I imagined her collar around her neck, and then my hand instead, choking her, stealing her breath. Stealing everything from her. But I would always, always try to give things back.

  Her phone buzzed on the table next to her.

  She looked down at the message, then at me. She handed it across the table before I even reached out my hand. There was no name at the top of the screen, just a number. Another message came before I could read the first one.

  I know you said not to call, but it’s been almost a day now.

  Chere, please. I’m searching for peace.

  I let out my breath in a huff. “He’s searching for peace,” I said. “Asshole.”

  A moment went by before she spoke. “I guess sobriety’s hard, especially when you have demons.”

  “He’s a fucking demon.” I pushed a few buttons and blocked his number, then put the phone down beside me. “I’m going to keep this for a while.”

  I could tell she wanted to argue, but the memory of last night was still brutally present between us. She bit her lip and looked down at her plate. “For how long?”

  “Until I’m sure he’s moved on.” And until I’m sure you’ve moved on, you and your kind, codependent heart. Did I really think she wanted to get back together with Simon? No. I might worry about it every once in a while, but I knew it wasn’t realistic.

  Did I think he might fuck her up again, while fighting his demons? Yes, I absolutely did. I think he wanted nothing more on earth than to get in some parting shots now that Chere was happy and successful without him.

  “What if someone else tries to call me?” she asked.

  “I’ll give you your messages.”

  “I think Simon needs me.”

  “Like he needed you before?” I frowned at her. “Like he needed you when he sucked the life out of you and used you for his own fucking weakness? No, Chere. Not again. I’m taking this phone for your own protection, and I’m warning you...” I waited until she met my gaze, because this warning was serious as shit. “Do not dare let him draw you in again. No contact. Zero contact. Do you understand?”

  This was why I’d punished her so harshly last night. To get her to the point where she would look up at me and say, in complete and utter surrender, “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

  “Promise me,” I said.

  “I promise.”

  And that was more than surrender. That was her word.

  Chapter Eleven: A Place to Hide

  I kept Chere’s phone for the rest of that week, relaying messages when she needed them, making sure Simon didn’t try to contact her again using a different number. He did, twice, but she didn’t need to know that. Listening to his begging, his insistence on her attention, I realized that yes, Simon still wanted her. He wanted her back in his life because she’d always made things easier for him. I deleted his pathetic, whining messages, which were all the same. I need you. I’m suffering. Help me.

  As fucked up as I was, I never used Chere in the selfish way that Simon used Chere. I gave back to her in whatever ways I could. I�
��m better than him. I’m better. Simon Baldwin was a low bar to measure myself against as a boyfriend and lover, but I was trying. I wanted to get better.

  Simon wants to get better too.

  But hell, he needed to do that for himself. He’d taken enough from Chere, and it wasn’t her business or my business if his life was starting to fall apart again. I felt secure in this line of reasoning until late Sunday night, when Andrew sent a barrage of texts.

  Chere was drifting to sleep beside me when her phone started vibrating on my side table. “Is that Andrew?” she asked with a half-smile. Her friend texted her a lot, about his work, or his relationship. He could be counted on to supply a vast stream of amusing minutiae. But these texts weren’t amusing.

  OMG BABES

  JUST HEARD ABOUT SIMON

  CHERE!!!!!

  And I knew. I just knew.

  “What’s he saying?” she asked drowsily.

  I didn’t answer. I typed Simon’s name into a search engine and watched the slew of headlines come up about his shaky sobriety and sudden overdose. Yahoo. CNN. Huffington Post. Twitter. #RIP #SIMONBALDWIN #TOOSOON

  I sat up in bed, leaning over the phone. I had the craziest urge to destroy it, like that might make this go away. My next thought was, how do I hide these texts? How do I hide the fact that this has happened? But that would be impossible. Andrew would keep texting until Chere responded. If she didn’t respond, he’d call, and if she didn’t answer, he’d come over, because this was a big traumatic fucking deal and what the holy fuck was I going to do about this?

  It was eleven o’clock at night. I looked down at Chere, almost asleep, and thought, I’ll give myself one last night of peace before this shitstorm breaks wide. I texted back to Andrew, Chere’s sleeping. I don’t want to wake her with this news. I’ll tell her tomorrow.

  He didn’t text back. I wondered if she told him that I’d barred her from helping Simon. I wondered if he blamed me for this. I knew Chere would blame me, even if Simon’s fucking addiction problems weren’t my fault.