by Loki Renard
If I’d been smart enough to wonder where Dante’s limit for sass was, I’d have been interested to note that it was right there. As it is, I’m surprised when he grabs me by the back of the shirt and lifts me physically forward over the table, pinning me in place. He hooks his fingers in the back of my jeans, and I am immediately betrayed by the elasticated fabric that makes them fit so well because it also makes them really easy for him to yank down. I curse, but that quickly turns into a scream as his hand meets my ass, a hard slap which makes intense pain blaze through my bottom.
“Jesus Christ! What are you fucking doing!?”
“What someone should have done a really long time ago,” he growls. “You’re spoiled. You need to be unspoiled. Hard.”
That’s exactly what he’s doing. I’ve never been hit before. I had no idea what it felt like to feel someone’s palm meeting my ass, his powerful arm delivering slaps which make me squirm and squeal. As much as I try to escape the pain, there’s no way I’m breaking his grasp. Last night, he made sex border on punishment. Today there is no sex, just discipline and I have no idea how to process it. I find myself kicking out at him, flailing my fists against the table. The box of weed goes flying when I almost break free, but that grip of his is fucking hard to get out of. I can hear the fabric of my blouse tearing at the seams and he’s still spanking me, giving me even harder swats now, if that is possible.
“Settle down,” he growls. “The harder you fight this, the worse it’s going to be. You stop fighting right fucking now, or you’re going to feel my belt, baby.”
What makes this so much worse is the fact that we are not alone. The only way he could be doing this in front of more people is if he hired a fucking stadium to do this in. The workers might not be looking, but I know they can hear, and of course they’re going to be watching out of the corner of their eyes, the weird girl they never saw before getting her ass beat in the middle of the workshop.
“How am I supposed to not fight this? You expect me to just let you do this to me? Are you fucking insane?” My eyes are filling with tears of frustration, pain, and embarrassment. I can’t believe he is doing this to me. This is even worse than being arrested. This is worse than anything and everything.
Dante
She’s so fucking spoiled. I can hear the outrage in her voice. She doesn’t think she deserves this. She truly believes she has the right to do whatever she wants whenever she wants and if anyone steps in, then they’re a monster.
She’s right about one thing. I am a monster. I’ve been treating her so fucking nicely, and she hasn’t appreciated it one bit. She expects it. It’s time she learned how much the world can hurt when it wants to.
Keeping her right where she is, I yank my belt out of my pants and loop it over in one hand. The leather is several inches wide. This is going to make an impression for sure. Raising my arm, I bring it down against her pink little cheeks and she lets out one of those spoiled shrieks as a hot band of pure red fire appears across the center of her ass.
“You’re killing me! I’m dying!”
I have to hold back from laughing. She doesn’t know anything about pain, or injury. This isn’t going to kill her. This isn’t even probably going to leave a mark for more than a few minutes. All this is doing is making her feel something, a fraction of what she deserves. She could be dead several times over now, if what should have happened to her had happened to her. My guy is out his car. If I’d let him do what he wanted to do, she wouldn’t be breathing now. There’s a gun in police custody that shouldn’t be there. I had to bail her ass out to stop the whole shit show getting worse, and now I have to babysit this spoiled little girl because she can’t understand that what she’s been doing is dangerous, and not just to her, but to everyone around her.
I make that belt dance against her ass, painting her butt bright red. Maybe she won’t understand the reason for this. Maybe she can’t. But maybe more than that, she’ll fucking think next time. She thinks I’m being cruel, but the truth is, I’m saving her life.
Everyone can her her crying and complaining and carrying on. That’s a good thing. I need to make an example of her. If my people think I go soft on her, then she’ll be a target, and so will I. This is a harsh world she’s thieved her way into, and she might not like the rules she has to play by, but she’ll feel the consequences of them anyway.
Candi
After more cruel lashes of his belt than I can count, he finally releases me. My hands go back to my belted ass, finding it hot and so fucking sore, covered in little welts from the harsh leather. I can’t believe what he’s done. How brutal he is. How cruel he is. How willing he is to physically hurt me just to get his way. He humiliates me on purpose. He forces me to submit to his will. I hate him. I hate him so fucking much, and I will make him pay for this.
With shaking hands, I pull my jeans and underwear back up. It’s too late for dignity, and the tight fabric makes it feel like hell, but I am not going to stand around ass-naked for the amusement of Dante and his men.
“Pick the stuff up and start packaging it,” he says, keeping the belt in one hand, pointing to the ground where his filthy drugs have fallen with the other.
I have to crawl around on hands and knees to pick up the weed, which has gone absolutely everywhere. It’s hard to see the little green buds against the hard concrete floor with tears in my eyes, and every few seconds I have to stop and sniff and wipe my nose on my sleeve. No point asking him for a tissue.
Right now, there are several hundred people simultaneously not giving a fuck about me. I don’t know why I thought this man might have a hint of kindness in him. I’m now more sure than ever that he got me out of jail to suit himself, not to save me, and I have to get away from him, before this all gets even worse than it is.
“Hurry it up, blondie,” he growls, snapping the belt over my ass again.
I scramble for the buds, pull them into the box from which they fell and then stand upright. I can feel his eyes on me. I can’t read his energy, and I don’t want to see his expression. I don’t want anything to do with him at all. He hit me. How dare he hit me. How…
He takes me by the chin and directs my gaze to his.
“You’ve never been disciplined,” he says. “But you will be now, girl. So behave.”
It’s such a simple sentence, but it carries so much weight now that my ass is burning and my pride is welted even more thoroughly than my skin. That’s not a phrase that makes sense, unless you’re inside my body and feeling the way everything prickles and hurts, pure shame coursing through my blood. Why does he have to hold me and look at me? Isn’t it enough to beat me and gain my submission that way? I try to avoid his gaze, and end up staring at a spot just between his brows. He can control my body, but he’ll never have my mind.
“Candi,” he growls, and my eyes snap to his. “Do your job now.”
“Sure,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m giving him attitude, and failing miserably. I don't know how to handle myself in this situation. I never much liked being told off, but it never happened much either, because in spite of what Dante thinks, I am actually a good girl. I never gave my parents or teachers any trouble, and now I’m at college, I never skip a class. I never put so much as a toe wrong until that day I saw that box of whatever the fuck it was he wanted back so badly, and decided to just risk it. I regret that now so fucking badly. My life is unravelling and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Dante releases my face and swats my ass with his hand. I let out a hiss, but manage to contain the curse that rises to my lips. Asshole.
“Get to work.”
I get to work. It’s simple and it’s stupid and I don’t like the smell of weed very much. It stinks like the kind of people I usually avoid at parties, the ones with glassy eyes and incoherent comments about what I think are cartoon movies.
This job isn’t exactly an intellectual endeavor, but it does take a while. I’m guessing it’s an hour or so by the time I
get anywhere near the bottom of the box, and then almost right away, there’s another two boxes being delivered.
I’m there for hours. All fucking day. I need to go to the bathroom, but I don’t dare ask. There’s nobody to ask anyway. Dante has gone. I don’t know where. Nobody else talks to me. I’m an outsider, and one who got her ass publicly beat. I count myself lucky that they're not outright laughing in my face.
“Eat.”
A sandwich is tossed down on the table. It’s plastic wrapped and it looks like it came from a gas station.
“No, thank you,” I mutter, not looking at the guy who gave it to me. I don’t know who he is, but I know everybody here is going to be reporting to Dante.
“Suit yourself.”
“Uhm. Where’s the bathroom?” I get up the courage to ask the question.
“Shitter’s over there,” he points at a door in the corrugated iron wall marked with a yellow X.
I leave my station and head for the door. I have to go so fucking bad. The lock on the door isn’t very good, but I secure it as best I can and relieve myself, feeling the fresh ache and sting which comes with putting even part of my ass on a plastic surface.
Tears spring to my eyes all over again. I have to get out of here. And I mean, really out of here. I need to escape and I need to call my parents and I need to tell them that I’m in trouble. They’ll be freaked out, but they’ll help. It will break their hearts, especially my father’s. He was so proud of me when I went to college, and now I’ve fucked up even worse than he could possibly imagine. Still, I have to tell them….
And then what? Are two white, middle-aged, middle-class people going to be any match for Dante? No. As much as I want to go running to them, this is not the kind of problem they can help me with. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m a big girl. In big trouble. And I have to get myself out of it.
There’s a window in the toilet. It’s not very big, but then again, neither am I. It’s one of those glass slatted ones with rubber seals. Not exactly impenetrable. I’m surprised it doesn’t have a metal grille over it or something, but I guess dozens of men with guns is enough security for Dante.
Before I really think about what I’m doing, I’m at the window, pushing it open and pulling the slats out of their seals until there’s just one hole that I think I can fit through. I push my arms through and kick up from the toilet seat. My shoulders slide through followed by my waist, and then I… stop.
“Fuck.”
I push against the outer sides of the window, my palms against dirty corrugated iron, hips squirming in the attempt to make it through the opening. When the hell did my ass get this big?
“Fucking fuck…” I grunt, pushing harder. Goddamit. It’s not going to work. I can feel the walls squeezing my hips painfully, and decide to abort the attempted escape.
That’s when I realize just how badly I’ve fucked up. I have absolutely no leverage to get back in. I try to push out, but there’s nothing to push against to get back in.
And now I’ve been in here too long. Someone has noticed I’m missing. Or maybe they were watching me. Or maybe they just really need to go too. Whatever the reason, there’s banging at the door behind me.
“JUST A SECOND!” I yell out, as if that’s going to help. No amount of seconds is going to change the fact that I’m stuck here. Maybe I can wriggle forward… no. Fuck… nope. There is no way. Goddamn.
I hear a crash behind me. It’s the door bursting off its hinges. I can’t see it, but I can hear it and I can feel eyes on me.
“What the fuck…”
I hear someone curse behind me.
“DANTE! Your bitch is out the window.”
What the hell did he just call me?
I hear what sounds like the crack of a fist and then a yowl and then scuffling. I don’t know exactly what is happening back there, but it sounds a lot like whoever called me a bitch just got a damn good punch in the face. I hope that’s what happened.
Seconds later, my legs are grabbed by unseen hands. They yank at me roughly enough to pop me free of the tight frame, and I find myself tumbling back in through the toilet window, only just missing the bowl itself as I’m hauled back out and into the main warehouse, where I find myself on the ground with Dante standing over me, looking pissed.
“There was an accident…” I say, cringing.
“Oh yeah, there was an accident,” he agrees, his eyes black with anger. I’ve fucked up. I’ve fucked up really bad. I thought, for a second, he might find some kind of humor in this.
He doesn’t.
Dante
She tried to run away.
Again.
And with all the sophistication of a puppy going through a cat door.
No matter what I do, she doesn’t seem to get it. She’s mine. There’s no escape. Even if she had made it out the window, stolen another car, taken another gun, fuck, taken my whole arsenal, I would have found her.
I’m going to have to punish her. Again. Usually when I maintain order in the gang, it’s pistol whipping, not ass whipping. But I got to make allowances for her, even if I don’t want to. I can’t treat her like she’s one of us, because she’s not. She comes from a different world and she’s made of different stuff.
I might not ever understand her, and I’m starting to think she’s never going to understand me. She doesn’t know when I’m giving her a break. Maybe I need to show her what this world is really like. Maybe she needs to see who I really am to appreciate the chances she’s being given.
My guys are at my side. Well, two of them anyway. I’m missing one. My knuckles are swelling and split where I hit Rick. He can call his own girls bitches if that’s what they’re into, but nobody disrespects my girl - in spite of what I’m about to have done to her.
“You know where that cage is, Tony? The one we used for the dogs?”
“Yeah boss.”
“Put her in there.”
I see a flash of fear in her eyes. Maybe even respect, but it’s too fucking late for that. I let my guys handle her even though I don’t like seeing their hands on her. It makes my blood boil, but she needs to feel what happens when she tries to run away from me. If she doesn’t want to be with me, she’ll feel the rough touch of other men one way or another.
She starts to fight, kicking and squirming, her legs flailing. She’s not going to make this easy. Candi never makes anything easy. She lives on hard mode, in spite of the fact she was born into the kind of easy life everybody in this building dreams of.
There are kennels in the adjoining building. They used to be used for guard dogs. I had them cleaned when I took over this complex, not quite knowing why, but figuring steel and concrete boxes big enough to hold Rottweilers would come in handy one day.
Today’s the day.
I follow the guys, keeping an eye on them. Making sure they don’t put a hand anywhere they shouldn’t. Making sure she’s safe and cursing myself out for caring. There is no reason for me to give a fuck about her. She stole from me multiple times. She defies me. She could have caused serious legal issues. Even now she can’t just sit down and work, earn her keep for a single second. All she had to do was obey and she refused.
I’m going to make her obey.
I’m going to go as far as I have to in order to impose my will on her. I refuse to be outplayed by a simple college kid. There are hundreds, thousands of girls just like her in the world. I can go to any campus, anywhere, and find women just like her.
Except, you can’t.
Now my own mind is rebelling. Candi is different. I think I’ve known that from the moment I saw her, I just didn’t want it to be true. I definitely didn’t want to catch feelings for someone like her. I need a woman who understands my lifestyle, the choices I make, the risks I take.
She does.
Oh fuck off, I tell myself. She doesn’t understand a goddamn thing except resistance, defiance, and breaking all the rules.
Just like you.
; She is not like me. Goddamnit. Maybe she is. Which means getting through to her might be impossible. But I’m going to try.
Chapter 8
Candi
Cold concrete meets my knees as I am pushed into a cold kennel. Dante’s men slam the door shut behind me and one of them clicks a padlock closed around the catch.
This space is claustrophobic. The roof and walls and floor are concrete. I can crouch, but not stand. The iron bars are spaced a few inches apart, enough to reach an arm through, but nothing else. I can see scratch marks on the walls and around the bars, where desperate animals before me have fought their confinement.
“Dante…”
I know he’s there. I can see his legs, but not his face. I can’t see anything above his chest. The cage cuts my view of the world away and I am stuck on my knees, like an animal.
“Dante…” my voice catches in my throat. “Don’t leave me in here.”
Right now, my greatest fear in the world is the prospect of seeing him turn and walk away. I could handle anything, besides his heels receding into the distance.
In the next breath, he does me the greatest kindness. One I probably don’t deserve, from his perspective. He crouches down and I see his face, his eyes dark and full of emotion I cannot place. I saw his anger and his frustration before, but there’s something else now.
“Please, let me out,” I whimper. “I’m sorry.”
He snorts. “You don’t know what sorry is, girl. I’ve given you a dozen chances to be sorry, and every time you mess up again, worse than before.”
“Okay, but I really don’t like this cage.”
“You want to run off like an untrained puppy, you’ll live like one,” he says. The words are rough, and so unspeakably cruel, but there’s a tightening low in my belly that shouldn’t be there. It is quickly overwhelmed by the panic I feel as he rises up again and I lose sight of his face. God, I need to see his face. Suddenly, that visage is like life to me.