by Maren Smith
Rowth’s reflection glanced up at her, probably taking exception to her tone. She was making no effort to disguise her current dislike of him, but he only continued what he was doing, first cutting the root in half, then scoring the sides, and finally cutting pieces out of the thickest portion, about an inch from the base. Laying the knife by the sink, when he emerged from the bathroom, that root had taken on a very unmistakable form. It looked like a butt plug.
“Roll over,” he ordered, his long-legged strides bringing him right to her.
“Oh crap!” Brinley rolled onto her stomach, but only because it helped her mad-scramble for the opposite side of the bed.
Rowth caught the back of her skimpy negligee and hauled her back to him. When the lace tore, he switched his grip, seizing a fistful of her hair at the back of her scalp. It was a hold more commanding than painful, but she still yelled. And kept right on yelling and slapping behind her with both hands when he propped a knee on the bed beside her hip and pinned her down. His weight on her head was only enough to hold her relatively still. The bedding muffled her shouts when she felt the cool wetness of the peeled root slid down between her buttocks, nudging unerringly at her anus. In a single, slow push, he inserted the root all the way up to the notch he’d cut near the base.
It was at once the most deeply invasive thing she’d ever experienced, and yet the most soothing to her raging soul. From the moment he seated that root right to the hilt inside her, her anger faltered, diminished, and then abandoned her.
“This is heaij root,” Rowth said, the fist in her hair still forcing her head against the mattress, his knee braced at her hip controlling how much of his weight he used to still her struggles. “It is a main ingredient in many of the spices you dislike, though I doubt you’ll find it half as enjoyable taken like this.”
Her asshole began to tingle, the cool wetness of the root evaporating beneath the warmth rising to take its place. That warmth very quickly became alarmingly hot.
The focus of her struggles shifted and she switched from grabbing at the bedding to grabbing for either his hand or his leg. “S-Stop!”
He retaliated, his huge hand falling with a crisp crack that echoed louder than her involuntary cry—through the room, through her body, up through both her pussy and her ass because it wasn’t just her bottom that he’d struck. He’d hit the base of the root, jolting it deeper.
“You may not touch,” he told her, and swatted again. Again, the root jabbed at her, a burning thrust of physical fire scalding all the flesh of her most tender entrance. “You may not remove.” He didn’t strike her again. This time when his hand came down, it was to seize hold of her pussy in the most ruthless grip of ownership she had yet endured. He had her by both her outer and inner labia. Her clit was pinched between the knuckles of two fingers. It should have hurt and yet the sound that came groaning out between her tightly gritted teeth was anything but one of pain. “You may do only as I command you, when I command you, or I will punish you.” His fingers squeezed. “Do you understand?”
“Fuck you,” she gasped, squirming in the tightening grip of his fingers. It was hard to find the rancor to really make her refusal believable. Instead, it came out of her sounding like a paramour’s sigh. She had no idea why that should be with that root burning this savagely, and his fingers pinching this aggressively, and her nipples and pussy both throbbing in tandem as if all day long she’d been waiting for him to do this very thing. She didn’t understand it.
She was hopeless.
And he was smiling.
Leaning over her, Rowth’s breath caressed the nape of her neck just before he bit, then suckled, and then kissed her there. “Thank you, Brinley. I was hoping you would say that.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Where are we going?” Brinley asked as he carried her through the mid-level’s sliding balcony door. She shivered, but that had nothing to do with the cool of the night, the mist rolling in off the ocean, or the fact that she was still naked with nothing but the heaij root burning through her backside hotter than Hell itself. No, it had entirely to do with the crypticness of Rowth’s reply.
“Someplace you’ll soon come to respect.”
He’d never taken her out this door before, but like the balcony just off the dining room, here was another set of steps, carved from the stony cliff-face and hugging the sheer drop as it wound down to the bottommost level of his home. The rocks were wet here. The spray of the ocean waves as they rolled into the rocks below sprinkled her skin. She could taste it on her lips when she wet them and eyed the recessed door that each of his downward steps brought them closer to. Thick plank wood re-enforced by ornately carved bands of black metal, the door was so heavy Rowth had to put her down before he could unlock and then open it. It never once occurred to Brinley to run, not that she would have got very far if she had. No, from the moment that heavy door creaked open to reveal the yawning black maw of damp stone walls and more stone steps, Brinley froze where she was.
Dim lights, barely bright enough to light the way, winked on as he picked her up and carried her inside. The cellar. It had to be. Not quite so mythical now, as the gloominess closed in around her, it actually felt quite chilly.
It was a round, curving stone staircase, so narrow that she could have put out both hands and touched the walls, if only she weren’t so unnerved. She clung to Rowth instead, for once grateful that he was carrying her. She couldn’t imagine having to walk down all these steps on her own, knowing, or rather, not quite knowing, what awaited her at the bottom. And the root. At each slight bump as he descended, the friction of his movements made the heaij root scorch hotter. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much worse it would feel were she to have to make this trip herself.
Unbearable came to mind, and then Rowth turned that final corner, and his motions made a few more lights wink on, casting gloomy illumination through a maze of old chambers. It looked like a wine cellar. Or a prison, but a prison now encumbered only by the dark shapes of stored crates, stacked boxes, old furniture cloaked in ghostly gray, moisture-resistant wraps, and a lot of wide open, empty spaces. In the foremost of those spaces, Brinley saw the barrel.
It was Pra’kirian sized, big enough for her to fit inside and, had it been standing upright, almost as tall as she was. Currently, it lay on its side, black block wedges before and behind kept it from rolling. Within feet of each wedge, she saw the cuffs. Metal wrist shackles on one side; metal ankle restraints on the other, both attached to thick rings in the floor via a serpentine coil of black chain. Attached to the top of the unpadded barrel, twin leather straps lay open, waiting to still her struggles in their lover’s embrace.
“Welcome to my dungeon,” Rowth told her. He couldn’t have helped but feel her shiver as he brought her straight to it. It wasn’t until he stopped, giving her plenty of time to see it close up, that Brinley looked past the barrel long enough to notice the straps hanging on the wall.
“I can honestly say, I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, a response that seemed to please him.
“Mm,” he said, by way of agreement, then ruffled her hair. “You’ve been asking to come here for so long. Ready for your tour?”
She looked at him, her heart pounding hard against her ribs, her ass on fire, and her sex luxuriating in this confusing marriage of anxious trepidation and seductive fear. “I do as you command, when you command. I completely understand that now. Thank you so much, Master Rowth, for explaining it to me.”
He laughed, low and throaty. “Save your begging for later. Your tears will make it sound all the sweeter.”
Brinley yelped when he hupped her around in his arms and, without another word, hefted her up onto the barrel. It felt every bit as hard and uncomfortable as it looked. The wood was rough against her skin. The strap wrapped around her, hugging her in place as he buckled her down with her ass right up on the highest part of the arch, where the vulnerability could not have been any starker.
He
didn’t have the strap fully tightened down before she tried first to wiggle backwards out of it and then to crawl forwards through it. Neither worked. He had her, she was stuck, and damn, if that didn’t make her shiver all over again. Only this time, the seduction was far more prevalent than the fear.
“Until you have fully healed, I won’t tie your legs down,” Rowth said as he walked around her to pick up the wrist restraints. “Hands above your head.”
Against her will, she looked past him to the three straps hanging on the wall. One was thick, as wide as the width of her hand and, she was sure, quite likely to kill her. The middle one hung longer still, but was much thinner, less than two fingers’ width. The third was split at the end into three tails, all of which thinned into triangular points.
“Hands,” Rowth reminded.
Her bottom crawling, she gave them to him and watched in anxious amazement as he slipped them into the manacles. They were too big, but he fixed that with a length of rope so soft it could have been velvet. Before, being bound had been a matter of choice and her own erotic need. Now, that choice had been removed, and yet, perhaps not. No sooner had he tied her, than did Rowth run his hands up her arms, caressing past her shoulders as he gathered up her long mahogany hair. He tied it back on itself, keeping all but the shortest wisps out of her face. Though he didn’t say so in words, it was odd how that touch seemed to tell her, if she really wanted to be free, he would let her go. All she had to do was say something.
Her breath caught; she bit her bottom lip. Deliberately, she tightened her buttocks knowing it would make the heaij root flame, but the chemical effects of it burned now in conjunction with a fire of a different kind and in a completely different place.
Done with her hair, Rowth’s hands smoothed down her back, following the upward curve of her as she lay over the barrel. She clenched all over again when he cupped her ass, squeezing one cheek, molding it to his palm.
“Legs together.”
That would make the heat burn hotter. Did he know that? Of course, he did. That was the whole point. Her face flushed, but even as she thought it, she knew she would never admit to such a thing out loud. She dragged her legs closer together, biting back a groan as her muscles tightened around the root, and the heat rose by fiery degrees. Her groan came louder when his fingertips slipped into the crease of her cheeks, circling the base of the root seated inside her. The leather waist restraint creaked and the chain linking her wrist manacles to the floor rattled as he gripped the base and she strained, arching in her bonds, succeeding in very little movement from the hips up as he twisted. The heat turned hellish. Her knees bumped the barrel, but though she felt the jolting pain, it was… eclipsed. Muted, somehow, into a sensation still awful but easily managed when compared to the root being pumped in and out of her.
Her sex came alive with a warm rhythmic throb of its own as Rowth said, “I hope you’re enjoying this. Stubborn as you are, I suspect you’re going to find yourself in this same predicament quite often. But, at least, I have not bound your legs.”
He rolled the root inside her, twisted back and forth and back again, scalding her in fire. She keened, desire and despair both squealed through gritted teeth while her pussy wept.
“For now,” he continued, as if she were not fighting so desperately to wriggle over the barrel somewhere out of his reach. “Under different circumstances, I would bind your ankles like your wrists and leave you stretched, your ass well up for my pleasure, your body taut with no room to thrash the way you currently are. Careful now. If you harm yourself, I will have to be much more severe with you. Thank me, Brinley. Thank me for my gentleness.”
There was no trace of gentleness in the root fucking her from behind. God, what was it about this that she loved—loved!—with her ass burning and her pussy pulsing and now the tips of her nipples growing so taut as she arched and strained and rubbed them against the rough wood of the barrel.
“Thank you,” she moaned.
Her face burned. Her sex throbbed in wanton neglect.
He cocked his head, a dangerous angle, and waited.
Whimpering, she corrected herself, “Thank you, Master, for being gentle.”
One final thrust and the torment of the heaij root was abandoned. Circling the barrel, Rowth caught the knot he had tied in her hair, pulling her head to a level where she had no choice but to stare—heaven help her, her mouth watering—directly at the bulge of his crotch. He unfastened his pants, parting the dark halves to free his cock, swelling and stiffening before her hungry eyes, but not quite hard enough yet to be the kind of threat her quivering pussy wept for. He stroked twice before gripping the base of his shaft.
“Open,” he commanded, his tone cool, but his gaze ablaze with the darkness of his own desire.
He tapped her cheek with the head of him, bumping her nose, skimming once across her lips—the softness of his flesh swaddling the growing hardness of masculine sinew—and Brinley lost herself in obedience. She opened her mouth. Did he shove his cock into her mouth or did she lunge as much as she could, gulping him all the way into the back of her throat? She honestly didn’t know. All she knew was how wrong this was, and yet, how right it felt, the driving force with which he used her mouth, fucking her as if she were nothing but a hole to be used. She gagged. Her eyes teared, and this time, there was no holding them back.
“I have been as patient with you as I care to be.” Gripping her by the hair and chin, he pumped aggressively. “Look at me. Look at your master.”
The last thing she wanted was for him to see her eyes and her nose running, and drool spilling from the corners of her mouth because she couldn’t figure out how to swallow between thrusts. But she could no more disobey this command than she could roll off this barrel. As best she could, she strained to look up, past his cock, his belly, his chest, trying to see his face just as he pushed chokingly deep. A mat of curly black hairs tickled her nose as he bent over far enough to deliver several blistering slaps all over her cringing ass. A human male might not have been able to reach without hurting her neck, but Rowth was taller and his arms longer, and the thickness of his cock positively cut off her air when he grabbed the base of the root and this time fucked her raw with the full fury of its friction and fire.
Brinley both shouted and choked, writhed and bucked, and strained to hold herself obedient in the grip of a pain her body refused to perceive as anything but pleasure. The worst kind of pleasure. One that her heart both raced and broke for. One that stole each gagging, choking breath she sucked in around his driving cock, or were those screams broken off and muffled into whimpers by each pump of his hips? When he slapped the root home one last time and shifted his grip lower, shoving his fingers into her wet and aching pussy, not one or two, but all four, wedging them in tight together but only two knuckles deep—oh God, Jesus, no!—she came, hard. Gagging on his cock the whole time. Her ass was so consumed by the fury of both his spanks and the root that she humped and ground against the barrel, and the forceful wedge of his fingers, as he both thrust and rubbed, ruthlessly robbed her of every orgasmic spasm he could wring from her convulsing sex.
His cock was at a high stand when he finally pulled his fingers free. He left smears of her own lubrication across her ass and up her back as he shoved off both her and the barrel.
“If Rog dies, do you think I will blame you?” he demanded, circling back behind her. She coughed and wheezed, sniffling and gasping to catch her breath and straining to keep him in view. The barrel blocked it, but in the next instant she jumped when his hand found her hip. “If he lives, do you think I will send you away?”
He spanked her, the broad clap of his palm echoing off the damp stone walls of the cellar.
“Legs together!”
When had she spread them again? Brinley snapped them shut, thighs trembling and tense.
He straddled her. High as the barrel was compared to her, to him she was at the perfect level. Gripping his shaft, he angled the engorged hea
d of his cock to meet the source of her own wet, confused, and welcoming heat. Again, he grabbed the knot of her hair, yanking back her head to free her guttural shout when he shoved home, filling her up so full that she swore she could feel him in her throat.
She came again, as only a women kept on the edge could. Only this time, it was sharper and lasted longer, washing over her in shuddering waves that rolled from her sex to her womb, before spreading out to consume all the rest of her.
“Fuck,” Rowth pressed deep, seeking the limits of what she could take. “Tight.” He rumbled his approval as he withdrew to the point of almost leaving her again.
“No,” she whimpered, but already he was pushing in again. Slower this time, exploring her silken depths.
“Yes,” he corrected. The driving pump of his hips found their rhythm once more. It was as commanding as the rest of him, with each thrust bumping into the root, fucking her that way too and heightening the burn. He reached between her hips and the barrel to cup her pussy with his free hand, the tips of his fingers finding her willing clit and bringing the whole of Brinley’s much smaller body into straining sync with his own.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” Every few thrusts, he ground his hips into her ass until she could not hold back her cries. “From the moment you issued that first challenge from your hospital bed, I knew I was going to do this. And this.” He switched his grip to the heaij root again and on his next thrust, fucked her both ways at once. “And this.”
Reaching back under her, his fingers parted her. Unerringly, he found her clit, catching it in a pinching hold that rocked her whole body. Hard and fast, he pounded into her, scrubbing her against the rocking barrel. She forgot how much she wasn’t supposed to want this, or him. The harder he fucked, the more she strained. Not to escape the rawness of this sexual punishment or to stop him, but to match the desperation. To urge him on. To push back just so she could feel how much closer he could come.