In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part One

by Carmen Jenner

  It’s agony. I squeeze my thighs together and slump against my chains in utter despair.

  I hate him.

  I want him.

  I love him.

  I hate myself.

  ***

  “Wake up, Pet.”

  My eyes snap open, my world tilting on its edge as the pain in my limbs sets in. My arms, shoulders, and wrists are on fire. I’ve felt agony like this only once—the last time Sir left me hanging from the ceiling.

  Ares slides a hand between my legs, stroking my clit, running the length of my crease. “Soaking fucking wet. Just the way I like you. Even after hours spent trussed up like a naughty little whore.”

  The pleasure mingles with the pain in my body, and I don’t know which I need more. The pleasure to distract me from the pain, or the pain to remind me that he’s my captor, not my lover, not my boyfriend. He’s sick, and I must be too, because he makes me forget myself. He makes me forget everything but his touch.

  Sir unfastens the chain on my left hand. It drops to my side, a dead weight. Shooting pain lances up my arm.

  Ares unbuckles the cuff and takes my wrist in his hand. I try to pull away, because the idea of him rubbing my arm, increasing the blood flow, and stirring up more sensation is torture.

  “Shh, Pet.” He massages my arm vigorously. “I’ll make it all better.”

  Fresh tears spring from my eyes. “It hurts.”

  “Because you’ve hung on them all night.”

  “Why do you do this to me?”

  “I told you there would be consequences to your actions, and you touched yourself anyway.”

  “It’s my body.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong.” He releases my arm and grabs my breast, squeezing hard. “This is my body, and I’ll treat it how I see fit.”

  I can’t do anything but sob through the pain, so I let go. I cry, because I know he likes my tears, and maybe if I let him have them I’ll get to come.

  Ares unfastens my other arm, freeing me from the chains that held me all night. He slowly lowers it to my side. His strong hands work the abused muscles, kneading and drawing the blood back in while pushing out the stagnant energy. I cry the entire time and lean in as he pulls me back against him. I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

  Exhausted, cold, and emotionally spent, I let him pull me back to the bed. Sir sits me in his lap. His arm wraps around my waist, holding me so I won’t topple, and I lean back into his embrace.

  “My poor little, abused Pet.”

  “Please, Sir. I’m so tired.”

  “I know. That’s why your punishment will wait until later. For now, you may sleep.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” I groan with relief. But when I expect him to let me go, he doesn’t. “Sir?”

  “Shh.” He trails his fingers over my breast, down my abdomen. I’m physically drained, but not so tired that a thrill doesn’t run through me at his touch. When he slides his hands between my legs, I gasp. I can’t handle any more teasing right now. I need rest. I grab his wrist, attempting to pull him away but he encircles my nape with his free hand and crushes his lips to mine, swallowing my protests. His tongue swirls against my own, probing, coaxing.

  I break away with a moan. I can’t breathe. I want his touch, these sweet caresses, and his firm mouth on mine, but they frighten me too. I can’t trust this softer side of him. I don’t know what to expect, and that’s more terrifying than the knowing. “Sir, I—”

  “Shh, Pet,” he whispers. “I’m breaking all the rules now.”

  I’m instantly sobered by his words. What rules? Isn’t he the one who makes them? I moan, but it comes out like a sob. “Why?”

  “Because I’m weak where you’re concerned. Pathetically weak. Enough questions. I’m going to make you come.”

  “Yes, Sir, please.”

  Without preamble, Sir quickens his pace, rubbing my clit until the pleasure spikes within. I come in seconds. It’s light and shadow, color and monochrome, pain and pleasure, and I sink in it, drown in it. I moan and relax back into him, weightless.

  “Good girl. That’s it, Pet, let go.” He draws me up the bed with him, and spoons me from behind, his heavy arm falling over my side protectively. He kisses my hair, and I sigh, satiated, content.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “Your pleasure is my pleasure, Pet. Your pain, my pain. Though you’ll pay later for using my name,” he murmurs.

  I stop breathing. I wasn’t even aware of doing it.

  “Sleep now. Later you’ll be punished, and then we’ll join the others.”

  “Why do you do it if you hate them so much?”

  “Because sometimes even the big, bad wolf has to pay his taxes.”

  I don’t understand that at all, but I chuckle anyway because the idea of the wolf handing over anything but pain is a foreign concept to me.

  “Relax, Pet, I have you. You’re safe.”

  I fall asleep to the sound of his heart beating against my back, and his hot breath on my neck, and I wonder what I ever did before the wolf came along to eat me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Pet

  When I wake, it’s to Sir’s mouth on my pussy, two fingers inside me, and another teasing the puckered hole of my ass. I let out a sleepy moan and writhe beneath him. I don’t ask permission to come—I know I should, but I don’t—and he doesn’t give it freely. My Sir knows my body. He knows when I’m close to coming better than I do, and he definitely knows when to stop in order to keep my pleasure fisted tightly in his grasp. Perhaps this is all part of the game we like to play. Perhaps he’ll punish me later for this too. Or maybe he’s no longer keeping tally of all my indiscretions.

  I’m breaking all the rules now anyway.

  I fist his hair as viciously as he does mine, and I grind my pussy against his face. For once I have all the power, and I don’t stifle my cries when I come against his mouth. I come hard, I scream, and I don’t relinquish my hold on him until I’m satisfied.

  Ares climbs up my body, his hips dipping into the space between my thighs. His erection teases my drenched pussy, sliding through my slick folds, over my clit, and finally inside with one hard shove. His lips hover over mine, so close I can smell myself on his breath, and then he kisses me. Deep and cruel, as forceful as the brutal thrusts between my legs. I’m impaled by him, both tongue and cock. Each movement is more savage and jarring than the last. But it feels so damn good. In all the time he’s possessed me, he’s never made me feel more wanted.

  When he comes inside me, I lose myself to his driving rhythm. I’m close to orgasm again when he pulls out and, with a dripping cock, orders me onto the floor.

  “Kneel. I want your ass up, and your arms outstretched in front of you.”

  “Yes, Sir.” I assume the position, dipping my back and settling into the pose with my ass waggling in the air.

  He gives it a playful slap. “Don’t get cute with me, Pet. I’m going to punish you for last night. It will be hard and fast, but I doubt it will be enjoyable. At least not for you.”

  He’s wrong. Every punishment he dishes out is enjoyable because I crave his brutality, his dominance over me.

  “Good girl.” Ares smooths a hand along the dip of my spine and over the curve of my ass. He plays with my most sensitive flesh, running his finger over my hole before lowering his head and darting out his tongue. I do my best to keep still, to quiet my mind that’s screaming no, no, no, and I breathe into the strange and alien sensation.

  Too soon, he’s moving away from me toward the armoire. I watch him while his back is turned, his naked body so strong and dominating, so fucking perfect, a thing of both nightmares and dreams, depending on how you look at it. He turns, and catches me staring. The heat in his gaze and the quirk of his mouth tell me he finds me amusing. I lower my eyes and note several bundles of red rope in his hands. My gaze darts to his, and I’m certain panic is written all over my face.

  “So fucking precious.” Hi
s long strides eat up the distance between us. “Arms behind your back, Pet. Box position.”

  “Yes, Sir.” I fold them the way he requested, with each hands grasping the opposite forearm. It forces my head against the floor. The rope zings against my flesh as he threads it around my arms and breasts. It’s not prickly and scratchy, but soft, silky almost. My breathing is shallow, excited, and the more he loops the rope, the deeper I fall, the more relaxed I become. He ties the knots with gusto, and I’m yanked about with each one. The pressure of the rope binding my flesh and his hot breath on my neck is strangely comforting.

  The slide of rope against rope sets off a vibration. It zings with each pull, each knot. My heart trips in time, a stop-start staccato so heavy I feel it in my throat and throughout my entire body. I surrender to it completely. He binds my legs in what he tells me is a simple frog-tie position. It allows me to spread them, but I’m afforded no more movement than that. I can’t kick, I can’t buck, and I’m blissfully restrained with my ass up in the air, and my pussy spread open in invitation.

  Sir gives a final tug on the rope binding my arms, ensuring I won’t struggle free. As if I’d even consider trying. Being at his mercy excites me as much as it frightens me, but the heady mix of exhilaration and fear crashes together inside me like cymbals, like waves, and once again, I’m tossed in his ocean. I’m deliriously submissive, and I love every second of it.

  I shift my head to the side and watch as he returns to the armoire. He selects a black leather riding crop, a small tube of lubricant, a vibrator, and a large, shiny metal . . . fork? There are two prongs, both with silver balls on the ends, while the other appears to be a handle. Terror creeps down my spine with icy fingers, and I close my eyes, suddenly wishing I hadn’t snuck a peek. Sir’s low, growling chuckle wraps around me as he bends over and runs his palm across my ass with soothing strokes. “Relax, Pet. It’s not as scary as it looks.”

  “You’d tell me that even if it was. You love to torture me, Sir.”

  “That’s true. Now be a good girl, and hold perfectly still.” He pops the cap on the tube of lubricant, the sound too loud in the quiet of our room. I take a deep breath as I feel cold, slippery metal against my ass. “Bear down and breathe, little one.”

  I do as ordered, sucking in a slow, deep breath before exhaling and pushing out with my muscles as the cold steel enters my body.

  “That’s it, Pet. I told you it wasn’t scary.”

  “What is it, Sir?” I say breathlessly. I want to squirm, wriggle free and inspect the device he’s currently using to drive me insane, but I hold still because his rope means I’m not going anywhere, even if I want to.

  “This?” Ares flicks one of the tines with his finger. It makes a peculiar ringing sound, and vibrations travel through the device everywhere it touches my flesh, including my insides. I gasp. “This is a Satan’s Fork. Like a tuning fork. It emits vibrations when the prongs are struck, but I’m betting you’re already feeling those. Do you like it, Pet?”

  “Yes,” I pant, my whole body humming. “Please, Sir. More.”

  “Patience, little one. I’ll give you more, but first, I believe I have a little pain to exact.”

  The whine that leaves my throat doesn’t sound like my own, but I know it belongs to me when the tongue of the riding crop hits the firm globes of my ass hard. Too hard. Oh God, and that was just the first blow.

  “I’m going to hit you another six times. I’d add a few more to that number for your bratty fucking behavior, but the day has just started, and I dare say you’ll piss me off between now and nightfall. One ass can only take so much punishment, so I’ll go easy on you just this once.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” I whisper, breathlessly.

  “Don’t thank me yet, Pet.” Without warning, he strikes me again, this time in the crease where my thigh meets my buttocks. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. My body writhes with both the agony of the crop and the exquisite pleasure of the vibrations.

  I’m struck four more times on the thigh, the calf, the ass, and finally on the very soles of my feet. That last feels like a brand as red-hot pain sparks throughout my body. My synapses explode, adrenaline races through my veins, and a light sheen of sweat breaks out all over me. I’m a shivery, noodly mess, and I haven’t even come yet.

  Sir’s crop licks the inside of my thigh, and I tense because I know what’s coming. There’s still one more blow to administer. No. “No, no, no. Please, Sir, please not there.”

  My begging is weak, feeble. I know it, and he knows it. The smooth leather brushes my clit. I flinch.

  “No flinching,” he says.

  “Sorry, Sir.” My voice tremors with fear and anticipation. He slides the leather over my clit, down my left inner thigh and back up again. He repeats the movement on the other side, this time peppering my flesh with tiny little taps that sting, but don’t actually do any real damage. I still flinch with every one.

  “I told you no flinching, Pet. You get two more.”

  “No! I’m sorry, Sir.”

  “Three more. Keep telling me no, and I’ll make it five,” Ares snaps.

  He’s like some cruel and vengeful god. I tremble before him. The crop lands hard on my pussy. The pain is excruciating, a searing, burning heat like I’ve never felt. My insides contract. The Satan’s Fork hums. I scream because it’s all too much. I can’t take it anymore. With rapid speed I didn’t know he possessed, Sir strikes twice more in quick succession, and then it’s all over. The beating, anyway. The vibrations on the fork only intensify when he picks up the vibrator and holds it against the metal prongs. Without warning, my orgasm slams into me. The rope seems to tighten, digging into my flesh as my body jerks and writhes. I ride out my pleasure with his crop rubbing my sensitive clit, and the vibrations forcing my pussy to clench and cream all over his crop.

  “What do you say, Pet?”

  “Th-thank you, Sir.” I can barely form the words.

  I tremble. From head to toe I quiver as he removes the implement from my body and slowly begins untying me.

  Ares pulls me into his lap and unravels the silken cord from around my legs. One at a time he frees them, his hands massaging my flesh to help the blood to flow. I’m vaguely aware of the pain this causes, but I’m so high on endorphins right now I don’t have the ability to process anything other than his soothing words in my ear. “Such a good little Pet. I know that must have hurt a great deal, but you’re so strong and brave. So fucking perfect.”

  He gently pushes me forward and unfastens the rope at my back. My arms hurt more than my legs did, and I actually cry out when the pins and needles set into my heavy limbs.

  Ares’ deft hands rub and knead my abused muscles. He lets me lean against his chest, his hard cock pressing into the small of my back. He doesn’t rock his hips or force me to touch him. It’s such a small thing, but it makes me smile because this is just one of the rare moments in which I truly feel treasured by him. I love the closeness that comes with his aftercare, and I have to wonder if it’s not a big part of why I’ve fallen hard and fast for him, because he can be a tyrant—that much has been clear from day one—but he’s also capable of such tenderness.

  He slides his hands over my body, caressing every inch. Not in a sexual way, it’s more intimate than that, sensual, and full to bursting with adoration, just like my heart. I’m going to have to cut it free from my chest, leave it skewered and bleeding in my cell for him to find. I’ll have to learn to live without it when I run, because I can no longer live with it if it means living like this.

  ***

  Sir dresses me like the other slaves, in a strappy harness that covers more of my body than a swimsuit might—if that swimsuit had cutouts that exposed my breasts, ass, and pussy to the world. All the important bits are not covered, not by a long shot, but I suppose that’s the point. He wants me accessible to him at all times, in all ways.

  He makes me wear the mask again when we do finally emerge from
the room and head downstairs. I feel uneasy. Will I be recognized without it? Do I want to be? I don’t even know who I am. Can you really miss a life that you don’t remember? All I’ve known since waking up in my cell is my Sir. I remember flashes but never faces, never anyone whom I loved or who may have loved me. None of my memories are clear. They’re skewed by the fog of forgetfulness, by this amnesia. I remember the pain when I woke up in that cell, the fear, the bruises on my body, but how I was taken, where I was taken from has never returned to me. I need to know. Surely, I deserve this one thing from him?

  I tear my gaze from the finely dressed Dominants and their naked slaves as we descend the stairs and turn to Ares. He seems lighter today, freer, if that is possible. I wonder what it feels like to truly be free. I have half a mind to ask him, but I don’t because I’m not sure I truly want to know the answer when freedom is something I will never possess again. “Where did you take me?”

  “What?”

  “Where did you kidnap me?”

  He yanks my collar and ushers me to the side of the staircase, pushing me up against the wall. Angry eyes bore down into mine. “You are never to ask me that, and you’re not to ask me somewhere so fucking public. Do you understand me?”

  “Isn’t that what all of these men do? Kidnap their slaves? I doubt anyone enters into this life willingly.”

  “You don’t know anything, Pet. Yes, most of the slaves here have been acquired through abduction. I’ve trained at least six of the slaves in this room, and countless more for these men.”

  My eyes widen. “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  “Where are the rest of the slaves you’ve trained?”

  “Enough questions,” he says and steps back. “I doubt your ass is ready for another beating.”

  I clench my cheeks together involuntarily. “You always say enough, but you never give me any answers.”

  “It’s not my job to give you answers, Pet,” he says through his teeth. “It’s my job to make you the best submissive you can be.”