In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part One

by Carmen Jenner

  “No,” I sob as the falls of the flogger land heavily on my inner thighs. Israel stands and moves in front of me, awaiting direction like a good little slave. I hate him. With all of my being I hate him as much as I hate my Sir right now.

  “No, what?”

  “No, Sir. Please?”

  “Then shut your fucking mouth, and let Israel eat your goddamn pussy until you come all over his face.”

  Israel glances at Ares, who pushes on his shoulders to suggest he should kneel. He does, and crawls across what’s left of the space between us. He pauses right in front of my crotch. A look of pure hatred flashes in his gaze before he schools his features into that of a placid, docile slave.

  “Eat her cunt, Israel.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I buck and kick against my restraints, but it’s useless. I’m tied to a fucking cross. I’m exposed, and whether I want this man’s mouth on me is irrelevant, because it’s what Sir wants.

  To my surprise, Israel’s mouth is gentle. He doesn’t taste me and shudder in revulsion. He isn’t brutal, but instead licks at my wet folds expertly, darting his tongue over my clit, but never giving it the attention it truly needs. I squirm, both attempting to escape and move closer. The bastard is teasing me. I thrust my hips forward and a frustrated moan escapes my mouth. Ares and Texas chuckle, as if my torment is humorous to them.

  “He’s very talented with his mouth, isn’t he, Pet?” Ares moves closer. I glare at him. I hate when he provokes me deliberately like this. “Answer me.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I bite out. I want to scream at the injustice of it, but my Sir is right. Israel knows exactly how to pleasure a woman with his mouth, and my legs are shaking in their restraints.

  Ares grabs my hair and pulls it back. The roots ache with his brute force. “I don’t like your attitude, Pet. Does it disgust you that a slave I fucked is eating you out right now? Is that your fucking problem?”

  “Yes. I hate him.”

  “No one’s asking you to love him, Pet. Just let him bring you to orgasm.”

  “I hate you.”

  Ares grins. “I know.” He shushes me with a finger pressed to my lips, and pinches my nipple. Pleasure arcs through me. I gasp, on the verge of orgasm, but he lets go too soon and Israel—as if anticipating my impending release—slows the laving of his tongue on my slick flesh. My orgasm is gone almost as quickly as it crept up.

  Sir picks up a device that looks a lot like a hand-held mixer without the blade attachment. He switches it on, and a loud buzzing like that of a tattoo gun fills the dungeon. Israel quits lapping at my abused pussy long enough to look up at my Master.

  “I want your fingers in her cunt, and your mouth on her clit. Do you understand, little Achilles?”

  Israel inhales sharply, and the look he gives Ares makes my stomach twist with jealousy. Achilles. Israel gets a demigod for a pet name, and I’m a house pet. I’ve never been so full of hate in all my life. Not even in those first few days when I loathed Ares’ touch.

  “Do you understand?” Ares asks his former slave again.

  “Yes, Master.”

  Israel grabs my leg, and I try to yank out of his grasp, but my restraints mean I’m not going anywhere. He puts his mouth on me again, and I buck and cry out. “No!”

  “No, Pet?”

  I sob. “Don’t let him touch me.”

  “Keep your pretty whore mouth shut.” Ares grabs my face, his large hand squishing my cheeks together. Electricity sparks between us as his lips hover over mine. I hiss. He releases me and trails his fingertips over my body, except we’re not touching, and all I can feel are sparks. I see them too, purple arcs of lightning pricking my flesh with their bite. “We’re electric, you and I.”

  He grins and takes a step back, nodding toward the device tucked into his waistband. “I’m conducting electricity through my body. I touch you, and Israel feels it. I touch him when his mouth is on you, and you’ll be the one feeling the bite.”

  Ares’ tongue darts out and licks my breast, causing me to cry out with the electric shock as he trails it over my breast and collarbone and up my neck to the shell of my ear.

  He reaches out and grabs Israel’s hair, thrusting his long fingers into the younger man’s dark curls, forcing his head toward my pussy. Electricity arcs from Ares into Israel and onto me. The breath leaves my lungs in a rush. I feel the heat and bite of the burn all over my body, in random places where the wire wraps around my skin with his rope. “Oh, God.”

  Ares’ wicked grin flays me. “Israel, put your fingers inside her sweet cunt and fuck her.”

  “Yes, Sir.” He does as he’s asked, and Ares’ fingers almost trail over my side. He’s sure never to touch me, but when he does, my whole body goes electric. Israel’s fingers pump in and out, rough and fast, and my orgasm builds to the point of no return. His tongue darts out and zaps my clit. I scream. He moans as Ares moves and trails his fingers over the slave’s back. Israel jumps. The electricity arcs through my body, sending shock waves through my blood, my limbs, sinew, bone, and tissue alike. I come harder than I ever have, and if it weren’t for the restraints holding me to the cross, I would have collapsed into a puddle of tears and boneless body parts.

  The buzzing stops. Ares tells Israel to stand. Sir grabs the slave by the nape and forces his lips down onto Israel’s. His little Achilles. I sob as I watch them, fat tears streaming down my face and dripping off my chin. I wonder if I’ll be just like him one day. If Ares will grow tired of me and sell me off to the highest bidder. If Master Texas will be the one to buy me, and parade me around his estate like a fucking pony. I wonder if I’ll watch Ares bring in a new slave girl, one who he’ll use me to punish.

  “You’re a monster,” I sob at Ares. He ends the kiss, and turns to glare at me.

  “Am I now?”

  “Fuck you. Can’t you see he’s in love with you?”

  Ares shoots me a strange look. I can’t read it, but his gaze darts back and forth between me and Israel. “Do tell us, Pet, how exactly does any of this make me a monster? All of it was for your pleasure, was it not? Did you not just come on Israel’s mouth? Is it not your pussy I can taste?”

  “He loves you!” I accuse again, because it’s not lost on me that he chose to avoid the question.

  “Israel, do you love me?”

  The man looks anguished. His gaze snaps to his current Master Texas, and back to Ares. “I love what you do to me, Sir.”

  He’s not your Sir. I don’t say it out loud because that would likely earn me another beating. Not to mention Ares seems to take great delight in mocking me over my jealousy of Israel.

  “Why do you hate Israel, Pet?”

  I frown. I have no desire to answer the question, but the flogger gripped tightly in his hand tells me I won’t be evading it as easily as he evaded mine. “I don’t know, Sir.”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me. You’re jealous. Why?”

  I swallow hard as he turns his back. “Because I see myself in him. I see what I’ll be when you discard me like trash. I hate you. I hate what you’ve made me. I hate what you do to me, but I love it too. I . . . I love you.”

  A terrifying stillness creeps over him. His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them, angry, wanting, and full of poisonous hatred. For me. “Out! Get out!”

  For a heartbeat, I’d forgotten that anyone else was in the room. “But it’s just getting interesting,” Texas says.

  “Now!”

  Texas makes a disapproving sound in the back of his throat. “Come, Israel. You can finish me off upstairs.”

  “Yes, Sir,” he murmurs. I keep my eyes focused on Ares, but it’s too much. I can’t hold his gaze when all I see in it is . . . disappointment and rage. He circles his wrist, snapping the leather flogger in the air between us.

  “What.” He cracks his wrist back so fast and lets the tendrils fly. White-hot pain lashes my breast and stomach. “Did.” Slap. “You.” slap. “Say.”

  Slap
, slap, slap.

  He peppers my body with blows, my skin coming alive and just as electrified as it was when he was the conduit. I take a trembling breath. “You heard me.”

  Slap, slap, slap.

  When he’s done, there isn’t a single inch of my body left unscathed. I don’t know how long it lasts, but the beating is vicious. It’s pain mixed with pleasure, and I both crave and abhor it all at once. Over and over he lashes me, over and over he asks that one sentence “what did you say”, and again and again I ignore it until I can’t take anymore.

  “I love you!” I scream through a throat as hoarse and broken as my spirit.

  “You shouldn’t,” he sneers.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” I whisper like a mantra. I’m not even sure I’m forming coherent words anymore.

  “I will destroy you,” he says as he unfastens my hands and ankles. He yanks on the rope. It zings across my flesh, creating a tension and rhythm, a vibration all its own.

  “I know.” I do know. He will be my downfall, and if he ever tries to release me, my heart won’t cope. I’ll be an empty shell. I won’t survive my god of war, of pain. I won’t survive Ares.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ares

  I stare at my sleeping Pet. Her milky skin is still marked from my rope and the heavy falls of my flogger. In all the years I’ve done this, I’ve never once felt Dom-drop, until now. I should have walked away, left her in Israel’s care.

  I’ve never raised a hand to a sub in anger—true anger—in ten years. I may do a lot of fucked up shit to those I steal, but beating her because she told the truth, because she loves me, is the very worst. I’ve broken the trust I’ve worked so hard to foster. I’ve betrayed her, and it will haunt me for the rest of my miserable life.

  I need a drink. I need to talk to my brother and get the hell out of here. Visiting The Ranch is difficult at the best of times. I both love and loathe my time here with my little Achilles, but having him and Pet in the same room, sharing her precious cunt with him, all of it eats me up inside.

  I leave Pet sleeping and quietly exit the room, but the second I turn around, Israel grabs my face and kisses me. I pull away, less than pleased he’s topping from the bottom. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. His breath brushes my face. “I need you, Sir.”

  “You need whatever your Master says you need.”

  He bows his head, and I’m taken back to the first moment he gave me his submission two years ago. I’d never fallen for a slave until him, and it destroyed me to watch him be carted away. Thanks to Texas’s fat bank account, he’d ended up at The Ranch when the gavel landed on his auction. He’s in a far better place here prancing around as a pony than he ever would have been at my side. And Texas is fond of me, so he doesn’t mind loaning him out.

  “Please, Master, take me. Please, please?” He clutches my shirt collar in his fist. His wide blue eyes are pleading, and so sad. My beautiful, perfect boy. My Achilles. I shake my head. His gaze lowers to his fist and he releases me, smoothing out the fresh crinkles in my shirt. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  “Stop,” I command in a whisper.

  “You won’t fuck me because you’re in love with her.” His eyes turn mercurial. His anger is an ugly slash on an otherwise perfect face. “She tried to run from you last night. I saw her.”

  I nod. “She didn’t get far.”

  “I would never run from you.” He smooths my collar, his trembling hands gliding down my torso, and over the erection straining against my pants. “I’d be yours forever, if you’d only let me.”

  I grab his wrist and pull him away from me. “Careful, little Achilles. You do not have permission from me or your Master to cross that line.”

  “You’re my only Master.”

  I grab him by the throat and spin us, shoving him against the wall. He claws at my hands, but it’s all for show. He always did love it when I choked him. “You touch me only when I permit it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he gasps around my hand. “Master.”

  “And the only Master you answer to now is Texas. Anything else puts me out of a job and you out to pasture. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I inhale deeply, breathing in that strong masculine scent, flexing my hand around his throat as I watch his eyes spark and flare with desire, and then I do the unthinkable . . . I lean in and kiss him.

  My tongue thrusts deep inside his mouth as if I could eat him, punish him from the inside out. My hands grasp his hair, tugging at the strands, causing him pain any way I can. It only fuels the fire. He wants me to hurt him. He never knew when to cry uncle. Not once in all the months I had him did he beg for mercy. He took everything I gave and then he cried for more.

  A gasp penetrates our heady power exchange. I glance over at my now open suite door, at the stricken, broken-hearted girl. “Fuck! Pet, go back inside.”

  “I knew it,” she shrieks. “You’re in love with him.”

  “This is your last warning.” I pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration, staving off a fucking migraine. When did kink become so fucking demanding?

  “Fuck you! You lied to me.” Tears spill over her lashes and down her rosy cheeks.

  “And you ran from me.”

  “What are you talking about?” she says, glancing between Israel and me.

  I take a step forward and shove my foot in the door before she can slam it and lock me out of my room. Pet retreats. I turn and glare at my little Achilles. This will break his heart, but it’s for the best. “Go back to your Master, slave. I have no more use for you.”

  I throw back the door to the suite and let it slam behind me as I stalk toward Pet. Panic flares in her eyes. Her gaze darts around the room, as if she’s planning to run again. “Why were you kissing him?”

  I ignore her question in favor of one of my own, because she already knows the answer. It’s the reason her eyes are red and puffy. It’s why she hates me so much right now. “Why didn’t you keep going?”

  She sniffs. “What?”

  “Last night when you ran.”

  Pet wipes the tears away with the back of her hand. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “I’ll ask the questions here, little one.”

  “I couldn’t leave. I didn’t go because I love you.”

  “Fuck, did my earlier beating teach you nothing? You obey your Master, Pet, not fall in love with him. Love has nothing to do with it. Not for us.”

  “Is that what happened with Israel? Is that why you sold him? Because he fell in love with you? That’s what you do, isn’t it, Ares? Make us crave your touch, your approval, and then sell us off to the highest bidder when we start to fall?”

  I grab her by the throat. She backs up against the bed, but there is nowhere to retreat. I inhale a deep breath, allowing the air to fill my lungs and calm the raging in my blood. “I told you never to call me that.”

  Her tears flow freely now. I lean in and collect the saltwater from her skin, tasting her sadness.

  “Why did you have to break me? Why couldn’t you just take my body and leave me my heart?”

  “I don’t want your heart. I never did,” I whisper softly, as if my words were caresses against her skin.

  “You don’t want it, but you have it anyway. You took it the night you led me outside.”

  I release her throat and lean in. Closing my eyes, I rest my chin on the top of her head as she wraps herself around me and sobs into my shirt. In the past two months, her tears have done nothing but make my dick hard. I’ve loved it, gotten off on it, but this time, it’s as if she’s opened up my chest with her tiny little hands and is squeezing the life right out of my black, bitter heart. We’re balanced on a razor’s edge, and it reminds me that I’m losing mine. First Achilles, and now Pet. I hate this . . . this feeling. Fuck! I hate that she’s crying in my arms, and for once, I don’t want to be the cause of it. What is happening to me
?

  I push her down on the bed and climb between her legs, kissing her mouth openly, languishing in the feel of her tongue lashing mine, her submission, and her fight for dominance when she has none. Perhaps that’s no longer true. Perhaps her domination of me is not a physical act that can be seen, but her possession over my heart, because it’s clear—just as it was with my Achilles—that she owns that part of me.

  I’m her bitch now.

  I reach between us and unfasten my zip, then I pull out my hard cock, slide it between her hot pussy, and shove inside. She cries out—part pain, part hunger. I’d know that sound anywhere. I fuck her hard, punishing, bruising her soft flesh as if she were a precious fruit. I run my hands over the marks I’ve left all over her body. My marks, my brand. And when she comes without my permission, I smile because we both know I’ll get to create more bruises later as punishment. I own her punishment. I own her, but perhaps she owns me too.

  I come on her slick cunt, rubbing my seed into her flesh.

  A knock sounds at the door.

  Probably my Achilles disobeying orders that he too will need to be punished for, but it’s my brother’s voice that interrupts my reverie. “Open up.”

  Pet tenses beneath me. I don’t know how she can be quite so terrified of a man who’s barely touched her when I’m the one who’s tortured her daily, but I suppose it’s instinctual. Hermes often rubs people the wrong way, especially slaves.

  I tuck myself inside my pants as he bangs again, this time with more urgency.

  “Hold your fucking horses.” I pull back the door and Hermes bursts into the room, his fury barely contained. He’s been drinking, too much.

  He disdainfully eyes Pet on the bed. “You’re fucking her?”

  “I’m training her.”

  If Pet is offended by my remark, she’s smart enough not to show it. She’s sitting up with the sheet clutched close to her chest, her head bent, and her eyes cast down at the mattress.

  “Training,” he scoffs.

  “Is there a point to you being here, Brother?”

  “Time to go,” Hermes says, sobering some. “Vladik will be arriving within the hour.”