Branded Possession (The Machinery of Desire Book 3)

by Cari Silverwood

  The chair was isolated and made of geometrically precise and straight timber – squares and rectangles and no padding. It had been placed in the middle of the open space. It was a piece of furniture she could imagine surviving an apocalypse as well as a lot of deliberate abuse.

  Formidable looking.

  The twin chains dangling from the ceiling near it were even more formidable.

  She knew his kinks.

  She hesitated but approached the chair, a little wary, a lot curious.

  “Wondering why you’re here?” Ryke put a hand to her shoulder blade and guided her closer.

  “Of course.” Her heart was wondering too, from the acceleration of her heartbeats.

  She didn’t have much clothes left and wore the black shirt and leggings Ryke had retrieved from when she’d stripped for Ormrad’s men. She was probably overdressed. Did he aim to fuck her? He hadn’t expressed a blip of interest for so long.

  That had irked her but that she’d actually been annoyed had bothered her more than Ryke ignoring her. If this was Earth, she’d find a therapist.

  “I want you to trust me for a few seconds. Sit.”

  She sat, unwilling to speak. The moment seemed fraught with possibilities, ones she dared not contemplate.

  The sounds as he walked behind her then returned, the slight rasp of some object running in his hands, was enough to make her want to twist and see. She didn’t. Doubt nailed her in place.

  “I want you to feel, and to think about what you feel, and why. You must have seen what was in my pack when you found it after the crash. You looked inside?”

  She hesitated. His bag of things related to sex was what he meant. Things he could bind and tease with, things that did far more than that. Her muscles tensed, as if to let her get up and run but she didn’t move.

  “Don’t try to leave. I will only fetch you back. Answer me.”

  A blunt demand that went to the heart of her desires and wet her panties, instantly.

  “Yes. I did.”

  God. What was she doing?

  Though she tried to hold back her need to swallow, Gio swallowed. The tiny movement of her larynx seemed a betrayal.

  Unlike when she’d been trapped in his rooms, his voice held no sinister undertone, it was soft if rock steady, with an occasional hint of gravel. She was dying to hear more of that gravel.

  Then a loop of rope dropped over her head and Ryke settled it onto her mouth.

  As he nestled the rope between her lips, her hands gripped the edge of the chair. Sounds muted, closed in.

  “There. Now, feel and think.”

  Her eyes fluttered and lowered.

  She lost her awareness of most sounds, for only he mattered, only what he did, and this rope between her lips linking her to him. She felt him tie it loosely then the small tap as he dropped the rest of the rope to the floor. The rough threads persistently reminded her of what was in her mouth and against her neck. She could move her tongue, her mouth, but the rope reminded her of him.

  Her reaction was a blatant announcement that, to her, Ryke was not merely another man.

  “I said to feel and think. Do you like this? If you lie, I will punish you.”

  But how would he know if she lied?

  He would because he knew her, intimately.

  Did it matter if she was truthful?

  The word was a small rock in her throat. She made it be said. Forced it. “Yes.”

  “When you saw what was in my pack, you could have thrown it away. Why didn’t you?”

  Her chest rose and she swallowed again, her fingers knotting their joints on the chair’s edge. “I...wanted to see...” What had it been? “I guess I wondered what you meant to use it for.”

  “Or who?” His hands wrapped about her neck. He could strangle her in an instant.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hope it would be you?”

  Oh fuck. Too telling. Too intimate. She pulled a face, wrinkling every fold, tightening muscles, then finally saying it. “Yes.” She wriggled. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why do you think? You’re mine and I want you to know it, to admit it. You’re going nowhere, unless I go there too. That you haven’t run says everything, even without those words. Say you’re mine.”

  “I don’t...” Panicked, she couldn’t think.

  His hands left her. “You don’t what? Say it.”

  Carefully, he slid a collar around her where his hands had been, then buckled and locked it at the back. Methodical, as always.

  She let him, confused. Did she stay because he scared her? Was she paralyzed? No. She remembered all those other times, and she wanted those, but didn’t want to have to say she was his.

  If he thought to make her, she wouldn’t.

  “Look...” She spread her hands, searching for reasons he would accept.

  Ryke walked to her front. He’d removed his shirt but still had on the black pants. The shirt was draped over his shoulder. The two of them were almost a match.

  “I understand you think you should leave because of what I was. I’m not your interrogator anymore. I’m the man who wants to do nasty, dirty, kinky things to you, but I don’t want to irreparably hurt you. I’m keeping you. You’re mine.

  “Say it. Admit it to yourself.”

  “I can’t.” The words came out in a sob. “I did like some of what you did to me. I’ve said that before, but this is different.”

  “Yes, it is, and it’s true.”

  He pointed to the floor. “On your knees, here.”

  He threw down his folded shirt then hooked a finger under the rope where it ran across her cheek. He tugged, keeping eye contact. It was that which undid her – his eyes. The one dark eye versus his lighter brown. The eyes she’d seen on the day of the blood-snack room. He’d rescued her.

  He wanted her forever. There was no out if she did this. How could she say, yes, please, take me forever?

  She should leave.

  Here was different from before.

  He bluffed.

  She could go.

  Those days after the blood-snack room, he’d torn out her soul, put it back into her with a few dozen stitches, figuratively speaking. He’d been inside her body and inside her mind.

  Then he’d said, go, be free.

  “Girl. Down.”

  Like a bitch dog being trained. Her hands shook. “You said be free, at the ship, before the fight.”

  “And you know why. I never wanted to release you. Down. Now.”

  Something compelled her and it wasn’t Ryke alone. It was her own self. Her needs. She slipped from the chair to her knees and let her head lower.

  “You like me commanding you.” Ryke pulled at the rope until she raised her head. Then he released it and traced the watery tracks running down her face. “Tears?” He leaned in and kissed her where the tears ran, whispering. “Perhaps you can’t say it yet?

  “I could let you go and in a year, or two, I’d hear of your death at the hands of an animal or a man who just wanted to fuck you or steal from you, or I’d find out you’d been sold as a slave. No. That’s not what I will allow. You’re mine.

  “I won’t demand words then. Nothing spoken. Nod. Do you want to be mine? My slave. Not my thing to hurt just to see you cry. Not a thing I don’t care for, because I do. I promise this.

  “If you can’t say it, nod.”

  His hand around her neck again. Possession, she loved this, she did, but it was the kindness. The kindness broke her. Forced her to see this an alternative. Kindness. That was all she’d required.

  She hiccupped and spilled words, “I can say it.” Then she nodded like a doll with a broken neck, with her hands crunching onto her knees. Squeeze, release. The pain helped.

  “Yes, I want to be yours.”

  “Good.” Eyes firming, teeth showing for an instant, he went on. “I’m going to make sure you never forget who you belong to. I’m putting my mark on you. I own you, no one else.” Now he was gr
owling, trawling the bottom of his octave range, as if he could scar her with that alone. “I need you still for this so I’m chaining you. I don’t want to risk you moving. Then I’m going to fuck you. Brand you then fuck you. Come.”

  He could have taken her by the collar but instead he paused to tighten the rope about her mouth to make it truly sink deep between her lips, until her tongue licked at the rough fibers if she tried to speak. He wrapped the rope around and around her face, across her eyes so she must close them, lopsidedly over her nose, and he knotted it again, then he towed her, blind and trembling, to where he wanted her.

  She couldn’t see where that was, and for that she was grateful.

  She’d rather be simply put where he wished her to be.

  Choice had become irrelevant.

  “Put your hands out for me.”

  Swaying, adjusting for her lack of visual cues, she put her hands forward and felt him wrap cuffs about them and tighten them to the brink of cutting off circulation before he loosened and buckled them. She’d not forget their presence. Ryke then stripped her, casually. Her clothes landed somewhere to the side. He added ankle cuffs. A breeze whispered by. Her clit swelled and her nipples erected, tight and almost painful, so turned on had she become. He must see her arousal.

  She shouldn’t be ashamed. Shouldn’t, yet she was. She’d given in to him.

  Because she had to. Because she had little choice. Because she loved this as well as feared it.

  “Raise your arms.”

  He joined the cuffs to the chains and the chains clinked as they moved. Then her ankles were attached to something on the floor, forcing her to move her legs apart.

  She licked her lips, anticipating the unknown. Whatever sort of branding this was, she would not like this. Her toes pressed onto the cold, hard floor.

  Did she trust him? More than ever before.

  “Thank you.” His voice was soft in her ear, his hands roving over her breasts, pinching lightly, stirring her nipples, making her flinch and her breath hitch.

  “Fuck.” She hissed when he pinched harder then bit beside her navel, on her mound. When his tongue swiped across her clit, she arched, seeking that tongue, leaning on the chains for purchase.

  Ryke laughed and moved away.

  The bastard.

  Maybe she should be true to herself. She didn’t only like this. She loved it, adored it down to her last molecule. She’d forgotten how he made her sing, how she’d reveled in being manhandled...Ryke-handled.

  She smiled, sighing, wanting more.

  When he turned this part of him on...her feelings for Ryke were those of a worshiper who dreaded the punishments of her god. That he had in the past done anything he wished to do to her was part of why she both feared and loved this so much.

  In truth, she’d brought him down from the clouds, from his lonely rooms.

  “Forgive me,” she murmured. “For doubting you. For hating you.”

  Did he hear her or understand?

  “I forgive you.”

  Then he held her hip and she heard him crouch behind her seconds before he put an object to her pussy entrance and shoved it up inside her, slow and steady, making her grunt and rise onto her toes. Not that it helped her escape the remorseless invasion.

  It would be the dildo from his pack. His favorite toy. What other prophet kept a sex toy bag on his travels through a post-apocalyptic land?

  When he stopped she felt full and stretched and took a moment before she remembered to inhale. The push never let up and she understood why when something went thunk and scraped on the floor between her legs.

  He’d stuck a fuckspear inside her and had propped it below.

  “If you move now, I will be surprised.”

  “Oh. God.” She choked as her cunt squeezed down.

  “Now the branding.”

  She hung there in the chains, legs spread, impaled, with her hands winding around what she could reach, dreading this, yet yearning the bite of his mark.

  Chapter 46

  This was the crucial part, though it pained him not to fuck her yet – spread-eagled in his chains and naked, moaning as she twined her hands into the chains, with his fuckspear inside her.

  It was a sight he could live on for years.

  Once he’d sealed this, he could do this to her every night or day if he chose. She’d finally given herself to him. After his past with her, he’d craved hearing that, though he’d have kept her no matter what.

  There was a primeval satisfaction in taking what was yours, and if it tried to wriggle from your grasp you really were compelled to fuck it into submission.

  What he was about to do would shut off her one remaining escape route. He would never have let her embark into the wilds of Aerthe on the off-chance she might succeed, might survive, might not be taken as a sex slave by the first balls-intact man who sighted her.

  That plan of hers had enraged whatever conscience he had left.

  “Be ready, girl. This will hurt.”

  Or he imagined it would. As the chosen prophet, as this intermediary between Aerthe and the Mekkers, he’d been instilled with intimate details of what a waik crystal could do, what it was, what it might do if applied in certain ways. If anything had convinced him of the science of Aerthe, it was this data.

  He would brand her with the crystal in his hand and it would remove her ability to make a portal for no waik crystal would ever be allowed to leave Aerthe.

  “Steady.”

  She tensed.

  Slowly, calculating where he wanted this to embed, he approached the skin above her shoulder blade. He placed the crystal so it paralleled her spine, then he raised his other hand. Here, he was too high to connect via the land but he could emulate what all mechlings did, draw waik power from the air. The frequencies ran everywhere if you just knew how to catch them, where to feel.

  Bright blue Aerthe leapt to his fingertips, wriggling in the air above him in a cascading umbrella, spiraling in, sparking through him, coursing into the crystal.

  Gio screamed as the crystal liquefied. Concentrating, he drew his symbol on her back with his forefinger.

  Azure ran fast and melted, setting instantly as he reversed the energy and sent it dissipating as mist into the air. The last of the blue wriggled away.

  And was gone.

  Except for her, his pretty victim.

  “It’s done.” He kissed her back, beside his mark which was a free-drawn, letter R.

  While she trembled and sucked in her first breaths as his possession, he walked to the side to fetch lube, wetting his cock with it on his return to her shuddering, chained-up body. Then he slipped his cock into her, easing in as the pain from the mark made her anus expand and contract. He slapped her only once to make her gasp and forget what his cock was doing, then he forged in deeper.

  Her head pressed back into his chin as he rode her, fucking her ass slowly, building toward ecstasy.

  Her moans forced him to consider whether to gift her with a climax.

  “Want to come, Gio?” He paused, fumbling to relax the rope in her mouth, his cock at full depth and his balls tightening.

  “Oh fuck, fuck. Please fuck me.”

  He rammed in once more, stopped. “Want to come?”

  “Yes, oh yes, please.” She gulped in air through the rope, whispered another plea, “Make me come. Please?”

  He slipped his hand around to her front and teased her nipples lightly as well as squeezing and brushing in circles. With his other hand, he taunted her clit, making it rise, pop up hard, massaging her there as he fucked her. The fuckspear made her asshole so tight he could barely hold himself back from spurting on the instant.

  But he did, he did.

  With grace and gritted teeth.

  “Come for me, slave girl,” he said, his lips brushing her ear. “Come for me.”

  Whether the use of slave did it for her, she groaned again, muttering and bending her ass back into his thrusts, despite the way the fucksp
ear pinned her in place.

  When she went rigid then shuddered, he sped up, crushing onto her, fucking out then in, his thrusts only withdrawing a short distance because he couldn’t bear to pull out now. He pulled back her head so he could see her rope-tangled face and her mouth fixed in that wide O as she came and came.

  His last thrust shoved her forward. He stiffened, bellowing. His climax left him cursing and gasping in time to her spluttered moans.

  He left her for a moment to clean himself then returned, taking it slow, admiring his girl, this girl he now owned completely. The brand on her back sparked gleams of eye-scalding light.

  After extracting the dildo and releasing her from the chains and rope, he carried her to the bed. They collapsed onto it as one multi-limbed, panting, and exceptionally messy animal. Nothing between them, not once he inserted his cock into her cunt. Not roughly, not to have sex, simply to say she was his, to make them one.

  He kissed beside her mark, careful to be gentle there. The R glinted. There was more to it than his letter however. Rays of blue crystal sprayed outward from the R, fine as hairs but scintillating when the light glanced over them. They ran all the way down her back to just above the swell of her ass and curled over her shoulders, becoming more delicate toward the ends then fading.

  She was a living jewel.

  He’d decided she was precious. Now everyone would know it.

  “You’re mine,” he whispered, making the point while kissing her neck and snuggling her closer.

  Her eyes were shut but she wriggled into him and murmured a sleepy and agreeable, “Mmm.”

  “Good girl.”

  He’d wrap her up with collars and commands, with ropes and chains, make her learn what he wanted from her, until the very thought of leaving him was anathema.

  When he’d swallowed the waik crystal, he’d learned what lay at the root of his obsession with her and he’d decided he didn’t care. Gio was a gift from Aerthe and that was all he needed to understand.

  Chapter 47

  Gio sat at the edge of the roofless fourth floor on Ryke’s building, dressed only in panties and a slim bandeau top because that was all she was allowed when indoors. Technically this was outdoors, but whatever. It pleased him. Oh, and her collar and the little tinkling silver slave chain on her ankle. She lifted her leg and admired it. The links swung and glinted, the tiny lock made her smile.