by Lana Grayson
“What do you think?”
He kept his hair cropped short. Worked out. Inked most of his body. Held his head high.
“Military accident.” I said. “You got hurt in the army.”
“Reserves. And no. I never saw any action.” He tapped his leg. “Titanium rods. Shattered my femur, knee, tibia, and fibula, shredded everything, in a car crash. They should have taken the damn leg.”
An anger shadowed his admission. I braced myself as the flogger rose again to punish me for my curiosity. The leather didn’t strike. He rolled it over my arms, my side. A shiver caught me.
How did something painful still feel so soft?
“You have no idea what’s happened, do you, baby? Not in this house. Not in our lives.”
I swallowed. “So explain it to me.”
He didn’t. The flogger rushed down, striking my back once more. I bent forward, unintentionally offering him just another bit of sensitive skin to claim, another moment to watch me groan.
He didn’t hit as hard, and the sting washed away too quickly. I feared the warmth it left behind more than the bite.
Another hit.
I bit my lip, but the gasp still mewed too much. Max twisted the ends of the flogger and pushed. I flushed as my chest presented to him.
The leather kissed my breasts. The sharp prickle morphed into something…different.
My core clenched.
What was happening to me?
“I need your help,” Max said. The flogger snapped again, but the confusion shielded me from the pain. “And I’ll make you a deal to get it.”
“…What?”
The flogger cracked harder.
“Don’t move. Don’t open your fucking mouth. You’re going to listen now, and you’re going to think long and hard about what’s best for you.”
Another hit, this one grazing my belly. The fine trail of the leather dipped a little too low. A sharp peck struck between my legs. I collapsed onto the floor. Max didn’t care.
The heat didn’t either.
A rush of dizzying adrenaline protected my sensitive slit. I shuddered as it rolled over me. It hurt. It warmed.
It tingled.
“What can I offer you?” I swallowed. “You’re the one with the whip—”
He hit. Harder. I cried out against the stinging crash of the leather. He hadn’t broken skin. Hadn’t bruised me. Hadn’t seriously harmed me. But the stings dug deep, like Max understood the raw ache his instrument caused. I shuddered against the next smack.
“It’s a flogger, baby. Get used to it. You’ll be experiencing it a lot. Does that scare you?”
Depended on who held the weapon. I didn’t answer.
He tickled the leather through his fingers. “Listen, Sarah. Be smart about this. You are going to do everything I say.”
“Why?”
“Because if you submit to me, if you swear you won’t resist me…” The flogger pressed against my lips. He waited for me to kiss it. I obeyed only to keep him talking. “Then I can make it so that I am the only one who hurts you every again.”
“I don’t….” My words faded. “Is that supposed to comfort me?”
He bent down, his bad leg awkwardly supporting him. No matter how unsteady his step, the darkness of his expression, thickness of his jaw, and intensity of his presence revealed a man far stronger than just the physical strength bulking his muscles. I might have cowered in his stare, but I saw no cruelty. None of Darius’s blind hatred. Sadism, but no brutality.
“If I hurt you, I can protect you.” Max whispered.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’ll tell my father I’ll take complete control over your discipline, and he’ll agree.”
He was lying. Had to be. “Yeah, and Nicholas said he would be the only man to fuck me. What makes you think you can convince Darius?”
“Nicholas pushed his luck, and my father hates when people question him.” Max brushed my cheek. “But he would let me be the one to break you.”
“Why?”
“Because hurting people is all my father trusts me to do. I’m the second born. I scavenge for whatever piece of the company I’m allowed to claim. Nick has an image to maintain. I get what he doesn’t want dirtying his hands.”
None of this made any sense. I picked my words with caution.
“What if I say no?”
“Then the next time you act out, my father will take pleasure in satisfying every last vendetta he has against your family.”
“And how would you help me?”
The flogger tickled my breasts. My nipples hardened against the gentle tail.
“I don’t want to kill you. I want to break you. Watch you submit. Keep you quiet and tame while everything comes undone.”
“As appealing as that sounds…” I steadied myself. “I’m not choosing which Bennett I prefer to beat me.”
“Do you want my father to hurt you?”
“Do you?” I didn’t bother fighting the leash. “No? Then don’t offer to hurt me for him, just stop Darius from doing this!”
“We can’t.”
“No. You won’t. There’s a difference, and I’m the one who gets hurt because of it.”
“We’ve all earned our beatings, baby. Believe me.” Max’s grip might have broken the flogger in half. He swore, twisting the leather. His eyes darkened. “Will you help me?”
“I can’t do anything for you.”
“Yes, you can. He needs you to behave.”
“Who?”
The flogger cracked hard. I gasped as Max growled over my pain.
“Nicholas.”
The heat ground within me. His name shivered over my every welt and ache.
Max didn’t give me time to recover. “You have to be compliant. You have to obey us and do as we say even if it means getting fucked like a little whore. Make my father think you’ve given up. Let him believe he’s won.”
“Why?”
“Because Nick is plotting a takeover of the Bennett Corporation.”
The shock pounded my chest like an instant asthma attack. My first breath was ravaged by sheer, perverted excitement. It bound my pain and melted it into beautiful relief.
I stared at Max. “Are you serious?”
“My father is running our company into the ground. We’re losing money. Losing investors. Nick isn’t a man to inherit a problem. He’s taking control now.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“You aren’t a threat to us, baby.”
“I must be, or I wouldn’t be your prisoner. You wouldn’t be asking for my submission. I wouldn’t be…” I quieted over the words. “I wouldn’t be bred by you.”
“Mark sealed your fate. Don’t blame us for taking what is offered.”
“It’s not offered.”
“Isn’t it?” Max brushed his hand through my hair. “What would you give to see Darius Bennett humiliated by his own sons? Dethroned and cast aside. Left with nothing?”
I practically salivated at the fantasy.
“What is that worth to you?” Max asked.
“Everything.”
“Is it worth your submission?” His words curled over my neck, tighter than the belt. He tested just how badly the stirring rage built within me. “Would you spread your legs and let us fuck you, fill you?”
“I thought I didn’t have a choice.”
“You don’t. Not in this. But you have an opportunity.”
“What opportunity?”
Max pushed me down, twisting me until I rested on my hands and knees. I squirmed, but his hold on the belt held me steady, exposed and vulnerable.
“You can enjoy this.”
He could see my every curve. Every shudder. Every single part of me I had kept secret until the Bennetts captured me, stripped me, and tasted me.
He didn’t caress me. His hand struck my ass, hard.
It should have hurt.
It should have mortified me
.
It should have enraged me.
But the proposition was too good to be true.
Darius Bennett, displaced by his own son. A secret takeover, a humiliating and degrading act of aggression that made resting naked and exposed on my hands and knees seem pleasant in comparison.
“Will you submit?” Max whispered.
His hand warmed over my flesh. The fingers drifted too close to my slit. I squirmed—mostly to escape, but a part of me desperately needed a reassuring touch.
He spanked me again. My cry echoed in the room.
“What will you do if I submit?” I asked.
“I’ll fuck you, baby.”
“But…why? If Nicholas takes over—”
“I’m not Nicholas.”
The warning was sealed with a harder strike. I shuddered, my fingers digging into the carpet. Max wove his hand over my body, touching every place I had been bruised or welted. He didn’t offer his touch to soothe me. He explored. Pushing. Pinching. Earning my protesting squeals and watching as I twisted in my own agony.
Was it agony?
Nicholas didn’t frighten me. He had no need, not when a single touch, his heated glance, and the oppressive weight of his body over mine dominated me so thoroughly. I allowed myself the pleasure of submitting to a man so formidable, confident, and assertive that it wasn’t humiliating. It was right.
But Max?
He beat me, and whatever natural reaction I had for Nicholas mirrored in the stinging bite of Max’s hand. The constant strikes confused me. Slap after slap stung, but my skin faded the harshness into a heated protection. What began as pain and fear prickled away, leaving only the pure sensation of his aggression.
I swallowed. “Nicholas didn’t hurt me.”
Max’s hands gripped my hips. His hardness ground against me.
“Baby, I’m always going to hurt you.”
I believed him.
“If you do this for me, no one else will ever lay a hand on you. I promise. Every lash, every spank, every agony will belong to me.”
His words tangled in my mind. How could something so horrible reassure me?
“Can you really promise that?”
“My father is looking for a reason to frighten you,” he said. I stilled as his hand looped over my waist, traveling down, down, down. “And he knows I can and will frighten you.”
He captured my slit in his hand and smacked it hard enough to earn my squeal.
I flinched away, but his fingers found every humiliating and earned wetness caused by his attention. I whimpered, but he ignored my protest. His touch wasn’t possessive like Nicholas’s. He sought my clit and rubbed. Hard.
Why did I get wet for him? His intentions were dark. His hand ground my most sensitive area, just to watch how my body pulsed and shivered. I arched as he thrust a finger within me. The tightness gripped him, and I prayed he didn’t feel my shudder.
A fool’s prayer.
The quick pleasure enhanced the flogger’s bite. Every sensation—pain and pleasure—centered deep inside me. His finger sunk in deep and captured the confusing feelings.
“I’m going to fuck you,” Max admitted. “Are you gonna fight me?”
“I don’t know.”
He tested me, withdrawing slowly enough to earn a protesting moan.
“Listen to me, Sarah. We need you to behave. You can distract my father so Nick can make his deals and take this company. That means you doing what we brought you here to do. Last long enough, and we’ll keep you safe.”
His hand slipped back to my stomach, caressing the part of me he thought he’d own.
“Not a bad trade, baby. You give us an heir, and we get rid of my father. He won’t be able to hurt you or your family ever again. That’s worth a little fuck, isn’t it?”
He had no idea.
What should have been a punishment and horror became my greatest opportunity.
My head rested upon my hands, and my fallen hair hid a revealing smile.
Max demanded I submit, but he didn’t know the power that submission offered me. I’d do anything to protect my family—that included indulging the Bennetts.
And it also meant deceiving them.
I bit my lip, hiding the tease in my voice. “I…guess I have no choice.”
“You never did, baby.”
His growl heated the air. His hands claimed my hips once more. The leash tugged, and he pushed my head against the carpet.
I shuddered. He wasn’t like Nicholas. Not in his demands. Not in the way he positioned me and readied himself for the taking.
I pinched my eyes shut as his pants unzipped. My stomach fluttered, and I counted my staggering heartbeats. It’d be quick. Hard, but I could handle hard. Nicholas was gentle, but even his strokes had verged on overwhelming.
My core clenched in a good way. In anticipation.
I took an unsteady breath. It was all the permission I could give.
Max’s cock pierced inside me.
And the undeniable pleasure of his invasion shocked us both.
I hadn’t prepared to accept his entire raging thickness—not so soon after Nicholas claimed my virginity and took me in the morning. I stretched, and the heat blistered through me. His cock filled me in an instant.
I groaned. So did Max.
It didn’t hurt.
The slickness coating my thighs betrayed me. Whatever Max did, whatever games he played and pain he caused, wasn’t the sadism I expected. I thought he’d want me to hurt and cry and beg. God, was I wrong.
Max forced my submission and rewarded my surrender with pleasure. He grunted, slamming deeper inside of me as my body rejected everything sane and logical and embraced the ache created from his hands.
He twisted my pain. Max invaded my mind and shattered my every hope of self-preservation.
What should have disgusted me heated my blood.
What might have harmed me wetted me in preparation.
I didn’t submit because I chose to surrender. I submitted because I had to. Because Max was too powerful, too strong, too overwhelming to refuse. I reacted to protect myself, forging desire from fear.
I quivered under him. My fingers clenched in the carpet, and his thick arms pinned me, teasing with the leash binding me to his body. But I was too small to oppose him and too weak to escape from the barrage of his thrusts. I’d never be able to fight him.
But I wouldn’t have to.
Max promised he’d be the one to hurt me. And I believed that promise. I held onto that promise. It was easier to fear one man than defend myself against Darius’s unbridled, murderous rage.
Max wasn’t Nicholas.
His pace drove me to the floor. His strength slammed against me, as if he wished to hear the scrape of air from my lungs as he fucked. I had no support. No hope. No escape from his thrusts.
Who would choose to escape such passion?
The untamed and wild dominance stole my fear. I couldn’t fight, and I couldn’t stop the swirling tightness from crippling my body with the shadow of pleasure’s final crest. I fell limp as Max demanded it from me. He positioned my hips to steal my strength. His cock reduced me to a trembling, shivering, desperate shade of myself. I whimpered as my pussy claimed even more of his thickening length.
So different from Nicholas. So much rougher than Nicholas.
Just as pleasurable. Just as confusing.
Was this always how Max fucked? Did he take his pleasure from women as they writhed and begged and endured? This wasn’t sex, it was aggression. He thrived on the power taken from spread legs and animalistic mounting.
I wished it hadn’t excited me.
I wished my core hadn’t squeezed.
Max picked me up, holding me against him as his hips drove his cock deeper, harder, faster, unending.
His hand twisted under me, and his fingers teased the sensitive, aching nub. He flicked my clit and thrust faster as I murmured in protest and encouragement.
“Come f
or me, baby,” he whispered.
I shook my head.
“You said you’d submit.”
I said a lot of things. I couldn’t remember any of it now. Max slapped my thigh. The sharp pain dizzied me. I accidentally clenched, and we both surged with the sudden bliss. His cock slowed as I fought the intrusion. He liked that and slapped again.
“You’ll lose this fight,” he warned. “Take me. Come on me. Let me break you.”
He couldn’t. I was already broken—enraptured and bewildered and absolutely lost in the Bennett’s power.
“Sarah,” Max panted my name. “You gotta trust me. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll give you pleasure. I’ll protect you.”
I had no idea what he’d done to me, but one undeniable truth existed in his rampage.
I believed Max. And I believed him when he promised Nicholas could end the Bennett cruelty once and for all.
Nicholas’s victory was worth offering myself to his brother.
The orgasm was meant to shatter, break, and destroy me.
The pleasure only strengthened me and revealed both of us to each other.
I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. The agony that teased me was better served in utter silence. I arched and tensed as Max pinned me to his chest. I let the humiliation of his punishment coil into something primal and natural. Again and again he struck me. I offered my wetness and reveled in the enraged pounding of his cock.
His final thrusts lost me in a haze of passion.
I surrendered to pleasure.
He came.
The squeeze of his hands would bruise my hips. The shudder of his body would forever sear in my mind. The shared passion would bind me to him in a way I didn’t understand.
This was submission. So different from the bond with Nicholas, and yet, so physical with Max.
His endless heat jetted within me. Again and again, as desperate and forceful as Nicholas. Max fucked as though he were determined to be the one who claimed my body for his own. And maybe he was. The Bennetts promised many things—my safety, my protection—but they all wanted something damning in return.
I fell onto the carpet as Max pulled away. A shiver of delicious pleasure rolled though me. I wondered if he’d touch me again.
He didn’t.
Sadist.
I panted, trying to force myself up. The adrenaline and indulgence swirled into a dizzying promise of peace, but the aching bruises and welts crossing my skin tightened with each passing moment.