by Loki Renard
“We will send some local units to investigate, ma’am.”
“You can’t tell the police. He has them paid off!” I sound paranoid. I sound unhinged. “It has to be your agency. It has to be FBI.”
There’s a brief pause and my world comes crashing down as I realize that there’s no way the FBI are going to send units to a billionaire’s house just because some random woman is telling them to.
“I’ve been missing for days,” I say, injecting all that fear into my voice. “Triangulate this call. I am at Ethan’s house.”
Maybe it’s the note of real panic and angst. Maybe I just get lucky. I don’t know, but my call is escalated quickly and from that point, people start taking me seriously. Two more agents speak to me. They tell me to be ready to leave. They say they will be approaching the house soon. All I need to do is try and get down to the front door if possible.
I do as I’m told. First, I turn the phone off and slip it somewhere it won’t be found. That is one benefit to being kept in a mansion. There are a lot of hiding places for small objects like that one. Then I go downstairs. Casually. Like I’m just wandering the place. I do that enough that nobody really seems to care.
I pass Forsyth on my way down the stairs. He gives me a brief nod and a murmured “m’lady.” It’s probably not supposed to be mocking, but I always feel a pang when he says anything like that. I am not a lady. I am a woman. A woman they’ve all fucked with for the last time.
It takes a while for the FBI to get there. I hover about on the front steps, between the grand columns, feeling each breath I take stretch into the eternity between now and my rescue.
And then I hear engine noise. A soft purr. And then the nose of a black sedan comes around the corner, followed by the rest of the vehicle. And another one. They’ve sent two cars for me! I’m trembling with the excitement of my imminent release as they pull to a halt outside the house.
Two agents clad in dark suits emerge from the front vehicle, and another two behind. Four men to save me. Oh, thank god. Tears well in my eyes as I start toward them, ready to dive into the back of the car.
Before I can, the back door opens. A familiar figure steps out.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!” I swear at the top of my lungs.
It’s Ethan. And he has the nerve to look pissed.
He strides toward me, grips me by the arm. “You called the Feds on me, Casey?”
“Uh…” I don’t know whether it’s worth even trying to lie or not. Something tells me it isn’t. Ethan’s eyes are narrowed to two angry slits. His jaw is clenched. This is nothing like the police station, or at the bus terminal. There’s no smug victory written over his face. I’ve pissed him off this time. Caused him trouble, maybe. Good.
“Yes, I called the Feds on you! You’re keeping me captive. You can’t do that!”
“I can, and I will continue to do so,” he growls, his hand tightening around my arm. To not have seen him for days and be reunited like this is… unexpected, to say the least. But his touch, as angry as it is, reminds me why I was so conflicted in the first place. He’s mad. So am I. But there’s a passion between us that sparks at every gnashed growl he makes.
Ethan drags me back into the house. The four agents follow silently after him. The guards are posted in what looks like a static formation. All eyes are on me. At least a dozen men, all with the granite expressions of those who must guard a wayward captive.
I am in deep, deep trouble. My feet barely touch the floor as we enter the house, and when I try to pull back against Ethan’s grasp, they slide over the marble surface so he is dragging me like an ice skater. This could be fun, if it wasn’t so serious.
“Where’s the phone you used?” He snaps the demand down at me.
“Not telling.”
“Girl, I will beat it out of you.”
I know he will. And that fact simultaneously terrifies and excites me. I have needed this. I have needed the clash of wills. He left me alone. And maybe that was a greater sin than any other he has committed.
“So? I still won’t tell!”
He grabs my skirt up, bunches it in his hand and starts whacking my ass hard and fast with the other. My bottom becomes an instant inferno and I cannot help the shameful way I writhe and dance in his grasp. He keeps control of me by the back of the skirt, raising it high enough that everyone can see the state of my ass, especially when he yanks my fine panties up between my cheeks, exposing them to his palm and their eyes.
“It’s in the potted plant over there!”
He lets me go and strides over to a potted fern. “Here?”
“I put it in down the side and covered it.”
Before my eyes, Ethan starts digging into the soil, his fingers clawing at the dirt and discarding it on the marble floor. He won’t be the one cleaning it up, I’m sure. One of my hands reaches back to rub my ass. The other covers my mouth because I can’t believe I just got Ethan Keller to go digging in his own potted plant.
He excavates practically all the dirt before he realizes that the phone isn’t actually in there.
“You lied to me?” He rounds on me with a dirty-handed growl.
“You can’t beat anything out of me,” I snap back. I know more pain is coming now, but fuck it. This is going to hurt anyway. There was only ever so much he could do to me, and it was always going to be bad. At least this way, I get some amusement and brief reprieve.
“You’re going to tell me where that phone is,” he says, his brows lowering over his eyes until they are silver slits of pure aggression.
I’m terrified. My heart is slamming in my chest. My ass is aching. I am not making this easy on myself, but I don’t care because it’s more important to me not to make this easy on him. Ethan owns the world. The police. The FB fucking I, apparently. But he doesn’t own me.
“I’m really not.”
He crosses over to me again, stands in front of me. Ever the conscientious servant, Forsyth appears with a warm towelette for his hands. Ethan wipes them on the pristine cloth before tossing it to the side.
“This is not a joke, Casey. And it’s not a game.”
“It’s a phone,” I say with a smirk.
He’s wrong. It has been a game from the beginning. He’s just not used to losing, not even a little bit. This phone is the one thing I have some kind of leverage over, and I’m not going to tell him where it is just because he makes my ass hurt.
“Defiant little…” he growls under his breath. “You are going to pay for this, Casey.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m not telling you where it is. Because you’re going to hurt me anyway. So who cares. No matter what happens, this ends badly for me.”
“It can end a lot worse than you think,” he says, taking hold of me again. I steel myself for another barrage of hard slaps to my bottom, but that’s not what he has in mind now.
“Forsyth, bring me the restraints.”
We are in the grand room that leads directly off the foyer. There are more columns here, surrounding a sitting room with a vast array of furniture. Ethan marches me over to a long coffee table made of some dark wood, picks me up and lays me face down over it, holding me in place with the flat of his hand in the small of my back.
“Let me up, you fucking asshole!”
He doesn’t let me up. Forsyth brings him the restraints, thick, heavy leather that encircles my ankles and wrists, linked with chains that are similarly attached to the legs of the table. Ethan takes his time securing me, making sure that I’m not going anywhere. By the time he’s done, I am secured on the table like some kind of sacrifice.
He pushes the skirt all the way up over my back, and then he peels my underwear down from the crevice of my ass where it was stuck, to my knees. My legs are slightly parted, the shackles pulling them open a little, the panties trying to pull them closed again. That tension is the least of my problems.
An angry Ethan is an unpredictable beast. I don’t kno
w how harshly he will punish me, but I know he will go out of his way to make sure I don’t enjoy this. Unfortunately for him, I am enjoying this on one level at least. Finally, he seems to have lost a sliver of control. I got to see his eyes flash with temper. I got to see him as a man, possibly fallible. I have cracked his facade and I will not let him forget it.
“Where is the phone, Casey?”
It’s my turn not to answer.
“Get the cane, Forsyth.”
A cane. What kind of fucking sadist… the question terminates in my mind before I can even pose it to myself. The sort of sadist who has canes is the same sort of sadist who keeps smart girls captive and thinks they’ll never get the better of him. I know this is going to hurt. But fuck him. It can hurt all he wants it to. It might make me writhe. Scream. Cry. Beg for forgiveness. I might end up promising never to do this again. But in the end I will. Because fuck him.
“The cane, sir.”
“You’re such a fucking asshole, Forsyth.” I throw that out there too, make things worse for myself. I don’t care. The federal agents are all standing around, watching this unfold. They’re even less useful than the crooked cops down at the station. I bet those guys occasionally bust a jaywalker or something.
I feel the hard, thin line of what must be the cane across both my cheeks. It moves away after a fraction of a second, and then returns with a swishing sound that terminates in an explosion against my ass. The chains jangle as I buck against the table, a seam of fire burning across my skin.
Three days without Ethan means three days to forget how much he can make things hurt. That single stroke of the cane damn near broke my resolve in a single go. I have broken out into a sweat. My toes curl, my breath rasps in my throat as I cry out at the top of my lungs.
“Where’s the phone, Casey?”
I grit my teeth and stay silent. This hurts, but the pain has already peaked and it’s already getting better…
“Ow fuck!” I scream as the cane comes down again.
A fresh seam of pain explodes across my ass. Ethan is not playing around. But his determination only feeds mine. I will not give in to this. I don’t care if he’s paid off everyone from the postman to the president.
“Disobedient little brat,” Ethan murmurs under his breath. “Casey, I can do this a lot longer than you can take it. Now tell me where you put that phone.”
I take a shuddering breath. Two strokes of the cane won’t break me.
Crack!
Three strokes won’t break me.
They will, however, turn my ass to fire. My nervous system is alight with sensation. I pull at the bonds that keep me chained to this damn table as Ethan swings the cane down another three times, each and every one of those cuts landing subsequently lower than the one before it, creating a band of burning heat and aching flesh across the lower part of my exposed ass.
The wood beneath my face is wet with tears. I’m crying out of sheer determination not to give in, even though every part of my flesh wants me to. No. Fuck that. No.
Ethan crouches down next to me. His hand fists in my hair. He draws my head up and my watery eyes look into his pale blue ones.
“This has already hurt enough,” he says in that gravelly voice of his. “Tell me where the phone is now, and I’ll spare you the rest of this punishment.”
It’s a good offer. And a tempting one. My head hangs in his grasp, his visage blurry thanks to my tears. I sniff back my sadness and my frustration, and I whisper my response.
“No.”
Ethan narrows his eyes at me. “I can have this house searched,” he says. “I can find it on my own.”
“Do that then.”
“You really are a stubborn little…” He releases my head and stands back up. All I can see how are his long legs, two disciplinary pillars.
“Start sweeping the house,” he orders the guards. “Go room by room.”
I smirk to myself as he sends the men away. I’m winning. In whatever twisted sense ‘winning’ can mean, when one is tied to a coffee table with six cane lines smoldering away on one’s ass.
“That will probably take them a long time,” he muses.
My self-satisfied smile broadens…
Crack!
The cane lands again and I shriek. He didn’t land that stroke on fresh skin. He laid it across the others, finding six little points where my flesh was already sore and tender, and lighting hellfire across them.
“I will do this until they find it,” he informs me. “A house this size. That could take a while…”
“No!
Crack!
The cane lands again, I swear and cry out. “You’re a fucking psychopath!”
“I’m just determined, Casey. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what is at stake here. I need that phone you used to contact the FBI, and I need it now.”
There is a serious note in his voice, a particular intensity that makes me think that maybe there really is more to this. He wants that phone badly. He’s been harsh in the past, but he’s never punished me this hard.
“So this is how you deal with her.”
The new voice doesn’t belong to an agent. It doesn’t belong to a guard. Or any one of the people who could have, should have helped me. It belongs to Jack Ford.
He’s standing between the agents, his upper lip curled in what might be disgust or what might be a sneer of some other origin. I can’t tell. I am exposed to him as much as I am to the rest of these men, because Ethan doesn’t give a damn for my privacy.
Ethan turns around, the cane clutched in his hand. “This isn’t a good time, Jack.”
“I can tell,” Jack smirks. “And I can tell you’ve got everything under control too.”
This interruption is giving my ass a reprieve from the cane, but not from the pain. That has been stoked so it burns on without input from Ethan.
“I do,” Ethan growls. Ethan is taller than Jack. I didn’t notice that the other night when Jack came swanning in like he owned the place, but he has several inches on him and he’s a lot broader. I notice that because even from my less than useful vantage point, I can tell there’s more tension than before. Tension that seems to be on the verge of potentially erupting into real violence.
“Gentlemen, we don’t have time for this,” one of the agents says. “Any of this,” he adds, looking at me. I guess Ethan’s unorthodox approach to inquisition isn’t going down quite as well as he expected.
“You can liaise with the head of my guard,” Ethan says to the agents. “Jack, you can get the hell out of here. I’m dealing with my girl.”
His girl. Those words should outrage me, given what he is doing to me. But they don’t. They make me warm inside—not as warm as my burning ass, but still. His possession means something. I don’t know what, but something. Maybe I could forgive him for this, if he let me up now.
It also fails to escape me how he talks to the FBI agents. He speaks as if he is in command of them. He just dismissed them, for Christ’s sake. They can’t like that one bit. Nobody joins a federal agency to become some twisted billionaire’s lackey.
Jack lets out a snort and gives a shrug, as if he doesn’t care. But I see the flash in his eye before he turns away, and I feel how his gaze lingers on me. I feel goosebumps on my skin, in spite of the heat of the moment and the room at large.
In very short order, the room empties aside from Ethan, me, and Forsyth, who seems to think that the dismissal didn’t apply to him.
“Bring me the clamps, please, Forsyth.”
The clamps? I’m already shackled to this surface, what else could he possibly clamp?
“Ethan…”
“You ready to tell me where that phone is yet?”
I fall silent again. I’m not ready to capitulate to him. This was supposed to be the day I got out. It was supposed to be the day he went down. The day I righted the wrong I’ve been trying to fix since I found it. A lot of people are relying on me to get Vipyr out
of their lives. They might not know it. They might never know me, or anything I went through to try to stop what Ethan and Jack are doing but this matters. He’s desperate to get that phone. Anything that obstructs him is good.
“I guess not,” he snorts. “That’s fine, Casey. You and I are going to have a very long evening together.”
“The clamps, sir.”
“Thank you, Forsyth. Bring me the ropes, please, two of the paddles, the leather flogger, and…” he pauses for a moment, “the wand.”
“Wand?” I snort. “You want to do some magic?”
“I think it will have an enchanting effect on you,” he smirks.
As Forsyth leaves for a third time, Ethan adjusts my bonds. First he frees my legs, then he extends the chains, keeping my wrists attached to the legs of the table. His hands clamp around my hips and pull me down so my legs are off the table, and my pussy. I’m no longer pressed against the hard wood from the hips down. My toes support my lower body, my arms are stretched up over the table. This position is much less comfortable than the first one—and then it gets even worse as Ethan pushes my legs apart with his own, spreading my thighs wide. More furniture is brought into play as points of tie-down. One leg is attached to the base of a couch, the other is secured in a loop to something I can’t quite turn my head to see. My legs are spread wide enough that I can feel the stretch, and my pussy is lewdly exposed, the wet petals of my sex spread with the motion of my thighs. To a casual onlooker—and odds are there will be at least one of those given that Forsyth is yet to return—I’m physically enjoying this.
The cane welts sting as Ethan runs his hand over my ass in a possessive sort of way, the same way he might feel a nice car.
“I thought you sick assholes had special rooms for this sort of thing,” I bite out, trying to hide my shame behind aggressive sarcasm.
“I don’t need a special room to deal with you,” he purrs. “And you wanted to take this public, so I’m making sure this is all nice and public, just how you wanted it.”
I let out a little growl, but he just laughs.
“Your equipment, sir,” Forsyth says. Again, I don’t hear him coming until he announces himself in that elegant voice that makes all this decadence feel somehow even more perverse. He lays an armful of things down on a nearby chair. I catch a quick glimpse of some of them before Ethan picks up a length of black fabric and brings it around my eyes, obscuring my vision. I feel him tighten it behind my head.