by Raven Dark
As soon as I see what that door was hiding, a whole other level of panic hits me. “Holy shit.”
As with the main part of the bedroom, the moment the door is open, low lights in the ceiling turn on automatically. Here too, they cast a low, warm glow that suggests intimacy, yet the almost romantic feel doesn’t soften the blow of what I see.
Contraptions, the purposes of which are obvious even without my having seen them before, are set up throughout. A large wooden cross in the shape of an X stands in one corner, leather cuffs hanging off each of the four ends. Whips, chains, long wooden poles, all sit mounted on racks, neat and orderly. And every wall in the room is lined with thick red padding like one might find on an expensive mattress. Soundproofing, I realize.
The arousal in me dies a swift death. I’m in a whole lot of trouble here.
Michael releases me. A few paces into the room he turns to me. I instinctively step back.
“Are you going to run, kravitsa?” His voice is low and dark. “You will only put off the inevitable and earn yourself further pain.”
Powerlessness chokes me. I drop my shoulders.
“Come here,” he orders quietly.
I cross the space between us, shaking so hard my teeth chatter, and it has nothing to do with the slightly lowered temperature of the room.
The moment I’m in reach, his hand snags my wrists, and he pulls me to him. Michael’s expression is cold and hard as he undoes my wrists. Then he brings me over to a strange contraption that looks like a medical exam table with stirrups on one end.
I blink up at him. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Lean forward and hold onto the edge of the table.”
I release a shaky breath. The stern look on his face leaves no room for refusal. I obey, leaning over and gripping the other side of the table. The position leaves me bent over slightly, exposing my back and my ass for him. He turns the scarf around so that the ends hang down in front, leaving my back bare.
Everything in me wants to beg and plead, to escape what I know was coming, but I won’t. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
Michael’s footsteps echo across the floor. There’s a beep, followed by a hiss as the door shuts, then more beeps as he keys in the code. A buzz tells me the door’s locked.
My eyes follow him as he crosses the room. Michael takes down a cane from a hook on the wall. My heart gallops. I tear my eyes away from the sight of the weapon in his fist as he crosses the room to me.
He stalks over to the table and stands at my right. My head swims until I think I might pass out.
No. He won’t see me fall apart. Eyes averted, I clench my jaw and wait.
There’s a whoosh and a crack as the cane thwacks against his palm. The sound isn’t even that loud, and yet it makes me jump.
“After today, if you require punishment, we will come here, and you will choose the cane. You will bring it to me, go to the table, and wait to receive what I give you. Do you understand?”
Tears threaten, but I push them back. “Yes, Sir.” God, I hate him, but I have a feeling I will grow to detest that cane more.
“Good. I will not tolerate disobedience.”
His hand rests on my back, pushing me almost gently so that my breasts press against the table cushion. My breaths heave in and out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his arm draw back.
The first strike of the cane cuts like hot flame across my left thigh. I’ve never felt anything like it. The strike doesn’t feel like it even breaks the flesh, yet it cracks across the skin, loud and brutal.
Crack. Pure fire, across the same spot on my thigh. I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to scream.
“Why are you being caned, Aurora?”
“Because I tried to escape.”
“What else?”
My thoughts race, trying to think through the pain. “I tried to tell a cop.”
“That’s right.” You’ll get three more. I want you to count them. How many?”
“Three, Sir.” It doesn’t sound like a lot, but each one hurts like a bitch.
The next strike slices across both of my thighs, lower down, leaving a blade of pain in its wake. I whimper, gripping the table’s padding until I’m sure it’s going to rip. The pain burns itself like a brand on the inside of my brain. If I lived a hundred years, I’d never forget the feel of that cane.
“One.”
“You disobey me like you did today again, and you’ll get a lot more than a few swats. I’ll make you bleed, traitor.”
Crack.
My eyes sting, threatening tears, but are they for the pain, or for the horror of what awaits me if I go against him again? It doesn’t matter, I won’t allow them to fall.
“Two.” God, I’d do anything he wanted if only the pain would end.
The final crack cuts across the skin like fire, and I hold in a broken groan, knees trembling.
“Three.” I barely manage the word.
“See? Was that so hard?” But I can taste the sarcasm there. He sets the cane on the table.
It’s over. I nearly collapse to the floor on my knees.
I don’t even hear him move before he’s pulling me against him. His arm tightens around my waist, the other hand cupping my chin. An absurd gratitude hits me that he’s holding me up. If he weren’t, I’d have ended up on the floor.
“You alright?” His mouth brushes my ear.
“How can you ask that?” His thighs chafe the welts on mine. The hot sting makes me whimper, but my nipples also harden as if the sting tugs at them.
“Answer me.”
“I’m fine.” I hate how throaty that sounds, choked with unshed tears. “Why, Michael? Why do you need to do this?”
“You know why. You went against me. That sheriff could have taken you from me. I won’t give you up.” He sounds almost tender, and that only makes me angry.
“Don’t pretend you care about me.”
He brushes his lips along my cheek, a lover’s caress. “Don’t pretend you hate what I do to you.” He slides his palm over my hair, brushing it back. “Let it out, Aurora. It’s all right to cry.”
Around him? Not likely. I grind my teeth, silent.
“Such a tough girl.” He kisses my cheek. “Come here. Let’s see how well you handle what’s next.”
Dread washes over me, but I follow him across the room to a spot a few feet from the wall where all his twisted toys are mounted. There, a long, thick chain hangs from the ceiling, a steel hook dangling from the end of it. A pace or two away, a table sits, various implements lying across it. What look like golden butt plugs, vibrators, a pair of fleece-lined cuffs, and a few other items I’d never seen before in any online porn I’d watched. A lot of them look too sharp to be safely used on anyone.
“Wait, what are you going to do to me now?” I fold my arms around me, self-protection kicking in.
Without a word, he picks up the fleece-lined cuffs and guides me over to the chain. He takes my wrists and cuffs them, then lifts my arms, slipping the metal loop between the cuffs onto the hook.
Shit. The hook hangs high enough that my arms are stretched all the way up, my heels off the floor. Leaving no room for me to slide the loop off the hook and escape.
“You just caned me. Isn’t that enough?”
“If you want to make this difficult, I can think of a way to make this worse.”
I glare at him, mutinous. “No, Sir.”
“Good girl.” He touches me on the nose and smirks when I toss my head at him. “Don’t you go anywhere,” he adds lightly.
Michael crosses the room, keys open the door, and disappears into a bathroom I saw coming into the bedroom earlier.
Thinking he’s going to leave me hanging there, I make an angry sound. “Michael, don’t leave me like this!”
He returns.
I mentally kick myself for showing my fear when I see his grin. Then I notice a small tube of what I assume is the same lube he used the other night
in his hand. My eyes widen.
“Michael, wait. What are you doing?”
He walks in behind me.
“Seriously?” I thrash. “After what you just did, you’re going to—”
“Pipe down, Aurora.” His hand clamps on my shoulder until I deflate.
But instead of lubing me up for fucking, I hear the tube cap come off, and then cool jell caresses the welts on my thighs.
I wince at the initial flash of pain, then sigh as the cream soothes the sting. He tends to each welt, gently rubbing the leftover cream into my legs and ass cheeks.
“Better?” he purrs.
The gratitude that pricks at me is absurd.
“I can’t hear you.”
I huff. “Yes. Sir.”
“What do you say when master takes care of you?”
Master! My teeth gnash. “Thank you. Sir.”
He drops a kiss on the middle of my back and says something in Russian that sounds like it might have been “You’re welcome.”
I buck and twist. Michael comes around in front of me. He touches me under my chin, the corners of his lips turning up when I jerk my face aside. Then he unties the scarf and pulls it from around my neck. “You’ll remain like this for an hour while I do some paperwork. Behave yourself, Aurora. There’s cameras in here, too.” He points to the reflective black globes set into the ceiling. Michael brings the cloth to his nose and inhales with a smirk. “I’ll be watching.”
“Wait, you’re just going to leave?”
He leans in and brushes his lips over mine. Then he crosses to the door and keys in the code. The door slides open.
“See you soon, Krasavitsa.”
He walks out.
I close my eyes. My legs are already straining, a tight ache burning in my arms. A whole hour. Oh, God, help me.
Chapter 15
Letting Go
The next hour is the longest of my life. Five minutes in, I deeply regret so rarely having gone to the gym. How much stronger would my limbs be if I hadn’t stopped using that damned exercise ball?
Fifteen minutes in, my arms feel like they’ll fall off. Thirty minutes in, and they’ve gone numb. My feet ache, and my leg muscles burn like a bitch. To make matters worse, though the sting on my thighs has died down, they’re still throbbing. I want to shout at Michael to let me go, want to find him and knock his teeth in, but I say nothing, refusing to give into my emotions. Instead, I close my eyes and shut out the world around me, retreating to a place where the pain can’t reach me.
I won’t cry, won’t show him the anger I know he’d love to see. He can see it on those cameras in the room, and it’s not going to gain me freedom any sooner. Besides, he’d only get off on it.
The thought occurs to me that he’d been smart not to include a clock in this room. I wear a watch, but I can’t angle my cuffed wrists to see the time on it. Which means there’s nothing to track how much longer I’ll be here, no sense of hope to carry me through. The temperature also remains just this side of uncomfortable, a degree or two cooler than normal, keeping the floor from reaching true warmth under my feet and causing me to shiver now and again.
He’d said he’d do this to me every time I require punishment. My stomach rolls violently at the thought.
The memory of the cane’s fiery kiss turns my stomach even more, and I close my eyes, but it doesn’t shut out the pain. Despair threatens to set in and I grind my teeth. Years of being subjected to this torment stretch before me, unforgiving.
Fuck. And it makes it so much worse knowing he enjoys this. He likes hurting me.
Why? The question hovers over me, and I focus on it, letting the puzzle distract from the pain. What had I done to him when we were kids that caused him to hate me so much? And why is he so fixated on me now?
The question dangles, huge and unknowable.
What’s happened to Michael to make him so dark and twisted?
But I can’t answer that, either.
I shove the questions aside for now. I can’t allow myself to think of that. I can’t allow him to matter enough for the answers to affect me. I’ll just have to find a way through this.
Just when I’m sure my muscles will snap from the strain, the door to the bedroom snicks open. Footsteps tap across the floor, and then Michael stands in the open door to this kink chamber I’m chained up in.
“So, let’s see how well you did, shall we?” He crosses the space to me, rolling up his snowy white sleeves. “Sore?”
I nod. My arms feel like they have lead weights on them.
“Thighs sore?”
“Yes,” I grumble.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Assessing me for a moment, he puts his hands in his pockets. “Hungry?”
My stomach growls in response, as though his words woke it up. “Yes, Sir. Please get me down.” I’ll self-flog later for giving into my pain and begging.
“Have you learned your lesson?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Really?” He steps closer, slowly cupping and massaging my breasts. My nipples jab at his palms, the warmth of his touch melting away the cool of the room so that I arch my back just to feel more of that glorious heat. The movement pulls at my arms, reawakening the ache in them. His face is in mine. “What lesson did you learn today? Hmm?”
“Not… not to break your rules. Not to try to escape or tell anyone.”
His mouth twitches in the low light as he slides his hands up along my arms, covering them in sleeves of heat. Massaging away the pain. “You won’t break my rules again then.”
“No. No rules broken.”
Down his hands slide, around to my ass, his palms heating the skin there. My chest is pressed to his now, the warmth of his body seeping into me. His fingers lightly brush the welts on my thighs. I whimper at the sting, the reminder of my penance. When I twist, the movement pulls hard on my arms and legs.
“I’ve got news for you. You can’t never break my rules.” Above me, his mouth hovers, hot and hungry. “I’ve made sure there are a lot of them, and no one is perfect. You will forget things, you will mess up.” His fingers trace the marks on my thighs, making me twitch, increasing the agonizing burn on my limbs. “And when you do, the cane will be waiting.”
“Michael, please.”
He gives a non-committal rumble, and then his mouth devours mine.
Anger at his relishing in my pain wells up, white hot. I growl into his mouth and try to turn away. He kisses me harder, his mouth bruising mine. I try to close my lips. One of his hands seizes my throat, his fingers squeezing until I heave breaths.
“Open your mouth.”
I part my lips for him. Michael growls hungrily, his tongue swiping over my mouth in long, wet, possessive licks. His tongue darts in, lashing my tongue with heat. All the while, his hand grips my throat, a silent warning to give him access to what’s his.
This would be the hottest thing in the world, except the muscles in my limbs are still threatening to snap.
When he finally breaks the kiss, his lips and tongue leave hot trails along my throat. I hate the way my head falls back inviting his kiss, the way my body responds to him.
“Mm. I can’t wait to be inside of you again.”
At last, he reaches up and un-cuffs my wrists, freeing them but leaving the cuffs on the hook. Pain races through my arms and I wince, but relief follows after. He settles my arms around his neck, and I shove away the gratitude as he lifts me onto his hips, relieving the agony in my legs and feet. I wrap my legs around him, let the weakness in my legs subside.
In an instant, he turns easily with me and rushes me across the bedroom to his bed. Gripping my ass, he lowers me down, letting my back fall onto the mattress. His palms shift to my knees, gripping them and keeping my legs wrapped around him.
Keeping my welted thighs from touching the bed.
Michael’s weight pins me to the mattress so that I lay with my head on the pillows. Already, his lips,
tongue and teeth are licking, nipping, sucking on my throat, my neck, while he shoves my arms up above my head.
“I could give you everything, if you’d just let me, kravitsa.”
I draw back. How the hell can there be adoration in his voice?
I let my feet drop to the mattress. “So you caned me like some slave girl, left me hanging by my arms for an hour, and now you’re talking to me like we’re soul mates? What is wrong with you?”
“You’re so beautiful when you’re pissy.”
“Fuck. I hate you.”
“Good. I told you, it’s more fun that way.” He slides down my body a little. He licks and sucks each of my nipples until I arch my back for him, instinctively inviting his touch. I grind my teeth in effort not to groan.
“How romantic.” Holy shit, what the hell is wrong with me? Do I have a death wish? The sarcasm is my way of deflecting, a rebellion against his flippancy, but still. He’d told me he didn’t take backtalk. After what he’s just done to me, now is not the time to challenge that.
Michael jerks his head up. “You’re not still holding out for the perfect relationship, are you? Would it make you feel better if I brought roses before I filled every one of your holes with cum, Aurora?”
His words shouldn’t hurt. I’m his prisoner, not his girlfriend, yet something about his insinuations sting.
“Just get it over with, Sir.”
Something dark and dangerous flashes in his eyes. “Oh no. I won’t make this easy on you. I’m not a nice guy, and I don’t do romance. The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”
Before I can react, he swings off of me and turns me onto my stomach.
Awareness of his intentions slashes at me, but when I try to get up on my hands and knees, he flattens me to the bed. His legs shoved mine apart. Through the flash of pain from the welts on my thighs, I hear him working his belt and zipper.
It hits me then, even as he grinds himself against my sex, that this in itself is a punishment. I’ve said something that’s pissed him off, hit a nerve, but what? His anger goes deeper than my sarcasm. God, I want to claw at him, to kick him off, and yet, some strange part of this feels natural. I belong to him, and this is just how Michael is.