Whoever he chose to be.
I closed my eyes and let go, sinking into complete submission. The helpless little muscular twitches stilled. My breathing evened. Acceptance eased my fear into something less sharp and horrible. Still scary, still dangerous, but this was my Master. He would do with me what he willed and I would endure. Gladly. I would give him everything he asked. My pain. My suffering. My tears. My pleasure. My blood. Anything he wanted, as long as he wouldn’t regret it later.
Because I’d rather be dead than walk away from this man.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The blade was cold against my cheek. Lying with my arms stretched over my head, I didn’t try to avoid his teasing touches. He trailed the flat edge down to my throat and slipped the tip beneath the collar of my sweatshirt. The jerk of the blade made me cry out. Material tugged on my neck, lifting me up as he cut through the fleece. He took his time, deliberately tormenting me with brushes of the steel against my skin.
“It’s rather like skinning a deer,” he said in a conversational tone that sent chills down my spine. “First, a nice big slit down the belly.”
The sound of tearing material made sweat bead on my upper lip. Air tickled my breasts and stomach. I hadn’t bothered with a bra, since we weren’t going out on New Year’s Day with a storm on its way. Exposed, but still mostly clothed. It felt strange to have the sleeves still snug around my arms while he studied the faded bruises on my breast.
“I hate those bites,” he said in a low, fierce voice. “I loved giving them to you, but they’re not mine. Not really.”
How could they not be his? I opened my mouth to ask, but he started cutting away my pants. The blade traveled down my waist and along each hip. I’d only pulled on yoga pants for cooking (it wasn’t worth the risk of burns in unmentionable places in case of an accident if he wasn’t up to watch), so the material gave way under his knife as easily as butter. But I had a feeling denim wouldn’t have put up much of a fight against such a sharp edge. He peeled my pants away completely with sharp tugs to pull the material free of my bonds, and then slit the arms and pulled the sweatshirt off too. I still wore my panties, but nothing else.
He touched each old bite with the knife, except for the ones he’d put on my inner thighs. With my knees tied together, I couldn’t open my legs. Seemed like a waste to me, but what did I know?
“It doesn’t take a serrated Rambo knife to kill.” He held the knife up so I could see. His big hand made it look incredibly small, almost like a toy. “It’s so sharp it’ll slice through bone if needed. Slender enough to slide between ribs, long enough to puncture the heart or kidney or artery. One quick in and out here—” he touched my throat, my ribcage and my upper thigh near my groin, “—and he’s dead for sure. I’ll show you tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to learn how to kill anyone.”
He tipped his head to the side as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard in his entire life. “If someone’s going to kill you, if it’s you or him, then you kill. Simple.”
“No one—”
“Kill him, Ranay. I’ll show you how. And then I’ll have your promise.”
I didn’t know which was worse: to know that he’d killed someone to protect me, or that he expected me to do the same. “I don’t think I can.”
“You didn’t think you could give me your safeword and mean it, either, but you did.”
But that was different. This was wrong. So wrong. I couldn’t imagine hurting anyone.
“Even me,” he said, drawing my attention to his face. “If I come at you to kill, you take me out first.”
“You wouldn’t ever do that. I certainly wouldn’t ever try—” My throat closed off and I couldn’t say it. Kill you. Kill my Master. Impossible.
I’d rather be dead myself.
He cupped my cheek, his thumb caressing my skin. “It won’t come to that, remember? You have the power to stop me. You’ll always have that power. All you have to do is give me your safeword. That’s more powerful than a knife or gun in your hand. You hold ultimate power over me. You, Ranay, and no one else.”
Closing my eyes, I rubbed my cheek into his palm. It was a heady thing to think I might have the power to bring him to his knees like no one else.
“Let’s test this blade and see exactly how sharp it is.”
My eyes flew open and he chuckled as he lifted his palm away.
The tip of the blade pricked between my breasts. A slight pressure, enough to get my attention, but not enough to hurt.
He removed the blade and whispered, “Look.”
I lifted my head. A drop of blood welled on my chest.
I trembled, shocked. It hadn’t hurt, yet he’d drawn blood. That easily.
“The best blades are so sharp that they’re in and out before the target realizes what happened. Most of the time they don’t even feel pain. They simply slide into shock and bleed out.”
He bent down and swirled his tongue over the tiny wound. Groaning, I arched up, my hands automatically lifting to him, but he rose as quickly as he’d moved in.
“Keep your hands on the table, or I’ll force you to keep them there.”
That wasn’t a threat for me, but if he gave me an order, I’d do my best to comply with it.
“It’s sharp enough, I think I could shave this sweet pussy without a single nick.” The blade scratched gently across my pelvic bone. He lifted the blade, holding it parallel so I could see the dark curly hairs he’d shaved off.
I’d always kept myself shaved for Josh. After moving home, the last thing I’d taken care of had been my pussy. Why bother when no one would see it? I would have immediately gone to my apartment and shaved if he’d let me that first night, but he’d said no old patterns. No old toys. And he hadn’t complained or commented on my bush, so I’d left it alone.
“I like you natural. Just the way you are. Besides, I wouldn’t want to risk breaking out my kitten’s sensitive skin in a rash.”
The thought of opening my thighs while he shaved me with that knife... I couldn’t suppress the whimper that escaped. Reflexively, I tried to open my thighs, to tempt him with my flesh. Maybe that’s exactly why he’d tied my knees together. To keep us both sane.
“Ah, but you like that thought, don’t you? Another time, perhaps. I admit, there’s nothing softer and finer than a bare, delicate pussy, and my kitten always gets what she wants.”
He lowered his head and rested his cheek on my stomach, as I’d done earlier over his bandage. Breathing. Listening to my body’s rhythm. Gaining his courage. I wasn’t sure.
I had my hands in his hair before I could remember he’d told me to keep them on the table. I couldn’t help it. I cuddled his head in my arms, holding him close. When I realized he was shaking, I opened my arms more and hugged his shoulders, cursing my bound hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he whispered, but his voice didn’t sound right. Not as strong and confident, effortlessly dominant and assured. He sounded shaken, almost broken. That was me. Not him. “I can’t tell you what this means to me, Ranay. That you’d even...” His breath sighed out against my belly and he tipped his head to press his lips in a tender kiss to my skin.
Enfolding my wrists in one big palm, he rose up and pushed my arms back over my head. He held his other hand over me, letting the knife hover in my vision. Then he slammed it down into the table so hard I gasped. I ran a quick inventory through my senses, listening for pain in my fingers or arms, but I found nothing. He hadn’t stabbed that blade into me.
“I told you to keep your hands there.”
I gave an experimental tug, but he must have caught the ends of the strip he’d used to bind my hands beneath the knife. My hands were thoroughly pinned.
I looked into his face and he winked, feeling around in his pockets as if he’d forgotten something. “Luckily, I’ll be carrying multiple knives from now on. There it is.”
This knife was identical to the one embedded
in the table, so compact that I’d had no idea he had that kind of vicious weapon in his pocket. He flipped the blade out and studied my body as if he’d never seen it before. Or maybe he was making a mental list of all the places he was going to cut me.
Yet, he hesitated. The hand holding the knife was shaking.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me what you want to do.”
He breathed heavily, as if he’d run all the way to Springfield and back. “I want to cut you. Not bad. Just enough...”
“For blood.” My words rang strangely in my head, echoing as if a huge cavern had opened up in the center of my body. “You want blood.”
“Yes.” The word hung between us, a soft, sibilant cry of agonizing need.
I knew that need. It gnawed inside me too. Not for blood, but for pain, for complete submission and subjugation of my will to his.
“I want to mark you. Not with bites, but with my knife. Something I can look at that is mine alone, and you can look at it later, once I’m...”
His voice broke and his breath wheezed through his teeth. His skin was taut across his cheeks, his eyes blazing with rage and grief, as if he’d already lost me. I knew that fear too, because if I lost him now I didn’t know how I could live in that safe and joyless shell I’d been trapped in for so long. I’d rather be dead than go back into that empty prison.
“Okay.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating enough that he managed to calm his breathing. When he opened them again, his eyes were still tortured. That was okay. I knew torture and soul-crushing need all too well. “Red. Remember it. If you need me to stop, I will. Always. For you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I’ll make it feel so good. You won’t want me to stop.”
He nuzzled my unmarked breast, deliberately rasping his stubble against the tender nipple. He tickled the underside of my breast with his tongue and pressed teasing bites to that curve. Not hard, only enough to pinch the skin and make me moan. I’d already made the mental submission to him. With these little touches, he effortlessly pushed my body into full arousal. He’d only been gone a few days, but I suddenly ached from head to toe, as if he’d been edging me for hours without end.
I didn’t know how I’d respond to the knife play. The blood. But knowing it turned him on made my pulse thunder.
“Who do you belong to?”
“You, Master. Only you.”
“Who’s the only one that can stop me?”
I swallowed hard. “Me.”
“That’s right. Only you. This isn’t something I require from you. I want your safeword if you need to give it. I want that more than anything else.”
His lips closed around my nipple and I arched my back, pushing against his mouth. Obligingly, he took more of my flesh into his mouth, gripping hard enough with his teeth that I could imagine the bleeding ring he could leave around my areola.
I groaned with frustration when he lifted his head. “No bites, I said. That’s not my mark. This is.”
I braced to feel pain, the slice of the blade, but he merely laid the cold metal against the swell of my breast while he licked and sucked my nipple to a deliciously painful peak. Each draw of his lips and stroke of his tongue made my bones melt away. I burned for more: skin, flesh, his big cock hammering inside me. I shifted restlessly, desperate to get my knees apart, my feet free, so I could wrap my thighs around him. Tempt him to slide into me while he did his worst. I wouldn’t care about anything then.
Gripping my nipple in his teeth, he lifted his head, giving a tug that sent a throbbing wave all the way down to my clit. His slow, insistent pulls dragged me higher, urging my body to soar. My eyes started to roll back, my toes curled, my body arching up in release.
And that’s when the blade cut across my breast.
The slight tug through my skin was a sharp fire that melded with the pleasure crashing through me. It flavored and deepened my climax, pain to add to the perfect storm rolling through me. I soared higher, welcoming another flash of white-hot pain across my flesh. Even better was the sounds of pleasure he made as he released my nipple and stroked his tongue over the cuts.
Heaven, bleeding on his table, tied up with his shirt.
His mouth roamed across my stomach but he didn’t cut me. Yet. Instead, he gripped my hips and rolled me slightly toward him so I was on my side.
“Have you seen the tat on my stomach?” Lust roughened his voice
It took a few moments for his words to cut through the haze. I blinked my eyes, forcing them to focus on him. He’d squatted down, his head level with mine. “No,” I said hoarsely. “It’s always either dark or I’m exhausted.”
His mouth quirked. “It’s a number, a two, with ravens spiraling around it.”
Okay, that was a little different. I’d licked the flag and skull across his pec. I’d sucked on the stud in his nipple. But I couldn’t think what significance a two might have for him.
“It’s inspired by a poem. ‘The Second Coming’ by Yeats. Have you heard of it?”
I shook my head. I’d barely survived the required English classes. I certainly hadn’t taken any poetry classes.
“Do you think you can last long enough for me to cut a two into your hip?”
I shuddered, my knees pulling up toward my chest instinctively. I glanced down at my breast to see how bad it looked. Just two thin red lines, as if a cat had scratched me. They probably wouldn’t even leave a scar. “I guess it depends on how much of an artist you are, and whether you can make me come again when my legs are tied together.”
Laughing, he leaned in to nip my hip. “No artist, just very hungry for another taste of you. I don’t think I’ll have any problem at all making you come again, without touching that sweet pussy once.”
That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. Rolled on my side, I could feel how wet I was. My panties were plastered to me. Even feeling his pinkie finger slide into me would probably be enough to set me off again. I wiggled as close to him as possible, my mouth an inch from his. “Order me. Then I can do anything.”
His fingers danced down my leg and pressed in the hollow of my knee, finding the pressure point that made my thigh jerk helplessly. Down my calf to my ankle, another pool of pain I’d never known existed. The sole of my foot cramped, adding to the crescendo he built in me. Standing to lean over me, he trailed his hand up my body, lighting the nerves at the base of my spine. Layer by layer, he built the flames inside me, fueling them with pain that didn’t leave a mark. Energy pulsed through my body, as if he truly was lighting up my nerves like a switchboard.
Twisting my hands, I heard cotton tear. I was almost free. But I couldn’t concentrate long enough to pull the strips through the knife pinned to the table. Not with my head rolling around, need rising to a punishing pitch inside me.
“Please,” I whimpered. “I need you so bad. Please!”
He squeezed my elbow, grinding his thumb on the bundle of nerves that made my whole arm throb. “Who do you belong to, kitten?”
“You, Master. Only you.”
“I’m going to cut you, and you’ll find pleasure in it because it pleases me to see you marked as mine. Suffer for me. Bleed for me.”
His thumb dug into my hand, lighting up the last pressure point he’d taught me that first night. In my mind, I could almost see each blazing bundle of nerves glowing like bonfires.
He leaned into me, hard, clamping his shoulder over my waist, his left hand seizing my ankles and pulling them back toward my knees. I squirmed against his grip just to enjoy the way he effortlessly held me still. The tip of the knife sank into my skin and I bucked harder beneath him. It felt like a red-hot brand. In fact, he had me trussed up like a cow, forced to accept the mark of its owner. That probably shouldn’t have turned me on as much as it did.
When he added his mouth to the torment, I lost it. I couldn’t help but thrash as a brutal climax tore through me. My body remembered every single bite. The glorious press of his
jaws. The brilliant bruises he’d left for days. It remembered and wanted more.
He flattened his tongue against me, his teeth scraping, his vicious groans torturing me. I couldn’t feel the blade, now, not with his mouth on me. Not with every muscle locked down in a rolling, devastating climax that didn’t end. I screamed until I didn’t have any voice left. I was going to die. Not from his knife. Because I needed him too badly.
My legs suddenly swung off the table as the world tilted crazily. His hands dug into my waist, shifting me where he wanted me. On my stomach, the table beneath me, I was finally going to get him inside me. My ankles and wrists were still bound, though I’d almost managed to tear the strip along the blade pinning the cotton to the table. He tugged on the strip around my neck, drawing it out to lie beside the one pinning my hands. The second knife slammed into the table, making me jump, pinning my head as he’d pinned my hands.
I heard his zipper and my back automatically arched, lifting my ass for him like a cat in heat. The tearing condom package made me whimper, trying to hurry him along.
He fisted his hand in my hair and drew my head back slightly, letting me feel the cotton tighten on my throat. “I control your breathing now, kitten. I control everything about you.”
Tearing the thin satin of my panties like tissue paper, he bared my ass to him. I lifted as much as I could on my tiptoes, straining to make it as easy for him to slide home as possible. His fingers lightly stroked down my crack to my core. “So wet. God, you’ll be the death of me yet.”
He parted my outer lips and pushed into me, a long, hard thrust that drove my breath out of me on a hoarse grunt. He ground me against the table, pushing so deep I couldn’t breathe. My head fell back and the cotton tightened more around my throat. Dangerous. So dangerous. Yet heady at the same time. I squirmed in vain, trying to get my legs apart so I could take him deeper. It felt so strange to be tight-legged against him, rather than wide open and vulnerable.
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