In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part II (Gods & Monsters, #2)

by Jenner, Carmen

Heat builds within me. Pleasure threatens to wash over me, but it’s just out of reach. Atticus reaches forward, his cock surging deeper, and grabs the chain connecting the cruel nipple clamps. Violet shifts, altering her pace as she fucks me. Her body is now flush with mine. The pressure on the clamps becomes too much. Her cries spur me on. I’m almost there. Atticus releases one clamp and then the other. Blood surges back to the sensitive flesh, and I scream around his dick as I explode into a million little pieces of light and pain, loss and desire. Violet’s body jerks on top of mine. Her cries are unmistakable. A beat later, Atticus spills thick jets of semen down my throat, and I swallow.

  Time stretches out around us. We’re sweaty and spent, but we’re just getting started.

  Atticus pulls free of my mouth, his long cock bobbing above us. Violet looks up at him with the kind of adoration that I hope to look at someone other than Ares with. He shoves his cock in Violet’s mouth, and she sucks him clean. I lift my head and lick the taut flesh of his balls. He groans. “We need to start with this next time.”

  Violet chuckles and sucks him harder, driving into me with every forward movement. Heat builds within my core again, and I have to resist the urge to bite down as another powerful orgasm slams into me and pulls me under. She continues to thrust as I ride out the sensations, stealing every last morsel of pleasure she’s willing to give.

  She kisses me, her tongue delving deeper, exploring my mouth. When we come up for air, she whispers, “I could lie here buried inside you all night, but I want to hear you scream.”

  An involuntary moan escapes me. She chuckles and bites my collarbone, her teeth sinking deep enough to bruise. I cry out, and Violet nips her way down my breasts and abdomen. She pulls out of me and sits. The dildos glisten with my juices. “So fucking hot.”

  She unfastens the buckles and tosses the device on the floor. Violet picks up the cane, and my pulse beats double-time.

  “What is your safe word?”

  “Swan, Mistress.”

  “Good.” She stands at the base of the bed. My legs tremor, tied in their restraints. They ache, and I long to be released, but that won’t happen. Not unless I use that fucking safe word. How is it that being in control, having all of the power in a scene is far more terrifying than having no choice at all?

  Violet begins tapping the cane lightly up and down my thighs and ass, desensitizing the flesh. The strokes still hurt, though they’re gentle. Just when I become frustrated that she’s holding out on me, Violet swings without warning, striking me across the ass. My breath hitches in my throat. My brain registers the initial sting, and then pain, white-hot and searing, erupts from the welt, radiating outwardly to my whole ass. Before I can open my mouth, she strikes again and again, this time on the other cheek, and the crease where my buttocks and thigh meet.

  Violet gets her wish.

  I scream. Over and over I scream until my voice is hoarse as her blows torture my inner thighs and ass, and then, when I’m a begging, sobbing mess, her cane lightly taps each nipple. It’s still hard enough to hurt, like the workup caning she used to desensitize my flesh, but it sends pleasure arcing through my pussy at the same time. She does it again, four lighter taps on each breast, but this time she rubs my clit with her free hand. It’s graceless and brutal, and it brings me right to the brink. She spreads my labia, and takes the very tip of the cane and taps my clit. It’s enough to send me over the edge. I come involuntarily. I come harder than I can ever remember coming before, and finally, finally, I sink into that black abyss that I’ve craved every second since Ares set me free. I float through the atmosphere, high above this room, above the world, and I don’t ever want to come down.

  “Incredible,” Atticus whispers. I’d forgotten he was even in the room.

  “Good girl,” Violet coos, rubbing my pussy, prolonging the warmth and my sensation of being pushed to the brink and allowed to tip over the edge. “You did so well, Camille.”

  “Please, no more. Please?” My voice is scratchy, my throat dry. I’m not even sure it’s audible. I can barely hear above the blood whooshing in my ears. “I can’t take it.”

  “I know, baby.” She smooths her hands over my inner thighs and down my calves. It hurts like a bitch, but there’s comfort in it too. “It’s okay. We’re done for the evening. I’m so proud of you.”

  Tears are still running down my cheeks. My limbs are both heavy and weightless at the same time, as if I’m made of bricks and feathers.

  Atticus shifts around the bed and glances down at Violet’s artwork of red and purple welts on my flesh. “Jesus Christ, that’s a beautiful sight.”

  He leans down and kisses his wife’s lips, and then bends farther forward and covers my pussy with his mouth. His groan resonates through me as he laps at the mess his wife created. I whimper. I can’t possibly take anymore, but he straightens and takes Violet’s face in his hands, pressing his lips to her in a violent, all-encompassing kiss. I smile and close my eyes, unable to stay awake any longer.

  “You can’t go to sleep just yet, baby girl. We need you to eat and drink something first,” Violet says, running her hands over my body from the soles of my feet to the roots of my hair. I crack an eyelid and find Atticus unbuckling my restraints. His sure, steady hands massage my limbs as he frees each one.

  I mutter an unintelligible reply. I don’t want to eat. I want to sleep. I want to dive headfirst back into that oblivion because that’s the only place I see my Sir, my Ares.

  When I open my eyes again, the bed is clear of Violet’s paraphernalia, and I’m beneath the covers, sandwiched between Atticus and Violet. All three of us are naked, and it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve seen Atticus without a three-piece suit. I roll onto my back, the welts on my ass smarting as I do so. Gray hair covers Atticus’ chest before thinning to his stomach. His arms are well defined—his abs, too. My hands travel hard planes of muscle. There isn’t an ounce of fat on him, and he’s in better shape, and is more virile, than most twenty-year-olds. I look at Violet, whose dark amethyst hair spills across the pillow like an angry storm cloud. Her pale eyes are on me, and her smile is bright and adoring. She hooks her thigh over my leg and her husband wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me closer. I offer up a sleepy smile, feeling safe, protected, and treasured, everything a submissive needs from her Dominants.

  So why does my heart still give a little lurch when I think about the Dom who gave me away?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Pet

  By the following Thursday, I’m settling into my routine with Violet and Atticus, and also into life without Ares. Violet’s burlesque show inspired me, and I met with the New York City Ballet’s director to discuss my future with the company. I didn’t get the outcome I’d hoped for, but it is the best I could have expected. I will train with the internship students at a starting level, and hopefully, if my body can keep up, I can join the roster as a dancer in the corps de ballet, but I have to get my fitness back before that is even remotely a possibility.

  In the meantime, I am getting as much practice in as I can, and the company have been kind enough to allow me to use the theatre after the matinee, only because the owner and my father are apparently old golfing buddies.

  I finish stretching and come off the stage, wandering through the empty halls, trying to spark a memory, something familiar, but nothing comes. I’m not ever getting back to dance on that stage, not as a principle. I’ve forgotten too much, and the more I push my body, the more frustrated I become. Dimitri has been good at helping me train, but if the company found out he was overexerting himself, he’d be in a lot of trouble. Besides, this is something I have to do on my own.

  Penny—the pianist who played for me as I rehearsed—exits the restroom. “I have to go. Just got an emergency call from my husband.”

  “Oh no, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, Dwayne just got home and apparently he doesn’t know how to use the convention oven. Men.” She rolls her eyes and wr
aps her scarf around her neck. “Are you sure you’re okay to get back to your apartment?”

  “Yeah, I got that security detail, remember?” I don’t. Since Maximus beat the crap out of my father’s hired goon, Christian, my father fired him and his partner. Stahl has been unusually quiet, and Max? Well, I haven’t returned any of his calls since I left his apartment the morning after our train-wreck sex. I miss him as a friend, but he can’t give me what I need. It’s better this way. I don’t want to give him hope for a future with me when there is none.

  I no longer have a security detail, but I don’t need it. Ares doesn’t want me. He’s made that very clear. It’s been a month since he let me go, and I am just as lost now as I was when I first ran down those stairs. I visit the apartment he kept me in several times a week. I don’t go inside, of course. It’s now property of the state, and I don’t know why I keep getting drawn back there, but every walk I take around the busy streets of Manhattan ends the same—with me in that place, staring up at the cell I was set free from, and one I long to be let back into.

  I pull up my leg warmers and head to the dressing rooms. I’m going to be late. Atticus and Violet don’t like it when I’m late. I get punished when I’m late. Which is why I aim to never show up on time.

  Atticus will be pissed. He’ll beat me, fuck me, make me beg, make me come, and I’ll curl up with my head in his lap while he tends to my aftercare. Often, he’ll let Violet beat me, spank me, and do the fucking while he plays with her pussy. Then I’m forced to eat her out until she comes all over my face. I love the way she lets go, as if I have the power to drive her wild.

  I take my time heading to the dressing room. I check my makeup in the mirror, add a coat of dark ruby red lipstick, just the way Violet likes, and glance up.

  I meet pitch-black eyes in the mirror, and his lips quirk up in a smile I’d know anywhere.

  “Hello, Pet.”

  He’s here. He came back for me.

  “Oh my god,” I breathe, rising from my seat. I turn to stare at him. Am I crazy? Did I finally get pushed too far over the edge, and my fractured mind is conjuring him up out of thin air now? Sir. My Sir.

  “Just Sir will be acceptable.”

  I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him tight as great sobs wrack my body. “Sir.”

  I love you, Sir.

  Why did you let me go, Sir?

  I breathe him in, relishing the strong peppery smell of his aftershave.

  “Have you been a good girl, Pet?”

  I nod. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Liar. You’ll pay for that later, but first, let me look at you.” He steps back, and his gaze rolls over me from head to toe and back again. “Still just as fuckable as ever.”

  “I was so lost without you.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you doing here? Why did you come?”

  “Because I need you, Pet.”

  “You need me, or you need to sell me?” I spit, and a beat later his hand is around my throat as he shoves me up against the cinderblock. This feels too familiar. I’m hit with déjà vu, and then it all comes flooding back: a stranger backstage, watching me as Dimitri spins us around in circles. The tattoos at his neck and sleeves, and later in my dressing room—in this very room—my makeup removed. I glance up from my false lashes in their little case, and I meet pitch-black eyes.

  I know you.

  I claw at his hands, desperate for breath, though his grip is not so tight, not as tight as the last time we were here, and his hand squeezed my throat as he slammed my head into the cinderblock.

  “I remember this,” I whisper, searching his gaze, attempting to piece more of this fragmented puzzle together. “I know you.”

  “And I know you, Pet.” Ares seals his mouth over mine. He thrusts his tongue inside and his hands roam my body, seeking entry to my panties. His nails dig into the silk of my tights, ripping and tearing. My flesh stings with the violence, but I love every second. I break free of his lips and moan as he yanks my leotard to the side. Then his fingers are inside me, fucking me with brutal force, and I beg and cry and plead with him to make me come.

  “Shut up. When you come, it will be on my cock. Do you understand, Pet?”

  “Yes, Sir. Please?”

  “Have you missed me, my greedy little whore? Did your cunt enjoy fucking the cop, or that pompous, fraudulent couple at sub?”

  I stare up at him, both terrified and excited that he knows exactly what I’ve been up to.

  “How did you—”

  “You’re mine, Pet. You don’t make a move without me knowing exactly what you’re doing, or, should I say, who you’re doing. Violet and Atticus, though? That surprised me. I thought you had more sense.”

  “More sense?”

  “It’s what they do, little one.” He slips his fingers from my pussy and cups my face in his hands. I can smell my arousal, feel the evidence of it on my cheek. Ares searches my gaze, imploring me to see the truth. “They take in young, impressionable girls like you who want to be hurt and fuck them, use them, until they’re all used up.”

  “No. They’re not like that.” Tears sting my eyes because his words hurt. Just being in the same room as him hurts, but I will not cry. He’d enjoy that too much. “They helped when . . . when you let me go.”

  “I set you free to save you from this life. I didn’t do it so you could run to the nearest Dom and beg him to beat you.”

  “You broke me, Ares! You showed me this whole new world, and you left me on the outskirts of it, banging on the city gates, pleading with you to let me back in.”

  “I sent you away so you’d return to your safe little life, but you never were very good at doing what you were told, now, were you?”

  “Fuck you.” I shake my head. “I hate you. I should report you to the police.”

  “You should, but you won’t, because as much as you hate me, you love me too.” He places a hand on my chest and presses me back against the cinderblock. “Spread your legs for me, little one. I’m going to fuck you ’til you’re raw, and remind you what serving a real Sir feels like.”

  He unzips his pants and pulls his cock free. I shove the leotard to the side. For a beat, he just studies my face, and then a predatory smile flits across his impressive features and he lunges, shoving me up against the wall. His hands come under my ass, lifting me. I wrap my legs around his hips, and he shoves inside me without warning. I cry out.

  “God, how I’ve missed that sound.” He growls, driving his cock into me. “I’ve missed your nails in my back, and the feel of your slick pussy milking my dick.”

  “Please, Sir,” I pant, rocking my hips in time with his. “Fuck me harder.”

  His lip quirks up in the corner and he drives in faster, rougher, punishing me with every thrust. He sinks his teeth into my breast over and over, sharp little nibbles that cause pain to meld with the pleasure of finally having my Sir inside me again. He pulls away. Cool air from the unit on the wall caresses my wet flesh, and when I glance down, I find a hickey in the shape of a love heart.

  “So fucking mine,” he whispers as his thrusts set a punishing rhythm that has my heart tripping all over itself. His balls slap against my ass. The concrete grazes my back, rubbing me raw. It hurts, but it’s the best kind of pain.

  “I missed you so much, Sir.”

  “I missed you too, Pet.” Each word is punctuated with another thrust, sending my frayed nerves into overdrive. The friction of our bodies, the brutality with which he takes me, and the sweetness of having my Sir fuck me like a goddamn animal builds to a point where I’m teetering right on the edge, but I hold it at bay because there is nothing more beautiful and torturous than waiting. “Now be a good girl and come on my cock.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I cry as I let go. My muscles clamp down around him. My back arches and bows, and my nails sink into his hard back, clawing, marring. He’s not the only one who gets to mark his territory.

  Are
s grabs my face. His gaze bores into mine. He shoves his fingers in my mouth, and I suck them as I clench my pussy around his cock. He drives into me, mercilessly, and grunts, “Mine, so fucking mine.”

  “Yes, Sir. All yours. Only yours.”

  A primal roar rips free from his throat as thick bursts of come spill into me.

  He leans forward, panting. I bury my face in his neck and breathe him in, unable to really believe that he’s here with me. He came back for me. My body protests as he pulls free and sets me back on my feet. I gaze up into eyes as dark and fathomless as his heart.

  “Y-you left me,” I choke on my sadness.

  “If I remember correctly, you’re the one who ran from me.”

  “You let me go.”

  “And it was a mistake.”

  He’s here, he’s real. He hasn’t thrown me away after all, but it still begs the question. “Why didn’t you come for me sooner?”

  “And do what, Pet? Kill your bodyguards, the maid, the cop?”

  I shake my head. “You wouldn’t have had to kill them. I would have come freely.”

  “And will you come freely now?”

  “Of course. I need to get my things, I need to pack, but I would follow you anywhere, Sir.”

  “You can’t go home. You can never return there, not if you want to come with me now. You can never see your loved ones again.”

  I don’t have any loved ones. Only you.

  I swallow hard and close my eyes. I don’t care about any of them. My father, my ex-fiancé, Brigid, Maximus—I’d give them all up for my Sir, but there is one heart I never want to break again by leaving . . . Dimitri’s. I spare a thought for Violet and Atticus too. Will they know my Sir has come back for me? Will they care or will they be too busy finding their next baby girl?

  “Will you come, Pet?” He holds out his hand, and silence settles heavily in the air between us. What he’s really asking is, “Am I enough?”

  I give him a small smile and place my hand in his. Ares brings it to his mouth. A grin, as mischievous as it is decimating, plays on his lips, and he kisses me, licking and nipping all the way up to my shoulder where he sinks his teeth into my flesh. I shiver, my nipples bead, and I close my eyes and float, all my cares forgotten. I’d follow him anywhere. He’s not just my Sir; he’s my home. My harbor, my freedom, and my shackles. He tethers me to his side with barbed wire, and I’d willingly wrap myself in it, endure the wicked prongs that cut deep enough to wound if it meant he’d never leave again. He’s everything.