by Ann Jacobs
The mere anticipation of this scene had aroused her. By the time Mistress Magda had laced her into this sparkling silver lamé corset so tightly that she could barely breathe, secured her hair in a ponytail at the crown of her head and rouged her exposed nipples, her cunt had been wet and swollen. Ready for her master.
“You may rise, slave. Have you prepared yourself for me?”
“Yes, Master.” Amber made her voice quiver, in accord with the script they’d rehearsed.
Cole reached out with his free hand and examined her swollen slit. “You are wet. But I believe you forgot at least one of my orders. Did you shave my cunt?”
“N-no, Master. I forgot. I am sorry.”
When he lifted the flogger, she braced for the strike that never came. “I do not wish to mark my slave’s tender skin. Not yet. Attendants! Prepare my slave for my attention.”
Mistress Magda and a naked male sub moved out of the shadows, grasped Amber’s outstretched arms and lifted her onto a chrome-plated table. They hadn’t rehearsed this. At the sparkle in Cole’s eyes, she knew he had planned it for her pleasure, thinking of her even on this night that was so important to him.
It underscored to her what she was learning. That she was important to him. Perhaps, for once, she’d found a relationship where her master cared for her as much as she adored him. And it made her realize many things about herself, one of them being that she was worthy of being loved that way, for she loved with her whole heart as well.
A delicious frisson of anticipation shot through Amber as Magda clamped fur-lined handcuffs onto her wrists and stretched her arms back, high over her head, immobilizing them by hooking the cuffs over the pole at the end of the table. Her master arranged her legs in stirrups before ordering the sub to secure them with Velcro fasteners around each thigh, her knees and her calves.
“Shave her cunt. Nick it and I will flay you within an inch of your life,” Cole told the sub.
“Yes, Master Cole.” Amber felt the warm wet lather and then the scraping of an old-fashioned blade as the sub began to shave her already aroused pussy lips.
Cole stepped up beside her and stroked her cheek. He toyed with the sensitive skin of her earlobes, then started a sensual massage that began on her throat and moved on into the exposed valley between her breasts. “Slave, I order you not to come until I give you permission.”
He moved his hand to either side to caress the swell of her naked breasts. “So soft. So beautiful. So mine.”
Her master’s most innocent caress aroused her more than the sensual scraping of the sub’s razor over her mound, her pussy lips and around her ass. She closed her eyes, let the music and Cole’s touch carry her somewhere safe, somewhere only the two of them existed, apart from the sub, Mistress Magda and the unseen audience in the theater above them.
By the time Cole found her nipples and began teasing them to tight, hard points Amber was squirming. Pressure built in her belly, her cunt, her ass. She had to come but she did not, would not disobey her master’s order despite the burning need that intensified when he threaded a long gold chain through her nipple rings and arranged the ends over the lacings of her corset.
Bending, he kissed one taut nipple then the other, before ordering the sub away and stroking her mound below the pointed front of the corset. “Oh yeah, that’s the way I like my pussy.” Bending, he tongued her where his hand had been, then moved lower to suck the rigid nub of her clit between his teeth.
When he raised his head and looked up at her, it was all she could do not to beg him to continue, to lick her cunt, suck her clit and lap the honey from her pussy lips until she screamed for mercy. Instead she managed a breathy, “Thank you, Master,” before he pinched her clit between his thumb and middle finger and attached each end of the chain to the small gold ring in the piercing she’d had done while her brand had still been healing.
It felt…incredible. There was pain where the weight of the chain dragged on her engorged flesh, but there was also pleasure—incredibly arousing sensation that flowed throughout her body as her master manipulated the chain.
Her breathing grew ragged. Her pulse raced. Her cunt clenched and her juices flowed, turning her pussy lips wet and slippery to her master’s touch. The gentle movement of the chain intensified her arousal. God but she was desperate to come.
“Please, Master, fuck me now.” Her words came out raw, ragged. She was barely able to speak as she struggled to hold back her climax.
Cole tugged sharply on the chain that connected her nipple rings with the one in her clit. “Not yet, my precious slave.”
Bending, he brushed his lips across hers, at the same time laying a hand over the lacings of her corset, tilting the platform where she was bound until she lay upside-down, her face level with his crotch. The bindings on her legs held her firmly in place. “Suck my cock.” His hot breath tickled her freshly shaved cunt as he looked down between her legs.
He moved closer, his crotch in line with her mouth. Greedy to taste him, she caught the hidden snaps that closed the front seam of his leather jock with her teeth and tugged until it popped open. No longer tightly confined, his gorgeous cock sprang through the opening.
It didn’t matter that the amphitheater was full or that hordes of guests were watching. She needed to taste her master, show him… She reached out with her tongue and caught the creamy drop of lubrication that glistened in his slit, then opened her lips as he flexed his hips and started to fuck her mouth.
She loved showing the world he was her master, giving him pleasure in every way he might demand of her. His flesh felt smooth and slick on her tongue as she swirled it all around his massive cock head. Greedy for more, she took him deep down her throat, swallowing convulsively around his rock-hard flesh.
Most of all, she loved listening to him groan when she serviced him this way, a primal blend of agony and ecstasy. When she felt a tremor in his massive thighs, she realized he was close to climaxing, that holding back cost him tremendous effort. It gave her a sense of power, of worth, that she was able to effect such a strong reaction in her powerful master.
Oh gods above. She was going to come. There wasn’t a thing she could do to hold back, even though when she came she knew he’d punish her.
He had bent his head and was licking her pussy, tugging with his teeth at the ring in her clit. His chest brushed against her nipples when he moved. When he sank two fingers into her pussy and another into her ass, she couldn’t hold back any longer. She swallowed convulsively around his cock, took him deeper.
She sucked him hard, as though she could consume him. She loved his taste and texture and what he was doing to her.
She loved him and the sensations he’d aroused until it felt…
Incredible. Her cunt and ass clamped down on his fingers. It all felt so good she hurt, as wave after wave of ecstasy flowed through her. Limp, half-conscious now, she only vaguely registered the fact that he’d turned the platform, until he flexed his knees and impaled her.
“I’m tired of gentle. I know you are too.” His hands easily spanning her corseted waist, Cole steadied her. With every thrust of his hips, each hard stroke of his cock within her swollen cunt, she came again. And again. Finally, when she thought she couldn’t come again, he came in her pussy, those hot bursts of life taking her to yet another climax.
She went limp, her eyes closed as she concentrated on the sensation of his cock inside her, still trembling in the aftermath of his climax. It was as though there were only the two of them, alone despite the observers looking on.
“Look at me,” he ordered quietly.
When she did, she saw incredible tenderness in his expression. She had to answer his unspoken words, so she raised his palm and kissed it. She loved tasting the clean, salty essence of his sweat.
“Master, I—”
A shouted warning invaded their private moment. Then came an otherworldly shriek followed by sounds of fighting in the hallway outside the door. “Master, tha
t sounds like Mistress Ciel.”
“Stay here.” Cole strode toward the door. “I’ll take care of this.”
“Amber!”
She heard Ciel’s voice, somewhere between a plaintive wail and a threatening roar, the Mistress warring with the pathetic soul she’d become. “You’re mine. You’re…”
Chapter Five
“No, Ms. Ciel, you can’t go in there.”
“Fuck you.” A whip cracked. Somebody screamed. Another crack. Feet pounded on the marble floor as people got scared and started running. “My brother betrayed me, and now I’m going to make both of them pay.”
Quickly, Cole loosened Amber’s bonds and lifted her off the modified cross. “Stay here.” He shoved her into a darkened corner of the dungeon and strode to the door.
Fuck it all. He’d have the head of the club employee he’d set to watching Ciel. Damn it, he had personally given her enough medication that she should have slept through the night. She must have gotten hold of something from Ulrica’s bag, something that had her wired tighter than a guitar string.
It was clear that his sister had completely lost it, but there was no way he was going to let her injure Amber. He opened the door to the dungeon, stepped out into the hall. “Ciel, put the whip down.”
“You…” She lifted the whip, cracked it, flicked it with her wrist and wrapped the last three feet or so of its five-foot length around Cole’s bare legs. While he struggled to get free, she dropped the whip and fled, her long black hair snarling around her like Medusa’s. The expression in her eyes in the split second she looked at him would have curdled the blood of a zombie.
“Show’s over,” Cole shouted to the audience as he came back into the observation room. “Welcome to No Bounds. Follow the rules and have fun. The dungeon mistress tonight is Mistress Magda.”
He stepped back into the shadows and took Amber in his arms. “Ciel has lost it, sweetheart. We have to go find her.”
* * * * *
Three moons shone in the night sky. Three.
Where the fuck am I going?
Disoriented, Ciel whirled first one way, then the other. The neon lights of bars and clubs along the Street of Pleasure blinked, blinding her to everything but her quest.
Kill. Gonna kill Dax. He tricked me. Wanted Amber. Not me. Amber was my friend. Now gone. Now Cole’s slave. Wrong.
Ciel raised the dagger she’d taken from the equipment room, waved it at a couple of passersby.
Yeah right. I’m crazy. Crazy, you got it.
“What’s with you, lady?”
“Moons. Three of them.”
The taller of the two men laughed. “Yeah, Obsidion’s got three moons. Weird when you first go out at night, until you get used to it.”
Ask him.
“Jail. I want to find the jail.”
“That way, lady. Take a right once you get past Pierced Princes and you’ll see it at the end of the street. Convenient, since half the Prince’s customers end up there at one time or another.”
Almost there.
Tucking her dagger into the belt of her robe, she took off for the blinking Pierced Princes sign.
“You could have managed a thank you, lady.”
The man’s sarcasm was lost on the wind.
Outside the jail, Ciel paused. Had to collect herself. Couldn’t rouse suspicion. She paused and smoothed her hair. Couldn’t look like a madwoman.
She straightened the folds of the white silk robe she’d snatched along with the dagger and schooled her expression into one of sublime composure as she opened the jail door and stepped inside. “I want to visit with Dax Petrone,” she said, making sure she sounded not like a furious Domme but like a sweet, compliant little sub. Like Amber.
* * * * *
They’d lost precious minutes, but they’d have ended up thrown in jail if they’d gone out into the street in the clothes they’d worn for their BDSM scene. Cole and Amber paused outside No Bounds, looked in both directions. A drunk stumbled out of one of the bars. A pair of tourists embraced outside a sex toy shop, their faces made surreal by the light of the neon signs.
Not a sign of Ciel. Anywhere. Amber tugged at Cole’s sleeve. “Would she have gone to one of the other clubs, Master?”
“Not likely.”
“Why don’t you ask those guys if they saw her? They look as though they’re still reasonably sober.”
Cole followed Amber’s gaze to the men outside the toy store. “All right. Let’s do that.” Hurrying now, he dragged Amber along, stopping to scoop her up and toss her over one shoulder when he realized she couldn’t keep up his pace. “Sirs,” he yelled as the two men started to amble toward the Leather Gallery.
They paused at the sound of Cole’s voice. One of them turned “Yeah?”
“We’re looking for a woman—”
“Did she have wild black hair? A white dress? Was she actin’ crazy?”
That sounded like Ciel, all right. “Where did you see her?”
“Right outside the new club. She wanted to know where the jail is. When I told her, she took off in that direction like a bat out of hell. Bitch didn’t even say ‘thanks’. Hey, don’t anybody around here know how to say ‘thank you’?”
“Sorry, man,” Cole yelled. “Got to hurry—trying to prevent a murder.”
A little winded after the three-block sprint, Cole set Amber on her feet outside the jail door. “Wait here,” he ordered, but as he swung the door open, a body came through it, almost like a flying missile.
“My God, what’s going on in there?”
Cole tore his gaze from the living missile—a guard from the look of his uniform—and looked at Amber. “I’m afraid it’s Ciel.”
He was more certain than ever that his sister had taken something—probably more of the stimulants Ulrica had been giving her to break her out of the coma. Ordinarily Ciel would have been no match for a burly prison guard like the one he’d just seen flying out the door.
“I’m going in there. She’ll listen to me.” Amber stepped into the jail, certain Cole would stop her if she gave him half a chance. She followed the sounds into a cell block whose door had been left ajar.
There was Ciel, standing over a bloody body, her black hair in wild disarray. A madwoman who had once been Amber’s best childhood friend.
“All the gods damn your black heart,” Ciel screamed, not at Amber but toward the prone body on the floor. A body that was obviously beyond response.
The scene before Amber made her stagger back into the security of Cole’s arms. Over and over, like one possessed, Ciel plunged a dagger into the bloodied body of Dax Petrone. She stabbed wildly at any of the guards who gathered the courage to try to stop her.
“Ciel, listen to me.” Amber worked hard to keep her tone mild, soothing. She hoped her friend had retained enough of her sanity to listen.
Ciel whirled, madness in her eyes. Her hands were bloody. Fresh blood dotted the pristine silk of her gown. “I’ll kill you too,” she spat, lunging not toward Amber but around her, toward Cole.
“No, Ciel. You’re sick. Give me the dagger.” Cole looked desperate, sounded tortured, but he moved forward and caught the wrist of Ciel’s hand that held the dagger. “Please.”
Why were those guards just standing there? Amber grabbed for Ciel’s free hand but found herself slammed against a wall as though she weighed no more than a baby. “Help. Help Cole. Can’t you see she’s going to kill him?”
“She already got one of us. No way we’re gonna invite the crazy woman to kill us too.”
Amber saw that Cole now had Ciel pinned to the floor, but she was stabbing wildly at him, her strength apparently increased exponentially by madness. Desperate to do something, Amber turned back to the jail guards. “Then use your guns.”
Her pulse raced with fear as Cole continued to struggle for control of the dagger.
One of the guards shrugged. “Don’t have any. The constable doesn’t allow weapons in the jail.”
> Amber tried to get close enough to snatch the dagger from Ciel, but she felt a guard’s hands at her waist, setting her out of harm’s way.
“Get out of the way and let us deal with this.” A guard moved in, grabbing Ciel around the knees to stop her from bucking. The other one grabbed her arm and held it for long enough for Cole to knock the dagger from his sister’s hand. He caught her shoulders then and forced her facedown on the floor.
“Quick. Snap those irons on her before she breaks away. Fuck, the woman’s got the strength of two grown men.” The guard who was restraining Ciel’s legs swore as he dodged a series of vicious kicks. Cole managed to hold her down only by pressing his substantial weight on her chest while keeping her arms pinned over her head. Even after the guard snapped handcuffs and leg shackles onto her wrists and ankles, Ciel kept striking out, screaming obscenities and threatening to kill them all.
This blood-spattered woman who had lost her last tenuous grip on reality wasn’t the Ciel Amber knew. She wasn’t the friend who’d become Amber’s anchor after her close-knit family had been wrenched away.
Still, she couldn’t help seeing remnants of that friend. It was Ciel’s high cheekbones, her regal-looking nose, that dimpled chin and the slender neck that Amber had always thought should wear the right Dom’s collar of possession. But the eyes—wild eyes full of hate that watched every move as the guards zipped the man she had killed into a body bag—those eyes didn’t belong to the Ciel she’d known.
Or maybe they did. Maybe this unrestrained violence had been part of Ciel’s nature for a long time and had worsened little by little, the way an addict’s need for drugs grew exponentially over time. Amber had been drawn into that violent lifestyle, sucked in by her own vulnerability and her belief that she had to do something—anything—to deserve love.
“Come,” Cole said after he’d talked to the head guard at the jail. When Amber hesitated, he took her hand and spoke as softly as if he were calming a frightened child. “There’s no more we can do now. Ciel will have to stay.”