by Joey W. Hill
Another strike. This time she felt more of the sting, and warmth washed over the pain. The tightness in her lower belly was a different kind of trepidation. He trailed his fingertips along the crease between buttocks and thighs, a quick impression, but one that sent a surprising shudder through her. Another blow fell, making her jump again.
They started falling in regular intervals, mixed with caresses, and strokes. Some of them stung more than others. She struggled, yet let out a strange sound when his bare palm smacked the widest part of her buttock, hard enough it wobbled and sensation speared through her core. Her wings fluttered out from her back and then folded down tightly again at his husky admonishment.
“Stay still, snake-girl. You have to stay still for your punishment. You feel it more intensely that way. If you keep moving, I’ll add to the count.”
That was no part of the prize agreement, yet words to argue the point dried up as his fingertips slid down again. It gave her a needed break from the punishment, but she went even more still than he’d ordered as he teased the lips of her sex, stroking her as easily there as she might one of the newborn kids in the goatherd.
It felt as it had the other night, when she’d wanted to touch herself between the legs, only it was him touching her.
“You’re wet, all nice, slick and warm. Fuck, you’re killing me.” He followed that crease between thigh and buttock again, and it made her clench, which caused a hum of male pleasure.
“Lift your bottom up for me some. Lift into the blows.”
She did it without thought, only following her desire to feel more of this and ignore the alarm at her uncontrolled reaction to it. She wasn’t even counting. Shouldn’t she be counting, to make sure he didn’t take more than he’d won?
She flinched, because the next one hurt. “These last four,” he said in a voice of sensual menace, “are the ones that are the real punishment for wounding me without cause. They’ll hurt. But I’ll follow them up with something nice, if you ask me nicely.”
She bit back a weak retort and instead yelped as he smacked her with punishing intent, as promised. He held her down, hand in the middle of her back, pinning her wings as he gave her a healthy spanking that had her ass throbbing and her flinching at each blow, wanting to beg him to stop…somehow without stopping.
“Please…John. It…it hurts.”
“Yeah, it does. But it feels good, too, doesn’t it?”
She couldn’t answer that, because the answer was yes and that made no sense.
“Tell me to keep doing it. Ask nicely.”
She should shake her head, but her body was throbbing. It was like he’d woken something up in her with his kiss. For some reason, this was making that reaction even stronger, making her feel like she needed something he knew how to give her.
“Medusa.” She heard that growl in his voice, the tone of command that made her tremble. He was ordering her to say the words, yet it was what she wanted, too.
“Yes. Please. Please, John Pierce.”
More blows, and the stinging became true pain. On the last slap, she yelped and tried to get away, but his hand dropped, and he was stroking between her legs again.
“Open your legs farther.”
They slid apart, giving him more room, and she turned her face against her arm, mouth opening as her hips lifted into his touch and the spiraling feeling got tighter and tighter in her lower belly.
“Say ‘please’ again. I love to hear that word on your lips.”
“Please. Oh…Goddess, please…”
It flashed through her like lightning, white and strong and electric, her body almost levitating off his lap except for that one anchor point where he was rubbing and stroking, pinching, scraping her with his nails. He pressed his palm against her core at the height of the wave, moving, massaging, as she cried out, as the sensation concentrated there exploded outward, making her legs and arms go rigid, her lips part. The snakes wound tight around her head and upper arms, their constriction mirroring what was happening throughout her body. Something else inside her whipped loose and lashed every nerve ending.
As the sensation ebbed away, it kept changing its mind, returning in small spurts, seemingly called back by the slow massage he continued against her with his rough palm.
“John. John Pierce.” She spoke his name, because she knew not what else to say. A vague alarm tried to marshal itself in the aftermath of that feeling. This was what she’d seen when the priestesses had pleasured one another. What Ukrit had experienced when he took her…
Goddess, she’d never made that connection, never thought of it as the same, but a physical reaction was a physical reaction. Seduction or rape, what was the difference if the purpose was to take… But John Pierce had just given to her, not taken. Right? Yes and no.
“Hey, no. Don’t get lost in your head. Not after that. You stay right here or I’ll give you another spanking, this time with a switch that’ll drive anything else out of your mind.”
He turned her over. She would have panicked about him looking at her, but one, she had her eyes tightly closed, and two, he cradled her in his arms and tucked her against him so her head was beneath his chin, face buried in his neck. She was trembling, breathing like she’d been running.
“But that was what he…that feeling…he experienced that.”
“Yeah. When people have sex, they can climax. Release, orgasm, whatever you want to call it. But there’s the right way and the wrong way. He did it the wrong way. The fucking totally wrong way. What you just experienced, there was nothing wrong about that. That was pure and clean as this waterfall.”
She wanted to believe that. But she still had questions. Uncomfortable questions, particularly about the arousal she could feel beneath her.
“He…was able to do that because hurting me, taking from me…excited him. I think that was the main reason he…climaxed.”
“It’s like that for a sick bastard like him.”
“But…” No, she wasn’t going to ask it, because John Pierce was nothing like him. Right?
“I got excited from spanking you, from making it hurt some, feeling you struggle. Yeah, I did.”
Anxiety bloomed in her chest, and she would have moved away, but he held her. Not in an imprisoning sort of way; he just stroked her and made a soothing noise.
“Here’s the key, sweetheart. You enjoyed the spanking. You got aroused by me spanking you, taking over like that. I wasn’t taking anything you weren’t wanting to give. That’s the difference. If you’d been frightened, there would have been nothing arousing at all about that to me. I would have stopped, and held you the way I’m holding you now, making sure you knew you have a say in this. There’s nothing I’ll do to you that’s one-sided in the pleasure department. Got it?”
She was confused, and overwhelmed. As if he sensed it, he pressed a kiss to her crown, his arms loosening but still holding her, giving her the option of moving away. “Don’t worry about it right now. Just relax.”
She didn’t move away. She wanted to be in his lap, held like this. She didn’t want to question it, because she knew if she did, she’d move away. They stayed that way for a while, her breathing settling as she recovered from her explosive reaction. He was still firm beneath her, but not quite as hard. She found that reassuring, though she also wondered about giving him a release the way she had before. She wanted to. She was pretty sure she did.
It was too much to digest. At length, she sat up and moved to the rock next to him. She was close enough he stroked her hair, the snakes giving way for him. She clasped her arms around her bent knees, laying her head on them again as she’d done on the beach. She kept her eyes closed, but she wanted to open them. She wanted to look upon him, trust those “contacts” he’d mentioned. But once again, her desires were only frightening her, making her want to withdraw as much as she wanted to experience more. So she sat silently, averted her face and opened her eyes so she could gaze away from him, at the water.
JP wished she would look at him and trust the contacts. But he’d pushed her all he would for now. He let his fingertips drift over the back of her neck, between her shoulder blades, over the curve of a wing, and he felt the tension. He could imagine the troubled look in her gaze, those darker things he’d felt from her earlier finally close to the top.
“Will you tell me what was bothering you, my lady? Before we started sparring.”
She stiffened even more, her arms flexing in their hold on her knees. “How did you know that?”
She sounded so suspicious, as if she thought he could pull thoughts out of her head. He could, but not in the way she worried about.
“I’m good at figuring people out. What they’re thinking. And I was worried about you. Still am.”
She made a hard-to-interpret noise, but relented. “Do you remember what I said to you the other day?”
“I remember every single thing you’ve said to me, my lady. I hang onto your every word. You’ll have to give me more of a clue.”
She snuffled like she’d bit back a chuckle. “What was the word you used? Wiseass?”
He smiled. “That’s the one.” When her shoulders rose and lifted in a hard sigh, he sobered and molded his hand over one. “Please, my lady. What did you say to me?”
“That if you have come to serve me, your loyalty is misplaced. And you should go home. You said if I would let you look at me, I would see your true feelings, which is why I do not wish you to do so.”
“They are nothing to fear, my lady. Wasn’t I right about the spanking?”
“Yes. And no. It is something to fear. The way you make me feel terrifies me. You are a step ahead of me, seeing the way you wish this to go, and I am following blindly.”
“No, my lady. Not blindly. When you put your hand in mine, some part of you knew how it would feel, and you desired it. You have a formidable spirit and I have no wish to destroy it.”
“Yet I am an agent of destruction, am I not?”
His brow creased. “I don’t understand.”
She sighed and straightened, shifting away from him. She clasped the edge of the rock as she dangled her feet over it and stared into the depths. “Having a man force himself upon me was a betrayal beyond anything I could conceive,” she murmured. “Yet each time I’ve seen the horror when someone looked upon my face, it was a betrayal, too. A denial that I am one of them anymore, pushing me outside the boundaries of their lives…I know that sounds foolish.”
“No, my lady. I can see how it would feel that way. You were a young woman who enjoyed her friends and her life. You were inside a world, and suddenly you were shoved outside of it.”
“Yes. But that excuses nothing.” She swallowed. “Perhaps being harmed as I was can magnify other betrayals beyond their import. But I can think of nothing that would hurt me more than knowing you looked upon me and saw the evil that was summoned from my soul to garb me forever."
"I would see no such thing. You possess no evil.”
“How am I to take such a naïve comment? You are so persistent; you are a man who is like a boy with a crush.” She startled him with her sudden vehemence. “You have said it yourself, John Pierce. Every soul has darkness, and the gods may pull it from us on a whim, no matter how noble we think ourselves. You think all that rubble on the beach was something I was helpless to stop?”
Her tone went flat. “For many of them, perhaps most, I could have tried to stay hidden in the cliffs, until they tired of their hunt and left. But I grew angry and let them see the monster they expected to see. You asked me about how little there is to do here. In the beginning, I felt that way, too. And the rage became flavored by boredom, so sometimes when they came, I made it a sport, letting them think they had the upper hand for several days before tricking them into my gaze."
“You were just—”
“No.” She sighed. He was looking at her in his peripheral vision, so he registered the pale shape of her body. She was hunched over, her claws clutching the rock ledge as if she wanted to spear it with her grip. “You are a warrior,” she said. “You know that there are things that happen when violence takes you, bloodlust that can’t be undone, that opens dark places inside that sometimes grow so strong, they release urges you fear can never be called back. Yes?”
He swallowed. “Yeah.” There were no hidden corners in the dark side of human nature for someone who’d done the things he had. The problem was how that darkness could expand and hide the light. Every guy he knew who had served in some form of military or covert capacity had grappled with that in his own way. Some better than others.
“Please put the blindfold back on, John Pierce.”
He didn’t want to do so, but up until now she’d been keeping her lids lowered, her eyes on the rippling waters around her slowly moving legs, so he could gaze upon her profile. It was an important step forward, and he didn’t want to take any steps back by refusing her.
After he’d complied, he felt her shift. Her fingertips brushed his face before she rose and moved away. It sounded as if she’d perched on an outcropping of stone a few feet above him. He wondered if, for the first time, she’d used the blindfold not as a safety precaution, but as another way to shield herself.
“One day, not too long before you arrived, an old woman and her grandson came to the island. I had given myself fully to that dark place, because of something that had happened with a group of young people who’d preceded them by a hand span of weeks. I would no longer seek the best in myself. Instead, I was determined to destroy anyone who landed on my beach, whether their purpose was to hunt me or cruel, ignorant curiosity.”
“My lady…”
“You bring me pleasure, John Pierce. You see me as someone worthy of your protection. You will hear me out to find out differently.”
He set his jaw. “There is nothing you could tell me that would do that, my lady, but continue. I will not interrupt again.”
“I descended on their small boat, swooping down like a bird of prey. I landed before the grandson when he was pulling the boat out on the sand, and he looked up and met my eyes. It is an instinct, something we think nothing about.
“The grandmother cried out in horror. She told me they'd brought food for me, and gestured to the basket that proved it. She said it was an offering. She told me her grandson had felt pity for me, in addition to the usual curiosity. Only his curiosity was the true kind, not the fascinated disgust the others brought.”
If JP wasn’t already blindfolded, he would have closed his eyes against the ugliness he heard in her voice. But she wasn’t done.
She drew a painful breath. “She kept calling his name, hoping he would answer. They live in the stone a short time, I think. I could almost feel him trying to answer her, pleading with me to help and release him. I could not, and I was angry with her, with him, for their pity and foolishness. For being undeserving of my rage that anticipated only enemies coming to my shore.”
“My lady…” He wanted to close his hand over hers, but she stayed out of reach, refusing comfort. He could almost imagine her, sitting straight and tall above him like an eagle, her face a brittle mask, hiding the agony he heard beneath the incriminating words.
"When she realized I could not undo it, she asked me to turn her to stone, for he was her heart and soul, and she had no desire to live beyond him. I could have shown her mercy, and I did not. I had killed him without a second thought, yet her, pleading for her life to be taken, an old woman a step from the grave, I could not do it. I left her crying on the beach, close to where you camp now.”
She stayed silent another few moments and this time he left it unfilled. “In the morning,” she said at last, “I found her at his feet, barely alive, overcome by the stress, refusing to take food or drink. I knew she would not move from that spot. I put my hand under her chin to lift her face to look at me. She curled her fingers around my wrist right before she raised her gaze. Her last words were ‘thank you.’”
Her ha
rsh laugh was brimming with self-hatred, a sound that bit into his own memories. “Thank you for taking my only family from me. Thank you for killing me when all I brought you was kindness. That is what you have come to serve, John Pierce. If I were still the maiden I once was, unfairly despoiled by a selfish, violent man, I would feel the pleasure and confusion you give me without weight on my soul. But I am no longer that girl, and I will never be her again. Here, alone, in a comforting numbness of day to day chores, breathing in and out, nothing more expected of me than that, I could bear it. You wake me up and make me face that darkness. I deserve nothing you are giving me, even as I want it so much it hurts. It is unbearable.”
“Don’t. Goddamn it…”
He actually tried to grab her, anticipating her retreat. It was in the broken sound of her voice. The foolish move was propelled by his reaction to her pain, his desire that she not leave with it. His attempt failed. A flap of wings and she was gone.
Damn it. JP removed the blindfold and rubbed a hand over his face. His heart and gut ached with a desolation he understood far too well. For some things, there was no comfort to offer. There was only living with it.
At last he had an answer to why she’d seemed more amenable to his incursion on her island, more willing to give him a chance. Guilt was eating her alive. As she’d just said, he’d brought a double-edged sword.
The more he wanted to offer her, the more those gifts cut her to ribbons.
Chapter Twelve
She’d left him a problem that had no easy answer. He spent the rest of the afternoon mulling on it, thinking about the path he himself had walked to grapple with the things he’d done. He’d helped bring down drug rings, undermined dictators, and done a bunch of things, small and large, for which the stated purpose was making the world a better place. A few of the things he’d done had accomplished that. Maybe. But he’d begun to wonder if, in the cosmic scheme of things, the ultimate judgement wasn’t on those end results, but the shape of the soul once the goal was reached.