The adrenaline surging through my veins is almost painful, sharpening every sensation. I open my eyes wider, as if seeing the details of this room in stark relief, seeing all of its details and imperfections, can help me escape. I jerk my wrists and ankles against the ties binding me to the bench, over and over, but the effort is futile.
I try to escape.
But there is one humiliation that I can’t possibly admit to him—me, the girl who spit at his feet.
And that is the fact that some small, terrible, filthy part of me wants this. Craves this.
Why does it feel so fucking good to be strapped down like this and stripped of all my agency? Why does it feel so pure, this moment, with my ass poised in the air and my pussy on full display? The air circulating through the room reminds me of how exposed I am every single moment. It reminds me that he could expose even more of me, and I would be powerless to stop him.
I suck in another ragged breath through the crumpled fabric of his tie as he positions himself next to me. The space around him seems to heat up. He’s pissed. I won that battle, at least—I got a rise out of him. I know it even if he won’t admit it. And why would he? He’s Cassian Locke, and I’m no one. An ass to be punished. But I can feel it in the air like you can feel a cold front whipping across the city, block by block.
“Forty strokes. For your disobedience.”
He’s crazy. He’s fucking crazy. He brought me here and told me what to do, and now he thinks he can punish me for not listening to him? What did he expect when he had his people drag me up all those flights of stairs—that I would just lay down and take it?
I buck against the bonds, trying fruitlessly to get free as my brain computes exactly what that means—forty strokes. He does not have a light hand, Cassian Locke. Not at all. My previously spanked flesh still smarted this morning when I woke up. This has to be worse. There’s no question about it.
The first strike lands without warning, in a blaze of heat and a pain that feels white, then red, and then smolders as his hand comes down on the other side. Again, again, again. It doesn’t matter that I pull at my wrists and shout incoherently into the tie. The blows are as inevitable as the sunrise and the sunset, and my ass is its own sun. It’s on fire, like embers about to explode into flame.
The first ten land, fifteen, twenty, and he has not varied his rhythm, as if he wants to show me how relentless he can be. Well, he has shown me. I can feel it rocketing through every inch of me. It would make my teeth knock together if they weren’t held hostage by his tie.
All at once, it ends.
I find myself heaving in labored breaths through the tie, my entire body trembling. All my focus is on the searing pain in my flesh. It pulls my mind away from every other sensation.
Except…the craving.
As the moments tick by, I become aware of another humiliating fact.
I’m rocking back and forth on the bench, as much as my bound wrists and ankles will allow. It isn’t much, and it’s certainly not enough to allow my clit to gain any traction on the leather surface, but oh, my God, this is what I have become.
It takes all the effort in the world to hold still, but my face feels as red as my ass must be. And there’s no way he could have missed those movements.
Could he?
I hold as still as I can, though I’m still trembling, praying somehow that I will fade into the black leather bench and disappear.
Instead, he offers proof that he can, in fact, see me.
It’s a steady hand on the reddened flesh, and it’s rubbing in slow circles. I can tell that it’s not meant to be comforting—he’s testing me. I want to press back into it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Not because more pressure will feel better, but because it will feel at all, send another spike of pure sensation ricocheting through me.
Cassian Locke does not offer any congratulations for surviving his onslaught, or even a comment. He rubs first one cheek, then the other, pressing different spots with his fingertips. It seems impossible to be so attuned to his touch when it’s a burning expanse of skin, but I feel every touch.
I also feel the desire building between my legs, and a horrified thought pops into my mind. What if I’m wet? What if I’m leaking onto the bench? What if he sees that when he lets me up?
He should let me up any moment now, and I wriggle a bit in my restraints, trying to encourage him. He’s punished me. He should let me go back to my room—my cell.
His hand lifts away from my skin, and I wait for him to come around to release my wrists.
His footsteps moving behind me make my heart sink.
There’s a clink of metal somewhere in the corner of the room. His footsteps approach, and then a strip of black leather swings into my vision, dangling from his hand.
It’s a belt.
The sight of it deposits a cold, twisting fear in the pit of my gut, along with something else I can’t explain and can’t begin to process right now. I only know that this is going to be worse. This is something to be afraid of.
All of my soul curls around the silence in the room. All of my mind goes with it.
I can’t see him. I can’t read his eyes, or even guess what he’s thinking, but as the moment draws out, I swear I feel…hesitation.
That feeling splinters and shatters on the ground when he voices his next words.
“Four strokes.”
Four. It’s possible I’ll hate the number four for the rest of my life. Or maybe, shamefully, I’ll love it. I give one last tug at my arms, at my ankles, and I am still bound. And again, I am reminded that there’s no way out.
I tense, waiting for the belt to land, and that’s when Cassian Locke laughs.
I’ve never heard such a dangerous laugh. How can his voice be so smooth, yet so barbed, at the same time? It makes me hotly furious. Furious that he’s laughing at me. Furious that a part of me likes this. No—it’s not as simple as that. I hate it, but I need it.
I’m completely helpless to say anything, so I have to wait for him, feeling his power throbbing through the room with every breath he takes.
“Do you think I’ll dispense this punishment just like that?” He traces a finger down the small of my back, and I automatically arch for him, falling deeper into that abject humiliation, an embarrassment I don’t think I’ll be able to forget for the rest of my life. “Not while you’re fighting me. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
“Why?” I retort, the word completely garbled by the tie.
“It’s not enough that you bear it,” he says, as if this is obvious. “The punishment is in the offering.”
The words ring in my head, turning over and over, folding back in on themselves, and somehow they’ve caught my attention. I don’t want to offer myself to him. I don’t. He brought me here. I didn’t choose to come here. My own answers come fast and hard and they are all lies, lies to the core.
Because I can feel my body responding to him. To the scent of him in the air. To the space he fills as if he owns it, as if he owns me, and in this moment he does. The wet heat pooling between my thighs is proof enough of that.
The battle rages. Mind and body, back and forth, one over the other, a whirlwind.
And in that whirlwind, I forget.
Forget to be tense, to brace myself for the inevitable lash of pain, the stripe of fury that will fall whether I want it to or not. I forget. I am supposed to be endlessly vigilant, I am supposed to delay this as long as possible, I am supposed to fight until the bitter end.
But I forget.
“Good girl.”
The words stab into the center of my mind, a shock that brings me back to myself—wait, wait—
The belt comes down across my ass, a bright-white pain leaving a thick band. He’s caught me off-guard. I can’t stop the strangled scream that rumbles in my throat but is hushed by the tie. I can’t stop the tears.
“One,” he counts.
10
Cassian
I need dis
tance. I need air. I need light.
In the hall I snap my fingers for Mika, who will take her back to the cell and administer any necessary care. It will only be soothing to a point. It will only be kindness for a fleeting moment. The purpose is to make her ready for tomorrow’s session. That’s all.
I should have stayed to reinforce the lesson I was trying to teach, when the even lines of the belt were imprinted on her skin. It would have been according to every protocol I’ve established for myself over the last five years.
I’ve built them up so fucking carefully, so meticulously, these rules. And yet I stood there afterward, holding that belt in my hand, breathing hard.
So was Justice, through the tie I’d gagged her with. My own tie from around my own neck. That was when it started—when I took off my own tie, part of my uniform, part of my armor—and used it to silence her. God, they were delicious, those sounds she made through the cloth.
It woke me up.
I had been sleeping, but now I am fully, painfully, horribly awake.
The housekeeper shies out of the way when she sees me coming. I feel like I must be thundering, my footsteps loud, but this place isn’t meant to amplify anyone’s comings and goings. That’s how my father liked things. Discreet and quiet, unless he was in the room with a contract. Then they were as loud or as quiet as he liked.
And never once did I see him react to a contract this way. Not once. That has always been the guiding principle of this work: never get involved. Never get attached. Never get emotional.
I don’t know if lust is an emotion, but it has completely taken me over.
My cock is throbbing, leaking, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from breaking into a run.
I’m almost to my room when Lysander saunters out of his, a delighted sneer twisting his face. “Poor Cassian. Did you overexert yourself? I can tell by the look of you that—”
“Fuck off.” His shoulder gives under the palm of my hand, a push meant to toss him out of my way. It sends him back a couple of steps, and his eyebrows raise.
“What did she do this time? Spit in your face?”
I wheel on him then, my breath too harsh and heavy for my lungs. Once, twice, I try to steady myself. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, arrogant to the fucking last. “Looks like you’re the one who’s in over his head.”
“I have a call.”
“Enjoy.” He gives me a jaunty wave.
“You’ll wait for me in the den.”
“Oh? Will I?”
I bite back the urge to let loose a string of profanities. My brother, more than anyone alive on the planet, knows how to get under my skin. All I can do is consider it practice for when I’m in the room. One deep breath in, one deep breath out. “Yes. Before this goes any further, I need more information about the contract.”
He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, looking for an instant exactly like he did as a petulant teen. “I gathered all the pertinent information.”
“You did not, and we both know it. The den. Half an hour.”
“I have an engagement, which you’d know if you cared to ask—”
“Cancel it. Postpone it. Whatever you have to do. We have business matters to discuss, and if you can’t be available…” I lift one shoulder in a shrug that I hope telegraphs “then I’ll kick you to the fucking curb, you asshole, and I’ll see to it that you never come back here."
He’s opening his mouth to protest when I turn away, taking the last few steps to the door of my suite.
“Cassian—” I slam the door on him and flip the lock. Then I key in the code on the separate security system I installed when ownership of the property was transferred to me. Nobody is coming through that door now.
I press my back against it. The door, at least, is solid. It’s not a modern pressboard piece of shit. It’s not hollow… like I am.
Like I was.
What is it about her that’s made me this way? She’s beautiful. Of course she’s beautiful. Most of the women who come here, either as pawns in someone else’s deal or to pay for their own sins, have had a lifetime of practice enhancing their beauty. But even with Mika’s simplest makeup, Justice shines.
She’s like an avenging angel.
One that’s so powerful in her fury, yet delicate enough that I can bind her and bend her.
Whether I can break her is another question entirely.
That’s one of the things that makes my heart race. I might’ve gone too far today. It’s always been part of my protocol that I start simply, building up to peak severity at the end. That’s what the payers expect, and that’s what I deliver.
But, somehow, she got to me.
She burrowed her way under my skin, to the gilded cage that rests around my heart, and she melted it with the heat of her words.
It was impressive, how long she fought. And it was more impressive how she bore the punishment I gave her. It was too much. The belt? On the first day? She’d challenged me, and instead of remaining in control, I’d accepted.
And then…
And then…
I shove myself away from the door. My clothes feel too tight, too constricting, and I strip them off piece by piece. Jacket. Shirt. Belt. It wasn’t my belt that I used on her—it was the one that hangs in that room expressly for that purpose—but to touch it is to cause the memory to flood back as if it’s happening all over again.
Her tears were fascinating in a way that no other woman’s tears have been. I wanted to lick them off her face.
And then I wanted to lick all the way down her body to that sweet space between her legs.
I leave a trail of clothing on the way to my bathroom, shoving the handle on the shower so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t come off in my hand. The stream is instantly powerful, on the verge of scalding, and I throw myself under it like it has any hope of cleansing me. It would be holy water if I could wish it so.
The end.
The end was when I knew that nothing about Justice Danes was going to be the same. This was no neat and tidy contract, and it never would be.
Because she wanted it.
When the leather of the belt lifted away from her skin for the last time, she was no longer holding still. Her body shook with little whimpers, and for a moment I was relieved. It had been so easy. Almost too easy.
I was fucking right.
Justice wasn’t squirming away from the belt. It took one heartbeat for that to be clear. She was rocking her hips forward, straining to get herself off against the surface of the bench. The noises coming from her throat weren’t cries of defeat. They were cries of desire.
I dropped the belt to the floor, and she turned her head at the sound, still moving, still trying to find release.
Her blue eyes had locked on mine.
She was a gloriously pathetic sight. Naked, my tie soaked in saliva from being lodged between her teeth. Fighting to rub her clit against the bench I’d bent her over to teach her a lesson.
I turned away from her to hide how much I wanted to give her more.
One last little whimper emerged from around the tie. It sounded so much like please.
I’d gone.
Mika waited in the hall, and I’d gone past her with a brusque, “Take her back.”
Here, under the hot water, I can give myself over to it.
I wrap my fist around my hard length and pull and pull and pull while the water lashes my own back, running hot and bright down the backs of my legs, the sensitive creases of my knees, and the hard tendons at my ankles. It’s so hot it hurts. It’s penance and it’s pleasure, all at once.
“Fuck,” I grunt. “Fuck.” The impending orgasm builds, drawing my balls up tight. I came in here to get her out of my head, but I can’t. My mind is frantic to remember every inch of her. The reddened flesh of her ass. The pink, glistening folds of her pussy. And that particular rock of her hips, back and forth, back and forth, searching for a sensa
tion she could never have while she was restrained like that.
Unless I gave it to her.
The mental image of sliding my fingers between those legs to collect that sweetness sends me over the edge, into a roaring orgasm I don’t bother to stifle. All of me empties into the center of the shower, one arm braced against the wall and the other engaged in this futile attempt to forget.
I watch the fruits of my efforts swirl down the drain as I try to catch my breath.
Then I reach for the soap.
It’s time to meet my brother.
11
Justice
Every minute seems like an eternity. They are all small eternities, folding in on themselves and exploding back outward. They crash against the blank walls of my cell and echo back on me, a tightening spiral of shame.
My own fury tastes like desire.
It shouldn’t taste like this, shouldn’t feel like this. The anger I feel should be a wall that keeps the thought of Cassian Locke from touching me.
But the memory does touch me.
I could blame the fact that I’m locked in a cell with nothing to do, but the more I stare at that too-high slit of a window, the more I know that the cell is blameless.
It’s me who is ruined.
Two days with Cassian Locke, and I am ruined.
I squeeze my eyes shut in the half-light of the cell and try to remind myself that Tripp exists, somewhere on this planet. At least—I think he does. They took my phone, obviously, so there is no way for me to contact him and find out what happened. What on earth could have kept him from picking me up?
The brutal truth is that there are any number of things Tripp could have chosen over me. A party. A dinner. God forbid he let the plan slip in any way to one of his sisters, or his mother. They’d have his head for that. My stomach goes cold at how perfectly stupid I was with him. He was convenient and his own stupidity clearly dragged me down. I saw him as an escape hatch. He saw me as a liability.
Cards of Love: Justice Page 5