My God. The laugh I let out is one of genuine surprise. “You’re asking me to keep punishing you? I’ve brought you to my private rooms, away from all prying eyes, and you want more?”
She bites her lip, looks down, nods.
There are many other ways to punish a woman, especially one who’s begging for it. And I have the sense that another forced orgasm won’t be enough for her. Not now, not when everything is so heightened, so razor-sharp. No. It needs to be more...intimate than that.
I have never fallen for a woman. I’ve never let myself. That doesn’t mean I’m without experience...or means. Or tastes.
I move away from her and into the bedroom. Justice doesn’t call out after me, and no footsteps pad into the space behind me, so I know she’s waiting.
Maybe I have broken her after all.
I press a button at the side of my dresser and a drawer slides open.
The assortment of toys I keep here is enough to provide entertainment enough to sate me. Then I send the women on their way, those whores.
I select a toy that’s too big to begin with. I’m only guessing, but it would not surprise me to discover that this is Justice’s first experience with this particular kind of punishment. I also take a small bottle of lube. It doesn’t need to be so harsh. But if I’m going to fuck her—and I am—I should also give her what she needs.
A bit more pain.
Back in the den, Justice is still kneeling on the sofa, her head up and her hands on the back. She has not moved an inch since I left her. As a reward, I put my hand on the back of her neck, below the twist of her hair. “Good girl.”
She shudders. “Oh, God.”
“And you fought me.” I let the laugh linger in my voice. “But you wanted this.”
“It’s—not right to want this.”
“Move your knees back a few inches.”
She does.
“Good. Now balance your head on the back of the sofa. You’ll need both hands.”
She obeys me instantly, but there’s a slight hesitation. I was right—she doesn’t know what’s coming.
“What do I do?” Her voice is so soft. I almost wish she’d fight, but it’s delicious knowing that two days of pain from me were enough to make her mine.
Mine.
It’s true.
“Reach back and spread your ass for me. As far as you can.”
20
Justice
My heart beats so hard it feels like it might burst out of my chest and take flight, moving around the room like a macabre little singing bird. Am I hallucinating this? Is this some kind of punishment fever dream? But no, it’s not—I reach back and there it is, my punished ass, protesting at my touch. Protest or not, I’ll do what he says. It hurts so much I hiss between my teeth, but I get a good grip and spread myself open for him.
This is what I wanted and the sensation of getting it is so heady I could pass out.
But I stay awake, my cheek pressed against the soft back of the sofa, and hold myself in place.
“Christ.” It’s a rare slip from Cassian. He’s normally in control of everything, every aspect of every interaction we have, even when I’m doing my best to upset the balance.
I don’t want to upset the balance.
I should want to. I should want to be free, to be independent, but nothing has made me hotter than being on my knees for Cassian Locke. My mind still whirls with what he told me about contracts, about people paying for this to be done to other people, but it’s difficult to be shocked when I know what I know. As much as I try to forget it, I still know.
In the dip of my hips above my ass, something cool and slippery drops into place and runs down between my spread cheeks. All my nerves sing with how exposed I am, how open—and the shock of the cold against that secret place makes me shiver.
Cassian’s finger against that place makes me shake.
But I want to obey him, more than I’ve wanted anything else as long as I’ve been alive. An idea flutters in the corner of my mind like light refracted from a window, or a mirror. That dancing light is the hope that if I do everything just the way he says, he’ll…
Hold me.
“Be still.”
My body stops moving at his command, even though I thought shivering was one of those uncontrollable things. It’s not.
The finger circles, increases in pressure, and forces its way past a barrier.
“It will be easier for you if you relax,” he says, his tone matter-of-fact. “But I’m going to do this whether you relax or not.”
I suck in a breath. I asked for punishment. He’s giving it to me. It’s the first time it’s been this way.
He works his finger inside, my flesh stretching. It’s uncomfortable, and I move my hips side to side, working to accommodate the invasion. The next moment, the finger disappears and I’m rewarded with a sharp slap on the side of my ass.
“Be still.”
I know I’ll get more than a little slap if I don’t follow his rules, so I will myself to be still and concentrate on holding myself open.
One finger. Then...two. That forces a groan from my lips. It’s beginning to hurt, the stretching, but then the fingers are gone, and something harder—and wider—takes their place.
“Punishment.” His reminder is almost a whisper, but it pales in comparison to the sensation of what’s entering my body right now. He pushes it in relentlessly, and it—oh, I can’t be silent, I can be still but not silent—it hurts, it’s too big. I’m stretched to the limit and just when I think it will go beyond that limit my muscles clamp down on a ridge on whatever it is, this plug, this toy, and I’m left with the pressing fullness of it inside of me. It aches. It burns. It humiliates me, knowing that he can see this, forced into me, wedged into me, and I am letting him...
And I love it.
I’m dripping wet, the insides of my thighs slick and slippery.
Cassian puts his fingers against my thigh and lets out a low rumble of satisfaction. “A slut for punishment,” he says.
“Not—not only punishment.”
He strokes a hand down my back. “Oh, I know.” He stills his hand. “What happens next isn’t punishment.” For the first time, he hesitates. “I need you.”
21
Cassian
I’m not the kind of man who speaks aloud about having a need like this. The words feel foreign in my mouth, but Justice responds to my words like she is lost in the desert and I’ve given her cool water. Her eyelids flutter closed, long lashes coming to rest on her cheeks, and lets out a little moan.
I’m undone by her.
She’s taken everything I have to give her, and still she asks for more. It’s like she can see past the suit I hide behind like it’s full armor to the raw beating heart buried inside of my chest. And a woman like Justice—she doesn’t just look. She’s taken a bite of the flesh and made it part of her.
“Hands on the back of the sofa.”
Justice releases her grip on her ass and a fresh surge of electric want strikes hard, threatening to take me out at the knees. How it must have hurt to hold herself open like that for me. How I fucking loved the sight of it. She’s positioned right where I want her, the plug still visible. It’s one size bigger than I thought she could handle, and even if she’s whimpering little hissing sounds, even if she’s struggling to bear it, she doesn’t fight it—doesn’t even make a move to step away from the sofa and run.
The release of my belt buckle is a metallic scrape in the air, and Justice’s eyes fly open. She doesn’t lift her head from where I told her to keep it, but her lips part slightly. She’s panting. The scent of her is everywhere, on my fingers, in the air, between her legs, and somehow, though I’ve done nothing but work to break her since she got here, it’s still sweet.
One hand on the small of her back. She leans into my touch, her hips rocking from side to side in tiny movements that seem designed to obey me. I didn’t tell her to move. Her obedience is another claw no
tched into my rib cage. I dip the other hand between her legs and she shifts her knees outward to give me better access.
One stroke of her smooth folds, slick and hot and ready for me, is a direct hit to the last of the standards holding me back. The noise she makes in the back of her throat crumbles the wall I’ve so carefully built between me and everyone else since I knew what it meant to be my father’s son.
There are no words left in my mind to command her, so I take her by the back of the neck and nudge her down onto the sofa. Justice arches back, keeping her face down, her ass in the air, one knee on the verge of slipping off. I climb on behind her and cup my hand back between her legs, clutching all of her in my palm. At first I’m gentle as I circle the swollen nub at the tips of my fingers, but this makes her growl and writhe and twist, so I pin her to stillness by bracing a hand on her hip, and then move my fingers viciously between her legs, increasing the pressure, dipping them inside and spreading that sweetness over her, circling that sensitive place hard enough to make her cry. And come. Without permission. It’s something I could punish her for, but instead I catch that new gush of sweetness and lick it off my own fingers.
I hold her still.
I’m throbbing painfully, the head of my cock leaking, and I am at the screaming end of my own wits. Justice is spread wide for me, trembling on her knees, and I thrust myself inside.
For how wet she is, it still takes work. She’s so tight and hot that her flesh could sear mine if I didn’t want it so badly. If I wasn’t prepared. But I am. I’ve been waiting all my life for this moment.
Justice has her head turned to the side, so I can see her lips moving as I drive myself into her one inch at a time. Does she know she’s not making a sound? I put two fingers into her mouth and she closes her lips around them, sucking, a mirror image of the way her pussy is slowly taking me inside. When I pull my fingers out, she releases them with a pop. “You’ll have to speak up, precious thing.”
She digs her nails into the surface of the sofa. “Please—”
Justice is already working to accommodate me, her hips moving side to side, her body opening itself under my invasion, and that one word from her lips...
How will I ever let her go?
With a powerful thrust I’m balls-deep into her, the beautiful sound tearing from her throat like a fucking symphony, and I reward her with a harsh twist of the plug buried in her ass, shoving it in another fraction of an inch. I have an angel on her knees in front of me, an angel offering herself up as a sacrifice, and I’ll take it like the vengeful god I’ve become.
I’m blind to everything in this moment except the sensation of her, clenching and shuddering beneath me, her voice resonating in my ears, her submission the very air that I’m breathing. And now that I’m inside of her, I can’t wait any longer. I can’t take any more time. I pull myself out so that only the last leaking inch of me is still inside, and then slam back into her. It knocks the breath from her, but she gasps one in to replace it, holding herself there. An offering. The way she’s squirming is wordless but it sounds enough like begging to me.
I’m still fucking her, my hips feeling savage even to me, but I reach around her nonetheless and center two fingers over her swollen clit.
“You’ll come again for me.”
She has to work for the words. “I—can’t—”
“You will, or I’ll punish you for it.” I rub her in small, relentless circles, my other hand tight on her hip. There’s nowhere for her to go.
“You’re—punishing—me—now—”
“Yes,” I growl. “I fucking am.”
This makes her become even wetter, makes her spread her legs farther, moan louder.
“I can feel you—where you punished me—“
I know she’s not lying, because I’m not holding back. My hips pound against the punished flesh of her ass with every stroke, against the plug, forcing it a little deeper.
“So—cruel—” Justice gasps.
“Not another word from those pretty lips until you come.”
It doesn’t take her long. Her release is powerful, and I feel it reverberating in waves around my cock. It’s too much. It’s too fucking much. I keep my fingers on her clit, drawing it out, not caring if it hurts, and she doesn’t either because she doesn’t so much as beg for me to stop. There are only wordless noises coming from those lips, sweat misting on her skin. It’s a wretched, raw thing I’ve forced from her and the sight of it—the sight of it—
I’ve never come so hard. It blacks out the corners of my vision and tightens every muscle in my body. For several moments I think I might die like this. It might suck the life right out of me.
It wouldn’t be the worst thing, to die like this.
I don’t know how much time passes before I pull myself out of her. Spent, Justice collapses to the side, her ass against the back of the sofa. She whimpers, shifting away from it so that the fabric doesn’t touch her flesh. Her eyes are closed, her labored breathing even.
My own breathing is not.
I settle it by tracing the line of her jaw with one fingertip, drawing my touch down to her shoulder, then over her collarbone, then between her breasts. I taste the salt that’s gathered there and wish I could keep her in my bed tonight. And every night.
But now that I’ve given in...
“Sir?”
The broken whisper draws my attention back to her eyes. “Yes.”
Her lip trembles, but she presses her mouth into a stoic line. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
She’s naked, well-fucked, sated. I could pick her up in my arms and put her between my sheets. I could let her sleep on my pillows and wake her myself in the morning.
Another brick slides back into place. The wall rebuilds itself inside my mind.
It doesn’t matter what my needs are. What matters is that I’m the one who holds up this world. For my brother...and someone else.
I stroke a hand down to her navel and then force myself to break the connection. Not touching her...it’s torture. It’s a special punishment all its own. And one that’s well-deserved by a man like me. Another man would care for her, after a day like today. After taking her like that. He wouldn’t have to outsource the job.
“No.”
The corners of her mouth turn down. I’m expecting an argument, a desperate why, but Justice pushes herself up instead. One foot after the other, she puts her unsteady legs beneath her and stands, head down, her wrists close together as if they’re still bound.
That’s when I know she’s mine.
22
Justice
Every step back down the secret passageway from Cassian’s rooms to the hallway where I am being held as his prisoner and nothing else is agony.
The way he touched me—the way he spoke to me—I thought...
I’m a fucking idiot.
I’m here to fulfill a contract. To be punished. To be dealt with and discarded. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know why—my knowing has very little to do with it. It was ridiculous of me to think that this could ever be anything more.
Yet I struggle to keep the tears from falling to my cheeks. With every step, I work harder to blink them away. I can’t let them fall. I can’t.
It’s only that I don’t know how I’ll live without him. Without...this. And it’s filthy and humiliating and it hurts, like how the empty space left behind from the plug still aches. He pulled it out before we left his room and let it fall to the floor.
I can feel everywhere he was inside of me. Everywhere he left his mark.
Cassian presses the code into the keypad outside of my cell and waits while the door opens. A spark inside my gut roars to life—this is where I could fight him. This is where I could prove that I’m still the same girl they had to drag in here kicking and screaming.
But I’m not that girl, am I?
“Justice.”
His voice is soft in the hallway, though I still recognize that edge—we’re in the h
allway now. This isn’t some intimate moment. He is Sir and I am nothing.
I turn to face him. Why doesn’t he leave? I want to throw myself on the bed and swallow back sobs, not face him at the doorway as if we’re two people who have never fucked, who have never...
“Tell me where your father is.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“How would I know where he is? I’ve been held here for days.”
The corner of his mouth twists down, and he takes a half step toward me. And I—God help me—I jerk backward. My body knows what will happen if he punishes me for this, and I’m too raw to handle it right now. If he touched me, I’m sure his hands would cut right beneath my skin to the blood in my veins and all of it would belong to him forever.
The thought doesn’t seem the least bit dramatic, but the way my heart pounds at the fact of him even an inch closer makes me drop my eyes to the ground. “He’s in and out of the city.” There’s another wrench in my chest. In and out of the city doesn’t begin to cover what it is my father has done, and it’s all tangled up in how good it feels to take the pain from Cassian Locke. “I don’t know if he’s here or not.”
“If he were here, where would he be?” His voice is deadly, and his questions from before rattle around in my mind. Did you break off an engagement? Cross a man you weren’t supposed to? Was he talking about my father? Is Cassian looking to settle a score that even I don’t know about?
The only way I can get answers to my questions is to obey him—I know that much. So I rattle off the address where my father keeps his offices. Where my brother manages those offices when he’s not in the city. And where my family lives, on the top three floors of the building.
Cassian gives me a long look.
Then he steps backward, out into the hall, and the next thing I know, the door is closed and locked between us.
Cards of Love: Justice Page 10