by Julia Sykes
Still, at least I now knew it was three thirty-five AM. Hopefully everyone really was asleep at this hour.
My gaze swept over the room, looking for the exit. Another closed door was set into the opposite wall from the windows. I started to make my way toward it when the shifting lights caught on something silver: an elevator. My way out.
I raced toward it on tiptoe, trying to move silently even as I rushed to freedom. I pushed the call button, which was illuminated in blue.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when a loud buzzer sounded.
Fuck!
I hadn’t heard that sound when anyone else had come and gone from the suite. Why now?
Desperate, I punched the button again, knowing I had precious seconds before Andrés’ strong arms closed around me. The angry buzz echoed through the suite.
“It won’t work for you,” he drawled.
I yelped and spun, backing up until my butt hit the cold silver doors behind me. Andrés stood in the doorway to the bedroom, the city lights reflecting stars across his black eyes. He didn’t move toward me.
The doors didn’t open behind me. Desperate, I hit the call button again.
Buzz.
His teeth flashed white through the darkness. “That elevator is accessed through thumbprint recognition. The only people who can come and go from this suite are those who have my permission. You don’t have permission, my curious gatita.” He finally began prowling toward me. “Did you want to explore my home?” he asked, the innocuous question made terrifying by the silky smooth tone of his voice. “Were you so eager to see the rest of it? I’m more than happy to show you.”
I shook my head wildly. “I didn’t… I don’t… I just want to go home,” I forced out past the lump in my throat. Whatever he was about to show me, I was certain it was terrible. I could read it in the hungry glint of his eyes, the sharpness of his smile. Dark anticipation pulsed around him like a palpable thing. It pressed against me, making me shudder.
“This is your home now,” he said when he finally reached me. There was nowhere for me to run, nowhere to hide. All I could do was press my body back against the cold metal doors and tremble.
His hand closed around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair at my nape as he pulled me against him. He was naked, and his huge cock pressed into my belly.
“You weren’t really asleep,” I accused, knowing the truth. He was toying with me, testing me.
His grin sharpened. “Clever and curious,” he remarked with satisfaction. “No, I wasn’t asleep.” He leaned in, his cheek whispering against mine as he spoke low in my ear. “You can’t escape me, Samantha. There’s only one way out of this penthouse, and it’s barred to you. I don’t have to keep you collared and chained to trap you here. I just like it. I like knowing you’re naked in my bed, waiting for me.”
“You’re sick,” I said shakily.
He laughed softly. “You’ve called me worse already. Do you really think your little insults wound me? I’m going to tame your barbed tongue because I enjoy training you, not because it’s capable of hurting me. If you continue to defy me in this, the only time you’ll be allowed to use your tongue is when you’re worshipping my cock.”
My stomach churned, fear clogging my throat. I didn’t have any words, anyway. What was there to say in response to such a horrible declaration?
“But you wanted to see the rest of my home,” he continued smoothly. “Let me show you.”
“I don’t want to,” I squeaked out. “Please. I’ll go back to bed.”
He clicked his tongue at me. “The time for being a good girl has passed. You’ve been a curious gatita. You know what happens to curious kittens, don’t you?”
Curiosity killed the cat. “You said you wouldn’t kill me. Your brother wants me alive.”
His hand tightened around my nape. “This is about what I want,” he growled. “I don’t want you dead. I want you crying out and begging for mercy. My mercy. Don’t talk about my brother. Don’t think about him. He’s not your concern. I am.”
Keeping his grip on my nape, Andrés pulled me along in his wake, moving toward the closed door I'd noticed opposite the wall of windows. Dread settled in my gut, and my feet dragged on the carpet in token resistance. I could have clawed at him, at the very least. But my body remembered the punitive feel of his finger invading my bottom, and I didn't even half-formulate a plan to fight before he'd managed to drag me to the door.
"Please," I begged. "I don't want to go in there."
"You don't even know what you're scared of," he said, his voice colored with amusement.
"Whatever it is, I don't want it. You wouldn't want to take me in there if it were anything good. You're scaring me."
"You should be scared. You've been very naughty, trying to escape from me."
"But you just said I can't escape. I can't use the elevator. You don't have to hurt me to keep me from using it," I babbled on, desperate to stay on this side of that closed door. Even though the words tumbling from my lips made my heart sink as I recognized the truth in them, I had to press on. I didn't want to be punished.
He reached for the knob and pushed. The door swung open into darkness. The city lights shining behind us barely penetrated the blackness, as though refusing to illuminate the ominous space. The light had no place here. The scent of leather and something deeper teased through the air that drifted through the open door.
"Don't," I gasped out as he propelled me forward, into the darkness.
The soft click of a light switch being flipped registered in my ears, just before panic seized my senses.
It was like something out of the scariest corners of the internet. I'd seen some fucked up dungeon porn. Andrés might as well use this room as a set for the most depraved, disturbing videos I'd ever glimpsed before quickly clicking the back button on my browser.
Creepy crimson lights illuminated the space so I could clearly see every object that waited to torment me. It reminded me of the time I'd ventured to the BDSM club Dusk on my particularly misguided Valentine’s Day mission to seduce Dex.
"This isn't like Dusk," I told myself softly, not realizing I was speaking the words aloud. "It's not. Dusk is Safe, Sane, Consensual." I knew the tenets of BDSM, even if I'd never practiced it myself. "This isn't. I don't want this. Not like this."
"You've been to a BDSM club?" Andrés' voice penetrated my mounting terror. He kept his grip on my nape, but he stepped in front of me. His angry black eyes filled my vision, botting out the horror that surrounded me. "I thought you were my innocent little virgin. Did you lie to me, Samantha? I wondered when I didn't feel your hymen intact. But those can be broken in other ways, and I thought your surrender was genuine." His scar deepened to a furious slash. "I wasn't the first man to touch you. If you think you've suffered under my hand before, that's nothing compared to what's about to happen to you."
"No!" I half-sobbed. "I wasn't lying. I am a virgin, I swear."
"Then how do you know about Dusk?" he demanded.
"I went there one time," I gasped out. "I was looking for Dex. I followed him there. I wanted to see him. I wanted him to see me. But he didn't. He never does. I got drunk and left. I didn't do anything but drink at the bar. I promise, I didn't do anything. I didn't lie to you. Please, don't hurt me."
His eyes softened, his scar easing as the tension left his mouth. He didn't release me, but his grip shifted so his fingers rubbed the back of my neck.
"All right, sirenita. I believe you. I don't think you could lie convincingly if you tried. You will explain more about this later. For now, you have a lesson to learn."
"I just want to go back to bed." A tear slid down my cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
"I'll put you to bed when we're finished in here. You must be punished for trying to escape. You need to understand that your behavior has consequences."
I started crying in earnest, harsh sobs wracking my chest as fear seized my system.
> "Come here." He pulled me against his hard body, wrapping his arms around me in a firm embrace as he continued to rub the base of my scalp in little circular patterns. "It won't be so bad," he cooed. "I'm not angry with you."
"It will be," I insisted, my voice hitching. "Just because it would be worse if you were angry doesn't mean it won't be bad. This place is... It's not right. I don't want to be in here."
I shuddered against him, and his big hand stroked up and down my back in a reassuring motion.
"You'll get used to it," he said, his voice deep and calm. "We are going to spend a lot of time in here. I think you might even enjoy it, in a way." His soothing tone was so at odds with the horrible things he was saying that my mind couldn't quite process it. I felt comforted, even though my heart hammered against my ribcage.
"Take a deep breath," he said, a softly-spoken order. "Good girl. Another."
I hadn't realized I'd complied, but my addled mind couldn't keep up with what was happening to me. My body obeyed, and my roiling emotions began to subside enough that I was no longer shaking and sobbing against my captor.
"Come with me," he commanded, finally releasing my neck to take my hand in his.
It was a sweet gesture, and he held my fingers so gently that he might have been my caring, kind boyfriend.
A caring, kind boyfriend I'd never had. A caring, kind boyfriend with a scary, scarred body and wicked gleam in his eye. A caring, kind boyfriend who was leading me toward...
I dug in my heels. "No."
"You don't get to say no," he told me, his voice still calm and even. "This is your punishment."
"You said you wouldn't hurt me," I said, trying in vain to jerk my hand out of his suddenly vice-like grip.
"I said I wouldn't harm you," he corrected me. "This won't leave any permanent marks. Although I'm interested to see how easily your pretty skin bruises. I do like seeing my marks on my pet."
I shook my head in wild denial. "Stop it! Stop. I'm not your pet. I don't want be marked or bruised."
"How else will you learn?" he asked, as though the question were completely reasonable.
"I don't need to learn anything. I just need you to let me go."
"You don't know what you need. I know what's best for you."
"You don't know shit," I railed at him, fear morphing to anger. "You're fucked up. You're so fucking messed up. Fuck you." I continued cursing at him, even as he pulled me inexorably forward. Mostly, I hurled the f-bomb at him. For once, he didn't rebuke me. He didn't say anything at all.
Which scared the shit out of me.
So I cursed at him some more.
He barely looked at me when he gripped my waist and positioned my body over the spanking bench. I knew what it was from years of indulging my perverted curiosity online.
But knowing what it was didn't prepare me for the full blast of terror that slammed into me when he pressed my torso down against the padded surface, forcing me to bend at the waist over the edge so my bottom was thrust up shamefully.
He handled my body with an almost detached air. There were no lingering touches, no reassuring strokes of his fingertips along my skin. He didn't even touch me with violent hands. Even that would have been preferable to the methodical way he captured my wrists and secured them with black leather cuffs.
I tried to push up off the bench, even knowing that I couldn't free my hands. He didn't make a sound as he buckled a thick strap around my waistline, pinning me down against the padded surface. I almost wished he'd click his tongue at me in disapproval. Now, that seemed like almost an affectionate act. This man who so callously arranged my body for torment made my insides quake.
I couldn't stop cussing. I wasn't sure if I was even insulting him directly anymore. A stream of curse words tumbled from my lips in nonsensical, half-formed sentences.
He grasped my legs and guided them apart, securing them with another set of leather cuffs. I was bent over and spread wide, my sex and asshole fully on display and at his mercy.
But I suspected he didn't have any mercy for me.
"Fu—" My final f-bomb was abruptly smothered when something rubbery pressed deep into my mouth, pushing my tongue down as it settled between my lips. He buckled the ball gag closed at the back of my head. I thrashed, as though I could somehow push it out of my mouth.
He gripped my hair, wrapping it around his fist and pulling back sharply. My shocked cry caught against the rubber ball as pain lit up my scalp, commanding my attention.
My head was bowed back, my neck stretched to the point where breathing was difficult. I focused on sucking in air through my nose, my impotent rage and fear finally muffled by the imperative to obtain enough oxygen.
His black eyes stared down into mine, and my mind went oddly blank. I couldn't fight, I couldn't shout obscenities at him. I couldn't do anything but draw in shallow, careful breaths.
"That's better," he said softly, trailing his fingers over my lips, tracing the line of them where they surrounded the red rubber ball that filled my mouth. "Very pretty," he praised.
A fine tremor raced across my skin as a strange sense of relief settled over me. He was looking at me again, touching me. He wasn't treating me like an object. The impersonal way he'd been handling me had scared me more than Cristian's knife cutting into me. The Andrés who held me and promised to protect me in his own messed up way was back, and I was relieved to see him. Fresh tears pooled in my eyes as my toxic fear leaked out of me.
"You're so beautiful when you cry," he murmured, stroking the wetness on my cheeks almost reverently. "Don't you feel better now? You don't have to yell. You don't have to fight. Your Master is in control, and you don't have to pretend otherwise. Not when you're strapped down and spread wide for me to play with. All you have to do is submit. All you can do is submit."
Keeping his grip on my hair, he held my face in place as he leaned down and pressed a tender kiss against my forehead.
"Time for your punishment, gatita," he said, his soft lips brushing across my skin. "You've more than earned it."
I shivered, but not entirely out of fear. A shadow of it resurfaced, but I couldn't be terrified anymore. There was no point. As he'd said, I wasn't capable of fighting him in my current predicament. Surrendering was so much easier than panicking, especially when panicking was pointless.
He won't harm me, I reminded myself, playing it over and over again in my head like a soothing mantra. He won't harm me.
I'd survived his spankings, his violations. Whatever he had planned for me, I'd survive this, too.
He finally released my hair, and my head dropped forward, my cheek resting meekly against the padded bench.
His palm skimmed across my lower back, the heat of his body sinking into mine.
"Good girl. I'll be right back." He said it like the sweetest reassurance, almost as though he was reluctant to leave my side.
Or maybe I was just delusional, and I was hearing what I needed to hear in order to cope with what was happening to me.
He disappeared behind me, his heat receding. I tried to crane my head back to watch him, but he had walked outside my range of sight. Bound as I was, I could only move my head so far.
Giving up, I settled my cheek back against the smooth leather and closed my eyes. The darkness behind my lids was peaceful. Far preferable to examining the torture chamber that surrounded me.
Silence enfolded me. I couldn't hear Andrés moving, but I could practically feel his eyes on me. My skin prickled with awareness, but my body remained limp against the bench. I breathed in deeply through my nose, taking in long draws of oxygen.
I tried not to think, but my brain began firing again, wondering what he was going to do to me. Several horrible possibilities occurred to me at once, terrible images of torment flickering across my mind.
Just as I began to tense with mounting anxiety, something cool and smooth tickled my spine. My shocked yelp was muffled by the gag, and my eyes flew open to assess what was happening to
me.
Andrés stood behind me, looming over my helpless form. His black eyes glinted in the eerie crimson light as he studied my reaction. He held a flogger in one hand, allowing its multitude of thin black leather falls to kiss my back.
My eyes widened, and I squirmed in my restraints.
I wasn't entirely trying to get away. I'd been curious to know what it would feel like to be flogged. I'd fantasized about it more than a few times.
But this wasn't the scenario I'd envisioned. For one, Dex had always played the hero in my mind. The man standing behind me was no hero. He was my own personal villain.
And he was staring at me as though I was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.
"You know what this is?" he asked, trailing the leather falls down the length of my spine.
A small whimper slipped past the gag as my nerve endings crackled to life. I managed a slight nod in response to his question, never even considering refusing to answer. I couldn’t have any secrets from Andrés when I was like this: stripped bare and put on display for him. I couldn't hide from him. He wouldn't allow it.
"But no one has ever flogged you before," he said. It wasn't a question. He already knew how innocent I was.
"Kinky little virgin," he mused. "When I decide to allow you to speak again, you'll tell me every depraved thought you've ever had." He smiled down at me with genuine pleasure. "I knew we'd get along."
He took a step back and swung the flogger down in a slow arc. The falls slapped against my bottom, but it didn't hurt. He was going slow with me, watching me with the careful, focused attention of a predator as he monitored my reactions. The heavy strips of leather slid down over my cheeks. They were cool and smooth against my heated skin.
"This is going to hurt," he warned. "It's supposed to hurt. One day, I'll show you how good it can feel. But not tonight."
I couldn't do anything but shiver and wait for him to begin. The fantasy I'd harbored for so long—Dex lovingly giving me a hit of pain to drive me into a blissful headspace—faded away. This wouldn't bring me to subspace. That was attained through trust and honest surrender. It was something I’d longed for, and it had never been farther from my grasp.