Bound, Spanked and Loved: Fourteen Kinky Valentine's Day Stories

by Sierra Cartwright

  A sign. This had to be a sign. He should go.

  He shoved back the chair, making it tip over with a bang as it struck the floor. Startled, Ahnyil looked up from her bowl of cereal.

  “Adam?”

  “I have to go again. Tomorrow. I’ll arrange things for you. Leave money. There’s a boy who has been hurt.”

  “Abu?”

  He frowned.

  “You spoke of him many times. In Pakistan?”

  “Yes. He’s dying. I want to try to see him before he is gone. Understand?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  He didn’t know how he would do this. His passport was in order but taking off to a country that was two steps from the Taliban and wary of fighters migrating across the borders to Afghanistan? It could be tricky.

  He had friends who knew friends, though. His reputation was still rock solid when it came to contract work. To his relief and sadness, he snagged a lift on a plane the next day. The secretary of a diplomat he’d worked for before was going back and the only proviso was doing some security work for a few days.

  He barely touched Ahnyil until the minutes before he left. Then he dragged her into his arms and held her and kissed her. Once more couldn’t hurt.

  When he returned to Australia, he expected her to be gone. To have ascended? Whatever it was angels did.

  “Be good,” he whispered in her ear.

  “I will.”

  Her last words to him as he climbed into the taxi were, “Goodbye, Adam.” Her wave and smile were as cheerful as ever.

  Maybe she didn’t suspect? It was kinder that way.

  Men didn’t cry, so he remained stoic until the vehicle turned a corner and was out of her sight. Then he buried his face in his hands, clenching them until his skin hurt. Any tears were soaked up by his palms.

  By the time they reached the airport, he was normal.

  He was leaving her forever and going to say goodbye to a child he’d abandoned to fate, long ago. For a man who’d thought he had the world by its tail, he’d turned into a piece of excrement.

  Being sorry for himself was stupid. Ahnyil was better off without him. He just prayed he’d get to Abu in time to tell the child he loved him and that he was sorry and maybe, maybe, give him some form of comfort. The last email had said he was still alive.

  He found his seat on the plane, sagged back into it. The secretary, thankfully, had accepted his excuse of fatigue and grief.

  The plane took off, engines roaring, pressing him into the seat.

  Gone. He’d left her life to let her become what she should be. For the best. His stomach was one solid knot of apprehension.

  Damn. Damn everything.

  Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day.

  Chapter Eight

  Ahnyil sat on the deserted rooftop of Gabriel Towers, her sword across her knees, the sunlight on her face, her companions a small boy called Jacob, his dog, and a few cooing pigeons. The wind blew the clouds across, until at last the sky was a blue slate of nothingness.

  Time to do what must be done.

  She was sure the sword was still hers by accident, but it was here and she would make use of it.

  Up here, close to the heavens, life was simple and clear. Her knowledge had crystallized. It had always been there, inside her. She was a fallen angel. She knew why she’d fallen, for lust. Specifically for lusting after Adam on that day. Sex wasn’t a sin, no, but it was unlawful for an angel. She could never become one again unless she cast that off. One fraction away, that was all she was today.

  Another deed of good was required, and she had that, she knew it.

  But to do so meant discarding Adam, and he had been her man, as she had been his woman.

  Her awakened knowledge bared so many facts.

  He’d known what she was, almost from the beginning. She cared not.

  He wanted her desperately and had tried to keep her from her true self when he’d recognized the imminence of her transformation. She cared not.

  He’d lied to her, when he’d left. She slumped, her hand gripping the hilt until her pale fingers were paler still. For that, oh for that, she cared.

  He loved her too, yet he’d gone away.

  She’d cry but it seemed angels did not cry. A shame, as it meant her heart was hurting and she could not relieve the pain by sobbing and pounding the cement of this rooftop. Couldn’t rend the skin on her hands against the stone and grit until it shredded and bled.

  She was at once not human and not angel. She was between those two states.

  Jacob had waited here with her, patting his dog, Gandalf. A poor exhausted child, but he’d understood when she’d explained what she’d done to his father. He had a hard life ahead of him yet being a child she could give him this knowledge and trust that it would both fade and help him. His mother, not so; she was best kept ignorant.

  Terrors would still assail this child. His memories of the injuries his father had done to his mother were acid paths in his mind. She smiled and laid her hand on his head, even as the boy stroked his dog. They were happy now but his father’s legacy would tell on him and reflect in his future life like a cracked mirror reflecting evil. Sadly he would one day be partly like his father. He was not strong enough. In this particular case, evil would beget evil.

  Not on her watch.

  Fuck this.

  “You know what to do, Jacob? Can you be brave?”

  He turned and looked directly into her eyes. His were brown, like Adam’s.

  “Yes. I do. I will be brave.” He trembled.

  “Excellent.”

  Then she raised the white sword, and she turned it so the point rested below her breast, and she drove it inside herself, inch by inch, agony by agony, until it touched her heart.

  “Reach in,” she gasped despite the blood rising to her lips, the blood that mixed with her spittle and her unsaid screams. “Reach in! Reach and touch my heart!”

  The sword hilt throbbed with each beat. The pain was mind rending and would soon split her in two.

  If wrong, she would die, but the boy would be free of terror. He would be good for the rest of his life. It was worth the risk.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then he put his hand to the gaping wound the sword had pried open and he wriggled his fingers and arm into her, deep, deeper.

  The sky flared white and consumed her.

  A terrible sacrifice marked this day.

  Chapter Nine

  Abu was in the third bed along. Adam went to it, grabbed one of the timber chairs to sit on, placed the chair, and waited.

  How pale he was beneath the thick bandages. How terrible it was to see a child mortally ill.

  A nurse stopped by and touched his shoulder.

  “Sir? You know this boy?”

  Adam nodded. He brushed back a lock of hair, aware of how grimy he was after the flight. There’d been no time to wash. Waiting might have meant not seeing Abu while he lived. He glanced back at the boy. His breathing was peaceful, not some awful strained rictus as he had expected. The bandage was clean too. Jacques had found a good place for the boy’s last days.

  “Yes,” he croaked out then he swallowed. “Yes. Good to hear English.”

  “I speak it well, sir. You know the boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “He is doing miraculously well. Since last night. The doctors expect to visit soon but I can tell you this, he seems...” She bit her lip as if wary of what she might admit. “We nurses, we all think he is recovering.”

  Then she smiled and moved away.

  It was seconds before he reacted. “What?” Had he heard right? Hadn’t a bullet gone into the boy’s brain?

  “Hello, Mister Adam.” The words were soft but Abu’s. The boy smiled up at him and squirmed under the sheets. His small hand emerged. “You came to see me?”

  “I have. From Australia.” He couldn’t stop his smile from spreading.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Ahh. I can fix tha
t.” He searched in his pocket for the candy bar. Was the boy supposed to eat, though? Before he could hand it over, Abu continued in an awed voice.

  “A lady came, last night. A lady with bee-yootiful wings. The room was so bright! She gave me this.”

  The words shocked him more than any other words ever had, but what Abu held out to him made the room blur and his heart beat so hard and insistent that he swayed.

  It had been her. Ahnyil had been here.

  The heart locket sat in the middle of the boy’s palm.

  There were consequences; he could see that as he strode from the taxi toward his hotel. He couldn’t ignore this. What point would there be if he simply went home again? He would stay. Bugger money. But small dreams were not enough for him anymore, he swore to himself, as the elevator ascended. He would help Jacques and he would make it his life work to make the man organize more orphanages, more places for hurt kids. He wiped away the tears that strayed down his face. He’d had an angel for his lover. He’d loved her. He would be grateful for that forever.

  He took the locket out and studied it. The piece of jewelry was warm and, in the dim fluorescent light, it had a distinct silvery glow. Abu had said she’d given him something from the locket.

  When he elbowed open the door, the locket still captured his attention and he walked blindly into his bedroom.

  “You must not open that except in dire circumstances.”

  He whipped up his head. Before him on the carpet kneeled Ahnyil, naked except for a pair of white lacy panties. From her back welled fresh blood – two vertical stripes of blood where wings must have been. The white sword lay on the rug, fading quickly, now...and vanished.

  “I am yours again,” she whispered, as he knelt beside her and pulled her into his arms. “I cannot breathe if you smother me,” she added a moment later, from where he’d buried her face in his shirt.

  “Ahnyil, my love. It is you.” He let her raise her head so that he could kiss her on those rose-red lips. “I am yours also. You know this?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Of course I know.”

  “Forever this time. Forever,” he said fiercely, before he kissed her a second time. Once he could stand to let go of her, he stood and carried her to the bed. “Wait.”

  He backed away, unwilling to take his eyes off her while he found a thin bed cover in the cupboard. He went to her and wrapped her carefully, then picked her up and took her out to the small lattice-shaded balcony.

  “Out here?” She looked about.

  Pale blue sky showed through the squares of the white-painted lattice. Dapples of sunlight played across Ahnyil and the blanket as he settled on the cane lounge.

  “I need sunshine,” he said softly, smiling down at her. Where the curve of a nipple showed above the blanket, he pulled the cloth higher. “I want to see you out here where I know you’re real.”

  The lounge creaked against his back. She turned her head into his chest and inhaled, her eyes closing. “When I smell you, feel you...” She placed her palm on him. “I am home.”

  The pain in his heart was ebbing. “I was scared I’d lost you.”

  “Me also. But Adam...I would do anything to be with you.”

  “Damn.” He swallowed, for his throat had squeezed in. Her hair trailed over his arm. It had grown longer in just these past few days. “Talk to me, beautiful creature. What have you been doing?”

  “Well. First. I see that you are gone. I help the little boy, Jacob.” That familiar line formed between her troubled eyes. “I become angel again and then I know, exactly, how to find you, how to fix everything.” She shrugged, smirked. “You are a part of me. I find you across the world. You think you can hide from an angel?”

  “I guess not. You know, I made a vow.” He touched her nose with his forefinger then traced her lips, her jaw. Her eyes softened. “I vowed to do great things with the rest of my life. It felt...right to do that. I’m going to help Jacques, the man here who runs the orphanages. Maybe we can do more, much more?”

  “We will. You will. I will help you. I’m so proud of you.” She pulled him down for another sweet kiss.

  “I just hope I never have to kill anyone again.”

  Her mouth stiffened into a straight line and she shifted. “If you do, if it is for good, it happens.”

  “You believe violence is good?”

  “Not good, necessary. Sometimes we have to fight to keep evil at bay. The world of men requires it. It is Right to raise your hand, to stop others from destroying what is Good.”

  Again with the resonance of capitals in her words.

  “Uh-huh.” Remember never to argue with her over good and evil. “No worries. I get to feel...” He thought a moment but the right word escaped him. “Happy and I get to keep you forever in return for my vow.”

  “Almost.” She snuggled closer.

  “What?” He was preoccupied with the blood smearing her back, frowning at it as if he could make it go away purely by his will.

  “I have these, uhhh, fetishes. Every month, I will be tempted. I will go good again, each month, always.”

  What a way to say it. He grinned.

  “It’s okay,” she said matter-of-factly. “I will cut off my wings. Besides, there’s another effect you will like.”

  He winced. She had to cut off her wings once a month? “What do you mean?”

  “Well.” After wriggling on his lap, she found his hand and separated out one finger then she nipped the tip and sucked the whole finger into her hot little mouth.

  Damn. Should that be as arousing as it was? An instant hard-on had arrived.

  “Go on, my little minx.”

  “Once a month, I will be a virgin again.”

  “That is going to be interesting, to put it mildly.”

  “You are dirty man.” Ahnyil tapped his chest. “But I like you.”

  He snorted then he remembered what was in his pocket and he wormed his hand in and pulled out the locket. “Abu gave me this. Said you told him it was for me. What is in it?”

  “Ahhh. In there is a part of my heart.” Her blue eyes seemed to swim with timelessness. “You must only open it, if you are about to die. Then, only then, will it bring you back to this world of men, for one last chance at living.”

  “Hole-eee –”

  “Shush. Do not swear. Sir.”

  That must be why, sometimes, the locket pulsed in his hand.

  “It didn’t hurt you? How did you get this? Please say it didn’t hurt. And last of all, why the efff... Why? Put it back inside you. Please.”

  “No.” She squeezed his hand. “I will not. I give you this. If you should ever die, Adam, I think I would also. Take this, please. Keep it safe. I needed to be an angel to help those who needed help and to find you. This made me an angel again. It is a sacrifice I gladly make.”

  Dumbfounded and awed, he shook his head. He held a part of her heart and he wondered if his own heart would fail in this moment.

  With her love for him burning in her eyes, she reached up and rested her hand on the side of his face. Then he kissed her as if she were the most precious thing in the universe, which to him, she was and always would be...

  About Cari Silverwood

  Cari Silverwood is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer of kinky darkness or sometimes of dark kinkiness, depending on her moods and the amount of time she's spent staring into the night. She has an ornery nature as well as a lethal curiosity that makes her want to upend plots and see what falls out when you shake them.

  When others are writing bad men doing bad things, you may find her writing good men who accidentally on purpose fall into the abyss and come out with their morals twisted in knots.

  If you’d like to learn more go to www.carisilverwood.net

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  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to all my usual suspects – Emma, Carly, and Jennifer Zeffer, as well as Jennifer T. You all helped me so much. I write weird and you enable me. Which is probably good. Who knows what I’d get up to if I wasn’t writing.

  Stepbrother Jerk by Natasha Knight

  Chapter One

  Jace

  It never fucking failed. The minute I opened my beer and sat down—finally—at one in the morning, after an entirely too long day, the doorbell rang. I glanced over into the hallway but didn’t bother getting up. Instead, I picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Maybe whoever it was would go away if I ignored them.

  Ding-dong.

  Nope. No such luck.

  Another ring, this time, two in quick succession.

  “I’m coming. Hold your horses, man.” Who could it be at this time of night anyway? When I reached the door, I looked out the side window to find a patrol car parked along the curb. Lights weren’t flashing though, which meant it was probably Mack.

  I sighed. This was getting old.

  I opened the door to find Lisa, my twenty-year-old stepsister, struggling to free herself of my friend Mack’s hold. He had her cuffed, though, so not sure what she thought she’d do when he let go of her.

  “Hey, Mack, good to see you”—I made a show of checking my watch, more for Lisa than for Mack—“at one in the morning.”

  “Jace.” Mack nodded. I knew our wealth intimidated him, but he could be such a prick. I’d known him throughout high school. We’d been in the same graduating class but on wholly different social spectrums. I’d been one of those kids everyone liked—students and teachers alike. Captain of the football team who could manage to score straight As with minimal study. It pissed people like Mack off. He’d had to work a hell of a lot harder and, for some reason, he always held it against me that he lived in a trailer park while I’d grown up in a mansion. I was never mean to the kid— told a bully to back off once—but all it got me was more resentment. And, now, he was a cop in our little town. Throwing all hundred and fifty pounds around whenever he could.

  Good news was, he had a crush on Lisa, who could always manage to find herself some trouble. Given my father’s high-profile government job, that wasn’t a good thing.