When The Gavel Falls (Masters of the Castle)

by Tabitha Black

  Muscles weary from their exertion in the shower, especially along the inner stretch of her thighs, protested with pain. The warmth of his fingers sliding around her ankles made her shiver, but she honestly didn't feel cold. She didn't know what she felt. She had to stop letting him do this to her, and yet she couldn't stop her own telltale shiver when he lifted her feet one at a time, pulling them to either side of his lap. Her belly tightened, molten need flowed from her womb, filling up her sex, swelling her labia until all she could feel was the pounding of her desire to be touched by him. Like the steady marching of soldiers' boots, it fell into time with the beating of her heart.

  "I can't," she said, the protest hardly convincing, not even to her.

  Leaning closer, Alan placed his open palm between the swells of her aching breasts. Her nipples grew taut for him, budding into tight peaks that begged to be kissed. When he pushed, applying gentle pressure, Tavy helplessly obeyed. She lay back amid the rumpled bedding, and it took everything she had not to arch up into his retreating caress when he sat back, dragging his hand down the length of her as he went.

  "Continue," he told her.

  She burned, but not from embarrassment alone. She knew what she looked like—her feet spread to either side of his knees and her legs hooked over his, providing an unobstructed view of her swollen sex and the musky fluid welling from her. She could feel the tickle of each drop as it slid from her pussy into the crack of her bottom. Slipping her hand down between her legs, slicking her fingers in her own oils, she touched herself; something she had never, ever done in front of anyone. Ever.

  He stroked her calves, watching as she pressed timid circles around her aching clit. The effects of the showerhead could still be felt. The soreness would last for days and yet, with his gaze locked on her, already the tenderness was fading beneath the rising pleasure of both their touches. How easy it was to turn her face away, close her eyes, and pretend the fingers she felt massaging those circling passes upon her sex were olive-skinned, thicker, and rougher than her own.

  "Look at me," he said softly, a command nonetheless.

  She didn't want to. She wouldn't be able to stop herself from coming if she looked at him, but already the need to obey was outweighing her stubbornness. Her blood felt hot, lava coursing through her veins. The pulse of erotic wanting throbbed at the tip of each swollen breast, a heady cadence that was offset by the racing of her heart and the shivery hitch of each shaky breath.

  "You never answered my question. No, I didn't say stop." Alan stroked her legs, moving up from her calves to the tense stretch of her inner thighs. She couldn't stop her muscles from jumping under his fingertips, but she kept her legs open and her eyes locked with his. "Good girl," he purred. "Keep going. In fact, I think those pretty little nipples of yours have been neglected long enough. Play with them, too."

  Blushing furiously, she tried to cover her eyes, but he allowed her no time to hide.

  "That's not your nipple."

  Tavy moved her hand, haltingly dropping her fingers to her breast. She cupped, but that felt too much like shielding herself, hiding from him yet again. At the first contact of her hand, her breast begged for a different kind of touch altogether. Her fingers wandered, first lightly plucking, and then tweaking at the crowning bud. Alan watched the entire time; his devil's gaze heating by midnight-black degrees.

  "Not like that," he said, deep in his throat. "As if I were doing it."

  There was no hesitation in her now. She pinched, hard enough to bring herself arching up off the pillows. His hands on her knees kept her legs from closing on the involuntary shudder that ran through her.

  "Good girl. Beautiful girl." He smiled, his massaging hands creeping up the insides of her thighs. "So tell me, who were you thinking about before I startled you with my overwhelmingly quidnuncian presence?"

  To tell him it had been him was the last thing she could bring herself to admit. It lurched right to the tip of her tongue to say she couldn't remember, but there was no way she could look into those dark, knowing eyes and lie to him. It just wasn't possible. That nagging inner voice kept saying he'd probably know if she tried.

  "Why won't you have sex with me?" she countered, punishing herself for how badly her voice was trembling by pinching her nipple harder than necessary.

  Smug victory lit his eyes. His mouth broadened in a grin. "Is that what you were thinking?"

  Tavy thought she could handle anything, but his smugness proved her undoing. She tried to roll away but he moved faster, launching himself over her, pinning her body beneath his. The protective snap intended to close her legs ended up trapping him between them, hugging rather than evading, as he settled into devastating position on top of her. Lean, hard hips rocked into the cradle of hers, letting her feel his unavoidable interest straining against his zipper, confined only by a thin barrier of rough leather.

  "Is this what you want?" he asked, rocking his pelvis against her in a mock thrust that made her nerve endings sing. "My cock inside you? Shall I make you beg again?"

  She loved the way he said that. She didn't want to, but she did. "That was a one-time deal, and it didn't end so well for me the last time."

  "You came."

  "You didn't."

  There was that smugness again. He grinned. "Is your pleasure so dependent on mine?"

  "Of course not," she quavered.

  "Don't lie to me," he warned, the slow rock of his hips becoming a full force thrust, slapping into hers. It was the worst possible punishment; the scrub of his bulging zipper against her clit hurting almost as much as it felt good. "Put your hands on my shoulders," he ordered, and, desperate now for something to cling to, she did. His motions gentled back into slow, rocking undulations. He never should have felt so good.

  His devil eyes regarded her, heavy lidded and difficult to read.

  "I might fuck you," he mused. "I haven't decided yet."

  "Why not?" The question was out of her before she could bite it back. As if the situation weren't humiliating enough as it was.

  "Maybe I want to be memorable. Maybe I want to send you from this place so in love with the experience that you can't help but think about returning just so you might feel me at last inside of you."

  "Or maybe you're married," she countered, stubbornly determined not to feel an instant razor-thin slice of jealousy for that unknown woman cutting at her.

  He arched an eyebrow. "Do you really think I would be here with you like this if I were married?"

  "You wouldn't be the first man to cheat on his wife." She really needed to learn to keep her mouth shut. His frown was hard to look at. She turned her face away, trying to find something—anything—else to stare at. "Maybe you have an open relationship."

  "I do not." His tone was as flat and hard as his words. "When I marry, if I marry, my wife will be my own and no one else's. Not for a weekend, an hour or even a scene. I don't share what's mine."

  Tavy dug deep, but she couldn't find the slightest feminine objection to that kind of ownership. Instead, what she found was an uncomfortable sense of envy.

  "And you?" he asked. "Is there a cuckold waiting at home for you somewhere out in the world?"

  Nothing in this room was safe to look at now. "No."

  Catching her chin between finger and thumb, he forced her back into the prison of his gaze. His frown had deepened. He waited.

  "No," Tavy repeated, firmly.

  "Just your schoolwork and extracurricular thieving activities."

  That was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Her annoyance resurged, but the minor tussle that erupted when she tried to yank her chin away ended when he shifted his grip to encompass her whole lower jaw. His palm overlapped her throat, and now not only could she feel the utter heat and overwhelming weight of him pressing against her, but her own erratic pulse became a pounding cadence of need under his hand. He shifted his thumb, as if feeling for the traitorous beat.

  "Wrap your legs around me," he softly comm
anded.

  Pure heat flushed her. More than anything, she wished it were another man on top of her. Any other man, she could have resisted. She had to stop this.

  His fingers caressed the side of her throat, circling the collar he'd given her. He rocked; more a slow, circular grind of his hips than a thrust. "Three more strokes of the cane," he coaxed. "I promise, I'll make every one of them as hard as you can take."

  She trembled harder, but she also obeyed. Wrapping her legs around him lifted her pelvis. Now all she could feel was the hard bulge of his imprisoned cock, the harshness of his leathers pressing full against her achingly empty pussy, and the hard heat of his body cradling all the rest of her.

  He began to rock, fucking her in motion if not in deed. Each bumping movement ground the bulge of his cock into her sex. She arched every time the pressure rubbed over her clit.

  "What do you steal?"

  Oh, God. She snatched her hands off his shoulders and would have turned away again, but his hand dug into her cheeks and chin, and she couldn't escape. She couldn't even close her eyes; his were too bewitching, and the undulating motions of his body over hers too distracting.

  "Cars?" he guessed, thrusting faster now. His confined cock was spanking her pussy. "Stereos? Candy bars?"

  "Get off," she said, furiously willing her body to stop enjoying this. Any of this. From all the inches of her that touched him and burned because of it, to every part that hummed and tingled, and ached to be stroked, kissed and invaded by him.

  "Four more strokes, a baker's dozen, just as hard as you can take it. You won't sit for the rest of the day. Or keep your secrets and get nothing."

  "Money," she spat, irritation sprouting into anger at her own inability to just throw him off and scramble out of the bed and away from him. Screw her obligations to the auction. Screw the Castle and its extra days. She wasn't getting what she needed now anyway, and with every offer of pain he dangled like a carrot before a horse, came a price she knew better than to pay. "If you knew—" Tavy caught herself, snapping her mouth shut with an audible clack of teeth striking together. She swallowed, then glared at him. "You should have returned me to the auction block when you had the chance."

  She braced herself, waiting to see the recrimination she knew had to be building somewhere inside him, but if he felt any at all, he wasn't letting it show.

  Alan cocked his head. "What do you do for a living, Tavy?"

  "O," she bit back

  "What do you do for a living?" he demanded.

  "I steal!" she shouted up into his startled face. Everywhere he was touching her, all those places that had burned with erotic desire just moments ago, now felt sullied and unclean. She didn't deserve to be here. She didn't deserve to feel anything but shame and disgust, and if he weren't so hell bent on making her feel, on forcing her to let him know her, then maybe she could get her head where it needed to be to endure this.

  She had to get out from under him.

  Wrenching her chin from his hand, she shoved, fighting to roll over, every nerve in her body suddenly geared to run. Just as suddenly, his body on top of hers became not a lover's weight, but a disciplinarian's. He tried to pin her down, but she fought back until he abruptly switched tactics, seizing her by the hair and dragging her to her knees.

  "Crawl," he ordered, and though he wasn't hurting her—not really—the gentleness was gone from his hand.

  Tavy crawled, following the wordless direction of his fist in her hair, up over the tile-lined rim of the sunken bed and onto one of the rugs. He shoved her head to the floor.

  "Crawl," he said again, and she did.

  Angry tears flooded her eyes. She couldn't see anything beyond his feet as she followed where he half-dragged and half-led her around the room. It seemed so aimless, except that it must not have been. The only pause he offered was filled with the dry clatter of a rattan cane knocking against others of its kind as it was selected, and then he was dragging her again. And all she could see were his pants and heels, and the garish red carpet fibers as they passed from the stone parts of the floor onto another area rug. She tried to keep up with him so the pull on her scalp wouldn't hurt so much.

  "On your belly."

  She was crying even as she obeyed.

  "I am rewarding your honesty," he said, and though she tried to slap her hands over her ears to block it out, she still heard it when he added, "nothing more. Where are you at, Tavy? What color are you?"

  "Ultramarine," she spat, digging her hands into the short carpet fibers. She thought she heard him tsk, but then the cane cut the air behind and above her… and the first stroke of hurt bit in.

  There was no warm-up, but she didn't deserve one. The pain was too much; much sharper and more intense than any session she had taken before—not with a cane, or a paddle, or even a whip. She clutched at the rug and then her own mouth, muffling back wails that never should have escaped her, and wouldn't have if only he would play the game the way she wanted him to. No emotion, no personal investment.

  She couldn't take it. The safeword was right there, right on the tip of her tongue, and it took everything she had not to let it come shouting out of her. Somehow, she bit it back. Somehow, she took every stroke. From the top of her bottom to the backs of her kicking, writhing thighs. Because she'd earned them.

  Because she was the girl who never said no. Not once. Not ever.

  She curdled inside. Outwardly, she wept.

  Chapter Nine

  The dining hall was as crowded as he'd ever seen it, but Alan wasn't surprised. It was New Year's Eve. Next to Halloween, that was always the Castle's busiest holiday. If he thought this was busy, he was dreading what he'd find when they finally got around to visiting Wardrobe. Because he'd cut her corset off, he and Tavy had been reduced to sharing an outfit. His. He didn't mind; she looked better in his vest than he likely ever would. Of course, he was probably a little biased. For his part, he was ready to get out of leather and into something that didn't chafe.

  The line at each buffet station was long but orderly, and they moved along fairly swiftly. He didn't mind the wait, and he knew Tavy probably didn't either. As stiff and sore as she was, the frequent pauses gave her just enough time to keep the winces hidden, and her muffled groans locked behind tightly pressed lips.

  "Why don't you try to find us someplace to sit and I'll grab a couple of plates?" he offered, already casting a dubious look around the restaurant's tightly packed sitting area. There were people standing in small groups, laughing and talking, and eating, in every open spot they could find along the walls. Finding one available chair wasn't going to be likely; finding two, damn near impossible. It was probably a good thing the Fire Marshall wasn't on the guest list this week.

  "I'm fine," Tavy muttered, her tone flat and empty.

  Alan frowned, but didn't say anything. She wasn't fine, and he knew it. She hadn't been fine since he'd caned her. In truth, she hadn't been fine before that, but now that emotion-hiding 'wall' of hers was back, as impenetrable as ever. She'd thrown it up between them the instant he'd set the cane aside and tried to enfold her in his arms. She'd refused every form of aftercare he'd offered—from the simple act of rubbing lotion on her welted bottom, to rubbing her back and hair; she'd even refused the pillow and blanket he'd brought her so she could be more comfortable where she lay on the floor, exactly where he'd put her, making no effort at all to get up, roll over, or even to cover herself. She'd just lain there, limp and broken. Like a discarded doll.

  A doll would have been easier to fix. With Tavy, he had no idea what he should do. Standard Castle protocol was telling him one thing—contact security, notify Marshall, get one of the counselors down here to talk to her and remove himself from the scene until Tavy had proved herself once more able to communicate her needs. His heart was telling him something altogether different—contacting security or Marshall meant he ran the risk of having another Dom assigned to Tavy for the rest of her stay. He couldn't do that. He couldn't ev
en think about it. Another man wouldn't bat an eye when she said she wanted pain. He'd do exactly what every Dom before him had done—welt her, bruise her, scar and use her until her tears flowed. Instead of tearing down that damned wall to free the submissive within, they'd be cementing another layer of rock across the top of it. Then she'd leave, and all he'd have left was another empty-eyed photograph for him to tape to his mirror.

  He had to break through to her, but how? Every wall had its weak spot, but emotional ones also had their booby-traps, reinforcing triggers capable of filling her with enough razor wire to keep even someone as determined as he was from getting close enough to do any good. Tavy's razor wire was already curling into place. Alan could all but see it wrapping its distancing coils around her. What he couldn't see was a way to cut through it.

  Casting another look around the crowded dining hall, Alan settled his gaze on an unmarked door in the far wall. It would be locked to prevent guests from gaining access, but everyone who worked here knew what lay within: the Masters' private dining room. Very few guests saw the interior of that room. Although he knew some of the other Masters occasionally brought their temporary companions in to eat with them, Alan never had. Right now, he could see the wisdom in it. A private meal with Tavy versus standing room only in a hall so full of conversation and dish clatter that he could barely hear himself talking? No contest.

  They made it up to the front of the first serving station. Tavy barely acknowledged it when he handed her a plate. She followed at his elbow, trailing him from the salad station to the meats and vegetables, and past the dessert table. The only things on her plate were what he paused to put there once he'd realized she wasn't taking anything at all for herself. She might have been standing right next to him, but she was miles away. He had to do something about this. He just wasn't sure what would make it better, and what might well make it worse.