Dark Nights Boxed Set: The Complete Series

by Skye Warren

  I tried to distract myself by imagining what it was. A whip of some kind? No, it wasn’t long enough. A flogger, maybe. I could just picture one, with a blunt leather tip.

  He worked his way over my breasts. Like a lover would, I realized. Kissing over the tops and working his way inside. Along the tender underside, making me squirm. Saving the tip for last. But there, he paused to caress the hardening nub with cruel heat-filled lashes. The stunted sounds of my pain filled my ears, a high note above the rapid beat of my pounding blood.

  He moved down my belly, not pausing there, just slapping my tender flesh to mark the passage. I jerked against my bonds. There? No. God no. It would hurt so fucking bad…

  But that was what made it a punishment.

  There were lies people told you to get you to cooperate. This won’t hurt. It will be over soon. He didn’t bother with those. No. As far as I could tell, he’d told the truth every step of the way. Then again, there were plenty of things he hadn’t told me, and a lie of omission was still a lie.

  He moved to my feet, and when he hit me again, he used some kind of implement. Something thin and reedy. It felt like the sole of my foot cracked in half, split with a wicked knife. But then he pulled back and the pain faded. And I knew it would come again.

  It did. He used that goddamn horrible stick on my feet while my body jerked. It was the most painful thing I’d ever felt—on my feet. When my legs were moving spastically, out of my control, he held them down with one hand and hit them some more, picking up the pace. They would be broken, I thought dimly. They would be cut into ribbons.

  But then he stopped and in the seconds that passed, the pain in my feet faded to a dull ache. It was a sharp and fleeting hurt, one that took my breath away and left before I reclaimed it.

  The next slap was with his hand again, on my thigh, and I had to sigh in relief. One, two, three. Even without his words describing it, I knew he found the same places. I wasn’t the one obsessed with my bruises—he was. He moved to the other side. My body jerked away, and somehow toward him. It was confused, mistaking the pain for pleasure and the pleasure for affection.

  The blindfold and my muteness served as a barrier between us. They were obvious signs of bondage and my captivity. But in another way they allowed me to pretend I was somewhere else. At home, maybe, and I’d finally found a date who could give me everything I wanted. One who’d spiked my drink and pushed me inside my own door. One who’d held down my hands and taken what he wanted. That date had never happened, because no one had ever hurt me.

  But he did.

  The skin closer to my cunt was more sensitive, and I couldn’t help but cry out. I moved constantly, a puppet on leathery strings. My toes curled in alternating pain and anticipation, and every time they did, I felt an echo of pain from my feet. A warm, lulling fog descended over my mind, hiding before and after, so there was only now, this moment, and all the ways he could make me hurt.

  Here, too, he struck me the same way a lover might kiss me. Along the insides of my thighs to start. Then inward, closer. Finally, he moved up and down the lips of my cunt. He reached down to spread those lips and delved deeper with each stinging blow. When he snapped the wet leather against my clit, I screamed.

  He hit me there again and again, until all the breath left my lungs, all the thought left my head. I was nothing but sensation, nothing but lights under the tunnel, flashing bright on each new burst of pain. My mouth was open, my body strung taut. I wanted to beg him to stop. But even when he unclasped the gag and pulled it way, my mouth remained open and mute. Accepting this. Needing it. He laid the damp strap across the most sensitive part of me, the only organ built solely for pleasure, and he made it pain.

  I choked on my sorrow, my guilt. My moan mingled with his grunts, his low animal sounds on every strike. The strange thing was I sounded like a person being pleasured. The stranger thing was he sounded like someone in pain.

  I wondered when he’d stop hitting me, hurting me, but maybe he never would. We’d be caught in a web of our own making, turned monster by a poison we’d created. There was no escaping the trap we had set for ourselves, no believing our own lies. This place was stripped of decorum and manners. All that was left was rawness and blood. My blood. It squeezed through tiny strips made in my skin on my breasts and thighs. I could feel it where the salt of my sweat burned.

  Was he waiting for me to come? It would never happen. A sensual tension held me in its grip, but I would never let go enough to enjoy it. There was only pain for me, and that was all I wanted. To enjoy it would have been much worse, and I didn’t have to. My body had been played like an instrument. Like an object. And objects didn’t come.

  Only then did I realize the mockery he’d made of sex. Using the flogger to mimic a lover’s exploration. Blocking my senses. Using an object on an object, like making a doll fuck another doll. Was that how he saw himself too, as a thing? Or was he a god, the one orchestrating us all? I knew the truth. Somehow I knew, the same way I’d known he hated the cold. And I knew because even something as cruel as this formed a bond of intimacy between us. The real reason he orchestrated this crimson dance was because it was all he could handle.

  He was Mr. Hyde, and if he stopped being evil for just a moment, if the haze of violence cleared, he would see what he’d done. He’d turn into Dr. Jekyll again and then he’d hate himself. He’d kill himself, and in that twisted logic, he hurt me in order to save himself.

  “Please,” I murmured, exhausted and spent.

  “Shhh.” He picked me up, and I wavered on my feet.

  With his help I stumbled over to a bathroom. He set me down on a toilet and held my face against his leg while I peed. The sound was loud, and I didn’t even care. He’d seen me bleed, so what did it matter if he saw me pee? He’d torn into my soul; nothing he could do to my body would hurt anymore. That was probably another lie.

  He wiped me himself, and I sat blankly as the water ran and he washed his hands. Then he ran a stinging wipe over my cuts. The chemical smell pierced my sinuses. Antiseptic. He was taking care of me, looking after my health. How ironic. I could have laughed. I didn’t.

  After, he laid me back down on the bed. Under the sheets this time. Not tied up this time.

  He climbed in behind me, and for a moment, I was surprised. The haze lifted, and I wondered why a warm, hard body had nestled in around me, the fabric of his shirt soothing on my overheated skin. He was spooning me, for Christ’s sake. But then I remembered the parody we were making. First came sex and then the cleanup routine. Now would be cuddling.

  And pillow talk?

  The time when men were vulnerable because they’d just had an orgasm. Except he hadn’t come.

  “Why are you cold?” I whispered, cringing because I expected a blow. For talking at all or for asking a personal question.

  He answered easily, though, as if we were lovers instead of a criminal and his pet FBI agent. “A brain injury when I was a child. I’m fine now, but the part of my brain that figures out if you’re cold, that makes you put on a jacket or go back inside the house, that part’s just broken.”

  “So your temperature—”

  “Is normal. But my brain doesn’t know that, so I’ll keep wearing layers and turning up the furnace until I overheat myself.”

  How was that for lies we told ourselves? He couldn’t trust the messages his own brain was telling him. And he really had told me the truth. He hadn’t even seemed surprised by my question.

  It was worth it. The thought came to me suddenly that if I had to endure an hour of pain for a single confession, it was worth it. Not only for the job, but also for myself. Some personal quest I couldn’t quite admit yet. And maybe it was a fair trade after all. Who knew what the admission had cost him? He’d sounded so at peace with it, as if remarking on the brown of his eyes or the tan of his skin. And yet, he wouldn’t know how to show any weakness. Not this man. He would have been dead by now. By his own hand or someone else’s.

/>   I could understand him. I didn’t have to like him.

  He lay holding me as I drifted off, only the mockery seemed less and less fake. And more real than any embrace I had known. Only then did I remember I’d had my blindfold on. The entire time he flogged me, even in the bathroom. But he’d directed me the entire way. And somehow, I’d pictured him. His body. His face. As if I could see it without looking, so I hadn’t even noticed the barrier across my eyes.

  Maybe it was his presence—an overriding charisma that would give him the power to speak in a room full of terrifying criminals. The power to rule them. The presence painted a more defined picture than most people’s actual appearance did.

  Was I in awe of him? Did I like him?

  No. He’d been bullied as a kid. He had a small penis. He was overcompensating for something. But the old explanations felt empty now, more of a mockery than his sex-like beating had been. This wasn’t a man who reacted to things. He molded the world in his image. He was god-like after all, whether he saw himself that way or not. So what did it mean that I was no longer afraid when he held me? The pain warmed me across the front of my body, and he from behind.

  Was he cold, though? He might feel that way. I snuggled deeper and tucked the blanket over my shoulder, making sure it covered him too. Jesus, I was comforting my captor. Crazy. Insanity. A madman holding me in bed, and I had to appease him or he’d hurt me again. A lie, but then what was wrong with that? Sometimes you could take comfort in a lie. You could nurture it and hold it close to your heart. Right up until it turned on you.

  Chapter Eleven

  My body draped a bench, hands tied down. Ankles tied down. Cushions supported me. It was almost like a massage chair. Except I wouldn’t be getting anything as nice as that. I was naked, blindfolded, gagged. My uniform for my position as his slave. A prerequisite before he would touch me.

  And he was touching me. Stroking my hair and running his hands down my back. Lightly, like calming a wild animal. Which was crazy, since he was the animal. So why was I panting, nostrils flared? Why did an uncontrollable keening sound escape me, a cross between pleasure and despair? With just a gentle touch he could reduce me to my basest state. He could turn me from Jekyll to Hyde. He was my poison.

  I sighed, relaxing against the warm padded bench. Relaxing into him, because he pressed me more firmly now, seeking out the knots in my shoulders and rubbing them away. God, he was good at that. We could have been any ordinary couple, the man giving a back rub to the woman. The gentle clink of metal where the cuffs rubbed against their base reminded me that we were different. The pleasure would soon turn to pain.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked, speaking low. His words always hovered just above a breath, sharpened by that faint accent. I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel for him to speak normally, how much it would cut me open.

  Anyone could miss company when they were left alone in the dark.

  He chuckled softly. “You’re so tense when you’re angry.”

  I stiffened further at his words. But he wouldn’t let even that small rebellion go. He pushed the fierceness out of my body with firm strokes. God. All the questions I had bunched up in my hands. Why are you doing this? Will you ever let me go? But he’d never tell me the answers to them, and he’d saved us both the trouble by making it so I couldn’t ask. I opened my palm, and the questions drifted away, over the wind and out to sea.

  You only have this moment, the restraint told me. You only have what you feel.

  It changed the synapses of my brain. Instead of escape, I wanted to take whatever comfort I could find. Instead of cold professionalism, I wanted to understand where he was coming from. I already did understand, deep inside. We were both trapped here. His handcuffs weren’t visible, but they kept him bound to me as much as I was trapped against this bench. A man this powerful, this wealthy, this skilled at bringing pleasure to a woman didn’t need to force one. I was a hassle he didn’t need. However unlikely, I might one day escape. Might one day testify against him. Much easier just to pay a woman, to seduce her. And this wasn’t a man who took unnecessary risks. But here we were.

  Reluctance. Coercion. They strummed through my body—and his.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll start slow.” He sounded almost concerned. I could have believed he cared, but for the sting that hit my ass. I gasped against the shock and braced myself for another. His palm landed on my other ass cheek, waking every nerve ending in my body. I recognized the sensation from last time, a tingling warmth. I’d thought I was awake, walking around and going through the motions. But then he spanked me, he whipped me, and I realized that had all been a dream. This was real.

  He switched to a flogger, covering my ass cheeks and then working his way up my back. This was new territory, a parallel of what he’d done to the front side of my body. I gritted my teeth and tried not to cry out.

  A pause.

  This new implement whistled in the air before it landed across my shoulders. Oh God. The strands were long and thick. They covered me from spine to shoulder before flicking off again. The pain felt almost less than before. Certainly there was less of a sting. But more of an impact. I felt the thud ripple across my skin and reverberate in my bones. My fear faded under his onslaught, turning into something murkier. Something gray and reflective. Something good.

  I understood now what his massage had been. To show me what would come. It felt like a hundred hands pressing into my skin, a thousand minute corrections across my back until my muscles melted into puddles. I was hugging the bench, grateful it could hold me up. Even my brain had turned to mush, entering a strange twilight hour when the sky turned hazy and stars glittered.

  My spit pooled behind the ball gag. When I didn’t swallow fast enough, a drop leaked from the corner of my mouth. I didn’t care. I couldn’t, not when I’d found some higher plane, a place where I could float. This wasn’t a base place, an animal incarnation. This was strangely spiritual. A perversion, no doubt. Maybe even blasphemy. But so sweet I would want to come here again anyway. I’d sell my soul for this feeling, but then, maybe I already had.

  He stopped striking me, but the sensations continued, racing each other over my skin. This felt amazing, and I wanted to ask him why he’d force a woman to take this. He seemed handsome enough, especially if you ignored the crazy dead look in his eyes I’d glimpsed in secret. He had plenty of money. Why not find a woman and make her feel like this? Unless forcing a woman was half the fun.

  My job is to put them in handcuffs, not care how they got there.

  That was what Hennessey had told me, but he wasn’t here now. Not caring how they get there had been a luxury reserved solely for the free. He could put in his hours, make his arrests, and go home at the end of the day.

  Not me.

  Soft rustling sounds came from behind me. I felt his soft breath on my lower back, and I knew he was crouching down behind me. Something hard and cool prodded my entrance—and pushed inside. He hadn’t used lube. It was my body’s own preparation, creaming myself in anticipation of him. A defense mechanism, I told myself, but the excuse felt thin. Whatever object he’d put inside me, it stretched me to full capacity.

  Cocks would have felt hard in my hands and in my cunt. But they weren’t really, were they? They were flesh and blood and muscle. The thing he’d put inside me—that was hard. Made of something with no give at all. Maybe glass. I felt stretched and daunted. Take it. With a single thrust, he shoved the dildo all the way inside, and I gasped, feeling its curved tip bottom out at my cervix. My mouth was open around the ball gag, panting against the intrusion. Too full. Too much.

  But this wasn’t about what I wanted, was it? This was punishment. Except when his fingers found my clit from beneath me, when they circled and teased and drew a stuttering orgasm from me, it didn’t feel like a punishment at all. The walls of my cunt clenched around the glass dildo and rained down hot liquid.

  The dildo pressed against the forward wall, finding my clit fr
om the other side, making me come even harder. I felt something wet gush out of me, and I worried briefly, his hand, getting him wet, before I realized how crazy it was to be worried what he thought. He’d made me do this. It was all for him anyway. So I let myself go, riding the waves of my orgasm, one after the other until I could only rock on the choppy seas, eyes closed against a blinding sunset.

  He unlatched the gag and removed it. Gently, he wiped the drool from my face.

  “Why are you doing this?” My words came slurred. I sounded drunk, and felt that way too, but this was important. I only had this time, right after he’d hurt me, to ask him questions. It was the eye of the storm.

  “Because I can,” he said simply. “I don’t need another reason.”

  It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, and he knew that. I didn’t feel he was evading me either. That was the logic he used to justify it, but deeper still, in the places where logic didn’t reign, where instinct did, he wanted this. My subjugation. My fear. Elemental, the way another man wanted to kiss or feel a woman up. Just instinct.

  “Will you ever let me go?” I asked. He’d already told me. I knew the answer. But I had to find out. Had to hear it again.

  “Eventually.” His voice was faintly regretful. “If it makes you feel any better, it was decided before I took you. You never stood a chance.”

  “Why would that make me feel better?”

  He ran his thumb over my lips. “Because someone finally wanted you. Not just because you were pretty and convenient. Someone was willing to hurt you. To take that risk. My little orphan with no one to abuse her. To understand her. But I do. You’re just as crazy as me, love. And we’re going to be happy together for a long fucking time.”

  I shivered. How could he know that about me? Why would he care? I’d kept my horrible desires hidden from everyone. Even myself. Never admitting, even to myself, that I wanted someone to hit me, stalk me, rape me. I’d never secretly wished the sweet guy I was dating would turn into a raving psycho behind closed doors and make me do things I didn’t want. That was crazy.