by Maren Smith
Patting him on the shoulder, Marshall walked away. One by one, his friends gave him commiserating looks and followed.
"I'll keep my phone on," Sam told him, but Alan already knew he probably wouldn't call again.
"If you need help with a scene," Dominick offered, before he, too, left. Alan wasn't going to take him up on that either. Not because he didn't think Dominick wouldn't fall into place behind him, picking up a secondary position, helping his scene in any way he could, but because Alan didn't think he could handle watching anyone else laying hands on Tavy. Not when it had taken eight thousand dollars and hell of a lot of planning to finally get her where he wanted her: in his care and under his control.
She was waiting in the corner for him to come back, and then two things were going to happen: The angry and defiant O was going to lash out at him, demanding in the way many angry, defiant submissives demanded, for him to put her in her place… and if he did, the already cracked and fragile half of Tavy that everyone but him had seen so easily was going to break under the strain.
Somewhere, there had to be another option. Something he could do that would soothe O's driving need and yet not inflict any more damage on Tavy. It was his job to find it.
He just wished he knew where to look.
Tavy didn't know how long she'd spent in that corner, kneeling on the craggy stone-block floor, but her legs were shaking and her kneecaps screaming for relief by the time she heard Alan come back into the room.
Round Two. She could all but hear the clang of the prize fighting bell as his long-legged stride crossed from stone to carpet and back to stone again. She kept waiting for him to pick up speed, to get angry. To grab her by the hair again, drag her around the room, force her to the floor and make her crawl at his feet the way despairing women undeserving of a name should be made to do, but if he was angry, he didn't show it. He denied her that. By the time he reached her, he was nothing but calm.
For a long time, he said nothing. Did nothing. Refused even to touch her, not until at very long last, he lowered himself to squat just behind her.
The heat of his breath caressed the bare slope of her shoulder, followed by the brush of his lips.
Tavy shivered, her own fingers tightening in her hair with the effort it took not to immediately slap the sensation off her rebel skin which, for just a moment, tried to interpret that as pleasant. She didn't want that. She didn't want his gentleness. The corner was too tight around her and he was too close at her back. She wanted to retreat, but there was simply nowhere for her to retreat to.
His breath touched the back of her neck, the only warning she had before the next kiss caressed her.
"Your defiance does not make me happy," he said again, picking up the conversation he'd started back when she'd still been sprawled across his knee, before he'd marched her into this corner and then left her here to sulk. "You are going to be punished for that."
She shivered all over again, the shaking in her legs forcing all the rest of her to tremble now, too.
"No," Alan said, his devil's voice in her ear as soft as any lover's. "It will be my kind of punishment, not yours. Stand."
Her knees begged for the relief. Tavy shook her head. "I'll crawl."
"No, you won't. You haven't earned that reward. Stand." He rose to his feet, hooking a hand under her right arm and pulling her up off her knees. Reward or not, her legs refused to take her weight. Halfway up, they went out from under her, and she crashed all the way back down again. His hand under her arm was the only thing that stopped her from landing harder than she did.
"Up," he said, unyielding. He pulled her to her feet, and this time she got her legs all the way under her.
This was where he should have dragged her by her hair to the giant sunken bed, throwing her back down on her knees, head down on the pillows, ass up in the air, mounting her from behind with no regard for anything but his own pleasure. After so many trips here, she expected that. Some days, she even depended on it. But Alan didn't do that. He pushed her back against one of the corner pillars instead, the smooth curve of marbled stone bumping up between her shoulders as he planted his hand on her chest and pressed her against it.
He held her there, just held her. Looking at her, she thought, his purchased conquest. His piece of meat. But no, he was waiting until the trembling of her legs solidified, his hand on her chest and the pillar at her back supporting her until he was certain she wouldn't fall.
"I'm fine," she muttered.
That only made him frown. "Don't move."
He waited long enough to see if she would obey—or maybe fall—before walking back around the bed. A dining table was tucked into a nook on the far side, with a chest of drawers built into the wall beside it. One after the other, he opened the top two drawers, removing something pre-packaged from it. Pulling a quick-release knife from a sheath on his belt, he cut through the stiff-plastic casing, returning to her with a pair of black leather wrist restraints linked together by a metal chain.
Tavy offered no resistance when he buckled her wrists into each restraint. So dark they seemed almost midnight black, his eyes bored into hers without blinking. He raised her arms and hooked the chain that linked the cuffs onto another chain high up on the pillar above her head. Adjusting the height, he brought her as fully upright as she could stand. Checking the tension in her arms and then the tightness of the cuffs, he walked back to the chest. From the bottommost drawer, he withdrew a spreader bar. Fastening that to her ankles forced her feet more than shoulder width apart, and brought her even higher onto her tiptoes.
Her arms felt the strain, but that became a secondary concern to the dark calculation that stole through his icy gaze when he looked at her then. He reached for her, his hand settling on her throat. Asphyxia was a hard limit of hers, but he did not squeeze. Still, Tavy felt the strength in his fingers in a way she hadn't been aware of in any man before him. Strong, but gentle. Every inch of him so in control that he couldn't help but exude that same control over her as well. She trembled. For the first time in a long time, that heated pulse still throbbing in her punished flesh shifted, wending from her bottom until the low thrum of it was firmly seated between her widely splayed legs.
"When you are obedient," he said, the slow measure of his words making the thrum beat all the harder, "I will give you whatever you need. But when you deny me your obedience, you will be punished."
Her battered muscles clenched when he let her go, her aching flanks feeling every nuance of the word 'punished' in every place he'd already so thoroughly spanked. She flinched when he pulled that quick-release knife from its sheath again. As much as she tried to hold still, she cringed in her bonds when he hooked the front of her corset and, careful to keep his own fingers between the blade and her flesh, cut straight down the front between the posture-enhancing boning rods. Tossing the ruined corset aside, he left her without so much as a stitch of clothing to hide behind.
Back to the chest of drawers he went, leaving her feeling every bit as exposed as all her scars. Quivering, trying to control her breathing and trying even harder to convince herself that he was no different from all the other men who had put their marks on her, Tavy watched him rummage through the drawers. Canes, crops, whips—there wasn't anything he could have chosen to use that she had not felt a dozen times before. None of those things would have been half as frightening as what he settled on.
The Hitachi wand was white, from the bulbous, vibrating head all the way down to the corded plug. She tried to shy away, but the pillar and her bonds held her exactly as he wanted her: open, exposed, and immobile.
"Don't," she quavered.
Grabbing the same straight-backed chair he'd used when he'd spanked her, Alan thunked it down directly in front of her.
"Don't?" he echoed mildly, unwinding the cord on the Hitachi. Bending down, he flipped the lid on the in-floor electric socket directly behind her left leg and plugged it in. "Don't what?"
"I don't like those." Sh
e was breathing hard again, and the heat between her legs, contrary and insidious to what she really wanted, was spreading. It moved up through her sex and into her womb. The pulse was changing, still thrumming in time with the ache in her bottom, but now adding a whole different flavor to the hurt.
"Don't you?" He regarded her a moment, his expression unreadable. Laying the Hitachi on the chair, he stepped in close to her. Her breasts brushed his vest with every ragged breath she took. Her legs were shaking so badly now it made the chains at her wrists and on the spreader bar clink.
Leaning in to her, his black stare bored so deeply into her that she could feel it; a physical tickling that twined with the heat in her belly and began to pulse along with it. She tried to look away but, combing his fingers into her hair, he fisted it, forcing her gaze to remain with his. Her belly flinched when she felt the brush of his other hand settling hot upon it, palm flat, fingers splayed much as her legs were.
Without a word, he moved his hand down. His fingers slid boldly over her sex, as if he owned her. And didn't he? This was what she'd known would happen the moment she agreed to be sold, and this was what he'd paid for—her body, her pleasure, her pain… her all.
Her breath was little more than a gasp when he invaded her, two fingers sinking deep and with such humiliating ease. Her pussy tightened all around him, hugging onto that single thrust of his fingers in ways she hadn't felt in so very long.
He shouldn't be affecting her like this. Nobody else had. Why couldn't she disassociate herself the way she could with others, shut her mind against everything but the pain, pretend it was someone else's body he was touching, feel nothing but the shame, as she had so many times before? It was his eyes. His insistence on looking at her, at forcing her to look back—when all she wanted was to close him out.
Removing his fingers, he held them up for her to see. Arousal glistened on his skin, all but dripping down the back of his hand. He waited, letting her get a good look, his grip on her hair making her unable to turn away even after the mortification became too much.
"What do you want from me?" she moaned, shaking her head.
"Everything. I already told you that." Releasing her hair, Alan picked up the Hitachi and sat down, pulling his chair closer until she could feel the brush of his knees against hers. "I believe I also told you not to lie to me."
With a click, the wand came to aggressive life just inches from her pubis.
"Don't," she begged. "Please!"
"What color are you?" he countered, giving her a way out if she wanted to take it, and Tavy didn't pretend not to understand. And yet, she couldn't. 'Red' choked in her throat, but refused to come any further than that. She wouldn't say it. She couldn't. Alan shook his head, the wand buzzing furiously in his hand. "You'll take whatever pain I give you, but not pleasure. Why?"
"Because…" If she let herself like what he did to her, then how would she ever find redemption for the wrongs she did? She opened her mouth, but the words refused to come. She couldn't tell him that. How could she? She already knew he was going to come back with another prying 'why?' He'd dig the reasons out of her. He'd flay her open and lay her bare, see the ugly things she did… and know, beautiful as some might think her, how horrible she really was. She couldn't bear it. "Because it's not what I want."
"That makes the punishment effective then, doesn't it?" Tavy sucked air when he swept his left hand back between her legs, twin digits finding the heated core of her and pushing their way up inside. "You have two safewords. Use either and I'll stop."
He waited, two fingers sunk to the palm inside her, stroking gently until her hips no longer heeded what she said she wanted. They moved in time with his shallow thrusts. The wand was so close she could feel the air vibrating between them.
"I can't," she cried, already beginning to pant.
"Then come for me." He nestled the vibrating wand against her sex, rolling the head, his fingers inside her feeling every twitch, flinch, and finally every bucking, quaking convulsion as he found the perfect spot just above her clit. "Let yourself go. I want to see if you can."
"No!" Tavy banged her head against the pillar. She locked her lips and tried to keep it back, but the bonds and the stone column kept her where he wanted her, and her refusal to yield either safeword meant the Hitachi stayed where it was. Heat rolled molten inside her, flowing down to wet his hand with the hot musk of need. Her thighs locked and shook, her belly spasmed. She tried, but she couldn't block it out. Not the rattling hum or the thrust of his fingers as he sought out that sensitive spot deep inside her.
"Come," he commanded, just as she lost the war to the sexual spasms that rocked her. She couldn't block him out any more than she could the wand, and for the first time since she began to visit the Castle, a Master made her come. Not once, not twice, but over and over again he milked the orgasms from her weeping pussy, until she had nothing left and no choice but to follow suit.
She wept too.
Chapter 6
Alan took the spreader bar off, setting it behind the pillar well out of the way. Wrapping his arm around Tavy's waist, trying not to fixate on how all the curving parts of her seemed to magically fit against all the hardest parts of him, he unbuckled her wrists. One after the other, her arms fell limp at her sides. She was sniffling, shaking. Her face was flushed, wet with tears and smeared with tracks of dark make-up that cut her cheeks to her jaw. Her eyes and nose were red and running. A hot mess, some might have called her. To him, she was still beautiful.
Her knees buckling at every step, he walked her to the bed. The steps were a tricky negotiation, but once he got her down amongst the cushions, she sank to her knees and then flopped onto her side. Hiccupping and gasping, she wilted where she lay. Alan covered her with a blanket, tucking it in all around her. She didn't look at him, not even when he brushed the tousled mop of brown hair back from her face to check her. One look in her eyes told him everything. She wasn't shell-shocked. She wasn't broken. She was, in fact, flying deep in subspace.
Until that moment he hadn't known it possible for him to want her more than he already did. Hunger, hot and powerful, burst up through his core, firing through his veins, bringing his already hard cock surging back to the very edge of fierce control. As hard as it had been to resist those carnal demands when his fingers had been buried to the hilt in the suckling pull of her orgasming pussy, when his mouth had ached mere inches from the jutting points of her taut nipples and the alluring bounce of her swollen breasts as she'd writhed against the pillar, seeing her like this now, and knowing he himself was responsible for this highly erotic state, made the kick of his need almost impossible to deny.
Almost.
Alan shook, but he still reined it in, forcing the rampant ferocity of his desire back down deep inside him. He touched her face, but repressed his urge to bend down and kiss her, taste her; the saltiness of her tears or the trembling sweetness of her lips. His hand slipped down onto her throat, but though every inch of his body tightened with the need, he did not grip. The darkness of his fingers was an intoxicating contrast with the paleness of her throat. Alan swallowed, hard, but breath-play was a hard limit for her and he would not cross that line.
Leaving her where she lay, he placed a call down to Connie's kitchen. Although a Master of the Castle and technically entitled to room service whenever he liked, one of the perks of being a winning bidder was the use of a kitchen runner upon request. In the condition Tavy was in, a trip down to the all-night deli and coffee nook just wasn't possible, and right now she needed food and drink as much as, if not more than, she needed comfort.
He placed his order; a light supper of fruit and protein, then fetched a handful of tissues and a cold cloth from the bathroom before returning to the bed he would be sharing with her. At long last. Every nerve in his body quivered with the excitement he forced himself to suppress.
Tavy might have been asleep for all that she acknowledged his return. Her eyes were open, however.
&nb
sp; "Look at me."
She blinked, but otherwise didn't move.
Gently wiping her face with the damp cloth, Alan cleaned away the mascara and tears. He even wiped her nose.
"Blow," he coaxed. She half-heartedly responded. Tossing the tissues away, he wiped her face again with the cleaner side of the cloth, letting the coolness soothe her red-rimmed eyes, before wadding it up and tossing it up onto the stone ledge that surrounded the bed. Brushing another stray wisp of hair back from her face, he lay down, facing her. Her pupils looked good. Her hand, tucked up near her chin, was still shaking, raising blood sugar concerns.
A knock at the door signaled the arrival of the food. Alan got up to bring in the tray, closing the door on the runner before she could do more than crane her neck for a curious look around the Bordello. Carrying it back to the bed, he set it on the ledge nearest to Tavy and then crawled down beside her again.
"Sit up." He stroked her head, letting his hand trail to the small of her back. When she didn't move, he took hold of her arm and pulled her upright. "Sit," he said, more forcefully, and refused to let her lie back down again. For the first time, she looked directly at him. It was a hard look to decipher—not angry, not bitter. Rather, she seemed empty. Void of everything, including sadness. Had he gone too far? Had he not gone far enough? He frowned. That he'd flipped some kind of trigger in her was obvious; he just wished he knew what that trigger was.
Pulling the lid off the supper tray, Alan picked through the spread Cook Connie had sent up. Although the buffet was within minutes of closing, the infamously short-tempered mistress of the kitchens had done her best to accommodate him, providing an assortment of sliced meats, cheese cubes, fruit and drinks—two waters and a juice box, complete with multi-colored crazy straw that had, in all likelihood, been pilfered from supplies not yet sent up to the Littles wing.