Chapter Nineteen
The Coming Contradiction
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H ANNAH’S HEAD WAS A confused, cloudy landscape, fogged with lust and turmoil. Straining against the cuffs, she tried to recall how she’d been foolish enough to have gotten caught again as the brush landed hard against her defenseless ass.
“Please!”
She was really begging then, the words catching in her throat, while hot tears burned in her eyes. The brush definitely hurt—its hard edge grazing her heated cheeks, taunting her.
“Stick that ass out,” he growled, tapping her sore skin with what felt like the back of the brush.
“But please,” she implored him, already unsure if the cuffs were only restraining her or actually holding her up. Her knees were weak, buckling under the brunt of the brush’s attention and seemingly no longer able to sustain the effort to keep her standing. “It’s too much.”
“Enough.”
Untangling himself from the heat of her body, he spun and walked away, his curt tone and abrupt departure convincing her she was far from out of the woods as far as the punishment was concerned.
Spinning around as far as her separated ankles and cuffs would allow, she watched with horror as he bent to collect more items from the closet behind her.
Oh God.
Shifting back into position before he saw her, she panted at what she’d witnessed.
Whatever he was looking for in that cupboard was likely to spell more bad news for Hannah.
Nothing good ever came from the dark places where Lawes hid things away.
He’d warned her to be quiet, yet the intensity of the strikes meant there’d been no choice but to defy him and vocalize at least some of what she’d been feeling.
Surely, he understood that?
Of course, he understands. She blinked away her emotion miserably, wishing she could offer her pained backside a comforting rub. That’s the point. He knows. He just doesn’t care.
She braced at the sound of his approach, brushing away the tears making tracks along her face with the side of her arm.
“Open up.”
His voice was calmer than before, but that was little consolation when he dangled the latest evil-looking gag at the side of her face.
“No.”
She didn’t know why she bothered to protest when the outcome was inevitable, but she supposed, after so long reconciling Lawes’ wicked acts, she needed to articulate her complaints.
Capturing her and treating her that way was wrong—a point that had repeatedly been reinforced during his trial—and deep down, Lawes must have known it.
He’d never seemed to have a problem wrestling with his conscience, though, and if the authorities hadn’t intervened, she reasoned that she, April, and the others would have spent many long and agonizing years in his and Fuller’s custody.
What difference does that make now ? Her head ached with despondency. I managed to break free just so he could drag me back into hell.
The air in the dank room seemed to disappear at her bleak appraisal. Was that what was in store for her again—more months of protracted and excruciating ownership at Lawes’ hands?
How would she deal with that?
A fresh surge of emotion drowned her as the answer smacked her hard in the face.
She wouldn’t.
“Hannah.”
He sounded more irritated than angry, as, standing flush against the back of her body, he held both ends of the gag out in front of her.
The latest implement of her torment was much like the ball gag had been, but instead of the black plastic ball that he’d shoved unceremoniously between her teeth last time, the middle of the current gag’s straps was met with a large black circle.
Her brow furrowed as she struggled to recollect if he’d used something similar on her the last time. Not that it mattered. He seemed set on doing so, regardless.
“Last chance to open up, or I double the number of strikes with the brush.”
His threat reverberated from behind her, distracting her from his hard length, which he was grinding against her punished backside through the fabric of his trousers.
Double? She mouthed the word, hardly able to focus on the threat of his hips.
He had to be fucking joking with a threat like that. The brush hurt like hell!
Desperation scratched at her insides, reminding her she was fucked whichever way the process played out.
Either he was going to stick that plastic ring in her mouth and effectively silence her before continuing to spank her with the cruel brush, or he was going to double the number of strikes and no doubt find some way to force the gag into place, anyway.
Pulling in a pained breath, she accepted glumly that there was no decision to be made. Lawes would do whatever he liked.
“Okay.” She tried to calm her breathing as his hot breath grazed her nape. “Please, don’t double the strikes, sir.”
“You are in no position to negotiate, little girl.” His face appeared from her left side, his green eyes steely as he concentrated on getting the right angle for the gag. “Now, open.”
Eyes flickering closed so she didn’t have to see its descent, she did as he asked, forcing her lips wide until she felt the gag lodge inside her mouth.
Accepting her fate, time lengthened around her, desolate seconds when she was suspended in the midst of her bitter vulnerability.
He had her then—entirely. He’d had her before, of course, but no moment so far had seemed as lonely as the one when she was forced to acknowledge the awful circular gag.
Compelling her eyes open, she watched as he ensured the circle was in position in her mouth. Her breaths were coming hard and fast as he leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss on her outstretched lips; an absurdly intimate act for any captor to bestow upon their hostage.
Gazes locking for a long moment, he withdrew, and the next thing she sensed were the straps attached to the gag being tightened around her face.
By the time the buckle was secured behind her, her tongue had already explored the confines of its new master, and even though she hated herself for the response, her clit throbbed in an eager response.
“Better.” He shifted back into place at her side, one hand tweaking her nipples while the other had somehow found the hairbrush again and dragged it along her buttocks. “This is how it should be, isn’t it, little girl?”
She moaned in reply, unsure what her guttural grunt was supposed to mean.
In all those intervening years when Lawes had been nothing but a sordid figure from her nightmares, she’d wrestled with the reality of her love-hate relationships with gags.
At first glance, she despised the things, her body reacting physiologically with sweaty palms and an accelerating pulse to their restrictions.
Yet, the first time one had been coerced into her mouth, she’d experienced something else—panic, yes—but then something she’d never expected.
The pulsing at her pussy confirmed the odd reaction.
For some incomprehensible reason, she found the loss of liberty to speak insanely fucking sexy.
Even though it made no sense, particularly in her current dangerous predicament, looking up at the hook attached high on the door in front of her, still holding her so effectively in place, she could no longer deny its tantalizing tug.
The effect was as real as the brush Lawes was sliding along her sore ass.
Tugging ruthlessly at her right nipple, his fingertips skimmed along her tummy until they slipped back into place at her needy sex.
She peered at him through half-open lids as two of those digits slid back inside her, marveling at how much she detested him, yet how nothing had ever felt so fucking divine.
“That good, eh?” His laughter was deep and low, the noise resonating over her sensitized body like electricity. “ This is supposed to be a punishment, remember?”
She did remember. The ache in her shoulders and her ass were constant reminders, but then the heel of his hand brushed her clit as his fingers delved deeper, and those problems were abruptly less significant.
“Uck.”
She forced the noise out as best she could, realizing she was stretching her lips wider than the circle, preventing her from articulating the word.
She didn’t want to be there, hadn’t asked to be his prisoner all over again, but hell, if he was going to torment her with such exquisite torture, then who was she to argue?
Lawes knew her. He understood her responses and the kinks that heightened her desire better than anyone. If she had to endure the merciless treatment, then let him shower her with the pleasure as well as the pain.
“Yeah.” His voice was breathless, his own emotions warring in his eyes when she looked more closely. “We both know you’re going to come so fucking hard, you won’t know what’s hit you.”
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his own stupidity as he brought the brush down against her backside again.
She groaned at the sensation, vaguely aware that her brain should be registering the swat as pain, yet she was way too deep into his dark rabbit hole to accept that obvious conclusion.
Whatever hurt the brush inflicted was drawn immediately as fuel for her raging fire, the energy threatening to explode at any moment.
Her head fell forward as he struck her again, and in response, she snapped her hips forward ruthlessly, taking more of the sweet friction her clit demanded.
Fuck.
The word rebounded in her mind as the hedonism rose up around her, silencing her every discernible sense until all there was in the world was Lawes.
In all the years since she’d been freed from his clutches, there had never been anyone who’d coaxed her to feel even a fraction of what he’d achieved.
Him —Mark Lawes—the man who’d come to take her, his damn cuffs, his satisfying hand, and his fingers curled inside of her.
And alongside those attributes, she was surprised to find she welcomed the rhythmic brutality of the hairbrush, which only seemed to push her harder toward orgasmic abyss.
For lengthened seconds, he held her there, poised on the edge of ecstasy as though they’d never been parted.
She screamed as the passion rose to consume her, or at least she thought she did.
All she knew for sure when the wave finally broke was that she surrendered to it entirely, inviting its suffocating black solace when it dragged her down into the depths of Lawes’ sordid branch of hell.