Chapter Eleven #3
He’d killed our bond the moment he’d bled me in Victor’s massacred menagerie.
“Henri...don’t.”
“Ten strikes.” His hand suddenly left my ass, rising above his head.
“Five to kickstart your deliberation and five to punish you for ever thinking you could manipulate me. Once you’ve screamed and your skin is bright red, you will get on your knees and blow me.
If you satisfy me, I’ll grant you one request. I’ll repay you for your obedience, and you’ll learn it isn’t so bad to belong to me.
If you play with me, I’ll play with you.
We can have more than what the others have.
We can have sex, but we can also have closeness, and if I’m perfectly fucking honest—which I always stupidly am with you—that’s the part I want the most. I want to feel connected to you while I hurt you.
I want to adore you while I heal you. But if you deny me that closeness, then...
maybe you’re right. Maybe my suggestion of monogamy is ridiculous, and I should just revoke my exclusivity over you and give you to the others. ”
Before I could reply.
Before I could tell him that he terrified me and not just because of the harm he caused my body—
He struck.
I yelped as he planted a bruising hand on the small of my back to keep me in place, then spanked me hard.
So hard.
Far harder than he spanked me with the book in the library.
That’d been for show.
This was for him.
Only for him.
“Henri—” I scratched at the grass as he struck me again. “Ahhh!” Stinging pain. Five fingers of sting. “Stop it. I get your point. Stop—”
A third swat.
Agony layering upon agony.
A fourth, fifth, sixth in quick succession.
Agony, agony, and...an awful kind of thrill.
Seven.
I screamed.
I couldn’t help it.
I cried out as fire blazed, feeding through my throbbing flesh.
“Henri!” I clawed and mewled, trying so damn hard to get away. But he kept me wedged on the grass, my back locked in place, my hips exactly where he wanted them.
“Christ, you look incredible with my mark on you.”
Eight.
I gasped.
Grunted.
My insides trembled.
Clit ached.
Nine.
“It’s like a brand. My own brand. A bright red stamp that you belong to me.”
I groaned and moaned, grass sticking to my lips and sweaty skin.
Every cell forsook me, turning hot and heavy.
But I didn’t cry.
Didn’t even have the urge.
I choked back the fiery flush.
I grasped onto merciless revenge.
And when the final strike landed, and Henri stumbled back to the lounger...
As he spread his legs, and dragged me between them...
As he stroked my cheek like he loved me then positioned me like his whore...
I knew exactly what I would do.
I gathered all the wrongness, all the lewdness and...used it to break him.
He wanted to play Master and slave?
Fine.
Let’s play.
Sucking in a deep breath, taming my out-of-control panting, I wrapped my fingers around the thick base of him.
I looked up.
His gaze flared with mistrust.
His hand hovered as if to grab my wrist.
I squeezed—
“Fuck.” His voice mimicked a thunderstorm. “Behave, little nightmare. Suck my cock like a good little jewel—without teeth—swallow every drop that I feed you, and then...I’ll reward you.”
His voice stroked the greed in my blood.
I clenched on nothing and hot, hot need.
My fingers tightened around his shaft.
“Ily...” He shuddered, wary of my willingness. “Be nice.”
“Oh, I’ll be nice,” I whispered. “So very, very nice.”
His cock twitched in my palm, eager and hard.
He was vulnerable—pretty much as defenceless as a man could get, yet...it was his gaze that ensnared me.
Cold but unguarded.
Distrustful but hopeful.
Angry and brutal and full of sadistic power but beneath all of that...lonely.
Even now.
Lonely.
I wasn’t his greatest weakness.
It was that.
The two L words.
Love and loneliness.
Two intangible, important things that had the power to destroy him...if only I knew how to wield them.
“Ily...” he breathed as I dropped my lips to his crown. He smelled of sparkling fresh water from his swim and earthy with lust.
I let that lust fill me with newfound hope.
I tucked away the knowledge of what my name truly meant and what he said to me each time he used it.
He wanted a wife who could patch up that loneliness and make him whole?
Well then...
My mouth enveloped his cock.
He jerked as if I’d electrified him.
His hands came up to gather my hair, fisting it in a ponytail so he could watch.
My scalp tingled.
My ass stung.
One delivered with cruelty, the other with caresses.
He was a paradox.
An enigma.
I swallowed him as deep as I could manage.
I’d never liked giving blowjobs.
Even when Samuel and I were happy, it’d been something I did for him, not for me.
But this?
As Henri jolted and groaned, utterly transfixed as my head bobbed up and down and my hand corkscrewed around his length, I felt the first flutterings of power.
True power.
Raw, feminine power.
I could kill him like this.
Could slice a vein and bleed him out.
Cut off his balls and maim him.
I did none of those things.
I became his because, in return, he became mine.
I didn’t need him.
Not the way he needed me.
And that was my first weapon.
A weapon so wicked, it made me tremble to use it.
“Fuck,” he hissed as I tongued his slit. “Fuck.”
A sharp, salty droplet coated my lips; I looked up.
His eyes glowed sterling as he gave me every exposed, despairing piece of himself.
I increased my pace, worshipping him with my mouth.
My core clenched.
My nipples pebbled.
Quakes of sexual hunger pulsed through me, and...I made a different choice.
He’d been good once.
We were all inherently good beneath a lifetime of misery and mayhem.
His aggressiveness came from fear of loss, his possessiveness from fear of loneliness.
Therefore, I would give him the things he treasured.
I would be everything he ever wanted without giving him what he needed.
And then...one day, he would wake and see just how far he’d tumbled.
And when that day arrived, he’d save us.
If only to save himself.
Sucking hard, my jaw ached as I worked and licked him. Sucked and devoured him. His skin was so soft, his hardness twitching on my tongue.
His thighs turned to marble around me.
His hands turned to stone in my hair.
I swallowed him down and hummed in the back of my throat.
“Jesus Christ—” His head tipped back. His eyes snapped closed.
He gave me everything.
I took it all.
Dropping my hand between his legs, I rolled his balls between my fingers.
His reaction was instantaneous.
His growl echoed over the pond, scattering dragonflies. “Hell yes. Just like that. Fuck, you’re good at sucking my cock.”
His praise soothed the pain he’d given me but didn’t earn my forgiveness.
How strange that Sam said I was terrible in bed, yet Henri acted as if I was his ultimate fantasy.
I hated that ego made me try harder.
Pride made me fall into ruin as I cut free the threads inside me and threw myself into war.
I wanted him to break.
I wanted to be the one to destroy him.
I sucked harder.
I fisted tighter.
“Goddammit—” His voice cracked. “Your mouth...shit—”
I did most things on instinct, stroking him, caressing him, finding his most sensitive spots. I studied him, stripped him, stole everything.
My hand dipped lower, burrowing into the dark heat between his legs.
He twitched and groaned.
I did it again.
A flush of salt on my tongue.
Tightening my fist around his iron length, I sucked and pressed three fingers right on the ridged line tracing from his balls to his rear.
Neither of us was ready for his reaction.
Clamping both hands on my head, he surged into my mouth. “Fucking hell. Yes. Christ, yes. Take it. Suck me—”
I rubbed him.
He lost all power of conversation.
His body quaked.
His cock pulsed.
His skin became an inferno.
“Merde—” He thrust again and again, and...I let him.
I pressed harder and harder against that ridged little spot.