Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Juliet
The timer has to be rigged. Slow, painful seconds tick by, and I squirm against the altar, but nothing helps. The burn is a relentless inferno, devouring me from the inside out. I’d give anything I own for a few seconds of relief. If this was a scene, I’d have safe-worded ages ago.
And that’s the exact reason you never fantasize about safe, sane, and consensual. It’s no fun unless it’s real.
Oh, good, the voice is back. Through the longest twenty-five minutes of my life, that voice has dropped in over and over to add a little extra torment to the mix.
Can you victim-blame yourself? It sure feels like I’m trying.
Dark fantasies are all well and good until you end up strapped to an altar with a red-hot poker up your ass.
Why did I have to picture that? For all I know, that’s his second punishment.
My eyes blur as I try to focus on the numbers, and I’m not sure if it’s from tears or the relentless darkness. Five minutes to go. I can do this. I can fucking do this.
My thoughts swirl. As hard as I try to think logically about what’s happening, I just can’t. I’m trapped in something that still doesn’t feel real, despite the pain, and logic doesn’t have a chance. He knows me. He’s already inside my head, and what he’s doing is working.
The door clicks open, and I almost wet myself as it thunks shut.
He’s here, and I still can’t see him. He has to have night vision. It’s the only explanation.
I strain my senses, desperate for some way to locate him, but he’s a fucking ghost. The pain fades as I slow my breathing, listening. Still, there’s absolutely no warning until the loud buzz rips through the air, and an extra-strong vibrator hammers into my clit.
Jesus fucking fuck.
I yelp and jerk, but there’s nowhere to go. He leans his weight on my back, trapping me as the crazy vibrations batter me. Too much. Way too much, and I twitch against him. “No. Stop. You—”
I almost say fucker. It’s right there, but he told me what would happen, didn’t he? More of this. More time here with the plug in my ass. I’m trapped in his game, and he makes the rules. He doesn’t seem the type to forget a threat.
“Relax and take it.” His gravelly voice, in the darkened room, sounds less human than it did before. Everything is warping into pure insanity. He punctuates the words by twisting the plug, and I yell.
Christ.
The movement reignites the burn, but it does something else, too.
The vibrations still batter me, but the flare of pain changed things, and they feel different.
My body isn’t trying to pull away from them anymore.
They’re a lifeline through the pain, and I latch on to them as he twists the plug again.
It starts to feel good. Even in this fucked-up situation, my body responds to the pain and vibrations like a well-trained dog.
Pleasure surges, and I close my eyes, fighting it.
I can’t let him make me come like this. It’ll just reinforce his messed-up view of me.
If he makes me orgasm on his stone goddamn altar, I’ll never convince him this isn’t what I want.
As if he can see into my head and not just through the darkness, he says, “Relax, Juliet. You can’t stop it.”
I can. I fucking can. I tense and will myself to dissociate from the sensations flooding me.
I’m in control; he can’t push me over the edge if I don’t want him to.
But he grips the plug and tugs, sliding it out to the widest point.
The stretch on my sore ass draws a scream from my lips, and I lose my mental hold on myself.
The savage vibrations do their work, and pleasure takes over.
I’m trapped, helpless to stop it as my stomach tightens.
All I can do is bite my lip, catapulting over the edge.
My body spasms on the altar and the orgasm rips through me, blasting unwanted pleasure deep into my guts.
It overwhelms me, and my head spins as I pant, trying to pull together the fractured parts of my brain.
Fuck. No.
He pulls the plug free and keeps the vibrations going as I ride the wave, shaking with the intensity of it. Then he turns it off just as the timer hits zero and lets out a frantic beeping.
“Your first punishment is over,” he announces as though he didn’t just blow my mind from the inside out. He taps the timer, silencing it, and picks it up. Without it, the darkness becomes total again, and even though I’m now sure he can see me, I’m glad of it.
That was amazing.
Shut the fuck up.
I can’t let myself enjoy any of this, not even the parts copy and pasted straight from the darkest parts of my brain.
If I do, he’ll know, and it’ll encourage him.
This isn’t a dom performing a carefully constructed scene.
He's a psychopath, and I’ll never beat him if I start letting my messed-up sexuality feed into his delusions.
The lights snap on.
I hiss and squeeze my eyes shut. A few seconds later, I risk opening them—slowly—and the room comes back into view. It’s jarring all over again, the eerie perfection of it. I’d half expected it to look different after so long in the dark.
Where the hell is Saldar? I can only twist my neck a little, and I can’t see him. I yelp as he touches me, fingers probing my soaked pussy. It feels more personal somehow, with the lights on. More of a violation.
I manage, “Stop it,” and he pauses his exploration.
“I own this body. You don’t get a say in what happens to it.”
I shiver as he presses first one, then two fingers into me.
Fluttery panic starts again at the casual way he does it.
As if it’s no big deal. I don’t know who this man is, I’ve never seen his face, and his fingers are inside me.
After what he just did with the plug, I don’t know why it affects me so much, but it does. It’s different.
“Get your hands off me. You—”
“Don’t do it, Juliet. Don’t disrespect me again.”
The heavy, warning note in his voice shuts me up.
His fingers disappear, and he comes into view.
If seeing the room again jarred me, seeing Saldar is a slap in the face.
He doesn’t look any more human. The creepiness is magnified a hundredfold, knowing this apparition just had his fingers in my pussy.
Knowing how entitled he feels to my body.
He crouches so he’s eye level with me and pushes my sweaty hair back from my face. I catch a brief glimpse of his hand. It’s inked with a design I don’t have time to take in. What does this man look like under his costume?
If things go the way I expect them to, I’ll find out soon enough.
I don’t think his fingers are the only thing he’ll stick in me.
A shiver racks me at the pure helplessness of it, and he notices.
The mask creases into an inhuman approximation of a frown, features shifting with that odd, sand-like motion.
He runs a finger over my cheek, touch gentle. “This is the hardest part. Once you’re trained, it all becomes easy. You’ll love being my slave, Juliet.”
He believes it. He actually believes it.
And you haven’t wanted this for years?
That voice seriously needs to fuck off.
I search for words, but he speaks before I get the chance, tone stern once more. “You withstood your punishment well. Now, apologize to your Master for your behavior, and I’ll release you.”
I open my mouth to do just that, but my brain clicks into gear before the words come out. They’re just words. They don’t mean anything.
But to him, they do.
To him, this is part of the fantasy he’s built. He punishes me, I fall into compliance, then I become his willing, obedient little slave. His happy slave. The more I act the way he imagines I will, the more convinced he’ll be that he’s doing this for my benefit as well as his own.
It might be the longest shot on the planet, but I can’t shake the feeling that belief is important to him.
The setting he chose, my own game and the character I love, point to a desire to make me happy, even if it’s in the most fucked-up way imaginable.
The less I play along with his delusions, the better.
I brace myself. This will hurt. “Fuck off. You’re a crazy psycho, and I’m not apologizing for shit. I don’t want any of this, and you’ll never be my master.”
Shit.
I tense my whole body, braced for the explosion. Surely he’ll yell. Beat my ass with a cane. Something. Instead, he just sighs, an oddly human sound even through the voice changer.
“That’s unfortunate. Thirty minutes.”
Wait. What? He can’t mean…
Fuck. No.
I’m yelling by the time the fiery lube hits my ass. Again. It’s worse this time. So much fucking worse. He pushes the plug in, and I break. “I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry, M—”
Even now, I can’t force the word out.
I don’t think it would have made a difference anyway. He doesn’t react to my words at all. Once he’s handed down a punishment, I don’t think anything I can say will change it. He’s as uncompromising as a brick wall.
Just what you always wanted.
The lights go out, he resets the timer, and the door clicks shut, leaving me alone with my misery.
***
The timer hits one minute, and he still hasn’t returned.
The burning discomfort in my ass is almost equaled by the rest of me from being stuck in this position for so long.
God, I need to move. I’m covered in sweat, and it’s made my skin itchy.
I can’t stand this. I can’t cope for one more fucking minute.
What if he doesn’t come back?
I’ve been trying not to think about it, but now, watching the numbers tick down toward zero, I can’t hide from the thought anymore. What if something has happened? He’s been hit by a car. Had a heart attack. No one knows I’m here, and I could die here, in the dark, like this.
A sob bubbles up at the thought, and it’s a pathetic sound, echoing weirdly in the stone room.
Zero. Oh God, he’s—
The door opens, and relief douses my veins as the lights come on.
I let out another sob, and my body shivers.
He’s here. I’m not forgotten. Even broken as I am, the irony isn’t lost on me.
He’s my captor, and I’m practically crying with relief at his return.
Well played, Saldar. Well fucking played.
This time, there’s no messing about with vibrators. He comes into view and says, “What do you have to say to me?”
The words burn my throat, but he’s won this round. I’d say anything to get off this table. “I’m sorry, Master. Please let me go.”
The hot wash of shame almost eclipses the pain, but not quite. Now that he’s here and release is imminent, I can feel everything in sharper relief. The burn and the aches scream at me.
I said it. Let me the fuck out of here.
I think the words but don’t say them. I can’t let my mouth trap me here for longer. He runs a finger over my cheek, and I try not to scream with the frustration of it. Is he enjoying this? Does he seriously think I am?
“What have you learned?”
Seriously? I squirm against the altar and try to think of a response.
What have I learned? That he’s a psychotic asshole who isn’t going to give me an inch.
That’s what. But it’s not what he wants to hear, and I’m not brave enough to push any further.
I search for words that will get me off this goddamn table.
“To do what I’m told the first time.” I pause. “Master.”