Chapter Sixteen
Caroline
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“OH, GOD!” GRIPPING the edge of the bedpost, I couldn’t seem to keep quiet.
He’d been spanking me for what seemed like eternity, the sting of his palm becoming a relentless rhythm that we both knew would collide with my frantic clit.
Yet still, there was no relief, and no imminent sense that it—nor I—would ever come. “Please, Sir!”
“What’s this?” His palm paused, skimming over my heated skin as his words vibrated along my spine. I needed him—needed the visceral connection we shared—but caught in his web, I had no perspective of how I’d ever survive the onslaught. “Is my little girl begging me to stop, or to carry on?”
It was a good question, and shuffling my toes into the thick pile carpet, I hardly knew the answer myself.
Three days had passed since we’d arrived at Fabian’s house.
Long, delicious days where we’d enjoyed doing normal activities other couples took for granted.
After months of being both a Fortorus captive and the man running the twisted show, going shopping, preparing meals, and walking in the park were like paradise.
There was a comfort in the convention that I’d never appreciated in my life before the Edict, and I adored every moment.
After so long deprived of the basic tenets of human experience—the right to speak, to meet someone’s eyes, and to consider them an equal, the time with Harper began to seem dreamlike, as though we might wake up at any moment to find ourselves thrust back into hell.
Holding his hand became an ethereal adventure, while being able to run my fingers through his soft hair and touch the man who’d enthralled me was an almost celestial experience.
Especially pleasing, though, was the way that, at the end of every day, Harper had taken the time to ask me how I was feeling.
He wanted to know if the balance between power, play, and tenderness was right and whether there was anything I wanted to change.
It didn’t matter how the day had played out, if he’d pushed me hard during a kinky session, or whether we’d only been feeding ducks at the local lake.
The fact that he cared enough to inquire made all the difference.
In that sterile little house in Zurich, the push and pull between us finally began to take shape, lulling me into believing we really could leave the horrors of our genesis behind us and look to a future together.
In those satisfying hours, I fell for him all over again.
His hand struck my upturned backside, piercing the contented bubble of the memory and bringing me crashing back to the current moment.
Bent at the hips and holding onto the end of the bed, that present was not with the kind and caring version of Adam Harper I’d been imagining.
The man looming over me then, intent on blistering my backside, was every inch my master.
“I’m waiting, little girl.” His voice was like thunder. “What’s your answer?”
“I d-don’t know, Sir.”
Desperately, I tried to recall what his question was.
He’d had me clutching the wooden bed frame for goodness knew how long, in receipt of his swats for not being a good enough footrest for him earlier that morning.
Apparently, after not being his prisoner for the best part of a week, my technique had grown sloppy, and I was thoroughly out of practice at playing his furniture.
I might have laughed at the failure had the repercussions not been so striking.
“I suppose it’s just as well I’m the one calling the shots, then.”
He sounded pleased with his conclusion, and even though my lower back ached and my ass felt like it was on fire, my pussy agreed, my hips pushing my labia back for more of his punishing authority.
As much as he pushed me to the brink, and whatever logical facets of my mind urged resistance, my body always craved more.
More of his brutal attention, more of the pain, and then, when he deemed me worthy, more of the fucking pleasure.
The desire building between my thighs was so intense that it clouded my ability to think about anything except the burn of his swats and how badly I needed to come.
“Sir.” The word was little more than a groan.
“Mmmm.” He brushed his fingertips over my back before resting his hand on my hip. “What is it?”
“Please.”
Harper was right. He had me stretched so thin I no longer knew what the hell I was pleading for. Did I want the punishment to stop, for him to hold me and remind me how much he loved me, or did I never want the stinging pace to cease until it had pushed me right to the edge of sanity?
“You’re so needy.” His chuckle pulsed over my skin. “And always so ready to beg me, baby.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I was ready, always keen to persuade him to break the agonizing embargo of my pleasure.
The matter had become something of an important taboo since the night he’d denied me an orgasm after ordering pizza on that first day in the house.
Despite the affection he’d shown me, the hugs and breakfasts in bed, he’d adamantly refused to offer me any release since then.
Sometimes, he took me right to the edge, teasing my clit with his fingers or his tongue, while others, like that moment, he merely focused on his wants, be they the reddening of my ass or his own multiple crescendos.
After days of denying me, the extent of my longing was becoming unbearable, yet the more I pleaded for reason, the more his resolve seemed to harden.
“You’re perfect like this.” His hand rose, and I tensed, knowing precisely what would come next.
Right on cue, a torrent of hard smacks rained over me, temporarily taking my breath away. I winced at a particularly potent spank, and as though he’d read my mind, his hand stilled over my sex, one long digit brushing over my lips.
“I see my pussy is enjoying herself.”
His smug tone was taunting, reminding me of all the things he got to relish while I was forced to go without.
All the hedonism I’d delivered to him while receiving none.
The vacuum would have been unconscionable had we both not been all too aware how much I reveled in the contradiction.
For some reason I’d yet to understand, being made to wait while he enjoyed himself was a ridiculously heady turn-on.
Maybe after all those months of being told how unworthy I was, the message had begun to sink in, but instead of producing despair and disgust, my twisted brain had managed to morph the condemnation into breathtaking arousal.
Who knew how or why his masterful denial of me elicited such a potent reaction?
Hanging on for dear life, all I knew was that I lived for it.
Even in the moments alone, when I could have taken the edge off my excruciating craving for pleasure, I hadn’t caved in and found release, and deep down, I knew why.
I wanted to do as he asked. I needed to wait my turn.
Strangely, the denial, and the fact that I had no control over its duration, left me hotter and needier than I’d ever known before.
“Oh, God.” My head fell, knowing I was like a horny robot stuck on repeat.
I was going to beg him again. Even though I’d sworn to myself there wouldn’t be a ‘next time’, even though the mortification of the day before when he’d had me plead in front of his phone’s camera before he’d used my mouth to provide him with more satisfaction, I knew I was succumbing.
The look in his eyes was simply too captivating, and the heat at the apex of my thighs was just too strong.
It didn’t matter that a week before, I’d been genuinely afraid for my life, and that I feared for the fate of so many others.
Those horrors were still there somewhere, locked away where I could keep them small, but like a genie from a bottle, they’d been replaced by the need Harper had unleashed.
My head was full of him; his smile, his tantalizing aroma, the way he held me.
The arguments those assets made in favor of my obedience and denigration were powerful—far more potent than reason—and too downright compelling to ignore.
Fuck.
Squeezing my eyes closed for a fleeting minute, I gritted my teeth and prayed for some composure, but even the reassuring hug of the carpet between my toes was no longer able to ground me.
How long would he make me wait, and would I break into a thousand shards before he took pity on me?
Perhaps if I was an extra good girl that day, he’d give in. Maybe if I did just that little bit better and crawled with more grace, he’d finally show me mercy.
The incessant need throbbing at my clit that seemed to resonate out to every other part of my body assured me it had to be worth a try. If I didn’t get permission to come soon, I was going to combust.
“Something you’d like to say, little girl?” His tone was knowing, and it wasn’t difficult to see why.
Since denying me the pleasure, my climax had been the one thing I’d obsessed over.
Suddenly, seeking sexual release was more important than what food we ate that day, or even the document he was trying to obtain for me so we could leave Switzerland and enter the EU.
While my rational mind knew where we were and why we were there, it knew how lucky I was to be free and the possible risks that still lay ahead, being suspended in such perpetual erotic torment had made it damn near impossible for me to focus on anything save for when he’d relent and let me come.
So, when my lips parted, the words that came rushing from them were as inevitable as the oxygen traveling to my lungs.
“Am I allowed to come yet, Sir?”