Chapter 37
IVY
The next day starts off as usual, relatively uneventful, but by the time the afternoon rolls around I can tell something is on Soren’s mind.
I’ve just gotten done scheduling a few client meetings. Soren has returned from catching up on a few things in his office. He pats the couch, more instructing than inviting.
He looks at me—his expression even more intense than usual—and leans in close. His eyes are dark storms, a tempest brewing behind the surface.“So what do you like, Ivy?” His voice drops low, conspiratorial.
I glance at him, confused. “Huh? What do you mean?”
He leans in closer, his breath tickling my ear. “I want to know your darkest thoughts—the ones you’ve never said aloud. Never shared with anyone else.”
No one’s ever asked me like that.
Not seriously, like the answer matters.
I hesitate.
He doesn’t look away.
“Where did that even come from?” I squint at him.
“It’s been on my mind,” he says, the intensity of his expression unflinching. “It’s important that I understand what you really want. Not just what you think is acceptable to say.”
This doesn’t feel like a joke. It doesn’t feel like something I can deflect.
It feels like he expects the truth.
And worse, I want to give it to him.
I want to tell him the darkest, filthiest thoughts I’ve ever had.
The most depraved fantasies that I’ve conjured up in my mind and then quickly brushed to the side because they’ve seemed fucked up or wrong.
Or because they’ve made me blush, and there’s no way I’d ever have the courage to speak them.
Somehow, Soren makes it feel safe to say them.
He makes me feel beautiful and seen—in a sensual way, like nothing I could ever ask for would be wrong. Or too weird. Or too much.
I’ve never been brave enough to voice my fantasies out loud, although I certainly have them. The thought of acting any of them out has only left me embarrassed and more inhibited than ever.
My choice of partners—except for the one that turned out to be a complete psychopath who almost killed me—have been fairly vanilla for the most part. They’d have been shocked at the thoughts that enter my brain—at the wild things I’ve thought about doing when it comes to pleasure and pain.
And when the one person who lets you feel free in that regard also tries to kill you, it makes you gun-shy. Like that level of freedom, lack of inhibition, comes at a sharp cost.
So my thoughts have been mine, and mine alone. Not something I’ve even delved that deep into, although they’re there. Even when I’ve touched myself in the darkest part of the night, I’ve kept my thoughts relatively chaste.
But my darkest desires have remained there, simmering somewhere deep down.
And the lust in Soren’s eyes, his conspiratorial whispers, are pulling them to the surface. Ready to be spoken aloud.
My pulse jumps at the thought, excitement causing my body to tingle.
Even if we never do any of these things, the act of speaking them aloud is enough to make me throb. I jam my thighs together.
Soren notices, and he smirks. Approving. “Tell me,” he says. Not a suggestion.
“Okay.” I exhale in preparation for what I’m about to say. “I’ve thought about…” I start, then stop, heat rising fast. The act of actually saying it is more confronting than thinking about doing it.
His thumb brushes along my jaw, holding me there. “Keep going.” Not encouragement. Expectation.
Fuck it. I might as well tell him one of the most full-on ones.
“I’ve wondered what it would be like to be… incapacitated,” I say quietly. “Bound. Unable to move.”
He goes still.
I don’t stop. “To have someone I trust come in and just… take control. Do whatever they want.”
His grip tightens slightly.
My pulse is loud now. “I wouldn’t be able to see them. I wouldn’t know who it was—for sure, anyway.” My voice is quieter now. “They’d just—take what they wanted, however they wanted—rough and hard, though, for sure. Feral, primal, carnal.”
His thumb presses into my lip, holding it there. “Not just anyone.”
My breath stutters.
“You’d need to trust them,” he says. “Completely. Enough to let them do whatever they want to you.”
I don’t answer.
Because he’s not asking. He’s correcting.
Rewriting it.
Silence settles between us, and I feel a blush starting to creep up my chest and onto my cheeks. I force myself to meet his eyes, expecting to see judgment. But there’s none. Something about his look encourages me to say more.
“The rope burns would serve as a reminder, because they’d be pulled so tight—so expertly—that they’d dig into my flesh and give me welts and bruises criss-crossed all over my body.”
Soren nods, his mouth curved into a small smile.
“And then, when he was done, he would just… leave. Leave my body and soul used and discarded. Thrown away like a cheap whore left on the street. A worthless cunt who didn’t deserve anything better than to be fucked within an inch of my life, filled with cum that would seep out of me for hours, a reminder of how he just took me over completely and did whatever he wanted with me while I lay there helpless. ”
The image in my head is so vivid—so visceral—my body hums. Wanting it. Craving it just how I described.
I let out a little moan at the thought.
“And my pussy—and maybe even my ass—would be sore for days, battered and bruised, left wondering if it was him who ravaged me while I couldn’t move. Every time I adjusted my position, I would feel him inside me.”
My entrance is slick now, my pussy throbbing while I think about being prone, helpless. Waiting for him to come and unbind me at a time of his choosing. Lying there with my pussy pounding with the pain of being fucked so hard without being able to move.
“And he wouldn’t let me come. He would edge me.
Taking me there until I was almost there—making me beg for it—and then swearing at me.
Calling me degrading names and then spitting on me.
Fucking me so he got his own pleasure, so his cum coated my back and my chest and my face.
Blindfolding me and flipping me around—my back, my stomach, every way. Destroying me.”
His expression is neutral, but the fire in his eyes gives him away. “And you want that?” he asks.
I’m suddenly self-conscious of the way the words poured from my mouth so easily, my brain conveying what I’ve held in the darkest corners of my mind for so long.
The words are filthy, and I blush as I realize there’s no taking them back—there’s no undoing the sheer depravity of what I just shared. “I didn’t say that.”
But the correction comes too fast. Too thin.
His fingers close around my chin—steady—holding my gaze exactly where he wants it. “You don’t say things like that unless they’re real.” He pauses. “I know the difference.”
My breath catches.
His thumb drags slowly across my lip. “You want to give up control. But only to someone you trust.” A beat.
“And you want to not know for sure. And you want to be degraded, humiliated, fucked so hard you feel my cock in your pussy and ass for days. To be tied up so tight your body aches in memory of the ropes that bound you so fully you were rendered completely at my mercy. Exactly where you want to be.”
The way he says it isn’t a guess. It’s recognition. Maybe a spot of admiration.
He wraps his hand around my throat. Slow. Intentional.
I try to speak. “I just—”
“Stop changing yourself to fit what you think I want. To fit what you think everyone wants.”
I look down, his words stinging unexpectedly.
“I already know what you want.” He increases the pressure on my throat. I’m struggling to breathe now, the corners of my eyes watering as he constricts my life source.
“I know there’s more you want. That you’re too scared to say.
That you think you’ll be judged for.” He pauses, and grabs my hand between both of his.
“But Ivy, my darling poison, please know this—I want you to be uninhibited, free, the most authentic version of yourself. I would do anything you asked. Within reason. I’d tie you tighter than you think you could handle.
I’d make you beg before I ever let you come.
And you would never forget who did it to you. ”
I swallow, my breath ragged. My pulse thrums at the heady combination of his willingness and his desire.
“I’d consume you. Own you fully. That’s what I want.
To make you weep at the combination of self-hatred I’ll make you feel, while also ravishing you in a way that makes your hollow soul feel full—to make you feel like the most beautiful and cherished being that’s ever walked this earth.
Fill you with my cum until it seeps from your holes.
Force you to take every inch of me until you are in tears, until you are bleeding and sore.
Make you never forget that I own you. You wouldn’t want to. ”
He pauses again.
“And then treat you with a tenderness like you’ve never known, but always craved. Always been missing. Make you feel the love that you deserve, finally and completely. That makes you never question that you deserve everything you want from the world and everything in it.”
He lets go of my throat, and using the same hand he picks up one of mine and brings it to his mouth, kissing it gently. I tingle at his touch.
It’s a dichotomy of savagery and tenderness that leaves my head spinning.
He gently places my hand back down and leans closer.
“You’re going to keep telling me everything, my little poison.
You don’t keep things from me. You won’t.
” Certain and demanding, every word landing heavier than the last. “Every thought. Every impulse. Every fucked up curiosity you haven’t said out loud yet.
” His grip tightens slightly. “The more I know,” he murmurs, “the better I can take care of you.” The words settle deep.
Controlled. Precise. “Better than anyone else ever has. I will fuck you until the end of this earth and beyond. I will give you pleasure and pain that you’ve never felt before, and that you never will again. ”
His words make me tingle. Is it really possible that he’d do what I described—and more? Would I even be able to handle something so intense? So depraved?
Could my psyche handle the degradation and humiliation of someone using me and discarding me like that? Making me feel filthy and nasty and fucked up more than I already do?
This time, as sick and depraved as my fantasy was, and that his response was—his willingness to take me to the edge of sanity and back—I’m not afraid.
Instead, I’m excited.
Turned on.
Horny as all hell.
I thought there was something wrong with him, but clearly he’s not the problem. There’s something just as—or even more—sick, more wrong, with me. Two dark souls tethered together—whether we meant to be or not. Ready to engage in acts darker than most would ever dare think about.
So I speak, the words flowing freely as fantasy after fantasy pours from the darkest parts of my mind.
How I want to be chased through the woods at night.
How I want to visit sex clubs and just watch—at least at first. To visit the debauchery I’ve heard about in the clandestine neighborhood of the Anything Goes.
To have a lasting souvenir of him and us branded on my body for eternity while I squeal in terror and pain and pleasure.
How I want to dress up and be degraded and humiliated in ways that, in front of him, no longer make me feel embarrassed to say.
I’m giving him a depraved menu to pull from, and from the look in his eyes I know he’s treating everything I share as an invitation. Filing each little detail away to retrieve when he’s so inclined.
I clench my thighs together as my clit threatens to pulse me into an orgasm just from the thought of what he might do to me one day when I least expect it.
And I don’t try to pull away from what that means.
I don’t want to.