Chapter 4
Willow rushed to put her dress on and follow him up the steps, stopped at the top to take it off. Shoes, too. She hurried to the red medallion and stood in inspection pose while he clipped a spreader bar on the winch. Lowered it.
“Enter. Stand under it and hold the bar.”
She did, and he lifted it until she nearly had to stand on tiptoe.
“I’ll want to whip your pussy some, too. The insides of your thighs. You’ll have to raise a leg for that, since I won’t put you in a spreader bar. The idea is you can let go and walk away.”
“I’ll obey, Sir.”
He looked at her a few seconds. “It’s more than that. You can’t collapse. This is going to be about endurance as much as it is pain, I think. The wolf is hurt. He has to do this.”
“Then I need to give it to him, Sir.”
She gripped the bar with both hands, shoulders already straining from the angle, toes barely brushing the floor. Her pulse roared in her ears.
Silas moved behind her without speaking. She couldn’t see what he chose first, but she knew when she felt it.
The rubber sap punched into the back of her thigh, a thick, meaty blow that landed like a fist, dreadful and deep. Heat rolling in behind the impact like fire under skin. Her knees jerked, a shriek escaped, but she didn’t fall. Didn’t speak. She’d never been hit with a sap of any kind before.
She’d had no idea how brutal and bruising each individual blow would be.
A moment passed.
Then it came again, higher this time, the heavy thud drove into her ass muscles, and she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.
The third blow crashed over the bruises already forming, and the pain doubled back on itself like coiled rubber bands snapping inside her.
He circled.
Another blow. Her flank. Then again, the other side. The rhythm unpredictable, calculated to keep her guessing.
Her hawk-vision noticed the change in his face when she could see it, threaded with something more primal. Not a shift, but something leaking through. The way he moved. The set of his jaw. A different pattern. Not wholly Silas.
The sap disappeared and the whip came out.
She didn’t hear it first, she felt it — the long, lashing arc cutting a line from her ribs to her hip, a searing kiss of fire that made her scream.
She screamed again when it crossed her shoulders, and again when it wrapped under her arm and slashed across her ribcage. Her feet skittered for purchase.
“Leg,” he said.
It wasn’t his voice. Not exactly. The words were human, but the cadence, the growl behind it was all wolf.
She raised her right knee, bent.
The whip carved a welt across the inside of her left thigh.
The pain bloomed a second later, shocking in its intensity.
Then: “Switch.”
She did, and he matched the mark on the other side.
He circled again and she lowered her leg.
Her muscles quivered from holding the bar. Her breath came in ragged bursts, but she didn’t cry. She couldn’t. Tears meant a release, and she couldn’t lose focus, couldn’t risk collapsing, losing the bar.
The whip came down again, her back, her hips, the backs of her knees. He made her lift her legs so he could strike the soles of her feet.
The whip flew over and over, again and again.
Eventually, her grip slipped for just a second, her body threatened to fold, but she caught herself. She didn’t let go.
And then came the sap again, cold this time from sitting on the counter, shocking against her welted skin.
“Legs open,” he ordered, voice flat, emotionless.
She angled her right leg up and out.
She heard him step close, felt the rush of air an instant before it struck — the sap to her clit. Not hard, not the first time.
The second was harder, and she sobbed.
The third made her scream.
The fourth was sharper and at a different angle. The jolt was blinding.
Still, she didn’t let go.
He moved in front of her. Raised her right leg, shoved it against her chest and leaned in, crowding her space, holding her there while he struck the exposed inner left thigh from that close, tight angle. A dozen times. More.
Then switched sides and did it again, though he had to bend her left leg to get it out of the way.
She was working towards the splits with her right leg in front, and her left wasn’t anywhere near as flexible, but he forced it up anyway, leg bent to get it there so he could savage the inside of her right thigh.
She couldn’t scream anymore. She just hung there. Swaying. Muscles locked, joints straining, her grip turned white-knuckled.
He stepped back and she braced for another round, but it didn’t come.
* * * *
Silas stood just out of reach, whip in one hand, sap dangling from the other.
Her body was painted in angry red and purple welts, some already bruising dark. Blood trickled in a few places. Not much, but enough.
And he realized the problem, the lack of connection hadn’t all been his wolf.
The human needed more from her.
He walked to the wall and chose a slightly thinner, slightly longer horsewhip. Put the sap away.
This was about him using full strength. Wrapping it on purpose. A full-on whipping.
He stepped in front of her with the new whip. Let her see it. “It’s me now. Silas. Not the wolf. Turns out, I need some of this too.” He looked at the whip. Back to her. “It’s going to be bad. Like Stephen with O, I feel I want to… not apologize, but express regret that it’s the only way.”
“And I’ll give the same answer O did.” Her voice was raw from the screaming. But she got it out. “I’m yours.”
Silas nodded and stepped behind her again. She’d understood.
* * * *
Willow grasped the bar with everything she had.
The new whip was lighter, but longer. Faster. It snapped the air with a high, cruel hiss before it struck — across her back, her ass, her thighs. Over the welts. Across raw skin already weeping.
She jerked. Screamed. Her knees buckled and caught. Her fingers stayed clenched around the bar.
The next stroke landed across her side. Then one lower, just above the curve of her ass. The pain sang up her body and flared, a hot, blooming pressure that came with every lash.
Each stroke was measured. Not wild. He placed them with surgical precision and full, devastating force.
This wasn’t frenzy, it was grief.
Another kiss of fire slashed down the back of her thigh, and her weight sagged.
Still, she held on.
Silas circled, whip dragging behind him, then rose again with an arc that carved across both shoulder blades, staggered enough that the wraparound bit into the soft flesh beneath her arms.
She gasped. Sucked air into her lungs and screamed through her already raw throat.
And still, she did not let go.
Not when he whipped across her calves. Not when he split the backs of her knees with a precision strike.
Not even when he struck her spine.
Or when the whip curled around and bit into her nipple.
The whip snaked around her ribs over and over, devastating both breasts. Bit her hips. Kissed and wrapped around her thighs in a merciless, endless rhythm.
He ordered her to raise her leg again — one side, then the other so he could punish the trembling flesh beneath. One brutal lash after another until her leg quivered and nearly dropped.
Then, with both her feet on the ground, he stepped in close, his body behind hers, close enough she could feel his heat.
He leaned in, his breath hot against her skin.
Her ear. “You lie to wolves, you make us doubt the foundations of every promise, every hug, every kiss. The air we fucking share. If you’re ours, and you lie, you tear our fucking guts out. ”
His voice cracked.
She was beyond crying, but her whole body trembled.
“I wanted to trust you, but I couldn’t. The wolf couldn’t.” He touched her forehead to the top of her shoulder. “We do now. You took this. You didn’t run.”
She couldn’t speak. Her lips moved. No sound came out.
Silas dropped the whip and stepped in front of her.
He reached up and helped her loosen her grip, one hand then the other.
She collapsed into his arms, and he held her like she was the most fragile thing in the world.
Like she was his again.
* * * *
Silas held her shaking, trembling body, and she was his again.
Claimed in violence and pain, and she hadn’t walked away.
She needed aftercare badly, but the two of them needed to reconnect, needed the union of their bodies. The reunion of their bodies.
All the Alaska King sheets were black, in case there was blood, so he didn’t worry about her bleeding on the sheets. He carried her to the bed cradled to his chest, pulled the spread and blankets back, settled her in the middle, and put lube on his dick.
He looked at her, saw the love in her gaze, the acceptance, and decided she got a say in this. “I love you, little hawk. Aftercare now and sex later, or sex now and aftercare later?”
“Same answer, Sir. I’m yours.”
Silas moved over her, slid between her legs with the sweat and blood of their reckoning still clinging to him.
He didn’t tease. Didn’t wait. He lined up at her ass and pressed in hard, all at once, with a growl that vibrated through both their bodies when his groin touched hers, his dick impaled completely inside her.
She screamed. Back arched. Eyes wide.
But her legs wrapped around him. Pulled him in closer.
He didn’t move at first. Just held deep. Hands braced beside her shoulders. His face hovered inches above hers, and for a long, breathless stretch of silence, he just stared into her eyes.
Not with anger. With relief. With renewed possession.
“I need you,” he said, voice low and raw. “I needed to forgive you and didn’t know how.”
Her trembling hands cupped his jaw. “I’m so glad you figured it out, Sir, because I love you too, and I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you.”
The first thrust after that wasn’t brutal. Just deep. Honest. A claiming without cruelty.
Their rhythm built slowly, with measured strokes, hips grinding as his cock filled her ass again and again. No softness, but no edge of punishment. Just a deliberate, primal joining.
He lowered his head and ran his nose along her collarbone, breathing in the sweat and pain soaked into her skin.
The submission. His wolf growled and he let it out.
Let her hear it. He nipped at a welt on her left breast hard enough to make her jolt.
Then another. And another. Not biting to mark, but to feel her flinch.
To make her gasp. To reconnect through the kind of pain she begged for, and he needed to inflict.
“You like it when I make it hurt?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You want to come?”
“Yes, Sir. Please.”
“No.”
She whimpered.
He slowed. Dragged it out. Each stroke angled to hit the places that would drive her mad. He rubbed and pressed the front of her body over her clit, bringing her close to the edge without tipping her over. Her hands fisted in the sheets. Her thighs trembled against his sides.
“Please, Sir,” she begged. “Please.”
“No, but feel free to keep begging.”
The sound of her near-broken voice begging and pleading made his balls ache to release, but he held on. Kept telling her no until she broke past his ability to hold back.
His lips landed on hers, another possessive claiming. His balls churned, the wait sharpening everything, but he only deepened the kiss while she squirmed under him. Finally, he pulled back to tell her, “Permission, little fuckhole.”
One hard thrust, deep and fast, and her orgasm detonated under him. She screamed again, sobbed through it, body clenching around the fullness in her ass, wrung out and flying.
His own release hit seconds later. A savage thrust, then another, and then he poured into her with a low, growled, “Mine.”
He didn’t pull out.
“Yours,” she agreed. “I love you, Silas. Sir.”
He kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. Her lips. Ran his hands over her body like he had to reassure himself she was still here.
Then he telepathed Kenny, The two of you should come help with aftercare. You have time to shower if you hurry, but this needs all four of us in the bed.
And he wasn’t up for cooking, so he added, Order something for delivery. Olive Garden, that alfredo steak she liked so much last time, and a triple order of their broccoli-cheese soup. She needs something soothing for her throat. Dessert too. Their chocolate lasagna. We can add some ice cream.