Chapter 8
Silas didn’t say a word when she followed him out of Kenny’s office, blotchy and trembling after giving Boone her apology letter. After kneeling and telling him from the bottom of her heart how sorry she was.
Boone had told her he loved her, and he was glad the lesson had taken. He’d looked at Silas and back to her before saying, “It’s Silas’s night with you, and you don’t get to cheat him out of his time with you because you had to be punished.”
And now, Silas walked ahead of her and expected her to follow like she was a dog who already knew her place.
What did it say that she followed? She was so tired, she couldn’t even consider the answer.
Her legs trembled with fatigue, her ass burned from the chemical irritation, her breasts pulsed with engorged hypersensitivity, and her entire groin blazed like a flayed open wound.
It felt like she still wore the damned bra and panties, because every inch of skin where they’d been pulsed with the nettles’ lingering poison.
She smelled clean earth with a hint of floral on the way up the steps. Soothing, but with a sharp edge beneath it, and the scent deepened as they entered her room.
When they made it to the bathroom, steam curled from the tub in lazy spirals. A bag of Epsom salts beside it along with two bottles of essential oils — chamomile and comfrey. Also, an empty bottle of witch hazel.
Silas stepped to her vanity, to a tray covered by a towel, and ordered, “Get in.”
The thought went through her head that this didn’t bode well, and a moment later, when she obeyed, the water hit like liquid needles.
She felt the heat first. Soothing and completely misleading because the punishing, blazing sting came two heartbeats later.
She gasped, muscles seizing, hands shooting to the sides of the tub for balance. It felt like being lowered into acid. Every welt and inflamed patch from the nettles screamed. Her raw skin didn’t soak, it howled.
Her clit pounded like an exposed nerve, raw and swollen, her heartbeat amplified and radiating so her entire cunt was nothing but nerve endings begging for mercy.
“All the way,” Silas ordered, voice like velvet steel. “You’ll soak like a good girl. Soothe the muscle strain. Burn away the disobedience.”
She nodded, but he expected compliance. Her agreement wasn’t necessary.
Her thighs trembled and her spine bowed, but she bit her lip and slid lower. When her ass touched the bottom and the water closed over her breasts, she was shaking.
“Chamomile, comfrey, Epsom salts, and witch hazel to calm the nettles, because I’m so thoughtful,” he told her while he knelt beside the tub.
“Sometimes, medicine hurts.” He ran his hand through her hair. Relaxing her. “There are things that wouldn’t have hurt. I chose three that don’t, one that does.”
His smile was soft if you didn’t know him enough to see the cruelty underneath, and his words verified what her hawk vision had seen.
“The one that bites is the one you’ll remember.”
“Thank you for seeing to my needs, Sir.” And she meant it. Truly. Even if it burned like the fires of Hell, which it did, she’d put up with anything to stop the fire of the nettles.
His face went solemn, his eyes serious. “You held yourself together for Kenny. Spoke with honesty and truth. I’m proud of you.”
She couldn’t speak around the sudden knot in her throat.
He pressed a shockingly gentle kiss to her temple, then reached to the side and came back with something small and sharp.
Her eyes widened when she saw the butter knife.
“Spread your legs.”
Her breath hitched.
“Now, wrecked-fucking-whore.”
She spread, and he dipped the knife in the water, tracing the tip along her inner thigh, moving upward.
She jolted. Gasped. Her knees twitched inward on instinct, but locked back open when she remembered who she is. What she is. Her breath came in short bursts, arousal twisting with dread. She’d been handed over to a sadist and was completely at his mercy when her skin was already on fire.
“The barbs keep releasing their poison into your wrecked whore-meat until there’s nothing left,” he explained in that aggravatingly calm voice.
“The sooner we get all the poison out of them and into your already screaming flesh, the sooner your shifter metabolism can deal with it and flush it from your system.” He shrugged.
“Gonna hurt like hell until then though.”
The knife scraped its way up until it found the tender crease where thigh met cunt. She jerked, and he clicked his tongue in mock disappointment.
“Stay still so I can work on your ruined holes. Your mouth’s going to get a lot of action until we’re sure your other holes aren’t going to fucking bite us.”
The steel blade moved slowly, tracing angry welts. Gently, at first. Then harder, dragging heat across heat, raising every nerve to the edge of panic.
The tip circled her clit. Pressed. Lifted. Scraped just enough to make her hips tremble.
She whimpered.
“Don’t twitch.” He glanced up at her with a half grin. “Unless you want me to slip?” His voice dropped, almost fond. “Wouldn’t take much to fillet this pretty little bundle of nerves. Paper-thin cut. Like slicing into fruit.” A chuckle. “Or butter.”
She clenched the sides of the tub, barely breathing.
He reached with his other hand, pulled her clit hood up, scraped lightly at her bared clit, and she closed her eyes and stopped breathing.
Again, but slower. More pressure. The sting knifed through her pelvis like electric glass. Her vision swam, and she pressed her teeth together with the effort to keep from screaming.
“You screamed for Kenny, little painwhore. Don’t pretend you’re silent now.”
The warm metal moved over and around her clit, slow and firm, while his thumb trapped her hood out of the way, and she concentrated on staying absolutely, perfectly still. Every nerve flared under the steel, but she didn’t dare scream and move even a millimeter.
At last, he stopped with the knife, but he crushed her entire clit between thumb and forefinger of his other hand, rubbing them together hard, rolling side to side, and she finally gave him the scream he’d wanted, raw and from the bottom of her lungs because this was a whole new level of fresh hell.
“There we are.” His voice radiated joy. “Boone was thorough, wasn’t he? Making sure you’d feel the pain on your clit, the underside of the hood, the outside. Nothing half-assed about our third, is there?”
The tone of his last two words made it clear he expected an answer, and she managed to choke out, “No, Sir,” between her sobs.
And then the metal edge was back, scraping through her folds, pressing across every fucking little crease the nettles had invaded. Shallow channels of pain, one after another.
Her heart stalled in her chest when he reached below the edge of the tub and returned with a second butter knife.
He used both. One to pin her right lip open, the other to torment every inch around and just inside her opening, tracing her raw, swollen cunt like it was a map of her sins.
“This is what a cunt gets when it mouths off to her owners,” he said. “You still sore from Boone’s strap? From Kenny’s Johnny?”
She nodded frantically, tears dripping off her chin.
“And yet you’re soaking in a nice bath while I take care of you. See? We do believe in aftercare.” He chuckled and twisted one knife slightly, stretching her wider. “Gotta keep our toy in working order.”
She hated that her nipples were hard, that her cunt throbbed with empty need despite the pain. Fuck, probably because of the pain, though she had to admit Silas’s humiliation probably added to it. Her whole body was traitorous. Wanting.
As if he heard her thoughts, he ordered, “Spread your legs like an obedient fuckhole. Feet beside your adorable ass.”
She slid her feet up until her knees poked out of the water tilting outward, thighs trembling. Her whole body burned. And still, her clit pulsed. Her hole clenched.
“This is a gift,” he said softly, reaching into a nearby bucket. “Controlled suffering, because I’m feeling generous tonight.”
She didn’t see what he grabbed until it hit her clit.
Ice.
A solid cube, starting high and pressing down, dragging through her swollen folds like frozen glass before he pressed it inside her pussy. She yelped and jerked, the cold carving through the raw heat like a blade, but he only chuckled and pressed another cube to her left nipple.
“You whine like I’m hurting you. This isn’t pain, little bitch. I’m cooling the fire. Soothing raw nerve endings. Stop with the fucking drama.”
Another cube, wedged between her butt cheeks this time, right over the welted spots where the panties had ground nettles into her skin. The ice burned against heat, sharp as acid, and her thighs trembled with the effort to stay open.
“I could strap you to the gyno table and bleed your cunt raw. Instead, I’m helping your sensitive tissues recover. Bit of heat, bit of cold. Therapeutic, even.”
The contrast hit her hard — bathwater heat, ice-cold cube. Every nerve screamed, confused, overwhelmed. Her cunt clenched hard around the frozen intrusion, as if trying to expel it, only to spasm tighter when the shock set in.
He lifted a long-handled spoon and pressed the freezing metal to her clit. Clearly, it’d been stored in the ice bucket, and she nearly shot out of the tub with a series of shrill shrieks.
“Do. Not. Move.”
He held it there, her body shaking, unable to breathe. A statue of torment, unable to fucking blink.
“Two holes out of commission makes you a near-worthless whore.” A shrug. “I have to find other ways to occupy myself, but I can improvise.”
He lifted the spoon and replaced it with the fingers of his other hand, warm flesh squeezing her now-frozen clit until it felt like the nerves might shatter. Then warm fingers. Cold. Heat. Cold. Heat. Each switch like whiplash, tormenting her, driving her deeper into madness.
“See? This isn’t even cruelty. This is what it looks like when I’m gentle. Let’s hope I don’t get bored.”