24. Chapter 19
Fear licks at my heels, my heart hammering faster than I can run. Loud laughter rings out behind me, reminding me that my fear is their fun.
My boot catches on a thick branch and I stumble, catching myself on a spindly tree, but it was enough to slow me down.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” Viper calls. “We just want to play, Sweetheart.”
My eyes lock on the break in the trees and the little squares of lights shining like yellow beacons from the windows of the mansion. I dig in, sprinting forward, but before I can break free, a hand slams over my mouth, muffling my scream. We stumble forward, bending over, but he keeps his footing. My legs fly out from under me as I’m slammed back to a broad chest, my head hitting hard muscles as a powerful arm wraps around my waist, pinning me to him.
“Naughty Kitten,” Reaper rasps in my ear, heavy breaths hitting my flesh like flames. “I caught you.”
I kick back but don’t have enough force behind it. My heel just grazes his shin, but it’s enough that he buckles slightly. My hands fly up and I grab his mask, ripping it away.
Reaper growls, this irritated, animalistic sound, grating through my back as he shoves me forward. My knees hit the dirt, my teeth gnashing together from the impact.
“I didn’t run!” I scream under his palm, but my words are cut off as he grips my throat, yanking me back into him, the back of my head hitting his hard length. Fear, and something dark, tangles up in my belly.
“Naughty Kitten, I just caught you running,” Reaper growls, fingers digging into my pulse. “Running through the woods, trying to escape.”
When he loosens his grip, I jerk away, falling to my hands and knees, small rocks and twigs cutting into my palms.
The slick sound of leather slipping through belt loops makes my blood freeze, my breath whooshing from my chest. I look around, my mind tripping over itself, and I see Striker, Viper, and Breaker stalking forward from every direction, wolves coming in for the kill.
They surrounded me. Like hunters closing in on their prey.
“You”re going to regret testing me,” Reaper says and slams his leather belt over my eyes, drawing it tight at the back of my head. I scream from the shock of his brutality, from being suddenly blindfolded, as he uses the belt to shove me forward. He drops with me, covering my back with his enormous body, until we’re both lying in the dirt, my face pressed to the earth under his palm. Reaper digs his hips into my backside, his erection pressing into my ass crack. I try to buck my hips to get him off me, but he’s absolutely massive.
“No no, little Kitten,” Reaper growls in my ear, grinding my cheek into the dirt. “You’ve been a brat for days, wanting our attention, and now you have it.”
With the belt covering my eyes, all my senses scream, every sound, smell, and taste heightened. I hear as the others approach, their boots cracking over the sticks and dried leaves. Taste the dirt as it slips past my lips. Smell the dry earth under my cheek. Feel his weight, his raw power and how, no matter what I do, there’s no escaping.
“I told you not to run,” Striker says. Dusty dirt hits my lips. The cracking of his leather boots near my head tells me he’s crouching. “Yet you chose to disobey.”
“No,” I croak out, barely able to form words, my heart’s thumping so hard in my throat.
“No?” Striker says, his tone close to mocking. He doesn’t even sound like how I remember him. None of them do. “No you didn’t run, or no… what Princess? No, don’t dirty your pretty nightgown or no don’t—”
“Where’s Cora?” I scream, the sound bloody and raw. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing,” Breaker says from my right. I suck in a raspy breath as Reaper shifts upright. “Cora is in her room like you should be.”
Reaper’s hot breath fans over my face as he leans down again. His hips dig harder into my rear and I gasp, breathing leaves and dirt into my mouth. He’s so hard he feels rock solid against me. “Why did you run?”
“Answer him,” Viper says somewhere to my left. “Didn’t we tell you not to run?”
“Fuck you,” I manage between gasps, the gritty dirt in my mouth caking my lips. My fingers curl into the earth, nails digging in for purchase, but someone, Reaper I think, grabs my arms and twists them, pinning them to my lower back.
“God, she’s spicy,” Striker says. “I think she needs to be tamed a little more.”
“Fucking perverts,” I scream, but I choke on more dirt as I inhale.
Reaper’s grip on my wrists tightens, and he wrenches them up higher on my back, sending a sharp pain shooting to my elbows. I bite my sore lip, trying not to cry out from the pain.
My nightgown slips up, slowly sliding up my thighs. Cold air hits my exposed rear. My entire body stills. The entire world halts, all sounds fading until there’s only the faint chirp of birds, the distant cracking of branches rubbing together, and our ragged breathing.
A hand lands on the back of my thigh. I jerk at the sudden warmth against my flesh.
“Pretty Kitten needs to learn a lesson.” Reaper’s words crack at the end, scratchy like they’re clawing his throat. His heat leaves as he sits upright. “Viper, hold her down.”
My heart skips. A choked gasp escapes when his hand slides over my ass cheek, tugging my underwear down some. Another, different, warm hand wipes strands of hair away from my face.
“I fucking went outside and now you’re going to hurt me?” I hate the way the last few words catch in my throat. Hate him for sending this awful fear skittering through my body.
“We’re going to do something far worse than hurt you, Kitten,” Reaper growls. “We’re going to own you.”
I squirm under him, fear and rage flooding my senses.
“We don’t hurt helpless creatures,” Striker says. “Punish yes. But I promise you we’d never hurt you.”
The irony of my situation makes a guttural laugh escape. “You’re fucking insane!”
“Hush now, Princess,” Striker whispers. “Reaper has a point to make.”
I open my mouth to curse him again, to threaten him with the vengeance of my father, but the sharp sting of flesh meeting flesh rings out over my ass cheek and I scream, more from shock than the actual pain. Stinging heat radiates out, spreading from my right butt cheek to my thigh.
“Fucking asshole!” I scream when I realize what he did. “A fucking spanking?”
Another slap to my other ass cheek makes my entire body jerk, my hips digging into the ground, bucking away from the pain.
“Two,” Reaper growls. “How many until our little Kitten learns to obey?”
Another, another. Two more in rapid succession, each one making me cry out.
“How many more, Sweetheart?” Viper asks, shifting his grip on my wrists so my arms are up even higher and I’m forced to bend, draw my knees up under me, my ass in the air.
“Fuck y—” My scream gets cut off with another sharp slap to my ass.
“How many?” Reaper’s hand lands again. “Ten more?”
Another. Another.
My sob breaks on a growl. My heart hammers. It’s not so much the pain as the humiliation. I’m pinned down, four men standing over me, spanking me because I was trying to find my best friend. To fucking save her from god only knows what.
“I wasn’t running,” I whimper, my ass hurting so badly, I’m squirming, like if I move enough I can outrun the pain.
“You don’t leave here,” Reaper says. “You’re ours.”
I shake my head, my forehead grating into the dirt, a red tide of fury making me wish I was stronger so I could get free. Kick him.
Another slap to my ass rips a cry from my throat.
“You don’t run,” Striker says as another punishing spank lands.
“You belong to us now. You’ll listen to us. Be rewarded by us. Get punished by us. Do you understand?”
“I belong to no one,” I hiss, regretting my defiant words the second another harder spanking stings my sore ass. Something twists, low in my belly like embers spiraling upward, stained with darkness.
When another slap lands, I buck into it, an explosive heat hitting between my thighs.
“Ours,” Reaper says. “You’re ours, Kitten. Do you understand?”
I nod, my throat tight, fear making my heart race. Not of another spanking to my sore flesh, but of that dark feeling curling through me.
“Say it, Kitten.”
“Yes!” I scream.
“Say you understand.”
“I understand,” I plead, trying to twist my hips, instinctively trying to avoid another spanking, but there’s not another slap to my skin.
Reaper’s hand slides over my ass, kneading the tender skin as an arm slips under my hips and I’m hauled up, knees scraping over the dirt until I’m kneeling. Viper adjusts his grip on my wrists, holding them crossed at my back, drawing me against him in a twisted embrace. I drop my head, my forehead hitting his warm chest. I breathe in and out heavily, all my senses crashing together violently. Every nerve ending lit up brightly so that I’m aware of their every breath. The way Reaper’s fingers feel on my ass. How Striker’s hand slides along my jawline. Viper’s chest moving up and down under my cheek and his grip on my wrists The faint smell of sweat and soap and earth mixed with a dark, woodsy scent. Breaker’s hand running up my back to my neck. The deep intense clawing low in my belly like a gnawing hunger, but for something I can’t name.
Reaper’s fingers slip down lower, over the fabric of my underwear, right at my core, and he curses under his breath. “She’s soaked.”
My cheeks flame and I tuck my face into Viper’s shirt, inhaling his clean, slightly citrusy scent. Fuck you seems to be the only response I’m capable of, but I clamp it behind my teeth and remain silent, refusing to give them the satisfaction of my anger.
A light slap lands on my pussy, making me jolt. I hiss out a breath into Viper’s chest. Lightning shoots from my center to the base of my spine.
“Naughty, naughty, Kitten,” Reaper rasps. “This pretty pussy is begging for us.”
My tongue flickers over the slightly swollen cut where my teeth bit into my bottom lip, out of retorts and… words. I have nothing because he’s right. That nagging ache is begging to be soothed.
Striker makes an approving sound in his throat. My heart skitters at the quiet praise. “Did our pretty Princess just need to be put in line? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? We warned you what would happen if you ran and you did, anyway.”
Reaper slips his hand slightly over the material again and I arch back into his touch, hating his dark chuckle. Hating myself and my body that I can’t seem to control. Detesting how a spark of need flies outward, catching fire, and I want him to do it again.
“What a good girl,” Striker says, petting my head. “You took your lesson so well, maybe we should reward you.”
I lift my head from Viper’s chest and bite my lip to keep in an angry growl, wishing Reaper would just do it already. Take me. Fuck me ruthlessly again until this hunger dissipates.
His fingers tap up lightly again and I clench around nothing. He does it again. Then again. “You need to come, don’t you?”
An angry, slightly desperate, fully anguished sound slips out, and I press my cheek back to Viper’s chest.
My nods going to send me to hell, but I do it anyway.
“Say it, Sweetheart.” Viper’s gentle tone fires through my brain as his voice reverberates through my cheek. “We need to hear you say it.”
I don’t want to say it. Saying it means I want them.
The word clings and claws, grips the inside of my throat, desperate to stay in, but it breaks free on a whimper. “Yes,” I whisper, elongating the word as a finger slips over my cheek.
“What a sweet little kitty you are when you want us to please you,” Reaper says. He runs a finger along my opening and I feel how wet I am, my panties soaked. He presses hard as he slips a finger over my clit.“You want to come so bad, don”t you.”
Fuck.
I nod, burying my face in Viper”s chest.
Reaper”s growl as he slips over my clit again shoots fire to my core. “Good girl.”
My mouth opens, breath rushing out. Viper shifts, his grip tightening. A tear slips down my cheek. He”s going to make me “Please.”
“Such a sweet little purr,” Viper whispers into my hair. “Let”s hear it again.”
“Please.”
He slaps my pussy again. My back arches. A moan slips past. I’ve lost all control of myself, my body, my mind, and I don’t care. I just want him to touch me. Soothe this ache twisting between my thighs, curling like thorny vines in my belly. “Breaker, remove her panties.”
I hear the slick sound of a knife leaving its sleeve, feel the cold metal flat against my skin. Then the material is cut away as Striker holds my left leg and Breaker grips my other, spreading me wide.
I don’t need help. I do it for them, mindless with need.
Cold air touches my heated flesh. I tilt my hips, straining to get my ass higher, leaning into Viper’s solid form, my body begging for more.
The next slap lands viciously, sending a bolt of pure desire through me. My clit stings from the impact and when he does it again, I cry out.
He does it again, working up to a brutal pace. The sting mixes with pleasure, building until I hear myself making low keening sounds, my hips moving to meet his hand. Something dark and primitive claws at my insides, wanting to break free. The sting gets worse, the pleasure gets higher, flaring on my clit with each punishing spank. And this is what it feels like. A punishment for wanting their touch. Another punishment from Reaper for his dark need to touch me.
Viper’s solid body moves away, and my hands are released. I fall forward on to my hands and knees in the dirt. Someone”s hand slips over my lower back, pressing down so that I’m forced to dip my hips like a cat in heat. A tear slips out, and the belt tightens, my head snapping back.
“Do you want me to kiss you, Princess? Is that why you’re whimpering?”
Please. Please. Please, just kiss me. Like you did before. When Reaper was taking my pleasure in the blue tinted room. When you knew I needed softness.
My head’s yank back further. Striker’s hand clamps around my throat, his mouth enclosing over mine. I open for him, groaning into his mouth as he kisses me with long sloppy sweeps of his tongue. Kissing me savagely, as Breaker pulls my leg, so I’m open wider. As Viper presses my lower back down, keeping me still. As Reaper continues to spank my pussy. They’re all doing this. Taking part in this. Willingly sending me over the edge of sanity.
The slaps get harder, faster, all our breaths heavier, until I’m crying, pleasure rippling through me, mixed with the edge of pain. Until that wild feeling breaks free.
When I come, it’s as cruel as the slaps on my clit. It cuts through me just as sharply, ripping a scream from deep in my throat. Striker’s throaty groan as I continue to whimper against his mouth sounds like he’s devouring my demise. Eating my will.
Savoring my ruin.
Because that’s what this feels like. Like they are destroying one small piece of me at a time, until I’m nothing but theirs to use, to have.
To control.
Then it’s just emptiness. All the hands leave my body and I melt to the ground, forehead pressed into the dry earth. One of them slips the belt from my eyes, but I keep them closed, not wanting to see them.
“Come here, Princess,” Striker says. “Let’s get you inside.”
I feel warm hands slipping under my arm and my legs and I’m lifted. I press my cheek to his shirt, hiding my face. But I can’t hide from the darkness inside my head.