Chapter 26
KATE
The handle on the short whip is carved into three smooth balls, each the size of a small peach. I feel myself stretch over each round, resisting until he pushes again, again, and then I’m full.
I’m aching. I don’t want to hold this toy. I want Wolf’s cock inside me. He’s not soft like the men I’ve fucked before. He’s pure power, and he knows it.
I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m splayed on this iron cross, my arms stretched to either side of my head, aching, shaking. My feet are spread too, like I’m striking a power pose, bristling defiance.
But my delicate white wedding dress is shoved up around my waist. It’s pulled tight across my ribs, the skirt trapped above my arse. My waist looks impossibly narrow under the froth of my dress. My hips look like they’re carved from marble.
And that whip hangs between my thighs, the leather strands dripping like tentacles. It’s obscene, this view. It’s disgusting, this weapon hanging out of me.
And I grip with all the strength of my inner muscles because I don’t want to admit the possibility of failure. I will not lose.
Wolf circles back to me, keeping one hand by his side, hiding something. He glides behind me. When he leans forward to rest his chin on my shoulder, I feel heat radiate off his chest. My thighs sting where he used the whip. The lines he left on my mound are turning crimson.
I don’t want this. I don’t want to want this. I don’t want Wolf to understand me, to know that I need to hang here, I need to be powerless, I need to let him make all the choices, because I don’t understand any of it myself.
“Don’t drop it, girl,” he says. Before I can protest and remind him I’m the adult woman who led the Red Cap Raiders against his sorry arse, he shoves his hand into the bodice of my rucked dress.
At the same time, a furious buzzing fills the room. I only have a moment to be confused and then my nipple is trapped between his finger and thumb. No. Not his thumb. Something harder. Something colder. It’s a vibrator, and it jolts pure pleasure from my tit to my brain to my heavy, aching clit.
I come.
Faster and harder and more furious than ever before, my body submits to an orgasm before I even know what’s happening. Spiraling tight, I pulse around the wooden handle inside me. My nipple throbs, pinned, trapped, as waves of pure sensation arch my throat.
A century later, I’m finally able to breathe. I can open my eyes. I realize the back of my head is resting against Wolf’s chest. I find his gaze in the mirror, see how he’s watching me like I’m a buffet dinner spread for his private pleasure.
One ball of the whip’s handle has slipped free.
I don’t know how that happened. I didn’t feel it go. But I’m so wet, and my orgasm was so strong… I thought I held it tight. I thought I was perfect. But he won this round.
Moving closer, he presses his cheek against mine. “That’s one,” he says, very controlling, very precise.
I murmur, “You feckin’ love to count, don’t you?”
He huffs as his arm folds around my waist.
This time, his touch is gentle. The vibrator is cupped in the palm of his hand, and he barely touches me with the tips of two fingers. He frames my clit in a tender V, taking care not to crush my swollen flesh against the cat’s handle.
The sensation is amazing. It slips me into a warm bath. It floats me under a starlit sky. It spreads me out, smoothing me, pooling me.
This time, coming feels like diving into melted chocolate. I sink into waves of pleasure, rolling in them like I’m burrowing under a duvet on the coldest winter night. Pulses rise from deep within my core, slow and steady, filling my belly, overflowing into my lungs.
“That’s two,” Wolf whispers.
I have to look. I have to know. The whip has slipped another notch. It’s heavier than ever between my thighs. So much more dangerous.
Wolf eases his arm from around my waist, and if he notices the shiver that convulses my spine, he doesn’t give a sign.
He must have turned off the vibrator, because the only sound in the dungeon now is our heavy breathing.
He strokes my reddened thighs, the toy still in his hand.
His touch is solid, firm. The vibrator has matched the heat of his palm, or the heat of my clit, or of my poor, tortured nipple.
I whine because I want more. I whine because he’s done this to me, brought me to this. I whine because he’s turned me into an animal who’s forgotten her words, a creature who only deals in pure sensation.
“Careful what you ask for, girl,” he says.
His hand moves faster than I can follow in the mirror. Shifting his weight behind me, he tugs at the bunched cloth of my dress. That’s my only warning of what he means to do. The vibrator storms to life between my legs, jammed up hard against the tight rosebud of my arse.
It’s too big. I’m too tight. There’s nothing to ease the way, to make it slick, to help it slide. I know exactly how much it will hurt—the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m already opening my mouth to give up, to safeword, to admit the shitehawk’s won.
But Wolf isn’t trying to force the thing inside me.
He’s holding it still. He’s finding a million tiny nerve endings and setting every one of them on fire.
He’s sending one message surging up to my brain—this is pure bliss—and it’s crashing into another that flashes down my spine—this is filthy, this is foul, this is wrong.
For one moment, I’m stretched between two power lines—perfectly balanced between present and past, longing and revulsion, ecstasy and horror. And then something shifts, something so tiny I can’t name its place inside me, but it settles and I’m certain I’ll come again.
All the muscles in my legs tighten. My mouth stretches into a stiff O. My fingers stretch, like I’m trying to scrape the ceiling.
I’m held there, rigid, cuffed to the cross with Wolf behind me, his cupped vibrator pressed against my arse.
Then, one by one, every vertebra in my spine comes unpinned.
I collapse inward, downward. I fight my arms, fight my legs, giving in to every instinct of my body to fold tight, to curl into a perfect ball.
The clatter of the cat o’ nine tails hitting the floor sounds like the mansion collapsing overhead.
I scream, a wail without words, shredding my throat like a thing with claws. I twist. I writhe. I plead with Wolf’s shadow in the mirror, “I tried,” I sob. “I meant to hold it. I did my best. I tried… I tried… I tried…”
His fingers are gentle as he works the buckles around my ankles, but I’m shivering uncontrollably, my thighs twitching like they’re strapped to live electrodes. His palms soothe my calves, guiding my feet to the floor.
He takes even more time freeing my wrists. He holds the weight of each arm, lowering it slowly, giving the muscles time to release.
He produces a blanket from somewhere, as dark as the leather furniture, as the sheets on the bed. It’s softer than gauze as he pulls it close around my shoulders, gathering it beneath my chin. Slipping an arm around my waist, he guides me to the sofa.
He sits first, then he pulls me onto his lap. His arms tighten around me until my shivering finally fades away.
Only then does he shift my weight to the next sofa cushion, climbing to his feet. His footsteps are heavy as he crosses back to the cabinet. I can’t imagine what he’s going for. I can’t fathom anything I could handle without screaming my safeword.
But he slips on his boxers before he comes back to the couch. And when he sits beside me, he presses an open bottle of cold water into my hand. He helps me to hold it, to bring it to my lips, and then he watches as I down half in three greedy swallows.
Nodding, he peels the foil off a piece of chocolate. I open my mouth like an infant, or maybe a patient in hospital. He settles the square on my tongue without any fanfare. It’s the darkest chocolate in the world, tinged with just a hint of raspberry.
It might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Or maybe it only seems that way because I’ve barely had a meal in four days, the entire time I was locked away in Da’s cellar.
By the time the chocolate has melted away, I’m back in the world of the living. I can feel the satin underskirt of my wedding gown, smooth beneath my arse. I can look at the cat o’ nine tails lying on the floor, at the glint of the soft overhead light on its massive carved handle.
I can realize Wolf never came.
He pleasured me three times over. He split my spine open and sealed me up again. He made me feel things I never even imagined when I was with any other man.
He was hard. I saw that. He wanted me.
Turning toward him on the leather couch, I reach for the fly of his silk boxers. He catches my hand before I can slip my fingers inside.
“Let me,” I say.
He shakes his head once.
“It’s our wedding night,” I say.
He snorts like an animal pawing dry earth.
“I want to,” I say, surprising myself. But it isn’t a surprise, not really. It’s part of the energy between us, this feeling, this…whatever it is we’re sharing here in his dungeon.
“I say what happens in this room. In this entire house. And I say you won’t touch me tonight.”
Of course he does. That’s why I hate him. Hate Lone Wolf. Hate my father for selling me, for pawning me off like a dented gold ring.
And just for good measure, Wolf hates me. He hates the Raiders. He hates even the thought of losing a penny of his precious fortune.
But none of that has anything to do with the way he makes my body feel. I learned that lesson in Boston. He nearly gave me a refresher the day we met in Granny’s room. He’s shifted me into the masterclass tonight.
I flex my fingers, but he puts my hand back in my lap.
“New rules,” he says.
I sigh, because he’s already made more than enough demands.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “You’ll see a doctor.”
“I’m not sick.”
“We’ll confirm that. You’ll get tested for STDs. And you’ll get started on birth control—an implant that will last three years.”
I hate being ordered to do anything. “I don’t have a doctor,” I say. That’s true. I don’t have one here in DC.
The look he gives me is so feckin’ superior, I think about elbowing him in the bollocks. “I do. On call full time.”
I keep forgetting he’s a billionaire. He owns people, left and right.
“Fine,” I say. I’m clean. And I don’t want to have Wolf’s baby. I don’t want any man’s brat.
Whatever this insanity is between Wolf and me, it’s not going away. I’ve already seen enough of his power games to know he’ll ban me from this basement unless I give in. And as much as I hate admitting the truth to anyone, I very much do not want to be kept from this dungeon.
He reaches under my dress, flipping my fluted skirt out of his way so he can glare at the newest scar on my leg, the place I cut two weeks ago. He presses with his thumb, the one he had inside my body less than an hour ago. “And no more cutting.”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
He presses harder, enough to make me squirm. The entire ladder of scars on my leg reacts like he’s dipped them into acid. It isn’t a good type of pain.
“Fine,” I say. “No more cutting.”
He nods, like he was always certain I’d agree. “And no more skipping meals.”
“I don’t—”
He just looks at me without blinking, the gold flecks steady in his eyes.
“I eat when I’m hungry,” I finally say.
“And now you’ll eat when you aren’t. Three meals a day.”
I shake my head. “I’ll boke if I eat when I don’t need to.”
“You need to,” he says. He looks around the room, glancing at his range of torture devices. “You’re no good to me if you don’t have stamina.”
Stamina. I’ll show him feckin’ stamina.
“Then yeah,” I say. “I’ll eat.” But when he bares his teeth in a victorious smile, I mutter, “Jaysus. What a feckin’ honeymoon.”
“No honeymoon,” he says, like he’s just come up with another rule. “What we have is strictly a business transaction.”
I take my time, turning my head to look at the metal cross. “Business,” I say, earnestly, like we both don’t know he’s talking bollocks.
That earns me another one of those snorts. I realize that’s how he laughs when he doesn’t want anyone to know.
Pushing himself to his feet, he extends his hand to help me stand. “Come on, Mrs. Wolf. Let me show you the rest of the house.”
“Lynch,” I say.
“What?” He’s honestly confused.
“I’m not Mrs. Wolf. I’ll never be Mrs. Wolf. I’m Kate Lynch, same as I’ve always been.”
He shakes his head. “Unacceptable.”
I’ll let him tie me up. I’ll see his goddamn doctor. But I will never, ever take his name. I need one thing that’s mine.
“Force me,” I warn him. “And you’ll regret it. I swear to God, you’ll have to hide every knife in this house. Sleep with one eye open. Lock me in a cage.”
He glances at the huge black bed, at the mattress positioned above iron bars. “That can be arranged,” he says, his voice deceptively mild.
“I’ll kill you,” I say evenly. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll kill myself.”
He studies me forever, his gaze stripping me down to muscle and bone. His lips curl back from his teeth in a silent snarl. But finally, he says, “Ms. Lynch. May I show you the rest of your home?”
He asked nicely. So I let him.