Chapter 19
KATE
Acid paints my throat. My lips refuse to move.
He doesn’t know what he’s asking. He can’t know how that one word breaks my brain.
Not one month ago, he apologized after putting me on a feckin’ leash. He admitted he went too far. But now he’s forcing me to go miles further, to weave my own leash, to snap it around my own neck with my own fingers, to submit in ways he’s never required before.
This is Cole, not anyone else. It’s one feckin’ word. I can say it. I can lie.
But it’s a symbol of who he is, of who we are. It’s an admission that he owns me.
I can’t do it.
I won’t do it.
But if I refuse, he’ll never take me to the dungeon again.
I know I’m broken. I’m my own worst enemy. Half the time, I act without thinking about the consequences—as I did tonight. The other half, I think, but I still arrive at a flawed conclusion, one that’s bound to harm me in the end.
Mam says I’m a bad seed. She hates me because I didn’t fight back the way she did when she was in harm’s way.
She shoved the tale down my throat every chance she got—how three pissed Englishmen caught her outside the Forge and Anchor one moonless night in Athgarven.
She fought her way clear even after the first shitehawk carved her face with his butterfly knife.
She crushed his bollocks in her fist and broke the voice box of another and head-butted the third so he fell on his arse in the middle of the road.
So there’s no room in her heart for a daughter who failed to fight her own battles—even if that daughter was barely eight when the Bad Men came.
When I was a child, I made bad choices. I chose to run for the merry-go-round, causing my nanny to die. My choices rang in the Dogfight. I’m the reason so many good Lynch men were buried for years.
I made more bad choices tonight. I listened to my devil. I could have destroyed my husband. I nearly caused pain to the Andersons, whose only sin has been loving a boy who needed them years ago.
I don’t want to make any more choices. I want to be told what to do. I want someone else to be responsible, to be in control.
I want Cole to be in charge. He knows my body. He understands all the crossed circuits in my brain. He binds together all my broken pieces, turning me into something whole.
He makes me come so many times and so, so hard.
My decision was made before I ever picked a fight tonight. It was made before I threw a glass of champagne in Cole’s face at Fiona Moran’s wedding. It was made years ago, when I did my best to save my innocent sister.
“Take me to the dungeon,” I say. “Master.”
The word tastes like shite. But Cole’s fingers close around my arm, pulling me to my feet. He marches me down the hall, toward the door and the stairs and the room filled with all his instruments of pain.
Leaning close to my ear, he growls, “Say red, and I’ll stop.”
I shudder and clamp my lips together.
He folds his arms over his chest and says, “Go on then. Strip.”
“Yes, Master.” The word comes more easily this time. It’s simple, with Cole. It’s right.
I don’t think about my clothes, about removing them in any special order, about looking sexy or smart. My goal is to fulfill Cole’s command without delay, and I don’t pause until my knickers are off, until my naked belly rises and falls with my far-too-rapid breath.
“On the bed,” he says, nodding toward the huge mattress. “On your back. Legs spread.”
“Yes, Master.” I don’t have to think. Don’t have to question. I understand exactly what I’m meant to do.
He crosses to the armoire and retrieves two lengths of rope. My left foot trembles as he lashes my ankle to the bedpost. He pulls my right foot hard, forcing me to splay my legs.
“Eyes on me,” he orders. I didn’t realize they’d closed.
I watch him move to the wall then, to a panel next to the light switch. His fingers skate over a control board until he nods with satisfaction. When he comes back to the bed, he spares me a gloating smile.
“Cameras,” he says, pointing at four dark eyes embedded in the ceiling. “Motion activated.”
“No!” I cover myself with my fingers, a hot flush spreading from my cheeks to my chest to my toes.
“Yes,” he says.
“You can’t—” I start to protest, but the words die, because he can. He has. “I didn’t agree—” I try again, but I did, the moment I called him Master. “I…”
I can stop this. I can shut down the cameras with a single word—red.
But I don’t.
“Eyes,” Cole says, and I realize I’ve closed mine again.
It takes me a moment, but I manage to meet his animal gaze. His lips twist up, just a little. “Come,” he says.
I don’t understand. “M— master?” I ask.
“Make yourself come.”
I’ve touched myself plenty of times—quick, rushed work to meet my body’s basic needs. But I’ve never found my folds so wet. My clit has never been this hot. I’ve never shivered so hard as I sink a finger deep inside.
“Eyes,” he snaps one more time.
I open them again. I force myself to meet his gaze. I see myself as he must see me—tied up, drenched, trembling with need. The cameras are capturing every second of this. I blush all over again.
“Don’t make me repeat myself again,” he says. “Come.”
I rub my clit with my slick finger. Faster. Harder. It feels fine, like I’m scratching an itch, but my touch is nothing special. My thighs don’t tighten. My toes don’t point. I’m nowhere near exploding.
Cole studies me like I’m a rabbit caught in a trap. His head tilts to one side.
I catch my lip between my teeth. I change my rhythm: Scrape, scrape, pinch. Scrape, scrape, pinch.
Cole’s eyes narrow. He lowers his chin.
With the fingers of my free hand, I trap my left nipple. It’s soft, limp. I try flicking it with my fingernail, but that upsets the rhythm between my thighs.
Cole’s tongue darts out over his lips. His nostrils flare, as if he smells prey.
Whining, I flex my hips, trying to find a better angle. I bite my lip, hard. I want to see his satisfied smile. I want to feel the world tilt out from under me. I want to do this right for the cameras. I desperately want to come.
But I think of what those lenses are capturing. I think of the landing strip shaved on my mound, a path of false promise. I think of my thighs, scarred from my years of cutting. I think of my flesh, mottled from exertion, from failure.
I can’t do it. I can’t find the nerves. I can’t locate the release point.
“Please,” I whisper, my voice shaky.
“Please what?” he answers, as if he’s recording data in some clinical lab.
“Please help me.” My throat is raw. “Please touch me. Please let me come.”
He doesn’t move a muscle.
I remember the magic word: “Master.”
His trip to the armoire takes barely a second. I don’t have time to focus, to question what he’s holding. I see a flash of black as he returns to his position between my legs, and I hear a rush of air. I feel a stabbing icicle pierce my clit and then the flicker of wildfire.
My breath catches in my throat. My thighs clench. My fingers tighten on my nipple, startled to grasp a sudden pebble.
“Master,” I beg, because he’s brought me closer with one blow than I managed in forever.
This time, I see the riding crop slice toward my bare pussy. The leather tab lands squarely, like a magnet snapping home. Ice-fire-pain-joy ripples from my clit to the base of my brain.
My eyes roll. My toes curl. I’m so close now, so close, almost, almost there. “Please, please, please,” I beg, and then I seal our pact. “Master…”
The crop closes every synapse in my body. For one perfect moment, I’m suspended, utterly open, entirely exposed. Then I’m tumbling through space, hurtling through time. I’m desperate and I’m gasping and I belong to Cole, Cole, Cole.
He completes me. He shatters me. He gathers up all the tiny bits of me and builds me back again.
And all of it is caught by the cameras’ unblinking eyes.
I don’t feel him strip the rope from my ankles. I’m barely aware of him leaning against the headboard and pulling me into the cradle of his body. The cotton of his jet-black shirt creases against my back, and the wool of his trousers heats beside my hips.
His knowing fingers stroke my sides, but I’m too spent to respond. He shrugs, which pulls me closer. His fingertips read my landing strip like it’s a secret message in Braille.
My knees splay because I don’t have the strength to pull them together. He finds the liquid core he melted inside me and dips his fingers.
I moan when he taps my clit. I want his magic. I want to drink him dry. But I don’t have any power left. I can’t begin to stir.
He taps again, wet on wet. I murmur something that used to be a word.
He shifts his wrist, harvesting more of my honey. This time when he flicks my clit, I shift my arse, giving him a better angle.
He’s playing songs I’ve never heard before. Painting with colors I’ve never seen. He’s firm and he’s strong and he’s certain, and even as I gasp a new plea for release, he finds the perfect key, striking the note over and over and over again.
I melt.
My body is gone. My brain is gone. My soul is gone.
Cole Wolf has dissolved me. He’s erased my past. He’s eradicated my future—I don’t need anything anywhere anymore.
I’m nothing.
But I’m his.
I’m his, and I want him to be mine. I want him to feel even a fraction of what he’s given me. But when my clumsy fingers finally settle on his zip, he shakes his head, the tip of his chin brushing against my hair. “Not tonight,” he says.
His command scrapes something raw inside of me. I thought we were past that rule. I thought he’d learned to trust me. Learned to care.
I think about trying again. If I can get my fingers on his cock, I can make him change his mind. My lips, even better. If I catch him with the molten space between my thighs, he’ll never be able to resist, even with the cameras watching.
But he pulls my hand close to my chest. He covers my fingers with his own. Squeezing his thighs, he holds me close and whispers again, “Not tonight. Say it.”
I raise his hand to my lips. I smell myself on his fingertips as I kiss him. I turn my head to the side, and I give him what he commands, what he wants, what he needs more than he needs my body. “Not tonight,” I whisper. “Master.”
He rewards me by pulling me even closer. And for now, for tonight, that’s enough.