Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Rory brought some things home from his drawer at the club. In response to her trying to ask questions he didn’t feel like answering, he’d taken Kate to bed.
She was tied with her wrists to her ankles, and he’d just slid a snub-nosed wide-neck plug into her ass. She was uncomfortable and flushed, and his cock was ready for the second round of the night.
“I don’t need to be stretched there tonight,” she said, trying to move and finding her mobility too limited to make a difference to her situation.
Her phone buzzed. He glanced over. It had been going off all night.
He stood and walked over.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
He raised his brows and picked it up. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t to see that she had three unopened texts from her parents.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I—we’re in the middle of something.”
“Why haven’t you read these and answered them?”
“Please can we talk about it later?”
“Give me the code to unlock your phone.”
“No. Why?”
“So we can see what they want and send a message. You can’t do it. I’ll send it for you.”
“A phone’s access code is really personal. And if you trust me, I don’t think you should ask for that.”
He frowned and gave her an appraising look. She looked harried and gorgeous. She also looked open and exposed.
He set the phone down. He would find out what was up with her parents later.
He stripped down and returned to the bed. “Pull your legs toward your chest,” he said.
She did so, but whined. “I’m really uncomfortable.”
He landed a series of smacks on her exposed ass. She immediately fell silent, and her breathing changed. He rubbed her clit while manipulating the plug, and within moments, she was moving her hips in that telltale way.
“Want me to fuck you?”
“Yes!”
He smiled and delivered another dozen smacks to her ass. When he toyed with her again, it sent her into a frenzy. There was no denying that the cocktail of pleasure and pain that he liked to dish out, she loved to take.
He pushed his cock into her. She was so slippery with need it took almost no force to enter her, despite the plug narrowing the space. She throbbed around him, tight as a fist.
He savored the feeling. She was beautiful and helpless beneath him, bound with her ass red and swollen and her skin marked by the earlier swings of his belt.
When she should have wanted to escape, all she wanted to do was to stay his prisoner.
It was like winning a fucking lottery to find a girl that he never tired of and who enjoyed the things he did to her.
It took less than five minutes for her to come. Then he rode her hard until he spilled his seed into her.
“I love you, Kate,” he murmured against her mouth.
She, not unexpectedly, was overwhelmed and started to cry.
“Oh my God! What happened?” Kate asked when Rory rolled onto his side to turn out the light. She’d discovered that his back was covered in welts and scabbed scrapes and cuts.
“It’s nothing. Get your phone, kitten. Let’s see what your parents are texting about.”
“Please tell me how you got these. I need to know,” Kate said, unable to move.
It was like he’d been dragged over gravel. Who could’ve managed to hurt him? He was so strong. Had there been more than one of them? There must have been. Was it over? Or would they come after him again?
“You need to?” he asked, sounding amused. “Why’s that?”
“Why are you smiling? This is not funny. At all.”
“Well, it’s a little funny, considering you’ve got three or four times the number of marks on you, and I’m the one who made them. I’m not sure how I expected you to react when you saw my back, but I didn’t think you’d be outraged.”
“You’ve never broken my skin! This is a whole other thing. Wait, are you saying that it was a punishment?”
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“Who? When? Where was I?”
“You were in D’s office, talking to him.”
“You let this happen? Why? Because you broke the club’s rules? This was the price of them letting us back in? I didn’t agree to that. I wouldn’t have!”
He laughed. “It’s not a two-way street, kitten. I own your body. You don’t own mine.”
“Just tell me. Did you have to take a punishment? Was it mandatory?”
“No.”
“But you did. Because it’s what the club wanted?”
“No. It had nothing to do with our coming back to the club.”
“What then? Are you a switch?”
He barked out a laugh. “Kitten, come on. Be serious.”
“I am. Your back is shredded.”
“Hardly that,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “And if I was a switch it wouldn’t have been only my back. My ass would’ve gotten the same and more.”
“But you chose to do this?” She pulled her legs up to sit with her arms wrapped around them, feeling very cold.
“Yeah. Atonement.”
“For?”
“That’s between me and my conscience. Let it go.”
“You had a scene with someone else,” she whispered. There were things he did, big things, that had nothing to do with her. And that he had no intention of sharing with her.
“It wasn’t really a scene,” he said.
“I see,” she said, her voice empty. She knew from the online community that this was how things were.
Dominants often did scenes with other partners.
They frequently had more than one pet. The thought of Rory with other women made all the air in her lungs disappear.
This was part of what scared her most about being with him.
The feeling that if things ended, she’d never again be as happy and in love as she was right now.
Her dad would have called it limerence because he was an academic.
“Kate—”
“My parents were texting about a wedding. I said I was going to RSVP no. I said I couldn’t afford to fly home right now, and they weren’t happy. They were texting to say they bought me a plane ticket. I guess I’ll go.”
She crawled under the covers. The expense had not been the reason she hadn’t wanted to go. The real reason was that she didn’t want to be away from Rory. But now she thought maybe she should force herself to go.
She couldn’t afford to become so caught up in him that she lost her mind.
There couldn’t be another few days like when he’d been in Austria.
Maya had already texted to say that if anything like that happened again, she would call the campus police to open her door and an ambulance to take her for an evaluation.
She had scared her suite mate in the worst way.
She had scared herself, too. What if she had stopped breathing?
Her parents would have had to wonder for the rest of their lives if she’d killed herself on purpose.
“Kate,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Move over here.”
She slid to the center of the bed, so her arm was against his.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just really tired. Aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew he must have been because he didn’t ask her anything else.