Chapter 10
Lula
I pressmy cheek to the leather cross. It slips a little because the surface is slick with my sweat. Overhead, my arms sag in their bonds. My back is in flames. Victor warmed me up with a light flogger, then quickly moved to a heavier one. As soon as I got used to the thuddy rhythm of the strands, he changed the angle of the strokes so it felt like stinging rain. He hasn’t touched my nipples, but they throb in sympathy with my abused backside.
And now he has a crop. He showed me the implement before tapping it on my calves and the backs of my thighs. He pops it harder on the fleshy swell of my ass, making me growl. The crop peppers my back and rear, leaving spots of fire, and as much as I hate the pain, I love the heat it leaves.
The crop prods the side of my breasts. “Breathe, Lula,” he says, and I brace for the sting. The leather flap kisses the side of my left and then right breast. I snarl, straining against my cuffs.
“Smarts, doesn’t it?”
“Fuck you,” I mutter.
“So impolite. Where are your manners?”
Something wide and rectangular presses against my ass and then claps down harder. I shout. “Oh, you bastard.”
Another hard smack to my opposite rear cheek, but I was expecting it. He stops to give me a sip of water, and I glare at him. “Kinky fucker. Do you do this with all your victims?”
“Just you.”
“So I’m special.”
“Very.”
He steps behind me again, a monster looming behind me. Something soft falls on my face, and I rear back.
“Shhh, it’s just the blindfold.” He draws the strip of silk tight over my eyes, and the world drops away. There’s no light, no movement, not even a sense of shapes or shadows. It’s darker than night.
I’d rather endure hours of pain than have my sight taken from me this way. I bite my lip to keep from begging.
Victor shifts behind me. I tune into the slight rustle of his clothes and the soft huff of his breathing. He steps closer, his clothing brushing my back, and goosebumps run down my skin.
He runs his hands down my sides, circling the sore weals his crop left on my backside. There’s nothing for me to see or focus on except the cool, tickling trail his fingers leave on my skin. It’s soothing, inevitable. He takes time stroking down my calves, even my ankles. His touch is gentle, but I tremble, wanting to resist. To fight. He presses himself against my back, awakening the sting and, worse, an intense craving deep in my gut. He slides his hands around my front and traces light circles there. It’s sweet and sensual, and my body is confused. Is this my enemy? Or my lover?
“Stop,” I whisper. “No.”
“No?” He stills, glued to my back from nape to knee. “Not this?” His fingers ghost down the vee of my legs, towards my shaved pussy. “Or this?” The lightest touch on my folds.
I shake my head but can’t bring myself to protest.
He drops his lips to my bare shoulder. “It’s all right, little liar. But I still need to punish you for removing the blindfold.”
He steps away, and I’m filled with relief. Let him beat me, mark me, etch his rage on my skin. Just don’t make me like it or crave it.
Don’t make me cum.
“Shall I use the flogger?” Soft suede trails over my back. “The paddle? Or the crop? Shall we try something new?”
There’s no use answering. Anything I say will make it worse.
I rub my head against the leather, wishing I could dislodge the blindfold.
“Bad girl.” He grips my hair and draws my head back. I let him so as not to wrench my neck. “I’ll put you in a posture collar if you do that.”
More bondage. He’s been lenient so far. Things could be so much worse. “I won’t,” I say. “I’ll be good.”
“Yes, you will. I know just how to keep you sweet.”
He leaves and returns to fit something around my waist and legs. It feels like a harness with a wide section to cover my pussy. Some sort of chastity belt? I’m happy with anything that keeps him from playing with my pussy and giving me pleasure.
He tightens the contraption. I rise to tiptoe but can’t escape the panel pressing against me.
“How does this feel?” he asks.
The thing between my legs comes to life, vibrating right against my clit. I yelp and push upwards as if that will allow me to escape it.
“Excellent.” He steps away and spends the next interminable minutes adjusting the speed and intensity of the vibrations, finally settling on a swelling buzz that rises and falls in uneven waves. Heat fills my belly but settles at a gentle simmer. Without my vision, there’s nothing but the insistent and random stimulation between my legs. I lean against the cross, rubbing my nipples on the sturdy frame in an attempt to get a spark, a sting, something that will trigger my climax.
This is torture of the sweetest kind.
The toy buzzes as he resumes flogging me, and sensations collide until I don’t know which is which: the sting in my back, the tickling at my clit, or the tightening in my core muscles. There are no boundaries between them and the rising tide of my climax, threatening to consume me.
I angle my hips, desperate to rub against the cross. If I can push at the panel between my legs and press it closer, I can get some relief. But it’s no use. As soon as I push my pelvis forward, Victor stops the vibration.
“Naughty girl.” Victor comes to hold my hip and pat me with the paddle again. He swats me until I’m dancing from right foot to left, trying to get away. Then, he amps up the vibrator, transforming the pain to golden and perfect pressure. My clit swells, my orgasm darting just within reach?—
The vibration dies.
“No,” I mumble, despite myself. “Please.”
“Since you ask so nicely. . . beg for your punishment. And I’ll give you a reward.”
My thoughts trip and fall over themselves. I take too long to answer, and Victor steps away again.
“Very well.” He switches to the heavier flogger, letting the strands fall in a wall of knotted ends that knock the breath out of me. The blows leave me numb at first, the pain rushing in too late.
I curse, but eventually, my anger runs out. I’m lost in the darkness, and at least the pain gives me something to focus on. It flares in the distance, a bright, wicked light.
Besides, focusing on the pain lets me ignore what else is happening in my body. Some strange alchemy is happening, transforming all sensations to the deep, insistent ache between my legs.
Eventually, the pain isn’t enough to keep me tied to the present. It becomes one giant, surging ocean, and I’m lost in the rise and fall of the waves.
I can’t see, but I can hear. Without realizing it, I start to hum. The sound is another vibration, a pleasing counterpoint to the one between my legs.
I barely hear Victor calling my name. His cheek rubs mine, and I lean into the pleasant prick of stubble.
“Still with me?” He cups my breasts and kisses my sweaty neck. I press into his palms and bow my head, letting him trail his mouth over the tender spots. He could cut my throat. He could bite me and make me bleed. Instead, he’s kissing me with impossibly soft lips. I want to hate it, but I don’t. It feels so good.
When he steps away, I want to cry. I wait for another round of flogging, but nothing comes. The vibrator on my clit surges higher and higher. I pant through it, my hips jutting forward as if I can ride the invisible waves. All too soon, they die away.
“Tell me what you want, beautiful. Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Please. I want to cum.” My voice sounds far away.
He loosens the harness, and I almost cry. The straps and panel fall away, but in their place, Victor puts his hand.
“Beg me,” he hisses. His voice is all malice, but his long fingers are already working between my legs, bringing me bliss.
“Please, please, please,” I whisper over and over. It doesn’t feel like defeat. It feels right, like the natural next step. Like I’ve been underwater, finally broke the surface, and it’s time to take a sweet inhale. It’s not surrender. It’s what I need to survive.
He strums my clit just right, pulling my moans out of me like music.
“Yes,” I say. “More.”
His fingers plunge into my soaked channel. It’s almost enough. My orgasm is bright and shining and within reach. And he slips his free hand around my breast and tweaks my sore nipple.
I cum, shaking against the cross, mouth open. Howls fill my ears. As I come down from the peak, I realize the sound is coming from me.
Victor moves close to me, and my arms drop. Victor frees my ankles next and scoops me up. I’m still blindfolded—in the dark and off balance. I grab at him, clinging to my captor like he’s the only thing tethering me to the earth.
“I need to taste you.”
I’m laid out on a table and strapped down again, but I don’t care because my legs are pulled apart, and Victor is there, oh, he’s there, and his hot mouth is on my folds, and his tongue presses in. I throw back my head and scream. He licks and probes and devours me, and my orgasm swells again, no gentle tide this time but a tidal wave that’s crashing over me, destroying everything in its path.
I can’t see anything, and it’s cruel. Every squeeze of his hand, every soft swipe of his tongue, is all magnified a millionfold. It’s cruel to deny me the sight of Victor’s intent face: his mouth hidden by the swell of my sex, his eyes on mine, and his pupils blown, the icy blue of his irises consumed by lust.
I don’t know how long he eats me, how many orgasms I have, or whether it was one long, continuous orgasm. I only know that it’s a mercy when he finally takes his mouth away.
“Lula,” he growls, and the flogger falls again, warming my front. Then it’s the crop, biting at my breasts. It hurts and feels good. I arch my back, accepting the pain, feeling the connection to him any way I can. I want to feel him, to touch him. Pain or pleasure don’t matter. I want more, more, more.
His thumb nudges my clit, and I realize he’s stopped striking me. My body is throbbing. I am scoured by sensation, devoured by it, and every nerve is singing. I imagine my body lying on the padded platform, no metal table this time, my skin a painting of pink and red and my pussy a pale target. I feel Victor lean over me, his pale head at my collarbone, dragging down my breasts. His tongue probes my belly button, and I let out a long, low groan. The barest amount of penetration feels so damn good.
“Do you want me, Lula? In this pretty pussy?” He pets it, and every stroke of his fingers is delicious. “Will you be good for me?”
In the distance, an alarm bell is ringing. Under the silk, I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Good girls get to come on my cock.” His fingers slip down into the cleft of my ass. “Bad girls get something else.” The tips find my back hole, tickling the tight skin there. A shock runs through me.
“Has anyone ever taken you here?” He leans close, whispering like a lover. I hold my breath as he circles my rim. I clench my buttocks, but it’s no use. He’s pressing in, and his finger is so slick from my pussy that he’s able to breach the tight ring of muscle. Just a millimeter but it burns. “Have they? Answer me, Lula.”
“No.”
“I will be your first.” He sounds so confident that a tremor goes through me. “Soon.” His hand falls away, and I feel relief, but it’s short-lived.
He steps away, and the crop falls again, this time on my unprotected pussy. He alternates smacking it and using it to probe my folds. He uses it to work me up to orgasm again, and it’s wonderful and awful. When he finally releases me from the table and gathers me into his arms, I cling to him like he’s my anchor in the ocean. If I let go, I’ll drown.
* * *
Lula
“Why Stephanos?”We’re in the shower after another long session on the table and then the cross. We’ve fallen into a routine: he ties me up and works me over. Every time he gives me an instruction, he uses the hand signals I’ve now memorized. I’m made to beg for my orgasm, and then he gives me so many I beg him to stop. I wake up in the cage. I’m fed and watered and allowed some privacy, but he’s always near. He bathes me himself, either in the bath or, this time, in the shower. Sometimes, he keeps me blindfolded. And he always keeps me shaved.
There’s no more talk of earning privileges, but I know he’s keeping track of my behavior. Sometimes when I beg him to stop, he shows mercy and doesn’t make me cum. Instead of figuring out how to free myself, grab one of his many knives and plunge it into his heart, I find myself thinking of ways I can please him. And as much as I tell myself that pleasing him will lead to more freedom, which will give me a chance to escape, it’s only a partial truth.
He’s wearing me down.
“Lula,” Victor sing-songs and tweaks my nipple. He’s introduced me to the clover clamps, and I’ve never known such pain. I go to great lengths to keep him happy when I’m wearing them.
What was he asking me? “Stephanos? He’s our enemy.”
“He’s a petty thief compared to the Regis family. A fly buzzing around a pack of lions.”
“He’s stolen from us.”
“He’s stolen from all the families. For many years. He’s a scavenger. It’s not enough to explain your lifelong vendetta.”
It seems impossible that Victor doesn’t know of my mother’s death. It’s more likely that he knows and is toying with me, wanting me to bare myself and my reasons to him. “Maybe I don’t like thieves.”
He smacks my ass. The sound echoes in the tiled space. “You defend them for a living. Don’t lie to me.” His hand cups my rear, massaging it. “You know I do not allow lies between us.” His touch grows bolder, slipping into the crevice of my ass. With a foot, he nudges my feet apart and bows me forward so he can play with my ass. He’s been encroaching on this forbidden territory more often, in the deepest part of a pain session when I’m too limp to protest. He pushes his fingers deep into my cleft, finding the slick skin of my seam and massaging. It feels weirdly good. I press my palms against the tile, partly to brace myself and partly to pretend I can push the sensation away.
“You know I’ll find out eventually,” he taunts, the blunt edge of his knuckle pressing onto my rim. He has long, elegant fingers, but they feel impossibly huge when he works one into my ass.
“If you won’t tell me why you went after Stephanos, you will tell me why you ran into danger so recklessly and without backup. Practically unarmed.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“It was stupid.” He stops threatening to penetrate my ass and grips it hard, squeezing so tight I’m sure I’ll have violet bruises on my skin. “One word and you’d have the full might of the Regis family behind you. And maybe even the other families if you formed an alliance.”
I swallowed. I never thought of an alliance. But get too many people involved, and there would be a chance that Stephanos wouldn’t die from one of my bullets.
“So why, Lula? Why were you so foolish? I’m sure your cousin would back you up?—”
“There’s a mole!” My voice rings out, too bright and loud, and I bite my lip to keep from saying any more. Victor’s not a judge I have to convince by making my case. He’s my captor, and every second, every hour, he worms deeper into my psyche.
“Ah.” Victor lets his hand fall away. “A mole. That explains why Stephanos has survived all this time.”
“He’s a rat.”
“Who attracts other rats. Have you uncovered this mole?”
“If I had, I would’ve had backup. I wouldn’t have done something so. . . so stupid.”
“Suicidal.” His voice is flat, but he presses himself to my back. I rise, and he grips my hips, pulling me gently against him. He’s hard—he’s always hard. It takes an inhuman effort to sate him, and he’s been holding back during my torture sessions. I arch my back, leaning into him, but he doesn’t kick my feet apart and take me. He picks up the soap and lets his hands roam up my chest, sliding over my skin under the pretense of washing me. I hold my breath and let him touch me. It feels wonderful, and I know this is part of his plan to break me. In a minute, he’ll drop the soap and take up the straight razor, gliding it over my skin and smoothing my stubble away. There’s no part of me that he hasn’t thoroughly touched. No part that he doesn’t own.
“That was the worst part,” he rasps in my ear after a long while. I blink and realize I’ve drifted off. I’m unsteady on my feet, still leaning against him as the shower beats down in a gentle rain. He must have a massive hot water tank.
“What was?”
“Sitting as the doctor stitched me up, learning you’d wandered into Stephanos’ lair wearing nothing but two guns and my coat.”
“I wore heels and stockings too,” I correct, not wanting him to miss out on the full visual. He plucks my nipples in retaliation, and I welcome the sting. I need something to pull me out of my haze.
“I waited and waited for word of what happened to you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
I could deny that I do, but it’s obvious. He wanted me alive so he could kill me himself. Sometimes, when I wake up on my pallet in the cage, I’m surprised I’m still alive.
“And then I learned you were still alive and safe. Secured in the Regis family’s stronghold.”
“Not so secure,” I mutter, remembering how easily he found me.
“There is no fortress that can keep me out. It was only a matter of time.” He skates a hand down my front until he cups my pussy. He pushes two fingers into me and tugs forward, roughly massaging my G-spot until my damn body shakes like the last autumn leaf on a branch. “And while I searched for you, I imagined what I’d do to you. How I’d train you to please me.”
As his fingers delve deep, stretching me, he rubs the heel of his palm over my clit, frigging me in rough, scrubbing movements. Like my orgasm will be a punishment. With my sex raw from the orgasms he gave me earlier, maybe it will be. “How I’d punish you for leaving. For nearly throwing your life away.”
“Not for trying to kill you?”
“No, Lula.” He releases my cunt, leaving me on the brink. It’s both a relief and a torment. I grit my teeth to bite back my moan. “We both know you didn’t try to kill me.”
“I shot you.”
“In the gut.” He takes a handful of my wet hair and tugs my head back. In this position, I’m vulnerable. But it feels good, too, the pinch of pain at my skull from his fist in my hair and the water washing over my upturned face.
His teeth score my throat.
“I’ve never killed before. Maybe that’s why I missed Stephanos.” My voice wobbles. After all my practice and long hours at the range, I proved too soft-hearted. Too weak.
“Perhaps. But you didn’t miss me. You could’ve shot me between the eyes. Instant death.” He guides my head down so he can take the nape of my neck between his teeth. Like a lion disciplining a lioness. “Or in the heart. But you didn’t, did you?”
“Maybe I wanted you to suffer.”
“You left your mark on me, but you wanted me to live? Because deep down you knew.”
I jerk back, jabbing my elbows into his solid frame. I haven’t fought him before, wanting to wait until he’s truly off guard, and this isn’t a real or very serious attempt. We’re both naked in the shower, but he’s twice as large as me and more confident in hand-to-hand combat. An elbow in the gut won’t incapacitate him, not even if I get lucky and poke him right in his healing wound. My struggles are futile.
But I have to shut him up.
My feet slip on the tile as I push myself away, finding a corner to brace my back in. He’s on me immediately, grabbing my wrists as I claw at him, closing in and pinning my legs so I can’t kick. I snarl, teeth bared, and he shoves me flush against the wall, my wrists caught in his grip and secured over my head. He’s taller than me and monstrously strong, using every inch of his body to trap me. Both of my wrists fit into his left hand, leaving his right one free to collar my neck. In the end, I’m imprisoned between him and the shower tile.
I can’t move, but I can glare at him. If looks could kill, he’d be bleeding out. He studies me and smiles, water streaming down his brutally beautiful face. His lips are close to mine. If he tries to kiss me, I’ll bite through his tongue.
“You could’ve killed me,” he purrs. “And you didn’t. You know why?”
I surge against him and use the little space I gain to twist away from him. He slams me front-first against the tile, his dick jabbing my back. His chuckle echoes around the shower.
“You liked me, Lula. You didn’t want me to die.”
“You weren’t worth another bullet.”
He presses into me more, keeping me pinned while he shifts his right hand to get a better grip on my throat. “You hoped I would live. And you knew if I did, I would come for you. A part of you must have wanted it.”
“No.”
“Do not lie to me.” His fingers press in, constricting my airway. I fight but can’t move much.
This is it. He’s going to kill me. He knows just where to squeeze, to choke me, and I’m helpless, dangling in his arms.
“Admit it,” he growls into my ear. “You wanted me.”
“No.”
“You wanted to return to me.”
“No. . .” My voice is growing fainter, my brain screaming for air. I claw at the tile, but I’m getting weaker and weaker. The air is gone from my lungs and, with it, my strength.
“You need to be claimed like this, to be owned.” His voice comes from far away.
I’m dying. He’s killing me. I’m at the end.
“Lula. . .”
I open my mouth and croak with the ghost of my last breath. “Do it.”
“Fuck,” he snarls and releases his grip. Sweet, precious air rushes in, and I rise with it like a freed balloon floating into the sky. I’m weightless as Victor lifts me, hitching me up the wall so he can part my legs and slam his cock into my cunt. It feels so good, so right. I’d never taken a man bare before Victor, and it’s wrong but perfect.
He fucks me higher and higher, and I come with my head somewhere in the stratosphere, my cheek sliding against the tile.