Chapter 25
CIPHER
I didn’t wait for Annie to process the confession I’d just dropped on her. I didn’t want to talk about feelings or the architectural history of my obsession. I wanted her bound.
“Get up. I want you on the bench.”
Annie moved, her legs shaking, but she didn’t argue as she walked to the padded leather bench, the one angled specifically to present her to me.
“Strip,” I said.
She hesitated for a moment, but finished stripping out of what was left of her clothing. When she stood there, naked and trembling under the red lights, I realized the fucking timer in my head had finally stopped.
That fucking clock.
Ten hours. My brilliant strategy to reduce her to a biological necessity, a prop for the cameras when required and a warm body to silence the static in my head, hadn’t even lasted half a fucking day.
I had built the walls. I had drawn the lines.
And the second she walked into my lab, she had pulverized every single brick.
I stared at the pale curve of her spine as she pressed her hands against the cold leather and anger coiled hot and sharp under my skin. I hated that I couldn’t stay away from her. I hated that the mere thought of her wandering my halls out of my sight made my skin crawl with violent possessiveness.
The realization was a jagged pill, tearing up my esophagus on the way down. I was a slave to this fixation already.
Fine.
If the equation wouldn’t balance with distance, I would rewrite the math. If I couldn’t cut her out of my head, I would just swallow her whole. I would own the marrow in her bones.
“Lean over,” I commanded. “Chest to the leather.”
Her gaze darted from the cuffs to the red lights overhead, her throat working as she swallowed. Her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection, exuding the kind of nervous energy that usually preceded a flight response.
“Cipher,” she breathed, but my name came out sounding more like a question.
She eyed the spanking bench, her skin going pale beneath the flush. She was terrified. Of the display. Of the openness of what I had asked her to do. She was used to shadows, to keeping herself under the covers and not being laid out under a spotlight.
I stepped into her space and ran my hands down her arms, reveling in the goosebumps that rose on her skin at my touch.
“Don’t think,” I murmured. “Just give it to me.”
With a shaky breath, she complied, bending at the waist, draping herself over the bench. It was a perfect display. Her spine curved, her ass lifted, vulnerable and waiting. I reached for the cuffs attached to the bench legs.
She gave a quick inhale of breath as the leather touched her ankle, spreading her wide, locking her into place. She couldn’t close her legs. She couldn’t hide. She was completely, utterly mine.
I stepped back, running my eyes over the lines of her body.
I was still angry. The heat of it was still running through my veins, coiled tight next to the lust. I hadn’t expected to be so insulted by her question.
Am I the only one? The audacity of it. As if I were some common sadist who picked up women at bars to test out his hardware.
As if I hadn’t taken the time to calculate the tensile strength of these chains, the density of the padding, the exact lighting array, all with her body in mind.
I had watched her earlier on the security feeds. I’d seen her enter the room, her eyes wide, terrified and curious. I’d watched her sit on the recovery bed, touching the furs, looking around the room like she was trying to memorize it for a test.
That was the problem with Annie.
She treated everything like a job. She treated submission like a set of rules and regulations she had to follow to keep her employment.
Even last night, when she was shattering around my cock, there was a part of her trying to do it right.
She wanted to be the perfect submissive, just like she was the perfect Keeper.
She wanted to be graded on her performance.
She didn’t know how to be messy. She didn’t know that I didn’t want her performance; I wanted her ruin.
I walked around the bench, trailing my hand along her side. She flinched, her muscles jumping under my touch.
Telling her the truth about the room might have been a tactical error.
It gave her leverage, knowing just how deep my obsession ran.
I usually kept my cards close, my motives obscured by layers of misdirection.
But looking at her now, stretched out and waiting for my hand, I didn’t care about the tactical disadvantage.
I couldn’t let her think she was just another body. I couldn’t let her categorize herself as replaceable. I needed to be the only one who broke her and I wouldn’t let her break herself with her own insecurities before I even got started.
Part of me screamed that this was supposed to be an extraction. Annie Bishop was a vault, she was made up of sealed Alliance files and redacted histories, and I was the safe cracker. Pain and pleasure were just the tools I needed to pry the hinges off.
But as I looked down at her, spread wide and helpless on the black leather, I tasted the lie I was telling myself.
I didn’t care about the files. Not right now. The obsession that had started as a calculated risk had metastasized into something terminal and I needed her to be as obsessed with me as I was with her.
“You’re trembling,” I observed.
“Hard not to when you’re looming over me,” she snapped, her voice muffled against the leather but still sharp.
I smirked. Even trussed up like a prize, she had teeth.
“Careful, Bishop. Any other time, I’d expect you to fight me.
I’d want you to claw and bite and argue.
But not right now.” I leaned down, keeping my voice low in her ear.
“Right now, you obey. If you want me to use that crop you were so curious about, you have to prove you can take my hand first.”
She let out a shaky breath, her defiance wavering under the threat of denied sensation.
The way she’d reacted to having her cunt smacked combined with the fact that she constantly pressed on her bruises, I had a hunch that Annie was going to be quite the little pain slut.
She was worried she wouldn’t get the crop, that she was too weak, but those reactions made me think that she’d acclimate to the pain faster than most.
I straightened and let my gaze drift to her hip.
The welt from the knife play was still vivid, a crimson line against her skin.
It was a masterpiece and just looking at it made my cock twitch.
I traced the line of the wound with my thumb, loving the sound of her intake of breath and the way she pushed back into the sensation as I stroked it.
“Beautiful,” I murmured. Yes, she’d be able to take the crop just fine.
I ran my hand down the curve of her ass, teasing the sensitive skin without giving her the pressure she was clearly desperate for.
Then I moved inward.
I trailed my fingers between her legs, barely making contact. I hovered over her wetness, feeling the heat coming off her pussy, smelling the arousal I’d already drawn from her. She squirmed, her hips bucking, trying to chase my hand.
“Impatient,” I scolded. I dragged my tongue over the knife mark on her hip, tasting the salt and iron, before blowing cool air on the wet skin. She whined, such a beautiful needy sound.
I waited as the silence stretched, letting the anticipation twist her up until she was wound tight as I was. I needed to feel the impact of the strike reverberate through my bones.
I struck.
My palm connected with the roundest part of her ass, hard and unforgiving. She cried out, shock rippling through her, but before she could process the pain, I hit her again, a stinging slap on the other cheek.
While she was still gasping, reeling from the impact, I buried two fingers deep inside her cunt.
Her gasp turned into a scream and I reveled in the sound of her sensation overload.
I curled my fingers so my knuckles could hit the spot inside her that made her shake, forcing her to process the sting on her skin and the intrusion inside her at the same time.
I owned her pain and I was going to make sure she fucking thanked me for it.
I kept the rhythm in a simple, devastating loop: the sharp crack of my palm against the reddened skin of her ass, followed immediately by the thrust of my fingers inside her.
Her hips bucked, trying to lean into the sting, only to impale herself further on my hand. She grew so wet it was running down her thighs, slicking my wrist.
I watched the conflict play out in the tension of her muscles. Her back arched, straining against the cuffs, her body confused. She didn’t know if she was supposed to scream or come, so she was doing both, sobbing through the pleasure, moaning through the pain.
My cock throbbed against the confinement of my jeans. I was starved for her cunt and wanted to rip the zipper down and bury myself in her. The urge to fill her up and stretch her out clawed against my skin, trying to force its way out.
I looked down at her, at the mess I’d made. Her hair was damp with sweat, clinging to her face. Her ass was a vivid crimson, marked by my hand. She was shivering, lost to the heady mix of pleasure and pain.
She was fucking perfect.
Seeing her that way, messy and vulnerable, brought home how I’d made a miscalculation last night.
I’d assumed she understood the dynamic. I’d assumed she knew that it was her hesitation, her fear, the way she over-thought everything, that made what we were doing work so well.
She hadn’t though. She’d thought she’d failed for those things not realizing they only made me want her more.
I didn’t know ghosts of boring, perfect women were haunting her, letting her tell herself she wasn’t good enough.
I needed to exorcise those non-existent women.