Chapter 4
Scarletta
The watch beeps.
Two minutes.
I made it with two fucking minutes to spare.
The clearing opens up in front of me like something out of a fever dream. Or maybe I actually have fever. Malaria. Dengue. Whatever tropical nightmare is currently incubating in my bloodstream because I walked through a goddamn jungle naked and barefoot like some sort of feral idiot.
There's a massive tree in the center. Ancient. Gnarled. The kind of tree that looks like it's been here since before humans invented fire, waiting patiently to murder someone.
Thick vines wrap around the trunk like veins. The branches spread out overhead in this twisted canopy that blocks most of the light, turning the clearing dim and greenish and wrong. Like a fairy tale forest where children get eaten.
A rope ladder hangs down from somewhere high up in the branches.
Next to it, an envelope dangles from a nail hammered into the bark.
Of course there's another fucking envelope.
I stumble forward, every nerve ending screaming.
My feet are bleeding—I can feel it, even if I can't see it through the dirt caked on my skin.
Something bit my shoulder. Or maybe scratched me.
I don't know. Everything itches. Everything.
Like ants are crawling under my skin, burrowing into my pores, laying eggs in my—
Stop.
I rip the envelope off the tree. My hands shake so badly I almost drop it.
Inside, another card. Another stupid goddamn poem written in his perfect handwriting.
My naughty little Valentine let strangers make her moan,
So sixty feet above the ground, she'll pay for what she's sown.
Climb the rope into the tree and prove you can obey—
Walk the plank, retrieve your cuffs, and give that ass away.
Walk back to the beam you started on, then face it like my whore,
Bend yourself across the wood and wait for what's in store.
"Fuck you."
I say it out loud. To the tree. To him. To the cameras I know are watching.
"Fuck. You."
My voice cracks on the second word.
I look up.
Sixty feet.
Sixty fucking feet.
There's a platform up there. I can barely see it through the branches, but it's there—wooden planks lashed together, extending out from the trunk like a diving board suspended in nightmare territory.
I'm afraid of heights.
Like, genuinely afraid. The kind of afraid where I can't even stand near the railing on a second-floor balcony without my legs turning to jelly. The kind where I once had a panic attack in a glass elevator and had to take the stairs for the rest of the week.
And he wants me to climb sixty feet up a rope ladder.
Then walk out onto a plank.
Suspended in the air.
Above a jungle.
Naked.
I can't. I can't do this. It's not possible. I'm not capable of this. It's not within my abilities. I'm not—I don't have the capacity for this. I'm not the kind of person who climbs trees. I'm not athletic. I barely leave my apartment. I'm the girl who gets winded walking up four flights of stairs.
Climbing sixty feet up into a tree isn't in my… my… constitution.
Constitution? What the hell, Scarletta? The word floats through my panicked brain like it's auditioning for a role it doesn't deserve. It's not in my constitution. My fucking constitution.
Who even says that? What am I, some regency-era damsel clutching her pearls? Some fantasy princess fainting onto a chaise lounge because the prospect of physical exertion is too vulgar to contemplate?
Christ. I sound ridiculous. I sound like I'm writing dialogue for a character I'd mock in someone else's manuscript.
Oh, my God. I'm spiraling. I need to chill. Zen. Calm…
This is… safe. It has to be. I crane my neck back, squinting up through the canopy at the distant platform—barely visible through layers of leaves and dappled sunlight. The wood up there looks thick. Solid. Sturdy, even from this impossible distance.
Don't think about how far away it actually is.
Don't think about how you can't possibly assess its structural integrity from sixty goddamn feet below.
This is the masked man we're talking about here.
Control freak extraordinaire. The man who orchestrated an entire auction, who rigged every detail of my arrival, who probably has backup plans for his backup plans.
He's obsessive. Meticulous. Pathologically thorough.
It's got to be safe. It has to be. He wouldn't put me in actual danger—not the kind that involves plummeting to my death from a tree platform in the middle of the jungle.
Right?
I take a breath and hold it as I read the poem again. Slower this time.
Bend yourself across the wood and wait for what's in store.
He's going to spank me.
He's going to make me climb up there, restrain myself, and then he's going to—
My pussy clenches.
Oh god.
I picture it. His hand coming down hard on my bare ass while I'm bent over a beam sixty feet in the air, helpless and exposed and completely at his mercy. Will he use his palm? A crop? That leather paddle I wrote about in Prey?
Will he make it hurt?
Or will he alternate—pain and pleasure, the way he did at the mansion when he spanked me and fingered me at the same time until I didn't know which sensation to focus on, until my brain short-circuited and I came so hard I blacked out?
I watched that footage so many times.
Sitting in my glamping tent, wearing his Harvard shirt, laptop balanced on my knees.
I'd replay the part where he straps me to the exam table.
The part where he makes me recite my own story while fucking me with a pen and his fingers.
The part where I squirt for the first time in my life and sob afterward because I didn't know my body could do that.
I watched it until I memorized every angle. Every camera view. The way my face looked when I came. The way his masked face looked when he watched me fall apart.
I want him to touch me like that again.
I need him to.
Even if it means climbing this nightmare tree.
Even if it means I might actually die of a heart attack halfway up.
I grab the rope ladder.
It swings under my weight, unstable and terrifying, but I don't let go.
One rung. Then another.
My arms shake. My legs shake. Everything shakes.
The ground falls away beneath me and my stomach lurches but I keep climbing because if I stop I'll think about how high I am, and if I think about it I'll freeze, and if I freeze I'll fall and—
Don't look down. Don't look down. Don't look fucking down.
I look down.
The clearing is so far away it doesn't even look real anymore. Just green blur and shadows and oh god oh god oh god—
Keep climbing.
Rung, after rung, after rung.
My palms are slick with sweat. The rope burns against my skin. My thighs tremble with the effort of keeping myself steady.
When I finally haul myself over the edge of the platform, I collapse face-down on the wood, gasping.
The planks are warm under my cheek. Rough. Real.
I made it.
I'm not dead.
Yet.
When I can breathe again, I lift my head.
There's a narrow plank extending out from the main platform—maybe eight feet long, two feet wide. At the end, a wooden box with a latch.
Behind me, closer to the trunk, a thick beam mounted horizontally between two branches. Sturdy. Waist-height. With metal eyebolts screwed into the wood on either side.
I know exactly what those are for.
Next to the beam, another card.
Of course.
I crawl over—I'm not standing up, fuck that, I'm staying as low as possible—and read it.
Walk the plank. Retrieve your restraints. Return to the beam. Bend over it. Secure your right ankle to the eyebolt on the right. Secure your left wrist to the eyebolt on the left. Wait for your Master.
My hands won't stop shaking.
I look at the plank.
Then at the box.
Then down at the ground, which is so far away I can barely process the distance.
He wants me to walk out there.
Over open air.
To get handcuffs.
So I can restrain myself.
And wait for him to come punish me.
I crawl to the edge of the plank. Test it with one hand. It doesn't move. Solid. Bolted down, probably. Safe.
Probably.
He never said I had to stand. Well, walk the plank kind of implies it. But there was no rule against crawling.
Don't look down.
I let out a breath and inch forward.
You're not going to fall.
I make it to the box. Flip the latch. Inside there are black leather cuffs lined with soft padding.
I grab them, turn around, drop to my knees, and crawl slowly back across the plank. A bird flies through the trees, scaring the fuck out of me, and I wobble. My fingers grip the plank tight.
Calm down, Scarletta. You're three feet away. Three feet away…
I hold my breath, gripping the wood so tight, I can feel the splinters breaking my skin. But slowly, I cross that last bit of distance and reach the beam.
I blow out a breath… this is it.
The moment where I can still choose to climb back down. To walk away. To say no, this is insane, I'm not doing this.
But I don't want to walk away.
I want to bend over this beam and wait for him.
I want to feel his hand on my ass. His voice in my ear. His control wrapping around me like a second skin.
I want to surrender.
I buckle the right ankle cuff around myself first. Clip it to the eyebolt. Test the hold.
Secure.
Then I bend forward over the beam, the wood pressing against my stomach, my ass lifted and exposed to the open air.
To the cameras.
To him.
I reach back with my left hand and buckle the wrist cuff. Stretch my arm to clip it to the second eyebolt.
The lock clicks into place.
I'm trapped.
Restrained. Helpless. Waiting.
Exactly where he wants me.
My pussy throbs.
…
Nothing happens.
Chill, Scarletta. Chill. You literally just got here. It's been like thirty seconds.
…
Still nothing.
I've got a good look at the ground now. It's literally all I can see with the one eye that's not pressed against the bench.
A little chicken bird walks past, pecking at things.
A butterfly floats by.
Time slows.
Drags.