Chapter Six
Ember
Iopen my mouth to let out a shriek of sheer outrage, but Max anticipates my move before I can make it. Another tear later, and I’m once again being gagged by my own dress. This man is a fucking psychopath.
And this psychopath is probably about to rape me, after he’s done whipping me bloody.
Genuine fear takes root in my soul. One of Dagon’s conditions was not allowing any other man to touch me—something that was difficult, since he’d hand me over to his other soldiers.
It was always a taunt. If they succeeded in raping me, I’d lose my virtue and the only thing I care about. If they didn’t, I’d suffer a beating.
The first person I ever killed was Dagon’s soldier. Dagon beat me to a pulp, and then congratulated me.
After I killed four more would-be rapists, he finally relented and put out the order that his men were no longer permitted to try forcing themselves on me.
They still tried, of course, but Dagon ceased beating me when I killed them. In fact, he started giving me gifts. Jewelry. Dresses. Pictures of her—thinly-veiled threats.
True fear doesn’t make me scream or rage. It makes me shiver and go still as a statue, which is why I make it my business to avoid fear whenever I can.
I don’t feel fear when I kill someone. I don’t feel fear when Dagon beats me half to death, or orders one of his men to do it.
Right now, I feel fear, and it makes me freeze. I go still as a statue, with my only movement being the fine tremble in my bones. Max doesn’t notice the way I stop moving or stop breathing as he methodically rips away my dress, leaving me only in my bra and panties.
My vision goes blurry as he drops down to the bed beside me, and pulls me over his lap, face down, ass up. I desperately try to retreat to the corner of my mind where I usually go when it’s time for a beating, but I can’t. Shock and horror firmly root me into reality.
“Flame,” he says, using his apparent nickname for me. It barely penetrates the fog, but then his hand wraps around my shoulder, and I flinch so violently he nearly loses his grip on me. He goes still. “Flame,” he repeats. “I need you to breathe.”
I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t—
“Ember.” One word—my name—said in a deep, commanding tone forces my chest to expand with a violent breath.
I hold it for a beat before it shudders out of me.
“Ember,” he says once again, this time much softer.
His hand moves from my shoulder, and I feel his fingers tracing my back.
It takes me a beat to realize that he’s tracing my scars. “What happened to you, Flame?”
My back is a map of scars. I expect, at this point, there’s more scar tissue than normal skin.
I wouldn’t know for sure—I started avoiding mirrors years ago.
I’m not actually sure what my face looks like anymore.
I assume I’m pretty because men stare at my face and body—because Dagon regularly tells me how beautiful I am.
He doesn’t say it with kindness, however—instead, he says it with possession. ‘My beauty.’
Once again, I say, “Life.” This time, however, the word comes out as a terrified whisper, betraying me. Betraying the little girl trapped under years of trauma and steel forged in the harshest flames.
The life I remember has been one long trial by fire. I don’t want to remember the life before that, because it could make me weak. The remnants of my childhood weaknesses still cling to me like a rancid smell. No matter how much I wash, scrub, and try to change myself, I can’t get rid of it.
“I’m going to tell you this upfront,” Max says. “When I say punishment, I’m not referring to shredding your back or breaking your bones. I mean something far more straight forward and fewer long-reaching effects. And it won’t always have to do with pain.”
He sounds like he believes himself, but that doesn’t inspire me to believe him. It doesn’t inspire anything within me aside from sheer terror.
“You can’t touch me,” I whisper. “You don’t understand. If he finds out you’ve touched me…” my shivering deepens.
“Ember,” Max repeats. “You were never his to touch. You were always mine.” His hand travels over partially-numbed scar tissue, tracing the canvas of pain that my body has morphed into. “And I will kill him slowly for doing this to you—if he isn’t already dead.”
“He isn’t,” I whisper. “He’s deathless. He’s like a cockroach. And when he gets his hands on me, I’ll wish I were dead.” He’ll hurt her just to make a point. “Max, please. Whatever you’re doing, don’t.”
“No,” he says, tone turning business-like. “You need to learn. If you tell me what he has on you, I’ll take care of it. Otherwise, I’m going to proceed as planned.”
Planned.
Planned?
“Right, we’re up to thirty,” he goes on. “I’ll start off nice and easy. If and when you’re ready to talk, let me know, and I’ll see about commuting your sentence.”
“You sound like you’re sending me to prison or execution.”
Max chuckles, and his hand travels down to my ass.
“You wouldn’t know this even if you remembered me, but I have fantasized about having you in this position for fucking years.
Ever since you came onto me when you were seventeen.
I pushed you off back then. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to…
yet I always intended to change that. Then, you disappeared, and I thought you’d always remain there. ”
“Where?” I breathe. I don’t know why I’m indulging him.
I’m in a humiliating position, my face pressed into the mattress, my words muted, about to be disciplined like a toddler, and yet…
I don’t feel as horrible as I do whenever Dagon sets to work on me.
I certainly don’t feel safe, but I’m no longer trembling like a leaf in a storm.
“My fantasies,” Max says. “My dreams. My nightmares. Everywhere except where I was desperate to have you.”
“Where did you want me?” Shut up, you idiot, and stop encouraging him.
“My reality.”
I suck in a sharp breath, bending under the weight of his words, under the sincerity with which they’re spoken.
I don’t doubt that he knows me. I don’t doubt that I know him. The only thing in question is where we know each other from and how well, but the point is moot.
Max has subdued me, for now. There’s nothing I can do in this moment but take the punishment he’s planning on doling out and hope he sticks to his word, pray that this doesn’t end with him forcing himself on me.
If he does, it’s game over for me. Once Dagon gets his hands on me—and he will get his hands on me, he always does—he’ll hurt me in the only real way I can still be hurt.
Physical pain sucks, it can incapacitate me, but it lost its fear factor long ago.
I’ve gone through too much of it to really care about it in the long run.
“Relax,” Max says. His hand moves down to my ass, and I feel my cheeks flame. I have a dreadful sense that I know where this is going… and an even more dreadful sense that I might not entirely hate it.
I’ve never watched porn, but I’ve read plenty of smut when I knew nobody was watching.
It presented my only opportunity for sexual gratification, though most of my sex drive has died out over the last few years.
But, in my books, when the morally grey hero spanks the young, innocent heroine and then proceeds to fuck her brains out… yeah, that got me excited.
In theory. The reality of pain is far different—something I’ve learned beyond any shadow of a doubt—and yet… I think there might be the faintest niggle of excitement inside me.
“I want to taste you so fucking badly,” Max murmurs, though the words sound closer to a moan. “We’ll get there. First… why are you being punished, Ember?”
“Because you had the bad idea to kidnap me and expect a docile little captive. In essence, your poor decision making.”
It sounds like Max muffles a laugh.
“Why are you being punished?” he asks again, voice sterner and more… dominant?
I bite my lip. “Because you have a warped grasp on reality and think that hurting me will bring about any changes whatsoever.”
“Why are you being punished?”
“Because you belong in a mental asylum, but they released you back into society for population control. And as a walking advertisement for condoms.”
His hand leaves my ass. I brace myself, fisting the ratty bedsheets in my hand. His palm cracks down on one ass cheek, and I jerk, eyes shutting as a wave of pain washes over me. It stings and burns, but it also creates a wave of heat in my lower belly.
The fuck?
He spanks me again, right over the same spot. Hisses out a breath and suppresses what sounds like a groan. Then he hits me again, and again, and again… and it starts to actually hurt.
But it’s not the severe sort of pain that makes me retreat into a corner of my mind to just get through it.
This is different. Dagon loses his mind and his control whenever he ‘punishes’ me, but there’s nothing out of control about Max.
He’s careful, deliberate, intentional. It alters the landscape of the pain.
After fuck knows how many hits, I start squirming, unbearable heat curling in my lower belly and pooling in my panties. Several more spanks later, though, the heat disappears, replaced by genuine pain.
My ass feels raw and aching, like he’s gone at it with sandpaper, but there’s also a fuzzy sensation overtaking my brain, slowly but surely.
When the pain becomes too much for me to hold still and I try to crawl away, Max fists my hair to hold me in place, but he doesn’t stop or change the tempo of his hits—though he does ramp up the force.