Chapter 10 Silas—or is it?
SILAS—OR IS IT?
Roxana doesn’t take long. And when she steps into view from around the dining room table, all air evaporates from my lungs.
The whole world goes still and quiet first, and then it roars deafeningly as I take her in, my eyes trailing over her form and lingering on every detail, from her rich, freshly brushed raven hair to the black-painted toes of her small feet.
The shadows accentuate her cheekbones and jawline while the light from the fire emphasises the excited sheen on her face and the glow in her eyes. I hold out the glass to her, and she walks over to me with uncertainty in her step.
Her fingers close around the offered glass at the same time as mine do around the cane she brought with her as instructed.
She downs the whiskey in one go, tossing her head back.
“Where do you want me?” she asks, her voice a little tense, and she twirls a strand of hair around her finger.
Tucking the cane underneath my arm, I pour another generous shot of whiskey into the glass.
“On the ground. On all fours,” I reply to her, and she lets out a surprised, strangled huff, but obeys.
Not taking her eyes off mine, she lowers herself to her knees, biting her lip before placing her palms on the floor as she faces the expanse of the living room.
Her hair falls down her shoulders in waves.
The black teddy leaves the upper half of her slim back exposed.
I badly want to run my fingers down the depression of her spine before hooking them underneath the delicate lace to rip it off her.
But I resist the impulse. Instead, I place the glass just above the border of the fabric, and she gasps as it touches her bare skin.
Something inside me flutters at the way she reacts to me.
“We’re going to play a game,” I tell her, my voice raspy.
“A simple one. All you need to do is complete a lap around the living room like this without the glass falling off. That’s it.
If you can manage it, I’ll fuck you in any way you’ll want me to.
My tongue, my hand, my cock, not at all, it will be your choice tonight. ”
I walk to stand slightly behind her as I speak, and my eyes are drawn to the smooth globes of her arse like to a magnet, my throat constricting and my erection so acute that it’s painful.
“What if I can’t manage it?”
I breathe sharply through my nose in a humourless chuckle.
“I get to brand you with my mark.”
Roxie gasps and half-turns her head in my direction, so that I can see her mouth hanging open in shock. Soon she recovers, though, closing it in determination before opening it to speak again: “All I have to do is carry the glass on my back around the living room, right? Just once? That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I confirm, but the glee in my voice alone should be a clue for her not to trust me.
“You hate it when I spill something on the floor,” she points out, looking up at me sideways, and she taps the sycamore hardwood with her knuckles.
My present self has to agree with her, but the one in my nightmare dismisses her, “I don’t give a fuck about the floor.”
“Well, that’s new,” she remarks, a crease appearing between her brows. “Any other changes I should be aware of?”
She turns her head a little further to look at me directly with a challenge etched in her face, and a low guttural grumble escapes me.
“You’re testing my patience,” I point out harshly. “You shouldn’t. Doing as I say is your only chance to prevent me from doing what I want.”
Tracing her arse with the cane in an unspoken threat, I notice in the dim dance of shadow and light from the fireplace that her whole body is erupting in goosebumps.
She’s so responsive to everything I do.
That sight stirs me in more ways than one, my balls throbbing, my veins raging with need, and my pawn’s heart—what ??—beating a little faster.
“Start crawling,” I order her, and she obeys with a nonchalant, “Fine.”
She moves forward in small, careful movements, methodically using the opposing hand and knee, and keeping her back perfectly straight.
A clever girl, I think, letting her get a little ahead of me and walking level to her cautiously swaying hips.
It is when that thought morphs to ‘my clever girl’ that I wince and shout, “Faster!”
At the same time, I raise the hand in which I’m holding the cane, and I bring it down much too sharply with an intimidating whoosh.
As I recall Roxana’s pained, astonished shriek back in my office, I flinch and accidentally drag the red pen across half a student’s essay.
Never mind that, it’s one I was about to fail anyway.
But I feel sickened by my mental image of the angry slash across Roxana’s flesh.
I have to remind myself that it never happened, that it’s just my tortured mind trying to fill the gaps in my memory with the strangest products of imagination.
Now I would be the first to admit that when she was younger—before I discovered those sinister aspects to her personality that made that kind of play feel off—I definitely could be less than gentle with her when she let me.
I doubt any man cohabiting with Roxana for any prolonged period of time would pass up on the opportunity to bend her over his knee and punish her arse until bright red.
But never with that cane. That was always for psychological effects only, and I was damn careful with it, knowing how brutal that can be.
If only this whole thing didn’t feel so disturbingly, viscerally real ...
Dread coils through my body as I return to that living room in my mind’s eye, but something else intertwines in, something scalding and pulsating. A powerful, primal kind of lust such as I have never felt in real life.
Roxana is looking up at me, the fire reflecting in her eyes and complementing the surprised defiance in her expression.
She had jerked forward with the impact, and the glass slid off her back with a sturdy click and is now lying on my easily damageable wooden floor in a puddle of liquid!
Present me wants to rush for a rag to mop it off, but I’m just a passenger in my body, and my driver doppelganger clearly couldn’t care less.
“Want to quit?” he asks Roxana, but it’s my voice that comes out.
“Do you know me as someone to shy away from a challenge?” She raises her eyebrows at me with an amused half-smile that exposes nothing of her teeth but the sharp tips of her canines. “Pour another one,” she tips her head in the direction of the glass.
“Alright. Get back to the start line.” I bend to pick the glass up just as she mutters a muted “fuck”, before turning around and crawling in the direction of the bar, her back curving and highlighting the shape of her rear, all the more tempting because of my mark on it.
The freshly poured glass is sticky with the previously spilled liquor as I return it to the centre of her back.
“Go,” I order her, and she does, cautiously as before, but with tension in her posture, her movements less fluid than before, her muscles rigid.
She’s expecting another strike, I realise, preparing herself for it.
I want to trace my fingers along that first horizontal line marring her skin. I want to kiss every inch of it before burying my pawn’s face—WHAT??—between her legs, balancing the pain with pleasure.
I let her go a few paces before I slice the air with the cane, whipping her for the second time. The mark on her skin is a little fainter, and I only earn a whimper from her this time.
She doesn’t waver; she keeps steady and soldiers on.
Right hand, left knee, left hand, right knee.
Her back curves alluringly, and her hips tempt me to the point of insanity with the way they sway.
I’m picturing what it would feel like to have her move exactly this way, but with her warm, firm body pressed against me and with me sunk inside her to the hilt.
I’m so distracted that I allow her to make it all the way to the dining table, so composed and methodical in her efforts.
Well, not for long.
“Faster!” I growl at her, caning her arse again and again; not very hard, but in a quick succession, until half a dozen red lines criss-cross her skin and she is gasping for breath, moaning, and—of course—swearing.
Her movements become faster, jerkier, uncoordinated.
And as she rounds the corner of the sofa, the glass slides off her back and rolls away through the second puddle of liquid on my floor!
“Fuck! FUCK!” Roxana roars with frustration, hitting the ground with her fist before looking up at me with murder in her eyes.
Damn, if homicidal rage doesn’t look beautiful on her!
“How about now?” I ask, my tone severe and unrecognisable to my own ears. “Ready to give up, dark darling?”
What the hell did I call her?
“No. And also go fuck yourself,” she snaps at me, teeth bared and her tone furious. “And also, also, when I win, how about I fuck you in the ass with my vibrator? Jury’s still out on whether I’ll use any lube.”
She turns around and rushes back to the bar on all fours, her knees hitting the ground so hard they must be getting bruised.
“That won’t be possible,” I reply to her stoically as I pick the glass up, ignoring the whiskey seeping into the hardwood. “Since I threw your vibrator out this morning.”
“You did fucking WHAT?” Reaching the bar, she straightens up on her knees to glare at me.
I shrug as I walk towards her, half hoping she will lunge at me and picturing all the ways we could wrestle with each other before I would inevitably overpower her, pin her underneath me and rut into her so hard I’d have her screaming.
But she stays put, and whilst she is likely harbouring a desire to skin me alive—judging by her expression—she makes no move to turn it into reality.
“I told you that you wouldn’t be needing it anymore.” I pour a fresh glass and offer it to her. “Here, drink one before you have another go at it.”