Chapter 15
Damien
In the weeks that follow, Seraphina makes a full recovery.
The doctors must have been right. It really was a stress-induced fever, and the minute that stress was removed, she got better.
If only I had known that she’d been fed lies by Noel, the same lies I’d been told by Elias, all of this could have been avoided.
These eight months of suffering, followed by the cruel punishment I inflicted on her.
For that, Angel will pay. Well, what remains of them.
But I don’t want to dwell on that now. I’ve finally found her, and I wasn’t kidding when I told her I wanted to settle down with her.
Eight months of separation will do that to a man.
If it were up to me, I’d spend the rest of my life with my face between her thighs, eating her pussy, my mouth only leaving it long enough to stuff it with my cock.
Vincent takes my request seriously. He spends the next month taking trips to Vermont, sending me pictures of real estate listings.
The one I choose is a nine-bedroom brick house, nestled in a wooded area of seventy acres, with a private lake.
There’s no white picket fence, but it probably wouldn’t be very doable to put one around seventy acres.
Still, I hold onto my childhood ideal, and have every intention of putting up a fence somewhere.
For the moment, though, this place is perfect, and everything is in pristine condition.
While Vincent has been busy searching, I’ve had my accountant create a shell company, and it’s all set up by the time I’m ready to make an offer.
I don’t take Angel seriously anymore, but it’s a layer of protection to keep anyone from finding us, just in case.
As soon as my offer goes through, I have Vincent put a team together to get the house in shape.
Today, Vincent calls to say everything’s ready at last. He’s still getting a small staff together, and security, but the house is entirely finished and ready for us to move in.
“Don’t forget to buy the goats and the chickens,” I tell Vincent.
I hang up and turn my attention back to my girl, who’s lying naked on the bed. It’s the position she’s been spending most of her time in these past weeks.
But I’m surprised when I notice her expression. It’s not entirely happy. She seems to be anxious about something.
“So you bought the house?” she breathes.
“I certainly did.”
I jump back on the bed and my mouth finds her left breast again, swirling her nipple under my tongue. But she doesn’t react.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s… it’s in the countryside?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice harder. “Why? You don’t like the countryside?”
She hesitates.
“Doesn’t matter what you like. I’m the one who decides. You don’t have a say in this.”
She nods her head sadly, and I click my tongue in frustration. “Go on. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Is there…” she swallows, forcing the words out. “… is there going to be a lot of dirt there?”
I can’t help but bark with laughter. My pet is always unexpected. “I guess. It is the countryside after all.”
I clamp my mouth around her nipple again and suck. But she’s still not reacting to me. I lift my head up, expecting to find her fuming, as she usually is when I make fun of her.
Instead, she’s in tears.
Sighing, I sit up, bringing my fingers to her cheeks and swiping away the signs of her sadness. I like her tears when they’re brought on by something I’m doing to her in bed. But not when they’re emotional. And certainly not when I don’t understand their cause.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I order.
She opens her mouth, trying and failing to get the words out for some time. She’s gotten a lot better at talking recently. When she’s happy, she sometimes manages to speak whole paragraphs. But the minute she’s upset, she’s back to struggling.
“Go on,” I prompt, trying to keep my voice gentle. When I’m too brusque during these moments, her ability to speak vanishes entirely. I’ve grown to understand that she can’t help it, and I do my best to be patient. Though patience is not exactly in my nature.
She blinks away another tear. “I don’t like dirt,” she admits at last in a tiny whisper.
I snort. “Fine. We’ll get a good cleaner. There won’t be a speck of dirt on you or in the whole house.”
She nods silently. I’m tempted to go back to enjoying her body, but I have a feeling she’s not telling me everything. “Something’s still wrong. What is it?”
“I don’t like… the smell of dirt,” she breathes. Then, grimacing with effort, she blurts out, “It reminds me of when I was buried.”
I lie down next to her, my heart heavy in my chest. “Okay.” I stroke her hair and cheek gently until she’s relaxed again.
“I’m going to make sure every inch of dirt is covered in flowers.
We’ll go out there and see if you like it.
If it’s too hard for you, we’ll go live in a city. Wherever you want.”
“You’re not angry?” she whispers.
I press my lips to hers. “Your pain could never make me angry. Do you hear that?” I rest my face against hers, breathing her in.
“Your pain is my pain. I’m going to take it from you, and I’m going to own it.
Just like I do the rest of you. Your body, your heart, your soul, your fear.
Your pain. It’s not yours anymore. It’s mine. Got it?”
She doesn’t react, and now, I do feel a slight pinprick of anger. Not because of what she told me. But because of what she’s not telling me. She’s withholding something from me.
I pull back from her and tilt her face to mine. “I said, got it?”
“Got it,” she murmurs, but I can tell there’s something going on. Some sort of resistance I can’t get past. I’ve never been able to get past it, and it annoys me. Because it means I don’t possess all of her. Her mind doesn’t belong to me.
I click my tongue impatiently. “Get on your hands and knees.”
That gets a reaction out of her. She blushes with pleasure and follows my instructions a little too enthusiastically. Well, so much for the punishment fuck. Does it still count as punishment when the person being punished is this happy about it?
But moments later, all frustration vanishes as I take in the perfect, creamy globes of her bottom.
They once more have a little fat on them, though not quite as much as I’d like yet.
I rest a hand gently on her lower back, encouraging her to arch for me.
Even though I’m used to seeing her like this by now, her wet pussy and her ass still have the same effect on me.
My cock is already rock hard by the time I reach for the handcuffs dangling from the headboard.
Usually they’re zipped out of sight, in a hidden pocket there.
But we’ve been using them daily, so at this point I just leave them out.
I stretch out her arms and lock them in the cuffs.
It causes her ass to rise higher, and I nudge her thighs open before slipping each ankle in one of the restraints at the base of the bed.
My cock twitches as I stand up, walking around her slowly, wondering what I’m going to do to her.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of knowing how helpless she is, how completely at my mercy.
I could keep her here all day, using her exactly how I like.
The glistening wetness between her legs tells me she wants it just as much as I do.
The wounds on her bottom are nearly healed, faint red lines the only sign of what I once did to her. I feel the urge to reclaim her there, to hurt her in another way, so she stops associating the pain in her bottom with the past.
I go to the chest at the base of the bed, and she inhales as she hears me open it. That’s where I keep my toys, and she must realize I’ve got plans that will make it hard for her to sit down for a while.
I grab a soft flogger and drag it over her creamy globes. Then I bring it down and she gasps in startled surprise, before moaning with desire.
I know it probably doesn’t hurt too much at first, but after a while it causes a sting that makes her bottom quiver and twitch tantalizingly.
The red stripes that zigzag over her white skin make me groan with want, and it’s all I can do to keep from plunging into her right then and there.
But I can tell the sting isn’t deep enough yet.
I keep flogging her, letting it flick against her thighs, then up into her wet folds, more turned on than ever when I see her jump and whimper in that cute way of hers at every stroke.
I know she’s a lot more sensitive there, but I’m done being gentle with her.
My cock strains in my boxers as I zero in on her pussy, each stroke of the flogger causing her to thrash against her restraints.
I always marvel at how one of my relatively light punishments can make her squirm and yelp, but she barely moved a muscle during the three hard whippings I gave her. Her mind is a puzzle that keeps me out.
Frustration at that thought causes me to continue until her pussy is red and inflamed. But it’s still as wet as ever, and the desire to own it in a different way causes me to toss the flogger aside.
I mount the bed and kiss her tears away, licking at the saltiness.
She sighs and mumbles a few incoherent words into the mattress.
Then I sit back on my heels, sliding my hands over her ass, rubbing the pain away, inching my fingers toward her well-punished core as she moans louder than ever.
Unable to wait any longer, I zip down my fly and my cock springs out, painfully hard.
I slam it into her pussy, her inner walls clenching hungrily around its length, and I bury myself up to the hilt inside her.