Chapter 5 Sadaré #4
At the sound, he turns that grin fully upon me, and it’s like the sun in this dark place, bright and hot and burning, warming me to my core even as fear sings in my chest.
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” he says.
“No more amusing than you do,” I manage while trying not to lose my balance. It would be undignified to let him fully drag me. His grip on my arm is as solid as a promise.
“I told you, I might as well enjoy myself.” But there’s something in the way he says it, some shadow falling over his expression, that makes me doubt that he enjoys himself often. “Perhaps you might as well.”
I realize, rather belatedly, that he’s been hauling me toward the north wing.
To his personal quarters in the main keep.
I’ve been too distracted to notice, my eyes too busy fixating on every detail of his face.
For survival only, of course, to map his mercurial moods and learn how to best navigate them.
Except it seems I’ve navigated myself right into a ferocious storm.
The doors to the main keep crash open without needing to be touched, and then slam closed once he hefts me inside, leaving us in a cavernous dim space. My own breath is loud in my ears until he snaps his fingers once more and candles flare all around us.
We’re in a torture chamber. A decadent, luxurious torture chamber with leather-bound tables and chairs lined in straps, freestanding crosses and racks perfectly sized for spread limbs and polished to a high shine, wooden rings and beams hanging from the ceiling with coils of black rope draped over them, and all manner of painful-looking tools lining the walls—whips, floggers, pincers, even glinting blades.
All of it ready and waiting to either bind me or bite into my flesh.
Perhaps I might enjoy myself. Perhaps not. I might be in the Blessed Isles or I might be in the Pit of Hell, depending.
My knees nearly buckle at the sight, but Isha holds me up by the elbow. How considerate of him. I expect him to drag me forward and throw me onto one device or another, but instead he releases my arm once I’m steady and gestures at the room.
“You choose.”
It takes a moment for me to work up enough saliva to rasp, “What?”
“You know what you’ve done. You choose the punishment you think you deserve.”
An obvious test. If I go too lightly on myself, he’ll no doubt punish me all the harder. It’s a deviously cruel offering disguised as generosity.
And the stubborn, mad, foolish part of me wants to rise to the challenge.
Forcing composure, I begin to meander through the gleaming, candlelit room as if it barely holds my attention, though my eyes eat up everything hungrily, and my heart begins to pound in my chest as I trail my hand along the various surfaces, absorbing the textures of the wood, leather, and metal designed to hurt, and softer fabrics, furs, and feathers intended more for titillation.
I can’t help it—a thrill of excitement rises in me even as heat begins to pool lower in my belly.
All the while, Isha follows behind me like a stalking predator, watching my every move.
“I don’t suppose I could opt for tickle torture with a peacock plume?” I ask lightly without turning, my fingers combing through the silken barbs.
His laugh is dark and surprisingly warm at my back, and then he bends to murmur in my ear, “Try it.”
“Hm, I’ll pass.”
It’s then my eyes alight on the gleaming ebony cross, shaped for a standing spread-eagled position.
I let my hips sway as I saunter up to it and pace a slow circle around it until I have my back to Isha once more.
Languorously stretching my arms overhead, I lightly rake my nails—and the tips of my shadow hand—down the two upper branches to where they meet in the middle, and then turn to meet his gaze over my shoulder. His eyes devour me.
“This one,” I murmur.
He cocks his head, obviously intrigued. “And?”
I scan the row of various accoutrements closest to me and tip my head questioningly at a velvety gray deerskin flogger with wide, gentle tails.
He arches one dark brow at me, as if to say, Oh, really? That’s it?
Continuing our silent conversation, this dance to no music, I smile and shake my head, and then jerk my chin at a black flogger with falls of heavy braided bull hide. The weight will land like a punch, while the edges will bite. With his arm behind it, he could easily destroy me if he wanted to.
I want to be destroyed, but only in the best of ways. I don’t know what he desires, so perhaps it’s a foolhardy choice, but at least I didn’t pick a flogger with metal tips, or a whip. As much as I revel in the sensation of pain, I like the skin on my back.
Both of his brows lift in mild surprise, and then his eyes darken once more. He gives me a short nod, accepting my choice. His smile is as slow as his walk as he moves to retrieve it.
Oh gods, what have I done? And still, my fear doesn’t manage to outweigh my excitement.
Taking deep breaths, I stretch my arms back against the cross, getting a feel for it and trying to ease the tension in my shoulders at the same time.
At the exact moment I realize there are no restraints that I can see, the silver cuffs at my wrists snap into place as if caught by an invisible clasp.
I gasp in surprise and crane to look for Isha, but he’s no longer at the wall where the flogger was.
It’s gone and so is he. He’s somewhere behind me.
My breath comes faster despite my efforts to slow it, making me dizzy.
His voice seems to come from all around me as he says, “Put your ankles in place.”
He’s making me do it intentionally this time. To voluntarily spread-eagle myself before him while I can’t see him. While I don’t know what’s coming for me, or when.
Here we go, I think somewhat deliriously as I shuffle both feet outward, pulling my arms taut as I drop lower, until I feel my ankles lock into place with the same invisible pressure.
The cross is wide enough that I’m flush with it from breasts to groin, wrists to knees, with open space only for my head to stay straight on my neck…
or to hang. Still, I feel unbearably vulnerable with him at my back, unseen. At least I’m still clothed.
And then I hear that snap of his fingers and my clothes vanish in a blink. I can’t help tensing. My nipples go hard against the cool polished surface of the cross, and my core ignites against my will.
It’s only your backside he can see, I tell myself in an attempt to calm both my fear and other parts of me I don’t particularly want to acknowledge at the moment. I’m both hidden and terribly exposed.
“I wouldn’t want to shred your clothes,” he murmurs—his voice coming from only one direction now, close behind me.
With surprising gentleness, he gathers my hair at the nape of my neck and tucks it to the front, over my shoulder, his fingers trailing along my throat.
“And I don’t want those chains, as delicate as they are, between you and this.
” Leather scrapes across my back, the heady scent of it blooming around me as the tails run down me in a heavy rain.
Gooseflesh erupts all over me. “I wouldn’t want to shred your lovely skin, either. ”
At least there’s that, I think.
He leans in close, his lips at my ear. “Do you want this?”
I nod wordlessly. Hurriedly. Ready for him to begin or ready to get it over with, I’m not sure.
But I do want it.
With another waft of leather and of salt and something deeper and darker belonging to him, I feel him withdraw. I wait for the lash to fall, but after a breathless moment, only the cool tips of his fingers trace down my back, two for each scar there.
Daesra has the same scars. I told him to give me a matching pair.
I imagine Isha will ask about them, but he doesn’t. His fingers only stop, resting in the two dimples at the base of my spine like they fit there. He gives me the slightest nudge forward, pressing my hip bones into the cross, and then he’s truly gone.
My skin is charged, tingling everywhere from my scalp to my toes, sensitive beyond measure. A whisper would make me flinch, such is my anticipation. My lungs feel as though they’re being squeezed in a giant fist, aching for release.
A loud crack in the air makes me lurch against the cross, even though all I feel is the wind from the tails gusting along my back. Thank the gods the cross is as steady as an oak. Was he demonstrating the force he’ll use, or is he merely trying to scare me?
No matter what, he must be enjoying my fear, my—
Before I can ready myself again, the first blow whips across my back, leaving a streak of fire from my shoulder to opposite hip.
My own reactive spasm slams me into the cross, bruising my knees and shoulders.
Before I can catch a breath, another strike mirrors it, scoring down my other side with a ferocious heat, making me groan through gritted teeth.
He swung hard and fast, likely to see what I could handle.
He wants a show, does he? I force my shoulders to relax, sinking to the hard surface, and I waggle my backside at him.
The next blows land there, of course, burning across one cheek and then the other, the tails leaving molten kisses behind that continue to smolder. Gods, it hurts.
It feels divine.
Once more I can’t help it—a delirious laugh spills out of me with the tears in my eyes.
I’m pinned to a cross, unable to flee the bite of the flogger, and yet this is what sets me free.
This scorching feeling that incinerates everything else around me, leaving me in a space as wide open as the sky, no matter the walls around me.
“Are you taunting me?” Isha asks, but he sounds more amused than dangerous.
“No,” I gasp, choking on a sob. “I love it. Please keep going.”