Chapter 15 Isha
ISHA
I REALIZE that Sadaré must want me to punish her when she drops her full dinner plate onto the floor, shattering the ceramic dish and scattering food everywhere. She doesn’t try to claim it was an accident. She even holds my eyes as she does it.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I was already doubting the effectiveness of my punishments on one such as her.
And yet, while part of me doesn’t want to indulge her attempts to manipulate me—to even give her the illusion of control, as brief as it would be—another part of me finds her willfulness endearing because of the motivation behind it.
She wants intimacy with me, even if it’s painful.
So I smile back at her. Even though pain is often pleasurable for her, I can still teach her a lesson with either punishment or reward. And she could use a bit of both.
A tightness inside me eases at the thought, one that has been weighing on my chest since a group of shades presented themselves for admittance to the Blessed Isles before dinner.
The judges had granted only a few of them entry, and so I sent the rest away with desperation or despair in their eyes to meet the Gentle Ones, and took no pleasure in it.
Until one of them, a king, demanded entry because his mortal status required it, as if that signified anything down here.
I almost gained another statue for the underside of my table—kings, all of them—but he was so vile I didn’t wish to keep his soul for my collection.
So I waved him through the gateway well after the others had gone, and let Bereus eat him.
But his screams weren’t enough to satisfy me.
Sadaré can grant me satisfaction. There’s been something I’ve wanted to do to her ever since I laid eyes on her naked back while she was pressed against the whipping cross.
I don’t say anything, only stand and offer her my hand. When she hesitates for a brief moment, I raise my eyebrow in warning. She rests her fingers on mine quickly after that, starting to rise. But I seize her wrist and drag her to her knees.
“If you’re going to throw your food on the floor, you’ll eat it from the floor.” I take a fistful of her hair, tightly enough to make her gasp.
Her eyes flare up at me, but her outrage can’t entirely mask the depths of heady desire beneath.
She even bites her lip before I force her head down—making me stir involuntarily beneath my robes.
I didn’t expect to feel this, at least not so soon in our game and perhaps not at all this time.
She somehow manages to speak to my body in ways that bypass my own mind.
It frustrates me on more than one front—above and below.
She wasn’t supposed to cause me further frustration. And yet she’s quite adept at that.
As if to demonstrate, she dips her head to delicately select a morsel from the floor.
She strains against my grip to tilt her face up to me, which must be painful, and yet she only grows heavy-lidded as she does, until she reveals the deep red cherry between her teeth.
Wrapping those beautiful lips around it—suggestive of what else they could envelop with a delicious precision I can feel—she takes it in her mouth, chews viciously, and then spits the pit back out with enough force for it to skip across the floor with a few wet clacks.
If she’d spit it at me, this might have ended poorly for her.
Instead, I force down another smile as I release her hair, dragging my nails under her chin to tip her head up to me.
“Have it your way, my disobedient little beast. You’ve lost yourself the right to walk or speak until I’m finished with you.
” When I withdraw my hand, there’s a silver chain in my grip, attached to her collar. “Now you’ll crawl for me.”
She doesn’t speak. Her eyes narrow up at me, but her cheeks are flushed, her lips are parted, and her breath comes faster. I can even hear her heart beating more rapidly. She’s excited.
So am I—and we’ll see how long her excitement lasts.
Standing, I give her chain a light tug and turn to exit the dining hall.
She follows on hands and knees—her hips swaying a bit too sensually for any beast—trailing the black silk panels of her gown behind her.
Either ashamedly or demurely, she keeps her head down as I walk her between two expressionless servants who open the doors for us, and then we’re alone in the second-story hallway leading to the main keep.
Specifically, to my private quarters above the throne room.
She knows where we’re going, and her heart only picks up its pace.
I take my time, uninterested in dragging her since she’s at least pretending to be well-behaved.
I don’t speak, either, preferring to let her anticipation build.
The air is thick with it—hers, mine—as we reach the end of the hall, and the double doors open wide at my approach, responding to my presence. And only mine.
I want Sadaré trained to respond to my presence.
I want those green eyes to lock on me the moment I step into the room, her heart to beat faster, her lips to part with that silent little gasp.
Her fiery resistance amuses me, but she’s mine, and I want her to know it so deeply she feels it in her flesh.
In fact, I’m going to leave her a reminder for the times I’m not there—in her skin.
The darkly lit chamber certainly has that attention-seizing effect upon her.
Her eyes flicker along the shining surfaces and well-oiled accoutrements, so much that she falters on her hands and knees.
After waiting for her to regain her balance, I guide her over to a pillory, a thick plaque with holes for head and wrists.
I can attach her silver cuffs anywhere, of course, but I like the imposing nature of the heavy wood and the public humiliation it implies.
There’s no one else in the room, but her punishment will soon be visible for all to see.
I must be feeling generous, because with a flick of my fingers, I lower the pillory from standing height to rest just above one end of the padded leather bench that I summon. I even toss a cushion at the other end with a wave of my hand. “Kneel here.”
Her eyes widen with fear, but she obeys, even as the top half of the pillory raises on its hinge.
When she doesn’t move beyond that, when it has clearly opened for her, I yank her forward with the chain, bending her over the bench.
Her cuffs and collar aid me now, snapping into place in the grooves and preventing her from moving before I close her in.
It gives me time to tuck her hair safely forward, and to caress her head.
She melts into my touch, which gives me undeniable satisfaction… and then the pillory falls into place.
At the sharp report, she jerks against the pillory—which I also appreciate.
It makes me want to see her body in tension without anything to hide it.
Her clothing vanishes, leaving her bare, and she gasps at what must be the sudden rush of air on her skin.
I step around to give her one last look at me…
and to place a leather-wrapped wooden stick in her mouth.
She groans in indignation as I force it between her teeth and strap it behind her head.
“Don’t worry—I trust you not to speak. This serves a different purpose. Use it to bite down.”
Much to my relish, her eyes pop in delicious fear once more as she realizes what that might mean, before I disappear back around the pillory.
There, I summon a leather chair, drawing myself up alongside her.
Perhaps I let her be more comfortable so I could sit, or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Besides, she won’t be comfortable for long.
She can’t see what I’m doing, even though she amusingly cranes her neck in an attempt to look, but the pillory blocks her view.
I can’t help running my hand down her back and over her hindquarters.
She tenses when I let my hand rest on one round cheek.
Perhaps she expects me to take her from behind?
“Soon,” I murmur. “But not like this. Your limbs and mouth will be free. Because you’ll put yourself in this position, and then you’ll beg me for it.”
A soft whimper escapes around her gag, but that’s it.
After I give her a possessive squeeze, I run my fingers back along the luscious hills and valleys of her hips, waist, ribs, and the sides of her breasts, pressed against the bench.
Her skin is so smooth I want to bite it—save where two raised scars slash down either side of her spine.
The tracks of Daesra’s claws. Perhaps she hoped they escaped my notice, but I’ve simply been biding my time for the right moment.
Making them vanish strikes me as petty artifice, especially since she arrived here with them.
They’re a part of her, however much I dislike them.
Just like the memories I let her keep. I considered slashing my own marks across his, either with my fingernails or a whip, but merely emulating his daemonic barbarity would be insufficient, not to mention beneath me.
My mark will complement—no, elevate—the beauty of her skin, covering and incorporating her scars in the same breath.
It’s both fitting and not that her mortal society deems permanent ink on the body as a proprietary and punitive measure, used to demarcate slaves, prisoners of war, or criminals.
This is a punishment, and she is mine, but those ink blotches made by human hands are ugly, poorly done, and simplistic, a stigma often borne across the forehead that’s as obvious as a scream.
I’ve seen shades that still bear such markings even in death.
This will be neither simplistic nor ugly. Least of all poorly done. And while it will be subtle, it certainly won’t be missed with the low back of her gown or, better yet, when she’s naked. It will sing, not scream.