Chapter 13
Standing felt wrong in a way Tuesday couldn’t articulate even to herself.
Her spine was straight, when the muscles wanted to arch, and her nervous system was expecting things that no longer matched her body’s reality. The floor was solid under her feet, but she didn’t trust it. Gravity pulling in the correct direction felt like a trick.
And after being so tightly bound for so long, her skin felt… wrong. Was she imagining she could still feel the ropes pulsing away? She felt each one separately, possibly louder now than when they’d been compressing and constricting muscles and nerves.
The rest of her was — somewhere. Not quite here, but not completely gone. The cinnamon had faded so it wasn’t as loud, but it was still strong enough she couldn’t scent anything else.
And the silence was still absolute, along with the dark. She floated in the nothingness, exhausted and aching and strung tight as a wire underneath all of it.
Her body had been waiting all day. Had been brought to the edge and pulled back so many times she’d lost count, and the need had stopped feeling urgent and started feeling elemental.
Kind of like the weather. Something that simply exists, sometimes more and sometimes less, but either way, it had no interest in how she felt about it.
Her wolf lifted its head.
Something was coming. Her wolf knew it before she did, the animal reading the room through whatever channels were still available to her — the shift in his breathing maybe, or vibration through the floor, or some frequency of attention she couldn’t name. The bitch was suddenly very awake.
Tuesday held still and waited.
A line of fire landed across both cheeks and made her jerk against the cross. The pain was sharp and intense, but then a second later came the true agony, and she screamed and yelped. Fuck, only a cane does that.
But she barely had time to suck in a breath before another strike landed lower, then another, layering fresh fire down her ass.
Her legs shook, but the cane didn’t care. It moved to the backs of her thighs, strike after strike, until her knees buckled and her weight was hanging on her wrists.
She tried to make her legs work again, but she couldn’t brace. Couldn’t anticipate.
A sharp line at the top of her ass again, when she didn’t expect it, and it moved down again. Strike after strike, laying pain over what was already there, but at an angle now.
She screamed into the silence, no choice but to take it, floundering in the darkness, the cross her only anchor to this world.
And then the pain stopped, and she jumped and yelped when the butt plug buzzed back to life.
The sudden vibration deep in her ass made her hips buck involuntarily, pressing her marked ass back into the next cane stroke.
Pain and the relentless buzzing twisted together until she couldn’t tell which was making her whimper louder.
Finally, the cane stopped, and for a handful of heartbeats there was only the high, steady buzz in her ass and the burning lines across her skin.
Then something struck her back. Vertically this time. Cruel and vicious, and she’d have sworn it took skin off, but she didn’t feel blood dripping.
A second strike, and she was certain it was a whip. A single-tail. Possibly the horse-whip.
The third lash wrapped a little and bit into the side of her breast. She screamed into the hood, body trying to pull away from the cross, but her chest harness wouldn’t let her.
Another lash landed across her ass, then her thighs. Each strike left a hotter, sharper line than the last.
The lashes to her ass and thighs layered over the bruises and marks left by the cane, and she couldn’t stop screaming, couldn’t stop moving and pumping her hips.
Fuck, the vibrating plug crammed in her ass had her clit throbbing like crazy, her pussy clenching on fucking nothing — needing to be filled.
She had no idea how long he whipped her, or how many times the whip landed, but after a short pause, not even close to long enough to let her catch her breath, there was no doubt the next instrument of torture was a belt, or possibly a strap.
She couldn’t hear the leather cracking across her ass, but she sure as fuck felt it — heavy, thudding impacts that drove deep, crushing already-abused flesh, each strike sending shockwaves through every bruise and welt beneath it until her ass and thighs were a continuous, roaring fire.
Each lash was a detonation that radiated through her hips and into her gut, jarring the plug so her hole spasmed around it, and made her clit throb so violently she sobbed.
He set up a rhythm, and she thought she might be able to come from it. The steady, punishing tempo built something deep and low in her belly, and her hips rocked back into the strikes, needing it harder and faster. Just a little more, and she’d finally find release.
But then the belt moved to her thighs and the rhythm broke, she lost the edge, and she screamed in frustration.
The pain was different on her thighs — it kept her right on the edge, but it didn’t let her approach the brink.
She whined when the belt stopped. She wanted more of it. Harder. Faster.
And then… fuck, maybe a paddle. All of this going through her head while she screamed in pain.
But the next blow wrapped around her hip, which ruled out the yumminess of wood or lucite.
Then the after-pain hit just like a cane, and she knew.
A fucking loopy johnny.
But knowing what it was didn’t help, because it still hurt like everloving fuck.
And it just kept coming, unpredictable and relentless, layering fresh fire over the marks the cane, whip, and belt had already left.
Her body was a live wire — ass and thighs burning, the high buzz in her ass never letting up, the memory of the TENS still tingling across her clit. She was shaking, sweating, floating in that terrible, perfect space where everything hurt and her body still begged for more.
Somewhere in her haze, she figured out he knows where a blow will hurt the most. Where the nerve clusters are. Where the bone is closest to the skin.
And the loopy johnny was finding every damned spot. Over and over.
Until everything stopped without warning.
Her mouth was unzipped, the straw touched her lips, and she drank until he removed the straw.
This was the first time she tasted a flavor. Grape.
After hours of nothing but cinnamon, the sweetness hit her like a physical thing: too intense, too tart, too sweet, and then exactly right. An unexpected burst of sensory input she savored.
The zipper over her mouth closed again, and then she felt the heat of his hands at her breasts.
Seconds later, the chest harness was released from the cross, and her balance was fucked all over again, her torso suddenly free of the anchor it’d been attached to.
Her wrists and ankles were still connected, but still, she swayed.
He steadied her with one hand, then guided her head, gently tilting it back until she was facing the ceiling she couldn’t see.
She held the position because he’d put her there, and then his hands stroked her ponytail.
After everything — the cane, the whip, the belt, the loopy johnny, the hours before that — his hands in her hair were so unexpected and so almost-gentle, she went very still, trying to understand it.
She felt him pulling and working, doing something deliberate, his fingers moving through the strands, separating sections, pulling them taut.
Meanwhile, her weight settled differently, her spine bowed backward once again, her weight on her feet. Thank goodness her wrists kept her from falling.
Eventually, he stopped and ran his hands down her sides, over rope marks engraved into her skin throughout the long day, and over welts and bruises he’d so recently made.
They stopped at the plug. Tugged. Pulled. She didn’t remember him turning it off, but it was no longer on.
And now it was out, and her asshole felt wrong. It should’ve been a relief, but it wasn’t.
After hours of it being part of her body, the removal left her feeling hollowed and obscenely aware of the absence. Her body clenched on nothing and she couldn’t stop it.
Something else pressed against her. Not the plug. The shape was different. It was harder to get in, and so much bigger.
Also, cold… which is what finally clued her in. It was a damned anal hook, forging its own path inside her, uncaring of the geography.
She breathed through it while he disconnected her ankles, then her wrists, and immediately lifted her back into his arms, cradling her once again to his chest, and she rested her head against him.
But it didn’t last anywhere near long enough, and he was placing her on a mat she thought was on the floor. Knees first, and then he pressed her forward, holding her body up while he situated her hands.
Clearly, he wanted her on hands and knees.
Her arms shook with the effort of holding herself up. Her back screamed in its new configuration, every stripe and mark he’d just put on her stretched and hurting, the fire igniting all over again.
And then he pulled at her ponytail, and…
Oh.
Oh.
He’d braided rope into her ponytail earlier, and now it was connected to the anal hook in her ass, her back bowed down.
He tightened the connection, and her back was forced into a sharper arch, her spine closer to the position her body had held while it hung, but everything was different.
New muscles screamed. New ligaments protested.
The hook shifted with every tiny movement of her head, and every shift of her hips pulled her hair.
She understood immediately that she had no good options, so she held very still and did nothing but breathe carefully.
But of course, he wasn’t just placing her here to look at.
That part of the day seemed to be behind them.
No, she felt his hands at her hips, then her inner thighs, spreading them wider before strong fingers traced the line the crotch rope had made.
The flesh was raw and oversensitized, and Tuesday couldn’t help but flinch from even the lightest touch.
Panic hit when she felt him touching the left side of her clit, because she knew what it was.
Her whole body contracted around the knowledge, a full-system flinch that pulled her hair, shifted the hook, and sent a fresh spike of pain through her scalp and her ass simultaneously.
The second pad pressed against the other side.
No, she thought, with great feeling and zero ability to do anything about it. No no no no no.
His hands left her, and she shook so hard her arms could barely hold her up, every nerve ending she possessed already stripped bare and howling, hypersensitive from everything that’d come before — and her clit trapped between those two small pads like it was already happening, like the electricity was already there, like her body had decided to start without him.
But tapping out was not an option. She’d agreed to this, and she needed to see it through.
Not to mention the fact that going through it was the only way to get orgasms, and she fucking desperately needed release.
So she held still and waited. Shaking, arched, and connected to electricity by her raw, swollen, needy-as-fuck clit.