Chapter 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Peace. That’s the first thing I feel, like I’m floating, quasi-aware I passed out just moments ago and that I’ve been drugged into a false serenity.
My mind is fogged, my limbs limp, some deeper part of me screaming while the rest drifts in syrupy stillness.
Somewhere beside me a torch flame flickers an enchanting rhythm while my body catches up to process its one-sided heat.
An itch tickles my nose, but moving to scratch it reveals my hands are tied above my head. My feet too, body bound in the shape of an X.
Curious… and that’s not the right feeling.
My heartbeat is slow. So slow it’s wrong.
Wriggling as best I can, part of the fake calm reveals itself as a blindfold tied tight around my eyes. Twisting my wrists only spikes a sharp pain from restraints digging in harder, and the pain drags me further into my body.
“Marcus Wilder.” The whisper is hot in my ear: Alistair’s voice. “This is your second test.”
I wriggle harder, trying to object, but my mouth’s already open, with a rubber ball shoved inside. It squishes as my jaw tightens, and a yelp escapes out the sides.
“You’re safe,” he whispers. “You’re fine. Freed as soon as you ask. Now,” his voice dips into a growl, “do as you’re told.”
Sluggish and baffled by impossible calm, I can’t piece together what’s happening.
How can I do what I’m told when I’m trapped in darkness, unable to move?
“Call me Sir,” he says.
I writhe at the command, chewing on the ball.
“Get me out,” I try, sounding more like Ge eee oww.
A jolt of icy surprise shoots through me, an unexpected cold smushing against my nipple. My shirt’s off, and my whole body shivers with a gasp swallowed through rubbery air.
“Call me Sir,” he commands again, and the sensation scrapes across my chest to my other nipple.
“Opp—” My tongue fumbles on the ball, biceps and thighs straining against restraints that cut through the cold with pain. “Eeese! Op!”
“Call me Sir,” he repeats.
I give in. “Es, er.”
Something thaws my left nipple, shooting a different kind of shiver over my body—relief—at the warm sucking.
“You taste delicious,” Alistair says, and I shout, envisioning that horrible thin smile split by his tongue dragging across my chest to my other nipple.
It’s wrong and warm, and… a shiver interrupts my thoughts.
I have to get out. He said all I have to do is ask, but so far my protests and recoiling have done no good.
“Now for your gift,” he says, interrupting the thoughts I’m stuck with in the darkness.
The scent of leather reminds me what he means as the light touch of his riding crop brushes my lips. He slides it down my neck, across my chest, and up my right arm.
“Oh! Oh!” I scream, knowing damn well he understands without my tongue making the N.
The whip is sharp and sudden, nothing like what I imagined when he’d whipped Jake.
Blindfolded, I’d have guessed it was an electric shock from coming too close to a low-voltage fence.
My whole body tenses as pain lashes through me.
Then it’s gone, leaving my right bicep as numb as an ice bath after a hard workout.
“Op!” I scream through the ball, trying to use my tongue to reposition it for room to better enunciate.
“I think you like it,” he says, and I imagine him hard as a rock, projecting his enjoyment on the plaything he’s drugged and bound. “Tell me you like it.”
Smack. “Oh!”
Another shock stabs my left arm, pain dulled by the diminished surprise.
“No, what?” he says, pushing the leather tip against my cheek.
“Oh, er,” I say, hoping at least to divert the next shock.
“Better,” he says. “But I can tell that you’re lying. Tell me you like it.”
Smack. My right thigh this time. It’s not just my shirt. I’m fully naked, a horrible thing to realize in the sting of his riding crop.
I get my tongue just enough around the ball to hiss, “I don’t fucking like it.”
Smack. My left thigh, and it’s not that the pain goes away.
Smack. But it shifts, this time on my chest, a new feeling against what was just icy cold.
Smack. Now that I’ve felt it.
Smack. Expect it.
Every lash cuts through flesh and fog alike—searing, sickening—and somewhere beneath the burn, a treacherous buzz. My body, drugged and vulnerable, responds in ways I can’t control.
“I don’t like it!” I repeat. “Let me go.”
A surge of shame floods hot at how my body is giving what he wants. I just can’t let him know that.
“I can tell you’re lying,” he says, and something warm wraps around my fully erect cock.
It’s violating, and horrible, and again warmer than the cold everywhere else.
Alistair whips me, and my body bucks, cock gliding through his hand as I break.
“Mmhhh.” My gasp betrays me.
“What was that?” he asks, hand still gripping me, and dammit, the mix of sensations is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. “It’s you and me, Marcus,” he whispers, champagne on his breath. “You’re allowed to like it when I do this.”
His hand leaves my cock, and my body aches for its return, warm and tight around me. It’s like holding my breath, my whole body buzzing with the absence of that feeling until… it returns, a fist not just wrapping around my cock, but pumping.
He’s drugged me.
“Mmm,” I mutter, resisting a little less, only to the point before restraints would dig into my skin.
“That’s a good boy.” He removes the ball gag, and my jaw throbs in the relief of closing shut. “Now, tell me you enjoy it.”
The command mixes with every other sensation.
Welts stinging, ropes burning around my wrists and ankles, one sensation overwhelms everything else—pleasure. It comes in waves as he jerks me off. My hips buck into his palm, lifting my bare ass off whatever board holds me upright.
“Tell me,” he growls, his anger exhilarating.
“Yes, Sir,” I shout, the words coming from some other Marcus. “I like it.”
“Yes.”
Alistair’s hand moves faster.
Wrong. So wrong. I tear my head from side to side as if I can shake free of what he’s forcing from me. He commands it, and my body answers.
I hate him. But my dick doesn’t care who’s touching it or how wrong this is, and I moan, already leaking, desperate for the finish. Not far away… if he’ll just keep—
Alistair stops, his heavy breathing making me doubly aware of how the rise and fall of my chest matches his.
The blindfold comes off, and a harsh light blinds me for a moment before someone shuts it off.
“Good,” Alistair coos. “Very good.”
I blink away tears, eyes adjusting from darkness to blinding spotlight, then back to torchlight. My wrists and ankles are bound, ropes looping four or five times around them. My stomach is splotched with red welts. My dick is still rock hard.
The pool’s fiery lily pads drift in front of me, and on the other side—
Seven guys watching. Brad has Dae in his lap, jerking him off, their mouths agape. Linus and three others are draped over each other, and he gives me a coy wave when he notices I’m looking.
Only Jake is fully clothed, motionless. His hands are clasped over his heart, but his dick is pressed hard against his linen pants, shadows accentuating what he’s done to us both.
My cock jerks at the sight of him, still desperate to finish. Desperate for him.
I tear my gaze back up to Jake’s face to find it twisted into something I guess is anguish.
“Get me the fuck off here!” I shout.
These guys saw me moan. They heard me beg. They watched me thrust into Alistair’s hand.
I thrash against the bindings, and my still-hard dick slaps against my stomach with every wrench of my body, making the evidence impossible to ignore. I don’t care if it’s blood that lubricates my way out of these restraints. I’m getting out.
“Jake.” Alistair’s boom cuts through my struggle. “In helping me give Marcus his second test, you’ve passed your third. What is it your heart desires?”
Jake’s eyes flicker.
“Jake?” My voice cracks on his name.
His fingers tighten against himself, like he’s trying to keep whatever’s inside from spilling out, before he says it: “Ten million dollars and your support to fundraise the rest.”
“Done,” Alistair says.
Jake turns without looking at me and stalks toward the bungalows, shoulders rigid, leaving me strapped down and naked behind him.
I follow him as far as I can with my eyes.
“Aw. You watching him leave?” Alistair asks. “Even after he slipped you the drug? We have a doctor on the island if something were to happen.” His lips twitch back into that slivered smile. “And something did happen.”
I scream, my veins bursting as spittle catches the torchlight in an arc toward Alistair’s face.
“Why are you here?” he asks, the same question others have asked, now finally from its source.
This time I’m bound, with everything I felt and said turned against me.
“Fuck you!” I rasp. “You drugged me. You trap people here and call it a game—some kind of fucked-up paradise. You get off on breaking people.”
He laughs softly, brushing a fleck of spit from his cheek. “You say that like they don’t want to be here.”
“They don’t know any better,” I snap. “You offer them money and feed off their pain. You think this is consent?”
He leans in, smile frozen, voice low. “No one here needs saving, Marcus. Jake betrayed you because he’s loyal to me, a loyalty I’ll reward. Why are you here?”
“Fuck you.”
Alistair takes that in, pleased. “Ah, well. That’s the spirit.” He turns to the group. “Anyone here want Marcus to save them?”
Linus laughs. “Save me? I skipped rehearsal for this.”
“No.” Brad’s answer is flat as stone.
The rest follow in a scatter of agreement, truth and coercion braided too tightly to separate.
“You can’t hide behind righteousness,” Alistair says. “Not after this. You’ve passed your second test.”
“Get me the fuck down.”
He takes his time. First my ankle, and blood rushes to my toes. Then my wrist. I flex as he leans over for the other hand, swallowing the urge to punch him. He deserves it. But I can’t afford ruining what I’ve still got, something he can’t take unless I hand it over—my story.
I rub at the purple-and-red divots carved into my wrists as he bends to free the last restraint.
“Who are you, First Amendment,” Alistair hisses, my safe word curdled into mockery, “if you’re no one’s white knight?”
My ankle comes free. I shove him aside and bolt down the torch-lined path to my bungalow.
Even without restraints or blindfold, I still feel trapped inside the sick afterglow of my own body.
First Amendment. My fucking safe word. I not only gave Alistair the satisfaction of thinking I enjoyed it, he thinks I chose not to unshackle myself with the key I’d been holding the whole time.
Why didn’t I say it?
It had to be the gag. The drug. The champagne.
I pile the excuses up fast, desperate for anything that lets me keep my pride intact.
But pride is the reason. It was then too.
Beneath the fog, some part of me would rather endure than safe word my way out.
Some part of me would rather suffer than let him win.
Alistair’s breath lingers on my skin as I stumble down the path, naked and hard. Everything knots in my chest. At the bungalow, my hand shakes on the knob with too many feelings all aimed in the wrong directions.
I slam the door, twist the bolt, and turn the shower hot. I brace both hands against the tile, but it only makes me more aware of the spray pelting my stubborn, rock-hard dick and my balls aching for release.
What is wrong with me?
In the privacy of my own shower, I wrap my hand around my cock and clamp down on the only thing that’s still mine. I choose the speed. I choose the pressure. I choose the end.
But my body betrays me on the first stroke. It feels too good, and pleasure comes roaring back along with his voice. Tell me you enjoy it.
I hate how easy the answer is now that I’m alone. Yes, I enjoyed it.
Welts sting in the scorching spray, and with my eyes closed, I can see his inner circle watching. My breathing turns ragged as I lose control, pumping, pounding my hand as I imagine the others getting off while watching me do the same.
The riding crop lashes across my memory.
Jake’s turquoise eyes are hungry in my mind. I made him hard. His betrayal is a discordant note I can’t unhear, but my body hums along with the memory of his intoxicating scent.
Alistair commanded, and Jake—fuck—he obeyed. So cleanly. So precisely, even if he hadn’t wanted to.
I moan. Climax seizes my balls, shooting up my shaft until hot jets spurt onto the marble floor, cum swirling down the drain. I hate myself as I come… for what was done to me, for how much my body wanted it, and for what’s in my head.
Because it isn’t Alistair’s eyes I imagine.
It’s Jake’s.