Chapter 14 #3
“Ten lashes. I want you to feel a taste of it, but you need to be able to walk and move after this. You need to relax.”
Relax?
“Are you ready?”
I curl my fingers around the chains, forcing the rest of my body to relax.
Heat paints itself through my skin as the first blow falls. It’s a shock, so swift and intense that sparks shatter off the back of my eyelids before I even know it’s done.
“Alright, my fierce one?”
“Yes,” I grind out, because I know he won’t continue unless I do. Every step in this dance, he forces me to be complicit.
I gasp again and again as he sets into a methodical rhythm.
It’s like the buttery kiss of leather, pain flourishing a second before an intense, indescribable sensation takes hold.
He’s holding back. I know he’s holding back and I cannot comprehend what it would feel like for him to unleash.
I’ve never felt like this before, like pain can be so precisely dealt that it feels like pleasure.
It winds within me, my toes curling as I try to hold myself back.
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. My inner muscles clench, body tightening…
“Not yet,” he commands, breaking off and trailing the belt over my bottom.
I don’t know if we’re finished. I just know that if he doesn’t hurry up, I’m going to finish. Again.
A hand slides up my back, capturing the nape of my neck with a pressure so firm and deliberate that my body bucks at the touch.
“Not yet,” he snarls. “I want to be inside you when you finish. I want to feel that greedy little cunt tightening around me, milking my cock… I want to brand your body, your soul, until you cannot breathe for want of me.”
The blunt head of his thick cock finds my entrance, dancing through the slickness there as if to tease me before he slides in.
A helpless moan tears loose as he thrusts within me, sinking right to the hilt with slow deliberateness.
He’s large enough that taking him last night was an effort, but this angle is punishing.
I bite my lip as he works his way inside me, eased by the oil and my slickness.
Fuck, I’m right there at that edge again, pleasure and pain.
Fingers dig into my hips as he sets a bruising pace. “Gods, you’re so fucking tight,” he groans. “So fucking perfect.”
Skin slaps against skin as he grinds into me, and I beg and moan, savoring the feel of all that thickness stretching me.
He said once that he’d own me, and I didn’t understand.
But in this moment, I am his. Wholly and fully, my body squeezing tight around him as he rides over that sensitive little spot inside me.
“That’s it.” His hand sinks into my hair, gathering a fistful of it, fucking me so slowly I want to scream. “Right there, my little lioness. You want it, don’t you?”
“Oh, Gods, Bael!” I cry out, body tensing.
He slows down, grinding hard, the base of his cock rubbing against my clit. Words flow over me, filthy words, praising me for taking it all, telling me it’s okay to come, that I can come now…
Pleasure explodes through me, leaving me biting the bench and begging. Bael thrusts hard, as if my oblivion grants him permission. He rides over that spot deep inside me, again and again, hips driving against me.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He bends low, kissing the back of my neck, his body curled over mine. “Mine, Zyla. Mine for now, mine forever.”
He laces his fingers through mine.
“Yours,” I gasp. “Now. Forever. Fuck. Do it. Do it!”
A shudder runs through him.
“Gods.” Bael roars, fingers digging into my hips as he thrusts one last time. His cock pulses inside me, throbbing against my slick walls as he spills.
Collapsing over me, Bael presses little kisses along my spine.
I’m so broken, shattered with pleasure so deep I can barely endure it. My whole body trembles, marks painted hot against my ass and thighs, my body branded deep within. I want to stay here, right here in his arms, forever.
This is peace.
An aftermath of sorts.
I don’t want to move, but of course, eventually we have to.
Bael pushes off the bench. His mouth finds my ass, kissing away the pain. “We’re done here, Zyla. We’re done. Good girl. You were everything.”
“Everything?” I exhale the word, barely coherent.
“Look at you,” he says with a laugh, tugging the blindfold free and then releasing me from the bench. “Looking for praise.”
My whole body is shaking. I’m a mess of sweat-soaked pleasure, oil and cum.
“Come,” he whispers, gathering me to his chest. “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you, lioness. We need to clean up.”
He’d wrapped me in a blanket.
I rest against his shoulder as he hauls me up into his arms and takes me out of the room.
“I need to clean her up,” he says to someone.
The man jerks his head over his shoulder. “There are private pools back there.”
I lose track of time, my head pressed against his chest, listening to the slow steady pulse of his heart.
It feels like my own heartbeat is slowing, beating steadily in time with his, until they begin to sing in tune.
The world seems to hold its breath. I don’t know what’s happening, only that in this moment we are entwined, no concept of where one ends and the other begins. It feels so utterly perfect, as if my soul longs for this.
“Are you alright?” Bael asks, breaking the spell.
Water splashes from the ceiling, plunging into a shallow pool. Light spills down. The music is muted and it feels as if we’re all alone here.
“I feel very, very… drunk on sensation,” I mutter.
He cuts me a smile, helping me out of the blanket and into the pool. “Here. This will help.”
Hot water pours down my body, washing away the paint, the oil, his cum.
I shudder, every nerve under my skin still electric as I simply lean in his arms and try to breathe.
Despite the music, the frenetic dancing, the violence behind us, the world feels so still and peaceful in some strange way.
Whatever he did to me, it’s taken all the edges off.
“Are you alright?”
I nod. “Fine.”
I’m not fine. I’m not fine at all. For some bizarre reason, I want to cry.
He holds me through it, the water slicking his shirt to his skin as he presses a gentle kiss to my hair. For some damned reason, it reminds me of that kiss in the rain.
And the way he’d held me that night too.
Gods, I want to turn my face into his throat and breathe in the scent of his skin. I could lose myself in his arms. Simply surrender to his touch, knowing that nothing can hurt me here. And it strikes me that this is the first time I’ve felt safe in… forever.
“What are you doing to me?” I rasp.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” My thoughts are as much of a mess as my body is. “Nothing.”
He captures my face between his enormous hands, his amber eyes coming into frame. “Zyla? Are you truly alright? Are you ready for the next part of this?”
“Always.” The words sound right, but I don’t feel them.
And I can’t afford not to feel that certainty.
“Is there cold water somewhere?” I ask.
“There’s a cold pool over there.”
“I need to clear my head.”
“This way then,” he says, helping me out of the pool like a newborn filly, still learning her legs. He snatches up a bag. “I have more clothes for you. And your knife.”