48. Sage
FORTY-EIGHT
SAGE
Iyelp and try to move backward. But I end up bracketed between them—Eli planted in the doorway, Knox stacked behind me like a brick wall, body-to-body, the world’s most dangerous sandwich press.
“Eli.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t smile, either—just that hush of white fury, eyes so black they’re almost shining.
“I can explain,” I say, but it’s rote, a joke.
He tilts his head, cataloging the bruising, my still-damp hair, the bare place where my choker should be. Then he hooks a finger beneath the edge of my silver mask, lifts it away and passes it back to Knox without looking.
“I don’t need an explanation, little savage. I know exactly what you did.”
Something inside me flinches. Not because I’m afraid of him. Because I want him proud, not angry. I want him to look at me the way he did when I came for the first time on his hands—like I was a miracle instead of a liability.
“Then what do you want?”
He leans in until his mouth is at my jaw. His hand closes around my throat.
“On your knees.”
My knees hit the carpet before the command has finished echoing off the glass. My body knows exactly what to do with this version of Eli.
Obey.
His hand shifts to my jaw and tilts my face up. For a moment, I expect the lecture. Rules. Risk. Every consequence of what I did. Instead, he lowers his face until I can count the flecks in his irises. He breathes me in, as if the blood still clinging to my skin can tell him something words won’t.
“Stay,” he says, letting go.
I freeze.
Eli straightens, his gaze still locked on mine as he slips a hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a thin leather band with a silver buckle that catches the low light.
Without a word, he leans down and fastens it around my throat—snug, deliberate, the leather cool and stiff and new against my skin.
My pulse jumps under it. I don’t move. I barely breathe. He steps back to admire his work.
Knox chuckles low. “Looks good on her.”
“It does,” Eli agrees, his voice rough around the edges. He traces a finger along the collar’s edge, and every hair on my arms lifts. “Now, little savage, you’re going to make up for that stunt you pulled tonight. Starting by showing us exactly how sorry you are.”
I swallow, the leather shifting with the motion, and I glance up at him through my lashes. Behind the glass, the two women are unfastening the man from the chair. Nobody in here is watching him anymore. Knox moves in until his frame fills the door.
Eli’s hand comes back to my chin, tilting it higher.
“You think you can just run off and kill without us? Leave Milo sleeping like a fool and take all the risk yourself?” His voice is low, edged with that controlled fury, his thumb pressing just under my jaw to make me feel every word.
“That’s not how this works, Sage. You belong to us—all of us.
And tonight, we’re going to remind you what that means. ”
My breath catches, arousal flooding me despite the sting of his words—or maybe because of it. “Eli, I—”
“No talking,” he cuts in, his tone sharp but laced with the desire I know so well. “Not until I say. Now, crawl.”
He attaches a slim chain leash to the collar’s ring, the metal clicking into place with finality. The weight tugs lightly, a constant reminder, and he steps back, giving the leash a gentle but firm pull. “To the playroom. Show us how well you can obey when it counts.”
Knox’s deep rumble vibrates behind me. “Move, Fury. Eyes on the floor. Make it worth watching.”
I lean forward so I’m on all fours, the carpet rough under my palms. My knees sink into the pile as I start to crawl, eyes focused down.
The leash pulls taut, Eli leading me out of the observation room and down the dimly lit corridor.
My heart pounds, cheeks burning somewhere between humiliation and thrill—every shift of my hips in the tight dress feels exposed, deliberate, like I’m putting on a show just for them.
The club sounds fade to a distant hum, but I know eyes might be on us, and it only heightens the rush.
“Good girl,” Eli murmurs, low and certain. “Look at you—crawling for us like you know you deserve this. You were so reckless tonight, little savage. We could’ve lost you.”
Knox follows close, his boots thudding softly. “She’s strong, Eli. Doesn’t mean she gets to run.”
We reach a private room—dark wood, padded benches, walls lined with restraints, crops, and toys that make my pulse spike. Eli tugs the leash, guiding me to the center. “Up on the bench. On your knees.”
I obey, climbing onto the low, padded platform, hands and knees sinking into the leather.
The position leaves me exposed, ass up, the dress riding high.
Eli keeps the leash wrapped once around his fist, holding me in place while Knox circles slowly, his massive hands flexing like he’s deciding where to start.
“You disobeyed us tonight,” Eli says. He trails a finger down my spine and every muscle in my back pulls tight. “You ran off. Put yourself in danger. Now you’re going to get the punishment you earned.”
He steps back so I’m framed by both their bodies, the leash stretched tight. For half a second, nothing moves but my breathing. And then Knox is in front of me, crouched so his now-unmasked face is level with mine. His hands cup my jaw, and he brushes his thumb along my lower lip.
“Still hungry, Fury?”
I don’t trust my voice, so I just nod.
He forces my mouth open with the pad of his thumb, and slides two thick fingers past my teeth, pressing down on my tongue. I gag a little, instinctive, but he shushes me, thumb stroking my cheekbone.
“Breathe through it,” he says, and I do, letting his fingers fuck my mouth slow while the sting of humiliation and arousal blooms between my legs and coats the inside of my thighs.
Eli moves to my side, watching, arms folded, mouth tight with anticipation.
I can feel their approval before either of them speaks—it’s in the way Knox holds me, the way Eli tracks the movement of my lips, the way their bodies lean in, greedier by the second.
Knox adds a third finger, stretching me wide. It hurts, but I like it. I like the way it makes my eyes water, like the urge to cry is just another way to come undone. He rocks his hand gently, in and out. I drool helplessly onto his knuckles and let him have what he wants.
“Look at her,” Eli says, almost to himself. “You ever see anyone want it this bad, even in here?”
Knox withdraws his fingers and wipes my chin with the back of his hand. “Not in a long time,” he says. “You’re beautiful when you’re being ruined, Fury.”
I glow under the praise, heat pooling low in my belly. I don’t know if it’s the aftershock of murder, the collar, or just these two watching me like I’m the only thing that matters in this whole deviant universe—but all I want is to be seen, wanted, broken, and rebuilt by hands that understand me.
Knox leans in and kisses my forehead, the contradiction making my brain short out.
“You’re doing so good, Fury. Take what you’re given.”
Then he stands, unzipping his pants, and frees his cock. It’s heavy, dark, already swelling.
Eli’s eyes flash. “She needs to take it all, Knox.”
Knox slides his cock in where his fingers were—filling my mouth in one easy push, the girth an insult and a gift.
He’s not rough at first. He wants to feel me want it.
He lets me choke on it, lips stretched glossy and obscene.
And I do. I push past my gag reflex, ignoring the tears running down my face, focused on the sense memory of power switching hands and what it feels like to offer everything up, over and over, and realize you’re still not emptied.
I want to give more. I want to disappear into this.
He fucks my mouth faster, growls softly as he pushes deeper, hands holding my head just so until my nose is pressed up into coarse hair and I can’t breathe at all.
My eyes roll up. My lungs burn as he fucks my throat.
My vision blurs, and I try to moan around his cock.
I can feel him twitch, a warning. He draws back just enough that air floods back into my depleted lungs.
Then he pinches my cheeks between his fingers and groans as he lets go, his hot cum coating my tongue.
I moan and swallow it down, my cunt throbbing with want.
Then Knox wipes his tip roughly across my cheek and I let him mark me. Want him to.
“Doing so good, Fury.”
Eli’s eyes are black coals now, burning through his restraint.
I sense the moment he loses it. He pulls me upright by the leash so fast the world lurches sideways.
My knees slip and I land hard against him, backward, his chest pressed to my spine.
His arms clamp around me, steel trap—one across my ribs, the other snaking through my hair and forcing my head back until his mouth hovers at the edge of my ear.
“You want to be fucking reckless?” he growls, and the sound slithers inside me, straight to the pit of my stomach. “You want to make us watch you go feral, make us worry you’ll come home in pieces?”
He slides his hand down, fingers hooking into the neckline of my dress and yanking it down until both my breasts are exposed to the cool air, nipples already hard and aching from everything that’s happened tonight.
“Then you’re going to take everything we give you—choke it down and ask for more. Understood?”
I nod, or mean to, but the grip in my hair makes it a tremble instead. The leash cinches up at my throat, a wordless warning, and then Eli bites my ear hard. “Answer, Sage.”
“Yes—Eli, yes,” I gasp.
Knox’s laugh is a single, delighted rumble.
Eli brings my wrists behind me one at a time and buckles leather cuffs around them, then clips them together at the small of my back.
I feel everything. The precise way the padded bench forces my knees apart.
How easily my body is arranged by hands that know every inch of resistance and how to bend it open.
My shoulders burn with the pressure. Another part of the lesson: what it feels like to be made defenseless and know exactly who holds me.
Eli releases me and steps toward the wall, and I track him by sound—the whisper of his shoes on carpet, the small metallic clink of him selecting something from the display. When he comes back, he crouches in front of me and opens his palm.
Two silver clamps sit there, joined by a thin chain that pools in his hand like spilled mercury.
My stomach drops straight through the floor of myself.
“You know what these are?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“You’ve never worn them.”
It isn’t a question. I shake my head anyway, because my body has already answered—nipples tightening to aching points, breath coming shallow, heat flooding between my legs like my cunt doesn’t understand the concept of fear. Or understands it perfectly and wants it anyway.
“These are for the parts of you that forgot who you belong to,” Eli says. “Every time they bite, you’re going to remember.”
He cups my left breast, lifting it, his thumb circling the nipple once—slow, almost tender—and the contrast between that gentleness and what’s coming makes me whimper. Then he opens the clamp and lets it close.
The pain is white and immediate and so much sharper than I imagined.
I cry out, jerking forward, and the leash jerks me back, and suddenly I’m caught between two kinds of restraint with nowhere to go.
The bite blooms. Settles. Becomes a throbbing point of fire that every nerve in my body reorganizes itself around.
“Breathe, little savage.”
I breathe.
The second clamp closes on my right nipple and this time I’m ready for it, except I’m not, because knowing doesn’t dull it—it focuses it. The sound that comes out of me is broken and wet and Knox makes a low noise beside me, appreciative, like I’m performing exactly as written.
“Look at her,” Eli says, and there’s reverence under the command now, the fury finally cracking enough to let the want through. He flicks the chain between the clamps and both points of fire light up at once. My back arches against the cuffs. “Safe word, Sage.”
“Hangmen,” I gasp. “Please—”
“Please what?”
“I don’t know.” A sob hiccups out of me, laughter tangled inside it. “Everything. Anything. I don’t care.”
Eli stands, and I feel him move around me, the leash trailing across my back as he repositions.
Knox shifts too—I catch the flex of his forearms in my peripheral vision, the way he’s palming himself, his pants hanging open off his hips and his movement unhurried, like he could watch me come apart for hours and call it a perfect evening.
Eli’s hand slides between my thighs and we both discover how soaked I am at the same moment.
“Jesus, Sage.” His fingers drag through me, two of them sinking in without resistance, and my whole body clamps down like I’ve been starving. “You get punished and this is what happens. You’re dripping down your legs.”
“I’m sorry,” I moan, and I am, and I’m not, and he knows both are true.
“You’re not sorry yet.” He withdraws his fingers and I hear him suck them clean, and the filthy intimacy of that sound nearly finishes me. “But you will be.”
Planting his hand in the center of my back, Eli shoves me forward.
Without my hands to catch me, my chest hits the bench, face turned to the side, cheek pressed into the warm leather.
I’m pinned by gravity and the angle of my own body—ass up, knees spread, the dress bunched at my waist like a belt of ruined fabric.
The clamps pinch even harder under the pressure and I let out a strangled cry.
Knox moves to the front of the bench. He crouches, and his hands find my face—palms warm, fingers curving around my jaw, holding me steady. His eyes meet mine, dark and level.
“Right here, Fury,” he says. “Eyes on me. Nowhere else.”
I nod against his palms.
Knox holds me there with his eyes, anchoring me in place. I hear Eli move behind me, the soft hiss of air as he takes one of the leather paddles from the wall. My pulse jackhammers. I don’t dare look away from Knox. I might fly off the planet if I do.
Eli’s hand sweeps the dress higher up my hips. Cool air washes over my bare skin. Knox’s pupils widen at the sight of me—open, helpless, strung tight across the padded bench—and the muscles in his jaw flex, but his hands remain steady against my cheeks.
“I know you’re not gonna use it,” Knox rumbles. “But I want to hear the safe word from you one more time.”
I nod.
“You’ve gotta say it to me so I know you’re still here. What’s the word, Fury?”
“Hangmen,” I force out. The word comes high and breathless.
Knox glances up at Eli and nods.
Then the paddle comes down.