I secure the heavy silver mask over her face, obscuring her vision from the world around her. Her chest heaves as she draws in a breath, her nipples crying out as they poke upward. For a moment, I can’t do anything else but stand there and admire her. She can’t see me now, and I have been waiting all night to indulge.
Her body has all the qualities I admire in a woman’s flesh. Soft skin. Perfectly rounded breasts. Curved hips. They are not anything I haven’t seen before, yet those features look more enticing on her than any other woman I have ever had the pleasure to look upon.
Perhaps, it is simply because I know she will only ever be mine.
I lean down and help her to her feet again. Her fingers wrap around my arm, clinging to me as her guide when I lead her toward the bed. It’s the strangest sign of trust I don’t expect, and I find that disarms me too. But her trust wavers when I pull her arms up over her head to secure them to the rope around the bedpost.
“Santiago.” Her voice is pleading.
The undercurrent of fear in her tone hardens me like nothing else ever has. I have to take a moment, closing my eyes to resume control of the situation before I give in to my baser desires and ravage her without forethought.
I resume the task of securing her wrists and then step back to admire the art of her body. She’s arched at the hips, slightly bent forward, arms straining upward. Her nerves are a powerful aphrodisiac, and already, I can smell the arousal between her thighs. She thinks she knows what comes next, but the uncertainty makes her shiver.
When my fingers caress the length of her spine, she curves into me like a cat arches into its master’s palm. I don’t even think she’s consciously aware of the fact that she’s doing it. And it’s a shame that she should hope to find a protector in me when I can only ever be her tormentor.
I grab a handful of the soft flesh around her hip and squeeze, and her back bows even farther, thighs parted so enticingly. She’s aching for something she doesn’t even understand.
Taking my time, I dispense of my jacket and waistcoat and then slowly unbutton my dress shirt. Despite the fact she can’t see, my wife is turning toward me, her ornate mask staring down the scars on my torso as my shirt drifts to the floor. It’s unnerving, and it isn’t logical, but I feel her gaze on me regardless. As if she possesses the ability to see through the layers of metal. As if she can see me for who I really am.
“Turn around,” I command.
She jumps at the harshness of my voice but then settles back into her position once my hands are upon her again. This time, I’m stroking, caressing the length of her body. Getting a feel for my most interesting acquisition. She makes a soft sound of pleasure as my palms come around her waist and skate up over her tits. Her nipples are so hard she whimpers when they scrape against my skin, and I would bet all the money in my bank account her pussy is swollen for me too.
“Do you like this?” My lips hover over her ear, nipping at the lobe before they trail down her throat.
She makes a sound of protest that gets caught in her throat, but it ejects when I remove one of my hands and smack her ass so hard my fingers are imprinted on it.
“Santi—” My name dies on her lips as I repeat the action, slapping her ass again.
She tries to arch away as she shrieks, but my arm curves around her waist, forcing her to stay still and bear it.
Three. Four. Five. Six times I slap her, and her skin glows cherry red as the blood rushes to the surface. She’s panting, heaving, twisting in my grasp when I slide my fingers down between her thighs to feel her soaking want.
“Please,” she starts to beg as I stroke her. “I need… I can’t…”
I’m not in the business of giving my enemies what they want. But her voice sounds so sweet. So full of loathing for her own request, I can only reason that she will hate me all the more for being able to control her this way.
I dip two fingertips inside her and then swirl them around her clit. She widens her legs for me without realizing it, opening her body as if to welcome me inside. I stifle the groan building in my throat by biting her shoulder, and Ivy screams at the same time her body releases, a gush of warmth sliding over my fingers. Spasms rock her core as her breath hisses between her teeth. She’s still coming back down from her high when I smear the evidence of her own body’s betrayal over her lips.
She jerks in my arms, and I breathe against her skin, relaxing the grip on her waist as I resume the long, exacting strokes over the expanse of her body. I’m studying her. Taking in all the details of this unfamiliar landscape. The freckles on her shoulder. The dip in her lower spine. The way her ribs press against my fingers when she leans into my touch. I want to memorize them all, filing them away like the data on my computer. I don’t understand why, and I don’t want to examine the reasons too carefully just yet.
Before I can give it much more thought, I notice some bruising on her arm. I investigate it thoroughly, pressing my fingertips into the purple ovals as undiluted rage boils inside me.
“Who did this to you?” I demand.
She sucks in a breath but doesn’t answer. I’m tempted to shake her. Choke her. Force the words from her lips. But my eyes are already roaming the rest of her, scanning every inch for an injustice that hasn’t quite formed in my mind.
There are additional bruises on her thigh, knee, and calf. And I know they must be from someone because she has stiffened in my arms. She’s hiding something from me, and I won’t accept it.
“Who did this?” I repeat.
When she doesn’t answer, I wrap the length of the rosary around her neck until it bites into her skin. She strains against the rope to lean back into me, fighting the tightening of my fist.
“Who, Ivy?”
“Perhaps it was your doctor,” she snarls at me with such vehemence, it shocks me into loosening my grip.
The beads cascade back over her breasts, settling between the mounds.
“Doctor,” I echo, my mind coming back to Abel’s hand-delivered purity test.
“The nightmare of a doctor you sent me to!” She hurls the words out with a bitterness that catches me off guard.
“Who told you I sent you to him?”
She falls quiet again, chest heaving in anger. There is a fire in her I didn’t expect, and I find that I like it.
“Answer me.”
I slip my fingers back between her legs, and she tries to squeeze them together. Slapping her inner thighs jolts her back into submission, and her head falls back against my shoulder as I begin to toy with her all over again.
“Santiago.” She sniffles. “Please.”
Her arms are growing tired. She can barely hold herself upright. But she must learn the true nature of endurance, for she will need plenty of it with me.
Discussing the doctor will have to wait. The night is escaping me, and I am yet to claim her. I let her know as much when I unzip my trousers and free my throbbing cock.
Ivy falls completely still, even as I stroke her sensitive clit and mold my body against hers. When she feels the hard steel of my flesh pressing against the softness of her body, she turns her head again, as if to see me.
“Don’t make me keep punishing you,” I warn her gruffly. “Unless you truly want to feel my roughness.”
She forces her head forward again, and I slide my cock between her thighs, soaking the length in her messy arousal. She’s so warm and soft, I don’t know that I have it in me to be anything other than rough with her. It’s been too long since I’ve felt a woman. I can’t think of anything else now.
I grip her hips and rub the head of my cock against her entrance, slowly exerting pressure until it starts to sink inside her. Her hands clench, legs quivering, and I have to hold her up by the waist as I tease just the head in and out of her in a torturous rhythm. I keep stroking her clit, building and building that pressure inside her. I feel her squeezing around me, and it isn’t enough. I need to feel everything.
With a sharp thrust, I tear
through her virginity and seat my cock as deep as her body can take me. She cries out in surprise and then shatters as my fingers push her over the edge with frantic, unrelenting movements.
Her body squeezes me over and over again as the aftershocks roll through her, and I have to grit my teeth to repress the shudder of pleasure I feel from her tight pussy milking my dick.
“Fuck.” The word hisses through my lips, and there’s no holding back now.
I’m more animal than man when I hoist her ass up and pivot my hips back, slamming into her without mercy. Ivy wails, and the bedpost groans as the tautness of the rope and my body pull her in opposite directions. I close my eyes and get lost in the feeling of her warmth, her sounds, her sanctuary.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Somewhere in the back of my mind, logic is screaming for my attention. But I’m too lost to her to consider the reasons I’m petting her hair and kissing my way down her spine as I fuck her into oblivion.
She looks like a rag doll in my arms. So small. So easy to toss around and use as I please. I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t know how to rein in my control, but right now, all I can think about is burying myself balls deep and filling her womb with my seed.
The rope around her wrists begins to chafe as Ivy’s weight sinks forward. She can’t hold her head up anymore, and I can’t stop. I hold her up with one arm as I yank the rope from the bedpost, leaving her wrists tangled in the remnants. I drop her torso onto the bed and roll my hips deeper and harder, thrusting without restraint until my balls draw up and I can’t hold off any longer.
My fingers dig into her hips with a bruising grip, and agony explodes out of me as my cock jerks wildly, emptying four years of frustration into my wife.
My wife.
I blink open my eyes and look down at her, too exhausted to move, breathing like she can’t get enough oxygen. Neither can I for that matter.
I really did this. I married my enemy, and soon, she will be carrying my child.
The world tilts, and I collapse beside her with a grunt.
16
Ivy
I can’t lift my head. This headpiece he’s put on me is too heavy. I feel him pull out, feel his come—no, our come. I came too. I came. And I feel it gush out of me.
My legs dangle off the edge of the bed. I’m lying facedown, unable to move. Barely able to breathe.
He doesn’t speak, but I hear his breathing. It’s ragged like mine. He’s spent. Having my sight taken away makes my other senses work harder. They have to pick up the slack, and I need to remain on my guard with this man.
This man.
He is your husband.
As if I didn’t know.
I think he’s getting dressed. I hear a zipper. I still don’t move. My eyes are open, but all I see is black, and all I feel is a throbbing pain between my legs.
He took me violently.
And you came.
Violently.
He shifts my weight, lifting me to lie farther up on the bed. My head lolls as I try to manage the weight of this thing. I put my hands to it, but he takes my raw wrists and untangles the rope, freeing me of it before setting my arms on either side of me with a single-word command. “No.”
“Please.”
“Don’t make me bind you again.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“You can breathe. Just relax.”
He tugs something out from under me, then pulls one leg open.
I gasp, try to scoot away, but his fingers dig into that thigh as he wipes between my legs.
“I wonder if Eli will be pleased to see how I bled his daughter,” he says.
“What?” I ask, not sure I heard right.
Is he satisfied with the blood? I wonder. I know there’s much of it. He’d be happy to see my tears too, I’m sure, and I’d happily give them to him if he’d only take this damn thing off me.
“Stay,” he says like he’d command a dog. I guess he’s finished cleaning me.
I stay. I can’t move anyway. And as my body settles, I become aware of every ache. I hear him walk, hear a door open, water run. He’s back a moment later, his hands around my arms lifting me. I hold onto his biceps, feel his strength beneath my hands, my forehead almost falling into his shoulder.
“You’ll learn to carry it when you’re on your knees.” He deposits me on the floor, carpet rough beneath my knees. I sit back on my heels and place one hand on the floor to support myself.
What more does he want from me?
“Close your eyes.”
I do. I don’t even know why. It’s not like he can see. But I’m tired. I’m so tired. This day and this night have drained me.
He lifts the thing off me, and I reach up to touch my face, dry my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
“I’ve seen your face,” I say and when I feel him move away, I open my eyes and watch him. His shirt is undone. I see his jacket strewn over a chair.
I watch as he puts the ornate mask into a glass case like it’s something sacred and it takes me a moment to realize he’s watching me in the tarnished mirror. Our eyes meet but it’s so dark with just the candles and the black walls that I can’t see him clearly.
“And you’d like to see it again?” he asks. “I doubt that. Bow your head and lower your eyes. Now.”
“You don’t know me,” I tell him but do as he says.
“Don’t I?” He crosses the room to the door. I watch him from behind my lashes. “This will be your room. You’ll stay in it until I come for you.”
“When will that be? When you need another fuck?”
He puts his hand to the doorknob, and I see him cock his head. He turns a little. It’s the skull side.
I lift my head. I can’t not look at the shadows of the flickering candles playing across his face.
“You should be more careful, Ivy.”
“Or what? You’ll put that thing on me again? Tattoo me again? Brand me this time? Make me marry you all over again? You’ve taken everything. Done everything there is to do.”
“I’ve only just begun.”
I snort.
He walks back into the room, back toward me and I find myself leaning away. Watching him come to me, his face uncovered, a half-living-half-dead man, it’s a little terrifying.
“Lower your gaze. I won’t say it again.”
“No.” My heart pounds against my chest like it wants out before the attack that is surely coming.
“No?”
I shake my head.
He raises his eyebrows. “I’m not sure if that's bravery or stupidity.”
“I’m not scared of your face if that’s what you mean.”
He laughs outright. “You think I’m worried you won’t like my face?” He crouches down and it takes all I have to keep my eyes on his, but he must see me lean away and he leans closer. “You want to see me, Ivy?”
I just swallow as I take him in, trying to focus on his eyes, just his eyes. But it’s too much and I blink, turning away.
“Didn’t think so,” he says, standing, crossing the room again.
“It’s not…I don’t…” I trail off, not sure what I want to say. He was beautiful once. I can see that. Now he’s something else. Something most would sneer at. Run from.
“You’ll remain in your room until I come for you.” He opens the door.
“I won’t.”
He stops. “No?” he asks, turning. “You’ll rebel?” He waits for me to answer but I don’t. “Look at you. Still on your knees before me, my mark etched into your skin, my come leaking out of your pussy. I think you’ll do exactly as you’re told. But you’re welcome to try to prove me wrong. I will enjoy punishing you.” He walks out into the hallway.
“Why?” I call out. “Why did you choose me if you hate me so much?” I have to wipe my eyes again.
He stops. It’s quiet for a long moment and I realize how silent this house is. How still. Does anyone else even live here? He studies me, eyes
sharp and intent on me. He has an agenda. A purpose. And I am so far out of my league.
“Your tears won’t move me. I thought you knew that.”
“Just at least tell me why.”
“Do you love your father?”
“What?”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And he loves you.” It’s not a question.
“My father has nothing to do with this.”
“No?”
My tears turn into sobs as everything becomes too much, too heavy, like this rosary around my neck. Like his hands are still around it.
“Christ, get a grip,” he snaps.
“Fuck you,” I tell him but it doesn’t have the force I want, not when said through the sobs. But I think for a minute I shouldn’t have said that. I think he’ll come back in here. Punish me again. I don’t think my body can take any more. Not tonight.
But he doesn’t. Instead, his lips just curve upward, a skull on one side the monster on the other and I feel my shoulders slump, my body curl in around itself as I cringe away a little.
“You belong to me.”
“I don’t.” He’s right though. In our world, I do belong to him.
“Do you understand what that means for you?” he asks as if I haven’t said anything.
I don’t reply. I don’t know how.
He shakes his head, gives a little snort like he’s bored. “You’re weak, Ivy. And you’d better toughen up because you’re going to need all your strength to survive me.”
17
Ivy
“Miss.”
I groan as I start to wake up, every inch of my body sore, the worst of it between my legs.
A woman clears her throat. “Miss.”
I open my eyes. The room slowly comes into view. Black walls. No, not black. Dark, carved wood. A small square of light high up.
Requiem of the Soul: A Sovereign Sons Novel Page 11
