by Amelia Wilde
He does the same with my wrists. Hooks one behind his neck, then the other. “Keep them there,” he murmurs in my ear.
I’m helpless now. More helpless than I was facedown over his knees. I couldn’t let go of him if I wanted to.
I do not want to.
My mind is a thick haze of hormones and adrenaline and the room retreats a little, my head lolling against his chest. Zeus takes my chin in his hand and makes me look forward. “Come back to me,” he says. “If you don’t come back to me, I’ll drag you back, kicking and screaming.”
I can’t answer him through the wallet. “Back,” I mumble. “For what?”
Zeus puts one hand underneath one of my thighs and tugs them apart another inch.
Oh no.
Oh no.
No, he can’t. He wouldn’t.
His other hand is between my legs now. Fingertips gentle across the most delicate flesh.
Oh fuck.
He can.
He would.
“Three.” His breath is warm on my ear. “Now be a good girl.”
On girl he delivers the first slap to my pussy and my mind is flung out into the cold reaches of space. I’m a meteor made up entirely of pain. I cross the universe. Pain and possession. An exploding star. I’ve never seen him do this to one of the girls, never heard them mention it, and a twisted pleasure blooms alongside the hurt.
This is for me.
Just me.
The second slap is harder, and no, no, no, I arch into it, humiliated, tears rolling down my cheeks. Wanting more. I want more. His fingers circle my opening and what he finds there makes him laugh. “So wet,” he says. “A man might mistake this for pleasure.”
Is it pleasure? If it is, it’s a new tier of pleasure, one I’ve never visited before. It’s the pleasure of a raw nerve. Of his hand on my thigh, keeping my legs spread. I can see everyone else in the room. They can see me. People have noticed now. The whites of their eyes make it obvious. It’s so sick, it’s so wrong. Keep watching.
The third slap destroys me.
One more scream into the wallet and it dissolves into a sob that becomes another and another. A hand on my face—it’s Zeus’s hand, and he takes the wallet from between my teeth. It’s marked. It will never be the same again.
He turns me to face him, my whole body raw and throbbing. With the same care he used to remove the wallet, he pushes my knees apart with one of his and pulls me down onto his leg so that my newly punished pussy is bare against the fabric of his pants.
Zeus lifts my chin.
Looks me in the eye.
Smiles.
“I sat with him on purpose. I’m sorry, I wanted—I wanted—”
“I know.” My shoulders sag with the relief of the confession, but Zeus pulls me back up. “I’m not finished yet.” My hands fly up to cover my breasts. They’re already supersensitive and if he slaps those too I’ll melt into the floor. Light flares in his eyes, and a low laugh rumbles through him. “Your tits are safe for the moment. Now, Brigit, show all of my guests how much you love being punished.”
I clear my throat. “How much I love being punished by you,” I manage, my voice breaking over the words. “Only you.”
“By me,” he repeats. “Only me.”
It’s the closest thing he’s ever said to I love you.
And then he sits there like the king that he is, as detached as he might be watching the movie, as I work my swollen pussy against his hard thigh.
It hurts. My ass hurts, my pussy hurts, and the worst part—the best part?—is that the pain doesn’t stop the pleasure. It makes it stronger. It makes it multifaceted. Heat creeps up my back—humiliating, so embarrassing—but I’m lost to him as much as I ever was. So I push through the pain and force myself to find a rhythm.
It doesn’t take long.
I grind down onto him, rock my hips, turn myself into a shameless slut in front of all of his guests. No. He made me a shameless slut. I’m just not hiding it anymore. Maybe I was never hiding it. Could they always tell how much I wanted him? Now they know. Now everyone knows.
Good.
I must make some noise, some wordless plea, because he takes my trembling arms and helps me brace my hands against the front of his jacket. He reaches underneath them to press the pad of one thumb against one of my nipples. “Now, sweetheart.”
The orgasm rushes up and swallows me whole, and it is the most mortifying orgasm of my life. No wallet in my mouth. No hand between my legs. Just the friction of his expensive suit on tender flesh that he has recently slapped. I come like a house on fire, and when it’s over, my arms give out.
Zeus stops the fall.
Stands up.
Puts me on my feet.
He gives no mercy. One hand digs into my hair and that hand is the only thing holding me up. “James,” he says. There’s movement at the edges of my vision and then we’re moving too. Out the back of the ballroom. Toward the lounge.
I didn’t know how many people he had to do his bidding until now, when we arrive at the lounge, and they are all there. Uniformed men clearing the room. They hustle various couples out of the way, and Zeus waits no more than thirty seconds until he is free to drag me inside the empty room.
We cross to a stretch of blank wall next to the fireplace. The door closes between us.
And then his hands are on my waist. Lifting. Shoving. My back hits the wall and I wrap my legs around his waist to stay up, up, and stay alive while he kisses me. “Fuck, Brigit,” he says, again and again and again. “Fuck, Brigit. Fuck.”
His need is so violent that it soothes me. Calms the horrible fear that he doesn’t want me, that he has never wanted me, that I’m just the same as any other woman. I’m not. The proof is marked on my skin in his handprints and the marks from his belt. It’s in the frantic hitch of his breath. The wild pulse. The way he pulls back, every so often, to let his eyes trace the contours of my face.
This is all I want in the world.
I want to touch him and feel the lingering hurt of his punishment. I want to let him erase the memory of him taking bids for me in this room, when he pretended that I was on offer for any other man. I don’t care what he did. I care what he does now.
And what he’s doing now is kissing me, biting me, tasting me, like he needs me for his heart to keep beating.
19
Zeus
I kiss Brigit as long as I can stand it. Until her lips are puffy and bruised and every time my tongue meets hers, she makes a sound in the back of her throat. Until she’s rocking her hips against mine. I don’t even think she realizes it.
I drag her down from the wall and put her on the floor in front of the fireplace. I’m as unhinged as Demeter, an animal, and I have never cleared a room to fuck a prostitute before.
I will never do it again.
My knees sink into the carpet when I get down in front of where she’s propped herself up on her elbows. Kissing her on the floor is different than against the wall, a new angle, new sounds, and I am going to die if I don’t fuck her.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t take my time.
I linger on the side of her neck. Kiss down to her shoulder. My chest hurts, it hurts, with how much I’ve wanted this. It’s an expansive pain.
An emotion.
I would have felt it for her no matter what happened tonight but if I’m honest, if I’m an honest sick fuck, punishing her changed something. It shifted the fabric of my universe. Brigit’s suffering was beautiful. It made me need her, made me hot for her...
Convinced me.
She lived through the worst of me. Welcomed it. I’m scared you’ll stop. I never thought, I never fucking thought, that anyone could survive me. There’s still time for her to die, a voice whispers. You showed her to the world.
I write that thought onto her skin with my tongue and kiss it away.
And go lower. I tease her nipples with my teeth until she mewls, body bending, and then I make her tip her head bac
k so I can kiss the hollow of her throat.
I almost lost her out in the ballroom. I almost cracked her mind into a million pieces. But she came back to me. The vulnerable noises she makes now are like breadcrumbs. I follow her all the way back down to the floor.
Work my thumb over her clit.
Again. Again. Again, until her thighs are shaking and she opens her eyes. She’s on the verge of coming again, but Brigit has it in a tight fist. She runs her nails gently, so gently, over the skin at the collar of my shirt. “I thought...” Try again, sweetheart. “I thought the rules were that any of us could refuse a man.”
I put a palm on her waist and drink in the curve there. “That rule is for working women and clients.”
“Not me?”
“Not you.” Dread contracts my skin in a sudden convulsion. This could be the last time I ever touch her. If she leaves now, if she wants to leave, then I’ll let her. I love her that much. “Refuse me, Brigit, if that’s what you want. But it will be outside the terms of my business.”
“I have other terms.” She fidgets with one of my buttons.
This is certain death. “I’ll pay whatever you want. To have you.”
“I don’t want your money.” The quiver in her voice intoxicates me. “I—just. I just want you to tell me if you want me. If you love me. If it’s the truth, tell me that. Want me.” Her voice drops. “Please.”
I lean down and kiss between her breasts, the skin there soft and warm, smelling of her. “I want you.” A crushing weight lifts off my shoulders. Oh—fuck. I had no idea how heavy it was, how debilitating, how it has driven every step into the earth for years and years. A release. “Understand, sweetheart, it’s in a very—a very broken, fucked-up way that I want you. But I do. I want you, and I love you. Let me have you.”
A shattered gasp. “Say please,” she says.
“Please,” I say.
I never say that to anyone. Not sincerely. This is the first time in years.
Brigit kisses me then, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me down over her. It’s hot, fierce, and short. She pushes me away again and there’s a mad scramble for my clothes that ends with my shirt half-unbuttoned and more importantly my cock released from its prison. I lower her back to the rug underneath us and shove her knees up, up, up, to her chest and hold her open like that.
I eat her like a crazed animal. I do not relent. She’s pink and swollen in the firelight and the cages that have been around my mind for so long fall away as she sobs out another orgasm.
I leave her there, riding it, while I stand up and open the box on the fireplace mantle. Condom. Lube. Enough, enough.
When I return Brigit is staring at me, still shaking, still holding her knees to her chest.
“Good girl,” I tell her, and she arches again on the strength of the words alone.
With two fingers—big, she says—I trace down through where she is very, very wet and lower, to where she is very, very tight.
I’ve fucked her here before.
It wasn’t enough. And it was facedown over my bed. Not tonight. I want to see her while I stretch her ass. It’s so fucking filthy and her face turns so red while I drip lube onto her hole and work my fingers inside without asking permission.
I will never ask permission again.
She belongs to me now.
Every breath of this new reality burns off the old.
Brigit’s struggle is fucking magnificent. It’s written all over her face in the squeezed-shut eyes and the tiny gasps. She’s not a virgin here, but she feels like one, and yes, I did choose this position so this would be difficult and embarrassing. With each moment that she struggles for me I love her more. And god, she works for it, reaching for one breath, then another.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” I close my lips on her earlobe while I fuck her ass with two fingers.
“Yes,” she admits, fingers trembling around her knees. “It hurts.”
“And you’re being so good for me.” Her body responds to this, trapping me with her muscles, but I won’t let her have that kind of control. I pull my fingers out and work them back in. “You’re so good, sweetheart.” I add a third finger and she hisses with the burn but she doesn’t protest. She takes it for me. She takes it while tears gather at the corners of her eyes. “Want another finger?”
“No,” she breathes. “Don’t.”
“Cock, then.” I give her a desultory kiss and pull my fingers out, reveling in the surprised gasp. She doesn’t have time to readjust. I’m already there, rolling on the condom, pressing myself to her hole, tight tight tight, and her hands shake now. Thighs shake. More lube, more than you’d think is necessary, because I’m too far gone to go slow.
The finger-fuck was the most I could give.
One inch, two, three, and fuck, it’s a lot. It’s a lot for her. It’s heaven for me. Tears drip down onto the rug and she’s so tight she could bleed me dry and the clench and drag of fucking her shuts out the never-ending thoughts, the never-ending guilt, all the ghosts. Everything disappears but the squeeze of her.
Fuck.
Brigit’s trying to relax, but she can’t do it yet. Not fully. She doesn’t have the experience yet and I love it, I fucking love it. “Yes. That's it,” I tell her. “Such a good sweetheart.” I lick one tear away, because her tears are fucking mine. “I can feel you trying. God, you’re so good, you’re so perfect. Fucking perfect.”
I take the last few inches by force, driving myself in with abandon and she gasps, in pain, in pleasure, it doesn’t matter. She’s flat against the floor, open completely for me, and I have never felt more animal, more human, than right now. Fucking her. Hard. Harder. No more breath for Brigit, not even enough to sob.
“It hurts,” she cries when she gets enough air. “Don’t stop.”
But I must. Because otherwise I will come and this will be over and I’m not ready for it to be over.
I pull out of her, rip off the condom, and dive for the box again, wash my hands. She’s still crying on the floor when I pull her into my lap and over me, making her straddle me, yanking her down hard on my throbbing cock. There is no resistance now except the sweet tightness of her pussy. She’s too wet for resistance. I take control of her hips with both hands and all she can do is hold on for dear life, her hair brushing my chest. “I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you, sweetheart.” It’s the last thing I say before all of my muscles fire, tensing at the peak of pleasure. It’s the strongest orgasm I’ve ever had and I paint the inside of her with my cum and grind her down into it with vicious strokes. Brigit comes on the slick heat of both of us, drawing me in another inch.
She’s about to fall, when it’s over, about to tumble down onto the rug so I control it and stretch her out on her back. She held that open, exposed, humiliating position for me for so long. But she won’t pay for that in lingering tension. I work movement into her toes, and her ankles, and her heels, and then her knees. Brigit catches her breath as I arrange her legs so I can lay between them and focus my attention on her clit.
She threads her fingers through my hair. “Oh, no,” she says. “I don’t think I can.”
“Relax. For me.” The effect is instant. She couldn’t do it when I was fucking her ass but she does it now, letting her head fall back and her knees fall open.
Letting me run my tongue over that bundle of nerves until she comes, quiet and long, hips bucking slowly, slowly.
Then I get up and sit down in a winged chair by the fire.
I lay her over my lap again. I need to see her this way. Here, now. Without an audience. She tenses, trying to push up and away from me, but I run a soothing hand over her hair. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You did well.” I pause to let that sink in. “If you’d rather be disobedient, then I can correct that.”
“I wouldn’t rather,” she murmurs.
“Then take your pleasure.”
She sighs, lets me spread her legs, and is such a good girl wh
ile I work my fingers into her pussy and remind her who owns it.
While I make her come like that, draped over my knees.
Three times, until she’s a shuddering aching mess, begging me to stop, stop, please, Zeus, stop, I can’t, stop.
It’s the most beautiful sound.
20
Brigit
I want to stay curled up in Zeus’s arms forever. Forever, forever. There are other ways to spend a life, but this is the best one. Stripped down to my soul, cradled in his arms, in front of a fire. I want to see what he looks like on a beach but I would die happily in this dark room. When did he turn down the lights? No idea. Maybe one of his people knew what to do.
I want to stay here forever, but something taps at the back of my mind.
What is it?
My head is pressed against Zeus’s chest. I’ve been listening to his heart beat for a long time.
That’s why I didn’t notice the quiet. I tug on the collar of his shirt and he drops a kiss on my cheek. “Hmm?”
“It’s quiet,” I tell him, and instantly, instantly, his body is at work, standing. Tensing. He sets me on my feet and goes to a closet I’ve never seen before. The closet isn’t altogether surprising—there’s also a bathroom here. Zeus pulls a simple black dress from the closet and brings it to me, and then he puts his own clothes on.
If the quiet wasn’t so unsettling, I’d beg him to take the clothes off.
At the door to the lounge he stops and listens while the hairs on the back of my neck pull up. Zeus is careful in the way he takes my hand before we go out.
He opens the door.
It looks...normal, in the hall, except for the lack of noise. All the lights are still on.
Zeus keeps me close to his side on the way to the ballroom, where things are not right.
“Is it late?” I ask. “Did everyone go up?”
“It’s not that late.” He’s searching, searching, and I follow that gaze, dark now and wary. No James. No Reya. His jaw ticks. He squeezes my hand and I watch the calculations run across his face the same way clouds cover the sun. He sees me looking from the corner of his eye.
