by Kitty Thomas
Hunter turned and went back to his easel. Shannon let out a breath, thinking he was finished, but he returned with a thick-handled paint brush. It looked new. Damian still held her open for him as he dragged the brush carefully over her pussy as though he were painting her. As if he were memorizing the exact contours between her legs.
He flipped the brush around and pushed the thick smooth handle inside her, slowly fucking her with it. She moaned again as Damian held her for Hunter to play with. But he didn't let her come. He withdrew the handle from her body and turned to Damian.
“Turn her around.”
She knew Hunter must see the fear in her eyes. The last thing in the world she wanted was for someone like this man, this calculating, obsessive, details-oriented man to look at her back in the same intense way he'd looked at the rest of her. Because when he did, he would find her wanting, lacking. He would take one look, lose all interest in painting her, and unceremoniously pack his art supplies up and leave.
She fought Damian as he tried to turn her. “No!”
“Shhhh,” Damian said, petting her hair. “He won't hurt you.”
She wasn't afraid he'd physically hurt her. She was afraid of the cutting words that would come out of his mouth when he saw the scars Brian had made. But Damian was stronger than her and turned her around so that Hunter could look at her back.
The artist swept her hair to the side and there was a long pause where eternity flooded into the space of the room like the ocean tide. Finally it seemed to recede again leaving a new and deeper stillness behind.
Then the artist's hands were on her, stroking her. She had no idea what he'd done with that paintbrush because both of his hands carefully ran over her back, not just the scars, all of her. They cupped and stroked her ass and the cleft between her cheeks, the backs of her thighs, and all the way down her legs.
His finger traced a little pattern she couldn't discern over her right hip as if he were placing some imaginary brand on her. Then he was kissing and licking the lines across her back. The brush trailed gently over each scar after his mouth was finished exploring them.
“Lindsay,” he said.
He must have motioned because Lindsay came over and then there was some whispering she couldn't hear. Footsteps receded, a box in a far corner opened. Footsteps returned.
“Kiss her,” Hunter said to Damian.
Damian's hand wrapped around the back of her neck, pulling her forward, his mouth fiercely claiming hers, taking all her attention away from the artist until the cane landed in a sharp sting across her ass.
She yelped and jerked away from Damian's kiss. Hunter struck her again.
“Cry for me,” he demanded.
She looked to Lindsay who only nodded. She would have wondered why Lindsay was allowing all of this... why was he letting this stranger come in and take control of her? But Lindsay stood, his arms crossed over his chest, just taking it all in, looking absolutely and completely in control of the situation. So whatever reason this was happening, it was Lindsay's reason. And somehow that settled her.
The cane came down across her ass again and this time the tears the artist had demanded followed, trailing down her cheeks until she was sobbing.
Hunter stroked her back as she cried. “Good, that's good,” he soothed in her ear. “Let everything out for me. Show me everything.”
Shannon cried until she thought she had no tears left inside her. Everything that Brian had taken from her. All her fears. All her sadness. All her loneliness. All her insecurities and uncertainty and longing for things she hadn't believed she could ever have again. It all came pouring out of her in wave after wave of cathartic misery.
She didn't even notice when the furniture was brought out. Shannon allowed Lindsay and Damian to place her in a kind of bondage chair. The chair had a lubed dildo which she was pressed down on until it was firmly seated inside her. Her legs were spread open and tied down and her arms were bound over her head by long rope attached to a ring that came down from the ceiling. She was still crying, unable to stop once she'd started, but Hunter, who now stood back observing all this, didn't seem to mind.
The artist sat down behind the easel and began to paint.
***
Shannon realized suddenly that the sex sounds that had been going on around her had stopped. When had they stopped? Had those people already left the party? It was pretty late. They'd been down here for hours. She'd lost track of the time.
When her arms had started to hurt and she'd whimpered and begged, Lindsay had stood behind her, allowing her arms to rest against him, taking the pressure and tension off.
There was no one downstairs in the dungeon now but her, Lindsay, Hunter, and his pet who had finally fallen asleep on the pull-out sofa. Damian wasn't downstairs. Was he playing the polite host and seeing the other guests off?
Hunter cleaned up his art supplies and took them upstairs. While he was gone, Damian returned with a T-shirt and sweatpants and sat on the edge of the pull-out sofa. He stroked the woman's hair.
“Saskia, wake up,” he said gently.
“Damian?” she said. She struggled to sit, sounding sleepy and disoriented. The sheet dropped, uncovering her breasts, but she didn't seem to notice or care. “Where is he?” she said, her gaze darting around the room for Hunter.
“He's just packing things up. He'll be back for you in a few minutes. Why don't you put this on? It'll be more comfortable for the drive.” Damian indicated the T-shirt and sweatpants he'd laid next to her.
“Okay.”
He patted her hip, got up, and went to stand beside Lindsay. The two men worked to untie Shannon's arms. Once they'd freed her from the ropes, each of the men rubbed one of her wrists.
She let out a sigh, the soreness hitting her all at once. And the tiredness as well. She didn't look forward to the long drive back to the house. It must be only a couple of hours until dawn.
They untied her legs and ordered her not to move. The dildo was still inside her, and she was so exhausted but also so aroused. She'd spent hours bound and exposed and penetrated with no hope of completion while Hunter had looked right into her and painted whatever it was he found inside. But she knew she wouldn't be satisfied tonight. It was so late, and everyone was so tired.
Lindsay and Damian stood behind the canvas and stared at what Hunter had painted. Shannon watched Saskia get out of the bed, unconcerned with her nudity. As she put the T-shirt on, she moved in such a way that one of the overhead spotlights hit her right hip, illuminating a brand. The letter Q.
Shannon couldn't begin to guess at what the Q on her hip meant, but she'd been marked much like the people at the art show had. Had Hunter branded her, too?
The artist returned then with a couple of large black bags. He unpacked camera equipment and set up some lighting around the painting. Lindsay and Damian backed out of the way so he could get several shots of the work. Then he packed everything back up.
“I'll wire you the money tomorrow morning,” Lindsay said.
“Normally I don't leave the work without the money, but I know you're good for it,” Hunter said. “Don't touch or move it for a couple of weeks until it's totally dry. I can apply a varnish when it's fully cured in about a year if you'd like, just let me know. I'll leave the easel and pick it up later.”
Hunter turned his attention back to Shannon and crossed the room to her. He stroked her cheek and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “Some of my best work, I think.” he said as if he'd created her instead of a painting of her.
He turned back to Saskia, “You ready, pet?”
Saskia nodded. She looked at the canvas everyone but Shannon had seen and gave Shannon a small smile, then she took Hunter's free hand and the two of them left the dungeon.
When they were gone, Lindsay and Damian helped her out of the bondage chair. Damian brought the quilted blanket from the pull-out sofa to her and wrapped her up in it.
“Are we going now, Master?” Shannon asked.
She turned to Damian. “But why?”
“It's late,” Damian said. “You're tired.”
Lindsay pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “Be a good girl, and I'll see you soon.”
“Are you safe to drive?” she asked.
Lindsay laughed. “I'm wide awake. I'll be fine. I'll text Damian when I get home.”
“Okay.” She wanted to argue about this arrangement, but she didn't want to displease Lindsay. She didn't want to make a dramatic scene. And she was exhausted. Not having to be in a car for so long before finally getting into bed was too good of a prospect to fight.”
Damian walked Lindsay up the stairs where they shared a private conversation in low tones.
It was strange being alone down in the dungeon when so many people had been in this space such a short while ago. Shannon crossed the room to see what was on the canvas. When she saw the painting, her breath caught in her throat.
Hunter had somehow captured every secret Shannon held within her, now naked and exposed on the canvas for anyone who happened to walk by. She couldn't even be bothered by the lewd kinky pose. All she could look at was the painted reflection of her own eyes. And suddenly she understood exactly why Lindsay had let this man do these things and take control of her. It had been worth it to him to get Shannon painted this way.
For her part, she felt like she'd been broken apart and put back together again, somehow less broken than she'd been for a very long time—because what she saw when she looked at that painting was someone who was beautiful in a tragic way, just like Hunter had said. For the first time she could see what others saw when they looked at her, and it wasn't something ugly and scarred.
Her gaze drifted to the bottom right hand corner of the painting. The artist had signed it with a Q.
Chapter Twelve
It was eleven a.m. when Damian cracked the eggs into a bowl in the large kitchen to make breakfast for them. Maybe it was brunch. He'd been up since nine, cleaning up after his party guests and trying to bring his home back to the sleek sense of order he was used to.
Bach played over the sound system as he prepared bacon and omelets and poured juice into glasses. He couldn't believe Shannon was actually in his house. He'd been obsessed with the idea of having her for weeks now.
Lindsay's offer had come with a video attachment by email. The message simply read: “Last chance. Want to share this one with me?”
Damian must have jerked off to that video thirty times in the following days. And then... Lindsay had invited him to the office to meet her. They'd staged the ambush together, and she was just as perfect in person as she'd been on the screen. Shannon was everything he hadn't known he'd always wanted. The sweet obedience. The tragic vulnerable beauty. The princess in the tower he couldn't help wanting to help save.
He hadn't had a pet of his own in years. The last situation had ended badly. It had been a total power exchange relationship, and the girl, Angela, had been a brat with a trust fund. She didn't need Damian, she'd just wanted cheap thrills. So when the relationship became more work than pleasure, she'd bounced. She'd had no real need for the brand of kink Damian offered. And he hadn't really owned her anyway. It had been the standard... boy meets girl at a BDSM club and it goes from there sort of scenario.
He met Lindsay at a charity function several years ago, and despite a bit of an age difference, they'd become fast friends to the point that Lindsay trusted him with things. He'd offered early on to set Damian up with a girl from their house—for the right price, of course. Though Damian didn't judge, he hadn't wanted direct involvement in what was clearly a very illegal business. He wasn't the type of man willing to expose himself to that much risk. Not for sex. Even though the idea of it... the simplicity of it was appealing.
He'd long given up on the idea of finding what he really wanted by accident. Or at a kink club. Because every sub he'd encountered told him what he wanted to hear until the moment they could start manipulating and using him. He was done with that scene because in the end all the risks were the same whether it was kinks or vanilla. Someone was always using him for his wealth, and he lost the power the second they'd become blended into his life.
But Shannon was different. She was real property. She wasn't one of these girls looking for a cheap thrill who would be out of his life as quickly as she'd entered it.
What would it be like to truly own someone—someone who couldn't leave but deep down didn't want to get away? Damian had an opportunity a few years back. Lindsay had made a second and more specific offer a little later, a girl from the house named Mina—very damaged, scars... didn't do intercourse.
Admittedly that one threw him, but he could have worked around that parameter. After all, there were plenty of sexual activities that resulted in pleasure for both parties that weren't so prosaic as standard sex. And he didn't mind the scars. Things like that didn't bug him, nor was he the type of person who saw these imperfections as terrible flaws that made someone unworthy of love or somehow ugly.
It was just a piece of your life that had stuck to you in a visible way. Everybody had those things... scars. Most of them just weren't physical. In the end, Damian had turned Lindsay's offer down and had spent years kicking himself for it.
So when the offer for Shannon came around, Damian wasn't so quick to dismiss it. He knew her history, the things she'd been through at the house, the attempt on her own life. He was sure she'd hate him knowing that, but if he and Lindsay were to truly share her, Damian had to know everything, and he couldn't count on her to willingly give up the information to a man she barely knew.
She was only a couple of years younger than him, but she seemed so much younger than that, so lost. Usually trauma aged a person, but it had done the reverse to Shannon.
Lindsay planned to ease her into a dual-master situation where she would submit equally to both of them—then at some point in the future when their age difference became too large to ignore, Lindsay would hand her off to Damian completely. It was like a timeshare with the option to buy out the other party. Shannon had not yet been enlightened to this plan.
At thirty-three, Damian already had more wealth than he knew what to do with. He'd inherited a lot, but he hadn't squandered the opportunity to make the money he'd been given grow exponentially. He had a gift for investing—knowing just where to put money and the exact moment to move it somewhere else. He'd been labeled a massive success story to be so young and had been featured in several business and investing magazines since he was twenty-three. He wasn't sure if having good intuition about where to put money counted as a success the world needed to know about or worship.
And though his success continued to be impressive for one so young, now past thirty, the Boy Money Wonder thing was starting to thankfully die off as he was able to blend with the rest of the upper class around him.
He didn't have a career or a business of his own. He just knew how to take advantage of a situation, and he'd started out with a lot to begin with. Maybe it was why he gave so much of this bounty to charity. It felt like more of an accomplishment, and it softened the edges of his reputation. Given the way he made his money, if he didn't give so much of it away, he'd come off like an opportunistic asshole. Maybe that was also true, but Damian's name was known in circles of wealth for his philanthropy more than his wolfish ability to stalk the misfortune of those who had built businesses only to lose them in the end.
The one thing he didn't have—and couldn't seem to acquire with his skill set—was someone special to share all this wealth with. He wanted someone to spoil.
And here she was. Damian turned when he heard her enter the room. She hovered near the kitchen island, appearing vulnerable and uncertain. The black silk wrap from the previous night was wrapped around her body. He knew she wasn't doing it to be sexy, though it was... sexy.
“Good morning,” he said, flipping the
omelets.
“Good morning,” she replied, clearly unsure of how to be with him the morning after that party. He would love to be a fly on the wall of her mind right now. What could she possibly be thinking?
They hadn't had sex the previous night. She'd been so tired. He'd simply changed the sheets on the giant bed down there and tucked her in, going back up to his own room and leaving her to rest. He had the whole weekend with her. But that gesture of kindness seemed to have made her even more shy and unsure around him.
Damian pointed with the spatula toward the stairs. If you go upstairs, the third door on the right...the guest room... there are clothes for you in the closet.
“Lindsay sent clothes for me?”
Yeah, she might figure out what was going on well before Lindsay could break the arrangement to her. She was smart, and the sudden shrewd look in her eyes like she was putting together a very complex puzzle made it laughable that the doctor really thought he could keep this a secret until he was ready to lay it all out for her.
The shrink better figure out how to tell her. And soon.
“No,” Damian said. “I bought the clothes for you. Go put on whatever you like, but be quick. The food's almost ready.”
He watched her move up the stairs, anything but quick. She seemed scared of them. It was a pretty normal reaction, they were glass and see-through after all. But there were rubber grips on the stairs and solid backs behind them, and a wall on one side and a railing on the other. It was perfectly safe.
***
Shannon tried to reassure herself the stairs were safe. It wasn't as though they were slippery. And the little rubber grips felt comforting against her bare feet as she climbed to the second floor. She definitely wouldn't slip. But she could see through them. It was disconcerting.
Damian's home was beautiful, but it was a cold, naked beauty. Nothing was hidden. Everything could be seen. She could see into his bedroom from the main floor because the floor of his room—the ceiling of the main floor—was made of the same thick glass.
