Once Upon A (Stained Duet Book 1)

by Charlotte E Hart

  My gaze turns to Adam as he starts rubbing himself against the bench. The man’s movements become sharper as he loses himself in his moment, hips grinding with forceful intent. His face is ashen, probably doubting his own sanity in the middle of sexual asphyxiation, and then the inevitable happens, proving my earlier thoughts true. The man comes, quickly, his body shuddering against the surface as he flicks his eyes between throat and cunt for discharge. The visions makes me smile and release my grip of her little neck instantly, allowing the sub breath again and turning back to look at her as she gasps and gulps for air.

  “Never do that without me in the room with you,” I say, firmly, stroking the sub’s hair and then leaning down to kiss her forehead out of duty. “Any of you.” She smiles up at me, weakly, then does the same for Adam as he walks over and admires her efforts. At least Adam gives a damn about her efforts; hopefully it’ll instil the respect I’ve aimed to teach him. I don’t. She’s barely managed seconds. Hardly worth my fucking time at all. “You’re not ready until I say you are, Adam. Never. You understand?”

  “That wasn’t long,” the Domme snaps, sneering at Adam and avoiding going anywhere near him as she approaches, disgust etching her every move. The comment makes me smirk at her attitude, forgetting Adam for a moment as I remind myself to show her something that will last a little longer when asked.

  “You will get yourself in trouble one of these days, Constance,” I reply, watching her clean her glove on a rag and then cross back to the sub again with a damp cloth. “She lasts well enough for the likes of you four.” Constance tuts at me, her hand finding its way begrudgingly to the sub’s forehead and brushing off the sweat as she pulls the ropes away. It’s enough for my own dick to rear at her, the thought of wiping the aggressive little bitch into unconsciousness consuming any form of suitable I’m hanging onto.

  “Enjoy your night,” I eventually say, as I open the door, berating myself for every thought involving my body’s cravings. Eight other subs walk in, two of whom would be best suited in orgies, but I’m doubting Adam will give a fuck what he gets up to this evening after watching that. The guys cock is probably already hard again as he eyes one of them up. “Adam, not without me.” Adam scoffs, but he does nod as he grabs at one of them and pushes it to its knees.

  So I leave, discomforted with my thoughts, and desperate to find something to alleviate the strain I’ve put myself under. My cock’s as close as it has been in some time, and more than ready to grate against something unwilling given half a chance. It’s not until I manage to push through the crush of other guests, avoiding eye contact with anything that offered itself on the stairs and ground levels, that I finally feel myself calming down. I groan at the images still passing through my mind, allowing them a few more moments before I need to rid my head of them again. Times past filter in as I push through the door onto the street, sucking in breaths for clarification of the facts. New York. Dirty at this end. It not like the clean living I grew up with, or the family who would have had me providing a certain standard of life. It’s as I like it now, letting me be who I am without consequence, other than the obvious, anyway. And that’s of my own making.

  Brushing off the front of my shirt, I stare out into the night as my cock finally begins to shut the fuck up. It might as well have screamed for attention as it burst at my pants, ready to rut hell into something that could take it, or not. I still don’t fucking care when the old mood takes hold, the same one I’ve just let loose for reasons unknown, regardless of how antagonistic the inclination. My muscles are currently hostility personified, just as I’ve asked of them. All it takes is that one pinch at a neck, just the shortness of breaths, the slight squeal of fear. Just one small offering, one surge of strength set free and it’s all here again, reminding me of how it feels to give my all to a woman. The antipathy heaves through my veins as I button my jacket and look into traffic, barely noticing it for the thudding of my pulse against flesh. Its rapid acceleration reminds me of skin broken and stripes of glory slashed into pale white surfaces. I can feel my fingers itching to trace welts again, widen them. I can feel it all as if it were only yesterday, hear it hollowing the recesses in my mind. The tears, the screams, the clank of metal, the sharp flick of canes and leather, the ring of a well-placed spanking resonating like never before. Over and over again, the sounds embed themselves, almost to the point of me turning back around and walking straight back into the building. It makes me lick my lips and swing my gaze to the door as it opens, just willing it to be another offering. It wouldn’t take much now. I’m more than ready to give in to the noise consuming rational thought. However, instead of something useful, Richard walks out with his harem of whores hanging onto him as they head for an array of taxis.

  “Blaine,” Richard says, nodding his customary good night.

  I don’t reply. Richard’s nothing but a high end car salesman with only the slightest penchant for rough and ready, something proved by the used models currently waving their cheap assess about for the world to ogle. Still, they’ll be useful for slashing if this mood doesn’t remove itself sooner or later. Perhaps two of them could be stitched together, their skin clamped via staples so as to broaden the landing of the whip. The thought makes me smile, imagining the squeals that would emanate should I get the chance to try. Something tells me Richard won’t stick around for the viewing pleasure, as one of the whores grins back, waving her fingers at me inanely. If he did stay, he’d violate the floor with a stench best left for the inside of a person’s guts. I raise a brow at the image, wondering what I can do with the thought and letting it idle as I watch the five of them get into their taxis, the one girl hanging back for another chance at flirtation. It amuses me as I let her enjoy her moment, all the time sizing up her weight, the distance it will take to catch her should she run, the amount of blood she has in her veins and how long it might take to drain from her should I choose that type of fun. The images make my damned cock rear up again, enough for me to look down at it with a smile and then press its girth to help alleviate the throb. She giggles, her finger hovering around her lips and then dipping inside, finger fucking her mouth and causing my feet to move towards her. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few minutes. She’ll come back inside, I’ll do what I need to and then I can give her to one of the others to tidy up. Or perhaps I’ll just leave her on the floor, bleeding out and screaming. Who gives a fuck? Cheap whores are ten a penny and not worth any more than the fucking she’s asking for. Used, tired. She’ll probably beg for the end when someone finally dims her entirely, sending her skank ass into the ground below.

  Thank fuck for my brother, the one who will be here any minute now. The thought stops my impetus before I enter territory deemed unsuitable these days. She’s nothing but another cunt, not even a particularly attractive one. Not that that has ever stopped me previously, but tastes refine with age. Few are worth tasting anymore, and even fewer worth risking my wrath on. They don’t endure enough, don’t connect. Their eyes are all as insipid as their flavours. Lifeless, showing nothing but vacant dispositions and blank willingness. This one would be more use to Cole, who would fuck her and then leave five thousand dollars on her body after the act, something he sees as a thank you for services rendered.

  The car pulls up just as I’m stepping backwards from the woman, the distance between us more relevant than she knows. A few more steps and I might not have stopped. Another suck of her fingers and she might well have ended up in that back alley just behind the building, her lungs bellowing out the sounds of whores as I drove my fingers into every hole she has.

  “Fucked anything yet?” I quietly slide myself into the car, dismissing the woman’s still grinning face and closing my eyes to help me concentrate on my cock’s excitement.

  “You know I haven’t touched anything for over a year.” Not with any real sense of need, anyway. Nothing has been appeased. I haven’t been able to dispense my venom on a woman since Eloise, which my cock still reminds me of as
I will it down, again.

  “For Christ’s sake, Blaine. Why the hell not?”

  I shake my head at Cole, wishing it were as simple as that. Unfortunately, people who aren’t heavily involved in the scene have little knowledge of the actualities of it. Control is paramount when dispensing needs such as mine. A well-rounded, level head. One that’s happy to deliver content to willing recipients, ensuring sense prevails. What’s not needed is a screwed up sense of sadism, coupled with the memories of what happens when situations are plundered past wisdom’s boundaries. The only things I play with lately are Dominants, new ones who require training, and even they fill me with tedium. Pretty boys turning up, pretending their little hands can deliver stripes warranting terms they neither understand nor are willing to totally employ. It is, has become, mind numbing. A point proved by the irrational act in that room I’ve just engaged in.

  The clubs have become nothing more than moneymaking pits—somewhere I arrive into, teach, and then leave. They’re somewhere reprobates wave their dicks around in to gain some kind of distinction, perhaps hoping for a sense of fulfilment. It isn’t the scene anymore. Not truly. Yes, there is fucking, plenty of it, and multiple partners, and any kind of need you have will more than likely be fulfilled, but there isn’t any sense of collaboration anymore. Not like it should be. Not like it was when she was there to temper my flow.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” I mumble to myself, staring out into the night and just willing the car home before Cole starts with his 20 fucking questions again.

  “Why not?”

  The question makes me sigh and tune him out, not caring for yet another discussion on why I should or should not be fucking something. Why I ever bothered telling him I don’t fuck anymore is confounding in itself. It’s none of Cole’s business who I fuck or when. The fact that I haven’t had my dick inside anything for over a year isn’t a discussion I need to have with my little brother, the same little brother who is eternally screwing anything that moves with little regard for the consequences.

  “Melinda still pregnant, is she?”

  “Don’t start that bullshit,” Cole barks, groaning out his sarcasm as the car pulls towards Park Avenue and begins speeding up. “I’m just worried, Blaine. It’d be nice to see you happy for a change. Get rid of a little tension.”

  I close down completely at the mention of happiness. I’m not worthy of it, nor remotely interested in feeling it. Happiness is for people who love and enjoy, not for empty shells of humans who barely consider life acceptable anymore. Certainly not for ones who have done what I have.

  “Am I taking you to home or shall we go out and—”

  “Home,” I cut in, my eyes opening as we round corners.

  Not that it is home. The place I call home now is far out of Manhattan, but this place does the job while I have to be here. The only other place I want to go to right now, I’ve recently banned myself from going to. I don’t expect my self-imposed abstinence from going there will last all that long—the draw will be too strong—but for now it seems to be having an impact on my stability.

  Cole nods, realising the brotherly conversation is well and truly finished as we carry on in silence, cruising the streets to get us back to the apartment. Until undisciplined adolescence takes over again, that is, interrupting my peace once more.

  “How long is this going to go on for?” For fucks sake.

  I sigh again, blowing the breath from my lungs and closing my eyes again in the hope that it will stop the constant badgering. As long as it needs to. As long as I want it to. Maybe forever. Who fucking knows? As far as I can tell at the moment, nothing is any better than it was eighteen months ago. Life is stalled. I’m neither moving forward nor suffering in the past. I just am. Stagnant. Lifeless.

  “You know, Annie Renforth is still—”

  “Stop, Cole,” I grate out, quietly.

  As if little Annie is the answer to any of this. I don’t need an old high-school sweetheart interfering in my life, especially one who is too sad and lonely to find herself another dick to play with, let alone play with the sort I’ve got to offer her.

  “I killed her, Cole. You think me doing another one in will help?”

  That would shut the fucker up if I had the front to say it. Not that I truly did, not physically, although I still snarl at the reasoning. It doesn’t matter how many times sense is applied to the situation; it isn’t true. She’s dead, and it’s because of me. Her life was taken from the planet because she agreed to participate in the sordid capacities of my mind, loved me for it even. I close my eyes again and listen to the memory of her breathing beside me instead of arguing his point, her frame filling the gap I’d always left open before her. It wasn’t love for me. It never had been, but it was something I’d never found before. Contentment perhaps. A body that would take me, offering me no consequences for the magnitude of my wants and desires. She’d needed it as much as me, begged me to give her more on every encounter, but then the day came when it was all too much.

  My career had been ruined that day. My life, destroyed. Hers, obliterated.

  “Perhaps if you talked to a psychiatrist about…”

  I tune my brother out further, rendering the conversation obsolete and just giving her the memories she deserves, because now there is nothing but solitude, the pretence of amusement, and the haunted memories of her skin against mine. I’m not maudlin in the after effects like some lovers would. I didn’t love her. Why would I have done? She was just a student, a beautiful one, yes, but just one who fell into the wrong pair of hands regardless of how much I tried to deny them. She’d been as screwed up as me, a godsend in some ways. Someone who held my hand and told me it was acceptable to be who I am. It wasn’t, not with her anyway. I should have been stronger and pushed her away, perhaps been more of the man I am today. Controlled.

  It hadn’t been until after the event that I’d met Delaney, and then all that came with him. The man had given me a sense of realism, sadly all too late for Eloise’s life. Still, at least I’ve learnt now to appease my nature in other ways, keeping the truly sadistic thoughts inside my mind rather than unleashing them on society. Mostly. “Or maybe just fucking something else might make whatever the fuck’s going on in your head better?”

  The statement rouses my attention again and forces me to finally make eye contact with Cole, hoping that my glare attached might stop the ramblings of a youngster in heat. What does he know of fucking? Nothing. Cole knows how to drive his dick inside something until his come drains out. That’s all. It’s not unlike the way he drives this car now. Efficiently, but not really testing the car’s proficiencies, let alone toying with its mechanics until it falls apart.

  “What? It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” No, it isn’t. Cole doesn’t know of the connection made in the middle of true fucking, or the unnerving sensation that courses through skin and bone as blood mingles and swears allegiance and responsibility. Nor does he even remotely comprehend the glazed look of fear that can be produced when human anatomy is dangled on a string to play with. Cole Jacobs just fucks. For him, fucking is a simple case of engage and release. Caress and unload. There is no thought and no purpose to the event. I’ve watched it myself, trying to understand the ability to simply fuck with nothing but the finality in mind. Whatever that ability is, I don’t have it. Unless I can deliver pain, there is nothing but a half stalled backward and forward motion. It doesn’t produce pleasure or achieve anything, nor does it give any sense of realism or entertainment. I’d rather stick my cock in an oven than fuck something that won’t let me cause agony to it while I do.

  “Something’s got to change, Blaine.”

  I turn my head away again and stare out at the road ahead, disdain proving more interesting than the effort involved in arguing. Why? Why does anything have to change? I don’t deserve change. Eloise’s lifeless, rotting corpse is proof of it.

  “If you drove a car the way I fucked a woman you might understand. Until
then, keep your fucking opinion to yourself.” That’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. Time has gone by, and the conversation has been well and truly worn out. There is nothing Cole can say to change the facts. We’re just two different animals, regardless of the shared genes uniting us. Cole will never understand, and thankfully, he’ll never have to control himself because of it.

  “Well, fuck you very much,” Cole replies, his foot pressing the accelerator to speed us forward again. I half chuckle, amused by the brotherly response to antagonism, but I’m not willing to be pushed into a battle I’ll only win regardless. I’ve spent too long studying psychology to bother with more quarrelling, and I’d rather question why I’ve never told Cole the truth in the first place. Perhaps if Delaney hadn’t come along so soon afterwards I might have needed to. Perhaps then all of this would be easier to explain, thus ensuring Cole never pushed again. But only Delaney knows. I assume, looking back, it was some misguided hope that absolution would come if I spoke about it. The man’s response had been resolute and unwavering. He’d not flinched. He’d just listened intently over a glass of Scotch and then smiled, as if the morbidity of the situation meant nothing to him. It hadn’t been absolution that came, though. It was more akin to a confession of sin, one a priest stood tall over and then offered hope to.

  I muse the night to myself as we travel on, no longer caring for the speed at which the car is travelling and in some ways wishing the fucking thing would simply collide with a wall. Nothing makes any difference now anyway. I’ve got no right to be alive while she’s dead. And the sight of Delaney in my mind, opening a door to a world I’d not known about before Eloise, while intriguing, had been as morose as the sight of her lax form between trees. It was all too late. The new visualisations shown, the sense of a place to be included within and steered by, celebrated even; it had all come too late.