Kara bent and put her hands on the low wooden stool but made no move to lift her skirt.
“Bare,” he said.
Her hands trembled when she reached back and raised the skirt up to bare her bottom. Once she had replaced her hands on the stool, Silas pushed it farther up her back and pressed on her low back. “Like that and don’t clench.”
“Yes, sir.”
Silas stepped to the side. He raised the strap and brought it down. She cried out with each stroke but he didn’t let up and she kept her position throughout her punishment. As her bottom reddened, Silas resolved himself to her cries, knowing he had to be harsh. He needed to make sure she understood what her decision not to come forward, not to trust him enough to tell him, could have cost so many and would cost her now. He could have lost Rowan tonight. The repercussions from such a loss would be great, but the one thing that surprised him most of all was what he felt at the thought of losing her.
Chapter Eleven
Although still awake, Rowan feigned sleep when Silas finally returned home. She heard him hang the strap up by the door and her bottom clenched in anticipation of her own impending punishment. He left the lights out and went into the bathroom where she heard him bathe. It wasn’t long before he slid naked beneath the covers and lay on his back.
“I know you’re awake,” he said.
“Is she ok?” Rowan asked.
“She’ll be fine.”
“I’ve caused so much trouble.”
“It’s been a long night, Rowan. I’d like for it to be over. Try to get some sleep.”
She sat up and switched on the light. “Punish me now, Silas.” A part of her wanted to get it over with while another part knew how much tension Silas carried. She wondered if they both wouldn’t feel better after her spanking.
“Rowan.”
“I want double what you gave Kara,” she said even as her belly trembled at the thought of it.
Silas looked at her, his blue eyes ringed with dark shadows, and she knew if she pushed, he’d do it and she also knew he needed to do it.
“Please, punish me now.”
Silas exhaled and nodded once. “Get the strap.”
She swallowed and somehow, as frightened as she was, her sex came alive. She slid out of the bed feeling the moist pressure of arousal between her legs, and retrieved the heavy strap by the door. She hated it, hated the raw cut of the thing, but in a way, craved it as well. Silas stood naked by the bed, his erection rigid against his belly. He took the strap from her hand and with a hand at her shoulder, urged her to her knees. Kneeling before him, she placed one hand on his thigh, and with the other, guided his cock into her mouth.
He made a sound almost immediately and one of his hands worked its way into her hair, gripping tightly as he moved her along the length of him. She swallowed the first salty droplets, wanting the taste of him, the smell and sheer strength of him, but when his cock thickened even more, he dragged her off and up by her hair.
“After,” he said. “Go stand with your hands against the wall.”
She eyed the strap, questioning for a moment her own motivation even as her sex leaked with arousal. She turned and walked to where he had gestured and placed her hands against the wall, waiting for further instruction.
“Walk backwards but keep your hands on the wall.” She did. “More, I want your back flat.”
She walked until she felt the muscles on the backs of her legs stretch and her bottom jutted out, vulnerable, waiting to be punished. She glanced at his swollen, rigid cock then at the strap as he ran it through the palm of his hand.
“Face forward and keep your hands on the wall. If you turn back or move your hands, we start at one. You’ll take forty and you won’t move an inch until you do, understood?” he asked, his voice nothing less than a quiet command.
“Yes, sir,” she said, her own voice a whisper as she tried to swallow the nervous lump in her throat. But when one hand came to pull her bottom cheek out and two fingers dipped into her sex, she gasped, all her muscles tightening. He didn’t say a word but waited until, a few moments later, she relaxed them again.
Two fingers moved in and out of her slick entrance. “When I have to punish you again,” he said, sliding those wet fingers up along the cleft between her bottom cheeks and farther toward her back hole. She gasped when, once there, he put one hand to the flat of her back and pushed it down, forcing her bottom to protrude out while his finger violated that dark, tender passage. “I’ll punish you here,” he said.
Her muscles tightened involuntarily around his thick finger and he nearly lifted her as he pressed deep and hard.
“Do you understand?”
Why her pussy was dripping she could not fathom. She should be frightened, she should want to run, but her body shuddered beneath his touch, his words, his presence and she found herself pushing her bottom to him while she nodded.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Yes, sir.”
Abruptly, he removed his finger and stepped back, bringing the first lick of the strap down across her bottom before she had a chance to catch her breath. The gasp that followed the loud sound of leather colliding with flesh was only smothered by the sound of the next stroke falling. Rowan fisted one hand against the wall and bit her lip in order not to cry out.
“Hands flat and push your bottom out. I’ll keep going until you keep it where I want it and those strokes won’t count.”
She couldn’t answer with words as he struck again and again, the weight behind each one seeming heavier, more determined. As the strikes continued to come, Rowan pivoted from foot to foot, rising on tiptoes after some, finding she had moved so close to the wall that her forearms pressed against it until Silas’ firm grip at her hip dragged her back into position. When the flesh of her bottom felt numb and raw, he moved on to her thighs and at that, she couldn’t help but call out with each stroke. Sweat covered her from head to toe and her nails dug into her own palms while she sobbed with each stroke, the punishment seeming to have no end.
“I would have given you twenty,” he said, out of breath himself as he swung between words. “But you’re right, forty is better. Forty will teach. With forty you’ll perhaps remember what your actions cost you, cost all of us. Bend deeper, hands lower. I want your legs spread wide and your ass pushed out for these last strokes.”
She somehow complied, the skin of her bottom and thighs throbbing, burning, stinging with heat. The last strokes he concentrated on the tops of her thighs. Each one called a cry from her lips as the leather bit into her tender flesh, but he didn’t once soften, didn’t once give in to her cries, and she did not want him to. She needed this and she needed for him to do it, to punish her like he was.
She only knew it was over when she heard the sound of the strap falling to the floor. Big hands wrapped around her hips, fingers digging into raw flesh and pulling her backward while the head of his thick cock invaded her pussy. There was nothing gentle in this fucking, nothing but punishment as he thrust hard and fast, the sounds coming from him base, like those of a wild animal. He stretched and fucked her and not once did he offer her pleasure. Instead he took and when he neared the end, he thrust once more, a deep, hard thrust that called a cry from him as his cock throbbed inside her, delivering his seed into her womb, their potency assured now as he held her hips tight to him, the pain of her burning bottom matched by the now raw walls of her pussy, and while he held her like this, limp and spent, he brought his one hand around and took her clit hard between thumb and forefinger and squeezed.
“Come,” he commanded as he had before. “Come on my cock, Rowan.”
Even with the pain, the heat of her punishment, she found herself moaning, lifting her hips into him, moving into his hand until an all-encompassing sensation erupted deep within her, making her lose sight and sound, forcing a cry from her lips, turning her into sensation, pure sensation, whole and complete until, finally, she was reduced to nothing and she gave herself over to him,
to his powerful arms lifting her, hugging her to his chest, the sound of his heart pounding fast against her ear, and when he lay her down to sleep, she wrapped arms and legs around him as if afraid to be without, to no longer touch or hear or feel his heat, his breath, his strap, or his cock. She slept in this cocoon of safety, enveloped and possessed wholly by him.
Chapter Twelve
“Tell me about your son,” Rowan asked. They’d been lying in bed for almost an hour and he’d thought her asleep.
Silas turned to face her and they lay side by side looking at each other in the dim light cast by the moon.
“I never knew him, I’d thought him dead.”
At her confused look, he sat up and switched on the lamp beside the bed before climbing out and pulling on his pants. He opened one of the cabinets in the kitchen and found two glasses and a bottle. Rowan sat up but winced as she did. Her bottom hurt from her punishment and she eyed the strap he’d replaced on its hook by the door. Silas sat back down and poured two glasses of brown liquid.
“What is that?” she asked, smelling the potent stuff.
“A sort of whiskey. Alcohol. Here, take a sip.”
Rowan made a face but took the smallest sip and immediately pushed it away, coughing. “Are you meant to drink that?”
He smiled and swallowed the rest of the glass. “You’ll appreciate it someday.”
“I don’t think so.”
He poured another half glass and settled with his back against the headboard.
“When I met Ina, my wife, it was on a night she appeared almost out of nowhere in the village. There was another woman with her, an old woman, who was very ill and died within days of their arrival.” He paused, taking a breath. “Ina was a breeder. She had run away from the colony.”
“A breeder? How? It’s impossible to escape.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But she had cut out her tracker sustaining a serious injury. The villagers were afraid of her and when the old woman died, took it as a bad omen. They wanted me to send her back, but I couldn’t do that, not even when the vote was taken that she should go for the sake of safety and peace within the village. But I knew what would happen to her if I sent her back.
“She was different from any woman I’d ever known,” he said, staring off away from Rowan. “Pretty and quiet with these eyes that when she looked at me, the only thing I wanted to do was hold and protect her. She was, or seemed to be, a lost soul in need of caring, warmth, and love.” He turned back to face Rowan. “I married her. They couldn’t cast her out if she was my wife.”
“What happened?”
“She was always fearful that they’d find her, that they would come for her someday. I could always manage to calm her though. She became pregnant within a few months, which seemed to soothe her and during that time, she was able to integrate with the villagers and even make some friends. I thought the past was behind us, but I was wrong.” Silas sipped his drink.
“She was about eight months along when I had to go on a trading mission. I hated to leave her but had no choice. She stayed with Rose and her husband Gregory, a sweet young couple who had adopted one of the babies cast off by the colony. They had become friendly as Ellis, the child, was just a baby then and Ina liked holding her. I had thought the colony would assume Ina was dead. That was one of my mistakes, that and leaving her unprotected. Somehow, they learned that she was here, that one of their breeders, the only one who had ever escaped to my knowledge, was living here. They came for her while I was away.”
Silas’ eyes watered and he looked up to the ceiling, rubbing a hand over his mouth, his chin, his throat. He then turned back to Rowan.
“And they didn’t just take her back. They made an example of Rose and Gregory, executing them that night in the square. At least they spared Ellis. I was told Ina tried to intervene, to save them, and was injured in the process, but she was alive when they took her. But days later, as if murdering Rose and Gregory wasn’t enough, they dumped Ina’s body in the square.”
“Oh… Silas…”
He wouldn’t or couldn’t look at her.
“The baby, your baby… you thought he had died in the process?”
Silas nodded. “The way her body looked, what they had done to her… I didn’t think the child could have survived that.”
A chill made Rowan shiver. “Silas,” she said, her eyes wide, her expression one of shock and disbelief, her soft touch on his arm warm, compassionate.
“How long ago was this?”
“Six years.”
“Where is Ellis?”
“Living with another family. She doesn’t even remember her original parents,” he said, the guilt in his eyes almost overwhelming.
“You couldn’t have known, Silas. It wasn’t your fault.”
His expression told her he didn’t accept that.
“They forgave me, the villagers. Comforted me even.” Silas sucked in a long breath and closed his eyes. “I did not deserve either.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I should have gone away with her. Instead, I hid a breeder in our village, and innocent people died because of it.” Silence hung in the air between them.
“Am I like her?” Rowan asked quietly. “Do I remind you of her?”
He smiled a tender smile. “Sometime in the way you look at me, I see her. There’s a gentleness there.”
“Do the villagers know about your son? That he may be alive?”
Silas studied her, she was clever. “Aside from the elders, no. And they won’t know until I bring him back. It will only incite fear and it’s taken us all too long to recover from what happened.”
“You carry a great weight.”
“I wonder if I had sent her back if her fate wouldn’t have been better in the end after all? Rose and Gregory would be alive. Maybe Ina would still be alive too.”
“The life of a breeder is no life,” Rowan said.
“Still, it’s life. If only…”
“The past is the past, you can’t change it. And besides, you fell in love. You have no control over that.”
Silas looked into her eyes when she said it, her voice so soft as if a feather floating on the breeze. But there was something else in her words too: a longing. And it seemed as though the moment he read that, she could not stand for it to be known. She lowered her lashes, shielding her eyes from him.
“I’ll do what I can to help you get your son back,” she said.
He reached out a hand to lift her chin. “I’m sorry for you, Rowan.”
“Do you have a photograph of him? Some proof that he’s yours?”
“Blood tests prove it. And only this,” he said, reaching for the tablet. “He’s looking away, but the resemblance is uncanny.”
Rowan looked at the photograph. She tilted her head to the side, her eyes growing wide while he watched her take a closer look.
“Silas,” she began, but just as she did, his tablet came to life.
Silas turned quickly, recognizing the alert. The colonies used a special system to alert one another of imminent news. What they did not know was that some of the settlements, including this one, had perfected the technology to intercept such broadcasts themselves.
“What is it?” Rowan asked, coming to read over his shoulder.
Silas read the alert. “Unrest.”
“What?”
He read more of the message. Small rebellions had been growing in size for the last year now but this was different, this one got farther than any had before.
“I don’t understand. Silas, what’s going on?”
“We have informants within each colony. They report critical information back to us.” Silas got up and found a shirt to put on. “There’s been unrest in some of the settlements that’s now bled into the colonies as well. I need to go meet with the elders. Stay here, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
This was good, it was what they had been waiting for. As much as Silas wante
d peace, he also knew that in order to have it, all people would need to be freed of the iron fist with which the colony ruled. The citizens within the walls were poor, their living conditions only slightly better than those of the settlements. It was only a matter of time that something would have to give. He just wasn’t sure he wanted it to give before he could get his son out. Once that happened, he’d join the rebels and fight. At this point, the thought of snapping Commander Norrin’s neck caused his fists to clench. But first, he’d need to rescue his son.
“Wait!” she called after him.
“Stay here, Rowan,” he ordered without looking back.
* * *
Rowan watched the door close behind him. “Damn it!” she cursed, picking up the glass that still had some of the liquid inside it. Holding her nose, she drank it down. The warmth after the initial burn felt good but she couldn’t understand how he sipped it as if enjoying the flavor.
She had questions for him, questions about his son. She had a nagging feeling but it couldn’t be. What she was thinking had to be a coincidence.
Some months earlier while she was living at the breeder facility, she remembered having woken from a noise coming from outside. She and Lis were sharing a room with two other breeders and her bed was closest to the window. Lis had also woken and when the sounds didn’t quiet, they both went to the window to investigate. What they’d seen they had not understood, not then and not ever. There below them under the cover of dark, two guards led a boy into the building. He carried a small toy; Rowan remembered the bear in the child’s hands clearly. They had opened the window to listen through the bars, wondering what could be happening. The only children at this facility were females and then only the breeders.
The boy had been coughing hard and a fit had him double over. He had dropped the bear and when the guard had pushed him along, he had cried and made a fuss over it. The guard had become angry and moved to strike the child and Rowan remembered Lis’ gasp. The other guard caught the man’s arm and stayed it. His words were so strange and she hadn’t been sure she had heard correctly. He had said: “Too valuable, if we damage a male of their kind, you know what will happen.”
Given to the Savage Page 14
