The multitude of chains hanging down from the ceiling made my mouth go dry. My entire world slowed to a standstill, even the beating of my heart seemed to pause. A large cross dominated the center of the room. This was my initiation into X’s twisted world. Everything that came before had only been a prelude, but this, that cross, those chains, this was his domain. The hood and restraints on the plane had been child’s play compared to this.
I scanned the crimson walls. Implements of torture hung on hooks screwed into the walls. Whips of every variety were placed with the precision of an obsessive mind. Floggers and crops, paddles and canes had been laid out according to type and size. Chains and cuffs and shiny metal devices I could not identify occupied shelves and hung from pegs along the walls.
My gaze fluttered around, terrified of the next revelation, but I couldn’t stop looking. If I could take everything in, then I could destroy the power of the unknown. Blindfolds, hoods, gags, feathers, dildos were all represented. Chains, thin, thick, short, and long, hung from the ceiling or were attached to the walls. Cages lined the far wall and some even swung from the ceiling. Surrounding everything were red leather couches, chairs, and other oddly shaped furniture forming wedges and rolls. All of them had rings attached to them.
I teetered with the undeniable need to flee, but that route had been firmly denied. There was nowhere to go and I wondered if I would ever see the light of day again. What horrors did X have in store for me? What must I endure? My throat constricted against the thread of panic welling up inside me. I struggled to swallow, but my tongue felt thick.
“Come slave.” Ben pulled me to the center of the room.
My voice cracked. “B…Ben?” Turning to him for support made no sense, but reason had left me many heartbeats ago.
He hissed. “Silence, slave!” To my horror, but not much to my surprise, he brought me to the center of the room. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do not forget what name to call me by, and don’t speak unless asked a direct question. This begins now.”
I nodded as he unclipped my wrist and attached it to the cross. He spun me to face the cross and attached my other wrist to the last support. The wood pressed against my belly and upper part of my hips.
“You wait for your master, slave.”
Do I have any other choice? As if confirming everything Ben said earlier, a heat of arousal flooded through me with the thought of seeing X again.
I listened to Ben’s footsteps as he left and then the deafening silence of the room folded around the beating of my heart. This was it. My end would come in this room. Seconds stretched to minutes. My breathing deepened then turned frantic as I tested my restraints. Ben had left my feet free, but it didn’t matter. My arms spread above my head, shackled to the cross, I was helpless. My fingers clenched and unclenched with each of my breaths, fast at first and then slowing as I gained control over my breathing.
I wouldn’t let panic rule me. There was nothing I could do about my situation. The only thing I could control was myself, so I would control what I could.
A door opened, not the set of double doors behind me, but a door to the side. I didn’t have to look to know who approached. It was X. I knew his step intimately. He came to stand behind me and stroked my throat. I jumped at the warmth of his skin. His fingers clamped down, wrapping around my neck. I winced as I attempted to swallow beneath the constriction. The heat of his breath whispered against my ear.
“I won’t apologize for hurting you. I can’t deny it’s what I need. I thought I would be able to hold off, that I would be strong enough, but you ignite a darkness I can’t control.” His hand tightened against my throat.
I gasped as he squeezed the soft tissues of my neck. My body reacted to his touch, burning, melting, igniting beneath his undeniable power. He pivoted around the cross until he stood before me. The heat in X’s eyes acted as an accelerant to the fire smoldering in my belly, turning the embers there into a blaze. Within seconds he incinerated me with his gaze.
“Good,” he said as he cupped my cheek, “you feel it too.”
Such a tender move, but with him it was a move engendered to establish dominance. His hand tightened and then released around my throat. Gulping air, I gave a strangled groan. I lost even more ground in our battle as he collected my hair, twisted it together and brought it forward over one shoulder with a tug. I couldn’t help but shiver, even though the room was more than warm enough. I stared into the eyes of a man blinded with lust. My attention skittered to the wall of whips and crops.
“We’ll get there.” He turned to follow the path of my gaze. His finger pressed against my lips. “Ben told me what you did. Thank you, it will be rewarded, but first you need correction for your disrespect. And of course, you have your punishment later tonight to endure.”
Damn, Ben. I closed my eyes as hot pinpricks threatened tears. This was the thanks I received? X stroked my throat with his thumb.
“Pain doesn’t always need to come with discipline, Raven. With time, I’ll show you how pain becomes pleasure.”
Had X finally snapped beyond reason? I wasn’t permitted to speak. If I broke one of his rules, would he hear me? Or would it push him to punish me faster? I struggled not knowing the rules of this world. There was so much to learn. I didn’t know how brave, or how strong I could be. Looking at the wall of torture devices, I prayed my pain threshold was higher than I imagined.
His hand dropped to my breast. “You’re beautiful, and perfect for me; the other half to make me whole.” He brought both hands to cup my breasts, hefting their weight.
I fisted my hands as my nipples peaked at the stimulus. My back arched, pressing my breasts into his hands. A smile tugged at the corners of his impeccable eyes.
“God, you’re so responsive. We have just a few moments before our company joins us…”
I breathed shallowly as my body betrayed me.
What was I afraid of?
He kissed a tear on my cheek. “Don’t worry, Raven, I will not force you. There’s a promise hanging between us, one you can’t escape.” He traced the line of my jaw and lifted my chin as tears poured out of my eyes. He vented a deep sigh. “For what I must do to you, you’ll hate me. I have a role to fulfill, it’s everything you believe of me, but not who I am. Believe me when I say I would rather die than do this to you. I ask you to forgive me.” His words cooled me off. “Don’t hate me for what happens next.”
I pulled away, my heart pinching with pain. He made no sense. Closing my eyes, I berated myself for my weakness. Whoever X was, he had mastered the female body and he had certainly mastered mine. I was a fool, because I wanted to believe him and a piece of me already forgave him.
I despised the power he held over me. This man was my captor, not my lover, and I’d forgotten that along the way. It was time to take back control of my mind, if not my body. I had lost so much, so fast. I couldn’t believe I had caved under his dominion and shuddered at how far I had fallen. I sagged in my restraints with defeat.
“I don’t hate you. I hate myself.” I said it in the faintest of whispers, never meaning for him to hear. Although it was against the rules to speak, saying it aloud made it real. And I certainly needed to hear the truth.
“What?” The hiss of indrawn breath alerted me I hadn’t said it quietly enough.
“Nothing.”
“You hate yourself? Why would you say that?”
I turned my cheek, avoiding his demands.
“Answer me.” His voice lowered, a dominant tone, the one full of command that turned my insides to jelly.
“No.” I shook my head and ignored his command.
He could do whatever he wanted. I’d already given in, what more could he take? He’d stolen my dignity, and would make me beg for him to take me fully. I would, too, as sick as that was. It was simply a matter of time. I was ruined, but I would not give him my mind. He already had everything else. We both knew what would happen later tonight. I had lost this war. I would beg
and he would take everything.
“Raven, don’t deny me.”
I glanced back at him. “Or what? You’ll whip me? Find some other way to punish me? Have sex with me in front of my father? Or maybe you’ll sell me to some other sadistic freak?” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You win. I’m not going to fight you. I’m yours.”
He pressed his forehead to mine and breathed out a sigh. He shook his head, rocking his forehead against mine. “Life is not so simple, slave.”
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” He lifted his head and our eyes collided in an intimate embrace of wills.
I breathed out, releasing some of the tension in my body. “Sometimes you call me slave. Sometimes you use my name.”
His eyes hardened, and he drew back. “Don’t.” The muscles in his jaw clenched as if I’d hit upon a nerve. He turned away and walked to the far wall. “It means nothing.”
He ran his hand along the line of whips hanging from the hooks, pausing to caress the long bullwhip and cat-o-nine tails. My stomach clenched, then relaxed as he moved down the wall, fingers trailing over implements of torture I wanted nothing to do with, but which he seemed intimately familiar. He stopped at a length of hard flat leather, nearly the length of his forearm, something between a crop and a paddle. He lifted it off the wall and hefted its weight in his hand.
“This should do.” How easily his voice carried in the room, although I was sure he projected the callous tone for my benefit. He made a show of walking back to me, carrying his chosen weapon before him. “Ben mentioned you failed to call me Master.”
I drew in breath, certain what came next. No way was I going to break another rule.
“You call your father Z. Is this not so?”
“Yes, Master.”
“When did this begin?”
“I was young. Maybe six or seven.”
“But to his face you call him Papa?” He slapped the leather thing in his palm. A solid thwack sounded in the room.
I jumped at the sound. “In front of others, I do. When it’s just him and me, I don’t call him papa.”
“So, Z? The letter? It’s derisive?” The arch of his brow told me X already knew the answer to his question. I was so screwed.
My attention latched on to the device X held. I couldn’t make myself answer because I knew what would come next. Fear kept my mouth closed. My lower lip trembled. X stepped up to me and lifted the flat leather rod in front of my face.
“It’s called a tawse.” He pressed it to my lips. “Kiss it, and when I’m done, thank me.”
Prickly heat, the precursor of tears, burned behind my lids. My lips trembled as I kissed the leather. I despised the surge of heat blooming between my legs. This thing within me that wanted X to hit me with that thing confused me as much as it aroused me. I couldn’t understand how I wanted it—him—so badly.
X stepped behind the cross and rubbed the leather tawse up and down my back. “There’s something you need to learn about sadists, Raven,” he said. “Pain excites me. I like the power in forcing your body to turn pain into pleasure.”
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
I screamed.
His breathing came hard and fast. His words turned frantic, guttural, primal. Deep breaths panted in my ear. “For me, nothing gets me harder than dispensing pain. Every time you disobey...” He pressed the hard length of his erection against my hip. Then stepped away from me.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Deep sobs burst from my lungs as intense sensations flared to life.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
My bottom pulsed with pain, hot lines throbbed with each beat of my heart, radiating out with white hot fire. I sobbed and cried for him to stop. I begged him to end it. He unchained me, flipped me around, pressed down on my shoulders and forced me to my knees.
“Nine strikes with a tawse, Raven, and my dick is ready to explode. This is what you do to me. When I punish you, my cock swells with need. So, when you disobey, you’ll feel the bite of my whip, then see to my release when I’m done.”
I glanced up. Big mistake. Fury and lust swirled in his eyes. The double doors to the Hall of Horrors opened wide and Z's clipped voice called out.
“Starting without us, boy?”
Chapter Seventeen
My father puffed out his chest. My degradation was complete.
“Glad to see you’re making use of your new slave,” my father said.
“I’ll be with you in a moment.” X glanced down at me, a look of regret filling his face. “String her up in the corner, out of the way.”
“I thought she was to be our entertainment for the evening,” Z said from one of the leather chairs lining the center circle. He sounded disappointed and pouty.
If my father were closer, I would spit in his face. As it was, I had to endure his derisive comments and do nothing.
His associates lounged in identical chairs around the room, forming a semicircle with the cross at the center. Ben and Mel had joined them, leaving two leather couches unoccupied. A quick glance around the room revealed Chad standing guard at the set of double doors. Bay marched toward me.
I couldn’t help but flinch. I’d been lulled into thinking I was safe, untouchable even, in X’s home, but everything about this reminded me what my true status was. I was a prisoner and a slave.
“Come, slave.” Bay said as he collected me at the cross. He looped the leash around his wrist and headed for a far corner.
X headed to one of the empty couches. “So eager to see your daughter whipped?”
“I’ve been itching to see the bitch strapped since the day she was born.”
My step faltered, not because of the cruelty in my father’s voice, but rather at his eagerness.
“Then why didn’t you do it yourself?” X fell into the couch with a sigh. “Damn that felt good.”
Z didn’t answer. If a look passed between them, I certainly didn’t see it.
Bay took me to a far wall and locked me into one of the many chains hanging on the wall. He leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Whatever happens, keep silent.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question. Whenever someone said be silent a hundred questions pop to mind.
I had thousands of questions. Right now, most of them had to do with X, and I had a fair idea he knew it too. His laser eyes pierced through the dimness of the room and cut right to me where he stopped my heart for a beat. Then he glanced away and responded to a question one of his guests asked. The taste of him filled my mouth.
Bay pressed a finger to my lips. “I’m serious. Already, you’re to be whipped. Don’t force Master Xavier into punishing you on top of that. Not in front of guests, and not in front of your father.”
“I don’t understand.” Nothing about this made sense.
He pressed against my lips. His eyes shifted left as his shoulders tensed. “Not another word. Trust your master.”
“Bay?” The hoarse whisper in my voice pleaded with him to offer some sort of answer, but all I received was firmer pressure on my lips.
He shook his head.
“Bay,” X barked from the comfort of his couch. “Go fetch the slaves.”
Bay rolled his shoulders. “Yes, Master Xavier.” He gave me a significant look, turned, and gave X a slight bow.
Z waved to the man sitting next to him, a man with curly black hair and a dark pointed beard. “Derk, go with him.”
“Sure thing,” Derk said.
Bay walked to the small side entrance X had used when he entered the room. He gestured to Derk. “Mr. Paulson, the slaves are this way.”
As they left, X leaned back in his couch. “Can I interest you in something to drink?”
Z laughed. “Would love some Scotch…neat. What about you Braxton?”
The man sitting to Z's left rubbed his hand over his bald head. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. “Nah, if I start drinking now I won’t be able to get it up after the fi
rst time. I plan to fuck all night long. I’ll stick with water. How about you Mark?”
The remaining man, younger than Z, sandy brown hair, with a body that had once been fit but now sagged with a pot belly, turned to X. “I’d love a beer.”
“I’ve tried to turn Mark into a Scotch man, but he won’t give up his beer,” Z said with a sneer.
Ben and Mel gave their drink orders. The shift in the dynamic between X and my guards confused me. What was going on?
X flicked his wrist, giving some signal. Nothing happened for some time, then men appeared carrying trays with the requested drinks. I recognized a few of them from my one foray into the kitchen.
Z turned to Ben. “Now, Mr. Chambers, tell me about this resort of yours. I have to tell you I’m entranced.”
Ben snorted a laugh. “It’s been a dream of mine for years.” He took a sip of Scotch, lifting the glass in salute to Z. “Having a personal slave is a privilege few can enjoy,” he said with a wistful expression. “And having a well-behaved slave is a rare pleasure. I had heard of your slave acquisition program. That, combined with Xavier’s conditioning program and I figure I’ll get the finest and most well-behaved slaves my money can buy.”
Z toasted Ben. “Sounds like you’ve done your research.”
Ben took a sip. “Difficult research.”
Mel snorted. “Expensive.”
Z turned his attention to Mel. “You two are in business together.” It was a statement. Not a question.
“I’m the tech support,” Mel said. “I handle all issues of security, client screening, and overall resort security. Our clients want to ensure their safety and anonymity.”
Braxton nodded. “Don’t we all?”
“My clients are more interested in the fantasy aspect of slave ownership. They want to live on the dark side for a weekend, then go home to their wives and children.”
Mr. Bennett drank his beer and gave Ben a sneer. “Why not hire prostitutes?”
Ben sat up straight. “For the prices I charge, my clients want to know they’re purchasing the real thing. I’m not some fantasy sex shop making a quick buck.”
She’s Mine: A Captive Romance Page 13
