by Maren Smith
Her mouth suddenly dry, Brinley stared at the strap until she couldn’t bear it any more. She buried her face in her arms, the heat of her frustrated sigh blowing hot and moist back into her eyes as she subconsciously shifted her legs wider. She stopped only because she moved wrong and the twinge of discomfort that caused suddenly made her aware of what she was doing. Of the angle she’d tilted her hips into, arching her flinching buttocks up and back for the stinging lash of a strap that was in front of her, not raised up high in the air behind.
That was a really thick length of leather too. Worn. Supple, not stiff. As wide as her hand, two strokes would cover the whole of her bottom. After that, the blows would overlap and here she would be, lying vulnerable, without so much as a stitch of cloth to protect her from his punishment.
She tensed, a thrum of pleasure pulsing through her sex. …No! Belts hurt. It would be pain she felt, right from the first sharp crack to the last. Pain that swallowed her up, commanding her to take it and endure, lash after lash, so many falling that she soon lost the ability to count. In the end, all she would do was lie there, sobbing and pleading for him to stop. At least then she’d have an objection on record, and no one would hold her to blame because she was too busy orgasming to feel victimized.
…the cock that will be used…
Opening her eyes, she raised her head to stare at the larger of the two butt plugs. Just thinking about how he’d rumbled that threat shivered every wanton nerve inside her now as much as it had then. She was on the verge of coming. If she were just a little bit braver and not quite so mortified, she’d shove her hand between her legs and just let it happen. Now. While she could still feel the phantom thrust of his fingers inside her, stretching out her walls, filling her more deeply than any man’s fingers should and stimulating all those hard to reach places that continued now to clamor and weep for more.
She was dripping. She could feel the coolness of each drop sliding down her thigh, kissed until cold by the open air. She had to touch herself. She had to, the need to be touched was just too strong. It wouldn’t feel as good as it had when she’d been in wrist cuffs, but it might take the edge off enough for her to think straight again.
Forget it, she told herself. The minute she put her hand down there, someone—Rowth—would come marching back in here. He’d catch her doing the no-no, and then she’d have that to be embarrassed about, too.
She glanced at Rowth’s closed bedroom door. She was so horny, it was unbearable.
What time was it? She glanced to the window, trying to gauge the progress of the sun, but all she really knew was it was after morning and perhaps a good hour or two before supper. Had he started cooking yet? She couldn’t smell anything. Was that physical therapist fellow who apologized every time he touched her coming today? Considering Rowth face-shot the last male who touched her, maybe that was prudent manners on the part of Pra’kirians.
Her back was starting to stiffen a bit, she’d been in this position too long. She folded her arms under her, shifting her legs closer to get enough leverage to arch her back. She stretched. This sucked. She hated being stuck in bed. She hated being unable to walk. She’d probably hate being legless even worse and looked at in that light, she didn’t mind the pain in her shins so much. It was getting easier to bear, anyway. If she was careful, she could probably get up and move around the room a little, build her strength up, prepare for that inevitable moment when she no longer had to worry about Rowth or security guards posted at her door and… then what? What did she think she was going to do, make a break for it?
And go where?
It always came back to that whenever she thought about escaping. She literally had no place to go and a whole planet full of people who’d sooner kill her than help her. She wasn’t going to escape, no matter how much she wished she could. The plain truth was, she wasn’t a survival expert. She wasn’t a mountain man. She was barely an astronaut. The two family trips she’d taken into the mountains as a kid qualified as camping only because they roasted a couple s’mores on a camp fire. Once it got dark, they’d slept in a hotel! And that was on her home world. What did she know about Pra’kir? If she stayed where there were buildings and houses, then she’d be caught. If she disappeared into the wilderness… then what? She didn’t know which foods were safe to eat and which could make her sick. She didn’t know how to find water. Make a shelter. Dress a wound. What if she scratched herself and it turned into gangrene? What if it started raining twenty minutes into her escape? She didn’t have clothes. As soon as she got wet and cold, she was going to want to go home.
She could already see herself showing up on Rowth’s front porch—shivering and sniffling, hugging herself while her hair dripped. She also knew what he was likely to do about it—catch her by one misbehaving ear, scrub her down in a hot bath, feed her a supper capable of burning a spice-hole right through the tender lining of her stomach, and then she’d be marched back to her bed. If she limped, he might feel sympathetic enough to carry her. Either way, her ‘venture in the woods’ was going to end with a hot bottom and a prompt bedtime, so that all her budding resentments could start building all over again, starting the very the next day.
And if by some long-shot miracle she did figure out how to survive, what then? She’d become Pra’kir’s very own “bigfoot” monster, with police and media being called each time someone caught sight of her. Then would come hunters, guns, nets, and probably Rowth himself. She wasn’t at all sure which scenario was scarier, but she was sure she didn’t want to be Bigfoot.
She didn’t want to be a cripple for the rest of her life, either.
She poked at the tablet Rowth kept pushing at her. What was she supposed to do with this thing anyway?
Flipping it over, she tapped to bring the screen to life and then sat there, staring at the animated background full of orange circles and a slowly blinking semi-transparent white symbol of two leaning triangles attached at one corner. When nothing immediately happened, she tapped the blinking symbol directly. It vanished beneath her fingertips to the strain of cheerful, high-pitched, tinkling music. An equally high-pitched and cheerful voice declared, “Today we’re going to learn our alphabet!”
“The hell we are!” Brinley declared right back. She not only shut the tablet off again, she gave it a fling toward the closed door. The screen cracked when it hit the floor. If she could have stormed after it, she’d have stomped, kicked and last of all given the whole offensive thing a fling out the door and down the hall.
“I am not three years old!” she raged. This was all so pointless. So helpless.
She was still horny too. God damn it.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, Brinley folded over, elbows on her knees, face in her hands, that red-hot pulse of anger both diminishing and growing, joining itself with the pulse of unquenched arousal throbbing in the points of her nipples and the crux of her legs. Burning the pit of her belly, tiny twitches of muscle down there mimicking the orgasm she hadn’t yet had.
What was wrong with her that she couldn’t even lay back and take care of it herself? Right now, sans any kind of toy or vibrator. Just using her fingers, just like her caveman ancestors used to do. Was she really so far gone that all he had to do was tell her no, and she’d do it?
With a whispered whoosh, Rowth’s bedroom door slid open and she heard the familiar sound of his hard shoes crossing the polished stone tiles. There was only the briefest pause when he bent to pick up the broken tablet, and then he was walking again, coming straight to her.
Her stomach quivered and, like the plucked strings of a guitar, that vibrating hum rippled through her on tremors as ominous and they were delicious. He crossed into her field of vision when he came around the foot of the bed, and she grudgingly raised her head. Bracing herself to hate every part of this conversation before it had even begun, she locked her eyes with his as he came to a stop before her.
He showed her the broken tablet. Just like with the guard, he said nothi
ng, but everything he didn’t say was still all right there. She could see it, dancing in the black of his stare along with… something else. Something deeper. More hidden. She couldn’t quite catch sight of it long enough to say for sure it was there, much less to identify exactly what it was she was looking at. Amusement… anticipation… she didn’t know, but whatever it was, it was calculated. He didn’t need to be easier to read for her to recognize that.
So the minute stretched on. The silence between them grew heavy with her defiance and his impending consequences.
Rowth arched an eyebrow and held the tablet up a little more prominently. Oh what, was he waiting for her to say something?
She almost shrugged. “Oops.”
“Oops?’ he echoed. “You’ve done this same ‘oops’ twice.”
“Wanna see me do it three times? By all means, get me another one.”
Rowth tossed the broken tablet on the bed and stepped in so close to her that every fine hair on her body felt the shock of his nearness. They prickled upright, reaching for him the way her hands itched to do but which she refused to allow. Dropping onto his haunches, he came to her eye level and her nipples tightened. An entire afternoon’s unexpended wanting flowed through the river of her veins, growing warmer as it pooled in her belly, running molten between the involuntary squeeze of her thighs as she tried so hard to pretend she couldn’t feel the steady pulse of her desire like the suckle of a mouth directly on her clit. She blushed. She wanted to look away. She had to, and yet Brinley could not make herself move. She could only sit there, trapped in the pull of his black stare and the scintillating allure of the crooked smile that pulled at his lips.
“Apologize,” he coaxed, the gentlest of lovers even with that glitter of promised cruelty lurking in the black of his stare. “Do it now and I promise to forgive this without making you suffer for it.”
“I’m already suffering,” she grumbled, her nerves snapping and firing at the closeness of him. “What more can you possibly do to me?”
By his very look, she knew he wanted to laugh at her. A master in tight control of himself, he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You have no idea what I am capable of.”
“Is this where you threaten to show me how terrible it could get?”
“Is that what you want? For me to take you down into the cellar and bring you to penitence for all your many sins?”
Her chin hiked a little higher. “I have no sins.”
“We all have sins.” The other side of his mouth twitched up, evening out the crookedness. “Seeking out the depravity of those sins is what I do best.”
“I have no sins,” she insisted, hardening her tone.
“No, you think only to keep them hidden from me. You think my promise of pain nothing but empty words, and so you have backed into a corner where I have no choice but to establish my authority by proving my dominance and my resolve. And so, down into the cellar we will go. Just you and I. Together.”
Brinley jumped when he touched her. As intent as she had been on his voice, on his face, on not missing one nuance of subtle expression drifting in the black promise of his stare, she hadn’t noticed his hand move. Not until he lay it upon her naked hip, making every trembling nerve spark beneath the heat of his palm.
“Step by slow step,” he continued, “letting the dark, empty dampness creep in around us.” Her breath caught when he rose. Not straight up—he wasn’t standing—instead he rose over her and before she knew it, his looming subconsciously forced her to lean back. Before she knew what she was doing, she was flat upon her back on the mattress and Rowth was braced over her, his hand planted on the golden fan of her hair across the pale sheet. She tried to lift her head, but she was stuck, trapped under the weight of him. He stroked her hip. “I can already hear what you’re thinking all the way in the back of your tiny human mind. You’re thinking, ‘He won’t really hurt me.’ Those thoughts will linger right up until you see the barrel and the straps upon the wall, and then you will think, ‘He’s trying to frighten me.’” Again that crooked smile. “Your mind will race as I bend you over the barrel, tying you down—first your ankles, then your wrists—pulling you taut over the curved side until your hips are elevated, your vulnerability unbearable and you can’t move, not even to flinch.”
Her stomach tightened, the quiver in all her knotting nerves echoing the darkness of his words while his fingers trailed light as butterfly wings up the rounding curve of her hip and back down her abdomen. Those butterfly wings blazed a path of pure lust down to the vee of her mons, parting the folds, skimming her thrumming clit in the softest of caresses which yet had the jolt of a lightning bolt. Of its own accord, her back arched when he cupped her. At first, simply holding her.
“I will strap you then, softly at first. You’ll think, ‘This isn’t so bad.’ Except then the sting will grow. It will become pain. The pain will become fire. The fire will consume you and then you’ll think if only you sound pitiful enough I will show mercy and let you be.” His hold tightened with breath-taking possessiveness. “But I won’t,” he promised. “I won’t stop. Not until you have wailed your voice away and all the protest you have left will be in the tears falling into the pool you have made on the floor below. It won’t be my mercy you feel then, either. I find myself quite… enamored when it comes to watching you cry.”
He leaned over, letting his heavier weight settle on top of her. A very prominent erection pressed against her thigh where he straddled her leg. If she kneed right now, she could do a lot of damage. Probably even incapacitate him long enough for her to run for the door.
As if she could run.
As if she wanted to knee him.
Truth be told, incapacitating him was the last thing she wanted.
He released her clit and her breath caught. Parting her folds, he dipped into the slickness of her heated core. Now it was his breath catching on the inhale as his heavy-lidded eyes drifted closed, a blink that lasted a heartbeat too long. When he opened them again, the fire of his desire had turned his black eyes blacker still. His need became as obvious as the thrust and grind of his concealed cock, tenting out the front of his trousers even as he rolled his hips to rub the sheer erotic solidity of him against her leg.
“I believe I have found some commonality between our species,” he rumbled, sliding first one finger all the way into the clenching grip of her sex, then two. “You grow wet when you are aroused. Pra’kirian females do that too.”
Brinley couldn’t think. She tried to shake her head, but he had one hand buried three-knuckles deep in the indisputable evidence and his other hand braced on her hair, severely restricting her ability to wordlessly argue. “No,” she gasped out instead.
“Yes,” he countered, shifting his hand to allow his thumb to dip in wetness and play. Her hips bucked at the roughness of his skin and the pressure as he circled her ready clit, then pressed it flat against her pelvic bone. His fingers thrust deep.
“Oh God!” she cried, grabbing his arm with both hands, though not to push him away.
“I accept the comparison,” Rowth chuckled, sending all those heady vibrations straight in to tickle at her nipples, teasing the neglected tips until she arched and undulated beneath him in her need for more. It rippled through her, shivering her belly and her thighs, zipping and singing through her veins until she could feel nothing but the passionate beating of her own heart in all the sensitive flesh now hugging at his fingers.
“I’m going to kiss the tears from your face,” he told her. “I will savor the flavor of your pain and all the horror and misery that accompanies your realization that, try as you might to fight it, you have come to like what I do to you.”
Brinley shook her head, but two fingers became three and she grabbed fitfully, catching his shoulders. Clinging to him while she rode his hand.
“You will scream your want for me.”
She was ready to scream now. Her throat locked down, keeping it back, but barely. His smile was a dark as t
he promise in his eyes. His fingers stretched and filled her. It hurt, but it didn’t. It was too much, but she wanted more. She tried so hard to push him away, and cried out loud when she found herself pulling him closer instead. She wasn’t fighting his hold; she was riding it, humping and grinding on his hand. Grinding her teeth too, but only to keep from shouting in the rawness of her wanting.
The intimacy was too much. She tried to look away, but his weight on her hair tethered her to him. She couldn’t break away, no matter how she pushed or pulled, twisted and writhed. She was coming unraveled and couldn’t stop it, and he knew it.
“That’s it,” he said, as her pussy clamped down, shivering in spasms as familiar to her as they were welcome. “Good girl. Take it. Take the pleasure I allow. Come!”
Brinley lost it. On his command, she shattered under the force of her orgasm, every nerve sparking, every muscle seizing so hard it felt as if she were ripping herself into pieces. Dozens and dozens of pieces. Hundreds of thousands of them.
His smile turned predatory, and suddenly all she felt was that she had betrayed her companions. They were gone. Out of her reach, out of her ability to help, while she lay beneath this man writing to the thrust of his fingers in her cunt. Covering her face in shame, latent twitches of orgasm still wracking her belly and milking at his withdrawing fingers, Brinley lost herself to tears.
Rowth nudged her hands so he could watch them fall. “Lovely.”
She tried to cover her face again, but he caught her wrists and pinned them both to the mattress above her head.
Tapping a finger under her chin, he tilted her face to his. “Thank me for giving you pleasure.”
Tears slipping through her lashes, she clamped her lips, rolled them together, and refused to say a word.
He tapped the tip of her wobbling chin with damp fingertips. The same fingers he’d used to fuck her and make her come. Brinley tried to look away, but he forced her gaze back to his. “Look at me,” he coaxed. He must have realized something was wrong, because he’d lost his smile. “Eyes on your Master. It’s all right, Brinley.”
