by Julia Sykes
“Reed, I…” Her voice wavered. “I don’t think I can.”
I continued to tease and torment her nipples, distracting her from her worries. Her head dropped back against my shoulder. “I know you can.” My hand skimmed down over her abdomen and dipped between her legs. The wetness I found there satisfied me on a soul-deep level. Her body knew what she wanted, even if her mind hadn’t yet been convinced.
Well, I would just have to convince her. I knew just how to break her down, and the sweet spot between her legs was a good place to start. I found her hardened clit and traced slow, teasing circles around it. She rocked her hips up into my touch, seeking more. I pinched the little bud in response to her efforts. I couldn’t hold in my low, satisfied chuckle when she cried out. I loved watching her come apart under my touch.
Again, I restrained myself from going further. I had promised her pain, and I hadn’t even begun to give it to her. Her little whimper of protest when I pulled away brought out my slightly evil smirk. Denying myself was worth it when I got to enjoy how much my denial affected her. She needed me just as badly as I needed her, and that was immensely gratifying. No, it was more than gratifying; it was vital.
I retrieved a cane from my kit bag. It was harsher than anything I had used on her before, but she would need more pain than usual in order to work through this.
She shifted her weight nervously as she waited for what I had planned for her. I took it as an excuse to begin. The cane whipped through the air and came down on her ass with a satisfying thwack.
“Be still,” I admonished over her shocked shout. She stopped shifting instantly. All her muscles went rigid, and she stopped breathing.
My hand stroked down her back in reward. She shuddered and sighed, and I smiled at the first signs of surrender.
I began a series of light taps of the cane on her ass, working my way from the upper curve down to her thighs. Her lovely skin flushed a gorgeous shade of pink, and her muscles loosened as she eased into the sensation. Just as her head began to fall forward with her relaxation, I brought the cane down hard, giving her three hits in quick succession. Horizontal red lines bloomed across her soft flesh, and she let out a harsh cry.
I stroked her back again, soothing her until her breathing returned to a normal rhythm. I resumed the light taps, but this time her tension remained as she anticipated the next hit. So I gave it to her. One, two, three, four, five.
She screamed and arched away from me. I resumed tapping immediately, not stopping to comfort her with my hand.
When her muscles relaxed this time, it was in acceptance. She ceded to my control over her body, surrendered to the pain. I gave her one last hit, and her head bowed with a gasp. When I reached between her legs, I found her soaking wet and swollen with need. She moaned when I tested her arousal.
“Do you have something you want to say to me?” I prompted in my darkest voice.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I slapped her pussy. “Try again.”
“Master!” She cried out my name. “Thank you, Master.”
“Good girl.” I thrust two fingers into her and found her g-spot. I relished her little shriek of pleasure as she began to contract around me, primed for her orgasm by the release the pain had brought her.
“Thank you, Master,” she panted out as she came down.
I growled out my satisfaction and freed myself from my leathers. Denying myself for so long had made me painfully hard, but it was a small price to pay for what I had earned from her.
I drove into her fully, forcing her up onto her toes with the harshness of my entry. She fluttered around me, already on the edge of another orgasm. She fit me perfectly, in every way. As I began to move within her, I teased her clit with one hand while I tweaked her nipples with the other.
She exploded again, and her pleasure brought about my own. I rode her savagely as I emptied myself into her tight heat. My arms tightened around her waist, holding her up so that the cuffs didn’t bite into her wrists when her body sagged against me, sated and satisfied. My breaths came in harsh gasps that teased through her hair, making the coppery strands float before my eyes. I was just as caught up in her as she was in me.
Her head turned, her lips blindly seeking mine. “I love you, Katie,” I murmured against them before I claimed her mouth. I kissed her long and deep, until she quivered in my arms, her body heating up for me again.
When I finally pulled away to allow her the chance to breathe, she said the sweetest words I had ever heard. “I love you, Master.”
The End
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Want to know more about Kathleen and Frank’s twisted relationship? Check out their story in Mentor.
A beautiful, nameless man took me. He wants to break me and make me his. He treats me like his plaything, but I suspect I mean more to him than idle amusement. The monster needs me.
What's truly terrifying is that I'm coming to need him. He sets my body on fire, and I crave his touch.
When trapped in the dark, the blacker shades of lust can be confused with love...
Excerpt
Prologue
The Mentor
April 20, 1978
I slinked further into the shadows, concealing myself in the darker shades of night. The tremor in my hands came not from apprehension or hesitancy, but from anticipation.
I waited for my victim.
Soon, the darkness within me would be released, the pressure siphoned off. She would take my darkness. I would impart it to her, inflict it upon her.
I would be able to breathe again.
Seeking to still my shaking, I immersed myself in the memory of the first and only time the enigmatic pressure within me had been released.
Screams. Blood. Death.
Power. Freedom. Absolution.
I realized now that I hadn’t really been alive before the day the light left my father’s eyes. His lifeblood spilled over my hands, and the dulling film of perpetual apathy that coated my psyche dissipated. The world became sharp, my senses impossibly heightened. It was the closest thing to human emotion I had ever experienced. The pleasure that flooded me was the nearest approximation I could imagine to what normal people called joy.
But now the memory of that hyper-awareness – that sensation of being alive – tormented me as much as it pleased me.
No sooner had I disposed of my father’s body than the sensation began to fade, and the dim monotony of my detached existence began to seep back into me. Now that I was aware of it, the dimness built, gathering slowly into darkness. My darkness.
It coiled within me, slithering through my veins and rendering my very pulse sluggish. It would overcome me, would consume me from the inside out, if it didn’t find release.
Killing again wasn’t an option. I might not have a formal education, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t going to leave a trail of bodies behind and risk being caught.
If I kept her with me, she could take my darkness regularly. I would allow it to consume her rather than me. I would train her to like it. Otherwise, my darkness would devour her completely, and I would have to find a new toy. I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself by taking more than one woman.
Kathleen Marie White wasn’t special to me in any way. No one was special to me. I had chosen her because she was convenient and she suited my needs.
Like me, she practically lived at the Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame. She had come here to study for the last four years, and even though I was a few years younger than she, I had been coming here for much longer than that.
I wasn’t a student, but I had always found solace at the library. The desire to avoid my father and my disinterest in mundane human interactions made it an ideal place for me to hide out. People couldn’t speak in the library. The pointless tedium of social pretentiousness was muffled within those walls.
As always, she was th
e last to leave the library on a Saturday night. The light of the streetlamp near the entrance caught the reddish facets of her dark hair, crowning her head with a crimson halo for the space of a moment.
My mind conjured up images of how I might draw that blood red shade from her body in other ways. Something unfamiliar stirred low in my gut in response, and my pulse jumped past its normal tempo.
Interesting.
I had intended to use sexual torment against her. Sex held little appeal for me; it would simply be a means to an end. But in that moment, I understood its allure. When used as a weapon, sex might be pleasurable. The sudden stiffening of my cock told me as much.
I clenched my fingers into hard fists, willing their increased trembling to stop.
Control.
Control yourself. Control the darkness.
Soon, I would control her, and the darkness would never rule me again. I would be alive. More than that, I would revel in the heady power I had experienced as my father’s life slipped away under my hands. She would give that to me daily.
She turned from locking the library doors, and I caught sight of her face. It was lovelier than I had realized. She wasn’t perfect by conventional standards, but the hint of a contented smile that played around the corners of her mouth gave off a sense of innocence that was undeniably appealing. Her deep green eyes were large, only further lending to that vision of purity.
When I had watched her over the last four years, her beauty had been obscured by unconscious nervous habits. Usually, a small furrow persisted between her brows as she bent over a book, and her full lips were thinned while she chewed at a pencil.
I had chosen her for that very reason. Drive and determination were evident in every line of her body as she studied furiously every day. She thought she could shape her own destiny if she just worked hard enough.
But her fate was no longer hers to govern. What she surely considered her greatest assets – her tenacity and intellect – were the very qualities which would lead to her ruination at my hands.
There would have been no satisfaction in breaking a weak woman. Kathleen Marie White was exactly what I needed.
No, it was more than that. More than need.
Want.
I wanted something. The realization was jarring, the sensation utterly new. My lips curled upward in a semblance of a smile, and my hand was rock steady as I reached into my pocket to retrieve the ether-soaked rag.
I would take what I wanted.
Mentor is now available!
Want to know what happened to Carl Martel? Check out Lydia and Smith’s story in Knight!
Abducted. Drugged. Broken. I became a plaything, a possession. If I did ever have a name, I don't remember it now. Slaves don't have names.
My new Master stole me away from the man who tormented me. He saved me and took me for himself. I've found my salvation in his obsession, my freedom in his captivity.
Will his brand of rescue leave me more broken than ever?
Excerpt
I used to think pain wasn’t real. At least, not in the sense of being a tangible thing. It was just the result of my primal brain’s in-built response to inform me that damage was being inflicted on my body. If I trusted the person who was giving me pain, then I knew he wasn’t going to damage me. If I understood my pain, it stopped being something to fear and became something… interesting. I could master the hurt and ride the high of the adrenaline that flooded my system. I could enter subspace, that gloriously blank place where nothing existed but the sweet endorphins released by the pain that I embraced.
But then He came along and turned that all on its head. He enjoyed administering pain to torture, not to pleasure. And I couldn’t trust Him not to inflict damage. He claimed He didn’t like it when I forced Him to damage me; He didn’t want to mar his property. But that didn’t mean He wasn’t willing to do so in order to get what He wanted.
I had tried to fight the pain for so long, to hold on to my conviction that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let it. But He gave me so much that it overwhelmed me, claiming all of my senses until my whole world was agony. I was perpetually trapped in some twisted, inverted form of subspace where nothing existed but the pain, but it gave me no pleasure.
My only reprieve was the sweet reward that came with the merciful sting of a needle. If I was good, if I obeyed and screamed prettily enough, then He would give me my reward. I lived for it; that was the only time I was alive.
But I had become so dependent on it that now the denial of my reward was just as terrible as the agony He gave me. It had been so long since I had gotten my last fix.
Tonight, Master was testing me. He wanted to see just how obedient I was. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing just how thoroughly He had broken me.
I was broken. And I didn’t even care. All I cared about was my reward. Right now, my need for it was so acute that my insides were twisting and my skin was on fire. I was desperate to give Him whatever He wanted so I could get my fix. If He hadn’t ordered me to stand in the corner quietly and wait for Him to return, then I would have been curled up on the floor sobbing.
But I wasn’t ensconced in the stark loneliness of the pitch black dungeon that had become my home, and I didn’t have the luxury of going to pieces. His order for my silence denied me even the right to voice my agony. He had brought me out in public for the first time, and I recognized the place where He had brought me as a BDSM club. He would be able to torment me here in front of dozens of strangers, and no one would stop Him.
The thought of shouting out a safe word or screaming for help didn’t even cross my mind. All I could think about was when He would come back and doing my best to please Him so that He would grant me my reprieve. He had been gone for so long, and I was starting to panic.
And now a strange man was talking to me, threatening to hurt me if I didn’t tell him my name. But I didn’t have a name. If I did ever have a name, I didn’t remember it now. I was a slave, and slaves don’t have names.
Knight is now available!
Want to know more about Sharon, Reed’s partner in the New York unit? Check out the story of her rocky romance with Derek Carter, owner of Decadence, in Rogue!
I’ve never been a failure. I don’t allow myself to make mistakes. I’ve lived my life to painstaking perfection.
Until now.
I can’t seem to get anything right. And when you work for the FBI, mistakes can cost lives.
Busting BDSM club Decadence for drug trafficking is my chance to prove myself. And no pushy Dominant is going to throw me off my game, not even sinfully sexy club owner Derek Carter. I have to keep him close in order to uncover his secrets, but keeping him close to my body while guarding my heart is proving more difficult than I ever imagined.
He might just be my biggest mistake yet.
Excerpt
One corner of Derek’s mouth ticked up as he turned his full attention back to me. With the bar at my back and his large body in front of me, I was struck by the sudden sensation of being trapped. He was so close that the heat of him teased across my skin. I shifted my weight on my stool, angling my body away from his in a futile attempt to escape that intoxicating warmth. His twisted smile became more pronounced.
“I don’t appreciate being labelled as creepy, but I’ll easily admit that I’ve acted like a total ass. Can I buy you a drink to begin to make it up to you? I really can play nice. If that’s what you want.”
The playful spark in his eyes held a darker edge. That lustful light let me know that he would rather not play nice when it came to me. And damn it if that knowledge didn’t make an answering darkness coil deep within me.
“As a Dominant, he’s a master manipulator. He won’t need to knock you down to get you flat on your back.” Smith’s warning skimmed across my mind, but it didn’t fully douse the unhealthy heat inside me.
Careful, Silverman.
“You’re being creepy again,” I pointed out lightl
y. “But I do appreciate a man who can admit when he’s wrong.”
He laughed, a rich, breathtaking sound. It illuminated his features, wiping away any traces of cocky amusement or frustrated ire. He looked… free. His melted caramel eyes were golden and almost boyish in their genuine humor.
“You’re a bit of an ass yourself, you know,” he informed me when his laughter died down to a chuckle. “Most people aren’t so brazenly impolite, even if the person they’re talking to hasn’t been so nice.”
I shrugged, but I couldn’t hold back my smile; his pleasure was infectious. I might have been offended if it weren’t for the fact that he was right: I had been acting like an ass. If the accusation had come from Smith, he would have earned himself a slap. But from Derek, it wasn’t an accusation so much as playful banter. He made the insult sound like an admiring compliment.
“I prefer the term ‘blunt,’” I told him with a grin. “Maybe even ‘ballsy,’ if you want to be crass about it.”
“Oh, I can be crass, babe. I like to talk dirty.” He winked at me.
“Creep.” My pointed allegation was ruined by my amused smile.
“Damn.” He smothered his own smile, doing his best to school his expression into something contrite. “I promise I can be good.”
