Masters of the Castle: Witness Protection Program

by Maren Smith

  When she was what he deemed ‘appropriately attired,’ he grabbed her chin in his fingers and laid a soft kiss upon her cheek. “You ready for this, brat?”

  She wasn’t, she couldn’t be, but admitting that wasn’t an option. She nodded.

  “Very good. Let’s go then.” He had Champ’s leash in one hand and hers in another, and a bag slung over his shoulder filled with an array of toys and implements he had bought, most of which she hadn’t seen yet.

  Nick was gentle as he led her out the door, pulling on the leash that attached them only as much as was necessary. Her feet seemed to be on autopilot as she followed behind him, without protest. There was something about the way this night was going that calmed her about what was to come, even though she knew it would be far worse than anything she had experienced thus far.

  Down the main staircase they went, twisting and turning their way through a maze of first-floor corridors. He led her on, occasionally barking directions she vaguely remembered following back when searching for signs of Carmen and potential explosives, but she’d been working then. And right now, she discovered the details her working brain held onto didn’t extend to helping her figure out where they were going. She only knew they were going deep into the Castle interior and that Nick knew exactly where they were heading, because not once did he ever consult his map.

  A gold-plated sign on the door they stopped at read: The Master’s Table. In fine print underneath, Terri saw the words: All charges billed separately.

  “Uh,” she grunted, pointing.

  “I’ve already talked to Marshall and provided my credit card. Don’t worry; the department won’t be billed for this.”

  Why was it whenever someone told her not to worry, the tiny little strings inside her stomach all began to tighten and her nerves began to cringe? Or was that just her natural response to having Nick hold open the door, providing her with her first look at exactly what he intended for her?

  The room was long, lined with Romanesque pillars along both sides and arrayed with a massive circle of curved tables. On a high dais at the head of the room, two thrones reserved seating for the evening’s ‘king’ and ‘queen.’ Dressed all in black leathers, Marshall was already seated there beside a very pregnant brunette in a queenly blue and silver gown. Terri assumed the man and woman to Marshall’s left were probably another Castle Master and his submissive, but if so, Terri didn’t know them. Rather, her gaze was drawn to the gigantic circle of tables on the floor before the dais. Each curving section had chairs arranged only along the outer sides. People were already seated all the way around it, leaving very few open chairs for late-arriving guests. The ever-tightening strings inside her stomach told Terri that was probably not going to be a problem for Nick. When he gave a tug at her and Champ’s leashes, it wasn’t so much toward the exterior of that circle of tables that he led her. Rather, it was into the wide-open floor space within, where the only piece of furniture was a metal bar that dangled from a ceiling hoist on even lengths of chains. Heavy-duty wrist cuffs were attached to each end.

  Terri’s knees tried to buckle, but Nick’s hand caressed the length of her leash, steadying her as he hooked his fingers into her collar.

  “I see the show has arrived,” Marshall said, relaxed upon his throne high up on the dais.

  It was probably a good thing she was gagged or she might have been tempted to tell him where to shove it.

  “Come along,” Nick said, his voice low and calm and only for her.

  This was her partner. Her partner, her lover and her best friend, and—Terri suddenly thought with an epiphanous pang—for all intents and purposes here, her Dom. It was a thought that should have weakened her knees all over again, but in a way that was both terrifying and absurd, it calmed her. It excited her too. The nervous tugging strings in her belly gave way to a pulse of warmth and wanting, sending trickles of both tickling down through the folds of her sex. She would have squeezed her thighs together and halted the spread of that tell-tale moisture, but Nick had other ideas. His grip on her collar was absolute; when he pulled, she had no choice but to follow him all the way into the center of the room, into the speculative gaze of all those watching diners, and beneath the shadow of that restraining bar.

  “Do you trust me?” Nick asked. The devil could not have been more seductive if he’d tried.

  A normal person would have—should have—been afraid. Surprisingly, Terri wasn’t. She nodded instead and flames of arousal licked up between her legs as he took each of her wrists in turn, raising them over both their heads and cuffed them to each end of the metal bar.

  “Stay right here,” he teased when he was done. As if she could go anywhere.

  Taking Champ’s leash, he led the dog to the front of the room, tying him to a table leg fully within her sights. A bowl of food and water were already waiting for the K-9 there, which dropped the scariness of his obvious pre-planning and preparation to a whole new level. It was a good thing she was attached to the hoist. It kept her from falling when he reapproached her with that devastatingly slow smile of his and her legs weakened in response. The hoist chains clinked under her weight when he reached her.

  Twirling his fingers around the tassels of her pasties, he plucked them off her, completely baring first one breast and then her other. He sidled closer, his knowing gaze never breaking contact with her even as his hand slipped between her legs. Terri came all the way up on her toes, sucking a startled breath, salivating around the gag, when he pushed the G-string out of the way and touched her.

  In front of all these people, he was touching her.

  Terri froze and yet her pussy convulsed, a single wanton spasm meant to draw his fingers—if only he would slip them inside her—and be filled by him. He didn’t. He parted her folds, dipping his fingertips into wetness and spreading the heated slickness all over her. The chains clinked again at the tremor that ran through her when he found her clit and, in front of all these hungry eyes, slowly massaged it. Around and around, his fingers went while his gaze darkened with desire and his smile grew.

  “This is the kind of treatment good girls get, isn’t it?”

  Oh God. Her mouth ran dry and she shuddered all over again, because she knew what was coming next.

  Dark desire glistened in his eyes as he stared down into hers. Endlessly circling around the bud of her clit, he pulled every string inside her so tremblingly tight that she just couldn’t stop her hips from responding. She rolled them, tight little circles of her own that followed his caressing motions as she rode upon his hand, right up until he said, “But you haven’t been a good girl, have you?”

  She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until he took his hand away, severing all contact with her needy clit. The air gasped out of her, in hot spurts that struggled to escape around the red ball in her mouth, as her pussy spasmed, a hard contraction, so empty and desperate for him that it hurt.

  His arm slipped around her, at once pulling Terri’s trembling body closer and yet it was not to comfort her. She knew that the instant she felt his hand caress over her hip and down the curve of her buttocks, following the crease into the shadow between. She caught her breath all over again when he took firm hold of the plug he’d put inside her.

  “Bad girls,” he said with silken softness, “get a whole different kind of treatment, don’t they?”

  She convulsed when he suddenly gave the anal plug inside her a tug and then a not-so-gentle thrust. In front of everybody. Mortification scalded her. Her hands snapped into fists and her arms heaved, throwing her entire body into a confusion of motion. This was so not her, her brain protested. And yet, the whole of her body bucked up, not to get away from him, but to bring him closer. The tips of her nipples had puckered into peaks. When her back arched, they scraped against his chest, catching every scouring fold of his shirt and turning the slightest touch of cloth into scuff-pads. It was like someone else’s leg trying to wrap around his waist, forcing him to hold her close
r.

  While he fucked her ass with an anal plug.

  For everyone in this room to see.

  She gasped, unable to cry out, her body straining to press itself against him. But, she couldn’t stop him this time. That was the whole point of the gag. She was being punished for calling onion on him this morning, when he hadn’t done anything wrong. She could all but hear him tell her that as he pumped her ass with that plug, pulling until she just felt the pinch as the widest point verged on leaving her body and then thrusting it deeply home again.

  “This is how bad girls get punished,” Nick said, slamming the anal plug deep one last time and abruptly letting it go. With a harsh, stinging slap to each of her buttocks in turn, he let go of her.

  With a strangled and garbled cry, Terri fell limp in her bonds, her legs shaking and the hoist the only thing holding her upright. The strain pulled down her arms into her shoulders, but that minor discomfort was nothing compared to the pulsing throb in her ass—the one trying so hard to tell her that he was still back there, pounding away. Or the ache in her neglected nipples as they protested their sudden loss of friction. Or the deep, empty ache of her pussy, weeping its need to be used now in turn, every bit as roughly as her ass had just been.

  Smiling, Nick gave her pussy a spank now, too—four, six, a dozen quick patting swats that made Terri’s thighs shake and the surging need inside her sing—then he disappeared around behind her.

  Sagging, she let the hoist carry her weight, her head falling back and her eyes closing. Oh, this was wrong. On so many levels, it should have been wrong. At any other point in her life had anyone told her she’d feel so completely conflicted about whether or not it was acceptable for a man to tie up a woman and stick a plug up her ass for his own sexual amusement, she’d have said they were crazy. That putting a stop to this kind of degradation and abuse was part of why she’d become a cop in the first place and that she—she of all people—would never let anyone do anything like this to her.

  And yet, here she was. With her breasts swollen and heavy, nipples thrusting in wordless pleading for the attentions of plucking, pinching, twisting fingers followed by the nipping, licking adulations of a hot and hungry mouth. With her belly flinching, the low thump of lust filling her up the way she so badly wanted him to do. Her pussy so jealous of her ass. Her ass wishing the thing inside of it was bigger, thicker, a part of Nick and anything but holding still. And a rubber ball gag in her mouth preventing her from saying a single word to stop him, or expressing a single want, need, or thought.

  Oh… She arched her back the second she felt his fingers combing up the nape of her neck, gathering up her hair in his strong hands before twisting it up in a hair tie. Oh, this was so, so wrong.

  She didn’t want to stop anything, not even when he caught her by the ponytail he’d just made, pulling her head sharply back until the shell of her ear touched the hot, softness of his mouth.

  “You know what you’re here for,” he said, a statement not a question.

  Her throat was still too tight, but he was holding her hair too tightly for her to nod. “Mmm,” she whimpered around the rubber.

  Nick chuckled, stepped behind her, and the gag fell from her mouth and into his waiting hand with a single flick of his wrist.

  “Oh no,” he countered, dangling the offensive object by one finger in front of her face, taunting her with it. “Say it loud and proud, just like you said it back when you thought it would be funny to bring Castle security into our scene. Unless, of course, you would rather I put this back in.”

  A tiny shiver tickled up her back, amplifying to outright tingles that needled in her skin everywhere his body touched hers. Neither choice was appealing. Her arousal made it hard to remember why she’d thought such a thing would have been funny in the first place. Swallowing hard, in the loudest voice she could manage, she said, “I used the Castle safeword when I shouldn’t have.”

  “Why?” Nick demanded. “Don’t look at me.” He gave his grip on her hair a censuring shake when she tried to twist her neck far enough to see him. “Tell them. Tell everybody watching us right now, why you did it.”

  More than anything she wished she could shut everyone who wasn’t herself or Nick out of her mind, pretend they weren’t really here or that this was just some bad dream. Like the one where she showed up at high school without her homework or a single stitch of clothing. But, like that one, this bad dream was determined to stay out of Nightmare Land. She burned in the scrutiny of the Masters upon the dais and the voyeurs dining all around her, and yes, she was mortified, but she was also aroused. She had a collar around her neck, her naked breasts on bold display, a G-string that somehow made her feel far more unclothed and vulnerable than even naked could have, especially compared to Nick, who was fully dressed.

  “I-I,” she stammered, heat scalding her cheeks because she had no place else to look but directly up at Master Marshall.

  “You thought it would be funny,” Nick said for her.

  Marshall’s expression never changed. He barely blinked and he didn’t look away. Terri flushed hotter, her face burning. Her belly and pussy burning, too, twitching in synchronized, agonized neglect.

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  Letting go of her hair, the press of Nick at her back suddenly vanished.

  “You were being defiant,” Nick guessed again.

  Her pussy pulsed, but he didn’t give her time either to agree or object. Without warning or warm up, the long tails of a flogger struck full across her buttocks, wrapping her right hip to lash the side of her thigh with more than a dozen stinging tips. The impact knocked Terri up on her tiptoes. The th-whap of sound as the leather bit in was incredible. So was the sting that ignited her trembling flesh the instant Nick drew the flogger back again.

  “Weren’t you?” he pressed.

  “Yes!” Terri gasped, every inch of her desperate to feel that again. Oh, this was so not right, and yet her partner did not disappoint. He struck again, this time across her shoulder blades, first one side and then the other. Unlike the first blow, which had been hard as hell, these were feather-soft. Like the caress of gentle fingertips sweeping her skin, the tails of the flogger stroked her, back and forth, high on her shoulders, over and over again. Almost against her will, her trembling arms relaxed. The rest of her soon followed. Tipping forward, letting the hoist hold her up, Terri closed her eyes and simply felt.

  Ss-whap, ss-whap… the back and forth brush of the flogger lulled her. Right up until she heard Nick say, “Is this how bad girls are punished?”

  TH-WHAP!

  The flogger wrapped across her ass again, jolting her hips, arching her back onto her toes. Winning from her a cry that was at once both startled and dismayed. That stung like a fury, all across the center of both buttocks, around her hips to the middle of her thigh where the tips again bit in as if each had teeth.

  “You sadistic son of a bitch,” Terri blurted without thinking, all but awe-struck.

  Nick laughed. So did Marshall and just about every guest who’d heard her, and back the flogger went—ss-whap, ss-whap—lulling her with its many-fingered caresses across her shoulders. Back and forth, not quite as gentle as before.

  Her skin began to heat; her bottom was blazing. If he hit her that hard in that same spot again, she was going to make him sit in on another 101 Spanking class and, in particular, pay attention to the section regarding wrapping. But even knowing now that it was coming, her body lulled against her will.

  Lulled, and yet trembled too. It started in her thighs, a constant shaking that only grew more pronounced when those flogger tails returned, slapping her ass with a sound that echoed through the room loud as thunder, shaking all the rest of her until the hoist chains rattled.

  “God,” she gasped.

  “It’s all right,” Nick soothed, returning to her shoulders. “You can call me by my first name.”

  People laughed around them; incredulously, Terri was almost one, but already
the magic of the flogger had her locked in its lulling embrace. The back and forth across her shoulder blades was no longer gentle. Rather, it had become a mild kind of slapping and he only delivered four before lashing her ass with all the power and the strength of his arm.

  Nick had a lot of power. Even before they’d landed this assignment, she’d been intimately acquainted with his arms. She knew how strong he could be. How strong and how gentle. Her ass was on fire; back to her burning shoulders he went. And that became his pattern. Four gradually intensifying slaps to the upper part of her back, one absolutely savage th-whack that beat across her ass, jolting her hips until her pussy all but lurched in the lewdest thrust of wanting, if only it weren’t aimed at the wrong man.

  Her belly was shaking now, every bit as hard as her thighs. Throughout her body, that trembling began to creep, crawling up into her arms and down to her knees and shins. The hoist chains sang her weakness, but all Terri could hear was the seduction of the flogger falls, back and forth across her burning back before lashing her ass in another punishing embrace.

  “Say it,” Nick demanded when she threw her head back, crying out again. Louder than before.

  Dear God, was that her voice? She hardly recognized that hoarse warble as any sound capable of coming from her. It was too deep, too… lust-filled. Women didn’t—she didn’t—make sounds like that while being beaten. Sounds like that only came from the bedroom, with one hand grabbing onto the headboard and the other clutched in the hair of the man feasting ravenously between her badly shaking thighs.

  “Say it, little girl.”

  What the fuck did he want her to say? Her mind raced, but all she could think about was the next sweeping slap—two across her shoulders now, one across her ass. Faster and faster, each round falling harder than before. He really was the devil; the proof was in the fire her body now bathed in. It was in every pleasurable thump and wounded pulse that echoed from her flesh all the way down through her sex.