Masters of the Castle: Witness Protection Program

by Maren Smith

  Thankfully, it stopped on its own after three.

  Four in total, that’s what she’d taken so far. She would never earn another demerit again, not for as long as she lived. She gasped, holding on to the chair legs with all her might, desperate for Master Grimsley to let her up so she could grab her bottom and rub out the overwhelming hurt.

  “Penalty number one,” Grimsley said, soft and without mercy.

  Eden started to cry. “Please,” she begged, toes curling tight against the floor, every muscle locking down in an effort to endure what she knew was coming next. “Please not my bottom! I can’t!”

  Except she could. And even as she said it, she felt that first errant thrum of pleasure re-igniting off the burning pain beginning once more to pulse everywhere his hand had spanked her. And in the one place it hadn’t… right up until he gave her the first penalty swat.

  His hand caught her pussy squarely, though not as hard as before. It didn’t have to be to make her throw back her head, shouting and arching back her hips because she was helpless to do anything but offer herself for more while he punished her. The force with which he did it edged her closer to that point where she lost all determination to hold still and just take it. The way he expected her to. The way a good submissive should.

  She held on, but only just barely.

  “Penalty number two.”

  Not one stroke now, but six. All of which were delivered against her throbbing, burning, aching pussy, and she couldn’t close her legs.

  She shouted. She screamed. There was no such thing as holding still, and yet somehow he managed to hold on to her. Keeping control of her across his lap until it was over, and above all the tidal waves of burning, pulsing fire and hurt, she heard the low calm of his voice say, “Last penalty.”

  She wailed, but he didn’t spank her again. In a single hard thrust, he buried his fingers back inside her. Three fingers claiming her pussy. His thumb claiming her ass.

  “Penalty number three,” he said.

  God help her, she came even harder than before.

  Chapter 7

  Grimsley lay awake in the quiet of his dark room, in the softness of his lonely bed, eyes wide open and fixed upon a ceiling he couldn’t see.

  His body was thrumming, singing, that long-slumbering beast of dominance within him well and truly awake now. It kept whispering for him to get up. To leave his room and walk down the hall what few tiny steps separated his quiet apartment from the Little Maids’ dormitory. That was where Eden was.

  He knew that not because he had a copy of her employment folder or because he’d read it now twice, front to back, but because he’d had to carry her there once her punishment was done. He’d never seen a submissive flying so high in subspace, her legs just wouldn’t work. Under any other circumstance, he’d have called a runner to escort her. Grimsley did not do aftercare, but truth be told, this one time, he truly hadn’t minded. And from the moment he’d picked her up, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck, laid her head upon his shoulder and closed her eyes. It was hard not to be affected by that, but Grimsley did his best with every step that he carried her from his office to her dorm.

  There were thirty cots in the Little Maids’ dormitory, all but three of which were in use. It was dark and everyone was sleeping when he carried her down the twin rows to the narrow bed that had been assigned to her. Tiny as she was, he wasn’t even winded when he finally bent to lay her down. The minute her hot bottom touched the mattress, Eden roused enough to gasp and immediately rolled onto her stomach. Her hand went back. She touched her bottom, pale fingers against a surface of bright-blushing pink, and then she was asleep again. Gentleman that he was, he’d covered her with her blanket and gone home.

  The dormitory door would be locked now. It locked automatically at ten o’clock each night. A safety feature meant to keep the Castle’s sexiest sex icons safe while they slept. Of course, they could get out any time they liked; those with less than scrupulous morals could not get in. Grimsley had never considered himself one of those potential night-time predators, but instead of sleeping himself, he just kept thinking how he had a master keycard for that door. All the top-tier Masters did. One quick tap of his card against the lock and he could have access to her.

  He could already see himself picking his way down an aisle lit only by the evenly spaced nightlights that kept the dorm from ever falling truly dark. Until he came to Eden, still lying on her stomach in the bed where he’d laid her, her bottom still faintly aglow from a mild punishment now hours old. Perhaps her legs would still be parted with her swollen, sensually punished sex openly displayed just for him. Perhaps she’d sense it when his shadow fell over her and she’d raise her head to blink up at him, all sleepy and innocent.

  In the faint light of that dormitory, surrounded by the sounds of so many of his Maids slumbering, he wouldn’t be able to see the lovely details of her face. But, her wide blue eyes would be upon him and then her lips would part. He knew she would tremble, just like he knew she would not say the safeword. Neither the one he’d given her to use just between them, nor the Castle’s all-encompassing ‘onion,’ because stopping him wasn’t what she truly wanted.

  Stopping wasn’t what he wanted, either, but he would give her every opportunity to change her mind. To think it through as he took his clothes off as quietly as possible, baring his body to the caress of the nightlights and all the shadows in that far from private room. He would let her feel the impending consequences, let her take full ownership of them as she held her tongue, while he climbed onto the narrow cot of her bed. First one knee, making the mattress dip at her hip, and then the other as he straddled her.

  He could hear in the back of his mind her intoxicating whimper as his weight settled on the backs of her thighs. It echoed through his head, the shakiness of her breathing as he bent to bind both her wrists in the prison of his one-handed grip. With his other hand, he would reach down between them, taking hold of his cock. He was, every bit of him, as hard as these old castle stones, but it wasn’t fear that would make her tremble as he brought his mouth down to her ear.

  “Penalty number one,” he would whisper in a voice no louder than breath.

  Grimsley closed his eyes. Oh yes, he could hear every gasp and every mewling cry, just like he could feel the hungry clenching of her body as her hot sheath locked down on him right from the very first thrust. He wouldn’t be gentle. She didn’t want him to be gentle.

  She wanted to be owned. The same way everyone who came to this place of fantasy wanted to be owned. The only problem was, the Castle was a lovely vacation resort.

  Grimsley lived here.

  Forcing his eyes open, he stared sightlessly up at his own ceiling and he kept his ass in his own bed. It was the longest, most frustrating night of his life, and he spent every minute of it as hard as a damn rock.

  Eden spent the whole night in the Little Maids’ common dorm, sleeping in fitful spurts, haunted by the same damned, aggravating dream. She saw herself, lying on her thin cot of a bed, sandwiched between a girl with blonde streaks named Tasha, who kept second guessing her own reasons for coming to the Castle, and a redhead who mumbled in her sleep. She had to sleep on her stomach, too, because her bottom and the backs of her thighs were so tender that initially she couldn’t bear the pressure of her own weight on the mattress. After the worst of the discomfort faded, though, she’d stayed on her stomach. This time in an attempt to recapture the tenderness. Although that soreness had been unbearable in the beginning, Eden found she missed it the second she couldn’t feel it anymore.

  Touching her pussy helped. Her clit was sore; her labia, swollen and tender to the touch. The innermost folds surrounding the molten heat of her entrance felt scoured and raw, but she still touched herself there—gingerly at first and then with growing dismay, because the more time passed, so did the tenderness, fading away until she could hardly feel anything at all.

  Not that she wanted her body to hurt, she told hers
elf, hugging her pillow and trying not to cry, but it all felt so… anticlimactic. He’d fucked her with his fingers. First, he’d made her admit that she wanted all the same sex stuff that she’d tried desperately not to think about, and then he’d fucked her with his fingers. His cock he’d kept tightly confined within his black trousers, but she could feel it. Oh, could she ever feel it, that obvious breath-catching lump that she wriggled against until it strained and prodded at her belly and hips. She wouldn’t have said one word of protest had he dumped her on the floor at his feet, torn open the fastenings of his pants and, in a single hard thrust, replaced his fingers with his cock.

  Sadly, he hadn’t. Maybe, like most sensible people (herself included up until today) he wasn’t the sort to fall into bed with random strangers.

  Maybe you’re not his type, her mental voice of doubt chimed in. Either way, his pants had stayed buttoned and she’d gone to bed with a sore bottom, a pussy that was even more sore, and she’d done it all alone, albeit in a dorm full of fellow Little Maids, all of whom slept blissfully unaware of her restless, horny-as-hell state.

  And then came the dreams. The ones that felt so realistic that sometimes she couldn’t tell for sure which parts had really happened and which her imagination was taunting her with.

  The ones where she lay in bed on her stomach, hugging her pillow all night—those were probably real.

  The parts where she reached down between her legs, touching herself in a vain attempt to rekindle that intoxicating amalgam of pleasure and pain—those were real too. But while her hands knew exactly how to bring herself to climax, it wasn’t the same as when another person was involved. The intensity wasn’t as high and it always stopped far sooner than it had when Grimsley had been driving her body. He hadn’t cared how breathless she was or how strong the orgasm, he’d kept stroking, thrusting, grinding, rubbing her on to higher and higher peaks, apparently just so he could hear the trembling of her cry as she was swept right off those peaks in orgasm’s crushing waves.

  Then there were the parts that she was pretty sure weren’t real. Like the times when she lifted her head off the pillow to find him standing over her cot, just staring at her.

  So were the times when he stripped away his clothes, silently daring her with the blackness of his stare to whisper her safeword—or scream it—those absolutely had to be dreams. Because that was when he climbed into bed on top of her. And that had felt so real, she could have sworn the mattress actually moved around her.

  He’d gripped a handful of her hair then, pinning her head to her pillow while he straddled her from behind, the prod of his hard cock angling down between her legs. She remembered biting her pillow as that first penetrating thrust parted the folds of her tender sex. Hurt so good—it was the only way she could think of to describe how he sank inside her, slowly at first, deep as he could go, forcing her to muffle her moan for fear of waking all those other people sleeping around her. Sore as she was, damn if it didn’t feel good to be stretched upon his cock. Damn if the hard fucking pace he set didn’t set her on fire. The slapping of his pelvis against her ass was primal, the burning heat of his mouth as he alternately kissed and bit his way across her shoulders, up the back of her neck, behind the ear he liked to grip before marching her off to stand in the corner, flared the burning, aching, ferocity of her impending orgasm.

  All of that had to be dreams. It had to be, and so were the silken whispers that had woken her at least twice when he’d said, “Penalty number four. Now I’m going to take your ass.”

  The second time she heard him say that, she awoke with her whole sex twitching, electrified, begging to be filled by something—anything—other than the emptiness. This prolonged anticipation was unbearable. The sun was barely over the windowsill and everyone else in the dorm was sound asleep, but she threw off her blanket and crawled out of bed anyway.

  Eden hobbled to the bathroom with every muscle up the insides of both thighs crying at every step. Between Grimsley and all those dreams, she’d kept them open at entirely the wrong angle all night long. Hot water from the shower helped ease the stiffness. It also washed away all evidence of her body’s extended arousal—the musky smell of sexy and sticky desire. By the time she shut the water off, her soreness was mostly gone and she had talked herself into a pepped-up state of self-confidence. Today was a whole new day. Come what may, she was going to show Master Grimsley that she knew how to be professional, capable, and more than worth his time and training.

  Her hair dripping down her back and dressed in only a towel, she opened the bathroom door to find Grimsley standing there with one hand poised to knock and the other cupping his open pocket watch. They both startled, but he recovered first.

  “We are eleven minutes late for breakfast,” Grimsley whispered, looking her up and down with a frown. “Morning inspections are due in less than an hour, new arrivals must be checked in by 10:00 am and departing guests checked out by 11:00 am, and we still have to get you ready to take your mandatory first-aid and CPR certification test. Why aren’t you dressed?”

  “Well, good the hell morning to you too,” Eden snapped back. Any other day, her automatic response would have been an apology. In retrospect, an apology here probably would have gone over better than what came pouring out of her. She blamed her lack of sleep and, frankly, that was his fault, whether he knew it or not. “How was I supposed to know all that? It’s not like anyone told me—”

  Snapping his watch shut and stuffing it in his vest pocket, Grimsley caught her by the ear, hauling her right up onto her naked tiptoes.

  “Ow!” she mewed.

  “Be as loud as you like,” he growled. “The more people you wake up, the more will get to watch me do this.”

  He marched her out of the bathroom and through the long dormitory, past all the beds full of sleeping women, until they reached the main door and, more specifically, the whiteboard on the wall that listed the names of everyone in the program and which bed they were assigned to. He pointed to hers. Right beside her name was her mandatory 5:00 am wakeup time.

  “Oh,” Eden said, rubbing her ear. She stared at the time, shoulders slumping, mentally racing for how best to apologize. “Uh—”

  He cut her off. “We haven’t the time. One demerit for tardiness and a penalty for the cheek. Now, get dressed.”

  He sent her scampering for clothes with a swat to the bottom that stung even through the terrycloth towel. He stayed in the doorway the whole time she dressed, and God, how she felt every caressing minute that his eyes were upon her. Unrecovered from her fitful night’s dreaming, her already raw nerves flared to heated life. A low thump of arousal began its erotic dance between her unsteady legs. Her hands, tugging and pulling their way up the laces of her uniform corset, fumbled as she tried to hurry. She couldn’t breathe right, something that had little to do with the tightness of the lacing. Pinning her hair into a hasty bun, Eden cried a mental ‘to hell with it’ in regards to makeup, put her thumbnail right through her sexy stockings, and nearly twisted her ankle as she rushed to get back to his side in those death-defyingly high heels that were part of her uniform. She hated high heels. She’d never really worn the things before and she didn’t feel at all graceful in them. Plus, her feet must have swollen because they pinched even worse today than they did yesterday.

  Grimsley’s watch was back in his hand and impatience ticked in the hard line of muscle leaping along his chiseled jaw. As soon as she was close enough to hear him, he whispered, “That bed will not pass morning inspection and tell me I did not just watch you throw your wet towel on the floor.”

  Tottering all the way back to her assigned space, Eden’s lips locked against a wide assortment of scathing things she dared not say where he could hear it. She made her bed, kicked yesterday’s discarded panties underneath to be dealt with later, snuck a piece of gum from the travel bag she hadn’t had time to unpack so (hopefully) no one would know she hadn’t had time to brush her teeth, and then threw the towel
into the hamper by the bathroom door on her way back to Grimsley.

  No longer looking at his watch, his arms were folded across his chest and his face was a mask of grim displeasure. As soon as she was close enough, he held out his hand, palm up, waiting for… what? She didn’t know, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t for her to ‘give him five.’

  The gum.

  Crap. She should have known better.

  Bending, Eden sheepishly spat her gum into his palm. Her mouth was as minty fresh as it was going to get anyway.

  Grimsley closed his eyes. It was quite possibly the longest, slowest blink she’d ever seen him do and it was accompanied by a deep breath for patience. Taking a white handkerchief from his jacket pocket, he wiped both gum and spittle off his hand and, with another breath for patience, held out his hand again.

  “I don’t know what you want,” she said, even more sheepish because she had a feeling anybody else in this position would have.

  “Your panties,” he said, in short syllables. “Trust me, you will not be needing them for the rest of your day.”

  Mornings that started like that did not bleed seamlessly into wonderful days.

  Grimsley took her to the breakfast hall. Half the Castle might still be in bed, but if it was, it was the guest half only. The buffet lines were full of fellow employees, many of whom she recognized from her orientation. Almost half were dressed in the dark pants and black t-shirts of the security staff, including the one she almost backed into when Grimsley tried to hand her a plate and she tried to put it back again.

  “I’m not really hungry yet,” she said. “I’ll just have coffee.”

  “The foundation of every good morning is a sound and nutritious breakfast, none of which can be found in a cup of coffee.”