Dangerous Ties

by Devyn Quinn

  He laughed without humor. Even after all these years, the sting of what an unseeing prick he’d been smarted damned badly. “I had nothing but what money can buy, and the things I bought never made me happy. Something you know all about.” He allowed another punishing swat, one that left her cheeks fanned with deep pink while it elicited a whimper and a wriggle. “Eight hundred dollars for a pair of shoes when we both know you’d rather go barefoot.”

  Tsking, Sebastian gave the crotch vine a tug. Her pelvis ground against his thighs, connecting her juicy sex with the solid ridge of his erection. He curbed his groan even as hers pushed past the stick. Damn you, they were more than shoes!

  Pulling the crotch vine taut, he demanded, “Tell me.”

  No! Leia checked the grinding of her hips as her fury resurged, along with it the shame. You can leave me imprisoned here forever and I won’t share a word.

  “Because I didn’t protect you? I allowed Ken to beat you?” Self-disgust he couldn’t keep inside colored the words. He’d called her weak, but he’d been just as weak. Just as fearful.

  How can you know that? How can you hear my thoughts?

  He couldn’t be weak now, couldn’t cave to her sudden rush of panic. Keeping the crotch vine pulled taut, he worked it back and forth across her clit. “Nothing is withheld from your master, slave.”

  And nothing was her response.

  She didn’t think, didn’t feel. Didn’t even moan or whimper when he increased the tension on the vine, all but torturing her clit with the intensity of carnal pressure. Wetness soaked through his jeans after nearly a full minute. At first, he’d thought she come silently, inertly. Then the emotions barreled through her, hot and raw, embraced in a war between revulsion and gratitude, and he knew it was tears of confusion swimming in her eyes, drenching his thigh.

  God, I hate you.

  “So you’ve said,” Sebastian acknowledged, keeping his tone stern while he fought the urge to comfort. “As I’ve said, you don’t hate me, Leia. Sometimes, though, I hate myself. I hate the weakness that made me stay away while Ken abused you.” Just as he hated the weakness that resurfaced against his will now, giving him pause for his next move.

  Crushing that frailty with a mental vise, he grabbed hold of the vine around her waist and hoisted her off his lap. The pressure from the vine sliced downward once more, pressing fiercely against her clit and raising another long, keening whimper around the stick as he planted her on her feet. He left her standing for the space of a heartbeat—a beat he felt thick and sour in his throat. Then he shoved a hand at her back and sent her sprawling for the dirt.

  Leia saw the dirt coming long before her body connected with it. She would have had time to protect herself, to avoid a painful collision. She would have if her mind, body, and soul weren’t condensed into the tiny bud of her clitoris, consumed with the need to come. She landed as she had last night, prone on her belly with her breasts, already so heavy and aching with arousal, taking the brunt of the pummeling. The breath hissed from her mouth. The stick came out with it, spitting onto the dirt.

  Sebastian’s weight came over her, his knees pressing hard against the backs of hers. She expected him to growl at her, to shove the stick back between her lips while he produced his vine whip and swatted her for her disobedience. Instead, his torso pressed against her spine, muscles so solid and firm and sinfully, deliciously good.

  Bringing his head low, he brushed aside her hair. The ends of his own hair teased along her nape as he whispered hotly, “This is how I earn your forgiveness for my failings. By reminding you what was. What should never have stopped being. What has always been more than a wet dream.”

  The press of his upper half lifted, the shivering warmth of his breath leaving her neck, until only his knees trapped her in place.

  His knees, his words, and his actions.

  “No panties,” he uttered in a sickened tone.

  A mock sickened tone, Leia recognized. Acknowledged. Trembled as her blood fired hotter in wait of what she was suddenly so certain would follow.

  The flat of his palm connected with her butt seconds later, swatting the cheeks and leaving a sting. Not a delightful sting like that day with Ken at the stream. But a needful one, a hungry one. An urgent one.

  “What’d I tell you about not wearing panties, slave?”

  Was that day at the stream not a memory? Was it real? And what of the phantom thoughts? Were they not phantom at all, placed there by Sebastian or any other, but her own dearest wishes, her own darkest desires?

  She didn’t know. Wasn’t sure of anything any longer. Not more, at least, than the white-hot thrill of unspoken promises pushing through her. Not promises made by her dead ex, but those made by this undead god of a man.

  Her pussy liquid with need, her mind almost desperately demanding her to play her part, she panted out, “S-sorry, Master. I forgot.”

  “I’ll have to make certain next time you remember.” Glinting command and dark promise edged his words, lifting goose bumps on her skin.

  The weight of his body left hers then, quickly replaced with the weight of a lone booted foot against her back. She didn’t want to fight back—not knowing the lash of a belt would fall faster if not for her struggles. She did it anyway, stuck with the choreography of recent dream or latent memory, fighting the pressure on her spine, struggling to push herself off the ground and away from the tickling sweep of dirt against her lips.

  Material swooshed against material. On cue, Leia stilled. It wasn’t the crack of leather that split the air, but the unforgettable short, quick snap of his vine whip.

  “Oh…” Her pussy surged, no minor fluttering of expectation, but the deep, delicious furling of near-imminent orgasm.

  Unbridled tension and excitement burst through her, clawing at her belly and breasts, blistering an inferno of wet, pulsing heat in her core. From the corner of one eye, she caught the movement of the tail of the whip flicking into the air. Slowly, it arced downward, lashing out, licking into the soft flesh of her buttocks. Not hard enough to leave its mark on her body, just hard enough to leave its mark on her unbearably growing need.

  Yes. Yes. Yes!

  Stinging heat spiraled down from the hyper-tender tissue to the pool of juices flooding her cunt. Catching her lip in her teeth, she fisted her shaking hands at her side and waited, accepted, knew he’d been right all along.

  She loved this. Loved every darkly sensual moment of this game.

  Is it a game? Or does Sebastian believe it more?

  The whip rose higher this time, the downward thrust licking at her ass with a decadent nip that coursed from her scorching sex to the tips of her throbbing nipples. She squirmed on the ground, biting her lip harder to keep from pleading for release.

  But why? Did she even care if he thought it more than a game?

  “Did I tell you that you could move? You do nothing without my command. Nothing.” His boot lifted from her spine, and his knees returned to the backs of hers. Rough fingers took hold of her labia and parted her sex from behind. With Ken, the belt had followed. With Sebastian, she wanted more. Real. Him.

  “Please don’t,” she cried out.

  Wry laughter edged with rough lust spilled into the air. “You want this, Leia. You want every inch of this whip inside you, fucking you to explosion.”

  “No, I want you. I want every inch of your cock inside me, fucking me to explosion.”

  Sebastian’s breath dragged inward, the sharpness of the sound echoing as an urgent pulsing in her cunt. His hands went still for several seconds where she knew pure, pulse-thundering desperation. Then they returned to action as if she hadn’t spoken, pushing the tail of the vine up into her sheath.

  “Fuck this whip, slave. Show me how much of it you can take.” He fed it inside her, doubled it up, and spread her until her pussy fired from scorching to blistering, and a hot ball of electric sensation stormed through her from the sheer intensity.

  She knew to expect the other
end of the whip coming down on her ass, and still it managed to take her off guard as it whacked solid and fast. Punishingly hard. Mind-spinningly good. She jerked, and her nipples scraped along the ground, triggering a chain reaction in her cunt, throbbing her nearly numb clit with the most exquisite of painful pressures. “Ah, God.”

  The vine came again, the doubled-up tail pumping into her drenched sex in tandem. Fierce tension dragged at her eyelids until they were clamped shut. Her face pressed tight against the dirt. She couldn’t keep her hips in place the way she had with Ken. Couldn’t halt the want to move them, to grind her mound against the hard earth.

  The pressure of Sebastian’s knee changed until she could again feel the press of his torso against her spine. His head bent, moving past her nape to tease the ends of his hair and his breath across her earlobe.

  Hot and tawdry, he chanted a near-silent warning, “Don’t you come.”

  “I can’t stop!” Leia wailed, wriggling her cunt against the dirt. Knowing in that moment, when not a single touch of shame filled her for her unabashedly carnal behavior, that no one had planted desirous cravings in her head, no one but her maker when he created her. “I have to come now, with or without you!”

  The tail of the whip jerked from her sex, triggering the orgasm she could no longer hold back. It washed over her, huge and violent, shaking her deep inside, past pleasure, past pain, to the recesses of her mind, her body. Past a place where she could keep her eyes open and plead with him to fill her with his cock, join her in orgasm. To a place where she could cling only to the unknown, to the unsteady. To the maelstrom of memories unraveling in her soul.

  Since Leia taught him to value the simplicities that life had to offer, Sebastian had always been able to find peace in nature. Tonight, he found no peace in the woods that surrounded him, the moonlight cutting down from overhead to bathe the forest floor in myriad colors. Tonight, he knew only the weakness of leaving Leia, lost and blind, in the clutches of orgasm.

  Frustration churned through him, eating at his gut. Discontent clung to him like a first skin, stifling his breath. Not that he needed to breathe.

  He was dead. Not technically, but near enough.

  He could fuck her, the way she’d begged, but to what good? To make his already near-reckless want for her deepen? To make her want for him grow as well?

  He couldn’t do that. He could only see that his words and actions tonight had registered with her as completely as he believed they had. He could only let her spend one last night alone, asleep on the mat in the holding room, and then let her free come morning.

  Giving his tension time to ease, Sebastian walked on. Minutes. Hours. He had no idea how much time had passed. He only knew that when the pain came, it was near crippling in intensity.

  It ripped through him, leaving his abdomen feeling torn apart. Stealing his breath in those first moments when his mind fully aligned with the creature this pain came from. The animal’s thoughts came to him slowly…undeveloped…helpless.

  Christ, a baby.

  Able to guess at the sickening scene that would meet him, he followed the shattering call of his senses, moving swiftly through the bramble and copse. Seconds passed by as agonized minutes before the thicket finally let up. The cub lay feet ahead, a jagged-tooth bear trap clamped down around its small body, nearly shredding it in half.

  The frightened clacking of the yearling’s teeth was almost nonexistent, lending little hope for survival. Approaching cautiously but quickly, Sebastian dropped down on his knees and felt for the cub’s life source. Air feathered through its tiny lungs, waning with each breath until there could be no mistaking the animal was beyond help.

  Weakness coursed through Sebastian for what was too damned many times tonight. He’d learned to respect death and value the cycle of life. Still, he knew more pain from the need to end the cub’s suffering than what pain actually transferred into his body from bringing that end about. Cradling the cub in his arms, he soothed its mind as he’d already begun with its body.

  A noise trapped between high-pitched moan and heavy breathing sounded as the last of the yearling’s spirit lifted into his body. A familiar noise. A noise that had Sebastian’s heart pummeling in his chest as he whirled to stare into the eyes of a fully grown black bear. Many times he’d come across the mother bear while traversing the woods. Always, she’d recognized and respected him for what he was, her ruler. Her protector.

  Tonight, she reminded him of Leia in those first long hours that he’d held her captive. Too far gone with distress to see truth past misery.

  The bear saw only vengeance, in shades of furious red and black. And Sebastian saw only finality, in shades of hazy orange, as the bear bounded at him, slamming into him with 500 pounds of fury. Ripping into him with hooked claws, tearing at muscle, flesh, and bone.

  Making his first death by an arrow to the heart seem almost humane, almost painless by comparison.

  7

  Over an hour had passed since Leia came down from the grips of a life-altering orgasm to crawl onto her bed mat and curl into a weak-limbed ball. Exhaustion and tenderness pulled at her from every angle. Darkness had long since flooded the cell with black.

  Still, she didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep.

  Last night, she wanted nothing less than for Sebastian to lie next to her and hold her while she slumbered. Since the day she found the strength to leave Ken, she hadn’t allowed any man to stay in her bed longer than it took to screw. Tonight, she ached to feel Sebastian’s strong arms around her, holding her captive in the truest sense. And tonight, he was gone, left without a word. Without even waiting for her climax to end.

  “I should hate him.”

  Hell, she’d tried to convince herself that she did hate him for the cruelty of his handling. Tried to convince him of the same. But Leia didn’t hate him. Not after what he’d done for her—opened her eyes to the reality his handling wasn’t cruel but, rather, everything she craved. And not after having heard the anguish in his voice when he spoke of his failure to protect her from Ken’s abuse.

  If Sebastian had known her ex-husband, it wasn’t from an amicable standpoint. The two men could be no less similar, her feelings for them no further apart. Ken she would never regret was dead. Sebastian she regretted only not knowing while he was alive, when missing him served some purpose because they at least stood a chance at a future.

  Tomorrow, he might return to her. But soon their days together would end. Just as she could always somehow sense his presence before he entered the cell, she knew he wouldn’t keep her with him much longer. He would set her free to return to the city. To the friends and colleagues who knew nothing about the real her. To a life she’d built knowing nothing about the real her either.

  Vowing to change that the moment she was free of this cell, Leia closed her eyes and once more attempted sleep. Eventually, her fatigue must have won out. The next thing she knew, she was being awakened by the plodding of feet and a chorus of keyed-up voices.

  Brilliant light filtered through her eyelids, snapping her to alertness. Without moving, she opened her eyes to survey her surroundings. As when she opened her eyes the first afternoon in this cell, her surroundings were nothing she could have guessed. Dirt walls still encompassed her, but near to a dozen short, nude, white-haired skin-shifters now filled the cell with her. Unlike that first day, not one touched her. Not one even seemed to realize she lay curled up on the mat in the cell’s far corner.

  Currently a mixture of males and females, they moved about the small room conversing in excited voices while gathering strips of cloth and earthen bowls from the wall chest. The bowls, of what she could now see was Camaloe, were set in a wide circle on the ground. The skin-shifters stood around that circle, holding hands and rocking their bodies side to side as they chanted in some low, foreign tongue.

  The chanting grew louder, their swaying faster. The air warmed, thickened, crackled with tension. For an instant, Leia considered she was about
to witness some archaic orgy. Then she caught the unease that weighted each of their vivid blue eyes, and sickness rose up in her belly. Sickness she recognized all too easily for having experienced it days on end for months in row when she’d endured Ken’s drunken wrath.

  Her ex-husband was gone, not stuck in some middle life awaiting his final judgment—that much she was now certain of—but straight to Hell. Something else surged her panicked sickness. Someone else. For the skin-shifters to be in her cell in such an anxious state and without Sebastian at their lead, that someone had to be him.

  Shoving to her feet, Leia demanded, “Where’s Sebastian?”

  Even with the force of her words, not a single shifter looked her way, instead carrying on as if she hadn’t spoken. She bit her tongue around that insult.

  Son of a bitch, she would not be ignored.

  Rage and desperation tangling in her mind, she darted her gaze around the circle of pale-skinned midgets until it landed on Aubrie’s once-again female form. Hurrying to Aubrie, Leia took hold of the female’s arm, breaking the circle as she spun her around. “Where the fuck is Sebastian? What’s happened to him?”

  Something changed then. Something in the air. Leia knew even before Aubrie nodded past her with huge, solemn eyes that Sebastian had arrived. Tonight, now, she could sense more than his presence.

  She could feel his suffering.

  The sickness in her belly turned to a coiling of pure dread. Slowly, she turned to face the dirt wall that served as his doorway. Her heart galloped into her throat at the gruesome sight there; the man who looked nothing like her sinfully sexy captor, yet she knew with sickening clarity could be no other.

  “Please, God, no.” The prayer whispered out on a shaky breath.

  Without words, the skin-shifters surrounded Sebastian’s far bigger body, lifting him off his booted feet as a unit and placing him on the ground the same way. They labored over him feverishly, tearing away the remains of his tattered clothing, applying fresh strips of cloth, cloaking him with Camaloe. Stealing all but flashes of his body from Leia’s sight.