Thirty Days of Shame

by Ginger Talbot

When he pushes me to my limits, there’s a strange kind of ecstasy that fills my body.

  He runs his hands over my left butt cheek. “Do you like the Ben Wa balls?”

  “No. I hate everything about this. How much more time?” I whimper.

  He leans in and bites my shoulder, hard, then licks it.

  The sensations of pain and pleasure are too much. I feel as if I’m going to pass out. I want to beg him to let me down, but I’m terrified of him selecting an even worse torture when this one has already weakened me.

  “Will you run away from me again, Willow?”

  “No!” It comes out as a sob. “Please. Sir. Please, I can’t take it! How much more time?”

  He licks the curve of my neck and works his way up to my earlobe. He nibbles on it. He cups my breasts with his big hands and squeezes them.

  Fuck me. Release me. Let me down.

  “You’d better not. Because as bad as this is…it can get worse. Much worse.”

  His threat should horrify me. It should sicken me. Instead it makes me want him even more. It makes me want to know what “much worse” could be.

  His tongue traces the contour of my ear.

  “I can last twenty-eight more days,” I gasp.

  “Are you sure? Right now you’re having a hard time lasting an hour,” he taunts me.

  That’s not what I want him to say. I want him to say he’ll never let me go, that twenty-eight days won’t be enough for him.

  Sergei messes up my head like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. My life used to have rules. They were terrible rules, but at least I knew what they were. Behave a certain way, get a certain result.

  With Sergei I never know what’s coming. I never know what he’ll do next. I have no control over what happens to me.

  A wave of dizziness sweeps over me. I can’t hold myself up any longer.

  I sag, and the wooden edge cuts into the tender flesh of my burning pussy, and I bounce up again with a scream.

  “Tell me!” I cry out. “Tell me how much longer!”

  “Is that an order?”

  “No, sir. I’m begging you, sir.”

  “Does it hurt, Willow?”

  “Yes, sir!” I try to pull myself off the evil, evil wood, and sink back down on it again, and my body shakes with sobs. “Oh, God, sir, I can’t… I just can’t…”

  He smiles pleasantly. As if we were discussing the weather. “One hour. Your time is up.”

  He releases me, and picks me up in his arms. I’m trembling uncontrollably, and weak as a kitten.

  He kisses my sweaty forehead. “Don’t leave me again.” His tone is harsh, but underneath it I hear an undertone of desperation.

  “I won’t. I won’t. I won’t…” I’m shaking and stammering. His arms tighten around me.

  He scoops me up and carries me over to the bed in the middle of the room. It’s freshly made up with crisp, clean white sheets, and of course it has a headboard and footboard with cuffs attached.

  While he’s carrying me, I sneak a peek at the clock on the wall. The one that was behind me. It was only forty-five minutes. He let me down early.

  That makes me cry harder.

  He let me down early. He was merciful.

  Everything that he’s giving me now is what I craved during those first terrible days in his service. He’s told me that he wants me. He’s stopped parading me around in front of his men, stopped insulting me and telling me he hates me. He’s being as kind as someone like Sergei is capable of being.

  The fact that this rough, brutal man is changing for me means so much. But…it’s still not enough. He’s not asking me to stay.

  I force myself back into the present. Nobody can know the future – and that’s even more true for me than for most people. I come from a family of criminals who are always waging secret wars. Why worry about what’s going to happen a few weeks from now, when I could be dead tomorrow?

  He walks away from the bed, and I lie there, shaking, and wait for his return. I reach back behind me and slide the vibrating balls out of my rear channel and drop them on the floor. I hear water running. When he comes back, he’s naked – completely naked. So beautiful, he’s like an ancient Greek god, a marble statue that just stepped off his pedestal. His cock is rock hard. And he’s carrying a tray with a jug of water and two cups of ice.

  He pours me a glass of ice water, and I gulp it down greedily.

  “Lie down,” he says, his voice a gentle caress.

  How many Sergei’s live inside his head? Minutes ago, he was smiling through my sobs of pain.

  But I obey him. I lie flat on my back, exhausted. I close my eyes. The pain and fear fade away, and the only thing that matters is the earth-shattering pleasure I feel as he begins stroking ice cubes across my sore, throbbing pussy.

  He bends down to suck my clit, while one hand still slides the ice cubes up and down my heated flesh, and I moan and stroke his close-clipped, silky hair.

  He’s letting me touch him. My hands aren’t bound.

  I’m close to exploding. When my breathing speeds up, he draws back, and I let out a shriek of frustration.

  “Please, sir,” I beg. He likes it when I beg.

  “I’ll give you a choice,” he murmurs. “Where shall I put my cock? Ass, pussy, or mouth.”

  My pussy is too sore right now. It pulses with agony from the punishment he just dealt out to me. “Mouth,” I gasp.

  “Then I’m going to make you come first.”

  He drops the ice. He strokes me with his tongue and his fingers. The pain is receding, just a little. He kisses and soothes, and laps at me as if I’m made of honey. I am pushed closer and closer, until mercifully, I crest and go over the edge of ecstasy, squeezing my legs around his head, weeping with relief as wave after wave crashes over me.

  Oh, oh, oh, oh…

  He’s kneeling on the bed. I get on my hands and knees and take his cock into my mouth. It’s so thick, so round, that I can barely accommodate him.

  I love his cock. I love the musky taste and smell, so earthy and masculine. I love its thickness, and the salty taste of his pre-cum. I suck it hard. I let it slide down my throat, and I suck and suck as his fingers tangle in my hair and he moans my name. My hand tightens on his shaft, and I move it up and down in rhythm with the bobbing of my head. His moans become wordless, and then he goes rigid and explodes in my mouth. I drink his come eagerly, swallowing it like manna from heaven.

  Finally, he slides out of me and pulls me to my feet. I’m so weak he has to hold me up with his arms around my waist.

  He draws me up against him. “I have no tender words for you, Willow,” he whispers in my ear. “But you do suck cock like an angel.”

  I manage a shaky laugh. “Coming from you, that’s practically a sonnet.”

  Chapter Ten

  Day four…

  SERGEI

  I’ve avoided her for two days now.

  I know she and I aren’t a forever thing, and I’m bracing myself for the shock of losing her in twenty-six days.

  I’m trying to wean myself from her, like a drug addict. I will only let myself have a little bit of her at a time. I will never let myself get used to the peace I feel when I bask in her sweet presence.

  Just having her back under the same roof helps ease the craving a little, but it’s not enough.

  The frustration’s starting to build up inside me, and I know I won’t be able to hold out much longer. I should hate her for making me a slave to my desires, but I just can’t. God help me, I’ve tried.

  Now I’m leaning back in my leather chair, in my recently repaired office with Jasha, Maks, and Slavik, and they’re sitting in a half-circle of chairs facing my desk. Watching me and trying not to let me see that they’re watching me.

  A week ago, the day before I went bring my Willow home, I was swallowed up by one of my black rages.

  It happened when I found out that Vilyat is most likely operating under the name of Cataha in a district eas
t of Leningrad. My men believe that he was involved in the gutting of a young, kidnapped secretary who tried to escape him as he transported her to a brothel. He’s managed to bribe the police into looking the other way, though.

  I saw the autopsy pictures, the look on her face. There’s a particular way that Vilyat guts his enemies and drags their intestines out of them; this matches his M.O. exactly, and the physical description relayed by my spies matches him as well.

  I shouldn’t have looked at the close-ups. The secretary’s face gaped open, her mouth slack, her unseeing eyes a mirror reflecting back the agony of her last moments. She’d been pretty once; you could just barely tell from the picture.

  The pictures had slipped from my fingers, drifting noiselessly down to my Oriental rug. I’d destroyed my office. I’d also broken Slavik’s nose. That was when I knew I couldn’t finish my mission without Willow.

  I need her. She’s the only thing that holds back the darkness.

  My men want reassurance. They want to know that their leader hasn’t fallen off the deep end. We’re so close now.

  We have a list, and we are crossing names off it.

  The men on that list are rich and connected, and they aren’t easy to get to. And it is vital to us that not a single one of them dies quickly or easily. They all have to know that it is coming, and suffer for months before the horrifying finale.

  Humiliation. Terror. Despair. Those are the dishes we force down their throats before they die.

  It was the list that inspired us to embark on what seemed like a suicide mission all those years ago – a bunch of street rats starting from nothing and building our own criminal empire in St. Petersburg, Russia. Creating legitimate businesses both to earn money and to hide our less legitimate enterprises.

  We were attacked, and every time we struck back ten times as hard, with a viciousness that left no doubt as to the high cost of resistance. Year after year, we forced our way further in. Every last one of us has been shot at one point or another – more than once. We’ve fought until our bones broke. Our knuckles are studded with thick, knobby scars. Feodyr was run over. Jasha, Maks and I have been stabbed. We’ve survived car-bombing attempts that scorched and scarred us. A whore on a rival’s payroll tried to cut my throat.

  None of it even came close to the agonies that we suffered at the hands of the Toporovs and their lackeys. The men on our list.

  “Maks, why don’t you tell everyone our excellent news?” I say, gesturing at him. He smiles grimly and nods at the other men.

  “We’re in, all the way,” he says. “We will be providing the security.”

  The other men start cheering, and Jasha hurries over to the liquor cabinet. He starts pouring vodka into glasses. This is truly a cause for celebration!

  We’ve been working on this plan for the better part of a year now. Eliminating competition of all kinds. Bribing or killing officials, whatever it took.

  We’re building a giant trap to catch a bunch of rodents. The last few names on the list.

  One of my shell companies was awarded the construction contract for the rat trap a couple of months ago. We’re almost done. It’s not fancy or pretty; it doesn’t need to be. It serves a purpose. A hideous purpose.

  The most important thing about the building is the location. Deep in the forest, in an area far enough out from the city that nobody will accidentally stumble on it. The clients who will use this building demand guarantees of safety and anonymity. We’re giving them the illusion of it. Then the trap will snap shut on their vile necks.

  As we built the trap, we wove in security systems hidden so cleverly that they’ll never be found – until it’s too late.

  And with us providing the “security” now, we will have complete control over the grand opening.

  Willow is back, and the last piece of my plan has fallen into place. It’s like she’s my good luck charm.

  “So soon,” Slavik gloats, rubbing his big, meaty paws together. “I’m going to blow up pictures of their faces and jerk off to them.”

  Maks gives him a scornful look. “Whatever turns you on. Freak.”

  Slavik cuffs him on the side of the head, hard, but from him, that’s a gesture of affection.

  Jasha comes back and hands us cut crystal glasses of pure, clear Stoli Elit vodka, and we knock it back, savoring the ice-cold liquid and the taste of revenge.

  “Who ever thought we’d come this far?” Maks says happily. “Pour me another, Jasha!”

  “What, I’m your bitch now?” Jasha growls, but he complies.

  After a few more rounds, the other men head back to work. Jasha stays behind.

  “Anastasia asked me if she could go back to her old house to get a few personal mementoes,” Jasha says. “We burned all of Vilyat’s crap, but we saved her stuff and boxed it up in the garage.”

  When Vilyat fled the country, I was able to do some behind-the-scenes maneuvering and I got the deed for his house signed over to me.

  “Whatever. Go get whatever dumb shit she’s asking for and bring it back here.”

  “I could, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

  I shrug. I’m feeling magnanimous. The people who live in that house work for me. The house was a gift to them, a reward for their excellent service.

  “Sure. Watch her every second. Let me know if she tries anything. Obviously, her kids stay here.”

  “Yes, she says she’s fine with that. She said she just wants to get some baby albums and their baby shoes.”

  I shake my head at the foolishness of women. And at children who grew up with a life like that – with parents who would save a curl of their golden hair, or their tiny little shoes.

  Vilyat was an abusive bastard, but fortunately for them, he was a workaholic who wasn’t around them that much. His kids grew up drowning in luxuries, and their mother loved them.

  As for me? The only reason I didn’t starve to death as a baby was because the family next door crept in while my parents were passed out drunk and fed me. They live in comfort now, in a retirement home I bought for them ten years ago, in the Mediterranean. They don’t know that it was me who bought it for them. Maybe they suspect. But they haven’t questioned their good fortune. They went from living in a tin shack and digging through dumpsters for filthy clothing and rotting food, to living in a warm, sunny seaside condo.

  And then my mother miscarried multiple times, because after I was born, her drinking got worse and worse, and my father would punch her in the stomach whenever he found out she was pregnant. Between the alcohol and my father’s blows, nothing could grow in that poisoned flesh. She was in jail for slashing the face of one my father’s whores for most of the time that she was pregnant with Pyotr. That’s the only reason he survived. He would have been better off if he had died like the others.

  I was six when she came home with him, and the neighbors had recently moved away, but I was there to care for him. I stole food for him. I stole money to buy him diapers and clothing.

  Thinking about Pyotr too much makes black spots swim in front of my eyes, and I shake my head violently to dislodge them. It doesn’t work, because they’re not real. Jasha looks at me questioningly, with a hint of worry carefully but not completely hidden.

  I have to cover. He can’t know the truth. He can’t know the darkness isn’t gone, I’ve just forced it into a corner of my mind until the last man on our list has gurgled his final breath.

  “That’s it?” I bark, waving my half-empty glass of vodka at him. As if that’s why I’m shaking my head. “What am I, an infant? Why didn’t you serve it to me in a baby bottle?” I drain it all in one gulp and thrust it back at him for a refill. He takes it and visibly relaxes. Asshole Sergei, he’s used to. It’s Crazy Sergei that’s making him nervous.

  Later that afternoon, Jasha and Anastasia come back from their trip, and he comes to report to me.

  “As far as I can tell, she didn’t try anything,” he says. “She didn’t take a purse with
her. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and sandals, so she wouldn’t have been able to hide much, but even so, I searched through everything she brought back. It was all picture albums and baby stuff, like she said. She did ask to use the restroom at one point, and I didn’t go in with her, but I patted her down right after she came out, and again when we got back here.”

  “Her tits? Her crotch? Her ass?”

  “What do you think I am, sir?” he snorts. “Soft? Afraid of a little titty? Yes, I patted her down everywhere.”

  I frown. Something feels a little off.

  Anastasia loves her kids. It’s not unreasonable to think that she’d want to get all that sentimental crap that women love, all those childhood mementoes. It’s not surprising that a woman would need to go pee after a two-hour drive.

  And yet.

  It could be something, it could be nothing. I’m not sure what I suspect. She certainly couldn’t have smuggled any weapons past Jasha.

  I can’t imagine what Anastasia would fetch from her former home that would be any threat to me, or what she could possibly try to pull. Up until a couple of months ago, she was a drooling, drugged-out husk. She doesn’t seem like the type who is capable of making long-term plans. And she knows I’m letting her and the kids go after thirty days. Right now, they’re safer than they will be once they leave.

  Still, I haven’t gotten this far by ignoring my instincts, or by being too trusting.

  “Just watch her,” I say. “Keep an extra eye on her. Monitor her computer activity especially. She’s obsessed with that shit.”

  He nods, and leaves.

  Maks passes him, coming into my office, carrying a laptop.

  “Sir?” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “You need to see what Willow’s been searching for on her computer.”

  He carries over a laptop.

  When I see it, fury rises inside me.

  Who is Ludmilla? Ludmilla Volkov. Is Ludmilla a common name in Russia? Ludmilla Toporov. Origin of the name Ludmilla. Variations of the name Ludmilla. Ludmila. Ludmylla. Famous women named Ludmilla.

  These are some of the search terms that she’s been typing in.