Why was the act of crawling so difficult?
If I could understand it, I could do it. I knew I could.
But the answer to that question wasn’t easy. It was buried in the cultural norms I’d had instilled in me since birth, and the tangle of Catholicism I’d forsaken as a girl never quite having figured it out.
I caught Alexander’s dark eyes daring me from across the room and grasped that he took pleasure in my struggle.
Maybe it was easier to ask another question.
Why did my Master want me to crawl?
Those answers boiled to the surface of my brain from deep within my gut.
It was sexy. The slow slink of my body over the floor, the high crest of my ass in the air and the way gravity held my breasts in its hands. There was something about seeing a beautiful woman crawl toward you that would made a man feel like primeval lord.
It was power. He was above and I below, my limbs shackled to the ground by his words, my stubborn mind bent under the strong hands of his will. He would be hard beneath his suit trousers, harder maybe than he had ever been before knowing that our wills were at war in my mind and his was winning.
Of course, my Master would want to see me crawl.
I collapsed to the ground gracelessly, like a balloon punctured thanklessly by a child. I focused on my breath as I rolled onto my hands and knees, knowing that if I allowed myself time to reorient myself in my mind, to draw back my empathy from Alexander and root it once more in myself, I would stand up and fight back.
Fighting back was fruitless. Fighting back was for the dumb.
I wasn’t stupid. I was a survivor. I would submit to Alexander’s sexual games if it meant I could earn insight like this into his character. Insight that might get me home.
So I started to crawl.
There was nowhere safe to look save the veined marble floor, which made it impossible to tell where I was moving, but at least I didn’t have to face the sight of me in the mirrors, or even worse, his eyes.
“Master says stop,” Alexander drawled.
I took a moment to comprehend what he had ordered and didn’t stop immediately.
Electricity bit into my skin at the site of my paddles on my breasts, hips, tummy, ass, and thighs. I curled my fingers and toes into the ground, gritted my teeth, and rode out the wave.
After the long pulse of sensation, it was over.
It didn’t feel finished, though. My skin still buzzed as currents ran like tantalizing ribbons over my sensitive skin. My hips canted back instinctively, searching for friction.
I panted.
“Master says come,” he said again, wicked humour in his voice as he perverted the child’s game Simone dice or Simon says.
Even as I wanted to roll my eyes at his artifice, I admired the quirkiness of his mind.
Another shock surged through me, making me pause and pant through it.
I tossed my hair over my shoulder and looked up at him. “I didn’t do anything wrong that time?”
“I will say whether or not you are obeying my orders,” he said coldly. “Crawl.”
I resumed my steady pace toward him.
“Take your breasts out,” he ordered.
I used one shaking hand at a time to scoop my flesh out of the corset into the cool air of the hall. They weren’t shaking with fear or fury but deep, bone-stirring arousal.
It was if the electric shock had tied my nipples too tightly in copper wire, so that each shock pierced brutally through the tender flesh.
I was moments away from orgasming. My pussy was a leaky faucet dripping down my thighs to pool in the backs of my knees as I crawled and crawled and crawled.
He stopped me again, commanding me to kneel and play with my hard clit for him. I shifted on my heels and let my fingers find that diamond of sensation. My head fell back on my shoulders as I felt it throb against my circling fingers.
“You don’t like it soft. Pinch it. Pluck at it. Twist that pussy with your fingers until you want to come for me,” he said, and his voice was even heavier, pressing on me like the absolute silence of a mid-summer desert.
My fingers plucked and pulled at my wet flesh, barely finding traction in the slippery folds. I gyrated softly back and forth before I could stop myself, grasping for something more, needing friction against my cunt.
“Stop,” he said, and when I took too long, electricity stole through me like a full body sting.
My fingers pressed hard into my clit so I wouldn’t come, and my breath stuttered out of my lungs like an old engine rattling under the hood of a car.
“Crawl.”
I was going to cry.
The tears pushed at the backs of my eyes, creeping along the seam of my eyelids and finally, despite my efforts, they fell. The wetness was scorching against my cheeks. I could hear the splat of each drop fall to the floor in Alexander’s compressing silence.
His utter stillness and calm only served to emphasise the riot of sensations raging through my body and the small sounds I made to release the pressure as they mounted inside me. I panted, cried, groaned, and whimpered. Alexander seemed to collect each confirmation of my arousal and pain like precious gems.
I had no doubt he wanted to polish them to a higher shine.
Finally, I reached him, stopping only when my cheek was pressed to the inside of his knee. My tears and sweat saturated the fabric. Alexander placed a hand on my head, and it centered my buzzing electrons like a lightning conductor.
My tears dried up with one last hiccough.
“Such a good little mouse,” he praised.
If it wasn’t for the thick erection pressing violently against his trousers beside my cheek, I wouldn’t have known he was aroused at all.
A shiver zipped my spine straight vertebrae by vertebrae.
Why did I find his barely leashed restraint so alluring?
“Up here. Kneel over the back,” he said as he stood up into my kneeling form, forcing his cock against my cheek and dragging it up my forehead as he reached his full height.
Suddenly, I wanted it out of his trousers and in my mouth.
Another shock, this one longer than the others so that I had to clench my teeth and bite my fingernails into my palms to keep from coming.
I stood when I could, aware of the slick of arousal cooling on my legs. Alexander dipped down and ran a finger through the dampness before bringing it to my lips.
They parted instinctively, and I sucked on his index finger as it slid over my tongue.
Clean, salty, and slightly sweet.
I watched the narrow rim of grey still fighting against his dilated pupils disappear as I swirled my tongue around him.
He tried to pull away, and I sucked harder. When he shot me an angry Dom look, I bit down with my teeth to keep him against my tongue.
I only released him on a yelp when he brought one huge hand around to slap against my backside.
“Down,” he growled.
Triumph bloomed inside me at the telltale growl. His control was slipping, and it was game to crush it entirely.
I slinked up the ottoman and knelt over the short, raised back of it so that my spine arched in a steep slope from the high arch of my ass. I rested my forehead on my crossed forearms and tried to breathe steadily.
Alexander circled me once, twice, gently unpeeling the electric pads from my skin and then he stopped behind me for a long minute.
Crack.
The whip he’d held in one hand went snapping down against my exposed buttocks. My hips jerked forward instinctively, my hands jolting back to rub away the terrible burn.
“Resume your position,” he barked.
“Please, Master,” I tried, but his hand at my back shoved me face down into the back rest, and my plea was lost.
“Keep your hands away from you ass, bella. I don’t want to hurt them with the whip. Now, I’m going to give you five strikes to each cheek, and then, if you beg very prettily, I’ll fuck you until you can’t come
anymore.”
I nodded into my hands, my eyes squeezed shut and my breath regulated as if it would help cut the pain of the impending whiplash.
His hand slapped against the mark of the whip on my ass and then rubbed firmly so that the pain deepened and radiated through my pussy.
My whole body started to shake.
“Whenever I give you an order, I expect a ‘yes, Master,’ or ‘thank you, Master.’ Now, I want you to count each strike and thank me for them. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
The whipping that commenced should have shattered me. Each strike was short and hot like a branding iron against my skin, so painful and sharp it seared deep into my flesh to my very bones. My body was on fire, the flames licking away every inch of my skin and muscles and bones, leaving only my spirit exposed and quaking on the ottoman.
I had no voice, no thoughts or protests, just a deep need for my raw nerves to be contained before they split apart.
Alexander dropped the whip the moment I whispered, “Ten, Master, thank you.”
The next moment, he was inside me, thrusting through my slippery cunt without one ounce of resistance. I groaned, my head listlessly between my shoulders as he set a punishing pace. The sound of his balls hitting my drenched pussy rang out through the room, cutting through the harsh pace of our combined breath.
One of his hands grasped my left ass check hard, reigniting the burn so that I whimpered and yelped. The other slid over my shoulder to grasp my chin.
“Look at us, bella,” Alexander demanded as he forced my face up and locked eyes with me in the reflection of the mirror opposite. “Look how right it is for me to fuck you like this. For your sweet body to take my pain and my cock. Look how you blossom even more beautifully than you normally are.”
It was true; my eyes were bright gold coins in my flushed, damp face, and my lips were so red they winked like rubies as I panted. Alexander’s big body was curved over me, his abs tight and gleaming, damp gold hair falling into his furiously aroused face. He looked like a king fucking a servant girl because it was his right.
I squeezed my eyes shut as an orgasm gripped me by the throat and wrenched away my breath. My cum splashed out of his thrusting cock, wetting his thighs and the ottoman below us. The hand on my chin went into my hair and fisted it so that he could ride my orgasm out, fucking into me so hard that the one orgasm split into two, then fractured into four.
I submitted to it all, allowing Alexander to play my body and claim my mind as ruthlessly as he wished, and I was ultimately rewarded with a coarse shout that heralded his own climax.
He pumped wetly into my snug cunt, groaning at the feeling of my still clenching walls, and then he pulled out suddenly, letting our combined juices slide down my leg. I could see his face, ruddy with satisfaction and primal with male pride as he watched us sluice down my leg, and it made a mini orgasm quake through in the wake of them all.
“Mine,” he growled, his civilized veneer crushed beneath the overwhelming power of the hungry, dominant beast at his core. “Fucking mine.”
It was strange to wake up in a bed. In fact, my back ached from the softness of the mattress, and I’d thrown off most of the covers in the night because I couldn’t sleep with the heat of them compressing me. I didn’t expect Alexander to be in bed beside me because he always left immediately after using me. Still, I couldn’t help myself from seeking the scent of him on the pillow next to me, his forested fragrance woven into the silk fabric. It heated my blood instantly and ignited an itch between my thighs I knew nothing but his fingers or cock could gratify.
My entire body felt loose and warm with gratification after being thoroughly worked over hours earlier, but my brain felt sore and swollen between my ears as if I had an infection I didn’t know how to treat. I’d loved the pleasure given to me and the erotic sight of such a strong man with his mouth on my most intimate place, bringing me to orgasm not because I needed it but simply because he wanted to. His controlling nature shouldn’t have been so intoxicating, but I knew myself well enough to admit that I was in his thrall.
It was hard to fight against something I didn’t understand and had no prior experience with. Desire was foreign to pre-sale Cosima. I’d never had a crush or felt attraction like a branding iron to my breasts and thighs, marking me with the scarlet letter of my unholy impulses.
I knew it now, all too well, and I had absolutely no defences to it.
Alexander was winning a game I didn’t know the rules enough to play myself. It felt horribly unjust, and I found myself growing angrier and angrier as I washed myself in the shower and readied myself for the day.
Seeing the outfit laid out on my bed when I emerged from the bathroom only threw alcohol on the flames of my rage.
I was his doll to dress just as I was his flesh to use and his mouse to hunt.
I added this transgression to my list of hatred against him even as I rubbed the luxe fabric of the floral patterned wrap dress between my fingers.
It fit beautifully, just as the ludicrously expensive La Pearla lingerie in a shimmering gold fit too and magnified my curves. I knew he liked me in gold, not because it looked well on me, but because it cheapened me. It was a physical representation of the wealth he’d used to buy me like prized horse flesh.
For a moment, I considered ditching the outfit and walking around stark naked, but the idea of all those cameras and all those eyes on me was ultimately too much, even for someone as relatively immodest as I am.
There was no note on the bedside table and no instructions to follow, so with only a moment’s hesitation, I tried to open the door to my chambers.
It was unlocked.
The sound of the mechanism moving into place heralded in my ears like a trumpet call. There were so few freedoms in this new life, each felt pathetically magnificent.
The waving hills outside the windows were silver with heavy rain, and the pane was cold when I pressed my hand to it to peer at the elusive outside world. I wanted to run down the stairs, burst through the heavy front doors, and slip over the wet grass in my bare feet until they were brown with muck and I’d fallen to ground in a graceless heap. I wanted to spread my limbs in the cool blanket of green and watch the rain fall into my face.
“Am I ever to be outside again?” I asked myself, watching as my hot breath fogged the glass.
“You are.” Alexander’s voice startled me more than a gun held to my temple.
A moment later, the broad expanse of his body was pressed to mine so that I had the sunlight of his heat at my back and the cold eclipse of glass against my breasts. It was the very same duality I was coming to realize I’d always experience around my Master.
The hot kiss of unassailable desire and the cold slap of shame.
“You will be let out of this house and out of this life in due course, my beauty, especially if you behave as beautifully as you did last night.” I shivered at the texture of his silken breath trailing down my throat, followed by the touch of his lips to my tripping pulse. “You fell apart for me just as you should for your Master. Tell me, do you feel reformed this morning?”
I did, and it broke my heart to bear the weight of that. It seemed each time he touched me that he tore me apart only to weave me back together with a sharp needle and the dark threads of his ownership. I was becoming accustomed to the pain, and that worried me.
Because that resignation was tinged with yearning.
I hissed as Alexander sank his teeth into the strong tendon on the side of my neck. He drew away with a soft hum of pleasure, and whispered, “I would fuck you against the window and use your cum to write my name on the glass if I didn’t have a previous engagement.”
My stomach cramped in an alarming show of disappointment, but I didn’t let it show on my face when I turned around to scowl at him with my hands on my hips. Only, my indignation cooled into curiosity when I saw what he was wearing.
“What in heaven’s name are
you dressed in?”
Alexander smirked and dragged a hand through the thick wave of his golden hair. He looked so like a young, arrogant boy for a moment that I wanted to smile with him.
“I’m dressed in my fencing jacket and trousers.”
I blinked. “I don’t think I know what that is.”
His grin widened, softer than I’d ever seen it, so gleeful that it even reached his eyes. “If you come, I’ll show you.”
Before I could protest, my hand was in his, and he was pulling me in the current of his wide stride down the hall.
“Fencing is an ancient sport first developed by your Italian kinsfolk, though it was popularized by the French. It’s been a popular pastime of the Davenport men since the 19th century. I played varsity for a spell at Cambridge.”
“Ah, scherma,” I said, translating the word into Italian as I made the connection. “It doesn’t surprise me that you play with weapons.”
A short, startled laugh burst from his lips, and I noticed how full the bottom one was compared to the bowed top, and how pearlescent a pale pink they were.
“I am very skilled with tools and weapons, as you’ve begun to discover.”
We descended the grand marble staircase into the great hall and the left wing of the house where we entered a large hall that had been turned into a kind of gymnasium. There was a long pool at the very end that seemed at odds with the elaborate décor and Grecian pillars, and modern exercise equipment arranged beside a wide length of mats.
A man stood in the center of those mats wearing a similar outfit to Alexander’s only his was black. It took me a moment to recognize Riddick because his colourful tattoos were covered up, but when I did, I blanched.
Alexander, observant bastard that he was, noticed my surprise and smiled slightly.
“Riddick is trained in eight martial arts.” I blinked at him, and he slid me a pleased look as he moved past me to shake Riddick’s hand. “And I am trained in nine.”
I stood mutely as I watched the two huge men shake hands and quietly discuss their workout. Alexander moved back to me as Riddick went to a sideboard and retrieved too large masks with perforated fronts.
Enthralled Page 13
