The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set)

by Tara Crescent

  The cane traced a circle around my nipple before nudging it again. The man in black smiled at my moan. “I’m going to press the tip in,” he said.

  I nodded, my eyes fixed on the cane as it circled before it sank into my nipple, pushing the nub deep into my breast. I stifled a groan of pain as the bamboo itched at my sensitive flesh and tried to writhe away. But the man in black wasn’t going to allow that. His hand, the one that wasn’t holding the cane, reached out and grabbed my back, pressing me into the tip. “Stay.”

  I watched as the tip of the cane indented my flesh. Bolts of agony radiated outward from my nipple and my entire breast ached in sympathy. I gasped and exhaled through my mouth as I struggled to process the agony. My torturer kept his eyes on me and a small smile played about his lips.

  He was enjoying this. My moans were an aphrodisiac to him. The sharp look of lust in his eyes; the tenting of his pants, the torturous bite of the cane on my flesh — all of these bore witness to his arousal.

  My gaze flickered, just for a second to the Watcher. As always, his eyes revealed nothing.

  My groans increased in volume but the push of the cane into my breast was unrelenting. Finally, after several excruciating seconds, he slowly pulled it away. My nipple stayed indented for long instants before returning to its engorged state. I looked at it and I was convinced it was bruised. What was I doing in this room? But my pussy was wet.

  His arm encircled me, drawing me closer to the cane, which moved unrelentingly towards my other breast. I exhaled sharply at the slice of pain but my arms were tied up and my body was firmly in the grasp of the man in black. There was nowhere to run.

  This time when the cane sank into my flesh, he added a twisting motion, twirling the cane between his fingers. I watched my areola spiral around the bamboo and I gritted my teeth as the ache intensified. My breast deformed and twisted in the hands of the man in black and I groaned and yelped. But he was unrelenting.

  Once again, several seconds elapsed before the cane was removed. Once again, my nipple stayed hidden for several beats after, afraid to expose itself to even crueler fates.

  The cane was presented to my mouth and my lips opened to grasp it. The man in black walked over to the carefully stocked side table and returned with a riding crop.

  His hand stroked my head before tugging at my ponytail, forcing me to raise my head and look straight. The leather tip teased my bruised, throbbing nipples. Please don’t hit them, please don’t hit them, I thought frantically, but of course that’s exactly what he had in mind. The crop moved and I watched it as if in slow motion as it descended towards my breast, landing with a sharp thwack on my skin. A spot of red bloomed where it had made contact and I flinched and whimpered. One solitary tear rolled down my cheek and the man in black wiped it away with his finger.

  “It’s far too early to cry, my dear.” He smiled at me but the sharp lust hadn’t receded from his eyes. I knew that more pain was in store for me.

  I wasn’t wrong. The tip made repeated contact with my breasts and they reddened in response. I couldn’t form words to beg; the cane was in my mouth. I whimpered and made noises of shouted pain but each time I yelped, the man in black calmly hit me again. When he was finally done, my breasts were an angry shade of deep red and I knew this session would leave marks.

  Still the Watcher watched, his expression impassive.

  The crop was thrown casually aside and then he gripped my aching orbs from behind me, squeezing them between his fingers. “She’s quite well-behaved,” he observed to the Watcher.

  The Watcher raised an eyebrow at that. “She has her moments,” he responded finally. I was a little surprised. The Watcher had never yet broken his silence.

  The man in black continued to crush my breasts in his palms. He left marks in his wake; my skin looked bruised and battered. And we were only beginning.

  My body prickled all over with lust but I didn’t want to face that particular truth. Better to close my eyes and forget.

  I was given a few moments to compose myself before he resumed. I got my breathing under control; I pushed the throbbing ache in my breasts to the back of my mind. I didn’t look at the Watcher. His bottle-green eyes were a lake that I could drown in and I was already struggling to stay afloat.

  When the man in black returned, he reached for the cane in my mouth before trailing it suggestively over my breasts. I inhaled sharply and flailed away from him. I couldn’t take any more pain on my breasts.

  The cane propped my chin up and his grip tightened around my waist. “You will do as I want,” he said, his voice hard. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes Sir.” I could barely hear my own voice; it was so very soft.

  He came towards me with the dreaded riding crop in his hands again. “You will be punished for moving away. Count the strokes. And stick that ass out for me. I want you to welcome this.”

  Welcome each burning line of fire? Yet I thrust my ass out towards him and kept my face looking straight ahead.

  Smack.

  Stinging pain lanced through me and my hands jerked in my bindings. But I remembered, just barely, to count. “One.”

  The second stroke made my knees buckle. “Two,” I whispered in response to his stern look.

  There were five painful, fiery strokes. It didn’t sound like a lot but by the time he was done, I had tears rolling down my cheeks and I was whimpering like a baby. My butt felt like it was on fire and I couldn’t stop from wriggling.

  Still the Watcher watched without a word. I stayed silent, not uttering the words that would stop this painful encounter.

  Did I still feel arousal? Was this sexual? Was there pleasure to be had? I didn’t know the answers to that. Everything had narrowed and all I knew was that I needed to endure. I refused to speak the words that would end this. I didn’t want it to stop and I didn’t want it to continue. So I kept silent and let it all happen.

  The man in black grabbed my ponytail and looked into my eyes. “Are you going to behave?”

  The tears were still trickling down my cheeks. “Yes.”

  He went back for the cane and traced another path through my stinging breasts. I kept still with effort. He nodded slightly and tossed the cane on the floor. It landed a few feet in front of me.

  “Let’s get you free to move around,” he said. His hands undid my bindings and he guided my arms to my sides, where I held them in place. He pushed down on my shoulders, his message clear. Get on your knees.

  I obediently opened my mouth as he unzipped his pants and his dick sprang out, glad to be free. Average size but he was definitely hard and ready and a shiver of automatic, Pavlovian lust ran through my body as I leaned forward and closed my lips over him.

  His hand curled to the back of my head, holding me in place as he thrust down my mouth. My tongue skated on his dick when I could, but mostly I just made sure that I didn’t accidentally graze him with my teeth.

  Out of the corner of my eye I peeked at the Watcher. I was hoping for some kind of response from him but his face had the same carefully blank look it always had. Somehow that just made me angry. Damn him. I refused to care about what he thought anyway.

  I thought the man in black would want to finish in my mouth or even spurt cum all over my face, but he did neither. He pulled out, his grip tightening on my ponytail and he inclined his head towards the cane on the floor. “Pick it up,” he said. “With your mouth.”

  I tried but on my first try, the cane slipped out. A stinging slap landed on my already sore ass and I yelped. “Do you need to learn to treat the cane with respect?”

  I shivered in fear of punishment. “No,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  The second time, I picked the cane up without dropping it. He grabbed me by my hair and led me, on my hands and knees, to a different part of the room.

  Again the bamboo rod was taken from me and tossed to the floor. Again his dick was shoved in my mouth and I sucked obediently, drool falling from my lips as h
e thrust in and out.

  “Lick,” he said when he pulled out. He gestured to the wet spot on the floor and I flushed with shame as I bent down and licked my own drool from the cold ground.

  “Good.” Just the one word. Another gesture towards the cane and I crawled towards it and bent down to pick it up between my lips, very much aware that my pussy and ass were lewdly on display to the Watcher. The Watcher who always looked at me with impassive eyes.

  I crawled with the cane. He took it from me and tossed it on the floor and watched as I fetched it for him like an eager puppy. Finally, when he had me positioned so that I was facing the Watcher, the man in black ordered me to stay still and I heard a familiar tell-tale wrinkle of a condom wrapper tear open before he plunged his length in me.

  I yowled. I was wet but I still felt each inch of him rake through my vagina. He was unrelenting. “Behave,” he grunted.

  My gaze locked onto the Watcher. His green eyes were clear but his hand was gripping the side of his chair tightly. But he remained silent. He always remained silent. My body jerked back and forth as the man in black pummelled me with his dick.

  His cock was shoved in my mouth again, this time tasting of latex. He must have disposed of the condom. “Do not bite,” he growled. The dreaded cane traced a line down my spine before rapping at my already sore ass. Tap. Tap. Tap. Swipe.

  I moaned around his dick. That last swipe had sent a hot burning stroke across my ass and it hurt. But I still didn’t voice the words that would end this.

  My breasts swayed as my mouth moved up and down on his shaft. My ass was thrust out and would periodically receive strokes of the cane. I was clenched tight and dreadfully afraid that I would graze his dick with my teeth and earn myself further punishment. But thankfully my mouth stayed slack and he moved in and out of that wet hole with ease.

  “Good little cocksucker you have here,” the man in black said to the Watcher over the retching, gagging noises I was making.

  I saw the Watcher’s grip on the chair tighten but he remained outwardly calm. “So I’ve heard.”

  “What?” the man in black taunted. “You mean you loan this juicy pussy out but you haven’t tasted it yet?”

  Only the Watcher’s customary silence greeted that comment and there was absolutely no emotion in his eyes. Why would there be? I thought bitterly. I redoubled my efforts on the cock in front of me.

  The tip of the bamboo rod poked at my tight asshole and I flinched but kept sucking. Surely the man in black didn’t mean to insert it into my anus?

  Each slide of the cane up and down the seam between my butt cheeks filled me with fresh nerves but I didn’t take my mouth off his dick. When the man in black came down my throat, I swallowed dutifully, making sure to catch all of his cum in my mouth. When he handed me a vibrator and ordered me to spread my legs wide and make myself come, I obeyed, blushing. My pussy was splayed open towards the Watcher, but this time I found I couldn’t meet his eyes at all.

  The top keeps spinning.

  Chapter 9

  And so it went on.

  There was light and there was dark and I tried to balance them within me. But each time I walked down that familiar corridor and pushed that door open, I lost a little bit of myself.

  The girl who was Kelly Mitchell started to fade. My mother didn’t remember me and it seemed to be the only thing that had kept me anchored to my own sense of self. Was it that simplistic? Perhaps not. But it also had roots in truth.

  I greeted Friday nights with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Each scene at Club Phoenix grew darker. More intense. More painful. Each session I felt lust. But pleasure? I wasn’t sure anymore what pleasure felt like.

  There were whips. There were men in the plural, all of who closed in on me as if I were a particularly tasty bit of meat to be devoured. There was a man with dead eyes who unveiled an assortment of tools that made me shiver in fear. There were men who shoved their cocks into my ass, sometimes with lubrication, but often without. My tears fed their lust. My screams assuaged a need in their souls.

  And I allowed it. I permitted each and every act of degradation. I never spoke the words that would end the scene. It was as if there was a deep pit in my soul, and I wanted to see what it would take to fill it.

  The Watcher saw everything yet he never once protested. Never once called an end to the scene.

  I couldn’t take my mind off sex. I kept checking my phone to see if there was a message from Anna. I was constantly horny, yet when I fingered myself I didn’t find any real relief in my climax.

  In Akron, my mother’s health was failing. I caught another ride with Miles in his private plane. I thought he’d talk to me and help me understand the strange rabbit hole I seemed to have fallen down, but though his eyes studied me as he sat down, he opened his laptop and lost himself in his work. As for me, I once again sat across from Dr. Patel and we discussed my mother’s treatment plan. But my phone kept buzzing and I kept reaching for it, hoping yet fearing a message from Anna. Dr. Patel’s eyes grew steadily stormier and my rudeness was inexcusable, but I couldn’t control myself.

  Two weeks after that I realized that I’d forgotten, immersed as I was in my sexual fog, to buy a ticket home to Akron. I went to look at last minute air fares, but the trip cost an eye-popping twelve hundred dollars, and that was money I didn’t have. So I called Anna and asked her to schedule a scene for me and I went to the club instead of going to visit my mother.

  Little by little, the girl who had been Kelly Mitchell retreated and a new creature emerged from the wreckage. But I wasn’t sure I liked who I had become.

  I drifted through work, going through the motions, but with my head clearly somewhere else. My sketches suffered from my inattention. After I’d produced yet another incredibly derivative drawing of a purple coat that looked startlingly similar to a Vivienne Westwood design from two seasons ago, even Nina Germain noticed. She had plenty of flaws, but Nina knew her fashion.

  “Kelly,” she waved the sketch at me, her eyes flashing. “The kindest word for this is derivative. What the fuck is going on with you? Your designs are sloppy, you’ve missed deadline after deadline and you’ve lost attention to detail.” She glared at me. “I have to say, Kelly, this isn’t the standard of work I expect.”

  I’d held her business together for so many years now and this was how I was rewarded? But in a moment of clarity I knew Nina was right. Fashion was a brutally competitive industry and my distraction had no place in a work environment. I was on the brink of losing my job and I knew it.

  I did something I never thought I’d do. I lied. “My mother might be dying,” I said. The tears that rose to my eyes were real, though my mother wasn’t the reason for my inattention at work. But have you ever been so gripped by something that everything else suffers? Everything in my life felt fuzzy and unreal and only Club Phoenix had a sharp clarity to it. A knife edge and I was starting to bleed.

  Her eyes softened in sympathy and I felt horrible, but only for a moment. Then, my phone buzzed on my desk and my eyes jumped automatically to it. Was it Anna? Had she set up my next scene? I needed it. I craved the darkness.

  It was still there around my waist, the lifeline of the Watcher’s gaze. But my fingers picked at the knots, attempting to unravel them.

  My almost firing should have scared me straight. It did, for the space of twenty four hours. But Friday night rolled around and I opened my email with shaking fingers. I was an addict, and I needed my fix.

  “Why aren’t you stopping me?” I asked Miles as the car ate up the miles on the highway, taking me closer and closer to the source of my pain and pleasure. His face had been expressionless, as always. But I could sense the weight of his concern. “You could, you know. You could wave your arm and I’m sure my trial will be cancelled.”

  He didn’t try to pretend that wasn’t true. We both knew that money was a powerful tool and if he wanted, I’d no longer be welcome at Club Phoenix. What was the saying? Give me
a place to stand and a lever and I will move the world. His money was his lever. Was his disapproval not creating a wide enough platform to stand on?

  The silence grew between us till it seemed to take on a tangible shape. I pressed against the side of the car. He sat on his side.

  I wanted him. For the last few months I’d danced around the truth in my own heart, but in that moment of complete quiet, the truth couldn’t be hidden. Miles St. Clair was familiar to me, yet he was not. He was both darkness and light. Sometimes, his lifeline felt like a noose around my neck, but right now, as we neared closer and closer to that castle in the countryside, it felt like a warm blanket of comfort around my shoulders.

  And yet, the space between us was more than a physical space. I could move closer to him on the car seat. But to move closer in any other way would be a step on a different path and I was trapped in my current lane, unable to swerve away, unable to change my mind.

  “You once asked me if I had a Watcher of my own and I said no,” he began, his voice a warm murmur in the quiet night.

  I nodded.

  “It wasn’t exactly true. I too had a Watcher, at first.” His eyes were closed and his voice had taken on a faraway tone as he reached into the past to tell his story. “Her name was Daria. She was my lifeline as I fell.”

  His fingers were locked into tight fists, betraying his tension, though his tone stayed even. “You think there’s a bottom to the pit. That there’s a point where it’s enough. But with me that wasn’t true. Each door I walked through made me more eager to push open the next one. The welts hadn’t yet healed, but I would pester them for another session. Daria warned me to slow down. To stop and think about what I was doing.”

  “And?” I was almost reluctant to speak, just in case he wouldn’t continue his story. But whatever pain he felt he pushed past it and kept talking.