Stated so blatantly. I blinked, my thoughts running about like freaked-out mice. Truth then.
He’d killed a stranger. A fucking stranger.
A dark purpose emanated from him, and his feet moved under him, ready.
His large hands rested on his knees. The damage those could do...if he managed to seize me.
Caged and concealed behind the swayed locks of hair, his eyes lurked. The crack and rustling thump of a palm leaf falling to the sand behind him distracted him not at all. I was his only target.
I was playing a dangerous game with a dangerous man.
“Why?” I croaked. “Why today?” Black specks danced across my vision. My lips numbed. The gun seemed lost in my thick fingers.
“Because I want you.” He rose to his feet, heavy muscles sliding on arms and thighs, ominous as a dread instrument of war about to attack. “Because I will kill to keep you. I will kill a man on the bloody whisper of a suspicion to keep you. That –” He nodded at the rifle. “– an empty gun, will not stop me from taking you back.” He took one step.
All my fears crashed in.
“Stop. Stop there. It’s not empty.” My finger tightened. It couldn’t be empty. He was bluffing. I didn’t want to shoot, but he took another step then leaped for me. One, two strides. Panicked, I pulled the trigger while scrambling back, half tripping, unsure where I was aiming, the barrel swinging in little arc. Click. Nothing. I yanked the trigger madly. Nothing. Nothing.
I stumbled and my heel hit something. Just as I was on the verge of toppling head over heels, he was on me, snarling, one hand on the middle of the rifle and twisting it aside, the other hand had my throat.
“I wanted to see if you’d shoot. Three, four times, you pulled that trigger? You are in so much fokken trouble. Did you really think I’d leave it here loaded?”
Still off balance, but with both hands hanging onto the rifle as if it were a life jacket, I gaped at him.
Terror stampeded my mind.
I had to act. Had to do something. If I let him have this I was done for, his victim again. If I kept it, he was going to half kill me. Frantic, barely able to think, my fingers stayed locked on.
“Let it go. Now.” In the rumbling threat in his words, I could hear the or else like the music cue before the beast eats the teenagers in a horror film.
Something, probably that irrational terror, along with having him snarling down at me like that movie beast, made me attempt to swing the rifle around to bear on him. An empty rifle.
And fuck me, if I didn’t tear it from his hand. It was the left, hurt one, of course. I sat down abruptly.
He ripped the gun from my grasp.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat, my eyes watering purely from the anxiety of facing him down. “I... I’m sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean to...” But I had.
His eyes narrowed, darkened to what seemed pits-of-hell level.
Doomed, was putting it mildly.
“You spoke.”
The next sorry died on my tongue.
He rarely gagged me, but he hauled me to my feet, marched me over to the box, and held me facedown over it while he connected my wrist cuffs at my back. The leash clicked on, then he wrapped it around and around my face and knotted it somehow. My tongue met the metal links if I swallowed. While still behind me, he twisted my head back until I bent like a bow...god. That black stare – so impersonal. I floundered, crazy scared.
“You will learn never to touch another weapon. One lesson only because that’s all I need. Down.”
He shoved me to the sandy concrete and made me kneel with my face to the hard surface then he sat. The box creaked under his weight. With my head low, I could only see his feet before me.
“Turn your head to the side and look at me.”
I did that, blinking up at him, and his foot descended on my neck. The weight pushed my cheek into the grit.
“Being bad means bad consequences.”
I sobbed once. It was a little wretched, and he would see it, but what did it matter now? All I’d done had come to nothing. I was his again.
Chapter 34
I was incandescently angry. She’d tried to shoot me several times. The trigger pulls had been obvious. Another man might have beaten the crap out of her over what she’d done but that wasn’t going to be me. I’d unleash my anger, yes, but it would have purpose. After weeks of this, I’d thought we were nearly there. I’d thought she wanted to be with me.
That notion she’d just dragged through the dirt. I figured that meant I could drag her through it too.
Tears trickled from her eye and over her nose then dripped to the concrete, making wet splotches. I kept my foot where it was while I calmed.
“Crying? You should have thought. You should never have done this. I need to remind you of your place. Down there.” I tapped her neck with my foot then reached down to run my finger over her cheek and collect some of those precious tears.
My wet fingertips slipped over one another as I rubbed them together. “These are mine,” I murmured. “Like you are. Understand?”
She nodded, her lips trembling and her eyes communicating misery.
This was hard. Even with my anger, this was hard to do. This couldn’t be a relationship where we were equals in any way, at all. I had to have all the control in my hands, to her mind, her body, her heart, her soul. I couldn’t do that by continuing on the way I had.
I’d thought being on the island would help us become a loving couple. Wrong.
I couldn’t have a woman with so much knowledge wishing to escape whenever I looked away.
I had to come down on her with brutal precision. There was no question I could dominate her or that she loved it when I did, but now...now I would dom her ass out of existence until she didn’t take a breath without thinking to ask my permission.
I stood then pulled her up by a grip in her collar and her hair.
“When I’m done training you, you will beg me for proof of my ownership of your body. It isn’t just my cock that has rights to your body. For every time you pulled that trigger, I will pierce you.”
I would pierce her irrevocably with my metal. I could taste that. If I didn’t nearly come in my pants doing that, I’d be damn surprised. Growling, I shook her neck.
“What I did to you before was nothing, girl, and what comes next is only the beginning.”
Chapter 35
His declaration repeated in my head, yet I dared to hope. Being towed over to the jetty and the shelter with his hand clasped on my neck was no worse than other times. I could take pain. What could he do that was worse?
My cuffs were unclicked and fastened with rope to the roof, high above. I swung on tiptoes if he pushed me to the side. I remained there stretched out, while he went away. He came back carrying multiple implements, a whip, a flogger, and a stick of some sort?
Those I could handle, but when he attached the leash to the ceiling with a fine piece of rope and tightened it enough to force my head up and put pressure on my neck, goose bumps trickled down my spine and I grappled at the floor with my toes. I could die of asphyxiation if things went wrong.
My gurgled squeaking as I tried to tell him were met by a whip across my breasts and I jerked, coughed, and ceased talking.
“Be. Fucking. Quiet.”
He whipped me again, making me screech. Already my drool soaked the rusted chain.
The end of each sentence, he punctuated with the whip.
“You touched a gun that you knew you should not.”
Whip. The hard crack as it hit my skin made me dread my nipples splitting.
I choked out a gasp.
“Whatever you thought you might do...” Whip. “...you will never think that again, little bitch.”
His speech ended but he circled me, laying it on so fast that I wrenched myself everywhere in an attempt to escape. My arms ached from the strain. I’d thought Gregor was harsh but I’d have bruises on my breasts already.
&nbs
p; The fire laced me, seared me, and sent me spiraling into a litany of muffled screams.
Then he halted, leaving me dangling and shuddering.
Something hard and lubricated probed at my ass, squeezing into me inexorably, as he wedged me in place with his legs and a hand on my stomach.
In...further, I felt myself stretching though I was crying again.
“A size bigger than I planned. It fits. Just.” With teeth, he claimed a big chunk of my shoulder then pushed the plug all the way in.
Too big. Keening from the hurt, I attempted twisting sideways and got exactly nowhere. His palm smacked onto the end of the plug, jolting it deeper.
Pieter came around to my front and tucked his fingers into the chain of the leash either side of my mouth so that I had to look into his eyes. The pressure on my neck increased. Air rasped in my throat.
Panicking, desperate not to be strangled, I went up high on my toes, but he screwed the leash tighter.
The violence I saw in his eyes. The lust for hurting me.
This monster couldn’t be the Pieter I went to bed with. Something had happened. Just me? Just putting my hands on the rifle? I wished I’d never gone near it. This fear unraveled me, tore me to shivering pieces, until my legs trembled and the blood in my veins seemed to become worms of dread.
I had no savior here. My savior had become my torturer.
“I’m going to fuck you there later and you won’t like it, then I’m going to make you like it and come hard, then I might hurt you again. And not in a good way. You’re going to bleed. Learn from this. Are you learning? Nod.”
Though tears streamed down my face, I nodded and nodded, until he stopped me.
“Good.” He untangled his fingers and slapped my face, twice. “Good.”
Then he flogged me and caned me, covering me everywhere with a fetish artist’s playground of welts and bruises. More, and more again. He stalked past, studying his work.
I wanted him to stop, pleaded in my head for some impossible rescue, please, please, please, and knew no one was coming.
“Pretty, pretty stripes.”
Then around again, I heard the dance of his steps, the swish of leather and stick. I swayed, spun. Distantly he muttered no blood.
The last strikes of the whip were like leaves drifting silently onto a mountain of leaves. They didn’t register in significance. I was gone, elsewhere. Only the gasps and rasping sounds of my breathing came to my ears.
A whisper: Yes.
Then he pulled that plug from me and his cock shoved in. Red-hot pain. That made me scream and awaken.
“You’re fine,” he said, his words thick and harsh. “I’m in. Just.” Another shove, rocking me on my toes, then a grunt from him, and my inhalation became a whine. “A little more.”
The implacable surge of his cock as he slowly thrust further must rival childbirth. Burning, tearing pain. The circle of muscle seemed to stretch beyond what was possible. My teeth clamped onto the leash and I bit down as if I thought to crunch through the metal. The hold of rope, metal, and his hands on my hips made getting away impossible. I wrapped my fingers in the rope above and whimpered as he began fucking me in earnest.
A millennium later, his fingers clawed my stomach and I felt the swell of his cum inside. Then he released me from all the bindings except the leash in my mouth and laid me gently down on a blanket on the concrete.
My arms flopped at my sides and I groaned, eyes half open.
On his knees and arms, he leaned above me. “Have you learned properly or do I have to do that again?”
Oh god, no. No more. My eyes surely wide and full of fear, I nodded.
“Say yes, I learned.”
Though the gag made it a gurgle, I obeyed.
His smile crept out like the sun emerging after a storm, but this had been no ordinary storm. This had been an implacable assault on me, meant to devastate absolutely, and meant to make me obey him without question.
He rose and brought back the rifle, offered it to me, slowly advancing it toward my hand. Tears slipped down my face as I scrambled to avoid the weapon. Though my arms ached and could scarcely hold me off the ground, I dragged myself away. If I touched it even by accident, he would beat me, I knew this. I’d learned. Fuck. I had.
“Very good.” His lips quirked up. “Good, meisie. Now hold your ankles and be still. I’m going to eat your pussy and then fuck your ass again. Hold your ankles as long as you can. Say, yes, sir.”
My asshole clenched in at the suggestion of more, but he had me. I’d become nothing more than his owned thing and I knew it. I hadn’t even the will to be disgusted at myself. I blinked, sniffling. I could no more deny him than a rabbit deny the teeth of the wolf.
My drooled, “Ess, ssrr,” clearly made him happy. I wriggled my hands onto my ankles and held on tight. Like this I was so exposed, and he could slide into me easily.
I was terrified he’d rip me this time when he violated my ass.
Yet at his first lick across my clit, I dropped my head backward. Pleasure washed over me. I closed my eyes to let him do as he wished. His fingers entered my pussy. Other fingers made a V either side of my clit, isolating it for him to lap at and suck on, to flick with the tip of his tongue, to bite softly.
I groaned, squirmed, and prayed he’d suck all of my clit into his hot mouth.
Within minutes, I approached the bliss of climax. Such a betrayal of my own self – after all he’d done, that he could bring me to climax so fast.
A final suck and I hit the orgasm explosively, my muscles taut and the scream so exuberant, I felt the burn in my throat. I writhed on his fingers, arching, awakening the pains and finding those pains and his continued sucking setting me off on yet another climax. When he’d milked enough from me, he ceased, gave me one final exquisite lick that made me squeal, and sat up.
He undid the leash gagging me. “Keep yourself there.”
God. How? Sweat covered me and made my skin impossibly slippery. My fingers slid on my ankles and I was exhausted. I had my mouth back again but the indentations on my face and the corners of my mouth felt deep enough to be permanent. I ran my tongue over my lips and worked my jaw to lessen the hurt.
My grip kept my legs wide and as Pieter worked lube down his cock, his focus was on my pussy. Then he centered himself down there. The head of his cock poked in a fraction, pushing into that constricting circle. Already I had to bite my lip not to shriek.
Slowly, with a look of immense concentration on his face, he entered me.
“Hurts! Hurts! Hurts!”
But he kept going. For once my speaking seemed to please him.
The relentless advance of what seemed an immense cock, in that place I’d never thought to allow a man, cemented his dominance. I held myself open as he reamed me, squeaking with every fraction of an inch that he took.
When I almost released my ankles, he growled a stark no. Somehow I fumbled with my numbing fingers and found the energy to tighten my grip.
Once his balls met my ass, he leaned on his arms over me, pressing my knees to my belly, and fucking me a little as he spoke. “This ass is mine now. Every part of you, every hole I can fuck, every thought you have, is owned by me. Do you understand that I will do anything to keep you? Anything?”
I nodded through the sear of the hurts. Despite the fatigue, the scratches, the dread that perhaps he’d torn me open, I still whispered a yes.
In the storm, something had been obliterated, and I feared it was me.
“Good. That’s what you needed to say.”
By then my arms were shaking, I was dedicating so much effort to holding my ankles. Before my grip failed, he extracted himself and put me on my side and lay down behind me
“This time, you’re going to like it.” His cock brushed my asshole, found the center, and he pushed.
I whimpered, waiting for that burn again.
“Relax. Push out.”
Trembling, I feared what would happen next, but he enter
ed me slowly until only the first part of the head of his cock seemed inside me. The pain was there but I could stand it. With his palm on my lower stomach, he kept me in place and when I cringed, his hand slid lower, over my mons. Using one fingertip, he played with my clit, feather light, and in the tiniest of circles.
“There. Are you feeling that?” His cock sneaked in some more, the pressure widening me by increments. “You smell like a bitch in heat. Taste like one too. Damn, I could fuck you harder again. Next time I will.”
Talking in that dirty way and playing with me, it made me center on what he did, on his hold on me. On the sensations he was coaxing from my abused flesh. Now I knew he was satisfied. He’d dominated the fuck out of me, and if this was what he wanted, he would get it.
I breathed in, breathed erratically out. His other hand cupped my breast and toyed with my nipple.
My clit swelled under his tender ministrations. When I moaned, he clamped on finger and thumb and began a rhythm that would take me to climax.
More squeezing of my clit, more cock, more dirty words. Mouth parted, eyes rolling back, I was gasping, lost in that sexual haze, that eternal moment, seconds from coming.
“Oh. Oh.”
“There. Come for me, girl.”
He sucked on my neck, while his fingers kept working their magic and his cock penetrated me, all...the way...in.
Panting, straining onto his fingers, and aware of everywhere he touched me with mouth, fingers, and cock, and of everywhere I stung and ached, I soared into the climax.
When I was still shuddering through the aftershocks, he began to fuck my ass properly.
“You’re mine,” he said into my neck, “Mine,” as he bit me and thrust hard into his own climax. “Mine.”
No one had ever said that and meant it like he did, ever. No one.
I finally understood. I was. I was completely his. My world was him.
*****
“Do not touch the rifle, the knives, or any weapon from now until forever.”
That was his first command on arising the next morning.
Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) Page 22
