by Lilly Black
“Lorraine Meriwether gave you this riding crop?” he asks incredulously, not even seeming to notice or care that this means that Rain is alive and well.
“Yes.”
“And what did she tell you?” he asks, still holding his hand above his eyes. “Will you turn that thing off?”
“No. I don’t want you to see me, and you need to respect that if nothing else. Rain said that you had given these out to Victoria, Lourdes, and a bunch of other country club bitches. This one belonged to Elizabeth.”
“What?” he barks, but as everything crystallizes in his head, he softens, coming toward me. “Baby, no.”
“Stay back. Don’t you fucking touch me,” I growl, low and serious, but he ignores me, yanking the lamp out of my hand and throwing it against the wall behind me where it shatters, leaving us in complete darkness. Then he grabs me, and though I fight, he’s too strong.
“Stop it!” Cain commands.
“Let me go!”
“I promised to never let you go.” He’s speaking calmly, yet forcefully with no intention of acquiescing. If I want him to release me, I’m going to have to hurt him.
“You promised I would never have to let you go. I don’t have to. I’m choosing to,” I say coldly, trying to pull away when I think he has dropped his guard. He hasn’t.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he hisses, then he picks me up, stalking toward the bedroom as I struggle futilely.
“Cain, you’re scaring me.”
“Good,” he barks as he throws me on the bed where the tethers are still attached to the bedposts. Sitting atop me, he gets the cuffs out of the nightstand.
“Stop it!” I scream, fighting him as he straps one wrist into a cuff, then the other, doing it all skillfully in the dark. I guess it’s no wonder. He’s apparently had much more experience wearing a blindfold than he led me to believe!
“Hold still,” he roars, but I fight him until my hands are bound over my head. Then I feel my ankles being cuffed as well as he sits across my shins to stop me from kicking at him.
“Let me go!” I demand. “Cain, I’m serious! I am not having sex with you!”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I could not possibly want you less than I do at this moment.”
It’s the most hurtful thing he has ever said to me, and if I weren’t so pissed off, I would lose all fight. This is not how it was supposed to happen. I was in charge of this!
“Let me go!” I shriek again as I hear him milling around in another room.
“I’m not letting you go, Evan,” he says, matter-of-factly as he returns, his face illuminated by his cell phone, casting dark circles under his eyes. I hear it ring. It’s on speaker.
“Zahara Grohl,” says a sultry voice with a slight accent. Arabic maybe?
“Zahara. It’s Cain.”
“Cain, how are you?”
“I’m well, Zahara, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’m hoping you can answer some questions for me about the riding crop I commissioned.”
“Shoot,” she says.
“When did I order it?”
“A couple of months ago. Do you need the exact date?”
“No, that’s good enough. How many did I order?”
“One…is there something wrong, Cain?”
“Please bear with me. Have I ever ordered any other like it from you?”
“No.”
“Has anyone else?”
“No.”
“Did anyone see it before I picked it up?”
“No. It came straight from the artisan to my home address. I examined it to be certain it was up to snuff, then took it directly to the store where it was in a safe until you came to pick it up. No one else has the combination.”
“So there’s no way anyone from Grohl’s could have seen it?”
“No way. All anyone in the store knew was that you were paying for a special order item.”
“Would your artisan have shared this with anyone?”
“Not if she wanted to continue to do business with us. It is a contingency of our contract.”
“Thank you, Zahara,” Cain says.
“Has something happened?” she asks, and Cain explains the situation in brief.
“So somewhere along the line, someone has apparently leaked information about it, but Evan finds it more plausible that I’ve handed out nearly a dozen of these things,” he tells her, his irritation with me blatant.
“If you had been handing those out about five Christmases ago, I might have never let you walk out that door,” Zahara purrs. Cain laughs subtly.
“Sorry I didn’t mention it, but you’re on speaker and Evan’s in the room. I didn’t want her to think that you were tailoring your answers for her.”
“Hi, Evan. Sorry about that. It’s just a really lovely accessory.”
“No harm done,” I force myself to say, not wanting to give her an inkling of how I feel right now.
“Cain, are you sure that the one you have there is real?” Zahara asks.
“Yes. Evan had it appraised.”
“Tell you what. I am in the Gaslamp right now, not too far from your place. Is Lucy in town? Could she bring me Evan’s riding crop so I can take a look at it?” she asks.
“Why?” I ask.
“When I have it in hand, I can call you back and we’ll go over them together. I may be able to determine the artisan of the one you have by the differences. Could we Skype?”
“Yes. I’ll have Lucy call you. Thanks, Zahara,” Cain says.
“Anytime. Cain. Evan.” He hits the red button and starts texting Lucy.
“You’ve fucked her!” I snap.
“Once.”
“And when were you planning on mentioning that one?”
“It didn’t mean anything to either of us, Ev. It was Christmas Eve, her husband was with his mistress, and I was…”
“It doesn’t matter,” I hiss.
“If it matters to you, it matters.”
“Just let me go, Cain.”
“If you promise to be civil until we can get this figured out, I will.”
“Just because some woman you used to fuck covered your ass doesn’t mean that I believe a word of it.”
“I see you’re not ready to be civil.”
“Why would Rain go to all this trouble if it wasn’t true? What does she have to gain?”
“What would she have to gain from protecting you at the club? I don’t fucking know! Maybe if you’d tell me exactly what happened today…”
“Fine!” I shout, then I quickly go over the highlights. When I mention heroine, Cain is incredulous.
“Rain would never do heroine,” Cain says. “She’s was the only Goth at school without piercings. She’s terrified of needles.”
“Maybe she’s snorting it. I didn’t ask,” I growl.
“Don’t you think if she was actually on a heroine bender, she would have hocked a $150,000 whip that means nothing to her?”
“She’s rich! She’s probably got plenty of other shit to hock, Cain!”
“So she’d rather hock her dead grandmother’s pearls in order to save you from being fooled by a…fuck, what would that even make me?” He laughs for a half a second, then seems to suck the laughter back in.
“I don’t care what it makes you, Cain. You and Zahara can examine the riding crops all the fuck you want, but I don’t really see how that changes anything. Rain told me you called Elizabeth Domina!”
“I’ve never called any other woman that in my life!” Cain shouts.
“Just like you’ve never been with two girls at once? Like you’ve only had, like, ten partners in the past? No, wait, it was twenty. Oh, no, it was actually more like fifty! How many is it today, Cain?”
“I don’t fucking know!” he wipes off the top of the dresser, and I can hear random objects flying everywhere. “I’ve apologized for that, but I’m not going to let you hang that over my head for the rest of our lives.”
“There is no the r
est of our lives anymore!” I scream, and as the emotion causes my voice to crack, I lower it and try to sound rational. “Just untie me so I can leave.”
“You’re serious about leaving me over this?” he asks.
“Of course, I am! Do you not realize what your lies have done to me?”
“Evan, I am not lying to you,” he says calmly, and then just as calmly, he completely blows me away. “But if you trust the word of a woman you’ve met only once over mine, then maybe you should go.” I’m stunned, my heart impaled by a blade of ice, but my defenses wouldn’t let me back down now if I wanted to, preferring to see me alone and miserable rather than humiliated. God, I can’t believe the things I’ve said and done with him…and my scars…I have never been so exposed in front of anyone in my life.
“Evan,” Cain says sitting down on the end of the bed. “I never gave Elizabeth a riding crop. Before you, Grohl’s made a few paddles for me - simple, black, leather paddles with words written in diamonds. They cost less than $5,000 each, and they said things like ‘slut’ and ‘whore’. I’m telling you this because I don’t want to be accused of lying about it if it ever comes up. I am swearing to you right now that I never gave a riding crop to anyone before you and will never give one to anyone after you, and this is the first time I’ve ever even had the thought that there might be an after you.”
“I never wanted there to be, Cain, but I don’t see any other way. I can’t forgive this. Can’t you understand that?”
“If it were true!” he roars, his mood turning on a dime. Then I hear the sounds of glass shattering and falling all around as he smashes the mirror over the dresser.
“Fuck this!” He stalks out, and a second later, I hear the door to the suite slam shut.
Now I’m stuck here, tied to this bed, but that’s not the worst of it. Cain has left me. Tonight, I was doing the leaving, and when I visualized this moment, him begging me to stay was supposed to be the part that would have made the wound I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life ache a little less. Now he’s gone, I feel the loss of him like a phantom limb, and I do not like where I feel it.
“Just walk out, you fucking bastard!” I shriek into the darkness.
“Misogynistic prick! Fucking liar!” I shout then pause to listen for him. Nothing.
“I hate you! Do you hear me? I fucking hate you, you filthy, fucking whore!” I pull at the tethers, thrashing in the bed.
“You can’t leave me like this, you goddamned psycho!” I wail. “I’ll fucking kill you when I get loose!”
I pause again. Still nothing.
“You motherfucking, egomaniacal, self-righteous cocksucker!”
“Are you about finished?” Cain asks as he appears in the door way, his face illuminated by his tablet.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” I snarl.
“That’s the first accurate name you’ve called me,” he jokes. I’m in no mood.
“Fuck you! I thought you left.”
“That’s what I wanted you to think,” he says, smugly, then he stands the tablet on the dresser and walks out. It’s off kilter because it’s setting on broken glass.
“Evan?” Zahara asks.
“I’m here,” I say, meekly, mortified that he’s placed her in front of me.
“I can’t see you. Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
“Good enough,” she says, then wastes no time getting right to her point. “This is not your riding crop. For one thing, these aren’t even real diamonds.” She shines a flashlight at the “diamonds”, and I see the stones sparkle in rainbow colors, not clear like the real diamonds of my riding crop.
“I can assure you that this was not created by anyone we use at Grohl’s. It looks fine at a glance, but on closer inspection, it’s actually pretty sloppy work, definitely not up to our standards,” Zahara explains. “Also I spoke with the artisan who made yours, and what you might find interesting is that there is a date burned into the leather if you look inside the fold of the tip. You can see it in good light.”
“And you can feel it,” Cain hisses. “Thank you, Zahara.”
“Call me if you need anything else,” she says abruptly and disappears from the screen. Cain knocks the tablet over and comes to the bed, thrusting the crop into my hand. He grabs my right index finger and shoves it into the loop of the end.
“Feel it,” he orders me, and when I feel something that seems like characters embossed into the leather, it isn’t necessary for me to look at it because I realize with a heavy burden of guilt that Rain was the one deceiving me. I don’t know how she switched them out, but now that I know she lied about the riding crop, I know the rest was probably a lie, too. In an effort to try to maintain some semblance of justification, I play my last card.
“Then how did she know to say that you called Elizabeth Domina?” I ask, and Cain thrusts his phone in my face. It’s a video in a text from Lucy. Cain hits play.
“The case you ordered came in the day after you left for Vegas, so I put the riding crop in it when I took it out of Evan’s closet.” As Lucy talks, the video shows the case, and when she zooms in, I see a metal plate by the center lock. In a strong, yet feminine font, it says:
I have really fucked up.
“Cain, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not yet, you’re not,” he says, and when I feel him at my feet, releasing them from the tethers, it scares me.
What does he mean? Is he going to throw me out? Panicking, I feel like I can’t breathe as he yanks my panties off and flips me over onto my stomach, crisscrossing my wrists uncomfortably and forcing me up onto all fours.
Is he going to fuck me? Do I want him to? Does he care? As my mind reels, his hand comes down hard on my ass, and he’s not playing. His open palm strikes me over and over, but I won’t cry out.
“Are you sorry?” he asks sternly.
“Yes,” I say, my voice flat, which only incites him
“Not sorry enough,” he rules, and then he grabs the riding crop. It bends around the sides and stings my hips when he strikes me, but I remain stoic.
“Are you ever going to doubt me again?” he demands.
“Are you going to give me reason to doubt you again?” My pride asks, spitefully inviting his wrath. He brings it down a second time, and though it hurts like hell, I find the pain cathartic and satisfying as it quells my guilt.
“I didn’t give you reason this time, Evan.” His words are hard and deliberate as he spits my name out of his mouth and swings the crop against my ass even harder. “Will. You. Ever. Doubt. Me. Again?”
“No,” I give in, my voice shaky, my eyes tearing up. “No, I promise. I swear. I’ll never do it again.” I hear the whip hit the floor, and before I realize what’s happening, Cain’s cock is abruptly inside me. I feel violated, disturbed that his brutal spanking gave him an erection and more disturbed by how wet I am, which worsens as my legs start to tremble until he has me screaming his name within seconds. I know this is so wrong, but I love it.
With my wrists still tethered and twisted, Cain pushes me down flat on the bed, lying atop me as he fucks me. I arch my back, and with no room to relax my elbows, they hold me up as Cain’s mouth finds my neck, biting me.
“Never leave me, Evan,” he orders as his teeth tear into my shoulder, vicious enough to leave an impression but not break the skin. “Swear it!”
“I swear,” I breathe. “I’ll never leave you.”
“And never doubt my love for you.”
“Never,” I promise, my voice wavering as he moves to my ear, running his tongue around the rim before biting the lobe.
“I love you, Evan,” he whispers. Then I feel his weight lifted off my back as his hands run down my spine to find my hips, pulling me back onto my knees, but when I feel his hands on my ass, he stops suddenly.
“Oh, God, baby, I’ve marked you,” he says, his voice full of remorse.
“I don’t care. Just fuck me!” I demand, and he swift
ly leans over me to release me from the tethers. Pulling me upright with his hands on my tits, he fucks me slowly, but I don’t want to be fucked slowly. I bend back over on all fours, bucking against him to force my will, and his anger not entirely spent, he grabs me by the back of my neck and shoves my face into the bed, holding me there as his cock swells with the impending release until I feel him burst inside me, hot and wet, instantly taking me with him to a glorious end.
I collapse under the weight of emotion and fulfillment, and when Cain falls to the bed beside me, putting his arms around me, holding me so tight I can barely breath, I finally know peace.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, breaking the beautiful silence as we lie wrapped around each other.
“You were set up, baby. It’s not your fault. I just don’t understand why Rain would do that to me. Maybe her sister would, but…” he sighs.
“She said her sister was the one who asked her to steal the riding crop from Elizabeth’s apartment.” This piques Cain’s curiosity, and he prods me to tell him everything in detail. I go over the entire conversation with Rain, and when I tell him how terrible she looked, he’s suspicious.
“People on heroine don’t gain weight. They lose it.”
“She didn’t look fat, just…frumpy.”
“And she actually said her sister was being more mature?” he asks, and I nod. “That sounds more like Sunny posing as Rain. Could that sweatshirt have been hiding a pair of fake tits?”
“I guess, but would Sunny really have dyed her hair for this?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“What kind of psychos have you exposed me to?”
“I didn’t realize I came with so much baggage.” He makes me laugh.
“I shouldn’t have fallen for it.”
“I’m just glad you waited to confront me before running away.”
“But I went off the deep end. I deserved worse than a spanking.” When I say it, he rolls me over.
“You didn’t deserve this,” he says, running his hands over my ass and upper thighs. Now that he’s touching it, I realize it’s really sore. “Baby, I’m sorry.”
“Really. It’s not a big deal,” I say, and though I do wish the marks weren’t there, I feel better for having them. They’re my penance for doubting him.
