Echo of Redemption

by Roxy Harte

  He doesn’t lead me to the bedroom. I find him in the library. I lick my lips, anticipation shooting down my spine, making my pussy wet, my skin anxious and needy. I remember the times I’ve spent here, one blurring to the next, the floggings, the canings, the hours of torturous confinement trapped in rope or leather or chains. God, yes. Oh God. It’s been too long.

  “Stand.”

  I obey, noticing when I do that my knees are stinging. He drops a suspended hook and motions me forward to stand under it. I do, feeling almost giddy with excitement. He takes my wrists gently in his hands and wraps them in leather cuffs attached by a chain before drawing my arms up over my head to secure to the hook. With a press of a button on a palm sized remote, my arms are stretched out as the hook ascends, my body too stretched out, and then I am forced on tiptoe. Higher. He leaves me balanced precariously on the bare tips of my toes. I am not in pain, barely uncomfortable, but the potential is there…within minutes I will be feeling just how thwarting the ticking seconds will become. He pulls up a straight back chair and sits down, straddling it in reverse so that the back runs up his front. He crosses his elbows over the top and settles in. Oh, hell.

  I watch him, watching me. My toes hurt and I haven’t even been standing on them that long. Mere minutes. I keep waiting for him to say something but he doesn’t. I’m sure as hell not saying anything. Everything I have to say is inappropriate. Just because I knelt, stripped, crawled doesn’t make me less angry. I am seething on the inside, and I don’t know why. I feel like a long-watched pot, refusing to boil, and now…if I open my mouth I will erupt toxic venom. I won’t be able to stop. There is so much unsaid between us.

  If I was facing a mirror, I’m sure my stubbornness would be reflected on my face but I’m not, I have only Master, and his countenance is set in stone. Waiting.

  I wish he would talk to me. It seems we haven’t talked in a year, not about anything of relevance. We’ve gone through the motions; we’ve been so busy. We’ve discussed the club, we’ve talked about my day at The Darkness.

  My heart breaks in two, looking at him, seeing him for the first time in months. I love him. I do. I love him with every beat of my heart, but Thomas is so…overpowering, intoxicating…especially as Lord Fyre. I sometimes forget how wonderful and special Garrett is. How could I? God. Look at him. If Lord Fyre walked into this room right this second, would Master pale by comparison?

  Tears drip over my cheeks.

  He stands, seeming to want to answer that question himself, and as he strides toward me I cannot understand how I ever thought he was less. What is changed? Me? Have the blinders been removed from my eyes?

  Master closes the distance between us quickly, grabbing my jaw roughly, pinching my skin hard between bone. It hurts. A. Lot. I try to not moan, but lose that battle.

  “Tears?” he asks sarcastically. “What thoughts go through that pretty little head that cause you to cry?”

  I shake my head, refusing to answer, and he slaps me for the refusal. Shocked, I stare at him, realizing the difference. Not me. Him. “Lord Ice?”

  “No, Kitten, you aren’t ready for Lord Ice. Someday, but not today.”

  “Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.”

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Curse of Eve

  Chapter 7

  Garrett

  She trembles against me. Nervous? Fearful? I like it, quite a lot actually, knowing I can affect her so. After so many months of watching her slip away, to finally have her full attention…

  I could blame Thomas, but I won’t. I knew exactly what we were getting into when this ménage formed. He is mesmerizing, all-absorbing…no one is immune from the spell he casts. I’m certainly not, I couldn’t expect her to be.

  I’ve spent my fair share of time with him, and he’s made me remember who I am. It’s a shame really that now that I am ready to be all Kitten needs me to be, I can’t because she is pregnant. I must be especially careful with her. I can see the question still in her eyes. She isn’t certain motherhood is a path she wants to walk.

  I meant what I said. I will not force her to have this child. It has to be her choice. It is most convenient that Thomas was called away to deal with his brother. He would never permit her to make the choice.

  I kiss her shoulder. “Tell me what you fear.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Nothing.”

  I stroke her face, softly, forcing her with gentleness to look into my eyes. “Everyone fears something.” I caress her lips. “I’ll discover yours.”

  She shivers.

  I run my hands over her body. It has changed so much just from yesterday to today, or maybe I am just more aware. “Your breasts are larger.”

  She gasps when I stroke them, telling me they are extremely sensitive, and when I pinch her nipples…her eyes flutter closed and she grits her teeth to keep from crying out. I take her nipple in my mouth, sucking hard, drawing at her core.

  “Stop. Please stop.”

  Stop and please are not safewords. I bite down on her nipple, making her cry out, making her keen. I pull as much of her breast into my mouth as will fit and bite, leaving deep impressions of my teeth when I release her. I am careful, being mindful of her developing milkducts, but not so careful that she will not remember this night for many nights to come. I didn’t break the skin, but the dents are dark red, tinged almost purple. She will be bruised for days. I switch breasts, giving her a taste of agony for her second breast.

  “Master? Please!”

  I release her flesh and look at my marks on her. I stroke her arms, then her ribs. Bending, I cup my hands around her slightly distended belly. I should have noticed this. I kiss her just below her belly button before straightening, tempering her pleasure by pinching her clit hard. She is so focused on her pain, she doesn’t notice that I lower the hook just enough for her to stand flat-footed on the hardwood floors.

  I try to not be obvious as I examine her, measure her.

  Tapping her thighs to separate her legs. I smack harder to force them wider, my goal distraction. “Don’t move.”

  Going to the toy cabinet I select lengths of rope, lube, a vibrator, a butt plug, and ankle cuffs. As an afterthought I grab a ball gag.

  Using the ankle cuffs and ropes, I spread her legs as wide open as I desire and am certain she won’t move. She cooperates, without comment. Sometimes, she does. She’s quite the sassy slave, always trying to up the ante a notch.

  It seems odd that tonight she doesn’t say a word.

  Obviously unnecessary, I lift the ball gag and she opens her mouth without being instructed to do so. Our gazes lock and hold. I wait to see challenge in her eyes but see only resolve.

  With her gagged and bound, I hide what I am doing behind the guise of lubing her up, vagina and anally. Fingering her, I am more certain and even more concerned. She isn’t outwardly showing, but the top of her uterus is level with her belly button.

  I don’t know how pregnant she thinks she is but my gut and limited medical training tells me she is farther along than either of us imagined and that worries me. I want to get her to an obstetrician immediately.

  That doesn’t mean I intend to end the scene.

  I slide a small butt plug in place and attach it to the ball gag straps. Each jerk of her head will remind her she is filled.

  I face her, holding a ball-top vibrator. “Don’t even think about coming.”

  I’ve given her an impossible command. Squatting in front of her, I intend to prove to her just how impossible. I lift the hood covering her clit and keep the bud exposed as I apply the vibrator. It is an immediate shock that has her dancing in her bonds. The sounds coming from behind the ball gag aren’t happy ones. I ease the pressure, but barely enough for the sharp jags of sensation to become
pleasurable. I know the instant she is lifted into a stream of bliss, the moment there is no turning back. “Do. Not. Come.”

  She crashes through her need, orgasm exploding despite my command or maybe because of it.

  I don’t ease off the wand now that I have her sweet-spot targeted perfectly. Her orgasm doesn’t let up. Wave after wave of pleasure turns into wave after wave of overstimulation. Eventually, the overstimulation becomes pain. She is screaming and crying, snot and drool covered by the time I decide she has had enough.

  When I turn off the wand and remove the gag, she sags with relief but I don’t give her a second’s reprieve. I strike her. Slaps on the tops of her thighs and the back of her legs.

  “When did you first suspect you might be pregnant?” I expose the bud of her clit and begin again with the vibrator.

  “December.”

  “December what?”

  She starts to keen, responding much more quickly to the sensation this time around. “The twentieth, maybe the twenty-first.” She is crying. “I regret not coming to you the minute I suspected.”

  “You regret it, but you aren’t heartsick. You feel no grief, no remorse, even though you lied to me, kept secrets from me, and planned to go behind my back to have an abortion.” I think her blood is boiling, she is perspiring, and before she can answer the question another orgasm is lifting her. “Don’t you dare come.”

  “I’m sorry!” She shrieks and I am not certain whether she’s sorry for the secrecy or the orgasm.

  “Yes. Sorry. But what I want to know is what exactly went through your mind that you felt your responsibilities as my slave included keeping such a serious matter a secret?”

  “I was scared.”

  “You didn’t trust me,” I accuse. I remove the butt plug and reposition her, tying her in an inversion, feet secured with full-support ankle cuffs. She is upside down. This time rope is wrapped across either side of her pussy, trapping her genitals, cutting into her. More rope is attached to nipple clamps. All of the rope is anchored in front of her several feet away, forcing both nipples and twat to feel a constant sensation. It isn’t comfortable. Or pleasurable. I make certain she is experiencing pain before I hold the vibrator to her clit. I begin again with the questions. “What did I do that you stopped trusting me?”

  She is mid-orgasm when she screams, “You didn’t trust me first.”

  What?

  I allow her to ride the wave out before demanding, “Explain.”

  “When you found out I was a reporter, you chose to believe that everything we’d shared was a lie. It wasn’t a lie. You left me. I loved you and you left me.”

  She is upside down and sobbing. She chokes. I get tissue and command her to blow. I command she stop crying, but she doesn’t, and so she is forced to blow again and again to keep from choking on the snot going down her throat.

  I do not try to explain how betrayed I felt at the time, because she is right and I was in the wrong. I should have tried harder to see the truth. She was in an impossible situation, feeling emotions she’d never felt. I left her bottoming out with no one to turn to except Lord Fyre…and he was there…ready, willing.

  Damn it.

  “So, because I failed you once, you can never trust me again?” I do my best to keep my voice in monotone and my emotions in check. I dip my head to lick her clit, a gentler stroke than the vibrator can provide. I want her to come down a little. Not too much. But a little. Enough to make the next pleasure plateau her highest yet.

  “Yes. No!”

  I squat down, catching and holding her gaze. “Which is it?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Yet you went to Thomas, hoping he would support your decision to abort the baby? And I’m here to tell you, I’m shocked. Because the woman I knew the day before yesterday—or at least the woman I thought I knew—abhorred abortion. Or were you lying to me before?”

  She gasps, my meaning clear, but I don’t leave it at that.

  Standing, I expose the bud of her sex and hold the vibrator to it. “Tell me again how Lionell McCain and your father forced you into a car and drove you to an abortion clinic. Tell me again how you fought them and how you struggled for years to find absolution from murdering your child.”

  Her body jerks under the pressure of the vibrator. She screams, “Stop it!”

  “You had me convinced.” I repeat what she told me in the past, mimicking with cruel exaggerated sentiment, “I imagined that I’d felt her move the days before. I wanted her. I did. But I had no one, except Daddy, and I thought that giving up my daughter was the only way to keep my father.”

  “Shut up!” She screams, her body bucking defiantly.

  I should stop. I don’t. Interrogation is the one thing Lord Ice excels at and I wouldn’t want her to not have the experience before she decides if she wants me or Thomas, if it comes down to a choice. I fill my voice with the emotion she expressed almost two years ago. “Oh God, I couldn’t lose him too, not so soon after Mom. I wouldn’t have had anyone.”

  “No. No. No!” Her orgasm crashes over her.

  I lie down on the floor so that we are eye to eye. “Did you lie? Were you just playing a part?”

  “No,” she sobs.

  “You wonder why I left? Why I couldn’t stand the sight of you after learning you were a reporter.”

  “None of it was lies. I promise. None of it was.” She fights her bonds, but there will be no freedom for Kitten, not anytime soon.

  “I know, Kitten. That’s why I’m here. If I thought for a minute you were false I wouldn’t be.”

  She cries harder.

  “Tell me, at what point did you decide abortion is an acceptable form of birth control?”

  “Master, please!”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I didn’t want the ménage to change!”

  “The ménage changed dynamics the moment you conspired with Thomas against me.”

  Her eyes widen. “No! That’s not—”

  I wipe the tears from her face. “It’s how I see it.”

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.”

  I kiss her even though we aren’t through. She thinks we’re through, but I’m just getting warmed up.

  “What frightens you, Kitten?”

  * * * *

  When I do untie her, she collapses into my arms, completely sobbed out. She falls asleep as I carry her to our bedroom and tuck her into bed.

  She is bruised, bitten…emotionally devastated…marked by me both mentally and physically. And pregnant. Only time will tell how this plays out. In the meantime, I have to make an appointment with a community-friendly obstetrician.

  I crawl in bed beside her, completely jazzed on adrenaline though I should be exhausted. I feel good, better than I should following the events of the day. I hold Kitten, knowing that after the intense scene she just experienced she will need me when she wakes and even though her slumber is easy, I don’t sleep.

  Hours later, she awakens in my arms and her eyes immediately fill with tears. “Do you hate me?”

  I kiss her. “I love you. I was trying to help you figure out how you feel.”

  “You would support me in the decision to have an abortion?”

  It is almost impossible to say the words but I force myself to. “If that is what you want.”

  “I don’t, I’m just…”

  I wish I could read her mind. She is wearing the same expression she wore to her father’s funeral, lost, broken, dread-filled. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’ll be a terrible mother. I’m selfish, self-centered. I like having the party revolve around me.”

  I laugh though I don’t mean to, explaining, “You just described Jackie.”

  “No, Jackie is maternal, compassionate, selfless.”

  “We are talking about the same Jackie, right?” I ask sarcastically and receive a well-deserved look of contempt.

  “You know we are.”

  “Two completel
y different sides of the same woman?”

  She smirks, my meaning clear. I hug her closer.

  “What if God takes my baby anyway to punish me for the past?”

  “God doesn’t work that way.”

  “You’re joking. You were exposed to the book of Genesis in the Catholic church you were raised in, right? Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for daring to look upon deviants like us as they fled Sodom. What will He do to me if I try to raise a child under this roof?”

  I kiss her. “God isn’t going to smite you or your baby.”

  She sighs and cuddles closer. I close my eyes, hoping she won’t notice how truly upset I really am. I do not want her to even consider abortion. I thought we had this worked out…I know she told Thomas we would have this baby.

  There’s no slowing my racing heart, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I excuse myself to retrieve my cellphone and make a few phone calls. Within a few minutes I have an appointment scheduled—the soonest available being almost two weeks away—I don’t know how I’ll ever survive the wait.

  “Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.”

  Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

  Chapter 8

  Nikos

  The room is pitch black and I am hanging by chained manacles. My wounds flare, pain striking red hot through my body. Sweat-soaked, chattering, I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Whether it is yesterday or whether today has become tomorrow. All I know is that Shanghai is far behind me, and I long for the lush green mountains of Pelion overlooking the perfect azure of the Aegean. I haven’t been home in so, so long.