Lords of Pain

by Angel Lawson

  His impatience returns when he yanks off the panties, pulling them down my legs and over my knees. He holds them up and says, “These aren’t the ones we bought you.”

  Now, I know my knees are trembling. “I-I didn’t have time to change.”

  “Don’t make that mistake again.” I look down as he drops them on the piano bench, and I see the hard tenting in his pants. This isn’t how I wanted it to go—losing my virginity on a piano just because I pissed someone off.

  “Open up,” he says, pushing my knees apart. “Show me your pussy.”

  It seems like it takes forever to will my body to give in to his command. I force my legs open in small, nervous jerks, trying to quell the fear in my stomach, the tremor in my muscles. When he flattens his palms to my thighs, pushing them open wider, I slam my eyes closed, shoulders seizing up.

  There’s a moment of silence, and then, “Good.” He’s staring hotly between my legs, tongue peeking out to wet his lips. “You shaved like a good girl.” He touches my clit with his thumb and a current shoots through my body, hips bucking forward of their own accord. Rath’s back straightens and he grins, licking his thumb. “Just as sweet as I remembered.”

  “And you’re still a pig, like I remember.” There’s one thing that’s different about me this time. I refuse to cry. I won’t. I got myself into this, I asked for it. I have to accept it, but I don’t have to like it.

  He laughs, chest bouncing. “Still a mouthy little shit, too. That’s okay. We like it.”

  My fingers are wrapped around the edge of the piano, clenched tight. Rath pries them off, rests them on his shoulders and dives back in. This time it’s his tongue flicking across the bundle of nerves. My belly seizes and my hands, desperate for something to hold onto, thrust into his long, shaggy hair. He groans against me, mouth humming against my sensitive flesh. I fight against the overwhelming sensation, reminding myself that I don’t want this. I don’t like it. I don’t like him.

  I hate him.

  But what he’s doing, god.

  I will my body not to react, not to succumb to his skilled tongue and warm breath. I bite my bottom lip, I stare at the ceiling, I recite the words to my favorite song. Anything to ward off the sweet sensations building at my core.

  His tongue seems just as skilled as his fingers, though, rubbing and licking in ways that I wouldn’t have even thought to conjure. I draw on the fear that I’ve carried for all these years, the nightmares that kept me up at night. Rath whispering in my ear. The feel of his hard cock against my back. The sound of him coming. The fact he knew my secret.

  Because he was right.

  I did get wet while Tristian forced his cock down my throat. My body wanted something my mind couldn’t comprehend. I’d told myself over and over it wasn’t true. That I hadn’t really felt like that. That my mind was playing tricks on me.

  That it was a lie, how some part of me, no matter how small, wanted more.

  Yet here I am again; being forced against my will and liking it.

  “Stop fighting it,” he says, easing back to meet my wide gaze as his thumb makes circuits around my clit. His eyes are heavy-lidded and glazed, mouth shiny with my slickness. “I don’t get you. You agreed to this. You like it. Why fight it? I’m going to make you come for me, Story.”

  Still, I try to remain like stone. Even as he dips down to lathe my clit with his tongue, one deft finger slipping into my entrance, I tell myself that it’s not all that great—that I can beat this.

  And then he uses his thumbs to spread my pussy apart and flattens his tongue against my clit. The ball of tension building in my center abruptly explodes, whether I want it to or not. Suddenly, I’m fisting two handfuls of his hair and grinding myself against his mouth, jaw agape as I gasp with the clench of orgasm.

  I tell myself that it’s not me. Not really. This is just my body, desperate for a release after a long, difficult week. I can’t help it.

  Rath kisses my clit and sits up, lips shiny and wet between the piercings. “Pretty good as far as first lessons go, don’t you think?” he says, ignoring the fact that I’m staring sightlessly past his shoulder.

  My eyes drop down to his pants where his erection bulges against the fabric. Now that he’s done, I know he’ll want more. He’ll want to take the one thing that’s still mine. The one thing I had to barter with in this sick, cruel world.

  His eyes search mine for a moment, like he’s wondering what I think. I scowl back, hoping to hide my shame behind disgust.

  “Go,” he says, surprisingly. “Get out of here.” I gape for a minute, brain lost in the fog of my orgasm, trying to understand what’s happening. He adjusts himself and grimaces. “Go!” he roars and I scramble off the piano. I don’t stop for my panties or my shoes. I just bolt for the door.

  I race down the stairs, almost tripping and catching myself on the banister, not stopping until I’m in my room. Shut tight inside, all alone.

  Then I exhale, and allow myself the space to acknowledge the truth.

  That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had. His mouth, his hands, this tongue. They might be attached to a monster, but they were just…

  So goddamn good.

  I slide down the door and sink to the floor. Jesus. My pussy is still warm, still wet, practically vibrating from the remnants of the orgasm.

  I can’t let him know.

  I won’t.

  I can barely accept it myself.

  7

  Rath

  If it weren’t for The Game, I would be bending Story over my piano right about now, fucking her senseless. The thought of it—the vision of my cock burying myself into her tight, wet pussy—is so vivid and alluring that I have to practically force her to leave.

  She must sense it because she doesn’t just leave. She runs like hell, scurrying down the hall like a scared little mouse.

  Groaning in frustration, I walk across the room, my erection painful and stiff, intending to close my door. Instead, I find Tristian leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest, eyebrow raised.

  “That was quick.”

  I shrug a shoulder. “Didn’t even have to work for it. She was curled up on my couch like a present, waiting to be unwrapped.”

  “Bet she doesn’t make that mistake again.”

  I laugh, still tasting her on my mouth. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I made that girl come so fucking hard, she’s probably still all jelly-legged.”

  Tristian hums like he doesn’t care, but I can see the jealousy lurking under the façade. “Three points, then?” he asks, eyes falling down to the tent in my pants. Sure, I could have made her suck me off, but barebones compliance is the smallest point-value for head. I’m biding my time with that, maximizing my point gain.

  “Five,” I correct. “The door was wide open.”

  He narrows his eyes, like he wants to protest an open door being an exhibition, but we’d already laid out just about every variation, and an open door is worth two points. If there’s one thing Killian is good at, it’s managing to break any possibility down into micro-granular opportunities.

  “I still think three is too much.” Tristian would. Exhibition is more his thing than mine.

  I roll my eyes, but don’t bother arguing this again. Three points for giving our Lady an orgasm was my own idea. I know Tristian and Killer. They’re both too involved in their own dicks to give much thought to getting a girl off. Me? Hell, that’s part of the thrill, making a girl shake apart under my hands, my tongue, my dick. The way she’ll look at me after, half affronted, half awestruck. It’s easy to give a girl a bad fuck. Giving her a good one is the better challenge.

  “Maybe,” I smirk back at him, “to those of us who only think of clits in a vague, abstract, purely theoretical kind of way.”

  He flips me off and I laugh, turning to shut the door behind me. Competition has always been fierce between us, and things escalated the prior year when we worked together against the rest of the Frat. But addin
g Story to the mix is going to be interesting. There’s something about this girl, like just seeing her brings out something feral and wild inside. I know I’m not the only one who feels it.

  When I step back in the room, I get hit by her scent, both the sweet floral smell of her shampoo and the tangy aroma of her pussy. My eyes drop to the faded gray cotton panties I’d left on the piano bench. I pick them up and press the soft, worn fabric against my nose. I close my eyes and inhale, thinking about what it was like to have her writhing against my tongue.

  My cock twitches and I laugh. God, she fought so hard, yanking and pulling at my hair, pretending like she wasn’t into it. But that’s always been Sweet Cherry’s MO. I’d seen her sugar baby account back in the day. The girl is a tease. I saw the way she strung those old fuckers along. The way she acted so innocent. She’s not. She’s a horny bitch. Why the hell would she come into my room and curl up on my couch if she didn’t want me to play with her? Considering her little addendum to the contract, there’s no doubt the girl has an appetite.

  I crash on the couch and unzip my pants, pulling out my cock with one hand and gripping her panties in the other.

  I may have let Story get away without pleasuring me tonight, but the taste and feel of her are enough to spur my imagination. It’s not the first time I’ve had to conjure up the memory of her to get off, and something tells me it won’t be the last.

  Still, the orgasm is lacking. Even as I catch my spunk in her panties, I’m thinking that next time is going to be different. Let her stew in the knowledge that I know my way around her body. Then, I’ll make her return the favor.

  Maybe it’s the fading endorphins, but suddenly I’m dumped into the chilly reminder of Story mentioning my little…issue.

  Scowling, I throw the panties in the trash—Ms. Crane will love that shit—and pick up my journal, flipping it open. It’s not like I never tried to get better at reading. It was just easier, paying people off to take my tests, to let me copy. After so long, I didn’t even have to pay at all. One nice, long stare was enough to make people compliant—teachers included. Do it to the right people at the right times, they won’t even realize you need it. One day I realized it was too late, I was too fucking old, to have problems with this kind of shit. Might have flown in grade school, but in middle school? High school? Fucking college? No way.

  But somehow Story figured it out.

  It’s late when I descend the stairs, pack of cigarettes in hand. I pass Killer’s room, right across from Story’s, and don’t have to press my ear to the door to know he’s probably already in there. Looks like I’m not the only one jacking it to Sweet Cherry tonight.

  Just the only one feeling pissed off afterward.

  “Heard you got a new toy,” Ms. Crane says when I step out into the back garden. Not much light reaches back here, but I can still make out the lines of her ancient, worn face.

  I light my post-nut cigarette and shrug. “I’ve barely taken it out of the package yet.”

  Her laugh is gravelly and harsh, a lot like her voice. Ms. Crane is in her late fifties, but she doesn’t look a day under seventy. “You boys are gonna get it one of these days.”

  “Hell yeah, we are,” I say, deliberately misreading her words. “How was bridge?”

  She flicks her own cigarette. We’re used to these little garden cigarette meetings, although Ms. Crane must smoke like three packs a day. She practically lives out here. “Nasty bitches. Can’t suffer ‘em.”

  “Because you’re such a ray of fucking sunshine,” I respond, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the night air.

  “Only thing worse than bartering pills with a dozen bitter old hags is working for you three dickless cockroaches.”

  I put a hand to my chest. “You secretly love us like we’re your own.”

  Her shrewd eyes land on mine. “If I’d given birth to someone like you, I would have blown my brains out.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have.”

  Ms. Crane is the baddest bitch I know. She was married to the oldest, sickest crony in South Side up until three years ago. She’s probably seen and lived through shit that would even make Killian shudder. We wouldn’t let anyone talk shit to us like she does. Ms. Crane isn’t just anybody.

  “No,” she agrees, blowing a plume of smoke. “Would have solved you with a coat hanger long before it got to that point.”

  I snort. “Tell me how you really feel, you old bat.”

  “Very well,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette. “You know what happened to my husband, don’t you?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Pretty sure everyone does.”

  She nods. “You keep playing your little games. One of these days you’re gonna get the wrong girl. Just you watch your back. You hear?” She punctuates this with a pat to my cheek that could almost be called affectionate.

  Except then she flips me off.

  What I don’t tell her is that I’m always watching my back. Story knows my secret—something that even Killer and Tristian don’t even know.

  If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll keep it.

  8

  Story

  My sleep is filled with the hot, dreadful sensation of eyes, watching me, waiting. It’s a silly instinct. Ted was never so obvious. I wouldn’t even know he’d been watching me until a photo would arrive of me doing mundane things, completely unaware of his gaze on me. Eating at the table. Doing my homework over a cup of coffee. Pulling all-nighters in the library. Packing my duffle bag. Getting on the bus—any bus, I barely looked—in an attempt to run from him.

  I’d been at the boarding school until the summer following my junior year. I knew that I couldn’t go home, so I hopped that random bus and ended up in Colorado. It’s hard getting started when you’re lying about your name and age, but I just about managed. I was even able to live with some of my co-workers, a closet masquerading as a bedroom for three hundred a month. For a while there, things were…

  Well, not nice. But as nice as they could be, considering.

  And then Ted found me again.

  This time, he was beyond angry. The letters I’d been used to getting—full of frustration, but also longing—had turned into nothing but postcards with obscenities and threats scribbled on the back. Eventually, there’d be photos of my roommates with big dark ‘X’ marks over their eyes. It was, quite frankly, almost too ridiculous to take seriously.

  The last mail I’d received had been a photo with me and one of my roommates. A guy named Jack.

  In the photo, Jack’s hand was on my shoulder and I was smiling back at him. Perfectly innocent, just two casual acquaintances parting ways before conflicting shifts. I’d barely gotten to know Jack at all, in fact. It would have been a stretch to even call us friends. But the back of the photo was full of the same scrawled word, over and over.

  Whore.

  My first night at the Lords’ house, I only wake once, confused about the pitch-dark room, heart pounding with some phantom awareness that I’m not alone. I lay silently for a long moment, breath caught in my throat, waiting for someone to appear out of the shadows. When it never happens, my pulse slows, the weight of sleep dragging me back into another disturbed slumber.

  When I wake again, the sun is streaming through the curtains. I stretch, well aware that even with the memories and paranoia, I’m still probably more well rested than I have been in weeks. I know being in the Lords’ house is a big factor.

  As much as I don’t want to admit it, maybe the orgasm didn’t hurt either, unraveling something tense and unwelcome in the deepest parts of me.

  A beeping sound catches my attention and I roll over, taking the phone off the bedside table. It’s instantly obvious that it’s not my phone. This one doesn’t have the shattered screen in the right hand corner and is also a much newer model. I run my hand down the sleek sides and look at the screen. A memo from Martin fills the space:

  Shower/Dress

  (First Day Outfit is in the Closet—marked.)<
br />
  Put on the wrist cuff

  Downstairs by 8 a.m.

  Inspection

  Breakfast

  School

  Inspection? I think back to Rath when he saw my worn cotton panties. His displeasure with me not wearing the new lingerie they’d provided was evident. I walk over to the closet. Hanging on the inside of the door is an outfit I hadn’t noticed the day before. There’s a note pinned to the shoulder declaring, “First day.”

  It ascends absurdity. No human girl would knowingly wear something like this, I’m convinced. It’s a tennis-style skirt, pleated and short enough that if I bend over, I’m pretty sure it’d show my panties. The fabric is white with black piping at the hem. There’s a top to go with it, a soft-looking shirt that ties at the shoulders. The front drapes slightly in a way that I know will accentuate my breasts. A pair of pristine, white sneakers is on the floor, short socks tucked inside.

  “The Lords take it to another level. They’re more than just controlling. It extends to everything. What you wear, when you eat, where you sleep. They completely rule your life. They own you.” The redhead’s voice echoes in my ear from the day of the interview.

  On my dresser is a wide leather wrist cuff. I pluck it up, thumbing the bronze skull in the middle. It’s the same as the door knocker. Arranged around it in a triangle are the letters K, T, and D.

  Killian, Tristian, Dimitri.

  It takes me a moment to realize what this is. Their mark. Something to wear to show others that I belong to them, am owned by them.

  The idea of being branded like cattle raises my hackles. I’m not dumb, though. They’re not nearly as mysterious as they like to think they are. I know one reason they picked me is because I’m not like the other girls who wanted to be Lady. I’m not a doll they can dress up and play with. If they wanted someone like that, they should have picked another Lady.