by Maren Smith
There wasn't room enough in the cage for her to escape it. There was no direction in which she could roll, nowhere near enough pillow for her to avert her face and hide; nothing that she could do except just lie there while he coaxed the stiff lines of her to conform against him. Traitor that her body had become, that stiffness didn't last long. It ebbed from her, leaving behind only the pulsing need and welling tears.
She couldn't breathe. Tavy struggled to keep quiet, but she lost that fight, too.
"Shh," Alan soothed, stroking her hair.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, but the tears refused to be caged. They filled her chest first, weighting her lungs and multiplying wildly until they had no place else to go but up. Up into the back of her throat. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes burned.
"Let it out." His arms held her tighter. "It's okay to cry."
As if she needed his permission. As if she could stop it.
Her will splintered, cracking like a dam on the cusp of cataclysmic failure. The sharp jerk of her shoulders was the last sliver of weakening she could bear. She broke, and all attempt to keep it quiet broke with her.
Alan folded around her, cradling her despite the force of every spastic jerk. She gasped and bawled, not pretty, movie star-quality weeping, but ugly, red-faced, nose-running, voice warbling wails that refused to be smothered or contained. Frustration had her beating her head against the pillow—but only because he caught her forehead and wouldn't let her beat it against the bars. His body became her pillow then, holding and protecting her until the worst of the storm had passed and all Tavy had left was a wet face, the dull thud of a slight headache, and exhaustion like a blanket that covered every inch of her.
Just like Alan was doing.
He was a furnace at her back, still hugging her head to keep her from hurting herself, his other arm wrapped around her waist, and his leg thrown over the tops of hers as if he just couldn't hold her close enough.
"You can let go now," she said, or at least tried to. What little voice she'd had left after her fit in the dining hall was reduced now to nothing more than raspy whispers. She sounded anything but sexy. She was pretty sure she didn't look the part, either.
"I know." Alan pressed the softest kiss to the back of her shoulder. "But I don't want to."
She closed her burning eyes. "Why not?"
He was quiet a moment. "Let's just say, it's not Friday yet."
"I'm pretty sure Master Marshall will give you someone else—"
"This subject is not open for discussion."
"Someone you can have fun with."
He unhooked his arm from around her waist.
"You've got to be as tired of—" Tavy broke off with a cry when he slid his hand between her thighs. She bucked her bottom back, but the cage of his hips prevented any real retreat. Her next inward breath almost choked her when he shoved his fingers inside her. It was not a gentle invasion, but her pussy welcomed him with a flood of warmth.
"What did I just tell you?" he growled, his breath burning the back of her ear.
"You can't want me!" she cried. Except that, when he ground his hips into her bottom, all she could feel was the very solid bulge of his cock willing to argue the point.
"Can't I?" Another demand, another thrust of fingers that were not inclined toward gentleness. "Why not? Because you don't want you?"
That nearly reduced her to tears all over again. "Please…"
"No." He was relentless. He pressed his thumb over her greedy clit—as though her body needed any further encouragement to respond to him. "Talk to me, damn it."
She shook her head.
"Yes." Abruptly letting her go, he jerked her over onto her back. The narrow space within the cage gave them little room, but he rolled onto her anyway, straddling her legs to nullify the violent squirming with which she tried to wriggle free. His fingers were out of her for only a few minutes before he shoved his hand back between her legs and pushed them deeper into her. Her back arched, her bottom grinding into the bed of pillows as the wet, slick, slap of his palm against her pussy filled the air. "Yes, you will. You are going to tell me what's going on in that head of yours so we can end this."
Tavy glared at him through the blur of fresh tears. "And then what?" she countered bitterly. "How many will you give me then? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?"
He shook his head. "No more games. No punishments or rewards. Just you and me, and whatever is required for you to forgive yourself. Whatever it is, it should have been done a long time ago."
Her chest tightened, the awful weight inside her growing so thick she could barely breathe around it.
"Let it go, Tavy." Laying his hand upon her throat, his touch every bit as intimate and possessive as his collar, he said, "You don't have to carry this anymore. That's what I'm here for. I'm going to carry it for you."
She tried to look away, but his gaze was even harder to escape than his touch. What he was offering was so tempting, but she knew better than to believe it. Already she couldn't get her head where it needed to be to endure what she knew she had to. She'd barely been able to get through the last caning he'd given her. If she continued to follow him, letting him lead her further down this rabbit hole, she'd never find her way back out again. Then what would she have? Nothing but the guilt eating her from the inside out. He'd ruin her; stolen from her the only outlet she'd found to make the ugliness even halfway bearable.
Tears, never far from the surface these days, spilled from her eyes and flowed down the sides of her cheeks to be absorbed by her hair.
"Talk to me," he said again, his hand on her throat as soft and as cajoling as his tone.
She was drowning. Gasping for air, but not able to feel it fill her. Desperate to run, but unable even to look away. "You're going to hate me," she whispered, but it wasn't until she'd voiced that fear that she realized just how true it was.
"Not possible," he said, but she knew better.
She knew it.
She was the submissive who never said no, never, or enough. She was the one renowned for taking whatever the most sadistic of Masters could deliver. They cut her, bruised her, left their scars carved in her, and she endured it all. But she couldn't endure this.
"Onions," she whispered.
Her punishment was having to watch the ramifications of what she'd just done crawl across Alan's gentle face as hidden speakers all around the mosh pit came crackling to life. "Dominant, cease your play. Security has been dispatched. Submissive, we're coming to get you. You're going to be okay."
She knew better than that, too.
Alan caught her chin, but unable to bear the clash of anger and betrayal she could see in his eyes, she closed her own. If he was even more hurt by that, it really didn't matter. This, whatever this was between them, had been over from the moment he'd bought her. He just didn't know it yet.
Reaching across his desk, Marshall plucked two Kleenex tissues from their box and stood up. Curled sideways in the overstuffed chair across from his, as close to the fetal position as she could fold herself, Tavy sucked air between dwindling sobs and watched him round the desk to her side. Even though he was a man who habitually unnerved her with his freakish ability to read in her things she'd rather leave hidden, all Tavy felt right now was bereft. She hiccupped, clutching her fingers in the blanket Security had draped around her shoulders. Apart from Alan's vest, it was all she had to wear until she got back to her hotel room.
"I-I-I don't know wh-what's wrong with me," she said, accepting the tissues he offered her. "I c-can't stop crying."
Smiling faintly, Marshall sat down on the edge of his desk and did what he did best. He listened while she talked. The piercing blue of his eyes never left her face. He probably heard this sort of drivel all the time, but to look at him, one would never have guessed his attention was anywhere but raptly on her.
"Have you talked to him?" he asked.
Groaning, it was everything Tavy could do not to cover her head with the
blanket and just hide. "And tell him what?"
"The truth is always a good place to start."
"You would say that." Disgusted, with herself more than anything else, Tavy hid her aching eyes behind her hand. "This wasn't what I wanted," she moaned. "No attachments. No entanglements or complications. I just wanted to come here and go home again." Dropping her hand, she stabbed him with accusing, red-rimmed eyes. "Why did you let him buy me? You knew my rules, and you knew I'd already played with him once."
"And you knew the risks," Marshall returned, his gaze stabbing back at her. He was better at it than she was. "You knew it was possible someone you'd already played with might buy you, and I told you right from the start Alan was going to try."
"You didn't have to let him."
"I've known Alan almost as long as I've known you. He cares about you."
"I never asked him to."
"A funny thing about people: most don't need to be asked to care about someone else."
Hating that he was making sense at a time like this, Tavy covered her eyes again. "He doesn't know the first thing about me."
"Not true. He knows you're stubborn." He said that so mildly. "The two of you are rather evenly matched in that regard."
"I noticed." It was hard to bite back the bitterness, but the instant she said it, she regretted not trying harder to keep her tone neutral. Her relationship with Master Marshall had been prickly over the years, but he had only ever tried to help her. He didn't deserve the cross side of her tongue. None of them did. She had to get out of here before she did anything else that she'd regret. "Please refund his money. I'll pay you back. I just…" She unfolded her legs and got up. "I have to go home."
A touch of real amusement lit the pale blue of his eyes and tugged at the corners of his mouth. "If you think he's going to accept a refund over two more days with you, then you really have not been paying attention."
"Don't give him a choice. You're good at that." Hugging the blanket that much more tightly, Tavy did what she was good at. She walked away.
"You won't make it two steps into the hallway," Marshall called after her.
Having only just reached his office door, Tavy snapped around to glare at him. "Are you threatening me?"
Arms folded across his chest, still sitting on the edge of his desk, seemingly so relaxed, Marshall laughed at her. "Do you remember the day we met? I thought it was a godsend when you handed me the deed to this property and said all you wanted was permission to continue living in the old farmhouse on the back plot, a paltry twelve hundred an acre for the rest of the land, and one free visit per month for life. But even then, I saw something in you. I didn't know what it was then, and to be honest, I still don't know everything. But that something inside of you, 'O', is about to collect its due. To be perfectly honest," he mused, "I don't know if I'm going to do anything to stop it, either."
A shiver of icy fingertips played up the back of her neck. Not knowing how to respond, Tavy fumbled the door open and left. Marshall was right. She made it two steps into the hall before she spotted Alan, standing against the far wall, his arms folded across his bare chest, still dressed only in his black leather breeches, the epitome of calm. Perhaps. If one didn't look too closely. Dark fingers drummed upon the taut bulge of a very tense bicep. A tic of angry muscle leapt over and over along the hard line of his jaw. And his eyes. When he dragged them up off the floor and stabbed her with his devil-black stare, her knees almost buckled out from under her. He was not calm. He was not calm at all.
He was also not alone. The public hallway was full of guests; a constantly streaming buffer of people passing back and forth between them on their way to whatever kinky destinations called to them. And, standing with Alan, Jackson the Chief of Castle Security was doing his best to diffuse the situation, something Tavy didn't know until Alan locked her in his fiery stare and that tic in his jaw and the drum of his fingers both abruptly stilled.
"Now see, this is what I'm talking about," Jackson said, trying to step in between them—but already Alan had launched himself off the wall and side-stepped around him. He came at her with long strides Tavy didn't realize she was retreating from until she bumped into Marshall's inner office wall. And still he kept coming.
Jackson was coming too, catching repeatedly at his elbow, though Alan yanked free both times. "Don't do it, Alan. You are going to hate yourself. Don't—"
"You want to call 'onions' on me?" Alan growled, setting off every hidden speaker in the sanctuary of Master Marshall's office.
"Dominant, cease your play. Move to the other side of the room. Security has been dispatched—"
"Security is already here," Jackson called.
"Security standing down," the speakers relayed, and clicked off just as Alan seized her by the arms.
Tavy threw up both hands, but he still yanked her off the wall. "You want to call 'onions' for no damned reason?"
"Dominant, cease your—"
"Still here," Jackson barked upward. Then, to Marshall, "Why are you just standing there? We're about to get sued!"
"Possibly," Marshall acknowledged, and yet he did nothing but watch as Alan dragged Tavy across the room to a cozy sitting area where a chintz-covered sofa faced the fireplace.
"W-wait! Stop!" Only belatedly did she realize neither word counted as a safeword. Tavy locked her legs, resisting his pull with all her weight, and still when he threw himself down, it only took one hard yank to topple her face-down across his knees. She immediately scrambled to roll off, but he was still stronger and still faster. His arm locked like a vise across the small of her back. The clamp of his legs capturing hers, muting her scrambling kicks, was ironclad. "Alan!"
He ripped the blanket right off her, stripping her down to his vest, which offered her bottom no kind of protection at all. "I'll give you a reason to call 'onions'!"
"Still! Here!" Jackson barked, when the hidden ceiling speakers crackled.
"Please, I'm sorry!" Tavy shouted, when he ripped her blanket away. "I'm sorry, Alan!"
"We are sooo going to get sued," Jackson groaned, making no move to interfere. "I can't afford to get sued right now. I've got a baby on the way. This is really bad timing."
Alan jerked the back of the vest she was wearing, working it up over her bottom, baring her completely.
Finally, with a sigh, Marshall pushed up off his desk. He patted Jackson on the arm as he passed him, and then headed for the door. "You've got five minutes, Alan," he said, walking out of the room.
Glancing from Tavy, to Alan, to the ceiling, Jackson reluctantly fell into line behind him. "Am I breathing? I seriously can't tell."
"We'll find you a paper bag."
It was the last thing Tavy heard before the door clicked shut behind them, and the broad flatness of Alan's hand came smacking down hard and fast upon the undefended hills of her buttocks. Every place he'd caned her that morning came erupting to agonizing life. She stiffened, gritting her teeth against the rising shouts, but all too soon they became impossible to hold back.
"Alan!" she wailed, but instead of stopping, he switched targets, leveling his punishing swats across the very tops of her squirming thighs.
Tavy's shouts became shrieks. She strained against his grip, flailing to get a hand back to stay him, fighting to roll over—anything to tuck her smarting bottom and legs somewhere his hand couldn't reach. He couldn't have given her more than a few dozen swats altogether before it was over. It wasn't the longest or even the hardest spanking she had ever endured, but it was the most devastating, particularly when he grabbed a fistful of her hair close to her scalp and dumped her off his lap onto the floor at his feet.
Switching his grip to her collar, he pulled her right up to the edge of his knees. They were eye to eye, almost nose to nose, breath to shaky breath.
"That," he growled, "was not a reward."
Bottom smarting, she trembled. It hadn't felt like one, either.
"Tell me why I spanked you," he demanded, and
damn him if he didn't sound perfectly calm again.
"Because you're an asshole!" she spat, and quickly grabbed his wrist to lessen the pressure on her neck when he pulled her even closer.
"Push me again," he dared. "See what happens. Why did I spank you?"
She was losing her defiance by the heartbeat. Her bottom stung and throbbed, but already that throbbing was wending its insidious way down between her legs to places she'd never wanted to feel it.
"Because of the word I said," she answered, her voice quavering.
"Because you fucking ran away," he corrected. "Was I hurting you?"
"No," she whispered, both feeling and sounding small.
"Was I giving you more than you could take? Had you reached your pain limit? Were you scared?"
"I don't want to tell you what I do." She tried to pull away, but he wasn't softening his grip on her hair.
"Why not?"
"I'm ashamed." She could barely get the words out. Her throat closed on them, trying to choke her on the admission.
"You've already admitted to thievery. How much worse could it be?"
Putting it like that, he sounded so reasonable. But that didn't change the way she felt.
Letting go of her collar, he cupped her chin, tilting her face back to his when she tried to look away. "Why do you come here? You go to school—"
"I'm dropping out at the end of this semester."
"Why?"
"Because," she begged, "There's no point in finishing. I can't leave my dad."
Alan tipped his head to one side, waiting, once more a dark-eyed devil with all the patience in the world.
"It's the family business," she said haltingly. "Sutters and Sutters in Granger. He and mom started it, but then she got sick. He needed help, so I stepped in."
"Doing what?"
It was said the truth set people free. Funny, then, how just the thought of it made everything inside of Tavy want to curdle. "Debt collections. Credit cards mostly. Sometimes utilities. Sometimes medical centers and hospitals."
