“Yes?” I can feel him positioning himself behind me, and that fills me with both horror and a sickening type of anticipation that I’ve only experienced once, when he bent me over on the table this morning.
“Is there any way you’ll stop this?”
“Not unless you take my other option, no.”
“Are you ever satiated? If I give you more, will that even be enough for you? You took everything from me, everything. Why are you demanding more?”
His heat radiates against my back, even though he’s not touching me, and that does weird things to me—things that make me clench my thighs. “I didn’t take everything from you, Lia. You want to believe that because it’s easy to blame others for your mistakes, but that doesn’t make it true.”
“You brought me here and took me from my life.”
“Correction: I saved you from it.”
“First, you think you’re merciful, and now, you believe you’re a savior? You need a wake-up call!”
His fingers sneak over my collarbone and I stiffen as they trace up to my chin, propping it up as his lips find my ear and whisper in hot, dark words, “Maybe you do.”
My lungs burn and it’s then that I realize I haven’t been breathing since he caught hold of me. His fingers are caring, but couldn’t be any more brutal.
“Tell me to fuck you,” he rasps.
“Fuck me,” I murmur. “But you won’t be hearing anything.”
I realize my defiance has tapped an invisible red line when his fingernails dig into my skin for the briefest of seconds before he releases me.
“I was generous enough to give you two chances, but you chose poorly. As I already mentioned, defying me will only result in breaking the stubbornness out of you. Challenging me is like swimming against the tides, you’ll eventually tire and will be swept away by the current. Understand this, I make the challenges, not the other way around. It’s time you learn that.”
His impassive voice should have no effect on me, but it locks my muscles into a rigid line.
He lowers my shorts down my thighs, and even though it’s similar to what he did this morning, it feels entirely different, tenfold heightened. His hands are like lava from an active volcano, or maybe that’s my skin.
His finger curls into the band of my underwear. “You’re still wearing the ones from this morning. Did you like walking around all day, remembering how your cunt came undone from my fingers?”
My cheeks flame despite myself as I blurt, “Of course not. I didn’t find time to change.”
“You didn’t find time to change.”
“I really didn’t.”
“Did I say anything?”
“Your tone says it all. You think I’m lying.”
“Are you?” He traces my soft entrance and I jolt at the contact. “Is that why you’re already wet, hmm?”
I screw my eyes shut as he rids me of my panties and glides his fingers over my slick folds, fondling them, assessing them with utmost care.
“I haven’t begun to touch you, and yet, your body is burning with anticipation for the punishment. For someone who was acting high and mighty just a few minutes ago, it seems that the promise of punishment was enough to provoke your deepest, darkest secrets. Do you recognize what that is, Lenochka?”
I shake my head violently but stops when he brushes my hair to the side so his lips can find my ear again. With my eyes closed, everything is heightened—his callous touch, his warm breath, and his scent—that dangerous mix of woods and leather.
“You’re a masochist to my sadism, Lia.”
“Shut up!”
“And that’s eleven. Open your eyes or it’ll be twelve.”
I slowly do, staring at my bound hands, feeling the helplessness in my bones. And yet, a certain type of freedom overwhelms me. Something I’ve only ever felt when I was drunk, roaming the streets with no purpose other than to stay alive.
“Now count or it will go up.”
I don’t know what he means until the belt whistles in the air before coming down on my ass. A scream bubbles in my throat as searing pain explodes on my skin. If I thought his hand hurt, his belt is in a league of its own. The welt it leaves on my flesh aches and burns, bringing stinging tears to my eyes.
I want to shout, to express the physical agony, but I refuse to show him my pain as well as pleasure. I bite down on my lip.
“Do you want the count to go up, Lia, hmm?”
“One.” My voice trembles around the word.
It’s barely out before the belt hits again. I jolt, trapping my lip so hard that I nearly break the barely-healed skin from this morning. It takes me a few seconds to mutter, “T-two…”
“I wonder, how long do you think you can seal yourself off from me? Is it worth it?” Slap. Slap.
“Three…four.” I’m sobbing now, my tears wetting the pillow as my teeth break the skin. Blood coats my lips, forcing me to taste metal, but I don’t scream. Not even once. I don’t beg him to stop either, because that will only steal away my dignity.
“Have it your way.” His voice is so calm, and yet so dark that a shiver for something a lot different from the pain takes my body hostage.
By the seventh strike, I think I’ll stop feeling my ass altogether, but that’s not the case.
Far from it.
And it’s with horror that I come to terms with the reason behind the change.
Adrian brushes his fingers over the welts and I hiss, but the sound is about to turn into something else when he gently glides his thumb over the hurt skin, mixing the pain with a softness I never thought he was capable of.
A softness that confiscates my air and pauses my anguished sobs.
Something in me jostles and quivers with the need for friction.
Wait. What?
“What are you doing?” My voice is as shaky as my insides, full of tears and confusion—both at his behavior and mine.
“Shhh.” He dips a finger inside me and I buck off the bed at the harsh intrusion.
It’s like getting ripped from one phase of being and thrust into another.
“Ahhh—” I muffle my own voice by biting down on the pillow. Shit. A euphoric mixture of sensations rise and land inside me with a thud so resonant that I hear the vibration in my ear.
His belt comes into contact with my ass three times in a row and I scream into the pillow. The mixture of the agony and whatever is happening in my pussy turns me into a crying mess. I want it to end, but at the same time, I’m barely stopping myself from pushing against his hand to alleviate the ache inside me.
“That’s not counting, now, is it?”
For a moment, my screwed-up brain tells me to stop counting, to let the count rise up, to see how far I can go before I collapse.
But my brain is totally unreliable right now.
It’s succumbing to my body’s needs and losing all logic.
I release the pillow, leaving a smear of blood and tears on it as I whimper, “E-eight… Nine… T-ten.”
Adrian adds another finger and I feel myself disintegrating, decimating in the path of his destruction. My walls clench around his fingers and I cry with relief when he thrusts them in, giving me the friction I’ve needed since the first time his belt came on my ass.