Shattered (24 page)

“I could feel your disappointment in every blow.  That’s what really hurt.  It made me miserable not knowing what I did wrong or how I could make it right.”

He chuckled quietly and shrugged.  “I would endure it again if it was what you wanted.”

“I’m glad to hear it, prince.  And if I ever have occasion to beat you like that again I’ll make sure to want it,” she said, with a laugh.  “Deal?”

“Yes Mistress,” he answered, and muffled the words against a kiss upon her inner thigh.  Her hold on her dress slackened and rode higher up her leg as he made slow progressed towards her center.  Hidden still in the folds of her dress he could smell her.  Somewhere in hurting him, in their conversation, she had become aroused.

Her hands came down between her legs and pinched off his progress.  She pushed him back and leaned forward, over her knees, and her fingers went to his lips.  “You could have asked for anything but you asked for this,” she whispered.  “I think I’m going to have to make you regret that.”

She brought the outside of her leg to his chest and pushed him to the side, and Nathan scampered backwards to give her space.

“Stay on your knees,” she said, and hopped off the table. She walked around behind him and pushed the back of his head until his chin touched his chest.

The command in her voice triggered something in his brain.  What was melancholy before became submission now.  Nathan felt safer here, in the tiny space defined by his limited vision, a limited circle of carpet around his knees.

“I really didn’t like your tone earlier prince.  If you’re going to be a smartass you better do it from your feet.  But mouthing off from your knees?”  She shook her head.  “Very, very dangerous.  If you call me Mistress you had better mean it.”

“
I’m sorry, Mistress,” Nathan mumbled.  He felt her hand on the back of his neck.  She ran it over his shoulder, where her knife had played earlier.

“See? That’s better.  But I don’t think sorry is going to be enough.”

Her hand went lower, traced the thin white scars on his back.  She seemed to touch each one and for a long time she was quiet.  He knew better than to speak out of turn now, and so he kept silent too, eyes on the floor and mind as far off his erection as possible.

“What are you going to do to make it up to me?”

“Whatever you want Mistress.”

“I want a lot of things prince and I don’t think you’d enjoy most of them.  But you’d do it anyway, wouldn’t you?”

The threat surged blood between his leg.  It made him feel alive.  He gave a short nod and felt the point of her knife atop his shoulder blade.  She drew a line down the right side of his back, so slowly and for so far that by the time she reached his waist he could no longer contain his pain in silence.  He let it out in a long, hushed groan.

She put a second one down the opposite side of his back, just as slow as the first, and every instinct urged him to jerk away.  Even though he knew she wasn’t breaking skin he couldn’t detach that primal fear.  Sweat condensed on his skin and his muscles strained with stillness.

He was surprised when he heard her move again.  She crouched and set the blade down between them, reaching up again to touch at the bulge in his pants.  With his head down he couldn’t see her face, only her lower body and her hand as she traced the outline of his shaft and rubbed her thumb along the underside.

“Whatever I want…,” she mused, toying with his erection.  “You know how much I like watching you sweat.  What if I wanted to hurt you?  Push you until you beg me to stop, then go further still?”

“Yes Mistress.”  His mouth felt dry and he heard his voice crack, but more than that he felt a second wave of blood pulse into his cock.  He didn’t know if it was the threat or the challenge that excited him more.

“Or maybe I want your ass.  I’d like to
use one of those rods and show you how to fuck properly.  You’d let me do that too, wouldn’t you?”

His heart felt like it might beat its way up through his throat and escape that way, and he swallowed once to force it down.  “Whatever you want Mistress.”

Her voice dropped even lower, barely more than a whisper, and it was almost as though she spoke to herself.  “And what if I wanted to make you king instead?”

Nathan’s head came up at that and in that brief moment he searc
hed her face.  She seemed serious but he couldn’t tell, not before her hand forced his chin to his chest again.

“I didn’t give you permission to look at me.  Keep your head down.”

Robin stood and took a step back.  There was silence for a few long seconds but he felt her eyes on him, as certainly as if it had been her hand instead.  “I like you in that position prince.  You belong on your knees.”

Robin walked around him, examining him from every angle, and on the second pass she stopped
behind him.  He felt her hands on his shoulders slide down his arms as she crouched, pulling him back towards his feet. 

“Sit back on your heels and grab your ankles,” she instructed, and then stood again when he complied.

“Much better.  Stay like that.”

She retreated near the couch and then returned, and the longer she left him without touch or pain the more anxious he became.  Nathan
flexed his hands and felt the bone of his ankle against his palm.

Robin stopped before him and stood still, waiting, watching him.  It reminded him of her room and that first long morning when he would have given anything to begin, to know with some certainty what awaited him.  Tension gathered in his limbs.  He tightened his arms, pulled against his legs.  The breaths he forced calm strained his abdomen.

When her hand finally came down on his cheek he shivered.  The whip in her other hand crept into his field of vision.

“She’s still in the other room…
,” Nathan protested quietly, hushed words he knew he shouldn’t have even voiced.

“Then you better be quiet prince.
”

She coiled the braided leather around her arm and held it a few inches from the end.  She tested the distance, flicked and recoiled her wrist and let the lash dart out without actually touching him.  It flew through the air in silence.  Robin took a step
back and Nathan shut his eyes.

The rustle of her dress made more noise than the
whip, as the tip just barely landed across his chest.  Nathan let out the breath he’d been holding in a muted whimper.  She was starting light.

Robin warmed his front.  Her pace was consistent and she took all the guesswork out of when the next blow would fall.  Without that anxiety Nathan focused entirely on the heat that lingered on his skin.  Everything felt more sensitive and a draft of air over his chest was all it took to make him moan.

“How do you feel prince?”

“
Alive, Mistress.  I missed this.”

“
Then the next one is going to hurt.  Are you ready?”

Nathan nodded and grabbed his ankles with a bit more force, like he might prepare ahead
of the blow.  But the easy warm-up had only made him overestimate his ability to take that next one.  He realized the instant it landed how overconfident he’d become.

He tried to curl away from the pain across his chest and instinct directed him towards the ground.  He got his hands out in front of him
just in time to stop his forward fall and he took several deep breaths, his head limp between his arms, down on all fours at her feet.

Robin stood close to him and her hand went through his hair, around the side of his head, to his cheek, down beneath his chin.  She coaxed him back up to his knees and then hit him again.

Nathan caught the shout that wanted to rip free from his lungs and ground it out between his teeth.  He put his nails into his palms, his knuckles to the floor.  And Robin’s hand went through his hair again, beckoning him up.

“Please
, I can’t take those silently.”

“Then scream,” she cooed, lifting his face up to hers and bringing it tantalizingly close to her lips.  He was cool from the air and his own sweat, and he could feel the waves of warmth off her skin cascade down across his face.

“I can’t.  She doesn’t know…”

“Why do you hate yourself for sleeping with her? 
She must mean something to you if you were willing to stand up to me.  I mean, look at you now, that couldn’t have been easy.”

Nathan put his eyes to the floor when her hand prevented him from lowering his face, but she pressed her thumb into the fleshy space beneath his jaw and his attention snapped back up.

“Answer me prince.”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

Robin stepped back enough to open up space between them.  He expected her to hit him again but it never came.

“Look at me Nathan,” she commanded, and he did.  Her arms were folded across her chest and a frown creased the space between her brows.  “As long as you remain on your knees you will do as I say, and that includes answering me when I ask you a question.  If you don’t want to then feel free to stand up. 
Because you’re right, you’re not my prisoner, but you don’t control any of this from your knees.”

He could take the lash more easily than he could her displeasure.  That bore straight into him and knotted at his chest.  It deadened his arousal, but not his desire to please her.  That he wanted more, in equal and opposite parts to her current discontent.

“I used her to try to get over you,” Nathan whispered.  He couldn’t look her in the eyes.  His shame burned worse than the angry streaks across his chest.  “After I swore to myself I wouldn’t be that person again, I wouldn’t take and use and discard. I’ve known from the start that she couldn’t fill the void you left.  She’s just a slave, how could she? And what choice could she possibly have? I know all this and I use her anyway.  I can’t even be honest with her.”

Robin stepped forward again and knelt in front of him.  She touched at the darker lines the lash left, traced them across, and he drank in the sting her fingers revived.  It trailed up to his neck and she wrapped her arms behind his head, pulled him down to meet her lips.  She kissed him so softly it made him ache.  Nathan buried his fingers into his ankles to keep from bringing his own hands up, from touching her and holding her closer.

She nestled her face against his neck and tangled her fingers in his hair.  “Did you always hate yourself so much? Or is it something I did to you?”

Nathan shook his head and felt her lips move down his neck.  “It wasn’t you,” he said quietly to the empty space over her shoulder.  “Please
, hurt me.  I wish I never left.”

“I
already know you can take pain for me prince,” Robin said.  Her voice was gentle.  She stroked the back of his head and her words came out warm on his neck.  “You might get an opportunity to prove it too, but right now all I want is for you to trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

“Good,” she said, and uncoiled from him.  “Then you’ll stay like this until I return.”

“Yes Mistress.”  Nathan felt the cool air rush in between them as she stood and the chill bit deeper when he realized she turned towards the bedroom
.  His pulse fluttered in his stomach.  He dropped his eyes to the floor and tried to breathe away that anxiety.  He didn’t control this.  He just had to trust that she did.

**

Adara turned from the window and towards the sound of the door.  Her hands were clenched together, up against her chest, and her eyes swept
out over the whip Robin held before settling on her face.

“What hap
pened to your hands?” She asked.

Robin held them out in front of her and looked down at the twisted swaths of scar across her cri
ppled fingers.  She’d forgotten all about them in the time she spent with Nathan.  She should have put her gloves back on, but if she expected Nathan to obey she supposed he was entitled to his one condition, ridiculous as it was.

She
dropped her hands back to her side and ran her thumb over the braided handle of her whip.  The ridges there gave her something else to focus on.  “Dorthorial troops razed my village.  Twelve years ago.”

“Oh,” Adara whispered, more a breath than anything.  “Is that why you hurt
him? For revenge?”

Robin couldn’t help the frown that strained her brow.  She looked back up at Adara but there was only curiosity in her face.  No accusation, no disgust, no anger.  Her blue eyes caught the light and shimmered a little.  There was something strangely innocent about her
, but it wasn’t quite the same as the innocence that had defined Lily.  Adara wasn’t naïve.

“Yes and no,” Robin shrugged, th
inking she might leave it at that.  But Adara cocked her head a little to one side and the rest came out on its own.  “It was the reason I clung to as I hurt him.  I wish I could blame it on that.  But ultimately, I did it because I wanted to.”

Adara stepped away from the window.  Her eyes were still fixed on Robin’s hands, but the attention wasn’t uncomfortable.  Robin didn’t feel any urge to hide them.  Perhaps it was Adara’s expression.  She wore her emotions so openly that there didn’t seem to be any room for anything ulterior
, and right now there was only curiosity.