A Smile as Sweet as Poison (12 page)

“No,” she choked out, trembling. “No, please—”

The first swat of the cane struck her thigh. Pain radiated outward with an almighty echo, seizing hold of Hazel’s insides like a tight fist. She cried out, half in agony and half in relief.

Her head had always been a confusing place to be during a scene, but this was the first time Dylan had brought her to the brink of a howl.

“No?” Ward hissed.

He interposed so smoothly that Hazel almost didn’t notice him protecting her with his body until he’d grabbed her chin.

“Are you telling us to stop? That you can’t take it?” The fierceness in his voice walked the razor edge between contempt and threat, but there was another question shrouded in his bullying.

Is this you safe wording out?

Hazel took a deep breath, taking mental stock of the sensations coursing through her body. It wasn’t in her nature to cry wolf. Her pride rebelled against the thought of balking at punishment. Training had cured her of cowardice long ago but one lesson she’d absorbed well since taking up with Dylan and Ward was that her first task as a submissive was to keep their property safe—even from their actions, if the impact play went too far.

As much as the cane hurt, it wasn’t worse than the flared end of the riding crop.
And it’s not a hairbrush
,
either…

“Do you…do you think I can take it?” Hazel forced out through chattering teeth.

“Yes.” Ward didn’t even hesitate.

Prove it
. Her shaky nod was all the confirmation Dylan waited for. No sooner had Ward ducked out of the way that he struck her again, on her other leg, layering the blows with exquisite precision.

Hazel squirmed and shook with every single one, her cries fading to mortifying, wet sobs. She mistook a breather for the end of her torment, heart sinking when Dylan said, “Your turn.”

The final half-dozen blows left her cheeks tear-streaked and her body limp with exhaustion. A sunburn sting, ten times worse than anything she’d ever gotten herself at the beach, spread liquid fire over the abused flesh. There would be bruises, she was sure—perhaps as bad as those left behind whenever Dylan took a paddle to her ample ass. She jerked away from him when he approached, a knee-jerk impulse she aborted a half-second too late.

Dylan was already pulling away, lead in hand. “Bend down,” he ordered, gesturing her to face the wall.

Hazel dithered, afraid of scraping her mouth against the brick wall. She couldn’t stop trembling.

“I said
bend the fuck down
!” He twisted a hand in her hair and mercilessly nudged her into position, shoulders against the wall, the notches in her spine slowly peeling away toward the tail bone. Her knees locked to hold her upright. Incredibly, her feet remained flat on the floor as Dylan detached the cuffs around her wrists and fastened them to two lower handles protruding from the cinderblock on either side.

Hair curled around Hazel’s face, tangling in her mouth. She spat it out and flexed her toes against the hardwood boards. It was a weird pose, close enough to the forward fold she’d attempted once in the yoga class Sadie had dragged her to not to be unfamiliar but less strenuous on her hamstrings. The biggest inconvenience by far was seeing her thighs up close and personal.

As if he could sense her thoughts straying, Dylan groped her breast none too gently before standing.

“What do you think?” he asked lightly.

Ward hummed. “Could leave her like this for an hour or two, see how she likes it…”

Hazel whimpered.

“Or we could use this?”

With the world upside down and her field of vision severely restricted, Hazel only caught a glimpse of the device they meant. Her cunt clenched in response.

“Tight pussy like that? We’d split her open,” Ward scoffed.

No. No, you wouldn’t. Fuck, please…
Hazel bit down on her lips to keep from speaking. Her word meant nothing. She would take whatever they elected to give her.

“This, then,” Dylan decided. The inflatable dildo was set aside—to the tune of Hazel’s dejected sigh. He took up a curved plug instead.

The synapses in Hazel’s brain shorted out. They’d talked about anal once or twice, always as a possibility, never as something she absolutely needed to feel fulfilled. Dylan had mentioned finding it hot, but it wasn’t a must for him, either. Seeing him now with that shiny toy had Hazel wondering if perhaps she hadn’t been too quick to brush aside the possibility.

“Don’t you look scared,” he snickered, tracing the bulbous head of the toy along the inside of her thigh. “Never had one of these, I bet.”

“Oh, I think she lets all the boys plow that ass…” Ward swatted her hip as if to underscore the point. “Probably lets them fuck her loose and sloppy, saving her pussy for the right man.”

Hazel sucked in a startled breath when she felt the touch of slick between her cheeks.
This is really happening
. Her sense of reality was already a little shaken and the blood rushing to her head wasn’t helping, but the thought of Ward and Dylan claiming that part of her unraveled the final tethers she had on her self-control.

She didn’t resist as Ward prepped her with a careful, practiced hand, layering slaps on her hips with the other while Dylan raked fingernails down her back. They talked about her as if she wasn’t even present—a mere tool for their satisfaction.

Yes.
Hazel stopped fighting that bone-deep need to surrender herself to them. She stopped worrying about what she looked like, or what they expected from her next. She didn’t beg for another finger as Ward stretched her. That wasn’t her decision to make and never should’ve been.

Too far gone to clench against the alien pressure, Hazel curled her toes into the floor and sucked in a breath. Tension leached out as they pressed the toy inside her, a slow sharp burn awakening every cell in her body. In it went, then out, then in again, lubricating her insides along the way. She welcomed the torque of her limbs, the effort it took to catch her breath between one thrust and the next. Pleasure found her like the latent kick of a powerful drug, sweeping her up in an unexpected undertow.

“Maybe you should fuck her,” Dylan mused, his voice soft and faraway.

“Yeah?” Ward sounded breathless. Hazel couldn’t see him from the waist up, but what she could see of him confirmed that he was still aroused by the body under his hands.

Dylan moved into his personal space, speaking too low for Hazel to discern the words.

A moment passed, the plug finally bottoming out and the stretched ring of muscle closing tightly around the base. Hazel tried to acclimate to the sensation. The familiar fumbling of condoms and lubricant seemed to be happening somewhere far, on another plane. Then Ward aligned his cock to her throbbing cunt and thrust into her, holding her by the hips as though Hazel could try to get away. As though she had anywhere left to run to. He was both thicker and warmer than the toy, a change of pace that Hazel, in her dizzy delight, welcomed greedily.

“That feel good?” Dylan asked, running a hand down her spine. “She as tight as you imagined?”

Ward panted. “God, yes…”

“She’s gonna make you come, isn’t she? All tied up like a present and you still can’t say no…”

Excitement raced down Hazel’s back to coalesce behind her throbbing clit. This was new. Dylan and Ward usually teased and tormented
her
, not each other. Too much history between them, she’d always assumed.

Before she could give more thought to their weird, impenetrable dynamic, Ward thrust deep, groping her hips with both hands, and came. Hazel could’ve sworn she felt him ejaculate into the condom, but it was probably her imagination. Her inner muscles clawed at him, drawing out his release. Hazel was too weak to control her own body.

Spent, he withdrew with a groan, taking longer to unclench his fingers from her flesh.

“That looked good,” Dylan murmured, low and meaningful.

To Hazel, it sounded as though he wanted Ward to know he’d been watching every second.

Ward huffed out a laugh. “You’re up.”

Dylan didn’t need to pry out his dick or suit up. He was ready to go as soon as Ward allowed it and he entered Hazel’s cunt with an achingly slow thrust.

“How’s that?” he purred. “You like it?”

Hazel didn’t bother nodding. They couldn’t see her anyway.

“Looks,” Ward choked out. “Looks good.”

It wasn’t until he’d staggered back far enough for Hazel to see him that she realized he was stroking his spent cock as he watched them. Something inside her snapped at the sight. She jerked in her bonds, rutting between Dylan and the wall despite her limited range of movement. They’d had her on the edge of the tripwire for so long, the plug in her ass and her flesh smarting from her earlier caning, that when Dylan finally found the sweet spot inside her to push her over the edge, Hazel all but crumbled to the floor.

Release was hard-won, a victory she couldn’t quite grasp, but as long as she found herself in Dylan’s arms at the end of it all, Hazel didn’t much care how she got there.

“You okay?” He combed shaky fingers through her hair. His customary, casual self-assurance was nowhere to be found.

Hazel nodded. She had to force her eyes open when they seemed to prefer drooping shut. “You moved me,” she slurred. The light, airy color scheme of Dylan’s bedroom was too noticeable a shift for even Hazel to miss.

“We thought you’d be more comfortable here,” Ward replied. He was sitting at the foot of the bed, his fingers locked around her ankle.

She hoped he never let go.

“Anything hurt?” Dylan, again, taking care of the basics.

Hazel took quick stock of her limp body. “Kinda numb,” was the closest she could come to a diagnosis. She yawned, a little put off to discover that the collar was gone from around her neck. “Did I pass out…again?”

Dylan shook his head. “You were awake when we got you up. Just—loopy.”

“We can let you sleep—”

“Stay,” Hazel bit out, too tired to care if she was being clingy.

She felt more than saw Dylan and Ward trade a meaningful look over her head. Something had gone on between them in the playroom—something she didn’t quite understand and was too exhausted to worry about.

“We’ll stay,” Ward promised after a beat. “Now close your eyes…”

He didn’t have to say it again.

Chapter Nine

“Someone had a rough night,” Sadie chuckled, leaning over the counter. “And if that hickey’s anything to go by, it wasn’t talking that kept you up…”

Hazel spun around. “Shh!”

The morning rush had only just begun and the likelihood of Sadie’s voice carrying over the din of clicking cutlery and overlapping chatter was slim. It didn’t stop Hazel from feeling self-conscious as she pulled at the collar of her uniform.

“Is it that bad?”

Sadie flashed a commiserating smile. “Come on, I’ve got some foundation you can use.” She curled her forefinger around Hazel’s pinkie and towed her along between the tables, heedless of anyone who tried to catch their eyes.

The lockers were a stuffy, matchbox reprieve from stares that had been a little too piercing all morning. Hazel grimaced at the thought that every client had seen the hickey she’d missed.

It figured that a good caning had left her with no blemishes, but Ward sinking teeth into the top of her breast would leave a lasting impression.

“So I take it everything’s running smoothly in the Best-Whitley household?” Sadie teased, whirling around with a whole makeup bag in hand.

“You could say that,” Hazel answered diplomatically. They hadn’t talked much about anything, let alone her love life, since their afternoon chat in Newport. Part of Hazel dreaded a rehash of old arguments—a very small part. The rest still chafed at Sadie’s insistence that she take chances she wasn’t prepared to consider.

Sadie straddled the wooden bench and commenced rifling through powder boxes and tubes of lipstick. “I’m glad. Dylan’s a good guy…and Ward seems nice. I mean, when he’s not glaring. The other night, I could’ve sworn he had it in for you.”

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” Hazel blurted out, only tweaking to her choice of language when Sadie met her eyes. “I mean—”

“You’re in love with him?”

“No.” Hazel shook her head. “Of course not. I mean. That would be
really
stupid…”

Sadie arched her carefully penciled eyebrows. “Why?”

“I’m not exactly girlfriend material.”

“Says who?”

“The universe? My horoscope?” Hazel tugged the corners of her mouth down. “My mother?”

Sadie pinched her lips into a pout—an expression Hazel recognized as her patented ‘you’re being stupid’ look.

“Let’s backtrack, forget I said anything about the L-word… How are things with you and Frank?” Hazel deflected.

“Oh. Good. You know.”

No, I don’t. I’ve never been engaged, remember?

“How’s the seating chart coming along?” Hazel pressed, clumsily trying to steer conversation toward a more palatable topic. The last time they’d talked about Sadie’s impending nuptials, she had barely succeeded in keeping her doubts to herself.

Sadie plucked the mineral foundation she’d been searching for out of the clear plastic makeup bag. “I think we might skip the traditional reception thing and do something more modern…”

“Like what?”

“A picnic?” Sadie gestured to the collar of her uniform. “Wanna hold that out of the way?”

Hazel hooked two fingers in the stretched fabric and pulled it down an inch, exposing the hickey in all its glory. “I thought you had the venue figured out…”

“Frank doesn’t like it. And we don’t really have time to find anything else or figure out catering in time and
still
keep the same date, so…” Sadie rolled her shoulders.

“So why not push the wedding a couple of weeks?” Hazel sought her gaze with a dip of the chin. “Hey, come on. I’ll go with you. We can find something. LA’s huge—”

“I said no.”

Hazel clamped her mouth shut, stung.

Sadie heaved a sigh. “That was mean.”