Enslaved (17 page)

“Of course, you’re right. There is no us.” His voice was quiet and controlled, hard as steel. He lifted the knife and touched its point to the hollow of her throat, just below her slave collar.

~*~

There is no us.

The words reverberated in Sam’s brain like a ricocheting bullet. He was startled at how much they hurt. Had he really fooled himself into thinking what they shared had anything to do with D/s or, even more ridiculously, with love?

Her hatred had shone like a bright flame when she spit out those words.

There is no us.

All at once he understood—her apparently growing submission was only her having learned over the days and weeks to better play the game. The same way she’d fooled him in business, pretending to be his ally and supporter, she had been fooling him now with a pretense of true submission.

What did you expect, Ryker? You’ve held her against her will in your fucking basement, keeping her naked and marked. Did you think she’d fall in love, you asshole? Was this ever about anything more than power and revenge?

Sam withdrew the knife from Rae’s throat, leaving a small red dot behind on her skin. He stared at the knife in his hand, aware he should put it away. He was hurt, and letting that hurt manifest itself as anger. A Dom should never act out of anger with his sub. That was ingrained in his psyche, or it should have been.

But he wasn’t her Dom, was he? And she certainly was no sub! He was an idiot to have assigned anything even remotely romantic to her reactions. She’d been acting a part, that was all. She was nothing more than a prisoner who had voluntarily consented to serve her time under his control, at his mercy.

Fine.

Let the prisoner suffer her just desserts.

Sam turned the butterfly remote to high, making it hum between Rae’s legs. She drew in a sharp breath at the sudden intensity but there was no way she could escape the forced stimulation.

“Stay still,” he reminded her. He lifted the knife again and dragged the point along her right forearm, scratching a thin pink line along her pale skin. She was watching, the fear bright in her eyes. He drew a second line on her other arm.

Carefully he pulled the point of the blade along the tops of her breasts. Rae was whimpering softly, her body trembling, though whether from the vibrator or the knife, Sam couldn’t be sure.

He drew the blade down her left side and then her right, pressing slightly harder. Her skin was very sensitive to the knife, reddening quickly as it scraped her. Seized with a sudden idea, Sam began to trace a word on her stomach, just above her shaven mons.

C-U-N-T.

The word appeared in dark pink. She jerked in a sudden spasm just as he was finishing the T and the point slipped. She yelped but continued to convulse and he realized she was orgasming. She hadn’t asked permission, naughty girl.

He nearly said something about her breach of protocol, but was distracted by the droplet of blood that appeared on her skin, an impossibly bright, holly red. He reached for the butterfly remote and turned it down to its lowest setting, allowing Rae to ease slowly off the orgasm.

The drop of blood rolled down, leaving a red path on her mons. Rae started to look down, but Sam stopped her with a hand to her throat. “Eyes straight ahead,” he ordered, “or I’ll blindfold you.”

He realized his cock was hard, constrained in the leather and his heart was beating fast. He reached for his fly and pulled out his cock, giving it a few firm strokes. The sight of her blood had released something wild inside him—something powerful and edgy, something he had to explore.

He lifted the knife again and drew its point down her right thigh and then up her left one. He forced her legs farther apart and ran the blade along her inner thigh. “No!” she screamed, jerking away. Again the point slipped at her sudden movement and another droplet of the bright red blood appeared. Sam touched it, painting her soft skin with it, fascinated.

Lust fused with a kind of crazy energy was pulsing at his temples as he stared at the tethered beauty before him. The word
cunt
was still clearly visible, etched onto her fair skin. She was a cunt—his cunt. She deserved everything he gave her and more. He brought the blade to her skin again, drawing it upward. He slid it along her hip and slipped the point beneath the leather strap holding the vibrator in place. He yanked forward, cutting through the strap.

He did the same thing on the other side, and the butterfly fell to the carpet between Rae’s feet. Sam turned it off and slipped the remote from his wrist, letting it fall as he kicked the vibrator away.

The prick on Rae’s inner thigh continued to bleed, the blood rolling down her leg in a shiny red path. This time Sam’s blade was deliberate as he crouched down and lightly nicked her other inner thigh, needing to see symmetry in a second line of blood.

He was aware Rae was crying, soft whimpering cries, but he could barely hear her over the pounding of his heart, thumping in his ears like a primitive drum. Standing, he stood face to face with his captive. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“Please,” she begged. “Please stop. Please…”

He knew he should. There was something wild and dangerous coursing through him. He wasn’t in control. It was as if some demon had taken over his better nature. His cock throbbed and twitched. He didn’t want to hear her cries or see her frightened eyes. But he didn’t want to stop either. It was no longer about her or her submission or her walls or any other poetic bullshit he’d made up to justify his own sadistic actions.

It was about his cock and his pleasure and his compulsions. Giving in to their terrible sway, he quickly untied the sashes and secured one over her eyes, knotting it tightly behind her head. He forced the second sash between her teeth and yanked it tight, forcing her tongue back and muting her cries.

Don’t do this,
the last sane bit of his mind urged, but he snuffed the words, the knife quivering in his hand. He stood back and touched its point to her right nipple. Rae stiffened and stilled, finally controlling her impulse to jerk away.

Sam drew the blade over the distended nubbin and in a circle around the areola, power pulsing like liquid heat through his veins. He drew an S and an L on her right breast and a U and a T on her left, pressing hard enough to cause the blood to bead along the letters. Rae jerked and mewled against her gag, her nostrils flaring.

Without thinking what he was doing, or why, he opened his left hand and drew the blade along the fleshy part of his palm, hard enough to draw blood. He sucked in his breath as the sting registered.

Rae was holding onto the chains in a white-knuckled grip. Sam reached for her right hand, prying her fingers loose. Holding her palm open, he pressed the knife blade into the fleshy pad. Rae gurgled against her gag, her entire body trembling. Sam pressed his bleeding palm to hers, as if they were making some kind of sacred pact, sealed with their mingled blood.

Rae’s face was pale, her forehead glistening with sweat. Sam knew he’d gone past the line, way past, but he still felt driven by a kind of compulsion he couldn’t control. Dropping the knife, he pulled desperately at his pants, dragging them down his thighs and kicking them away.

Grabbing Rae around the waist, he lifted her into his arms and forced her legs around his hips, angling himself so he could fuck her. Her cunt was still wet from the forced orgasm and he pushed himself inside her, groaning at the hot clamp of her velvet muscles around his cock.

He pushed her down and lifted her up, fucking himself with her body. Lust raged through him like an elixir, giving him the strength and stamina of ten men. He plunged in and out of Rae’s tight cunt and within minutes he felt the surging rise of his seed exploding deep in Rae’s hot, wet embrace.

He held her to him for several moments as his heart slowed its wild pace and his cock softened inside her. Her head had fallen back, her dark hair streaming behind her, the blood dripping in thin lines down her slender frame.

“Christ,” he murmured, the spell broken at last, horror replacing the savage lust of just a moment before. “What have I done? What the fuck have I done?”

She was so pale, sagging heavily against her wrist cuffs, her head lolling back as if her neck was broken. “Rae? Rae!” Sam stood frozen, for a split second thinking somehow he’d killed her! He sagged with relief when he saw the slow rise and fall of her chest.

Springing into action, he pulled the blindfold from her head and unknotted the gag with trembling fingers. Releasing the cuffs with a jerk at the Velcro, he caught her as she sank down. Gathering her into his arms, he stumbled with the dead weight of her limp body toward the bed. He set her as gently as he could onto the mattress.

Bending over her, he pushed the hair from her eyes. Her forehead was damp and clammy. “Rae,” he said softly, his voice catching. “Open your eyes.”

To his relief, she stirred slightly and her eyes fluttered opened, but only for a second. Her lids closed, a small sigh issuing from her lips as she turned her head away from him. Her body, legs and arms were marked with thin red lines, some of them bleeding, as if she’d fought her way naked through brambles and prickly bushes. The words he’d carved on her breasts and belly were still visible and shame rose inside him like a corrosive acid.

All the mixed-up anger, hurt and lust that had spurred him past his own boundaries had evaporated, leaving behind only the residue of self-loathing and contrition.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, not sure if she could hear him. “I’m sorry.”

He ran his finger lightly along some of the cuts, relieved at least to see none of them were deep—they looked worse than they were because of the blood. Except for her palm, which continued to bleed, soaking now into the white sheets where her hand rested. He was vaguely aware of the cut on his own palm, but he didn’t care. Rae was what mattered now. What had always mattered.

Forcing himself to be calm, he moved quickly toward her tiny bathroom, where he ran hot water over a washcloth and squeezed it out. He grabbed the first aid kit he kept beneath the sink and returned to Rae. She still hadn’t moved, though he was relieved to note her breathing was deeper and more even now—she might just be sleeping, exhausted from the ordeal he’d put her through.

He would clean her cuts as best he could and let her rest. He would provide what aftercare he could, but nothing, he knew, could ever make this right. He’d taken her too far, too fast, and now they would both pay the price.

Something warm moved over her skin so gently that at first it was part of her dream, the edges between dream and reality a blur. She felt the softness of his breath passing over her cheek, caressing her eyelids.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

The words where little more than a sibilant whisper, like the rustle of leaves against the window of her consciousness.

She realized she was lying on her bed. A warm, wet washcloth was moving lightly over her skin, awakening the sting as it washed away the blood…

It all came hurtling back in stark detail—the knife, the jolt of pure terror as he drew the sharp point across her flesh, the blood, bright as death, the chains, the blindfold, the gag thick and dry against her tongue, the sudden sharp stab of pain in her palm, his huge cock impaling her like a sword.

The soft cloth continued to move carefully over her arms and legs. She was fully awake now but kept her eyes closed, her body limp. She let herself be soothed as she drifted, her mind emptying.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

The wet cloth was replaced with a dry one, patting along her body. She felt something gooey smeared onto her palm, which throbbed in a steady pulse that matched the rhythm of her heart. She felt the press of something binding the cut closed and then a covering of soft gauze.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

She felt the lift in the mattress as he stood. The touch of his lips on her forehead was as light as a father’s kiss. The tenderness of it caused something to catch in her throat, but she stayed still, limbs sprawled, lips lightly parted, chest slowly rising and falling.

She lay waiting to hear the click of the padlock as he chained her in place, and then his receding step and light tread on the stairs. Then she could drift back into the dreams where she was flew, free as a bird beneath wide open, sunlit skies.

~*~

Sam stood by her bed for some time, watching her sleep. Rae didn’t stir. He was glad, at least, that she was resting. He didn’t know how long he stood there, his body heavy, his tortured thoughts bashing themselves like desperate moths against the flame of his regret.

Finally he dragged himself upstairs and into the shower, wishing the hot water could somehow wash away what he’d done. He scrubbed at his palm, wincing as the soap got into the cut, glad for the pain.

He toweled himself dry and went into the bedroom, falling naked onto the sheets. He stared unseeingly out the window, wondering how it had come to this.