Tender Mercies (22 page)

“Please,” she whimpered.

He hadn’t made her address him properly yet. But it was coming. She could feel it. He was waiting for the right moment to wring the word from her lips. And he would succeed, so much more easily than she’d ever wanted him to. It was already becoming clear how very little it would take to reduce her to the scared animal he’d turned her into. Asher may have dressed Grace up like a kitty, but it was Lucas who had truly made her an animal, and it was Lucas trying to return her to that state now.

He placed the whip on the table and moved in front of her, hooking his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her to him. His mouth crushed hers, his tongue sliding inside her like a serpent. She tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go.

“Well, if you don’t want to kiss me like you mean it, maybe we should go ahead and start with the fun stuff.”

Her eyes went to the knife and branding tools. “N-no. Please.”

“Please what? Say it, and I might spare you a little longer. He’s not coming for you. He’s in prison. He’s never leaving prison, and you’re never leaving this dungeon. So tell me, pet . . . who am I to you?”

The devil.
But she’d already lost the courage to say it out loud, so she stayed quiet.

He grabbed her hair and pulled, wrenching her head back, and then he pressed the knife to her throat. “Or maybe I should just skin you and be done with it. What do you think? Are you worth the effort and cost to keep alive?”

Her heart was fluttering in her chest so fast she couldn’t think. Then the dog started barking. Lucas never let him see this part. She looked over at the Australian shepherd. He’d been getting more and more agitated as things went on, and now it seemed he was aware a life might be on the line, and he didn’t like it, either.

Lucas sighed loudly and went over to the door, flinging it open. “Outside, Jack.”

The dog looked between them, shifting from barking to growling.

“Now!”

Jack glanced warily up at Lucas and then darted from the room, his tail between his legs. Lucas slammed the door. “Stupid dog. Papers or no papers, he behaves like a mutt.”

Then his attention was back on Grace. He took a scrap of black fabric from the table and blindfolded her. She jerked in her bonds as he ran the flat of the knife along her cheek. “Come on, pet, who am I? Tell me, and I’ll fuck you before I brand you. It’ll buy you some time, yeah?”

She stood, shaking in the chains, the chill coming back. He’d juxtaposed the worst two suggestions he could have given her: raping her, or cutting the brand off and putting his own mark on her. Either way, it was all going to happen. The only thing that made a difference was the order. She’d hate herself if she betrayed Asher this soon when at most she’d get an hour’s reprieve. Maybe not even that, since Lucas seemed so excited about the branding concept.

“Fuck you.”

She heard him put the knife back on the table and then he wrapped a hand around her throat. “Say it, you bitch. Say it, or so help me, I will choke the life right out of you.”

He was already doing it: choking her. She was helpless to fight him, without even free hands to claw at him this time. He was so lost in rage, Grace wasn’t sure if he was aware of the fact that she couldn’t say anything in her current state. She felt herself about to slip into unconsciousness again when the door banged open and she heard a crack like the sound of thunder in the air.

Immediately the pressure released from her throat.

“Get your hands off my property.”

It was the red phone.

“Master!”

“Take the blindfold off and step away from her.”

Lucas seemed to hesitate, and then that loud thunder sound happened again. That got his fingers moving. “How did you get in here?” he asked as he untied the scrap of fabric.

“It seems your servants don’t like you anymore than anybody else on this island. It also seems that they fully support the idea of me killing you, since, if no one talks, they get to live off your wealth indefinitely.”

Grace blinked as the blindfold came off. Asher stood just inside the doorway with the bullwhip in his hand. The one that had hung in the other dungeon, that he’d said he’d never use on her. Lucas grabbed the knife, but before he could move toward Asher, her master flicked his wrist and the bullwhip snapped down on Lucas’s hand, causing him to drop the knife and scream.

“Kick it over,” Asher said.

“Fuck you.”

“I don’t swing that way. Kick it over.”

When he hesitated, Asher let the whip go again. This time it hit Lucas’s inner thigh, inches from his privates. Lucas howled and kicked the knife over.

“Good boy. And, just so you know, I could have hit the mark if I’d wanted to. I practiced and practiced with this thing, but I could never bring myself to try it out on a woman. Maybe this was what my practice was building up to. You think?”

Lucas grabbed his own whip off the table. Not nearly as impressive as the one Asher held.

Her master chuckled. “Mine’s bigger than yours. I’ll bet that’s true on multiple subjects.”

Grace wished she could enjoy this as much as he obviously was, but she was too scared that Lucas, weasel that he was, would somehow get the upper hand, kill her master, and then the plans for her would resume, making the rescue attempt barely a blip on the radar.

“P-please . . .” She couldn’t get a full thought out, her lips were trembling so hard.

Asher turned toward her. “I’m sorry, kitten. I’ll make it quick, and then we’ll go.”

Lucas rushed him while his attention was on Grace, and for a second the rotation of the earth stopped, the universe pausing entirely. But Lucas was so outclassed, his attempt would have been comical if she wasn’t still chained and helpless. Asher hauled back and punched him hard in the face, and the earth was moving again.

“You stupid motherfucker.” He beat on him for a few minutes with his bare hands until Lucas dropped the whip. “Grace, shut your eyes.”

She didn’t want to, but she knew he wanted to spare her the gore. She closed her eyes and listened to the crack of the whip and Lucas’s screams until they both stopped and there was silence.

“Keep them closed. This is messy, kitten.”

“Is he . . .?”

“Oh, yes. Like a doornail.”

She heard the water of the sink as he washed his hands. Then he came back and unlocked the chains from her wrists and the spreader bar from her ankles, inspecting them and running his fingers over the raw areas.

His jaw clenched when he saw her back. “Baby, this is bad. I’d like to resurrect him just to kill him again.” He took off his coat and wrapped it around her.

Grace was startled by sounds in the doorway. She opened her eyes and looked up to see servants with dark smiles etched across their faces, all too happy to help dispose of the evidence. A couple of the men had saws to cut the body up, and a matronly older woman held a bucket with hot water, sponges, and bleach. Asher had obviously given orders on his way downstairs to rescue her. He hadn’t been kidding about their disgust with the master of the house.

The woman set the bucket by the door and held a hand out to Grace. “I’ll make her some tea while you take care of the body.”

Grace looked up at Asher, careful to avoid the mess on the floor.

“Go on. I don’t want you down here while we finish.”

She followed the woman up the stairs, clutching Asher’s long coat around her body, feeling awkward that the woman had known the whole time she’d been with Lucas. But what could she do? The officials wouldn’t have stopped him, and it might have put her own safety in danger. It occurred to Grace that, once on the island, there wasn’t a huge difference between household servants and slaves. Maybe they’d become just as enslaved, depending on the goodwill of their employers for their safety and survival.

The tea was already brewing on the stove, and the woman poured some into two cups and sat at the table. She put a hand over Grace’s. “It’ll be over soon.”

The woman looked tired, as if she’d seen far too much cruelty, even from the fringes. She looked as if she’d been through war.

“I was his nanny when he was a baby, long before we came to this place. He was always so spoiled, but I never dreamed he’d become this.” Her eyes were full of sadness and guilt.

Grace drank the warm brew down, wishing they would hurry with the disposal. “Why didn’t the others help me or those before me?”

“Lots of justification and fear in this house. And Lucas kept us all away. We didn’t know details. It was easier that way to convince ourselves it wasn’t that bad, or that somehow it was consensual. He was the worst with you, I think.”

A little while later, Asher and the men came upstairs.

“Well?” the woman said.

“Incinerated. You can go take care of the clean up now.”

***

The ride home was quiet. Asher held her in his arms, stroking her hair, careful not to put any pressure on her back. He mostly thought. About Darcy. About Grace. About the whip he’d killed Lucas with. He’d finally been able to incinerate it, after he’d used it for something good.

“What if you get caught and go to prison?”

“That won’t happen. No body. No crime. And believe me, those three have so much guilt for not helping you sooner, they won’t say a thing. Plus they helped dispose of the evidence, and they have that nice, big house to live in without an asshole bossing them around all day.”

“But what if it does . . . happen?”

He sighed. Of course she’d worry about this. It was natural after what she’d experienced. “It won’t. But in the extremely unlikely event that it did, my wishes for what to do with you would be honored. Because it’s not a murder of a slave, it doesn’t invalidate my right to ownership. You wouldn’t be resold. You could either stay in the house with William and be free or leave the island. We can draw up paperwork indicating what’s to be done with you if something ever happens to me.”

“Okay.”

When they got home, he ran a warm bath and settled her in it. He winced as he watched her fight the pain to sit in the tub. He’d seen the last marks Lucas had put on her, but only after they’d had time to start healing and closing. Fresh like this, they were almost enough to empty his stomach.

“This is going to sting, but I’ll be as careful and quick as I can, all right?”

She nodded and gripped the edges of the tub. The water was already turning pink.

“How do you feel about what I did today?” He worried after witnessing that kind of violence from him––even with her eyes closed––it would change how she saw him. He didn’t want to become another monster in her mind.

“Happy. Safe,” she said, leaning her forehead against the rim. She hissed as he cleaned around a particularly nasty area.

“I’m sorry, kitten. I don’t want it to get infected. I should take you to the hospital.”

“Please . . . no hospitals.”

“It depends on how well this heals. If there is even the slightest sign of infection, I’m taking you in.” He cleaned her wounds as carefully as he could, helped her out of the tub, and then patted her back with the towel. She sat quietly, only flinching every now and then as he rubbed salve into the torn skin.

“You know, it’s okay to cry.”

“I don’t want to cry anymore.”

“Then you don’t have to.” He taped the bandages to her and took her to the kitchen and made her some scrambled eggs and juice. He’d asked William to keep a distance for a few days to let her get settled.

Asher watched her watching cartoons on the kitchen television while she ate. If he hadn’t listened to his instincts and gone first to Lucas’s estate, she could have been dead. He’d seen the skinning knife and branding supplies on the table. He gripped the end of the counter. If he’d arrived just a few minutes later, that bastard could have left his own mark, and Asher wouldn’t have had the stomach to skin it off her. Things could have been so much worse.

When she was finished, he took her plate and rinsed it in the sink. “Would you like to take a nap with me? I’m tired.”

She nodded, and he took her hand and led her upstairs.

Once in bed, Grace snuggled against his chest. “I love you, master.”

“I love you too, kitten. Get some sleep. There’s nothing left to haunt us now.”

His words had fallen on deaf ears because her breathing had deepened. She was already asleep.

About the Author

Kitty Thomas writes dark literary erotica. Her stories explore the psychology of ownership. This work is fiction and meant for an adult audience. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior carried out by characters in her stories.

Inspiration for Kitty’s work comes from many sources including Story of O, Nine and a Half Weeks, and the work of Claudia D. Christian.

Other books by Kitty:

Comfort Food

Guilty Pleasures

For updates on new releases, please subscribe to Kitty’s newsletter via the contact form at her site: www.kittythomas.com