Begging and fighting hadn’t stopped him, and as panic whirled within, my mouth spat out the first words it grasped onto.
“What kind of sadist are you? You consider this torture?”
He placed an open-mouthed kiss on my inner thigh, and I heard a slight smile in his voice. “I don’t feel like torturing you right now. I feel like seeing how fast I can make you come with my mouth.”
He was obviously confident he could do it fast, and I hated knowing, even now, he probably could. My body didn’t seem to have forgotten he gave it pleasure and food; how he evoked a desperate want inside of me that finally made me feel alive. It still grabbed on tight, unwilling to let go.
Shame expanded in my chest and burned the backs of my eyes.
I hated him.
He’d degraded me. Used me. Ripped out my heart. And when he got what he wanted—my papa’s head—he’d throw me out with the trash.
Tears running down my cheeks, I went somewhere faraway. Somewhere desolate and numb. He must have felt the sudden surrender in my body before he put his mouth on me because his eyes lifted to my face. He watched me for a long, suffocating moment, and then he pulled away from me.
I gazed at the ceiling, my body suddenly shaking with each breath of relief.
When he returned a few seconds later, he grabbed my wrist and began securing it to the iron headboard. I didn’t resist when he moved to the other. He probably thought I was pathetic; limp with submission and tear tracks on my cheeks. But I no longer cared what he thought.
He gripped my chin and turned my face so I looked at him. “You’ll be tied up until I know you can behave.”
I was staring through him. He noticed, and the strain in the air tightened my lungs—then released, settling to the floor as calm and languid as still water. I exhaled when the unexpected brush of his thumb skimmed across my cheek. It slid over my lips and pulled the bottom one down slightly. A soft caress, heavy with possession.
“Don’t tell me I’ve broken my pet already,” he said thoughtfully.
All of the emotion locked tight by years of obedience rose to the surface, and my eyes flashed. “Go to hell.”
He smiled. “Sleep tight, kotyonok.”
acatalepsy
(n.) the inability to truly comprehend anything
I didn’t move when the door shut behind him. A cool draft touched my bare skin and sent a shiver through me. I was naked and cold, my wrists secured uncomfortably above my head, but somehow, I managed to drift off to sleep.
Self-loathing was exhausting.
I woke to the sun slanting across my body and an uncomfortable pressure in my bladder.
For the first time, I viewed the room in daylight. I lay in the middle of a king-size bed with an elaborate iron headboard and a white duvet. Heavy drapes, the color of blood, framed the window with a reading seat beneath. The space was large, conveying wealth in a traditionally Russian way. Seeing no personal effects, I surmised I was in a guest room.
My eyes settled on a cracked wooden door leading into what I hoped was a bathroom. I really had to pee, and I wasn’t about to add urinating all over myself to my list of humiliations.
I jerked against the ropes, trying to twist my wrists out of them, but they were so tight, all I managed to do was rub my skin raw. I let out an angry sound of frustration and pulled hard against them, ready to take the headboard down if I had to.
At the sound of the door opening, I froze.
A dark-haired woman stood in the doorway wearing skinny jeans and a frayed T-shirt over the slight curve of her pregnant belly. She held a toddler on her hip who wore an oversized Possessed band T-shirt as a dress and knitted thigh-high socks. And I swore, she was watching me with a hint of judgement in her eyes.
For an uneasy moment, I thought the woman could be Ronan’s girlfriend and daughter. But then she spoke.
“Please tell me this is some kind of kinky role-play.”
I didn’t know what to say, but my express
ion must have told her everything she needed to know.
She sighed and muttered, “In-laws.”