He pulls back his arm and I screw my eyes shut. The flogger lashes the back of my legs, every strand leaving white-hot bursts across my flesh. “Count,” he orders.
And in the barest whisper I manage, “One.” I get to five and my skin is on fire and my breathing is little more than gasps. I haven’t said crackers, and I don’t want to say crackers, I want to show him that I can hold so still for him, be so good.
He stops and throws the flogger onto the bed, and when he speaks his voice is thick with desire and fury. “Hardened girl. Not one cry. Not one step. You don’t even beg for mercy.” He grasps my hips and pushes an arch into my spine. His feet force mine apart and he fumbles with the fabric of his robes. “Maybe this will make you repentant.” I hear a zipper, and then the heated tip of his cock presses against my sex. My mind clears as I feel him push into me, slowly, just a little, and I start to pant even faster. I don’t want mercy. I want this. He settles his hands in a death grip on my waist and thrusts into me, hard and sure and straight to my core. A cry tears from my throat but I bite down on my lip, and he pulls back and drives into me again. He fucks me hard, brutally. I remember the words he spoke to me while I was touching myself on his sofa, about the intruder’s cock being thick and invasive. It’s how he feels now, filling me, stretching me, making me moan for him. Every thrust makes my insides light up and I press my face to one side, against my raised arm, trying to stifle my cries.
He groans deep in the back of his throat and pulls out of me. “Yes, better. Let’s see if we can soften you up even more.”
Soften me up. He wants me to be quiet and still for him but he likes it when I can’t, seeing me tread the fine line between his control and the pain and pleasure I feel. He reaches for the flogger and runs the strands through his fingers. “Now, what were we up to?”
“Six,” I whisper.
The leather lashes my ribs. My smarting skin and the rough way he pounded me causes a rush of pleasure through my blood. I stand firm in the flogger’s path even as my eyes well up and I feel tears course down my face.
Finally, I whisper, “Ten,” and I hear Frederic cursing under his breath, dark, appreciative curses, as he throws the flogger to one side and grasps me about the waist again, guiding me toward his cock. He sheaths himself inside me in one sure movement. “Ma jolie, fuck, you take that so well.” His hands traverse my hot, swollen skin as he thrusts into me, deep and sure. One hand caresses my throat and brushes my cheeks, feeling the tears.
Voice roughened by sex, he whispers in my ear, “Are you crying for me, petite fille? Even as you’re standing there, so good, so still?”
“Daddy, please,” I whimper, beyond all words but begging.
“What’s that? Daddy please? Every time I’ve thought about fucking your sweet little cunt I’ve imagined you saying daddy please, begging for me even as you cry. I love every tear you shed.”
His voice has always been my undoing and I feel him pushing me higher with every thrust and every whispered word, my core banding around him, squeezing, goading him to fuck me harder, and he does.
Voice ragged with arousal, he curses again and grates, “Tears on your face and a pussy full of my come. That’s how you’d be all the time if I had my way.”
His rough words tip me over the edge and his hand around my throat squeezes. Everything rushes upward like overflowing champagne and I’m weightless in his arms, feet feeling like they’re no longer touching the floor as I come. It goes on and on, and I’m past the need to draw breath. I’m in a place of pure sensation, and I feel the slide of his cock and his growl as he comes, thrusting deeper than I thought possible. His hands pull me down and his cock pushes me up, preventing me from flying apart in his arms.
Finally, he slowly loosens his hold on me and I begin to descend from on high. In the stillness that follows there’s only the sound of our ragged breathing.
“Bloody hell, as you English would say,” he mutters, withdrawing slowly, his steadying hands on my waist.
I laugh weakly, my face pressed into my shoulder. The rope is the only thing holding me up. He goes to a chest of draws, pulls out a large knife and cuts me down. He must be expecting my rubbery legs as his other arm catches me tightly against him.
“Comment va ma brave fille?” he says, smiling down at me as he deposits me onto the bed. My hair is sticking to my sweaty face. “How is my brave girl?”
Well, how is she? I’ve been burned up from the outside in and the inside out. I’m a phoenix after it dies a fiery death and is reborn, even stronger and more beautiful than before.
His brave girl. She’s better than she’s ever been.
Chapter Eleven
Frederic
Evie holds up her wrists for me so I can cut through the rope. She doesn’t say anything, but she smiles. It’s a tired smile. A happy smile that speaks hundreds of unspoken words, like piano notes, and I hear every one. I called her a brave girl, and she is. I never meant to push her so far this first time but the way her body responded to my hands and the leather was too lovely, too enticing. I know her better now and she knows herself better, too. She was ready to be pushed a little, and then pushed a little more.
“Lie down, minette,” I urge her in a whisper, and once I’ve divested myself of the priest’s costume I lie down with her. It doesn’t take much to coax her into my arms and she buries herself against my chest and wriggles as close to me as possible. Conscious of the red marks on her back I stroke her hair and listen to her breathe.
“Do you feel good?” I ask her, because she’s being so quiet and I can’t see her face, and in answer she nods, the tip of her nose rubbing against my chest. “Don’t feel like talking?” And she shakes her head. “That’s all right, minette. You don’t need to talk.”
I love these moments after a really good, intense bout of sex, just lying together, sometimes talking, sometimes not. I wonder if she’s always quiet like this after, but then I remember she’d be locked in the bathroom sobbing ab
out now if I were her ex. My arms tighten around her protectively. That’s not going to happen with me. She’s clinging to me, and it’s a good sort of clinging. An I need you clinging. A don’t go anywhere clinging.
I’m not, mon ange. I’m here.
But I won’t be here for long, will I? Neither of us will be. Evie was right yesterday when she said we didn’t have much time together. Our five months will go quickly, especially once the summer is over. Evie has told me she will have to be in Oxford for a few days every week to study and run tutorials, and I’ll have rehearsals most days and, after that, performances most nights. And then—
But I don’t want to think beyond January. I try to imagine what would have happened between us if I didn’t have this death sentence hanging over my career but everything else was the same: that she fell in the road and looked up at me, shocked and flustered; that she turned so beautifully pink when she realized her sister had sent me her smutty stories; that she glared at me, teased me, cried her hurt out in my arms. I know what I’m like, and what I like. We’d likely have wound up exactly where we are now, and we’d still only have until the end of January, because our lives are in very different places.