He yanks me up then, grabbing my arm and hauling me out of bed, the torn halves of my dress flapping open and baring my breasts to his leering gaze. I let out a small squeak of pain as he turns me and shoves me towards the open door at the far end of the room. “Come, little one. It’s time to begin.”
—
Javier marches me through the door into a bathroom only slightly less sparse than the bedroom itself. There’s a glass-walled shower, a toilet, and a standing sink, with several small metal shelves on the stone wall next to it. The tiles feel rough under my bare feet, the room cold, and it’s becoming clear to me that Javier has no taste for luxury.
Or maybe he does, and it’s just his own rooms that are luxurious, not the ones afforded to his prisoners.
He shuts the door behind us, locking it. “Just so you don’t get any ideas of running past me, little one,” he adds with a smirk, pocketing the key. “There’s no way out of this. The sooner you learn that, the easier all this will be for you. Now,” Javier continues, his green-gold gaze dragging over my bare breasts, “you can take the dress off, or I can rip it off of you. I’ll enjoy it either way.”
I’d known better than to try to cover myself up. It would only have pissed him off more, as humiliating as it felt to be all but topless in front of him. Before now, Niall was the only man who’d seen my breasts, and something inside me twists at the idea that that’s no longer true. The nipple Javier twisted throbs painfully, and I know he’s not going to wait long for me to decide whether I’m going to comply, or make him rip the dress off of me.
Gritting my teeth, I strip off the dress, glaring angrily at him as I undo the leather belt and toss it to the floor, quickly yanking the rest of it over my head. “Fuck you,” I hiss between my teeth as I throw it defiantly to the floor, standing there in only my panties. “I hate you.”
“Of course you do,” Javier says agreeably, leaning against the jutting stone wall on the other side of the toilet, his arms lazily crossed over his broad chest. “Now, the rest of it,” he adds, pointing one long finger at me and circling it. “Bare, Isabella. Nothing but skin.”
“Why? So I can shower? You don’t need to watch me do that.”
“Oh, Isabella.” He grins. “I’m going to watch you doeverything. The only time you’ll have to yourself is when you’re sleeping and pissing, and if you anger me enough, you won’t do either of those things in private either. So hurry it up, because if you make me take those ugly panties off of you, I’m going to do itveryslowly. I imagine everything underneath is much prettier.”
I roll my eyes at him. The panties are nothing special, just black cotton, but they’re far fromugly.“Do you really think women wear nothing but silk and lace all the time?” I spit out, yanking them down. “Men like you don’t know anything about women.”
Javier moves so quickly that I back up with a cry, hitting the small of my back against the sink. He grips my jaw in one hand, the same way he did before, and I whimper in pain.
“What did I tell you about speaking unless I asked you a question, little one?” He shakes me, fingers tightening before letting me go. “Thatwas a question!”
“Not to do it,” I whisper, feeling tears burning in my eyes as my jaw throbs.
“Precisely.” His gaze rakes down my naked body. “Well, I’ll give you this, you’re quite beautiful. I can see how that poor Irishman was seduced into taking your virginity. Not good enough to die for—but not all of us can have the most refined tastes.”
Javier reaches out, his fingers tangling in my pubic hair and yanking so hard that I cry out. “First, we get rid of this. Then you can shower.”
“What?” The word bursts out of my lips before I can remember what he said about speaking, and I bite it back. “No, you—”
“I can already see that you’re going to be one of the more difficult ones.” With another quick movement, Javier scoops my discarded leather belt off the floor, snapping it. The sound makes me cringe back, and he chuckles.
“You like to pretend that you’re not afraid of me, little one, but I can see that you’re afraid of pain. So we’ll start with that.” He snaps the belt again and points at a stone bench next to the shower built into the wall. “Sit there, and spread your legs.”
“No.” I tilt my chin up, feeling my cheeks flush red. I can’t imagine doing such a thing. When Niall spread me, exposing me for his gaze, it was the most erotic thing I could have imagined. The idea of doing it for this man is sickening.
The crack of the leather belt against my bare thighs comes so fast that I don’t even register it at first. The pain shoots up my leg, and I cry out, gripping the edge of the sink. A second lash on my other thigh comes just as quickly, and I wonder if the stone walls mean that no one can hear my scream.
For all I know, there’s no one elsetohear.
“Sit down and spread your legs, little one, or it will get worse.”
And it does. I can’t bring myself to move, even though I want to obey. Javier continues whipping my thighs, the strokes of the belt biting into my skin hard enough to leave welts, but not hard enough to break the skin. I remember what he said earlier about Diego not letting him whip me hard enough to bleed yet, and the thought that it could get worse makes me start to cry with fear.
I don’t crumple, though, not until he brings the belt up between my legs with a hardcrack, and the pain sends me to my knees on the hard, rough tile floor, another burst of pain that makes me cry out.
“Mm,” Javier growls. “If Diego ever gives me permission to fuck you, perhaps that’s what I’ll do. Tie you to a bed and whip your pussy until it’s swollen, then fuck you hard. Would you like that, Isabella?”
“No,” I sob. “Please, no.”
“Then get up and sit on the bench before I whip it anyway.”
I can’t get to my feet. He brings the belt down hard on my ass, the top of it that’s nearly my lower back, and it sends me flat on the floor, crying on the rough tile. I think my knees are bleeding, my skin scraped, and I look up at him through tear-swollen eyes as he kicks me in the ribs, hard enough to bruise.
“This is only going to get worse the longer you fight me, Isabella,” Javier warns, and I believe him. Oh, how I believe him.