I do as he asks, though I’m clumsy and my leg almost falls, sending me toppling. Ares catches me before I can pitch forward. His warm, steady hands slide up my calves and move me so that I’m stretched out.
He shifts. I feel the stirring of the breeze beside me, and I imagine he’s looking down on me with those cold, dark eyes. His palm settles behind my head. “Lie back, Pet.”
I exhale a deep, shaking breath, and lean into his touch. Sir will protect me. He has to.I’m his. I repeat the words over and over in my head.
“Good girl,” he coos, lifting the hem of my dress up my body. The slide of silk teases my flesh, pebbling my nipples as he pulls it over my torso and head. “Now, bend your knees and open those pretty thighs for me.”
I hesitate, remembering the room full of people.Oh god. Please don’t make me do this. Please, please. I beg silently, because I don’t dare make a sound.
His voice is stern and ghostly as he whispers in my ear. “Don’t make me fucking tell you again.”
My knees shake as I spread them. But I try not to show him, show them, how afraid I am.
“Wider.” The command is followed by the harsh swat of leather against the inside of my thigh.
I gasp, and attempt to close my legs against the pain, but I’m swatted again. A cry escapes me this time. “I said open your fucking legs. You open them, and you keep them open wide.”
“Yes, Sir,” I repeat immediately, but then I’m swatted again and tears sting the backs of my eyes.
“Did I ask you to speak, whore?”
I shake my head.
“Speak.”
“No, Sir. Sorry, Sir.”
His hand clamps down hard on my breast, his fingers pinching the nipple mercilessly. I cry, but he doesn’t let up. My knees squeeze together, and I’m struck again. The sharp bite of a leather flogger.
“You’re displeasing me, Pet. And what did I say would happen if you displeased me?”
I don’t answer; I just cry.
“Fucking answer me!” he roars.
“I—you said I’d be punished tenfold.”
“Yes, I did. Now open your fucking legs, and keep them open.”
My breathing is loud in the silence of the room. It’s too loud, it unsettles me, and it sounds like a roar when I’m sure it’s quiet as a whisper. I open my legs for him, hating that I’m scared senseless, but I’m also wet, because though his lash may have hurt, it also felt good. He made me this way. Trained me to expect pain with pleasure and pleasure with pain, as if the two can’t be separated. Just like my feelings for my Sir. I both love and hate him, especially now.
“Wider,” Ares demands, lashing me on either thigh. I widen my legs as far as they’ll go. “Good.”
I’m struck three times right over my pussy, and it smarts so bad that I tense up. I try to close my legs.
“Don’t you dare fucking close your legs.”
I keep them open, but I writhe as if I could ease the burn.
“Keep still.”
I do as he commands. I go as still as my body will allow. I take deep, even breaths and imagine it’s just the two of us, I’m lying on the floor of my cage, and Sir is working me over because it pleases him, not because he’s been coerced into it by a slow Southerner. Who is Texas to my Sir? Why did he agree to this when he clearly didn’t want to?
Ares’ hand drops between my legs and strokes my slick flesh. He delves inside my pussy and fucks me hard with two fingers. My pulse quickens. Any faster and my heart will explode. “You’re so wet for me, Pet. That greedy little cunt of yours loves my flogger, doesn’t it?”
I nod, even as tears streak down my cheeks underneath the mask. My stomach muscles clench, the orgasm curling around my pelvis, burning the soles of my feet and building to a point where I’m rocking my hips up to his hand, silently begging him with my body to go faster, harder, to use me and make me come in front of all these sick, sick men.
But he pushes me back down with his free hand and withdraws his fingers from my pussy. A beat later they’re roughly shoved inside my mouth, and he orders me to suck.