“Sit down, don’t move. We don’t want to capsize. This river is full of dangerous beasts.”
“Only beasts I see are in the boat with me.”
I’m teasing. They’re mad. I’m not. I’m finally having a good time, maybe because I’m drunk. I know that sooner or later the buzz will wear off, and at that time I’ll feel bad about it all. For now, though, I am queen of the jungle.
The journey back across the river is swift. At the other side, they get me out and pull the boat up to the dock. I wonder what will happen next, what painful humiliation is planned for me now.
I look between Jason and Soren. Jason is glowering at me. Soren is barely making eye contact. He seems preoccupied.
“I’m going to go collect wood and supplies,” Soren says. “You got her?”
“I’ve got her,” Jason confirms.
“Don’t leave me alone with him!” I cry out. God knows what Jason is capable of without Soren to make him behave himself. Soren is like our mutual link to sanity. Left to our own devices, we’re two sets of equal and opposite bad decisions.
“No point calling for him,” Jason says. “You’ve pushed past the point of no return now. You just had to test me, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t testing you. I was getting my alcohol. You had no right…”
He’s tying me up. I guess I must have drunk a lot, because I’m only just noticing that now he has my wrists bound with hemp rope. And that’s not where he stops. He dumps me on the ground using his fancy military martial arts and proceeds to do the same to my ankles. I could be fighting him more than I am, but I’m buzzed and bemused. Plus, the way his big hands feel sliding over my limbs as he works the rope around them is not exactly unpleasant. Jason’s a beast. An absolute unit.
He picks me up, trussed like a smug, happy chicken, and puts me over one of the rolled-up bedrolls so my hips are raised. We all knew this was coming. There’s no pleasure without pain. There's no beating Jason without also losing to him.
I turn my face so I’m not looking directly at the floor, and I see him standing over me. He’s taken his belt off and is looping the dark, thick, oiled leather around his hand, leaving a long tail, all the better to beat me with.
He leaves me clothed in my tank top and pants, but that hardly matters. Wet clothing transmits the effects of his belt with a wild intensity that makes me scream. Jason doesn’t spank me. He thrashes me. Hard. The motion of his arm rising and falling, not to mention the twist of his hips makes for a frightening shadow cast over me. I feel chills and goosebumps along with heat and fury.
“What the fuck bondage bullshit is this?” I scream out between strokes. I need him to stop, or at least to slow down. Jason is no fucking joke. He’s capable of doing more damage than he’s doing, I’m sure, but I don’t know how much of his punishment I can take — though I know I deserve it all.
“It’s to keep you from being a danger to yourself,” Jason says. “You make the worst decisions of any person I have ever known.”
“How is that possible when you’ve been to war?” I sniff the question. I’m caught between tears and something else.
“Do you want me to compare you to a war zone, Aslin? Is that how destructive and damaging you want to be? Would make a lot of sense.”
“No. I mean… no.”
His hand drifts over my ass. It’s still aching and sore, because that’s what a belt applied to the same region with the strength of a pissed off ex-military man will do to you. I know I deserved everything I got. Maybe I even wanted what I got. Maybe I was wondering how far they’d go. I might have some of my answer.
Jason’s fingers curl around the cleft of my ass, the middle finger brushing against a very tight, very private region. I don’t know if he meant to do that. Then he does it again, and I’m sure he did mean to do it. He is toying with my ass, with the one place I swore I’d never let any man go.
“You’re a bad girl, Aslin, and I don’t think we can punish you into being a good girl.” His lips are very close to my ear. “I don’t think you respond to force. I think you resist punishment because secretly, or not so secretly, you crave it.”
His fingers press more firmly between my ass cheeks. I feel the tip of his middle finger rubbing the fabric of my underwear against the tight hole. I should have known he was an ass man. I’m surprised he wants to touch me. I thought by now he’d hate me. From the moment we met, I’ve been pushing his buttons. More than pushing. I’ve been shoving them. Hard. Now it’s time for him to push back. The button he’s choosing is a very different one. It’s sensitive. Soft. Hidden.