“I’ll carry you.” At that Cassius pulled me forward by my arm and scooped me up.
This entire episode had left me vulnerable, embarrassed, and anxious. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was instantly fucking ashamed of saying that too. I wanted to be allowed to walk, but I also liked this. He was warm and solid and yes, comforting.
“Don’t be.” He kept walking, dodging trees with ease, in spite of my added weight. I curled up tighter when we brushed by a few.
“I have a horde of bugs fluttering inside me that are definitely not butterflies. I hate this.”
“I know what happened to you. I saw your file. Shut up and be carried. I care. Do I know why exactly I care, considering we don’t know each other much? Nope.”
I squirmed a little before replying. “Still sucks.”
He laughed. “Yes.”
So Cassius cared. This erotic island fantasy was broken, or at the least it was cracked, but it made me think I could trust him.
The doctor was more unfathomable by the second, as I observed him threading his way through this little forest of straggly, clasping branches. Even when a branch scraped a red path over one cheek, below his eye, he was unmoved. I might not have failed, but I’d achieved something, and it seemed to be something bad.
“I told you before, if I have to, I’ll keep you myself, if the doctor hurts you…the wrong way.”
The wrong way was so open to interpretation. Oddly, I could almost imagine myself living here, but with an ex-soldier who was beholden to others it would be far more unsettled. He was an underling, while the doctor was a force unto himself, to put it in dramatic language.
“I was triggered, is all,” I said as he lowered me to the rattan lounge the doctor had used.
“I know.” He squatted before me, lines marring his forehead. “You’re okay now?” He’d left a hand on my thigh, and it pressed on me, reminding me of his other words. He wanted to keep me if the doctor did not, and that was so demeaning—to be a possession.
Demeaning, but…I could grow to like that. I could, I thought I really could. I sucked in my bottom lip. Admitting I wanted a man to own me was a whole new fetish, but dreams and fantasies could have rot under the surface.
“Yes. The horde of bugs has gone.”
“Good.” He moved away, as the doctor strolled in and dropped the rope onto the end of the lounge.
“The talk…” For a moment, the doctor was as interested in the sky as he was in me. “You asked if you failed, Charity, and it is a no, unless you don’t want to participate in CNC.”
“Oh.” I left my mouth wide.
He came closer and crouched, the same as Cassius had, but he reached out and took my hand then turned it over as if thinking of tracing my palm. “I would—”
“If you make her do this, with the threat,” Cassius was glowering, “of something awful if she says no, how the fuck is it CNC?”
“A good point.” His smile flattened his mouth. “Weare in a position of power, but you like that, don’t you, Cassius? And so does she.” His grip firmed, squeezing on my wrist, squashing skin on bone. My heartbeat accelerated; my gaze focused on where he held me. “Most of the time. Yes?”
I nodded, looked into his eyes, flicked my gaze back to his hold, which was honestly beginning to hurt. It pulsed with pain. “Yes.” How easily I admitted to that.
“Is your pretty cunt saying yes?” His eyebrow tilted.
“Ugh. Crude.” But it was true that each squeeze on my wrist heightened my desire, fed into me as if a wire fed electricity from wrist to pussy.
He crushed my wrist, dragged my hand to his teeth, and put one of my fingers into his mouth then sucked it out, leaving me riveted by its reappearance, glistening, leaving me breathless. “Say yes, again.”
Cassius was hovering behind the doctor, anxious as a mother duck, but he wasn’t the one who held me or demanding answers.
My finger had come out wet and hot from his mouth, though the breeze cooled it. I’d only just recovered from collapsing into a quivering heap of knotted anxiety and he dared this?
“Say yes, and I’m going to tie you up and let Cassius fuck you soon. Maybe in the ass.”
Cassius had frozen at those words. He put his hand to the outline of his dick in his shorts. Maintaining eye contact with me, he squeezed. Fuck the pair of them.
This was messed up, and I licked my lips and whispered, “Yes.”