Her Submission (16 page)

“
Do what you’re going to,” she hissed. “I can’t stop you.”

“
You could try.”

“
Why? So you can get off watching me?”

A pause. “Not just that. I want to see even more fire from you.”

She never saw his arm move. One second they were carrying on an insane conversation, the next the whip struck the side of her breast. Again driven by instinct, she hunched her shoulders the little the elbows tie allowed and presented him with her back.

The next blow laid a hot line on her thigh.

“
Ah!”

“
There’s the sound I need to hear. Let’s see what it takes to get that out of you again.”

Don’t move! Don’t run like some blind panicked beast!

Ruled by the command coming from a place she didn’t know existed in her, she held her head high. The whip kissed and teased, sometimes landing hard enough to force out another cry. She didn’t try to keep track of where the strikes landed, and when he ordered her to turn in circles, she gave into the harsh words.

The two of them were in a room built of wood, heated by wood, illuminated by the sun. No one heard her and no one saw him aim and aim and aim at her naked, defenseless body. She thought of herself as a ballerina twirling on top of a music box only there was no music here, only whip snaps and the sounds he forced from her.

Her fingers kept reaching for something they couldn’t reach, her breasts throbbed, her hair was plastered to her neck and cheeks, and her body—her hurting, on-fire body existed as something separate from her mind.

“
Stay with the sensations. Take them as far into you as they’ll go. Surrender your breasts, buttocks, and thighs to the throbbing.”

“
I can’t—I don’t…”

“
Don’t try to speak.” A spark struck the top of one breast and then the other. “Words require too much concentration.” The whip laid down a burning line on the inside of her right thigh. “Feel your body. Listen to everything it’s telling you. Become primitive for it, and for me.”

He wanted her to do something for him? She would, she would if only he’d stop hurting her.

“
You’re still thinking.” He sounded disappointed. “Sensation is the only thing that matters.” Fire briefly danced over her belly. “I wasn’t going to do this until later, but I’ve decided to take advantage of where I’ve sent you today.”

Once again he was giving her too much to think about. Something hot enveloped her. Now that he’d stopped switching her, she fought to comprehend where the heat was coming from. Some of it of course was the result of her beating, but that wasn’t all. She was exhausted, engulfed.

Engulfed in what? Sensation? He’d kept using that word.

“
Stand by my equipment bag,” he said in a conversational tone. “You will do that for me won’t you? I won’t have to do anything to make it clear that this is an order.”

His words were such a salve to her wounded psyche that she was standing near the bag before the ramifications sank in. The lump on the floor was where he kept his—his slave tools.

“
Go on. Take a look.”

Trembling so she had to widen her stance to keep from falling, she watched as he upended it and shook out its contents. She couldn’t get past the reality that she was closer to him than she’d been since he’d stopped her from running into the kitchen.

“
There.” He picked up a pair of handcuffs. “That’s one of the things I’m after.”

“
Cuffs? But—“

“
Your shoulders and arms have been under that particular strain long enough. Time to change things around.”

What an idiot she was, she acknowledged as he stepped behind her. She cursed her blind capitulation when he snapped the cuffs over her wrists and then released her elbows, but what could she do? He’d overwhelm her if she resisted.

She was still trying to make her peace with the freedom to her elbows and the harsh metal around her wrists when he slid heated fingers over her arms. She started, couldn’t relax.

“
The time will come,” he said, “when you’ll welcome my touch. The journey has already begun. Eventually you’ll turn yourself completely over to me.”

Completely.
“No.” She tried to step away from him. A masculine arm snaked around her throat and he pulled her back against his hard body. He fingered her right breast. “I’ve always enjoyed it when a slave struggles, but you need to learn it won’t do you any good.” He spoke into her ear. “You’re mine. Mine. End of discussion.”

Chapter ten

Mine.
Kaci could barely think for the words he’d just whispered. She’d been helpless from the first moment he’d touched her, but the totality of her situation hadn’t truly sunken in until now. She had no choice but to allow him to support her weight. Because of him, her body bore countless whip marks. He wasn’t done punishing her. She just didn’t know when it would start again.

Moving in slow-motion, he reached around her torso with his free arm and lightly rubbed her right nipple.

“
Tell me you hate being touched like this. Say something to make me believe you loathe everything about what has happened to you.”

The necessary words backed up in her throat, but she couldn’t get them out. Every muscle and nerve felt acutely alive. Her entire system was ragged, out of its element and trying to make sense of this new existence he’d thrust her into. The longer he massaged her nipple, the less anything except the erotic manipulation mattered.

“
It isn’t as bad as you need it to be, is it?” He switched to her other nipple, his fingers kissing her tight flesh. “One minute I’m subjecting you to pain, the next there’s pleasure.”

“
No,” she whispered. “I don’t want—“

“
Maybe your mind doesn’t, yet, but your body is primitive. It understands pleasure and pain, fullness and hunger, warmth and cold. When it is satisfied, nothing else matters. You have potential, slave. Potential I will exploit.”

This man who’d taken her from what she was familiar with could be a poet. He used words in ways she’d never experienced.

“
In many respects,” he continued in his sing-song tone, “the first days are the hardest. Resistance comes from many sources, fear high among them. Slaves want back the world they understand. The future is beyond their comprehension because the present is so intense.”

Keep rubbing my nipple, please. Hold me against you so I can feel your heat. Give me some of your strength. Make me believe you’re doing this because down deep you care for me.

“
As for why we make the initial impact so intense—otherwise the transformation takes much longer, wasting valuable time that could be put to better use.”

She was a prisoner in this man’s world. Sooner or later he’d rape her—wasn’t that why he’d taken her?—but he wanted more from her.

He wanted everything.

“
Seeing you helpless turns me on, satisfies a need, but I promised you a measure of relief. Its time you got it.”

It took incredible self-control not to lean against him when he stood her upright. She concentrated on trying to control her shaking as he slowly unwound the red lengths from around her breasts. The restored blood flow burned through her. She hoped he’d massage her. Instead, he picked up something she couldn’t see because her back was to him. Whatever it was, it felt soft when he pressed it against her spine.    

Suddenly he grabbed her hair and yanked, making her stare at the ceiling. An instant later something covered her eyes. Panicked, she tried to shake it off.

“
Don’t!” he snapped. “Damn it, you know better.”

“
This is called sensory deprivation,” he said once he’d fastened the blindfold around her head. He patted her cheeks. “It’s an extremely effective method of encouraging a subject to focus on what a master wants her to.”

Master? Had he used that word before?
Maybe it had only been part of her fantasies.

When he spun her in a half circle, she assumed she was facing him. Darkness conspired with her useless arms to threaten to push her into madness. No matter how hard she fought to stay in control, she wasn’t sure she could.

Seconds passed. Because he wasn’t touching her, she had no way of knowing whether he was where he’d been when she’d last seen him. For all she knew, he could have left the room. Maybe he was sitting in one of the chairs watching her, waiting for her to fall apart.

Where are you? Please don’t leave me.

No, damn it, she wouldn’t beg! Pride was all she had left.

Being deprived of the ability to see made her less sure of her balance and she again widened her stance. What a sight she must be for a man who considered him a master of human flesh.

The passing seconds were like never-ending fingernails on a blackboard. Locked within herself, she became even more aware of the metal around her wrists and the collar hugging her neck. She didn’t know what to call the sensations on and around her breasts, just that they were an accumulation of everything they’d been subjected to. He obviously was a master of abuse—and of stimulation.

Small fires continued to burn throughout her body. The way the countless tiny sparks heated and caressed her flesh, she wasn’t sure she wanted them to end. Sticky juices clung to her pussy and the insides of her thighs. Just thinking about what he’d done to her sex and ass hole started a new flood.

Not aroused! No, damn it, not imprisoned by sexual need.

Yet.

“
You’re a work of art, an erotic sculpture. The time will come when you fully embrace your sexuality, slave.”

Startled by his unexpected voice, she tried to determine where it was coming from. She had little enough left, just a small measure of pride. If he thought she’d bow before him, he was mistaken.

“
Your body has pretty much taken everything it’s capable of today. You’re still high on adrenalin and stimulation, but there’s going to be a crash. You’d love to have something to eat and drink followed by a shower and sleep wouldn’t you?”

Sleep? Yes! Oblivion.

“
You’re more vulnerable than you ever thought it was possible to be. Any minute now your body will say enough. It can’t take any more. But it’ll have to.”

In her mind’s eye he was reclining in one of the leather chairs. She imagined he was sipping a drink. Maybe he’d stripped off his clothes in preparation for forcing himself on her. His blood-engorged cock would stand out from his lean yet muscled body and he’d idly massaged it.

What hole would he push it into?

Shuddering, she clamped her mouth shut. She’d tried giving oral sex when she’d been drinking but hadn’t gotten anything out of the effort beyond a sore jaw and a feeling of
yuck.
Of course if she was forced—

“
You’re going to call me Master. I don’t need to spell out what will happen if you don’t do as I command.”

Master. Like in her fantasy.

Both recoiling from and embracing the comparisons, she squared her shoulders and lifted her head only to regret the action because all she’d really done was draw his attention to her breasts.

“
Someone your age has probably had a few hard knocks, relationships that went sour. Maybe you’ve been raped.”

Try as she did not to react, undoubtedly he’d noticed her tension. Fortunately he had no way of knowing she’d learned the meaning of the word thanks to her father’s drunken attempts.

“
That’s what I thought.” He sounded sympathetic. “You got in over your head a few times, right?”

“
Right.”
You have no idea.

“
What did that teach you?”

To hell with trying to placate him. He was getting what he wanted. “Not to trust men. Or anyone.”

When he didn’t immediately reply, she wondered what he intended to do with that piece of information.

“
Did you ever trust?”

“
Go to hell.”
Don’t say that again. He’ll punish you.
 

“
Hit a nerve did I? For the record slave, eventually you’ll tell me. There isn’t anything you can keep from me. Would you like to know why?”

She should ignore him and march—march where? Do what blind and without use of her hands?

“
Because I’m becoming your master.”

“
No you aren’t. No one’s ever going to control me again.”
No! I didn’t say that!
 

Once again silence stretched out. Then: “Again? You have a hell of a lot of old tapes playing inside you, slave. Of course you don’t want to share them.”

It had been better when he’d known nothing about her, when she’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, a body.

“
But you will because I’m your master.”

“
No,” she moaned. Then, hating her cowed tone, she lifted her head. “Is that what it takes for you to feel like a man? The only way you can get it up is to force a woman to submit?”

“
Careful. You’re in dangerous territory.”

She didn’t need his warning. If she could take back her words would she? She didn’t know. The only thing she was certain of was that she’d never felt more alive. Her childhood and time behind bars as a teenager had tested her courage. Those things had only been a prelude to today.

With her master.

Master.

#

Kaci hadn’t fought when her captor—not master—took hold of the collar’s ring. Hard as she’d tried to convince herself that she’d only stumbled after him because resistance would have been futile, something else had been at play. Against all reason, she’d wanted to see what he had in mind.

How he intended to force that one word from her.

She’d nearly panicked when he backed her to a chair and tied her ankles to the front chair legs so they were apart and her pussy exposed. Then he’d pushed on her chest, knocking her off balance. The seat was so deep she wound up leaning back with her upper body supported by her tailbone and shoulders. At least, she tried to comfort herself, she wasn’t sitting on her shackled hands because she’d pulled them up against her waist.