Lifting my head, I watch him through a veil of hair. He walks to the mantelpiece where his whips are displayed and takes one from the wall. The leather strap is flat and thick. He watches me as he rounds my body. Our eyes remained locked for as long as I have him in my peripheral view. Unlike earlier, I don’t crane my neck to look behind me. I prefer not to witness him studying my nakedness.
The silence that follows tells me this is exactly what he’s doing—looking at where I’m exposed. The creaking of the leather chair tells me he’s taken a seat. Close. His fingers slip around my ankle. Gently, he removes my sandals. The tip of his shoe touches my naked heel, and then he wiggles it between my feet, forcing them apart.
“Spread your legs.”
No point in arguing. It’ll only drag this out. I widen my stance. Cool air brushes over my folds. I resist the urge to clench my globes in an effort to hide at least some of my intimate parts. A calloused finger runs down the crevice between my globes, whispering over my dark hole. Despite how hard I clench my teeth, I can’t contain my shiver. His touch is soft, barely there, reminding me of the unspoken permission I granted him earlier. His fingers now have access to me in ways I don’t care to think about, not in this position.
His voice is dangerous, that raspy quality saturated in one hundred percent maleness. “You put your life in danger today.” The path of his finger continues south, feathering over my clit.
Biting my lip, I swallow back a whimper.
“Say it,” he commands.
“I put my life in danger.”
“You’ll never do it again.”
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
“You’ll never do it again,” he says a little more forceful.
“I’ll never do it purposefully.”
“No, you won’t, because you belong to me. What does that make you?”
“Property.”
A white-hot flash of pain rips over my left globe. Yelping, I arch my back to pull away from the source of the ache.
“Try again,” he says.
“Yours?”
“Mine. No one endangers what’s mine. Anyone fucks with this,” he cups my sex roughly, “and I’ll fucking cut off his hand.” His fingers clenches in the swollen flesh of my folds, giving my pubic hair a soft yank that sends moisture between my legs. “Anyone who lays a finger on you will lose it. Anyone who puts you in harm’s way is dead. Understand?” He pulls again, creating a painfully delicious sensation.
“Y-yes,” I cry on a gasp.
“I’m going to punish you for today so that you know how goddamn serious I am about keeping you alive.”
“Don’t.” Even as the words whispers past my lips, I know it’s futile.
“Sorry, angel,” he replies, not sounding one bit sorry. “You know you deserve this.”
I’m about to say I don’t when the next lash falls across my whole ass, covering it from left to right. It’s not a knife. A blade cuts with cold pain that sets into pulsing spurts of agony when the adrenaline from the physical shock wears off. The strap burns under my skin as if every molecule has been set on fire.
“Two,” he says. “Four more to go.”
I draw in a shaky breath, steeling myself, but no amount of mental preparation is enough for what follows. The next lash almost cripples me. My knees wobble under my weight. Before I have time to recover, another strip of fire bursts over my skin.
“D-Damian!”
“Almost there, angel. Only two more.”
He gives them to me consecutively and with no repose in between, heating the skin under the curve of my ass and the line that follows my crack. The tip of the strap curls between my legs, the clack it makes as it covers my folds and clit reverberating through my flesh in sparks of agonizing torture. My elbows cave. My upper body hits the rug. My thighs shake uncontrollably. That I manage to stay on my knees is a miracle. I won’t go down, damn him. I won’t give him the satisfaction of falling all the way.
I haven’t shed a tear. I haven’t screamed. I hold onto the knowledge while I gasp for air and will my strength to return so I can peel myself off the floor. Before I can execute either action, something presses on my dark entrance. Too weak to fight, I fling my face to the side with my cheek resting on the rug. Damian is pressing the thumb of one hand between my ass cheeks while sucking the other into his mouth. When the pressure lifts, I almost find that breath I’m chasing, but then he puts his wet, hot pad against the protesting ring of muscle.
“Breathe, Lina.”
I can’t, but my heart demands I do. The minute my lungs clear and oxygen expands in my chest, he sinks the whole length of his thumb into me. Two pumps, and more fingers join his thumb. I can’t tell how many he’s slipping inside me, but it burns and fires up sensitive tissue all at once.