“I…”
I never get to finish my sentence before he picks me up and throws me over his desk. The cane is in his right hand, his left is fisted in my hair. He doesn’t say another word. He simply starts lashing the cane down across my ass with harsh, cracking strokes which send pure fire shooting through me every time they land.
Within seconds I am howling and crying, tears rushing down my face as Angelo punishes me with a swift harshness I have never experienced before. A dozen strokes of the cane land across my bottom in under a minute and then he stops, holding me down for the lecture which must inevitably follow, even though I can barely hear him over the rushing of blood in my ears and my own pathetic sobbing.
“I am a tyrant,” he tells me, his deep Sicilian timbre cutting through my cries. “I am the tyrant. Your tyrant. I am your captor. Your owner. Your husband.”
He doesn’t ask me to apologize, because he is not interested in apologies.
He doesn’t ask me to promise never to misbehave again, because he doesn’t care. He wants me to misbehave. Then he can do this again. Make me hurt. Make me cry. Make me humiliate myself.
“Threaten me again,” he purrs. “Give me reason to turn your skin red.”
I am wearing leggings. They did nothing to protect from the cane. Now they feel tight against my sore, swollen ass, a reminder that my husband is cruel, and that there is nothing I can do to fight him. Angelo doesn’t want peace. He thrives on chaos.
He releases my hair and I slide up from the desk. My ass hurts so fucking much. Six strokes of the cane is a very British punishment, and delivered with that beast of an implement, that hard and that fast… I am not going to be sitting for a good long while.
“No? You're out of words?” Angelo smiles. “Maybe you’ll find some later. Mark, take her to her room.”
Mark wraps his arms around me, and holds me tight. I sob against his chest as he carries me from the room, one arm under my thighs to keep the weight off my ass. He knows how it feels to be caned, I saw that for myself. Right now, he’s bearing the same marks I am, but without any of the dramatics.
“That fucking hurt,” I gasp.
“I know,” he murmurs into my ear. “Come on, I’ll make it feel better.”
He carries me to his bedroom. Not Angelo’s. His. This is the room where I lost my virginity. That seems like a bitter irony right now. Mark sits down on the bed even though I know sitting has to hurt him too, and he holds me close, giving me the comfort Angelo would not.
“Why do you let him do that to you?” I ask the question with a half-sob. “You could kill him. I can’t fight him, but…”
“Angelo’s power never comes from his physicality,” Mark explains. “If I defy him, he can put me out the front of the house and have me arrested in a matter of hours. I’d go to prison forever. The kind of prison you never get out of.”
“So you’re trapped, just like me.”
“I try not to think of it as being trapped, even if that’s what it is. Angelo is a monster. I’m not going to pretend he’s not. But there is a life you’ll lead with him that is so much more real and immediate than any life you could live anywhere else. He’ll whip you, but he won’t bullshit you. And, if you behave yourself, once in a while, he can be something other than a complete monster.”
“So it’s fine, then? He canes you, he canes me, and it’s all fine? What happened to trying to help me escape?”
Mark helps me settle down onto the bed, he rubs my back and he lets me cry into his coverlet.
“It’s not fine,” he tells me. “It’s not. I've been trying, Tilly, but…”
I lift my tearful face to him. “How do we get out of here, Mark?”
He brushes my tears away with the pad of his thumb. His expression is so sympathetic it almost physically hurts. He looks at me, and I see all my pain reflected back at me, my sadness, and my desperation. Then he says two words which bring everything crashing down on me.
“We don’t.”
Chapter 15
Angelo
“About time,” Bobby snorts after Mark has taken a sobbing Tilly away. “She gets away with everything.”
“She gets away with as much as you do. Which is nothing.”
“Anyway,” Bobby changes the conversation. “What do you need?”
“You and I are going to take a little field trip. It is time we met the British. They seem unable to take no for an answer, so I think it is time we delivered the message in person.”