"Is that right, boy?
Angelo interjected with what sounded like amusement.
"You gave her to me. Said she was mine. You didn't have any right to touch her."
Bobby was really standing up to Angelo. Gemma figured that hadn't happened very often before. At least, not successfully.
"I have domain over everything in our world, boy," Angelo growled. "Including you and Gemma. There is nothing and nobody I will not touch. You should be grateful I did it and did not leave the task to you. It was most likely that this girl was the source of our problems."
"Sure, if you didn't want to wait five minutes and ask questions," Bobby sassed back. "If you wanted to be distracted so we could be a couple of chumps who had our prisoners snatched out from under our noses, literally. Someone was collecting a lot of intelligence on us this whole time. Someone was broadcasting it too. We're fucked, Angelo. It's the two of us against a whole world of lawmen and English people and armed soldiers…."
"We still have our resources. There is no need to worry."
"I disagree."
They'd almost forgotten that Gemma was there. She cuddled into Bobby and listened to the two men discuss their predicament. For now, they were safe, floating over great oceans. But they had to land eventually, and when they did, anything could be waiting for them.
Bobby was more worried than Angelo was, but would Angelo let it show if he was? Probably not.
She shifted a little and gasped as she did. The welts and the aches and the general ouchness of it all was not getting better. It was getting worse.
The sound of a pained female interrupted Angelo's train of thought. He knew Gemma was hurting. He did not feel guilty about it, but he did not want the whimpering to continue.
"Turn her over your lap," he instructed Bobby. "We need to fix this."
"Does putting her over my knee allow you to time travel and not ever have done this?"
"Boy, if you sass me again, it will be two of you needing aftercare, do you understand?"
Bobby narrowed his eyes but obeyed finally. Gemma squirmed and whimpered and generally complained as she was moved out of her protective coverlet and put into proper position over Bobby's thighs. She was still naked, which made her all the more vulnerable and also laid all the evidence of Angelo’s brutality bare.
"Asshole," Bobby growled as he took in the sight of her punished ass, thighs, and shoulders. Gemma's ass was crossed with repeated marks of the belt, still red, still welted, still very much punished.
"Enough, boy."
"Agreed. It is enough," Bobby replied.
Angelo could tell there would be another reckoning coming soon. Bobby had taken responsibility for Gemma, and it had made him less reckless. It had also made him far less submissive - if he had ever been submissive.
"Let me up, please," Gemma requested quite politely.
"You're not going to be punished again," Angelo assured her. "I have some cream that helps. It has healing and numbing properties."
"I'll do it," Bobby said. "I think you've touched her enough today."
"You are going to be touched, boy, if you don't cut that attitude. Give her to me."
He knew Gemma didn't want to be taken. This wasn't about Gemma. This was about Bobby remembering who owned what. Bobby almost refused. He saw the younger man's arms tighten around Gemma's naked form, a protective glint in his eye.
Was this the moment that had been coming for some time? The moment of separation and personal assertion?
No. It was not.
Under Angelo’s stare, Bobby relinquished his pet, and Angelo pulled Gemma over his lap. She was stiff with fear at his touch, which he found quite charming. At a moment when he seemed to be losing control, she reminded him of what it felt like to have someone completely submit to him.
Only time would heal the marks his lash had left on previously unblemished flesh. But he could supply some pain relief. He could smear some gel across the very same welts he had given her. The fact that his private plane was stocked with such items might have been cause for comment for someone who did not know him, but pain and release were the two tools in Angelo's world that he knew and loved most.
The girl softened to him gradually as he took tender care of her. She made small whimpering sounds, which died down as her fear left her and some other emotion began to creep in. Would she be grateful for the small kindness? Or would she do what his brat of a boy did and turn rebellious? Only time would tell.
Gemma felt like an object, an item of ownership passed from one man to another. She had become the House of Vitali’s whipping girl.
The longer Angelo's large hands worked the numbing, warming, softening, gentling cream into her body, the more her mind started to work again. In truth, Angelo was not the greatest monster she knew, though he was undoubtedly using her as a tool to control Bobby, and as a scapegoat, and as god only knew what else.