Taunt Me (Rough Love 2)

She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t been sleeping well. I hadn’t been sleeping well either. Something was missing from my life, a person I needed to make me happy. A person I would end up damaging and hurting.

“Chere,” I said, and it was almost a groan. “Why are you putting me through this?”

“Because we belong together.”

She was so sure of that, sitting there with her back against my door, and her knees drawn up in her little pink skirt. She was so fucking sure this was possible.

“I’ll show you the dungeon,” I said. “I’ll show you what I want from you, and then…”

I wasn’t saying yes. But she realized I wasn’t saying no anymore either. I was saying maybe, which was fucking careless of me. She gave me a huge smile as I held out my hand to help her to her feet.

*** *** ***

I stuffed down nerves and walked her along the hall to my bedroom, and then to my walk-in closet. She watched as I pushed aside a line of suits, revealing a hidden door.

“That’s why I couldn’t find it,” she said.

I frowned at her. “You tried to find it?”

“Yes. The morning you left me alone.”

“If I wanted you to see it, I would have shown it to you.”

Her eyes flashed in the harsh closet light. “You’ve shown it to other women, haven’t you?”

It wasn’t really a question. It was a reproach. Yes, I’d brought other women here but they meant nothing to me, and Chere meant too much.

“I’ll tell you this,” I said. “No one I’ve ever brought here has elected to come back.”

With that warning, I turned the knob and walked her inside. On the surface, it was like any other room. It had dark gray walls and a smooth white ceiling, and a polished hardwood floor. But beneath the drywall, I’d had the entire space soundproofed, because I lived for the sound of a woman’s screams.

I walked around turning on lights. Lamps, overhead lights, paper lanterns, every kind of light to illuminate this darkly perverse world.

“Wow,” she said. “This is…”

It was over the top. I knew. I’d repurposed two good-sized bedrooms to create the space, and furnished it with top-tier BDSM equipment. There was a monster of a bondage rack screwed to the wall, capable of restraining a victim in just about any position. There was a broad, padded leather table for horizontal kink activities, and an adjustable spanking bench for forcing women’s asses into the air. There was a sawhorse spreader with interchangeable tops: a flatter, padded one for milder sessions, and a hard, triangular one for punishing a slave who’d been very, very naughty. There was a cage, only one, a low, Chere-sized rectangle with stark metal bars.

Aside from the various kinky structures, there were two tall chests full of thousands of dollars’ worth of butt plugs, nipple clamps, sex toys and punishment implements, all collected in the three years since I’d met her. I’d collected them for her, because I’d wanted her even when I shouldn’t want her. I’d wanted this, a painful, dark, selfish dynamic that could never fulfill her, no matter how sexy and exciting it might seem.

“What do you think?” I asked. From the expression on her face, I thought she was probably soaking her panties.

“So, this is what you want in a relationship? To hurt me here? To keep me locked away in here, all the time?”

“Not all the time. Sometimes. When I feel like cuffing you to one of these structures and doing unconscionable things to your body.”

She let out a slow breath. A flush crept up my neck. It had been one thing to admit I had a dungeon. It was another thing to allow her in here to see all the ways I wanted to torture her, to see the sheer magnitude of my perversion in the furniture and equipment I’d bought.

“I’m not afraid of this,” she said, a little too loudly. She turned to me and repeated herself. “I’m not afraid of this. If this is what you want, I want it too. I mean, we were always moving toward this, weren’t we? You like control…” She gestured around at the racks and chains and leather cuffs. “And I like when you control me. It excites me.”

“Will it excite you when you don’t like it?” I asked.

“I can’t…” She gave me a flash of a smile and twitched self-consciously at her skirt. “I can’t imagine not liking it. Am I crazy for wanting this? I’m so turned on right now.”

I wanted to fall on her. I wanted to fix her to the bondage rack and do a thousand wretched things to her until she begged for mercy. She’d like it sometimes. She’d hate it sometimes, though. She’d hate me.

“You won’t always feel turned on.” I held out a hand. “Come here.”