Trust Me (Rough Love 3)

It wasn’t just the terror making me shake. It was the crazy jumble of emotions from this crazy jumble of a day. Sadness over my past, guilt over the painting, joy over my new business prospects with Vinod. I literally had so many feelings I couldn’t process them, and now there was this terror and regret, and the agony of seeing Price’s displeasure in his hard features and ice blue eyes.

I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, or maybe plead for mercy, but his gaze silenced me. We weren’t in his dungeon, but we might as well have been, and I wasn’t allowed to talk there unless I was asked a question. I’d broken enough rules for today so I bit my lip to keep my pleading inside. I just had to survive this. Maybe this punishment would be good for me. Maybe it would calm all the untamed emotions crowding my brain.

Price came toward me with the whip. I was naked, so naked, while he was still dressed. He piled some pillows in the center of the bed.

“Bend over and get your ass in the air,” he ordered.

The whip twitched in his hand. I did as he asked, too scared to make any response like “Yes, Sir” or “As you wish, Sir.” I just bent over the pillows, pressed my knees together, and buried my head in my arms.

“Ass up,” he said, louder and firmer. “Part your legs for balance. Don’t you dare flop around.”

I inched my legs apart and braced myself. A whimper of fear escaped my throat. I hated the whip. I had nightmares about it. It burned like liquid fire.

“You’re getting thirty,” he said. “Ten for going to see the painting, ten for making excuses about it, and ten for romanticizing your fucking history with him. It’s past, Chere. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered from between my arms. Thirty? I would die from thirty, at least with that whip.

“You’re getting all thirty at once,” he continued. “No warm up. No breaks. You blatantly broke a fucking rule.” He traced the whip across my ass, a gentle caress and poisonous mindfuckery at once. “I don’t want a fucking sound. Not one sound. You earned this, and you’re going to take it without moving or complaining.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to do that. What would he do to me when I let out a scream? Seeing the painting wasn’t worth this. Simon wasn’t worth this. I was a crouching, cringing huddle of regret. He stood back and I held my breath as the whip-fire barrage began. One liquid, searing line bloomed across my ass, then another, then another, so quickly one after the other that I couldn’t recover between them.

I used every fiber of my strength to kneel there and take it. I wasn’t perfect. I jerked with every blow and clenched my ass. Before he was ten strokes in, I’d collapsed on the pillows, but I didn’t roll into a ball or try to run away. I wasn’t inhuman, after all. I wasn’t a robot who could take a whipping without reacting to the pain. I grabbed handfuls of the sheets to keep from reaching behind me, and shoved those handfuls between my lips to muffle my frantic sounds of distress.

Don’t scream. Don’t scream. I didn’t scream. Thirty. Oh my God, thirty. What number was he on? My ass was a network of throbbing, aching lines and there was always more, more, more to take. I started shaking with the effort to be still, to endure. I stopped trying to muffle my cries and bit down on the sheets instead, gnashing them between my teeth. I bit down so hard, my jaw hurt. Please, please, please.

The entire ordeal probably lasted less than two minutes, but in those two minutes, I felt like I died, like there could never be any pain this bad, or any way to survive holding myself still. When he finished, I continued shaking. I couldn’t move, not even to escape him if he started up again. I’d worked so hard at submitting to his punishment that my body was now frozen in place as an act of will.

He moved to put the whip in his luggage, then he was back, kneeling behind me on the bed. I heard his zipper, heard the sound of him shoving down his pants. I heard the cap from the lube, and I knew he’d be stingy with it. He parted my ass cheeks to lube up my hole. I flinched as his fingers squeezed my tortured flesh, and bit hard on the sheets to keep from wailing out loud.

He positioned his cock against my ass and eased the head inside me with firm, forward pressure. Tears rose in my eyes, tears I’d been too panicked to shed earlier. Now they overflowed, soaking the sheets as he pried me open with no attention to my discomfort.