“I’m sorry,” I cried again, not really tracking what he was saying.
“I wasn’t supposed to want to protect you. I wasn’t supposed to want to fuck you.”
I couldn’t tell exactly when it changed, but something had. Every single strike still hurt, my nails still gripped the bedpost, my knuckles white, and tears still streamed down my face. But the pain was different. It was cathartic.
“You were supposed to be a means to an end. I was just supposed to threaten you, and you were going to play your fucking part. But no, you had to be so much more than just some random socialite bitch.”
I heard his words, but I couldn’t process them; they weren’t making any sense. But the lashes —those I was starting to understand.
The pain was becoming a release for both of us.
Something in this plan of his wasn’t going the way it should have, and he was taking it out in violence, but every strike allowed me to release everything I had buried.
Each swipe of the belt was like a cleansing fire, burning away my rage first. The more he swung, the more I was focused on that and not on the anger that had soured my stomach. Every time it connected, the muscles in my abdomen loosened and released.
“You are not what I’m supposed to want.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “You are everything I hate in this world. You are anarchy, you are chaos, and you are a fucking mess. Why can’t I get you out of my fucking head?”
His next strike didn’t hurt, it just added to the burn that covered my ass and thighs. That burn was a godsend. The icy fear and terror that had been around my heart, squeezing it, making it impossible to breathe, melted. It didn’t matter anymore. The shame that I felt from not living up to my mother’s expectations disappeared.
What did her expectations matter when this was now my life? Why should I be afraid of this man behind me, the one who was so angry at me for being who I was, but mostly angry at himself because despite the fact he didn’t want to want me, he did?
With every single punishment he gave me, it felt like I was paying for a sin, so I didn’t have to carry its weight. Every strikepeeled off another layer of self-loathing, self-doubt, and second-guessing.
By the time he threw the belt over to the side, I was out of breath. Tears were running down my face, but they felt like a purge. Even as they flowed over the scratch, stinging my skin, they still felt cleansing.
Darius was also out of breath as he rested his head on my back, his ragged breath panting over my heated flesh.
The pain, the punishment, was the release I needed, and that terrified me. This entire arrangement was temporary. How was I going to cope with this when he was gone? Was he really expecting me to be able to go back to my life before this? To hiding from my mother, from her suffocating expectations, inside a dusty old vinyl shop?
I didn’t even know how to understand it.
“Are you still sorry?” he asked, and my brain screamed at me to say yes and to beg for his forgiveness. But when I opened my mouth, that wasn’t what came out.
“No,” I said.
He lifted off the bed, standing next to me. I tried to move, but he put his hand on the nape of my neck and held me in place. His other hand went to the zipper of my dress and pulled it down. Then he pushed the dress up, over my head, uncovering every inch of me, and left it bunched where my hands were tied to the bed.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he said as his hand trailed down my spine and then between my red-hot ass cheeks. “I don’t think a simple spanking is enough anymore.”
I didn’t say anything.
Not until he went over to my bedside table and opened up the tiny drawer.
“No,” I said, but it was too late. He brought out the dildo and the lube I kept there.
He smiled that cruel smile that only he could pull off as he carefully placed them on the tabletop.
“And what do you do with these?” he asked.
My cheeks flamed, but I said nothing.
“Because good girls don’t have such naughty things in their bedroom,” he tsked.
I buried my face in my arms, dying of embarrassment.
Slowly, he started undoing the buttons of his shirt and then dropped it on the floor. Then he kicked off his shoes, and his pants fell to join the shirt.
I braced myself, thinking he was just going to fuck me again, but then he grabbed the pink dildo.
