“Right, we’re up to thirty,” he goes on. “I’ll start off nice and easy. If and when you’re ready to talk, let me know, and I’ll see about commuting your sentence.”
“You sound like you’re sending me to prison or execution.”
Max chuckles, and his hand travels down to my ass. “You wouldn’t know this even if you remembered me, but I have fantasized about having you in this position for fuckingyears. Ever since you came onto me when you were seventeen. I pushed you off back then. Not because Iwantedto, but because I had to… yet I always intended to change that. Then, you disappeared, and I thought you’d always remain there.”
“Where?” I breathe. I don’t know why I’m indulging him. I’m in a humiliating position, my face pressed into the mattress, my words muted, about to be disciplined like a toddler, and yet… I don’t feel as horrible as I do whenever Dagon sets to work on me. I certainly don’t feelsafe, but I’m no longer trembling like a leaf in a storm.
“My fantasies,” Max says. “My dreams. My nightmares. Everywhere except where I was desperate to have you.”
“Where did you want me?”Shut up, you idiot, and stop encouraging him.
“My reality.”
I suck in a sharp breath, bending under the weight of his words, under the sincerity with which they’re spoken.
I don’t doubt that he knows me. I don’t doubt that I know him. The only thing in question is where we know each other from and how well, but the point is moot.
Max has subdued me, for now. There’s nothing I can do in this moment but take the punishment he’s planning on doling out andhope he sticks to his word,praythat this doesn’t end with him forcing himself on me.
If he does, it’s game over for me. Once Dagon gets his hands on me—and hewillget his hands on me, he always does—he’ll hurt me in the only real way I can still be hurt. Physical pain sucks, it can incapacitate me, but it lost its fear factor long ago. I’ve gone through too much of it to really care about it in the long run.
“Relax,” Max says. His hand moves down to my ass, and I feel my cheeks flame. I have a dreadful sense that I know where this is going… and an even more dreadful sense that I might not entirely hate it.
I’ve neverwatchedporn, but I’ve read plenty of smut when I knew nobody was watching. It presented my only opportunity for sexual gratification, though most of my sex drive has died out over the last few years. But, in my books, when the morally grey hero spanks the young, innocent heroine and then proceeds to fuck her brains out… yeah, that got me excited.
Intheory. The reality of pain is far different—something I’ve learned beyond any shadow of a doubt—andyet… I think there might be the faintest niggle of excitement inside me.
“I want to taste youso fucking badly,” Max murmurs, though the words sound closer to a moan. “We’ll get there. First… why are you being punished, Ember?”
“Because you had the bad idea to kidnap me and expect a docile little captive. In essence, your poor decision making.”
It sounds like Max muffles a laugh.
“Why are you being punished?” he asks again, voice sterner and more…dominant?
I bite my lip. “Because you have a warped grasp on reality and think that hurting me will bring about any changes whatsoever.”
“Why are you being punished?”
“Because you belong in a mental asylum, but they released you back into society for population control. And as a walking advertisement for condoms.”
His hand leaves my ass. I brace myself, fisting the ratty bedsheets in my hand. His palm cracks down on one ass cheek, and I jerk, eyes shutting as a wave of pain washes over me. It stings and burns, but it also creates a wave of heat in my lower belly.
The fuck?
He spanks me again, right over the same spot. Hisses out a breath and suppresses what sounds like a groan. Then he hits me again, and again, and again… and it starts to actually hurt.
But it’s not the severe sort of pain that makes me retreat into a corner of my mind to just get through it. This is different. Dagon loses his mind and his control whenever he ‘punishes’me, but there’s nothing out of control about Max. He’s careful, deliberate,intentional. It alters the landscape of the pain.
After fuck knows how many hits, I start squirming, unbearable heat curling in my lower belly and pooling in my panties. Several more spanks later, though, the heat disappears, replaced by genuine pain.
My ass feels raw and aching, like he’s gone at it with sandpaper, but there’s also a fuzzy sensation overtaking my brain, slowly but surely. When the pain becomes too much for me to hold still and I try to crawl away, Max fists my hair to hold me in place, but he doesn’t stop or change the tempo of his hits—though he does ramp up the force.
The haze hanging over my thoughts grows. My sensations heighten—not just physical, but all of my senses simultaneously go on turbo while also muting. I can feel every individual crinkle of the bedsheets, the heat of Max’s erection pressing into me, and the cool temperature of the room. I can hear an ice machine crackling somewhere in the complex, and sounds of footsteps thudding above us. I smell thelemon cleaner that must’ve been sprayed in this room, and the slight fragrance of the woodsy cologne clinging to Max.
“That’s thirty,” he finally says. My ass burns and aches, but my brain is firmly caught somewhere between confusion and contentment. I’m dazed, pliant in a way I’ve never been before. All of my worries have melted away, leaving behind nothing but a calm emptiness and absence of the fear that clings to me every minute of every day.
“Why were you punished, Ember?” Max asks.
