“I’ll want to whip your pussy some, too. The insides of your thighs. You’ll have to raise a leg for that, since I won’t put you in a spreader bar. The idea is you can let go and walk away.”
“I’ll obey, Sir.”
He looked at her a few seconds. “It’s more than that. You can’t collapse. This is going to be about endurance as much as it is pain, I think. The wolf is hurt. He has to do this.”
“Then I need to give it to him, Sir.”
She gripped the bar with both hands, shoulders already straining from the angle, toes barely brushing the floor. Her pulse roared in her ears.
Silas moved behind her without speaking. She couldn’t see what he chose first, but she knew when she felt it.
The rubber sap punched into the back of her thigh, a thick, meaty blow that landed like a fist, dreadful and deep. Heatrolling in behind the impact like fire under skin. Her knees jerked, a shriek escaped, but she didn’t fall. Didn’t speak. She’d never been hit with a sap of any kind before.
She’d had no idea how brutal and bruising each individual blow would be.
A moment passed.
Then it came again, higher this time, the heavy thud drove into her ass muscles, and she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.
The third blow crashed over the bruises already forming, and the pain doubled back on itself like coiled rubber bands snapping inside her.
He circled.
Another blow. Her flank. Then again, the other side. The rhythm unpredictable, calculated to keep her guessing.
Her hawk-vision noticed the change in his face when she could see it, threaded with something more primal. Not a shift, but something leaking through. The way he moved. The set of his jaw. A different pattern. Not wholly Silas.
The sap disappeared and the whip came out.
She didn’t hear it first, shefeltit — the long, lashing arc cutting a line from her ribs to her hip, a searing kiss of fire that made her scream.
She screamed again when it crossed her shoulders, and again when it wrapped under her arm and slashed across her ribcage. Her feet skittered for purchase.
“Leg,” he said.
It wasn’t his voice. Not exactly. The words were human, but the cadence, the growl behind it was all wolf.
She raised her right knee, bent.
The whip carved a welt across the inside of her left thigh.
The pain bloomed a second later, shocking in its intensity.
Then: “Switch.”
She did, and he matched the mark on the other side.
He circled again and she lowered her leg.
Her muscles quivered from holding the bar. Her breath came in ragged bursts, but she didn’t cry. She couldn’t. Tears meant a release, and she couldn’t lose focus, couldn’t risk collapsing, losing the bar.
The whip came down again, her back, her hips, the backs of her knees. He made her lift her legs so he could strike the soles of her feet.
The whip flew over and over, again and again.
Eventually, her grip slipped for just a second, her body threatened to fold, but she caught herself. She didn’t let go.
And then came the sap again, cold this time from sitting on the counter, shocking against her welted skin.
