She pulled the drawer at the end of the garden open with her pinky and retrieved the panties and bra tucked inside with the same finger.
Nitrile gloves too, so the smug bastard could stamp pain onto her most tender flesh without having to feel it himself.
She didn’t know if it would be Boone’s hands or Silas’s though, since she’d heard him come in while she harvested. Her stomach turned at the thought. Though Boone was pretty annoyed, so he might be just as sadistic with the placement as Silas.
She turned and faced them, her skin too tight over her hands. Her chest.
She looked down, staring at their feet, unable to meet their gazes. What had possessed her to snap at Boone? Her shame at her behavior sat sour in her stomach while the fire spread outside her body.
Correction when she got something wrong was fast and done — pepper oil on a plug while she cleaned a bathroom she’d missed, lines while she sucked Silas’s hot-pepper fireball creations when she forgot to saySir, corner time kneeling on rice when she zoned out and forgot drinks or neglected something else. But out-and-out disrespect like this was different, and she was ashamed of her actions.
The sharp edges of each leaf shifted with every movement, and now the barbs were working into her breasts with every breath. She swore she could feel them pulsing like they were alive, angry, and multiplying with every step.
Her nipples burned. Not throbbed.Burned.
She whimpered, and then cursed her clit, pulsing away like it was looking forward to having the damned leaves wrapped around it, confusion and fear bleeding into arousal in the worst possible way.
She walked carefully, like a woman carrying a hive of copperhead snakes in her arms. That’s what this was. A twisting mass of punishment, alive and poisonous.
Her knees wobbled.
She looked up, hoping to see some kindness or mercy in their faces, but she saw none. They both stood with arms crossed, faces unreadable.
Until Silas met her gaze and smirked.
The fucking bastard was going to enjoy every second of this.
Her cheeks flamed. Her breath hitched. She looked back down and kept walking toward whatever was coming, every step worse than the last.
Boone took the gloves and snapped them on. “Leaves on the paper.”
Someone had lined a table with butcher paper, treating the damned leaves like the toxic substance they were. She gratefully leaned forward and let them fall from her arms.
Her breasts and sternum ached from contact, her fingers were already swollen, and her palms burned like she’d rubbed them across a stovetop. She forced herself upright and adjusted her grip on the panties and bra.
“Bra first,” Silas told Boone, tone conversational. “Make sure the leaves go around the cup and especially along the strap. Let’s pick an extra special one for the nipples.”
Boone nodded and met Willow’s gaze for a long, silent beat. No warmth in his eyes. No mercy. Just quiet determination with the full force of his displeasure behind it.
He put the panties on the table and held the bra. “Turn around, mouthy little fuckhole.”
He fastened it around her ribcage first, and leaves were wedged between cotton and skin, each a promise of torment. He lined three inside the base of a cup, held it to the underside of her boob, and had a long, horrifyingly casual conversation with Silas about which leaf would give her nipple the sharpest, most intense sting.
Her breath came hard and fast when Boone’s massive thumb and forefinger shaped the chosen leaf around her nipple like a sadist folding petals around the bud of a flower. She held back a whimper when he layered more into the cup’s top seam.
Then came the arm strap, and once it was up, he tucked barbed green leaves along the underside of the elastic.
The same sadistic ritual played out on the other breast. By the time it was done, she was shaking. Blinking against tears.
“We’re going to need more leaves to properly punish the mouthy cocksleeve,” Silas said, looking over what was left on the paper.
“Another two dozen, mouthy bitch. Go.” Boone’s voice brooked no argument.
Her feet obeyed before her brain caught up, moving pantiless in a torture bra like a prisoner to her own execution.
Her hands were already raw and inflamed, burning like the fires of hell. The barbs had driven deep, and her skin throbbed like it was covered in microscopic acid-tipped needles. Tears streamed down her face, her vision blurring until the leaves swam like mirages. She blinked hard, again and again, forcing her body to obey.
Behind her, the men talked as if she weren’t there.
