Station 2 is a twelve-minute walk from here along the primary access trail. I could take the service path and cut that time in half, but I'm not in a hurry. Scarletta isn't going anywhere. The restraints will hold her exactly as I've configured them, exposed and waiting, her arousal building with every passing second.
Anticipation is its own form of torture.
She'll be desperate by the time I arrive. Trembling. Begging. Ready to surrender whatever final fragments of resistance she's been clutching.
I begin walking.
Chapter 8
Scarletta
The cross holds me in place like I'm a specimen pinned for examination.
I can't move my arms or legs. The restraint across my waist keeps me from arching away from the steel, and the collar around my throat forces my head into a position where I have to stare straight ahead into the jungle instead of looking down at my own exposed body.
I'm waiting.
I don't know for what, exactly. Or for whom.
I'm hoping it's him. The unmasked man who kissed me on the plank. The handsome man who called my writing exceptional and made me feel like maybe I'm not just broken garbage pretending to be functional.
But I've learned not to assume anything since the auction.
Whoever he is, the point of all this is to force me to admit that I'm not the one in control here—heis. That everything happening to me ishisdesign. That I'm not a participant in this experience—I'm thesubjectof it.
The voices around me continue their commentary.
I think the hands that strapped me to this cross belong to the attendants from earlier., but I couldn't get a good enough look at them when they emerged from the trees to make that determination with certainty. They were masked. Dressed in black tuxedos instead of white linen.
The voices are definitely different, though. And they're amplified, like they're coming from everywhere, all at once. Ever since they put me on the cross, the've been making comments. Notaboutme. Not clinical observations delivered in neutral tones. They're saying things designed toarouseme. To provoke me. To stimulate responses I can't control.
One of them describes how he's going to fuck my throat until I choke when he's given permission.
Another one details exactly how he'll spread my ass and work his tongue inside me while I writhe against the cross, helpless to stop him.
The third voice—lower, rougher—tells me he's going to fist my pussy until I squirt all over his hand and then make me lick myself off his fingers.
My pussy clenches.
God. I'm so wet I can feel it running down my inner thighs.
But I'm not so far gone—not so consumed by arousal—that my critical thinking skills have completely shut down.
This is another test.
The masked man is diabolically cunning. I understand that now. Every challenge has layers. Every instruction contains traps I don't recognize until I've already fallen into them.
He set me up to fail at the bathing pavilion. Let the attendants touch me knowing I'd come without permission, knowing he could punish me for it later.
This feels similar.
These voices describing filthy acts they want to perform on my restrained body—they're trying to provoke me. To arouseme. So that when the unmasked man comes, I will fall apart immediately.
It doesn't matter who these three men are. What matters is that they're watching me. That they can see how swollen my pussy is. How hard my nipples have gone. How my body trembles against the restraints not from fear but from desperate, aching need.
I like the fact that they're watching.
I like knowing they want me.
