At His Throat, a Promise (50 page)

“I understand.” William"s arms tightened around him. “So he beat you like that just because you slept in the same bed as another slave?”

Ellis almost felt defensive. Jude hadn"t punished him just for no reason. “I broke the rules. I knew what the rules were and I broke them. That was bad of me, and I deserved to be punished.”

“Yes, but did you ever maybe think that the rules were impossible to
not
break?”

Ellis hesitated before saying, “Master, if I may?”

“Ellis, you can always speak freely with me.”

“Thank you. The rules weren"t impossible. I understood it. I didn"t
need
to be in Caleb"s bed.”

“But the other rules… You couldn"t possibly have obeyed them all. Jude set you up to
fail
.”

“I don"t think you"re right about that, Master.” Ellis knew his voice was bordering on insolence. Jude was
dead
. What was the point in talking about whether or not William thought his rules to be fair? William wouldn"t even punish him for breaking his own rule, and he didn"t have that many to follow!

“All right, don"t shut down on me, sweetheart.” Ellis cuddled closer. “I"m not,” he whispered. The endearment 432

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

made him want to forget all about Jude and his punishments.

“After Jude would punish you, how did you feel? Honestly?” It was difficult to sort through his own feelings on the subject.

“Besides sore? Relieved.”

“Because you knew your place, and that made you feel safe.” It wasn"t a question.

“Yes.”

“And if I were to punish you for what you did with Harte, that would make you feel a little better, a little safer?”

“What I did
to
Harte,” Ellis corrected.

William chuckled. “I think he was a willing party in your bad behaviour.”

Ellis ducked his head. “I am sorry, Master. I didn"t mean to be so bad.”

“Hush. You weren"t bad. I know you were confused. Now, tell me the truth. If I punished you for your transgression, how would you feel?”

“Like you"d forgiven me.”

“And if I didn"t?”

“Like… you didn"t care. Or maybe that you were just waiting for the right time to punish me.”

“And that would make you nervous, of course.”

“Yes, Master.”

“I"m going to punish you,” William said slowly, as if weighing each word. “But I"m not doing it because I"m actually angry at you. I"m doing it so you know that I forgive you, that I"m not angry, and that I want us to continue to enjoy each other without you feeling stress over it. Do you understand?” Ellis did and he didn"t. “But you seemed to enjoy punishing Harte… I… If you don"t want to punish me, you don"t—” 433

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

“Oh, Ellis.” William brought up one of Ellis"s white-knuckled hands and kissed it, prying open the clenched fingers until he could press his lips against Ellis"s palm. “I would very much enjoy punishing you. There are truly few things that I would enjoy more than seeing your pretty ass striped as you beg. But I"m doing it for
you
. You can stop it. I won"t hold it against you in any way, and I won"t punish you later. We can forget about the whole thing right now.”

“I can"t,” Ellis said, realising the truth as he spoke it. He couldn"t just forget. Bad slaves were punished, and punishment made good slaves. “I"d like for you to punish me. Thank you, Master.”

When William spoke a few moments later, he sounded angry.

“I cannot believe he made you think you were a bad slave.” Again, Ellis felt defensive of his late master. “He said I was getting better.”

“No such thing as improving on perfection,” William said, kissing Ellis to silence whatever response he might have come up with. “Would you like your punishment now?”

“If it pleases you.”

“It does. Go wait in the punishment room. Don"t kneel, just stand and wait, all right?”

“Of course, Master.”

Ellis slid from the intoxicating warmth of his master"s arms and rooted in his drawer for his punishment sheath. He changed, peripherally noticing how William"s eyes became dark as he watched.

The walk to the punishment room gave him time to get into a different mindset. He understood, now, what William meant when he said that he was punishing Ellis for his own good. Jude had 434

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

enjoyed punishing his slaves, there was no denying that. William was a little more reserved about it, but Ellis suspected it was the
punishment
aspect rather than the actual beating. William had enjoyed caning Harte"s feet. And Harte had worn William"s stripes at other times, not for punishment—afterward, they both seemed to float around for a few hours. Not a reaction Ellis could really understand from a person who"d been beaten and one who"d done the beating.

Until he"d met Jude.

Now punishment was more than something to get through.

While he didn"t look forward to it, he wasn"t afraid of it. The pain took him somewhere, did strange things to his mind and made him feel light and floaty. He liked it, but the feeling scared him. A part of him did wish he could get that feeling without the pain that had to come with it.

He stood in the centre of the room as instructed. It was a little strange, the room looking just like a bedroom—part of him had expected it to be curtained in black like the one in Jude"s house.

But William wasn"t Jude. If Ellis couldn"t remember that, couldn"t get himself together, he"d be in a lot of trouble.

Unlike Jude, William didn"t make Ellis wait long. He came in only a few minutes later, circling Ellis but not in a predatory way—simply as though he wanted to make sure Ellis was still there.

The gunmetal grey of the chains that Ellis could see from the corner of his eye matched William"s suit, its thin pinstripes reminding him of the Facility, where bars were common and through which stretched, wan faces would look accusingly. He could see them in his mind"s eye—they didn"t like that Ellis was owned and they weren"t. He suspected he would always feel guilt 435

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

for those left behind.

Now wasn"t the time for that. There could be no guilt in the punishment room—this was the room of absolution. Of forgiveness.

“Close your eyes,” William said in a very quiet voice.

Ellis obeyed, focusing on his hearing instead. William"s steps were light and steady, equally measured and thoughtfully paced.

He neither strode nor dallied. His next words curled into Ellis"s mind as he passed from Ellis"s right side to his left.

“Bring your arms behind your back. Hold your elbows.” His arms easily folded into the position. His fingernails tried to dig in as they had when he"d been required to tend to Jude, but William touched them lightly and he relaxed, holding instead of gripping.

“Can you stand there for a caning, or would you prefer to bend over something?”

“I can stand, Master,” Ellis said automatically. With William, the first answer was almost always what William himself wanted Ellis to do. He chose that option not necessarily because he thought William would be pleased—though that of course helped—but because he knew he could do it.

The sounds of William going into a cabinet and getting a cane were half-familiar from Harte"s long-ago punishment, so Ellis wasn"t surprised by anything. But the ominous creaking of the hinge and the final closing of a lock made him shift from foot to foot before he could help himself.

“Prepare yourself,” William said, in the same voice as he would have offered bread at the dinner table.

Ellis couldn"t do much besides widen his stance and moderate his breathing.

436

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

The first blow undid both actions. He stumbled forward as concentrated pain laced through him, and he gasped with the effort to not cry out.

Then William"s hands were on him, stroking his back and murmuring into his ear. Ellis couldn"t really hear beyond the rushing of his blood, but he nodded and got back into position.

William didn"t make him wait.

The second blow was easier, familiarity breaking the unknown barrier. Ellis absorbed the pain, grabbed it all up with greedy hands and drew it into himself. He could take this. This, he could bear. It wasn"t fists or open hands or boots in his ribs. It was just a cane. A piece of wood. A stick, really. And it was held by Master…

Master.

He wondered if it would always thrill him, being able to call William that. In a very real way, it was as much a claim on William as William had on him. More, perhaps. Because Ellis had a name for William, but William didn"t have one for Ellis. Ellis was
a
slave, but he wasn"t “slave.” It wasn"t his title, merely his position. William was Master. William was
his
Master. William was his.

His contemplations brought him through the next few strokes, though the sharp, flooding pain of the cane striking his ass brought his thoughts to a stuttering halt every few minutes. After each blow, William would speak in low tones and caress where the cane had bitten him, his fingertips causing pain but more than that, healing him. With Jude, punishment had not been interspersed with pleasure. It was all pain until the end, and then Ellis would clean himself up and stumble back to his room to try to find a comfortable position to sleep in until he messed up again.

William was taking care of him, making sure the pain wasn"t 437

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too much, making sure Ellis was still with him, still his. Ellis couldn"t really hear what the master was saying, but it seemed like good things, like reassurance and pleasure with how Ellis was taking the punishment.

To his surprise, the strikes of the cane turned into something else. It wasn"t pleasure, but no longer was it pain. He was aware of
everything
. Even though his eyes were tightly closed, he knew where William was at every moment. He could feel his own body, the blood pounding through him, focusing on the abused area on his ass cheeks, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. His lips fell open and he panted shallowly before he remembered to take deep breaths through the pain. It was okay. It hurt but it wasn"t bad.

As he was struck again, Ellis held onto that thought to examine later when his head didn"t feel all light and strange, and his feet didn"t seem to want to leave the floor. It hurt… but it wasn"t bad.

He
wasn"t bad. He"d done something bad, maybe, but it wasn"t really his fault. He"d only done the best he could, and that was
all
William expected of him. He didn"t need Ellis to be perfect.

He didn"t
want
Ellis to be perfect.

Perfection wasn"t real, wasn"t achievable. The best was all Ellis would ever have to give, and it didn"t make sense to expect more from himself. Like Jude had. Jude had expected so much from Ellis that when he didn"t comply, Ellis was sure he was
bad
because of it. William never made him feel bad. William made him feel
good,
even when he was being punished. And while the punishment
hurt
—fuck, it hurt—there was more to it. It wasn"t disappointment. It was forgiveness, and he hadn"t had to beg for it, it had just been offered.

His body was telling him there were more blows, and then more… but there was no unbearable pain, no wanting to curl up 438

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

into a ball and cry. There was no real attempt to escape, and even if he did drop his elbows and try to cover his ass, it was instinctual and not purposeful. Ellis didn"t get in trouble for it, either. William simply put his arms back into position or asked him to do it himself, and it was done.

Registering William"s arms around him, Ellis held his own arms up, almost like a child asking to be picked up. When he pressed into William"s chest, he noticed his face was wet. William seemed to notice at the same time, for his thumb swiped the tears away.

“You"re all right, everything is fine. You did so well, Ellis. I"m so proud of you. And I"m sorry, too. For not understanding how I felt. For not telling you. For letting you get away—for
pushing
you away even when I knew I should have been pulling you closer, instead. But it won"t be like that any longer, I swear to you. Now you"re mine, all of you. And I won"t let anything hurt you ever again.”

Luckily, Ellis had the presence of mind to accept the emotion behind the sentiment and not take it literally. William seemed almost as affected by the punishment as Ellis himself was. Which was a lot, consider the trembling of his body and the way his teeth were chattering together.

“Let"s get you to bed,” William said quietly.

Ellis just nodded and tried to take a step, but whatever strange gift his detachment had been, it was obviously fleeting, for the pain of at least fifteen cane strikes rushed him all at once, flooding his pain receptors without the incredible adrenaline to carry him through. He stumbled and would have fallen if not for William, who picked him up easily with an arm under his shoulders and knees. The position strained the tight, hot flesh of his behind, but 439

AT HIS THROAT, A PROMISE

the closeness to William and the warmth of his body made up for it.

He was manoeuvred onto his belly on his blood-red sheets, and the smoothness of the cloth felt incredible against his screaming nerve endings. Everything seemed infinitely more intense. He was cold and tried to burrow under the covers.

William helped him with a chuckle, disentangling his feet and tucking him in like a child.

“Stay?” he whispered, asking too much and knowing it, but not caring.

“Of course. How do you feel?”

Ellis took a deep breath and thought about the question, not wanting to simply placate William by saying,
Fine
.

“It hurts,” he said honestly. “A lot. And I"m really cold and I feel sort of strange… like I"m floating. But it"s not a bad thing.

Because you"re here. And I know you"re not mad at me. So I feel okay. I feel good.” Maybe it was disjointed and awkward, but it was real. For the first time since before he"d had to leave William, he was really saying what he felt instead of what he thought his master wanted to hear.