Predator's Salvation (12 page)

This was the part of the relationship between herself and a slave that she did not enjoy, 58

Predator’s Salvation

never enjoyed. She did not derive pleasure from disciplining her slaves or causing pain.

Punishment was a duty and a necessity for her, much like feeding. It was just another part of her responsibilities and LaMia took her responsibilities seriously, always had.

She was determined not to succumb to Mateo’s many charms, determined not to let him sway her with any arguments or objections he might raise. And she knew that he would raise objections since it was human nature to avoid unpleasantness, to avoid pain.

Besides which, to Mateo’s mind, he was an unwilling captive, a pawn in her game of vengeance against Alex and Genesis.

LaMia would not concede that he was unwilling or a pawn now. He had ceased to be either the minute she had sunk her teeth into him and he had liked it. He had ceased to be unwilling the minute he had laid his hands on her and reveled in the exotic new sensations of her body. He had ceased to be a pawn the minute he had swapped energy with her and had survived it with minimal physical damage to tell the tale.

How all this had affected his mental health, was another matter of course.

For now, LaMia just wanted to convince Mateo of the rightness of what she was about to do, convince him of the rightness of their joining and that he had a choice and was far more dominant and important to her than any pawn or slave had ever been.

LaMia suddenly noticed the eerie silence of the loft. She would have thought Mateo was playing hide-and-seek with her if she was not one-hundred percent certain that he could not have escaped his restraints. With Mateo, however, she had learned to expect the unexpected.

She turned from the door towards the room, not knowing what she was anticipating, but it certainly was not to see a listless and quiet Mateo.

Lilith
, she had killed him!

LaMia sprinted across the floor, panting as she got to him. She stared at his bowed head, hands aching to touch him, fingers itching to tunnel through his silken wavy hair.

She noticed his impressive erection a second before he lifted his head to glare at her and her heart did a little dance of ecstatic relief in her chest.

Never had she been so happy to be the subject of such heated anger and hostility in her life. She nearly sighed in contentment and gave herself away before she fixed her face into a stern scowl to keep from smiling. “I see your time alone and restrained has done nothing to improve that recalcitrant disposition of yours.”

He jerked against his bonds as if to leap on her, but the shackles stopped him.

LaMia knew had he been free, he might have charged her like a bull.

Her vaginal muscles clenched at the idea of being brought down and buried beneath all those hard muscles, imprisoned beneath his sandalwood-scented, masculine weight.

Lilith
, she was getting wet thinking about her subjugation! That had never happened to her before. Visions of being overcome by a male—Inanna or Sebitu—had never been high on her list of sexual fantasies, so to have these musings about a human male was utter madness!

Eager to hear his deep, honey-touched voice, LaMia waved a hand in front of him and made the tape across his mouth disappear.

59

Gracie C. McKeever

“Let me down from here, Mia.”

“Correct me if I am wrong, but I did not hear a thank you, please, or Mistress anywhere in that sentence.”

“Thank you. Now please let me down, Mistress,” he growled.

She stepped closer, tilted her head back slightly to peer at him and licked her lips. “Say it like you mean it, Mateo.”

He leaned forward just enough to caress her eyelids with his breath, and he might as well have touched her with his hands as the effect was just as potent.

LaMia closed her eyes and stopped short of shivering as she moved closer and wrapped her arms around him. “You are not getting out of your punishment that easily,” she murmured.

“Not even if I say I’ve reformed?”

She pulled back slightly to look at him, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.

“Have you reformed, slave?”

“I’m not a slave.”

“Wrong response, but it does answer my question. You have not reformed.”

Mateo straightened as much as he could in his restraints and stared down at her, the grim expression of a stubborn man splashed his features.

LaMia’s heart lurched in her chest before speeding at the determined look in his dark-chocolate eyes.

She had never looked forward to the prospect of disciplining one of her slaves before, but the challenging look shining out of his eyes made her eager to see just how strong he was, eager to see how much he could take.

LaMia circled him, trailing her fingers down from his muscular chest to his hard-ridged abdomen until finally landing on his narrow waist. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her body close to feel his firm, round male ass flex against her center. Her pussy clenched and gushed in response. She leaned a cheek against his well-built back and slid her hands up to his chest to lightly pinch each nipple.

Mateo hissed in a breath and trembled beneath her touch.

“Do you have anything else you want to say before I start?”

“Will it make you change your mind?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t have anything to say.”

* * * *

That thought comforted him.

She came back around to his front, waved her right hand, and a whip appeared in it.

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Predator’s Salvation

More than a whip. It was an I-mean-business flogger with countless strands of extra thick and heavy leather.

To his chagrin, his cock grew harder, his entire body, in fact, strung tight like the strings on a guitar just waiting for the maestro—or in this case, his Mistress—to use and play him like the instrument he was.

The way she made him feel…God help him, he enjoyed it, loved it. It made him wonder if there might be something wrong with him for liking the things she did to him.

Mateo had never seen himself ‘that’ way before, a deviant pervert who got off on pain and haunted the bondage and discipline section of sex shops looking for his next twisted fix.

LaMia gave the flogger and experimental swing, snapping her wrist and making the leather whistle and pop through the air.

She really didn’t need to demonstrate how her mini weapon of mass destruction worked, but he realized it was all a part of her game, all a part of her plan to intimidate him.

She didn’t intimidate him though. She turned him on, her and her sexy clothes and her threatening flogger.

Mateo shuddered with longing, hadn’t been this horny since he’d been a teen, and even then girls had been plentiful for him, especially girls who liked the wounded, traumatized bad boy type, each one believing she would be the one who could fix his broken soul.

Those girls had been children, mere babes unskilled in the age-old art of seduction, lacked the proficiency to deny and reward in the same breath and make their recipient enjoy the torture.

LaMia approached and Mateo steeled himself for what he thought was coming, no easy feat considering he’d never been whipped before, and despite his vivid imagination.

He had been an untrained child until today, a complete tyro when it came to knowing how much torment his body could stand, totally ignorant of the many ways a man’s body could be turned on and made to come.

LaMia had shown him, had broken him and fixed him and broken him again and made him love every minute of his destruction and rebuilding.

He would show her how much more he could take.

She touched the broad, rounded tip of the smooth wooden handle to his chest, trailed it down his body in a zigzag motion before she circled around to his back again.

Mateo strained his neck and turned his head to glance at her.

“You must trust me, Mateo. I can do this without leaving a mark.”

He did trust her, the realization shocking the shit out of him. He didn’t know how or why he felt about her the way he did after what she had done to him, to his family, but he couldn’t deny his emotional surrender. “I’m not worried about a mark. I’m worried about the pain,” he confessed.

“I worry about both, for your scars and pain are mine.”

“This hurts you as much as it will me, is that it?”

61

Gracie C. McKeever

“Exactly.”

“Bullshit. That didn’t work when my dad said it, and it damn sure doesn’t work for you, Ms. Nubian Queen.”

“Mistress,” she murmured.

He felt her slide the handle down from his shoulders to the small of his back and pause.

She hovered so long at his tailbone, he twisted in his restraints to try and see what she was doing before he felt her trail the handle down further to the crack of his ass.

Mateo froze, heart pounding hard and bird-fast in his chest. It felt like all the blood had drained from his head at one time and gone straight to his penis he grew so instantly hard.

She eased the tip just inside his hole and stopped as if waiting for a signal from him.

Oh, she was good, had probably been going around for centuries disciplining and enslaving men until they didn’t know whether they were coming or going, until they could no longer see straight, or say what they did or didn’t enjoy, men far older and more sophisticated than him.

Despite all this, Mateo would not be her easy prey. He didn’t care how ancient a predator she was.

He instinctively clenched his ass around the handle and groaned. “Is that all you have for me, Mia?”

She removed the handle and he felt her uncertainty before she said, “We will leave it for another time.”

He said nothing despite his need to defy her, too confused by his hunger for her penetration, too overwhelmed by his lust for her to risk speaking.

“Remember with each lash I deliver, you brought this on yourself, Mateo.”

“How many?”

“I will start you off with only thirty this first time.”

He gritted his teeth, determined not to balk. But there was no such thing as
only
when someone was talking about delivering lashes to his person. What only? Only went in front of five, maybe ten, but not thirty.

“I trust there will not come a time when I will have to do this again, or when I have to administer so many unless, of course, you wish it.”

“Why would I wi—?” Mateo gasped and jerked against his restraints as she flailed him.

The pain was white heat on his ass, made multicolored stars flash before his eyes. He hadn’t thought it possible that it could get any harder, but his cock grew and throbbed for release.

“You couldn’t have
warned
me?”

“So you could brace yourself and make your pain worse?”

He felt rather than saw her shake her head and held his breath for the rest.

“I told you to trust me, Mateo. The less tense you are, the less painful this will be.”

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Predator’s Salvation

“I doubt i—” His breath hitched in his chest as the next blow landed in the same exact spot as the last. He bit his bottom lip, refused to scream, but hoped she was planning on switching up sides because if she kept this up he thought he’d be crippled on his right side.

“You will not be crippled, Mateo. You will survive this and as a result you will know how you should and should not behave with me.”

Was she going to preach to him the entire time while she beat him? He could take one but he didn’t think he could take bo—

She hit him again, the leather strands impacting his back this time with an explosive crack. The sound was almost as bad as the slap.

From here, LaMia built up a steady rhythm. Her strokes were commanding, measured and spaced out as if to give him time between each to think about why and what she was doing.

There was no violence or anger behind the blows, just firm, loving care that made his anger seem that much pettier and without provocation.

Mateo lost count somewhere around her twentieth lash, the snap and crackle of the whip transporting him to another plane of consciousness, one well beyond what he had experienced while in a catatonic state in the hospital all those years ago. This current state had him floating outside his body in a near-death experience of bright lights and inner peace. There was no pain, just an overwhelming sense of bliss, more intense than when LaMia had gotten down on her knees to give him the blowjob of his life. He felt like a monk who had attained Nirvana.

When Mateo finally came back around to himself this time, he felt like he had lost a day instead of minutes.

He was free of his shackles, laying half on the Oriental rug and half in LaMia’s lap.

When had she taken him down? And when had she gotten the cool wet cloth that she was using to wipe his perspiring face?

She slowly moved the cloth down his body to his now flaccid cock where she tenderly stroked and wiped it clean.

Damn, he had come and he couldn’t even remember having done it. He didn’t even know whether he had enjoyed it or not.

“I hate you, Mia. Christ, I hate you,” he whispered.

“I know you do, Mateo. But that is okay as long as you know I did this for your own good.”

Drawn by her cinnamon scent, he buried his face against her full soft breasts and wrapped his arms around her tight. His own body shook with uncontrollable desire. He hadn’t been so overwhelmed with emotion and need since waking up in the hospital to find out his brother was dead. He hadn’t had such a catharsis in a long time, if he ever had.

LaMia returned his hug and Mateo closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off to her strange soft utterances. He thought she was speaking to him in her native tongue since he didn’t understand her words, just knew that they were comforting.

So…very…comforting.

63

Gracie C. McKeever

For the second time since she had taken him, LaMia sat at his bedside watching him sleep while she hungered for him, watching him sleep when she wanted to wake him but dared not for fear he would never survive her amorous attentions and demands without a repast or respite.