The Erotic Dark (22 page)

She tried to take a deep breath, but the constriction of the corset prevented it. A feeling of lightness began to invade her head. She couldn’t bring herself to look at any of the guests, but she experienced a strange compulsion to meet Kruin’s gaze.

He was standing in the same spot, his expression unyielding. Oddly enough, the sight of him seemed to lend Lydia a measure of strength. She forced herself to slide her fingers into the succulent crevice of her sex. Her flesh was still damp from her audacious voyeurism, evoking a shiver of carnality.

The sensation of lightness intensified as warmth spread through her blood. Lydia pressed the tips of her fingers into her fissure, trailing her thumb over the humid creases. Her body reacted with a shudder of delight. A ripple of murmurs spread over the room.

Lydia’s thighs parted. Her awareness of the guests and their response to her erotic display augmented her growing excitement. She pressed the heel of her hand against her pulsing knot and slipped one finger into the pliant opening of her sex. A gasp emerged unbidden as pleasure began to eclipse her shocked embarrassment.

Her breasts heaved against the binding of her corset. The guests stirred, leaning forward to enhance their view as Lydia’s channel engulfed her slender, tapered forefinger. She leaned her hips against the table and began to thrust her finger in and out of her body. It was a poor substitute for her fantasies of the hard thickness of Gabriel’s phallus, which Lydia remembered with a rush of longing. She moaned and pressed her finger even deeper, her eyes closing as her inner muscles tightened hungrily around the digit.

A hand suddenly clamped around her wrist. Lydia’s eyes flew open. She stared at Preston as he forced her hand away from her sex. His eyes were dark with both amusement and a glimmer of annoyance.

“Don’t enjoy yourself too much, darling,” he murmured, lifting her hand to her mouth in an evident command to suck her own wet fingers. “Remember your instructions about climaxing.”

Lydia let out her breath. A wave of dizziness passed over her. She curled her hand around his arm to steady herself as she tasted the salty flavor of her feminine emissions.

For an instant, she stared into the blue fire of his eyes. A strange thrill unspiraled inside her at the knowledge of her subjugation to him. She didn’t experience her usual rush of hatred—instead, she felt a deep shiver of awareness of her position and an undiluted fascination with Preston. His power over her suddenly made Lydia want to gratify him.

A slow smile curved Preston’s beautiful mouth. “What do you want?” he murmured, so low that only she could hear him.

“I want…whatever you want.”

“You want to please me?”

Lydia’s head swam as she swayed toward him. She had no idea what to make of her emotions. She only knew that she could not deny them.

“Yes,” she whispered breathlessly. “Oh, yes.”

Preston stepped away from her and snapped his fingers. “Get on your hands and knees facing away from us.”

Lydia forced herself to crouch on the floor, wincing as she felt the slippery folds of her labia part in full exposure. Her palms and knees sank into the plush carpet. Every person in the room stared at her upthrust bottom and the highly inviting valleys of her private areas.

A crimson burn of humiliation spread over Lydia’s skin as she waited for what seemed like countless moments. Then she felt Preston’s hand stroke over her bottom, and his touch felt like a consolation.

“Our Lydia is hopeless at controlling her climaxes,” he remarked to the guests. “She’s extremely lustful, but she lacks any control over her natural impulses. We’re still working on that, aren’t we, Lydia?”

Lydia couldn’t bring herself to speak, but she nodded. Preston’s fingers dug into the fleshy cushions as if demonstrating their resiliency. Lydia silently prayed he wouldn’t attempt to manipulate her to orgasm, but her hopes died when she felt his fingers ease into her spread sex.

Lydia’s teeth sank into her lower lip as she struggled to control the urge to pull away. Preston knew quite well that she was still aroused by the sight of Gabriel and Helen, not to mention her brief self-gratification. And he knew it would not take long before she succumbed to the pleasure of sensation.

She tightened her muscles as he began expertly rubbing her engorged clitoris, his long fingers caressing the exquisitely sensitive skin around the little button. Stimulation wound through Lydia’s loins immediately, as if her interrupted pleasure had merely been waiting to be sparked back into full force.

She buried her hands in the carpet, clutching the woven strands as she fought to stay in control. Spending in front of so many people would be even more humiliating than crouching here on her hands and knees.

To her utter relief, Preston lifted his hand from her before the urge became too strong to withstand. He gave her buttocks a gentle spank.

“Now, Lydia. Let’s show our guests how you can endure punishment, shall we?”

Despite her desire to please him, Lydia nearly groaned with dismay. The idea of writhing in pain in front of the guests was almost worse than the idea of losing control of her pleasure. She twisted her head to try and see what Preston had in mind, but he spanked her again in reprimand.

“Don’t move. Put your arms behind your back.”

A glimmer of fear sparked inside Lydia. She obeyed his command and stretched her arms behind her, an action that forced her to lower her chest to the floor. Her bottom cheeks parted, spreading and exposing her even more explicitly. She closed her eyes, feeling the softness of the carpet against her cheek as she tried to remind herself she could suffer anything as long as it meant that she didn’t have to return to the outside world.

“Good girl.” Preston grasped her wrists. He wrapped a cord of rope around them, tying her hands together and then lashing the rope to her corset laces so she was utterly immobile.

Then he pushed a large, soft cushion shaped like a cylinder underneath her belly, providing her with more support. Lydia tried to breathe deeply. Her back and torso ached from the strain of the corset bones, her nipples chafing against the thick silk. She remembered Kruin was watching her, and she tried to spread her knees farther apart to prove she was being obedient.

She started in surprise when Preston eased the tip of a cane into her sex.

“Fuck it, why don’t you?” he asked. “Pretend it’s my cock.”

Swallowing a biting retort, Lydia pushed her hips back and began working herself on the cane tip. Her plentiful liquids eased the path of the cane and provided a silky, luscious sensation. She thrust her body back and forth, letting the cane slip in and out of her body until Preston pulled it out completely.

With a chuckle of amusement, he stroked the tip around her folds before drawing it up to the portal of her anus. Lydia stiffened as he pressed it into the crinkled aperture, earning herself another hard spank. She forced herself to relax her muscles and allow him to slip the cane past the taut ring of muscles.

Humiliation surged inside her when he began easing the cane tip back and forth. A horrifying tingle of arousal spread clear up her spine to the back of her neck.

A laugh came from one of the male guests. “She likes that, from the looks of things.”

“She’s a strumpet, that’s why,” Odette remarked. “Look at how wet she is.”

Mortification scalded Lydia. She felt Preston slip the cane from her body again, and then he began tapping its length against her jutting mounds to create an oddly pleasant warmth. When she had been sufficiently prepared, the cane whistled ominously through the air before coming down hard across the cleft of her cheeks.

For an instant, Lydia didn’t feel anything, but then she gasped as pain rose over her bottom. Before she could even process the sensation, Preston spanked her with the cane again. The feeling was wholly different from the lash of the whips he had used earlier; slower and more intense, as if the pain were rising through her skin and pressing outward.

Lydia’s teeth came together to prevent a cry as he hit her a third time, painting a series of level, red lines across her creamy flesh. Then there was a fourth blow that brought tears to Lydia’s eyes. She dimly thought there was something different about the blow, and it took her a moment to realize it had been landed by one of the guests.

To her horror, Lydia comprehended that the guests were planning to take turns striking her with the cane. Stinging smacks rapped across her bottom with varying degrees of force, some accompanied by masculine grunts of excitement, others by feminine giggles. A burning heat began to lash across her skin as each stroke elicited a straight, red welt over her bottom cheeks.

“Make it even,” Preston ordered, his words thick with arousal. “That’s what she likes, isn’t it, Lydia, darling? Her whole rump burning.”

“Look at the way she thrusts herself toward me,” said a husky-voiced man as he slapped her with the cane. “You’ve taught her well, haven’t you?”

“Give me a turn,” requested another man. “How hot she must be.”

“No, please,” Lydia gasped, flinching as a particularly painful strike caused her body to jerk forward. “Please, stop!”

“Quiet, Lydia,” Preston commanded. “Behave yourself. And relax your buttocks. The tenser you are, the more it will hurt.”

Blow after blow landed on Lydia’s backside in an intermittent, but bitingly hurtful rhythm. The guests were intent upon covering her bottom with an even pattern of welts. She was soon unable to prevent the cries tearing from her throat, nor the tears that flooded her luminous eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Preston moved around in front of her, sliding his hands through her disheveled hair as he pressed his lips against her mouth.

“Darling, try and relax,” Preston whispered. “You look so lovely. Breathe deeply, feel the pain heating you from the inside out. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”

Lydia couldn’t respond, although his intimate attention soothed some of her raw emotions. Pain varnished her pale bottom like ribbons of fire, sensations augmented by the increasing tightness of her corset. Her blood burned, flowing through her veins like lava, and her skin was seared with the hot flushes of shame and pain.

She buried her face in the carpet, letting the plushness capture her cries as she dampened it with tears. Her sobs caught somewhere in her chest and restricted her breathing with such force that she began to fear she might faint. A haze descended over her mind and body, and just as she was about to scream at them once again to stop, Preston’s voice cut through the chatter.

“Enough! Drop the cane.”

The cane fell with a thud to the floor, leaving the room filled only with the choked sounds of Lydia’s sobbing. Her bottom flared with pain, her shoulders aching from having her arms restrained behind her back.

To her utter gratitude, she felt Preston pulling at the laces of her corset. The stiff silk and bones peeled away from her sweaty skin, releasing her breasts and ribcage.

Lydia began crying all over again from sheer relief, opening her mouth to draw in huge gulps of air. Her breasts dangled freely, heaving with the force of her breath, and her spine loosened deliciously from its enforced posture.

Although she was unable to push the corset entirely from her body, the loosening of the laces was more than Lydia had hoped for. She groaned with delight, dimly thinking the beating might have been worth it simply for the pleasure of breathing unhindered again and allowing her muscles to slacken.

She gave a little yelp of pain when a female hand pressed unexpectedly against her reddened bottom and moved lower to caress the damp folds of her sex. Her skin fairly flared with heat, and she longed for a cooling salve of some sort.

And yet in spite of the prickles scorching the tender skin of her bottom, an equally intense heat began burning between Lydia’s legs, centering on the pulsing bud of her clitoris as it grew damp with the fluids of her arousal.

She bit her lip on a groan, unable to prevent the thrust of her hips as she started to work her body against Odette’s slender fingers, her mind swimming in the whirlpool of sensations evoked by the repeated slaps of the cane and the other woman’s fingers sliding into the tight, humid warmth of her passage.

Poised on the brink, Lydia closed her eyes, her breath coming in rapid gasps as she struggled vainly to impale herself on Odette’s fingers. She suddenly didn’t care how she looked to the guests who were watching her with lust-filled eyes, for all she craved was the explosion of pleasure that dangled tauntingly just beyond her grasp. With a groan, she twisted her hips, silently willing Odette to rub the aching swell of her womanly pleasure.

Odette’s hand lifted from the wet folds of her sex with a swiftness that startled Lydia. She caught her breath in surprise, trying to turn and see what was the matter.

Preston had taken Odette’s place behind her, the compact stalk of his penis pressing against the front of his trousers. A pool of unfulfilled desire expanded in Lydia’s loins at the sight of the lewd bulge.

“Get on your knees and turn around,” Preston ordered, clamping onto her bound wrists and forcing her upright.

Lydia almost protested, her body throbbing from the force of the caning and from the rampant need that tightened around her sex like a vicious rope. Then she looked at Preston’s expression and struggled to her knees on the velvety carpet, wishing she could at least hold her bottom cheeks in a desperate attempt to soothe the pain.