Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (8 page)

I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, or maybe plead for mercy, but his gaze silenced me. We weren’t in his dungeon, but we might as well have been, and I wasn’t allowed to talk there unless I was asked a question. I’d broken enough rules for today so I bit my lip to keep my pleading inside. I just had to survive this. Maybe this punishment would be good for me. Maybe it would calm all the untamed emotions crowding my brain.

Price came toward me with the whip. I was naked, so naked, while he was still dressed. He piled some pillows in the center of the bed.

“Bend over and get your ass in the air,” he ordered.

The whip twitched in his hand. I did as he asked, too scared to make any response like “Yes, Sir” or “As you wish, Sir.” I just bent over the pillows, pressed my knees together, and buried my head in my arms.

“Ass up,” he said, louder and firmer. “Part your legs for balance. Don’t you dare flop around.”

I inched my legs apart and braced myself. A whimper of fear escaped my throat. I hated the whip. I had nightmares about it. It burned like liquid fire.

“You’re getting thirty,” he said. “Ten for going to see the painting, ten for making excuses about it, and ten for romanticizing your fucking history with him. It’s
past
, Chere. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered from between my arms. Thirty? I would die from thirty, at least with that whip.

“You’re getting all thirty at once,” he continued. “No warm up. No breaks. You blatantly broke a fucking rule.” He traced the whip across my ass, a gentle caress and poisonous mindfuckery at once. “I don’t want a fucking sound. Not one sound. You earned this, and you’re going to take it without moving or complaining.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to do that. What would he do to me when I let out a scream? Seeing the painting wasn’t worth this. Simon wasn’t worth this. I was a crouching, cringing huddle of regret. He stood back and I held my breath as the whip-fire barrage began. One liquid, searing line bloomed across my ass, then another, then another, so quickly one after the other that I couldn’t recover between them.

I used every fiber of my strength to kneel there and take it. I wasn’t perfect. I jerked with every blow and clenched my ass. Before he was ten strokes in, I’d collapsed on the pillows, but I didn’t roll into a ball or try to run away. I wasn’t inhuman, after all. I wasn’t a robot who could take a whipping without reacting to the pain. I grabbed handfuls of the sheets to keep from reaching behind me, and shoved those handfuls between my lips to muffle my frantic sounds of distress.

Don’t scream. Don’t scream.
I didn’t scream. Thirty. Oh my God, thirty. What number was he on? My ass was a network of throbbing, aching lines and there was always more, more, more to take. I started shaking with the effort to be still, to endure. I stopped trying to muffle my cries and bit down on the sheets instead, gnashing them between my teeth. I bit down so hard, my jaw hurt.
Please, please, please.

The entire ordeal probably lasted less than two minutes, but in those two minutes, I felt like I died, like there could never be any pain this bad, or any way to survive holding myself still. When he finished, I continued shaking. I couldn’t move, not even to escape him if he started up again. I’d worked so hard at submitting to his punishment that my body was now frozen in place as an act of will.

He moved to put the whip in his luggage, then he was back, kneeling behind me on the bed. I heard his zipper, heard the sound of him shoving down his pants. I heard the cap from the lube, and I knew he’d be stingy with it. He parted my ass cheeks to lube up my hole. I flinched as his fingers squeezed my tortured flesh, and bit hard on the sheets to keep from wailing out loud.

He positioned his cock against my ass and eased the head inside me with firm, forward pressure. Tears rose in my eyes, tears I’d been too panicked to shed earlier. Now they overflowed, soaking the sheets as he pried me open with no attention to my discomfort.

Ow, ow, ow, it hurt. It was scary to be forced this way without any mental prep time. More panic noises choked out of my throat as I gripped the sheets and tried to stay open. I heard him shrug out of his shirt, but his pants were still bunched up at his knees, against my trembling legs. This wasn’t romantic and sensual, like this morning. This wasn’t sex. It was punishment.

And I’d known it was coming, pardon the pun. Bad girls didn’t get it in the pussy. Sometimes, when it came to Price, even good girls didn’t get it in the pussy, but bad girls…bad girls always got fucked in the ass so it hurt.

I clenched my toes, but kept my legs apart so he wouldn’t spank me for resisting him. I wondered if he’d drawn blood with the whip. It always felt like he was skinning me alive, but then I’d look later and there’d be no broken skin at all, just a lattice of welts to remind me that I belonged to someone who believed in strictly enforced rules.

Ow, my ass. He was taking his time on the way to orgasm. He’d drive inside me slow, prying me open, then pound me as hard and deep as he could go. I wouldn’t be permitted to orgasm, of course, but he would come in his own sweet time, usually when I couldn’t bear to have his cock inside my ass one second longer.
You deserve this. You asked for this.

You wanted this.

You begged to belong to him.

I pressed the balled up sheets to my eyes as he pummeled into me. He put his hands on my shoulders, pushing me down and fucking me even harder than before. My hips bumped against the pillows. I didn’t dare resist him, no matter how hard he drilled me. My job was to take it like a bad, sorry girl who understood why she was being punished, who
wanted
to be punished. I tried to feel that way, but
ow…

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, his strokes lengthened. He drove deep, making sure I felt every inch before he got off. He moved one of his hands from my shoulder to my neck, and clutched my windpipe in a commanding grip.

“Who do you belong to?” he asked.

I gasped for air. “You, Sir.”

There was no way to deny it. He was so deep and hard inside me I couldn’t move. His fingers circled my collar, reminding me who I was. What I was. What I’d agreed to when he first buckled it around my neck.

“Are you sorry for what you did?” he asked, squeezing tighter.

I nodded. It was all I could do.

“Are you going to be a good girl for the rest of this fucking trip?”

I nodded again, as hard as I could with my flagging lucidity and breath.

Please
, I wanted to beg.
Please…
But no begging was allowed. He finished inside me with a series of violent thrusts that slid me across the pillows. I hung onto the sheets until he came to rest. Jesus, I’d torn the bed apart. I hoped he wasn’t angry. God, I didn’t want him to be angry with me anymore.

He collapsed on top of me and I lay there regaining my breath and my composure, although a few tears still leaked from my eyes. I felt uncomfortably aroused from my clit being banged against the pillows so many times, but there was nothing I could do about it but lie there and endure the lingering presence of his cock. My ass felt steamed. My whole body felt hot and wrung out. He pulled away, leaving me empty.

“Let go,” he said, tugging at the sheets. I realized I still held them in a death grip. He pried my fingers away when I couldn’t open them of my own accord, then sat beside me, rubbing my sore ass cheeks. At some point, his pants had been kicked onto the floor. His caresses hurt, as I’m sure he meant them to. Finally, he spanked me on both cheeks—
ow!
ow!
—and rolled from the bed.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Stay right there. I’ll tell you when you can get up.”

I buried my head in my arms again, feeling shamed and humiliated as he went to the table and opened his laptop, and started to work. Checking files? Answering emails? I didn’t know, because I was half-lying and half-kneeling on the bed with my destroyed ass utterly exposed to his scrutiny.

Was it worth getting punished over?
he’d asked me.

I didn’t even have to think about it. The answer was no.

*

I left her
there to wallow in her guilty shame, because it was good for her, and because it aroused me to see her kneeling in chastened defeat. Her beautiful, round ass was covered in the marks I’d given her, and her hole was fresh from a primal punishment reaming. All of it aroused me, but what turned me on most was her surrender to my will.

Even now, she’d gone back to clutching the sheets. This wasn’t easy for her, not the pain, not the guilt, not the humiliation, but she put up with it because that was the price of being with me. I’d grasped her collar and asked
Are you done with me?
And my lovely slave had burst into tears and said
No, Sir. Of course not.

Of course not, Chere. Of course we’ll never be done with each other. Even after you’ve had enough of this pain and you finally, wisely, leave me, I’ll still love you. I’ll still remember these times when you gave everything to me and let me bask in it afterward, staring at your hurting, exposed body.

I wondered what she was thinking as I watched her relax by slow degrees. Very slow degrees. Had she come to some place of peace with what she’d done, and what I’d done, and this fucked up dynamic between us that was probably just as bad for her as her relationship with Simon?

No, it wasn’t as bad. He hadn’t loved her, and I loved her. He hadn’t protected her, and I protected her from whatever I could, even if my methods were questionable or suffocating.

Are you done with me?

No, Sir. Of course not.

After too long a time, I went over and rubbed her back, and squeezed her welted ass again. I knew it hurt her, but I couldn’t resist, and she was sub-spacey, floating in the peace that eluded her while the punishment was going on. I helped her from the bed and ran a bath for us, and soaked with her in the tub, to the scented pleasure of the hotel’s artisanal soaps. I left her collar draped over the side, a memory and a reminder. There were no words to say, no big rehashing or lectures. The punishment was over. Now it was just her warm skin against mine, and her cheek resting against my chest.

Afterward, I put the sheets and pillows to rights while she dried off, and then we crawled into bed together. At home, I would have made her sleep in another room to complete her punishment, but here, in this busy, foreign hotel, I wanted her at my side.

I held her close and thought
Mine, you’re mine. Mine, mine, mine.
I’d thought that as I whipped her. I’d thought it as I buried myself in her ass and squeezed her neck. Tomorrow, maybe, I’d be gentle with her, just a little bit gentle. She might enjoy it. I might enjoy it for as long as the feeling lasted. No matter how gentle I tried to be, we always ended up in a fever pitch.

“Price?”

Her soft voice was a magic spell in the darkness.

“Price?” she asked again. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Can I tell you something? Something about what happened today?”

“Yes.”

I heard a soft sigh. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I don’t feel anything for Simon anymore, I swear. Today was just…archaeology.”

I rested my chin on her hair. “I know. It’s still dangerous.” I twisted one of her curls around my finger. “You remember how it was. Your past…”

“I hated my past,” she whispered, so low I could barely hear her. “I wish I could erase my entire history.”

I knew she felt that way, and I’d thrown it in her face anyway. I’d done it to hurt her as much as she hurt me. Sometimes sadists sucked.

“Chere, I’m sorry about…” My throat went tight. I wasn’t one for apologies. “I’m sorry I said that about your dirty money. That was shitty of me. Hypocritical.”

She gave a quiet, hurting laugh, which made me feel shittier, which was exactly what I deserved. “Well, you just told the truth, right?”

“Your past is your past.” My voice had turned gruff. “I don’t blame you for your past, but I have a problem with you romanticizing it. Longing for it.”

“I don’t long for it. I cried today because I felt sad. The memories are sad. The regrets…”

“We all have regrets.”

Jesus, I had a million regrets. Everything before Chere was a series of regrets. If she left… I couldn’t imagine the regrets I’d wrestle with then.
I don’t want you to leave. Mine, mine, mine. I want you in my dungeon, my captive in a tower. Don’t leave.

“What do you regret?” she asked, snuggling closer to me. “Your life seems perfect.”

That comment proved how little she knew me. I supposed that was my fault. I hadn’t exactly let her into my heart, even if I’d let her into my life. From the outside, I must have seemed like the luckiest man alive, the richest, the most successful.

“I regret that I waited so long to help you when you were with Simon,” I said. “That’s one regret I’ll live with forever.”

She made a dismissive sound and slid her arms around my neck. “Don’t have regrets about that. Everything you did afterward should cancel them out.”

Everything I’d done afterward? Like the possessiveness? The overbearing rules? The punishment anal? The humiliation for my own pleasure?