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"I can lash you so you'll feel the pain, but it won't draw blood. Jonathan has less experience at that. You'll just have to live with the scarring, at least for a short time." She blinked once.
A second and third strike fell, and Mac felt the pain jolt through his body like electrical current. His shoulder began to itch, as blood made its way down his back over his bicep, getting slowed in the hair on his arms.
"Very few can take it without screaming, but I know you can. Violet is going to be so impressed with your stamina."
The last stroke fell a few moments later, when all of them had merged into one vibrating field of pain on his back. Just as he released his breath, an eleventh came, striking across his ass, a barb catching his scrotum. His incisors sank down, slicing through the hard rubber, the reaction singing up through his gums and jaw.
"Jonathan, that was very naughty. Go cuff yourself."
"Yes, Mistress. My apologies, Mistress." Jonathan snickered.
The pain was unbelievable, worse than being shot, and for this there was no adrenaline kick in, nothing but throbbing, tearing agony.
"Now that you're paying attention, I'm going to tell you my secrets," she said, rising. She squatted down next to Mac and stroked her hand over his hair with her long fingers, following his cheekbone with her nail, pressing down a little hard, watching him as she traced the soft skin just below the vulnerable right eye. Mac kept his gaze steady on hers.
There was no fear now, only fury. He wouldn't give her fear, which meant he couldn't think about Violet getting here. He had to resolve this before then, one way or another.
"You know I like to mix potions. That cat was tipped in a very special mixture I make to punish my baddest boys. It's an alcohol base, mixed with a derivative of crushed nettle juice. Highly irritating, isn't it? It will keep hurting this badly all the way up to the last moment."
She brought her head down closer, so she could speak softly, where Jonathan could not hear. "I don't like to make my subs suffer just for the sake of pain. I draw their pain from them and then I release them with that one shot to the head. You're going to know it's coming, but I didn't want it that way. I don't want to hurt you except in ways that will give you release, focus you on what's important." She glanced toward Jonathan, now cuffed and waiting for her to finish restraining him, make him as helpless as Mac. "But him I intend to shoot between the eyes. Give him a full minute to see it coming, because he's a heartless bastard. Justice can be almost as invigorating as mercy killings, hmm?"
She smiled, feathering his hair off his forehead, as if she were stroking a puppy. "Lord, you are magnificent, you know that? I don't know what it is about you. I suppose you're thinking, Tyler will know who did this. Yes. Yes, he will. So I suppose I'll have to wait for him to come home and take care of that, just as I'll take care of Violet. I'm thinking I'll make it look like one of those 'sad, perverted life' stories. Erotica writer, living on the fringe of society, of reality, plays sick sex games with friends, offs them before he offs himself. And oh." She put her fingers to her lips, her eyes widening. "One of them is Tampa's finest, a homicide detective who was working undercover to find the S&M killer, and got too close because, he too, sadly, was part of that sick S/M scene. I'm sure that will result in a full departmental investigation, because how could we allow our fine police force to be infiltrated by such a sexual deviant?"
She stroked her finger down the line of his throat, her voice softening. "For you see, that's the problem. We all know what we are, but the world will never accept us. Would you like to hear a sad story?"
I'd like to put you out of your misery before Violet gets here, he thought grimly. How long did he have? Ten minutes? Five? An hour? If Violet had gone downstate to visit her mother, she might not get back until late afternoon, early evening, and then it was ninety minutes to Tyler's from Tampa. He tried not to think what Kiera could do to him in that amount of time, since she'd managed to inflict some serious damage in less than thirty seconds, but it would give him more time to plot a way to stop her before Violet got here. Or maybe Violet wouldn't come. Maybe she'd left a message on his machine that she'd decided to stay overnight at her mom's, or was running late.
Christ, Nighthorse. Focus. Powell's out of the picture, so figure out a way to overpower her. While hogtied to a bench bolted to the floor. Good trick.
"Tamara tried to tell me from the beginning. You see, she knew when we were twelve what she was. I was her first submissive. I delighted in pleasing her, whether it was eating her pussy under the sheets at night, or doing her homework, or giving her my share of Halloween candy. I could sit at her feet for hours just for the pleasure of her touch on my hair. But she trained me to be a Mistress with her, to understand what it was to release people's emotions through pain, enjoy the sensuality of that, the give and take. When to hold the reins tight, when to let a sub have his head and when to put it to good use." Her lips curved. "One of them came to be quite dear to me. Long after Tamara was bored with him. Sh
e didn't really approve of us playing separately, so I had to hide my times with him. It made it even more exciting." Her eyes grew darker and Mac watched the changes in inflection, learning everything he could about her changes in mood and what they meant.
"But I wanted more. For the first time in my life. I wanted to wake up with a man around me in the morning. Silly, wasn't it? Totally impossible for people like us. T told me, over and over, but sometimes the heart just doesn't listen, does it?
"I told him what I wanted, and he said he couldn't. That he loved me, but eventually he was going to have to give up the scene and settle down with someone vanilla, that there was no way he could live his life like this forever and get where he wanted in his career. I lost my pride. I told him I could do that, would do that for him. He cried, told me that 'together we'd always want to play the game.' I could see how much it hurt him, what we could never have but wanted so much. It tore me to pieces.
"It was inevitable that she found out about him, of course. I'm a Mistress, but I'm her sub, and your Mistress always knows everything you're thinking. You and Violet aren't there yet, but you would have been, you already sensed it coming. I broke down and told Tamara everything, the pain was so awful, his rejection.
"She loves me, has always looked after me, so she pretended she was me, went to his parents, told them what he was. Of course, it was his worst nightmare. Or so he always said it would be."
Her expression shifted, became dreamy, the closest to tranquility Mac had yet seen reflected in her face. "Tamara called me, told me to come over to his apartment, that she needed to show me something." She turned those soft brown eyes to him again. "You remember Bambi, the original book by Felix Salten, not the Disney whitewashed version? When the stag comes to get Bambi, to show him Man, with a capital 'M', lying dead on the forest floor, shot in a hunting accident? And Bambi is so afraid to get close, because the idea of Man was larger than life to him, something beyond his understanding. I was afraid like that when I walked into the room, smelled the blood. I was so afraid, because he was an extension of who I am, and if it had become too much for him, it would become too much for me. I was doomed. But Tamara made me come look at him, look at his face.
"He had shot himself, and was lying on the bed, curled up as if sleeping. There were thin tracks dried on his cheeks, and the side of his head was all blood. But the amazing thing was his face. His expression. It was so peaceful, so...released at last. It was then I understood, something I don't think even Tamara understood as much I did at that moment. All of them are looking for that release, all of them who are dedicating so much energy to hiding what they are, keeping it separate from the vanilla world. I can help. What is a sub but a person who wants to return to the bosom of an All-Powerful Mistress or Master, be watched over and cared for? Sometimes, I wish it was me. I imagine it is me, and I can be like them, at peace. But I'm a Mistress, and it's up to me to take care of a sub, help them find pleasure through pain, release through death. It follows and fits, don't you see?
"'There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.' Just as Bambi said. I am the 'Other' who can make things right for people like my love, my Thomas. We're all afraid to embrace death, even when we know it's the best thing for us. I could have helped him, so he never had to experience that awful moment with his parents. I could have released him and revealed his truth to them, so they would at last know, as he always wanted them to, but not be around to see their rejection or pain from it. He didn't have to suffer, none of you do.
"Struggle all you want, love," she noted the tensing of his muscles. "Those are lag bolts, holding that into an oak floor with a solid sub-flooring beneath. Tyler entertains all sorts of guests here, drives them near insane, so he's made it strong. You'd have to be Superman to get that loose."
She rose, went to Jonathan. Mac shouted around the gag, tried in some way to communicate to Powell the fatal mistake he was about to make, fought the chains, the bench, shoving off with his knees, his thigh muscles straining. Powell glanced over at him, then his attention was caught by his Mistress as she fondled him. He had stripped down, so now he was as naked as Mac. Being naked in the same room with Powell was a nauseating experience all by itself, but as Mac strained at his bonds, the lingering aftereffects of the drug they had given him only made him dizzier.
Kiera cuffed Jonathan's right hand, locking it to the cross, bent and did the same to his right foot, completing the process of making him helpless.
She came back to Mac, freed his gag with a rough jerk. "You can tell Jonathan what it is you wanted to say, now that I've gotten you all nicely trussed."
"You might as well kill us both and be done with it," Mac spat out blood, regretting that he just missed her boot. "Violet isn't coming."
"Of course she's coming. I expected her here already."
