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“Look at her. ” Dona moved around a large block of stone, her fingertips touching the bare back of the woman bound and bent over it, her legs manacled to the floor.
“Spread before you. Helpless. Deserving punishment. You may strike her until you draw blood, make her scream. She’ll have to tolerate it until you stop, for there’s no other choice. There is no loss of consciousness, no death. In the cycles that are considered time down here, eventually she’ll be given a moment of no pain, her back smooth as if she’d never been struck. Then it begins anew. ”
“A pain that’s reality and illusion both,” he murmured. Like his Mistress’s tears that had streaked her makeup. In the transition to this chamber, the evidence of that had been wiped away. While she was as perfect and intimidating as if the moment had never existed, he didn’t doubt the reality of that moment as he’d doubted some of the others.
“It will continue until she hears the message that the pain delivers. ” He was unable to look away as Dona traced the bumps of the woman’s spine. He could imagine it as his own spine, her fingers caressing him a moment before she would strike with a whip. The thought of that sent a shiver through him, brought a tightening to an already overtaxed groin. His testicles had permanently drawn up in pre-ejaculation mode and he wasn’t sure if they’d ever drop again. Even in the most frightening moments, he’d stayed aroused, as if the ability to fuck was a male’s most basic proof that he was alive, capable of action and meaning. Dona’s proximity had done nothing to discourage that constant state of need.
“What’s the message?”
“That crime has punishment. This is the punishment. After that, the debt must be paid, three times. That’s karma and one of the reasons for reincarnating. ” The vulnerability she’d shown him was gone. She was dispassionate, almost cruel.
He’d found a key to her in watching the stage play, though. The more she felt, the less she revealed in her face. She didn’t want to be his soul mate, but she hadn’t denied she felt something for him. She’d said she wasn’t ready.
Even in the midst of this, not knowing what awaited him except the certainty that it would be awful, he felt the wonder of that realization. If soul mates were a real thing,then it meant Dona was his Mistress. Now, forever, this life or the next. Whether she wanted him or not. So they’d always feel this connection to one another.
He realized abruptly that he was grasping something. Dropping his gaze, he found a whip there, a metal-tipped cat-o’-nine with a six-foot reach, his knuckles white on the handle. He lifted his attention to the small of the woman’s back, her naked buttocks and thighs. Her eyes were blindfolded, a gag in her mouth. Her nose was running, her body rising and falling with quick breaths, showing her nervousness and anticipation of pain, either because she’d been here before or she could hear Dona’s words.
His Mistress completed her circle to stand behind him. Now that long-nailed hand was running up the smooth skin of his back. She had him back in jeans only, so she played with the waistband, dipping her fingers just beneath the snug fit, teasing the crease of his ass. “Pain administered the right way shatters mirrors, so we can peer into the darkness of our souls with no tricks and see who we really are. What makes us evil. ”
Nathan’s gaze lifted as light caught the mirrors. The woman still lay before him trembling, her fingers clenched helplessly into fists and the manacles holding her taut on the stone tablet, but all around them the mirrors were rising from the walls. No longer embedded, they were suspended in the air and rotating on their axes. It seemed they moved together as well as individually, giving the impression the room was moving. Disorienting him.
Dona pressed her full breasts against his back, her hands on his hips steadying him as he lurched. When her hand reached under his arm and closed on his wrist holding the whip, he tensed.
“You’ve never struck a woman. I find that intriguing, considering how much you hate us. Would you be able to bring this whip down if it were me helpless as she is? My legs spread so you could whip my cunt, mark my back until there was only blood?”
“No… No. I don’t…hate women. ”
“I know that. ” Her touch dropped, her palm stroking over him. “But we make you very angry. We frighten you. ”
She lifted up on her toes, whispered in his ear. “What you really want is to be the one lying on this altar, waiting for my lash. For me to bring you the pain, deliver it to you like a gift. Ah… You got harder the moment the words left my mouth. ” When she closed her hand over him as much as the pants allowed, he couldn’t help moving forward, pressing against her hand. “You need to look into the other mirrors. ”
“I don’t want to
. ”
“Yes, you do. You’ve never known what it means, Mistress and slave, but you’ve wanted to, so much. You’ve made it about vengeance and denied yourself true submission. That’s what will help you find what you really want. Look into the other mirrors. ”
He kept his gaze stubbornly glued to the reflection of her face in that one mirror directly before them. “Whether you want a soul mate or not, tell me you care about me.
I know I’m not goddamned imagining it. ”
He needed to know there was someone at his back, even if he didn’t deserve to have her there. Even if the idea that someone could guard his back in Hell was laughable, like asking for a glass of ice water and expecting to quench the fire. But there it was. He didn’t see any other way he was going to find the courage to do what she commanded.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I care about you. Nathan. ” She said his name softly. It was as if she had kissed him, held her lips to his for that never-long-enough feeling of acknowledgement, completion. “But love isn’t about seeing someone with blinders on, though we all wish it was. Nothing is easy about love. As your Mistresses found out.
You made them dependent with your games and tore them down piece by piece. ” He wasn’t prepared when she reached down, seized his wrist and snapped it forward. The flogger struck the pale skin of the woman’s ass and she jumped, whimpering.
Nathan wrenched his arm away, dropping the weapon, but Dona shoved him.
Stumbling forward, he fell full across the bound woman, his hips and cock against her ass, his stomach and chest pressed into the contours of her back. The broad set of his shoulders sheltered her neck. Gargoyles of stone at each corner of the stone table came to life. Before he could yell or jerk back in startled horror, they’d seized his wrists in their jaws, stretched him out so his nose was pressed into the crown of the woman’s head. Their teeth bore down on his skin with painful pressure.
They captured his ankles in a similar fashion and pulled them out to flank the outside of the woman’s legs so his full weight lay upon her and his cock was even more aware of the creases of her most private areas. Though he could not see her eyes, tears ran from beneath her blindfold. Her quivering lips pressed hard against the gag, small muffled sounds escaping from behind it, the only thing she could do since the gag prevented her from screaming. She smelled of blood, sweat and sex, a potent combination to his cock.
“What do you want, Nathan?” Dona had picked up the whip and it flicked around her, reached out to sting his ankles. “Do you want this punishment? Will you take the lash for her?”
“I’ll take it from you. I want it from you. ” He tried to sound unaffected, but noted the hoarseness of his own voice when Dona stepped forward to curl her hand around his now bare testicles, squeezed. “I don’t know why you bother with the jeans if you’re just going to keep taking them off me. ”
“Because I can’t decide which way I like your ass better. In or out of them. So I’m enjoying both. My own little indulgence. ”
