But she can’t take her eyes from the cat. Her nipples have turned to stone beneath her limp dress. I can smell her arousal from here—honey and melon like a cloud of perfume.
“Let me show you whatIcan do,” I say.
“Please,” she moans. “Don’t do this. Let me go. I’m begging you. Please…”
The first blow is hard, sharp, striking her exposed right thigh. She yelps as the leather lands, yanking all four limbs tightagainst her rucked dress. Pink stripes blush against her firm white flesh.
I snag her gaze in the mirror. “What color are you?” I ask, very slowly, with perfect deliberation.
“Green,” she sighs.
So I strike her again, on the left side, to balance the first blow.
She swallows her cry, and I think of all the things people do in the dark, all the things they hide under sheets, under blankets, when they’re living in the confines of their parents’ homes. “No one can hear you outside of this room,” I say. “The ceiling, the walls, the floor; all of it’s soundproofed.”
To prove my point, I twist my fingers in the drenched scrap of lace between her thighs. I pull hard, and the fabric parts in the crack of her ass, exactly as I knew it would. She shrieks at the pressure, shuddering as it gives. I land the cat before her muscles can relax, sharp and clean across her mound, like the leather strands are tipped with iron, drawn to the magnet of her shaved landing strip.
She bellows, open throat, full volume.
But still no safeword.
She’s my enemy bride. I’m her husband. This is the first time I’ve had her in my dungeon, and we both know it won’t be the last.
I won’t strike her again. Not tonight.
But I move to stand behind her. My cock would press into the cleft of her ass if she wasn’t strapped to the cross. Staring at her in the mirror across the room, I fold my arm around her belly, splaying the cat’s leather strands across the hot pink marks I’ve made.
“Hold this, girl,” I say.
She starts to protest, to flex her wrists. She can’t hold anything unless I hand it to her.
“Hold it,” I say. “But the moment you drop it, I stop touching you.”
And I slip the cat’s wooden handle past her soaked folds.
26
KATE
The handle on the short whip is carved into three smooth balls, each the size of a small peach. I feel myself stretch over each round, resisting until he pushes again, again, and then I’m full.
I’m aching. I don’t want to hold this toy. I want Wolf’s cock inside me. He’s not soft like the men I’ve fucked before. He’s pure power, and he knows it.
As if to prove my point, he strides to the cabinet like he’s walking into a Fortune 100 boardroom. He takes his time finding something there, opening a drawer, closing it, opening another.
I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m splayed on this iron cross, my arms stretched to either side of my head, aching, shaking. My feet are spread too, like I’m striking a power pose, bristling defiance.
But my delicate white wedding dress is shoved up around my waist. It’s pulled tight across my ribs, the skirt trapped above myarse. My waist looks impossibly narrow under the froth of my dress. My hips look like they’re carved from marble.
And that whip hangs between my thighs, the leather strands dripping like tentacles. It’s obscene, this view. It’s disgusting, thisweaponhanging out of me.
And I grip with all the strength of my inner muscles because I don’t want to admit the possibility of failure. I will not lose.
Wolf circles back to me, keeping one hand by his side, hiding something. He glides behind me. When he leans forward to rest his chin on my shoulder, I feel heat radiate off his chest. My thighs sting where he used the whip. The lines he left on my mound are turning crimson.
I don’t want this. I don’t wantto wantthis. I don’t want Wolf to understand me, to know that Ineedto hang here, Ineedto be powerless, Ineedto let him make all the choices, because I don’t understand any of it myself.
“Don’t drop it, girl,” he says. Before I can protest and remind him I’m the adult woman who led the Red Cap Raiders against his sorry arse, he shoves his hand into the bodice of my rucked dress.
