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“The Weeping Tree is diseased. What you see isn’t blood, it’ssap. Nothing more. If you question me about it again, there’ll be consequences.”
She nods, approaching me, the leather whip grasped in her hand as she studies me in that hawk-like way of hers. It’s little wonder my father chose to keep her rather than disposing of her the same way he did all the previous women he brought home before her. She’s made from the same mould as him.
Herlovefor the Numbers—and I use that term loosely—is twisted in a way they refuse to acknowledge. One’s a product of abuse just like many of the Numbers are, the only difference is they’ve all been coerced into staying here, whereas One remains of her own free will knowing what this place is all about, understanding the truth of it. She’s as fucked up as my father, asweare. She’s manipulative, dangerous and only kept in line because of the tenuous relationship we share. What I’m doing now is risky. I’m fully aware of that fact, but needs must, and Imustrid myself of this sickness.
Right the fuck now.
I cannot afford to be weak, not if I’m to maintain what we have here.
Placing the whip at my feet, One reaches for me and raises my arm, fixing the leather strap around my right wrist. Her fingers are cool and my skin instantly pricks with goosebumps, reacting to her touch. She’s like the frost that comes right before the snow falls, freezing everything in its path, sucking the life from it. Warmth isn’t something I’ve ever experienced from another human being, or at least if I had, I don’t remember it. Whilst One and I have shared many intimate moments over the years there has never been any warmth or affection. Only pain and control.
Gritting my teeth, I lean my head back against the wall, watching her under hooded eyelids. Her lip twitches with a smile that she immediately hides with a perfectly posed bite of her lip when she notices me staring at her.
“It’s been a while, so forgive me if I mess this up, Master,” she says, her eyes dropping to my mouth then lowering as she feigns submission. One is many things, but she is not a submissive, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I go along with it nevertheless. Her acting is distracting, if nothing else.
“I’m certain you’ll pick it back up very quickly,” I reply tightly as she trails her fingers along my arm, over my shoulder and down my chest, finally resting on the buckle of my belt as she squats to pick up the whip.
My cock fucking shrivels up at her nearness, and I’m pretty sure my balls rise back up into my body, too afraid that she might go against my wishes and suck them into her mouth just like she did so many times when I was a boy.
“If you’d like I could—”
“No!” I cut her off, glaring at her as she licks her lips.
“As you wish,Master.”
There’s a subtle change to her tone of voice, one that raises my hackles. Someone who doesn’t know her as well as I do wouldn’t even notice it. But I do. One false move and I could tip the power balance between us. I have to play this out the right way so I can get what I need and she can remain a loyal Number, happy to maintain what we’ve built here.
“What I wish for is foryouto provide me with much welcome relief. The death of the Baron has caused us some issues that I hadn’t foreseen,” I lie, “And I need you to take my mind off them for a while. It is you I seek at this moment. No one else. Only you.”
Her spine straightens with the compliment and she rises up slowly, her gaze fixed firmly on mine. “Then I am happy to serve you, Master. Your wish will forever be my command. I amyours,” she says, knowing full well that she’s never,everbeen mine.
Unlike Nothing.
Gritting my jaw, I choose to ignore One’s subtle act of defiance alongside that bastard voice in my head that is getting louder and louder with every passing day. When my father was here One wouldn’t have dreamed of overstepping the mark, but these last two years since his death she’s become more and more emboldened.
“Are you ready?” she asks me, her dark eyes roving over my bare skin.
I can almost hear her thoughts. She wants to inflict pain. She wants to draw out the teenage boy who used to sob when she beat him. Over the years, it was One as much as my father who taught me how to take the pain and turn it into something powerful. I was sent to One every time I’d become emotional in a way that didn’t fit my father’s ideals and One would beat it from me until I learnt to turn my feelings off. Every bruise, every lash, every cut, every spark of pain that caused my tears eventually evolved into something else. I’m grateful to her, to my father for doing that. It’s allowed me to live a life free from the chains of human emotion. Until now.
“Do it.”
“How many lashes?”
“You will whip me until I tell you to stop.”
“Yes, Master.”
Stepping backwards and to the side, One releases the tail end of the whip. It drops to the floor, the tip dragging over the wooden floorboards as she holds it in her hand. With one curt nod of my head, she raises her arm, pulls back then strikes me as hard as she can, her pert tits wobbling from the force. The sound of the whip cracking against my skin is what I experience first, followed shortly by the sensation that I seek. Pain registers, and with it a brief, mind-altering release.
A release that’s short-lived, because despite the throb and the endorphins that follow, it’s the initial sharp sting that I relish. That’s where Leon and I differ. He seeks a state of nirvana that comesaftera severe beating, where the mind detaches from the body and it feels like you’re floating. I seek the intensity of the pain in themomentthat it happens. It’s fleeting, brutal, and exactly what I need to prevent myself from feeling any damn thing, to keep me in the present.
One raises the whip and strikes me ten more times in quick succession knowing that I prefer my lashings this way instead of drawing them out. When she raises her arm to strike me a twelfth time, she hesitates.
“More?”
“Am I bleeding?” I grind out between breaths, trying to focus on the pain, pissed off that she’s stopped.
Her gaze locks on my chest. “A little across your right pec.”
