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I’d been using him to erase Trevor from the first night inside Shannon’s minimalist sanctuary. Each orgasm brought on by vague sexual thoughts of him made Trevor fade a little more into the background, first into a nameless face in a crowd, then into a shadow, then into a ghost. Until he was mostly gone except for when I had a bad dream about the park. I didn’t bother Shannon with those. I was sure he didn’t care about any post traumatic whatever I had going on.
“Elodie. Now.”
I glanced back at the balcony door, trying to decide if I should run out there and scream my head off. But I didn’t want to.
“What if you lose control and kill me?”
“I’m not a Halloween monster. I don’t get red tunnel vision and thinkkill kill kill. I’m always in control of myself. But this continued discussion is adding to your punishment.”
When it became clear that I couldn’t bring myself to go to him, he stood, and brought the paddle with him.
“Okay, then.”
With every step forward he took, I took a mirroring step back. Like some dark tango. When we got close enough to the wall, he grabbed my wrist and twisted my body to face it.
“Ow, ow, ow.”
“Relax,” he said, as if it were possible with the way he’d wrenched my arm behind me. Maybe he’d once been a cop. Or military and cop. Or military police. I could imagine Shannon cuffing a criminal. Easily.
When I stopped struggling, he released his grip on my wrist. He kept one hand on the back of my neck, holding me in place against the wall while the other brought the paddle down across my ass and thighs several times in quick, hard succession. The sound rang out like a hollow gong in the echoing empty minimalism of the room.
Tears streamed down my face at the intense burning sting. “Shannon, please. Please, stop.” It hurt. Itreallyhurt. But I think my fear was that, despite everything he assured me, he would lose control. I was afraid he’d just beat me to death. I was afraid he liked this too much.
The paddle came down against my skin once more, even harder, so hard it briefly knocked the wind out of me. He kept his grip on the back of my neck.
I pressed my hands flat against the wall on either side of me, bracing myself, seeking anything to hold onto. I tried to focus on the texture of the light gray wallpaper rippling beneath my fingertips in elegant, sophisticated patterns. I took slow, measured breaths. I did everything I could to live inside those breaths and nowhere else.
“Beg me again. Beg me not to hurt you.” His voice was low and guttural, not even human.
“Please, you’re scaring me. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Apologize for your behavior. And be specific.”
“I’m sorry I disobeyed you and went downstairs. I’m sorry I left my room. Please,” I sobbed.
“If I tell you not to do something again, are you going to go ahead and do it anyway?” he asked.
“No.”
“No,Sir,” he said.
“N-no, Sir.”
When he flung the paddle away, it made a soft thud against the carpet, such a seemingly harmless sound. Heat rose off my flesh as if I were burning up from the inside. But despite this fact, and despite my terror, I felt a hard, steady pulsing throb between my legs, and I was sure if my hand were to stray to the apex between my thighs, that I would be very wet. Embarrassingly so.
Shannon pressed himself to my back and cradled me against the wall for several minutes, his breath and heartbeat keeping time with my own. I didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say no man had ever done this to me before. Perhaps they had. How could I know? Trevor hadn’t. Trevor’s tastes had always run strictly vanilla, without so much as a stray rainbow sprinkle to be found. It was all lights out and missionary with Trevor—nothing too threatening.
I had never really gotten off with him, but at times, there had been a comfort in warm body grinding against warm body, of embraces under down comforters near a warm roaring fire. I hadn’t wanted to fuck up the tiny bit ofnot terriblethat had defined my life in the park.
I don’t think I’d ever once thought that IneededTrevor to fuck me—as if he were the only source of water that could put out my flame. It had never been so dramatic as that. But standing shoved against the wall with Shannon’s rough jeans pressing against my heated raw flesh, I thought I would climb out of my own skin if he didn’t put his dick inside me.
I would never say this out loud. I was still waiting for a man who wasn’t a monster to bust in and rescue me off to a clean suburban politeness where everything was safe and smelled like lemons.
And yet every raw nerve ending screamed for Shannon to possess me and keep me forever, and now that he’d paddled me and I’d reacted as I had, I suspected in the darkest well of my being that I didn’tdo polite sex. I couldn’t say it was Trevor’s sociopathy that had kept me from being excited by him. Because Shannon was a sociopath, too.
He sighed against my hair. “It’s exactly what I was afraid of.”
“What?”
