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“Owww, fucking bitch!” Ari kept forgetting they weren't playing by kink rules. This girl was serious, and she didn't care about the normal safe places to strike someone with a whip. She'd take any exposed skin he offered her.
“I can go for the face. Or your back. Your call.” Her resolve had hardened while she'd been outside the cell.
He wasn't about to sit here and let her slice his face to ribbons if he could stop it. Ari pressed his palms flat against the wall and inched his way up to a standing position.
“Good, now turn around.”
He shifted, so that he faced the wall. Ari had been on the receiving end of chains and whips and canes and clamps and all manner of fun toys because he'd wanted to know what everything felt like before doing it to someone else. He'd wanted to know the limits and boundaries and how hard he could go before he did damage or how much pain was too much for most people's tolerance.
But he hadn't exactly been inthisposition. He still somehow saw himself as the one in control, still thought he could dominate her and get her to comply with his will. Even though he was locked in a cell and chained at her mercy, he couldn't let go of the idea that he somehow had the power here. Old habits died hard.
He couldn't let himself admit that a girl so small and fragile-looking had the power to break him, given enough time.
“Do your worst,” he said, unable to stop himself. His mouth was going to get him killed. He knew it. He was so used to being the one with the power.
Sure, everybody said subs had all the power, but that was only if they weren't with an abuser. The reality was if someone half your size was tied up and you had a whip in your hand, you had the power, and they just had to hope you were a decent enough human not to abuse their trust. The person chained up never had the power.
But it was a nice idea to put on a T-shirt.
The whip struck him with more force than he remembered from the times he'd submitted to it in the past. It was hard to believe this slight girl could put so much power into her strikes. But she was fueled entirely on rage and fear and adrenaline. And a need for payback.
He winced when the whip came down a second time and then a third and a fourth. She wasn't talking now or screaming at him. Or making threats. She seemed to have found a rhythm and had fallen into a zone.
Ari didn't cry out or beg her to stop even though after a while the sting of the whip was a real and present thing lighting up all the nerve endings along his back, and not in a good way. He just stood there and took it. He told himself it was because he wanted to save her. And a part of him did. It was another habit that was hard to break.
But none of that mattered. She would do this no matter what he said or did or no matter how much he wanted to get his hands on the man who had turned her into this. Her pain was a raw living thing, and it was impossible to be exposed to it for any amount of time and not wish an agonizing death on the person who had created it.
He listened to the crack echoing against the cell walls until he felt his skin break and the blood dripping down. Was she waiting for him to scream, beg, cry? She'd be waiting a long damned time for that.
He gritted his teeth against the blows that continued to fall until finally the whip clattered to the hard floor. And then she was sobbing. He turned back around to see her crumpled on the concrete, her head in her hands, rocking and sobbing.
“How long did he keep you?”
She looked up, and their gazes locked together for a long moment.
“You!” she screamed at him through her tears. “You. Stop pretending. I know it was you! I can see the fucking scar!”
Ari looked down at his chest. He didn't ask about the scar and what she thought it meant. It was obviously such an upsetting issue for her, she'd no doubt just start shrieking at him and threatening to kill him. He needed her calm. So he sidestepped that issue for now.
“How long?” he repeated quietly.
“Forty-three days.”
“Is that how long you're going to keep me?”
She didn't answer. Instead she struggled to her feet and wiped the tears off her face. She withdrew a set of keys from her pocket and put them on the metal table at the end of the cell, far out of his reach—the keys to the chains. Then she took out a syringe.
“We both know I can take that from you,” he said.
“And we both know you can't get out of the chains without me. I've got a tranquilizer gun if you're going to make this difficult. Are you going to fight me?”
Ari thought about it for a moment. The chains might have enough give that if she got close enough he could overpower her, but he couldn't reach the key. He needed her for that. Finally he sighed.
“No, I'm not going to fight you.”
She inched warily closer to him like she didn't believe he wouldn't just kill her out of spite and let them both die.
“Did you get the air out?” he asked. The last thing he needed was someone who didn't know how to operate a syringe.
