Before that fully registers, the next slap comes right atop the first, layering my pain to a flaming hot degree, and I sob into the tree. “Stop it! I’m sorry!”
My voice is high pitched and horrified, but he doesn’t seem to care; the next slap is the hardest yet, making me rise up onto my toes again as I desperately try to escape the pain. “Kage, Kageplease!”
He follows up my pleas with two more smacks, each harder than the last, until my entire body is quivering and my chin is wobbling as I sob. Snot and tears coat my face, my arms burning,my joints aching from being forced into this position for so long. Just when I think he’s done, he switches the hands holding my wrists and starts in on my other ass cheek, the skin on skin as loud as those little white pop-its you throw on the ground during the summer holidays.
Kage is not my father, and it’s clear he feels not an ounce of remorse for how he’s punishing me. But the pain has a strange way of making you focus solely on that, and in the span of time it takes for him to draw back and hit me again, the clarity rings forth. I’m in his world now whether I like it or not, and I have to play by his rules or face the dire consequences.
He spins me back around, his livid eyes searching my puffy, tear-stained face. Not an ounce of sympathy lies in his furious, golden eyes, and his palm encircles my throat, tilting my chin up as he leans in. My ass stings and throbs, and every time a piece of bark rubs against my heated flesh, I wince and cry that much harder.
But my punishment is far from over. Eyes locked on mine, he slaps my pussy so hard that I scream, the sound choked off the second he pushes me by my throat back into the tree. Air supply cut off, my mind goes hazy, and he slaps me again and again andagain, a demonic look in his gaze. Every time he smacks me, it spreads my lips just enough for the pain to lace through my clit.
And although it hurts, it’s also making me unbearably wet.
He repeats his ministrations, letting me suck in a breath, slapping my clit, and choking me the second I cry out. I lose count of how many times he does this, those damn eyes still never leaving my face, his reverence unyielding and devout.
Slap. Scream. Choke.
He reels back to hit me again, only this time, he shoves his two middle fingers through my embarrassingly wet pussy, pumping and twisting and thrusting so hard and so deep that it fuckinghurts.
But I’m the one who said I thought I’d like it.
And I hate how much I do.
He rips his fingers out and releases the pressure on my throat for a moment, just long enough for me to sob and suck in a few gulps of oxygen. His eyes have become transfixed on my face, the rage in his gaze turning them into molten gold. He slaps my clit again, and I lurch forward with a cry that he’s quick to cut off. Two more slaps send tidal waves of pleasure through my lower belly, each one building upon the last like stair steps to euphoria.
He fucks me with his fingers again, abusing my soaked cunt in sloppy, ruthless ways.
He lets me breathe, and I fall forward, my head crashing into his sturdy shoulder as I pant. Kage, however, is still enraged by my actions, and as he replaces pressure on my throat and raises my head, he shoves a third finger into me and pushes—up, up,up, until my pelvic bones are seated painfully on his hand and my toes just barely brush the dead leaves on the forest floor.
His thumb finds my clit, and he rubs quick, jerky circles over it while wriggling his fingers inside me; two, against my g-spot, and the middle splitting me in half, on its quest to find my womb. It’s immense pain mixed with fucking immeasurable pleasure, and the outcome is catastrophic for me.
My calves tense, my toes point, and my entire body convulses as I come, coating his hand in fluids because he’s made me squirt. Bringing me back down to Earth, he thrusts so hard and fast the liquid douses my quivering legs, my head so light from lack of oxygen that I feel like this orgasm has stretched into an eternity, and I never want it to end.
Kage’s long, deft fingers fuck me into a second orgasm, only this time he releases my throat and I fall into him, teeth sinking through his shirt and into his skin as I muffle my primal scream. We’re both left panting and exhausted, and as night settles quietly around us, he withdraws his fingers, the squelchingsound of how soaked my pussy became igniting my shame at what just happened.
Yanking myself away from him, he lets me go. My palms find the rough bark behind me, my ass aching, my pride decimated. Chin wobbling, I find his eyes through the night. He’s still holding onto a small bit of anger, but it’s lessened considerably.
It would be safer for him if he’d remained irate, because now I’mlivid.
“I fucking hate you,” I seethe.
If only he knew I hated myself more.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SUMMER
Kage discardsme in the basement after carrying me back. He tosses me onto the bed and doesn’t even bother with the chains. A few moments after he stomps upstairs and slams the door, he opens it again, and down rains fresh clothes, a towel, and a protein bar.
I don’t move. Ten minutes later, the door opens for the third time, and a squalling Poppy is forced into the hellish abyss with me before it slams and locks for the final time.
That was almost an entire day ago, and I haven’t heard a peep since. Somewhere in my state of fitful sleep, I could’ve sworn I heard his tires peel out on the gravel, but with how dark and clouded my mind currently is, I can’t be sure what’s reality and what I’m making up.
The only thing the pain across my ass cheeks allows is for me to lie in a vegetative, depressed state on the lumpy mattress. I should be trying even harder to escape, especially since he forgot to cuff me, but all I can do is intermittently cry, throw myself a pity party, and try to figure out why I fucking loved what he did to me, even with how irate and absolutely horrifying he was.
Every time my mind wanders to last night, I try to focus on something else: the cracks in the floor, the way Poppy’s tailtwitches when she spots something that looks like prey, the sun fading from noon to dinnertime.
My heart clenches, and I push up onto my elbows, narrowing my gaze at the window. There are fingerprints in the dirt that coats the pane. From my distance, it looks as though they’re on the outside, too. Mulling this new development over, I try to rationalize why—after four months of my being here—there’s suddenly a disruption in something that hasn’t changed at all. Maybe Kage touched the glass while looking for me? It was too dark last night for me to understand where my window is in relation to where we were seated outside.
