“Oh god,” slips from my lips as my body welcomes the contrast of sensations. And he doesn’t stop but rather keeps up a distinct rhythm, his hips slapping against mine while the flogger—what feels like leather with rounded tips—trails slowly over my back. He removes it and my body prepares for the quick flash of pain, and sometimes it lands smartly and other times it caresses in a gentle ruse, tickling my anticipatory flesh beneath it.

I am so focused on the flogger and whether its next movement will bring me pleasure or pain that I don’t realize my body vibrates on the cusp of my next orgasm. My back burns with the little licks that have assaulted it, and the muscles within my core ache from clenching so tightly around the thickness of his cock. My head falls forward, my arms weary from what feels like his endless machinations, and my mind is floating in pseudo-reality when my thighs constrict and back rounds.

The orgasm hits me like a runaway freight train: hard, fast, and unrelenting. It’s so powerful—so everything—that I try to pull away from him, try to press my hips forward to relieve the depth he’s penetrated, but I can’t. He grips the flesh on my backside harder, holding me still while he grinds his hips against my ass so just on the off chance he’s missed any interior nerves, he’s making up for it and then some.

But I can’t take any more. The force of the orgasm. The merciless onslaught of sensations barraging my system. “No. Stop. No,” I stutter in broken gasps, wanting to crawl away from him. I am able to get one knee forward, and he slips out of me some before his hands are back on my hips yanking me back to him. My yelp only gets louder when his hand wraps around my hair and tugs my head back. His mouth is at my ear, fury laced with a raw carnality that causes my posture to stiffen on the defensive.

“You don’t deny me. You take what I give you, bella, and right now, it’s me. Hard. Fast,” he demands as he slams into me from behind, bottoming out in the best way. In the worst way. I can’t process which way because my own climax continues to softly tremor through me, and the dominance in his voice and ownership in his touch spurns the release I just found to reignite. “Until I stop.” He reinforces his threat by tightening his grip on my hair as he continues his punishing rhythm, our bodies connecting with a jolt that reverberates through me and then back.

I begin to squirm again as everything increases and draws me toward what feels like the never-ending precipice of ecstasy. My fingers grip the sheets, my toes curl, and breath falters as the sparks of pleasure turn into a full-blown wildfire I can’t escape. Burned and bruised by the flames of desire, I have no option but to succumb to the heat pulsing within me. I whimper incoherently and shake my head back and forth as my body begins to collapse under the weight of release. My arms give and my face welcomes the cool sheet pressing against my cheek as he keeps my hips positioned to his liking.

His hips piston continuously for a few more moments, and then I hear the man who seems to always be in control groan out a guttural sound as his cock spasms inside of me. My shoulders push forward into the mattress while he draws out the last of his release. My eyes close, exhaustion overtaking me so that my only comprehension other than the lowering of my hips, is the kiss he presses to the space just above the swell of my ass. An oddly intimate action that normally I’d question, but my body sags and I succumb to the fatigue in my limbs.

I welcome the darkness the blindfold provides and allow myself to block out what his confusing display of tenderness says.

Chapter Five

I can hear him shuffling around the room. My head is groggy and my stomach is unsettled but my body is boneless, completely and utterly spent. I wait for him to tell me to get up or snap to, but he leaves me be. My back still burns subtly from the punishment he doled out, and the length of my sex is swollen and tender from his continuous usage. My hands are sore from clenching and gripping the sheets, my mind exhausted from trying to rationalize everything in my head. The contrast of feelings, the forced betrayal of my fidelity—everything—has me well beyond emotional overload.

I let the tears flow now, allow the guilt to pull me under as I try and figure out how I’m going to go back to being me when this is done. Because without a doubt, I know he’s going to let me go. I know he is going to get his fill and discard me. I don’t fear that he’ll brutalize me and leave me dead on the roadside somewhere, because even though he just put my body through the sexual wringer, he also did so with a misconstrued respect. Never going too far or stepping over what seems to be a predetermined boundary.

And he kissed me gently.

My head spins.

The merry-go-round of confusion is endless.

Since when does a guy abduct a woman, fuck her senseless, and then let her go? If I’m crazy for liking this, then he surpassed my lack of sanity miles ago.

Or orgasms.

The laughter comes now. Hysterical bouts of it that don’t belong in this room where consensual is not an option. It bubbles up and over. My mind and body succumb to the desperate sound in its tone, just needing a disruption from the exhaustive, unanswered questions.

And therein lies the problem. Yes he is holding me against my will—fucking me, pleasuring me, punishing me—but my God, I got off on it. What in the hell does that say about me?

I try to turn my mind off, try to allow myself a reprieve because I have no clue how long this is going to last and I’m spent. I just want to sleep, shut down the thoughts and questions I don’t want answers to right now. The answers that just might tell me I’m not the person I thought I was. The answers that might unravel the truths I don’t want to face.

Time lapses. I lose myself in trying not to think. And then I drift off.

I’m not sure for how long when I’m jolted from my slumbered state. A warm wash cloth runs over my inner thighs and then parts me gently, cautiously, cleaning me up. When he finishes, I’m chilled from the room’s air hitting my wet skin, but my attention is easily diverted to the dip of the bed and the feel of one of his hands whispering over my bare backside. I hold my breath immediately, the soft caress unexpected but welcome. A simple gesture of tenderness amidst his never-ending dominance. His hand trails languorously over my hip and then crosses over my back. My skin is still tender to the touch so I try not to flinch when he connects with the welts.

He murmurs something softly under his breath that I don’t understand. I tell myself to relax, to just accept his bewildering tenderness, but it’s hard to not anticipate another whip of leathered roses against my skin. I withdraw from my thoughts when his lips press against the indent between my shoulder blades, yet another show of affection. I work a swallow over the lump of confusion in my throat as the ache in my core flickers to life.

I try to fight it this time, tell myself that I don’t want this, want him or the burn that’s beginning to intensify as he laces contradictory kisses to the base of my neck. But my body has other thoughts. It betrays me when goose bumps chase in the wake of his tongue as it slowly slides down the length of my spine. I exhale audibly when he reaches the dimples of my lower back and keeps going.

His hands are suddenly on the curve of my ass, pushing me up to my knees so my shoulders press into the mattress and my hips are in the air. He unabashedly grabs the rounded globes and pulls them apart so that his tongue can descend with ease. I suck in a breath, my sex clenching tighter with every inch he covers. We both groan as his tongue licks around the rim. My muscles tense and my breath hitches as my nerve endings set ablaze from the potent combination of his touch and the forbidden notion of it.

I can feel myself becoming wet, can feel the ache intensifying as his tongue skims downward, his fingers firmly kneading my ass. I involuntarily press my hips backwards, a silent plea for more of what I’ve been told for a lifetime is dirty and wrong. A notion that I don’t care about in this moment because the hub of nerve endings he’s rimming begs for more—to be experimented and manipulated.

A chair scrapes across the floor on the other side of the room.

What in the hell? I’m jolted from the euphoric edge I can sense my body is climbing toward. My heart races and stops. His hands remain on me, possessive, but his face withdraws from the curve of my body.

“Ahhh, so you want to get a better view Marco, no?”

What? My pulse races, pounding a frantic tattoo as it roars through my ears. I want to tell it to shut the hell up so I can hear, so I can figure out who in the fuck is watching me?

Be forced.

Become pleasured.

“No!” I cry the word trying to process why my nipples harden and pussy throbs at the thought of being watched. Of having someone sitting there observing me be taken against my will. Why am I aroused beyond belief at the thought?

My captor chuckles low and mocking, and my every nerve stands on end. His hand fists in my hair, his voice an immediate growl in my ear. He pulls my head back so my neck is exposed and the heat of his body blankets across my back, seeps into any part of me that is chilled from the thought of an onlooker.

“No questions. No denials. Remember the rules?” His tongue traces around the shell of my ear—my surefire erogenous zone—and I fight the urge to shift my hips and relieve the pleasurable pain he’s relit. “Behave, mia bella.” The heat of his breath hits my ears, the brush of his lips such a stark contrast to the warning he delivers. “I’m going to fuck you. By the time I’m done, you’ll beg me to keep going. Then you’ll beg me to stop. Regardless, you’ll take what I give you—all of it—and you’ll enjoy every single fucking moment of it. And Marco is going to watch. Understood?”