“Pet?” I realized I had my mouth open and shut it.
“It’s nothing. A part of who we are. You’ll learn soon. I’ll make sure you do.”
Ah. God. The assessing look he trailed up my body sent ice-cold tingling through me, closely followed by a rush of warmth. I dropped my gaze to somewhere less challenging—the floor. The man was lust incarnate in the way he talked, walked and carried himself. Also, he was my personal horrible nemesis who scared the crap out of me.
But I accepted this. I couldn’t do anything else, and I let him lead me like some bedraggled pet up the stairs to their bedroom. The leash was clicked onto a ring in the floor, he fluffed up a blanket on top of a small mattress, and I crashed again and fell into darkness.
For the next two days they fed me, kept me in the room downstairs during the day and in their bedroom at night. Sleeping on the mat was agonizing at times. With the ungiving floor beneath the thin mattress, my shoulder went numb every few hours, and I was forever tossing and turning, and red-eyed by the morning. Sometimes that was from crying. I tried not to do it if I thought they could see, but I couldnt control what I did in my sleep.
Was I cramping their style while in their bedroom? I didn’t give a shit. After two days I was still swinging from angry to sad to terrified so often that sometimes I just curled up and tried to think of nothing. Despite his promise, they’d not given me any tasks, or sorted out anything really. I’d forgotten it was a long weekend.
If anyone had discovered the bodies, I hadn’t been told. Whenever that thought hit me, I felt ill. We’d left them there dead and cold, on the bed. By now, they’d be rotting, and no one knew except for us. That was so callous. They’d made mistakes, like I had, but someone out there would want to grieve for them. Often I’d awaken from the memory of me standing in the middle of the room, watching Leon and Melissa on the bed, waiting for them to stir and breathe again. I’d awaken to find myself staring at nothing. That memory was wearing a groove in my mind.
From the way Jodie and Klaus were walking on eggshells, I doubted the bodies had been found.
Irrational hope surfaced, just a shred, a glimmer. Maybe, they would let me go?
Tuesday. Early morning light filtered in through my eyelids. I lay there, thinking through my options. Klaus would be back at work today, I’d gathered. Jodie would be alone. Could I appeal to her to free me? Could I even dredge up the courage to attack her with something and demand she let me out?
I opened my eyes a fraction. Their murmurs and noises had woken me. He had her mounted on him and both were naked. But her soft sounds, that I’d thought were moans, were not, I realized. She was crying.
“What is it beautiful?” He reached up and placed his hands either side of her face, cradling her. “Tell me.”
“It’s—” She sighed. “Everything. How can you just carry on like this? I mean, what we are doing is…” She glanced at me.
“She’s still asleep,” he murmured. “And if she’s not, so what? Say what you want to.”
The sag of her shoulders and slight lowering of her head said anguish. It bothered me. They were the ones who had turned this into a nightmare, weren’t they?
“I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m afraid the police will still discover some evidence that points to us. I’m lost, really, damn lost.” She played quietly with his fingers. “I don’t think I can go to work anymore even. How can I? I love what I do. Filming. I loved it. But now, one of us must stay home, with her. Klaus, what are we doing? We’re keeping a woman captive…it’s just so,
so
wrong.”
“You know why we are doing this, what the alternative is. Say the word and I’ll give myself up. Or I’ll get you, or both of us, out of the country. Say it if that would make you happy again.”
Yes! Do that! Do the right thing.
I ran a finger around the leather edge of the cuff on my wrist, and hoped.
Jodie choked out a laugh. “No. Hell no. Okay. Okay.” Hand on his wrist, she smiled down at him. “I’m sorry for being all stupid. I know it’s the best we can do.”
“Not stupid. But yes. I believe this is the best option. That woman is not blameless.”
Fuck you, Klaus.
“Yes. I know.”
“The police,” He seemed to just stare for a moment. “I can’t say for sure, but I think we have a good chance at not being found out. And so, we will stick to our plan. But right now, I want to make love to you. I need to. I think you need this too.”
Then he drew her down and kissed her.
“I love you,” Jodie whispered.
“Jodie, remember this, I will never love her. No matter what. You are mine.”
“I wish you could actually say you love
me
, though.” Even I could hear the desperation in her words.
“You know that you and only you are truly mine.”
How fucking romantic. So they were in love. And, damn, how I envied them. I’d never had that amount of love from anyone—man or woman. I was pretty sure he loved her even if the idiot had trouble with the word. Even bad people could be in love. But were they the only bad ones here? What was I?
Fascinated, I watched them make love on their rumpled bed a few yards away.
Soon her soft moans arose along with, I assumed, Klaus’s cock that must be inside her.
My eyes still open merely to slits, I watched avidly.
My mind’s appreciation of their lust didn’t seem to care about what they’d done to me. He gripped her wrists at her back in one hand while he drove up inside her. When she tried to match his strokes by undulating her pelvis he slapped her breasts hard enough to make me wince.
I swallowed at her blatant moans as they climbed in loudness. Seemed as if she liked that.
His thrusts grew even more powerful, smacking wetly into her while his free hand worked at her between her legs. She threw her head back and arched then screamed as her climax ravaged her.
I shouldn’t be watching. I shouldn’t be getting aroused, not when they planned to do god knows what to me.
Despite my misgivings, I was…I was stunned at the raw beauty of this, and beneath the blanket I reached between my own legs and began to massage my attentive little clit. Already it was hard and sensitive and it throbbed awake, rising even more as I stroked it.
After running his hand over her breasts and pinching both nipples until she gasped, Klaus laughed then flipped her over onto her stomach. With one hand clawed in her hair and the other holding her ass cheek he started fucking her in earnest. I moved finger and thumb up and down on my clit, faster and faster. The tension of an orgasm built to imminent explosion level so quickly I prayed they wouldn’t notice my own gasps. His violent thrusts buried her face under the pillows, buried her choking gasps and squeals.
The moment he came every muscle in his body seemed intent on driving his cock even deeper into her. They were a montage of fucking sculpted in lust and groans and straining muscle.
I shouldn’t be doing this. This was so twisted. I ceased moving my fingers and just held them there, thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch, a fraction of movement, away from my now supersensitive throbbing clit.
Stop
. I hissed in through my teeth.
Too late. His orgasm triggered mine. Waves of pleasure shook me. My legs clamped in on my hand. I shut my eyes and bit down on the blanket, striving, at the same time as I enjoyed the last ripples of my orgasm, to contain the roughness of my gulping breathing.
The shudders as he came down from his climax were mine also. Then, as I quietly removed my masturbating hand from its warm burrow between my thighs, he looked across at me, and at the movement of my blanket, and he winked. I blushed, and still couldn’t stop the harsh rise and fall of my chest. Fuck him.
I glared back and his smile faded into a narrow-eyed calculating study of
me
. Crap. I chickened out. I pulled the blanket over my head.
The thud of him getting out of bed then the subsequent thump of his footsteps approaching made me oscillate between an urge to throw back the blanket and tell him to fuck off, and a need to hide away forever. My heart hammered madly.
“Come out, Stephanie.”
“No,” I said, quiet yet defiant. What a good start to the day.
“I think you just earned your first punishment.”
I quivered and stared into the dark under the blanket. What the hell did that mean?
A few seconds later the blanket was ripped from my grasp.
“What a surprise,” he said dryly. Then he unlocked the leash from the ring and tugged on it. “Crawl to the bed.” The jerk on my neck made me glower up at him.
“I am not an animal.” And to his bed? As if. When I went to rise he put his foot on the leash so I was unable to get up.
“If I say you are to crawl, you crawl. Come.” He tugged again.
“Damn you,” I muttered under my breath, but I went to hands and knees and crawled. A few feet from the bed he stooped and picked me up around the middle then carried me the rest of the way half-draped over his arm like some sort stuffed toy he’d rescued from the floor. He plopped down on the bed with me head down over his lap.
“Fuck! Put me down, you cunt. You have no right!”
If it wasn’t for his hand also gripping my hair, I’d have done a far better job, but I squirmed anyway and tried to bite his thigh. Between my cries and cursing I heard him tell Jodie to get a ball gag. The bed rocked as she went to do as he asked. Thinking he was distracted, I sank my nails into his thigh but only managed one deep scratch before he shoved my face into the bedclothes then wrenched both my wrists behind me and linked them together.
I didn’t have any idea what I was really doing except delaying the inevitable.
“Bastard,” I spat those angry words into the sheet, inhaling the scent of their sex. “Fucking let me go! Let me go!”
“No,” he said calmly. “You are going to learn to obey without all this nonsense. The consequences of disobedience…” He slammed his hand down on my ass. The slap jolted me forward and seemed to echo. The sting nailed me to the spot. Each phrase from then on was punctuated with another smack of his hand. “Are. Immediate if possible. Painful. If possible. Or otherwise appropriate. You will not. Swear. At me or Jodie.” One side, then the other. Harder and harder, like some robot on a mission to obliterate my ass. By now I was gasping in a choked, high-pitched fashion. “Gag, Jodie.”
With him holding my hair tight enough to make me wonder frantically if he was going to pull it out by the roots, a smooth ball was wrestled into my mouth and a buckle done up at the back.
“Bastard,” I coughed weakly around the ball.
“What?”
Slam
, he hit me again.
I found more energy and kicked backward with both legs, and the side of one foot slapped flesh.
“You okay, Jodie?” His tone was clipped.
Oh fuck. I’d kicked her.
At the same time as asking that, he’d pinned my upper body down, and now he managed to rearrange me so he could put his leg across the back of my knees. My wriggles did nothing. I was completely trapped. Just his leg seemed heavier than a ton of bricks. Panting around the gag, I slumped, turned my head sideways so I could get more air, and gave in. Staring blurrily out at the room and the mat where I’d slept, I trembled, and waited for the next blow.
“I’m okay,” Jodie said. “Just winded.”
In all this time, he’d left my panties on, but now he tugged them down below the curve of my ass. I closed my eyes as his big fingers slid down into my crevice and between my lower lips. I was wet down there still. My whimper sounded pitiful even to me.
How dare he touch me there!
“I see you were indeed having fun. Do you think she deserved punishment for swearing and refusing an order?”
Stupid. This was
my
body. Yet there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t make him punish me more. So I waited, humiliated, for them to discuss what to do with me.
“Yes,” Jodie answered.
“And how many more for kicking you?”
I heard her sniff. The bed rocked a little. “Ten?”
“Ten it is.” Then he shifted, leaning over to pull out a bedside drawer at the same time as keeping me in place.
I heard a scrape then the drawer shutting.
“Klaus? Isn’t that too harsh?”
“No.” The croak of that word speared a chill into me. “And an extra five to put behind us what happened on Saturday night. I think that’s fair.”
He touched me with something hard and thin down there, pressing it onto my buttocks. Then he drew his hand back and began again, only this time it was some sort of stick, making a lethal swish in the air before it connected. I curled my hands into fists, grunting with each blow. Then instinct made me stretch back to protect my ass and he grabbed my wrists and pushed them higher.
Over and over, licks of molten fire flared across my skin. He didn’t stop at fifteen and, by then, I was shrieking non-stop in the back of my throat. I thought Jodie was saying something but all I wanted to do was to get away from the relentless scorching pain.
He wasn’t going to stop hitting Steph, or not any time soon. He was scaring me, and Steph…he was turning her ass bright red. The last hit had broken the skin. There was blood. When he got to eighteen—I’d been counting—I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke loudly to get through to him.
“Klaus. Stop, please. You’re frightening me, and Steph will never see you as more than an ogre if you keep this up.” I shook him, feeling the almost granite hardness of his muscles as they flexed under my hand.
The crop clattered to the floor. Then, without looking at me, he untangled himself from Steph and got to his feet.
Outside birds screeched and wings flapped. Our house was close to the beach, though atop a cliff, and sometimes the compost heap that we kept for the garden enticed seagulls. A fresh breeze sent the light blue curtains billowing in above the bed. The serenity of world outside contrasted with what had just happened.
Klaus stood with his back to me; his hands were loose at his sides, but from the tension in his muscles, I knew he was upset. He’d not lost his control before like this, not even at the play party when he’d nearly let Kat put a needle into my nipple. Kat had given us advice on how to approach his sadistic drive, as had Moghul, and he’d been so careful to restrain himself since then. He liked causing me pain, and I liked that pain, to a degree. We matched up so well.