Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) (10 page)

Guilty thoughts of Robert surfaced in her
mind. Robert had been wow, too. Just in different ways. He’d always been gentle with her in bed. Careful of where he touched her. Tender. He wasn’t much for anal, either.

No point in making comparisons, though. It didn’t matter anymore. Somewhere on the floor below them, Robert was probably sound asleep with his arm around some other woman. Sara shut that thought from her mind. That relationship had been sinking for a while now. When she left here and had the time to really think about it, then it was probably going to hurt more. Right now
, though, she just didn’t want to dwell on it.

Moving slowly, carefully, she picked up Jackson’s arm and slid out from under it. She was almost able to sit up when his snores suddenly ceased, becoming a single, deeply
drawn breath. His eyes cracked open, and then he hooked his arm back around her waist and drew her snugly down to lie with him again.

“I’m going to bust your ass,” he mumbled. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I have to use the bathroom,” she whispered.

He grunted once, considering that, then swore under his breath. “Me, too. Fine.” He released her, giving her bottom a sharp slap. “You have five minutes, and then I’m coming in after you. What time is it?”

She glanced at the clock on his bedside table. “Just after eight.” She slipped naked from the bed, her bare feet padding whisper-soft from area rug onto hard stone and back onto another area rug as she crossed from the bedroom into the bathroom.

“Buses don’t come until noon,” she heard him mutter just before she shut the door. “Your ass is mine for another four hours.”

His tone made her shiver. She almost locked the door. Her finger hovered over the button for half a second before she changed her mind. She worked really hard at not examining her reason for why, but she was standing at the shower with her fingers held under the warming spray when Jackson meandered into the bathroom in nothing but his boxers.

Morning wood, piss hard-on—whatever you wanted to call it, on Jackson it was just as impressive as the rest of him. Funny how, in a dungeon
setting there was no such thing as shyness, but in the intimacy of a morning after, in a bathroom with a man she considered to be her best friend, she blushed like a schoolgirl and quickly looked away.

“Is it okay to take the cuffs off?” she asked.

“No. They can get wet. Go ahead. Get in the tub.”

Apparently, morning-after shyness was not a
“guy thing.” Jackson had no issue with bellying up to the toilet while she was standing there. Yawning and lifting the lid, he finagled his uncooperative cock out of his boxers and struggled to bend it into the right direction. Sara scrambled into the shower and drew the curtain so she wouldn’t have to watch. She was embarrassed enough for both of them just having to listen to it.

All too soon, she heard the toilet lid descend again. He yawned again,
and then dropped his boxers completely. His shadow splashed across the plastic curtain an instant before he pushed it open and slipped in behind her.

It lurked right on the tip of her tongue, the urge to say something completely stupid, like, “What are you doing?” But when he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest, it became too obvious for words. Under the warm streaming water, he nuzzled the side of her throat. He was so warm, so solid, and his arms around her held on as if she were the dearest of friends…as if he might even love her.

She wrapped her arms over his as he began to sway with her under the gentle spray. His hands wandered, following the dip and curve of her stomach to her hips. She enjoyed each tender caress right up until his hands parted and each wandered across her hips to find the opposing curves. The first time his palm skimmed from smooth skin onto scarred, she tried to block his hand, encouraging without words for him to return to the unmarred parts of her that she didn’t mind him touching.

“Stop that.” He caught her wrist and forcibly pulled her hand out of his way. Capturing her wayward arm in his right hand, he pinned it across her belly before returning his left to her left hip. His caresses remained soft. It still felt
loving; only now it was restraining, too, and didn’t feel quite as good as before.

She tried to relax, but she couldn’t hold still. He moved his hand up and down her side before branching out to touch other places. Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples peaking and throbbing when he cupped and groped them, squeezing gently in a milking motion that made her whole body tingle. But he didn’t linger there for very long. Before she could fully relax, his touch had returned to her left side and that tingling turned back into crawling. She couldn’t hold still. She tried, but the longer he insisted on touching the bad side of her, the more she squirmed until she just couldn’t take any more. She all but knocked his hand away.

He turned her abruptly and shoved her up against the shower wall. He caught both her wrists, pinning them both to the tiles above her head. He locked them there in the uncompromising grip of one hand and returned the other to her damaged side.

“Does it hurt?” he demanded, flattening himself against her.

His dark eyes were cool and hard and impossible for her to meet. The sexiness of the situation had completely died, leaving her feeling nothing but ashamed. “No.”

“Then stop it. I don’t fucking care. For the next four hours, you are still mine and I will touch you however and wherever I please. Do you understand?”

“Not there!”

“Yes! There and anywhere else I desire!”

“It’s ugly!”

He bruised her thighs when he shoved his knee between them and forced her legs apart. She caught her breath when she felt it butt up hard against her sex, lifting her straight up against the wall until her tiptoes barely kept contact with the bottom of the
tub. He pressed all of him against as much of her as he could, pinning her to the tiles, his controlling hold on her absolute.

“Is that why you ran away?” he demanded. “The only parts of you that you are allowed to think ugly are the parts I say, because mine is the only fucking opinion that matters, do you
get that? Look at me, Sara.” He grabbed her chin, his grip rough as he tried to force her gaze to his. “Look at me, damn it!”

She snapped her eyes shut. Disobedience, at this point, was so much easier than having to face what she knew she’d see if she complied. She heard the anger in his sharply drawn breath and felt his fingers on her chin tighten. Abruptly, he let her go. She almost fell it, happened so fast.

Taking the shower head off the wall, he shoved it into her hands. “Wash yourself.” Slapping the curtain aside, he left the tub.

She had no reason to be surprised that he would leave, and yet, the abruptness of it left her bereft. She held the shower head to her chest, twisting the handle between her hands, her eyes tearing because she had no one to blame for this but herself. She knew that, but why did he have to touch her side? Why couldn’t he, like she so often tried to do, pretend it didn’t exist?

She covered her eyes briefly, giving in to the first sharp wave of misery only to swallow the rest. She shoved the tears back with a hard swipe of her palm, sniffled once to keep from crying any more, and then hung the shower head back up. Gathering the soap and washcloth off the shower shelf, she scrubbed herself both listlessly and completely. There weren’t many tender places left from her spanking the night before, but every time she found one, she punished herself, scrubbing hard to make it hurt as much as possible, squeezing and digging her fingers in to make bruises if she could—it was a poor substitute for what she deserved and it didn’t make her feel any better. Finally, she had nothing left to do but shut the water off.

She thought she was alone, but when she pulled the shower curtain aside, she found Jackson hadn’t left the bathroom. He was standing completely naked, propped up against the bathroom sink with his burly arms folded across an equally broad chest, waiting for her with his belt in his hand. He’d folded the length and palmed the buckle, which left the rest of the remaining length to hang ominously free down from the end of his hand.

The towels had been removed. They were piled up on the counter behind him and the bathroom door stood wide open now. So was the bedroom window. The early morning breeze gently billowed the curtain. A whisper of cool air immediately stole away what little heat lingered from the shower, leaving her to feel each rapidly cooling drop of water as it slid down her into the bottom of the tub. Her nipples puckered from the cold every bit as much as from the tremor of uncertainty that bit down in her gut and gnawed there.

With the hand that held the belt, Jackson pointed to a spot on the floor just outside the tub. “Step out.”

Sara looked down. The rug that had been there when she’d got into the tub was gone. A thin, one-foot square of washcloth had been left in its place. Sara stepped over the lip of the tub and stood on it.

“Turn around.” Pushing off the bathroom sink, Jackson moved toward her.

Shaking, Sara turned around. She looked down to make sure she was still on the washcloth. Her fingers squeezed at one another fitfully. She gripped and twisted even harder when he took up a disciplinary position beside her.

“Bend over. Put your hands on the lip of the tub and don’t let go.”

She looked at the belt dangling from his hand, so deceptively innocuous for the bite she knew it could—and would—deliver.

Bending, she gripped the smooth edge of the tub. Her breath caught deep inside her too-tight chest. Her knuckles whitened against the cream-colored fiberglass.

“When I say look at me, what are you to do?” he demanded. There was no mercy or gentleness anywhere in his tone.

Her chest squeezed in, making it very hard to breathe.

“Look at you,” she answered in the strangest voice. It sounded hoarse, strangled even. It barely sounded like her at all. Her eyes and nose began to sting. It was as if her bent-over pose was forcing the tears she’d tried so hard to suppress right up to the very surface of her. They threatened to pour out all over again. She barely managed to swallow them back, right up until Jackson drew back his arm and struck—one…two…three hard times in rapid succession. The first brought her snapping up onto her tiptoes. The second made her knees buckle and her bottom dance, a tight little side-to-side wriggle that somehow failed to buck off the sting that was now chewing into her flesh. And with the third snapping crack, Sara lost her composure. Her gasp gave way to hiccupy cries. It almost sounded like laughter until the bawling wails broke free, and then she was sobbing.

Jackson stopped at three. He stepped back, giving her a full minute for the stinging pain to ease into a barely tolerable throb and for her to hiccup and gasp herself back into a shaky semblance of calm. He tapped her hip with the belt, and she reluctantly lowered her feet flat on the washcloth, straightened her legs and offered her bottom meekly up for more.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, calm but pitiless. “When I tell you to look at me, what are you expected to do? And this time, I suggest you think real hard about how you should answer me.”

She stared at her hands through the watery shimmer of her gathering tears. “I’m to look at you, sir.”

“Better.” Three more strokes, harder than before. The belt caught the entire width of her bottom. It hugged her; it loved her in a grip of pure hurt and slow-budding fire. She burst into wailing sobs all over again, but somehow managed to hold her pose. She even pushed her hips back, making her bottom a willing target for the pitiless wrap of the belt, though it took everything she had not to break her pose.

Again, he stopped after three. He let her cry until the fury of it had no choice but to ease. She gripped and re-gripped at the edge of the tub, sucking and gasping for air. Her bottom was in agony now, and so was the side of her hip where the length of his belt had wrapped around to bite at her.

“Spread your legs,” he told her, his voice as calm and as quiet as she had ever heard it. He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t even sound disappointed. She was disappointed enough right now for them both.

She repositioned her feet wider apart.

“Put your head down and push your bottom all the way out.” He moved back from her, giving himself more room to swing. It wasn’t going to be three this time. It wasn’t going to be easy to bear.

Sara tipped her hips, offering herself for all the punishment he chose to give.

“If you don’t want me to touch you, you have one option,” he told her. “What is it?”

“My safeword, sir.”

“In the absence of that word, whose choice is it how and where you should be touched?”

She wept. “Yours, sir.”

“Say it again.”

“It’s your choice, sir.”

“Don’t you ever hide your body from me again.”

The cracks of his belt filled that little bathroom like a fury of
gunshot. Cry after braying cry echoed them, wordless and as shocking to hear as the pain was to feel. Each thwhap of leather jolted her back up onto her tiptoes, stole her ability to hold still, laved her backside in stripe after unforgiving stripe of fire and agony. She didn’t count; she just felt. Absolution should be suffered, endured, embraced. She surrendered to it, an anointment of tears that washed her sin away, a baptism of pain that swept her right to the very threshold of what she could endure and yet, delivered at the hands of the one person who in some ways probably knew her better than she knew herself, did not cross it.