Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) (9 page)

“Not anymore.”

Comments like that made it easier to pretend he was hardened. Releasing her arms, he caught her by the throat. “Get your head up,” he snapped. “Back straight. Hands on your head.”

Her spine stiffened, but otherwise she made little effort to obey. “I can’t do this anymore, Jackson. I don’t want to play.”

“No?” His thumb shifted, gliding a single caress down the curve of her neck. “So say the safeword already. It’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”

Her mouth opened and in that moment, he thought she might actually do it. But something stopped her. She hesitated, a tremor shivering her when dismay crawled in the depths of her beautiful blue eyes.

“You remember what the Castle safeword is.” It wasn’t a question; he knew the answer just by looking at her. Onions; it was in all the brochures and damn near the first topic covered in every orientation. “You remember the safeword we use,” he continued. Again, not a question. She was trembling now, angling her chin just a little higher as if trying not to arch into his thumb’s next petting caress. Her eyes never left his. He wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “Use it, or submit.”

He gave her almost a full minute, driving it in one passing second at a time, just how completely she did not want him to stop. And still a flash of panic raced through her when he shifted his grip to her arm just above her elbow and dragged one of his dining chairs out from the table.

Once upon a time, Sara had confessed to him of harboring a love/hate relationship with spankings. She loved the hot, achy after-glow; she hated it while it was happening (her pussy translating each reverberation of every slap into sensual arousal), but that pain was still hard to bear. She said she loved being bent over things, but hated being taken across the knee (she couldn’t stand being made to feel childish). Bending her over the table would have made his first choice of after-care comfort so much easier to access. He’d have been inside her, he knew, just as soon as the last swat of his hand bounced off her soon-to-be red-hot bottom. He could already feel her yielding to his thrust, hear her wanton gasps and cries, and see the undulations of her body as she arched and pushed to meet him. No, he wouldn’t have minded at all bending her over the table, but he wanted no part of this to be mistaken for a reward.

“Wait!” She locked her legs, pulling away from him when he sat down, presenting a very capable and authoritarian lap. “Jackson! Please,
wait
!”

Tightening his grip on her elbow, he slung his other arm around her waist and brought her crashing down across one thigh. He immediately locked her involuntary kicks in the vise of his legs, greatly limiting her struggles to the flailing of her hands as she sought something to grab onto. Not to fight, he recognized, but to grip. She caught the bottom rung of the chair and then his ankle, her small hand latching on tight. Once she was in position, she never tried once to break his hold. She accepted it the way she should and she held onto him, seeking comfort in his touch to help her endure.

His heart warmed, swelled, grew tender. But when he spoke, none of that tenderness made its way into his voice. “This is the last time you will use my name without respect.”

The soft, round curves of her naked bottom as they absorbed the impact of his first spank was a visual piece of art. Her flesh flattened, bounced and blushed a soft shade of wounded pink that was completely belied by the shrill gasp that burst past her lips. She let go of his ankle, her hand scrambling back to keep his hand from falling again. And it worked, but only until he caught her wrist, tucking it under her stomach as he locked his arm around her waist and held her steady.

He tried to tell himself that this was just for her disobedience. For breaking position after he told her to stay put, for resisting his authority after offering her submission and her lack of proper supplication. She was no green girl, new to the BDSM game. She knew the rules and she knew the consequences for breaking them. He tried to tell himself this had absolutely nothing to do with what happened three years ago. He had swallowed that anger, moved past it…yeah, right. And by the time he realized he was in trouble, the only coherent thought Jackson had time for was that split second of gratitude when he realized it was a good thing he’d left his belt hanging on the hook in that other room. Otherwise, he didn’t know if he could have resisted his need to use it.

As that old adage went, it all came out in the wash. This particular wash was as dirty as it got. His anger came pouring out of him, fueling the rapid rise and fall of his arm. He felt the burning heat of pain in his palm and the embarrassment that still tinged him when he remembered showing up that day at the hospital only to find she’d already left. He remembered how the nursing staff had looked at him as he’d stood there, too dumb for it to sink in right away that what she was running from was
he.

Jackson tried to stop himself. At the very least he should have given her some kind of warm-up—she could have borne this easier with a warm-up—but he didn’t. He just spanked her. Harder and harder, faster than she deserved. And he knew exactly what she was feeling, because he could feel it
, too, spreading through his naked palm, growing red and sore and every bit as hot as her poor bottom. She was writhing and bucking upon his knee, tossing back her head and helplessly yelping, then wailing, before finally bursting into pleading sobs, and he still could not make himself stop. Not until she was bawling, her pleas so garbled as to be incoherent. Not until all the soft flesh behind her was scarlet-red from the top of her ass all the way down onto the backs of her thighs, so swollen that the very summits of both nether cheeks felt hard to the touch.

The palm of his hand was a burning agony to match and still he wanted to keep on, to punish her longer, but he had already taken it past the point of abuse. A good Dom gave his sub what she needed; but nothing in this was about her needs. It felt too much like revenge.

It was that realization that finally stopped him. Jackson held himself frozen, his aching hand poised high and shaking to deliver another crashing cadence of slaps to a bottom well past the deserving of it. He was breathing hard, both from having to hold her down and from the rigors of the paddling that had driven her to thrash and writhe in the first place. He had never beaten any of his subs before. And that’s exactly what this was—it wasn’t a spanking; it was a beating.

With Sara, he lost all perspective. His hand shook harder. He had to stop.

“Get up,” he said, barely recognizing the harsh voice that was coming out of him.

She crawled upright, somnambulistic and sobbing, backing off his lap with each gradual degree that he was able to let her go. He released her legs last and she stumbled, her knees buckling in and out. Holding her arm until she grew steadier, he stood up and pushed her ahead of him, marching her into the nearest corner. He left her facing the wall between the mantle and the window, and then he retreated. He had to get distance between them. He had to.

Stalking down the hallway, he shut himself into the bathroom before releasing a deep and shaky breath and sinking down to sit on the edge of the tub. He stared at his bright red hand, then rubbed at it, though whether to soothe the pain that slight touch caused or to grind it in, he didn’t know.

He needed to call Marshall. Needed to tell him to summon Kade to come and take Sara. He couldn’t—shouldn’t—Top her when his emotions were this uncontrollable. Hurting her wasn’t what he wanted, and yet that was exactly what he’d done. Shaking his head, he closed his eyes. Up until now, he hadn’t even thought he could hurt her.

A soft tap at the door made his eyes open again. He could hear soft, shaky gasps and sniffling on the other side.

She was going to leave tomorrow. In the grand scheme of things, what good was one more day going to do him anyway? How stupid could he be to think he could cleanse
his need for her and learn how to say goodbye in the little bit of time they had left. He had to let her go.

“M-Master Jackson?”

He could hear the tears thick in her voice. She sounded hoarse, raspy, but then, she’d done a lot of yelling and crying while he’d been blistering her ass. Jackson shook his head again, and then he stood up. He made himself open the door. Harder still was the effort it took to look at her, but he made himself see the damage he’d done in all its ugliness—her disheveled hair, her red-rimmed eyes and nose, her flushed cheeks streaked with the tracks of more tears than he cared to count.

For a long time, they simply looked at one another. Then, she bent and knelt at his feet. Reaching for his hand—the hand he had spanked her with—she pressed a tender kiss into his palm before tucking her cheek against it.

“Please, Master Jackson,” she whispered, and began to cry all over again. “Please don’t be angry with me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Jackson knew better, but he couldn’t stop himself. One soft nudge of his hand brought her close enough to lean against his thigh. She shifted to hug it with both hands, his pants leg absorbing her tears.

“I’m sorry,” she wept again, and he closed his eyes, lost in the fragile sensation of her touch.

One more day. That’s all he had.

He refused to give it up for anything.

They stood back-to-back in the kitchen at opposite countertops, each at their own cutting board: she, cutting bell peppers and onions; he, chopping chicken breasts. The air between them held an odd mixture of first date, get-to-know-you jitters and comfortable familiarity. Fully intending to be a selfish sonuvabitch, he didn’t want to share so much of an ounce of her attention tonight. Sadly, his decision to cook dinner in was stymied by the revelation of what a bachelor cliché he really was. Although he had a fridge in his apartment, he spent way too much time eating either at the daily buffet in the long dining hall or at the Castle’s infamous Supper and Show—a nightly choreography of discipline and desire, where anything could and often did go, and which was sometimes enacted behind a thin paper screen that hid identities but left little else to the imagination.

Tonight, the Sultan was bringing his harem down to service the diners and, if he played true to his usual end-of-the-month form, the “eunuchs” were going to get their chance to play. Now that was a show. Floggings and fellatio would most certainly abound, but it wasn’t some nameless harem girl he wanted to feed from his cock. Not when he had Sara, dressed in nothing but the collar he’d bought for her and primed to wait on his every command.

No. No, tonight he wanted dinner to be a simple and intimate affair. Just the two of them. Unfortunately, when he opened the fridge, the entire contents amounted to little more than a half a case of beer and a bottle of ketchup eight months past its expiration date. Until tonight, he hadn’t known ketchup
had
an expiration date.

Taking a client off Castle grounds was a job-terminating event—no excuses, no exceptions—and since taking her grocery shopping would have meant he had to let her dress, that was out anyway. Out of choices, Jackson did the next best thing. He called down to the kitchen and requested food be sent up. He also asked that the courier swing by Sara’s old room and bring up his belt, along with anything else that might have been left behind. When he finally heard that knock at the door, he’d opened it fully expecting to receive a supper tray, already prepared and ready to eat. Cook Connie must be in one of her
“peculiar” moods. She’d sent up fajita fixings, complete with flour wraps, jalapenos, spices, a bottle of tequila and a hastily scribbled: “Too busy. Do it yourself.”

So here he was, chopping chicken, heating oil on the stove and composing a mental reminder to have a word with Connie once Sara was gone. Connie was a switch with a serious aversion to paddles. Right now, there was a paddle in his bedroom closet just a-calling her name. If she got out of that conversation with less than sixty bottom-blistering strokes, he wasn’t worth the Dom leathers he intended to wear while he dispatched them.

“Can I put some clothes on yet?” Sara asked, slicing up the last of the bell peppers behind him.

“Nope.” Jackson had just finished cutting up the chicken. He had a pan with oil and spices heating on the stove already. He reached over to give the pan a gentle shake. “The more you keep asking, the longer you’ll go without.”

“I’m a little cold,” she hedged.

He glanced back at her. The temperature in the apartment felt comfortable enough to him. Her bottom was still hot-lobster red and probably would be for most of the night.
A soft blush suffused her cheeks. It had spilled down her throat onto her chest and her nipples were standing, but not because of cold.

He turned back to the stove. “Want me to warm you up again?” he offered, stirring the meat into the oil.

Her soft blush deepened and the steady chopping cadence of her knife faltered. “No, thank you.”

Jackson smiled. “I could call down to the kitchen and request a piece of ginger root.”

Her flush grew significantly hotter then, but she also started to smile. “No, um…really, thank you.”

“I’m fairly sure I have some Ben-Gay in the bathroom.”

“Ben-Gay?”

“Yeah, great for treating sore muscles when I over-exercise. But in this case, a nice, deep pussy massage might be equally enjoyable.”

“For who?” she burst out, laughing, her eyes wide.

“Me,” he admitted. “A clitoris slathered in Ben-Gay isn’t going to enjoy being touched by anyone or anything for at least ten minutes, but since there are a good many things I intend to do to you tonight that you’re not going to wholly enjoy, why not start with heating ointment?”

She stared at him, her eyes huge, her breath held and, he knew, not only because of trepidation. “Oh my God.” She turned back to her food. “I forgot how devious you are. You know,” she swung back around, shaking the paring knife at him like a scolding finger, “you think it’s funny now, the thought of smearing that stuff on my…” She squirmed, unable to make herself say it; how cute. He smirked as her blush deepened and shook the pan again, shifting the cooking chicken. “You’ll change your tune fast enough if you get any of that stuff on your…” She wiggled her little knife in the general direction of his zipper. “You’ll change your mind, I guarantee it.”

“You think so?” he inquired, almost as if he weren’t interested in the direction this conversation was heading.

“I wasn’t issuing a challenge,” she said quickly, then added, “but, yes. Put that stuff inside me and you’re pretty much shutting down Disneyland before you get to ride the rides.”

Jackson chuckled. Covering the chicken, he flipped the stove off and shifted the pan onto a back burner. “Start the picante,” he told her, and left the kitchen.

She followed him, but only as far as the arching doorway. “I said I wasn’t issuing a challenge.”

“And I said start the picante,” he called back, and vanished into the bathroom. Digging through the medicine cabinet until he found what he wanted, he re-emerged with a tube of ointment tucked into his palm and a latex glove, which he was already trying to squeeze on over one big hand. That was the problem with being a big man. They never made latex gloves big enough. He did manage to get this one
on without ripping it, however, and when he rounded the corner and entered the kitchen, Sara took one look at the glove and forgot all about the onion she was peeling for the picante.

“Come here, Sara.” He smiled, but it didn’t seem to reassure her much.

“You’re crazy.” She backed from him, one hand raised to keep back his inevitable advance, and yet she laughed when he did.

“Am I?” Jackson crossed the kitchen, pausing at the sink only long enough to uncap the tube and squeeze a very small amount of white ointment onto his fingertips.

“Oh my God,” she said again, as he rubbed it to saturate the latex. She tried to duck past him, but he caught her by the nipple of one breast, which not only stopped her escape, but brought her arching up onto her toes with a squeak. In one step, he had her backed up against the wall again.

She slapped her hands down to block his access to her pussy, beautifully bare and smooth.

His smirk grew. “Put your hands on your head.”

Her breathing quickened. She looked down at his hand, where he kept rolling the ointment around and around the tips of his fore and middle fingers. She looked up at him uncertainly. He never took his eyes off of hers and he didn’t repeat himself. He simply waited until, only a twitch at first, she raised her hands and laced her fingers behind her neck.

His grip on her nipple softened. He rolled it, stroking with his thumb, the same lazy motion he kept making with his ointment-wet fingers. Her mouth opened, her chin lifting just a bit when he moved in closer. The medicinal scent of the Ben-Gay was in his nose. He could feel her shakily exhale, her breath the softest whisper against his lips right before they touched hers. He drank her sigh straight from her mouth, releasing her nipple to mold her perfect breast in his palm. Her squeak came only a half second later when he slipped his ointment-slick hand between her tensing thighs and cupped her pussy.

He slathered the majority of the ointment on her soft outer labia, but he didn’t waste it all there. He moved in and he knew the instant she began to feel the heat because her squeals heightened in pitch and began to come with every breath. He spared her nothing, touched every line and fold of her quivering sex and sank his fingers all the way up inside her before withdrawing to roll her clitoris in the tainted juices of her own burning body. Her mewling cries were an aphrodisiac he couldn’t get enough of, and they were only growing as the heat of the ointment built and built without mercy.

“Oh no!” She threw her head back against the wall, eyes closed, panting expressively, but her hips kept riding his fingers. She winced but never once tried to escape his touch, not even when her cries escalated into full grunting moans. These were fuck-me sounds, growing louder as her face contorted in expressive discomfort. Her whole pussy would be on fire now. He fucked her with his hand, slapping his gloved fingers in and out of her hard and fast.

“Oh!” Her hands clamped onto him, her sharp little fingernails digging into his shoulders like claws.

The worst of the heat, he knew, would not last long. He made the most of the hell while it lasted, rubbing, squeezing, slapping and fucking her, stretching her open with two fingers, and then three, and then finally all four just to hear the full-throated animal groans falling from her with every panting breath.

God, those cries. She was a woman so lost in her own pleasure that she didn’t care what she sounded like or how loud she was. For one small window in time, she didn’t care about the scars on her body. Nothing in the world mattered to her but him and the bonfire of burning he was fucking her body with.

She was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen, ever held, ever pinned up against the wall, and the driving urge to bury his hard and throbbing cock as deep as he could reach inside of her became a need too great to think beyond.

Flipping her around, Jackson slammed her belly-up against the wall and covered her back in an instant. He kissed her, hungrily filling all his senses with the smell and taste of her—her shoulder, her neck, her hair. He sucked her earlobe into his mouth and the whole of her little body writhed and wriggled against his, her gasps turning wanton as he nipped. He ripped the glove from his hand and tore open his pants, barely remembering to fish the condom from his back pocket before shoving the cloth down out of his way.

His cock sprang up between them, hot against his belly, hard and insistent as it sought to lie in the valley of her buttocks. He ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth and got the condom on. He angled down between her legs, finding the entrance now smeared with Ben-Gay, so hot, so unbelievably tight.

His groans
mingled with hers.

“Yes, yes!” She scraped the wall, raking at the paint with both claw-like hands. “Please, God, fuck! Please!”

He sank in slow, stretching her gently until he felt that first ring of muscle give way. He would have filled her gradually, but all that ended when she shoved her hips back and impaled herself on as much of him as she could get inside her. That first animal grunt of both pleasure and pain was his absolute undoing. He surged into her after that, slamming her back up against the wall until his hips were slapping against her ass and she was flat against the paint, unable to find the leverage to shove back any more to meet him.

He had to get deeper, better angled. He had to thrust, and he had nothing sturdy to grab onto. Hooking his arm around her waist, he jerked her off the wall and threw her down over the nearest section of counter instead. He grabbed her hair, winning another animal cry when he yanked her head back and slammed into her now, as hard as he could manage, all the way up to his aching balls. His hot, aching balls. Fiery hot, even.

Shit. The ointment. It was on him now, too.

Jackson didn’t stop. It was heating, searing into him as thoroughly as if he were cooking his balls and now the whole underside of his shaft on the stove right next to the pan of chicken. That little bit of Ben-Gay was enough to take him through a good fifteen minutes of sheer, unadulterated hell, but Sara made it worth the trip. The tight heat of her body amplified the burn until it had seared through every tender nerve ending. His cock felt seared by it, but he couldn’t stop. He took her until they were both shouting, both burning, both shuddering one right after the other in fiery convulsions so agonizing it was hard to believe they could be orgasms. Heaven and hell, intertwined.

It hurt, but it was beautiful.

* * * * *

Sara awoke to a room filled with soft snores. At first, she couldn’t remember why the bedroom, lit by streams of bright morning sunlight that spilled in around the heavy black window draping, was so unfamiliar.

She was naked, her wrists were cuffed together, and there was a warm, heavy arm draped around her waist. It wasn’t Robert’s arm. It was too big to be Robert’s. Thighs like tree trunks were pressed up against the backs of her legs. A very solid length of morning wood was nestled between her buttocks, pointing up toward the small of her back.

Heat flooded upon her instant recognition of it. Of the ointment he’d smeared into her, there were no lingering effects that she could feel. No more heat. No tenderness. Only a vague stickiness between her thighs when she squeezed them together, as if she could hold onto the way it had felt when he’d been inside her, not just in the kitchen when he had…had…She flushed hot all over again. It had been a long time since anyone had shoved her up against the wall like that. Gentleness and love-making, they both had their place. But sometimes, a girl just wanted to be plowed into the plaster. Jackson was a good plow-er. He was…wow. Just wow.