“Open your mouth and accept his kiss.”
His muscles tightened. “No.”
Another strike, harder. He sucked in a breath. “I won’t kiss him.” He ground his teeth and prayed for his parents’ safety. “Not happening.”
The lashes that followed came quicker, spreading out over his buttocks, thighs, and lower back. He held onto his resolution as his body swayed on his feet and his head swam through a haze of pain. At some point, she switched to a whip. Still, he refused the kiss.
She and Van gave him a wide berth as he fell to his knees, his torso held up by his arms in the chains, the tip of the whip cutting so sharply he felt it scorch through his blood.
The strikes turned into hours, the hours into days, and so his training lunged into full swing. As those days passed, they didn’t seem like days at all. With the absence of windows and the constant pull of fatigue, it was always night. But he gaged the stretch of time by the healing of Liv’s face. When he slept, it was on the rug beside her mattress. When awake, he was chained to the ceiling, the floor, the walls, or her bed.
While her tactics varied in creativity, her drive was steady, unyielding, and rife with trickery. Hours of silence would spur him to speak. Twenty lashes. A tender caress on his cheek would draw his eyes to hers. Twenty lashes. Her gripping strokes along his penis guaranteed an orgasm. And twenty lashes.
Some sessions were better than others. Sometimes the pain carried him to a strange space of unawareness where time and chains didn’t exist. Where he mindlessly accepted the punishment. He anticipated that feeling of bliss. In fact, when he was in the moment, he didn’t want her to stop.
On the third evening, she restrained his naked and kneeling body to the floor and opened the door. Van’s swift gait sounded through the room followed by the click of her heels.
His blood pressure doubled as Van circled him. He lifted his shoulders, protecting his neck, and held his elbows close to his sides. After countless beatings, he’d learned to protect the most vulnerable parts of his body.
Luckily, he hadn’t seen Van in three days. It didn’t take long to find out why she’d finally invited him in.
She slammed her spiked heel into Josh’s back, knocking him forward. “Accept his kiss, boy.”
Violently shaking on his hands and knees, he glared at the floor and bit down his cheek. His anger boiled so hot his skin flushed with fever.
Van squatted before him, hands laced together beneath Josh’s bowed head.
Screw them. He’d rather stab the bastard with a three-foot toothpick than kiss him. He would not become a broken grateful slave. “No.” He pinned his lips and braced for twenty new welts.
The silence in the room drew tightly around him, overtaxing his nerves as he stared at Van’s unmoving hands. Finally, she spoke, using the empty voice he’d become accustomed to hearing.
“Raise your eyes and sit back on your feet.” She walked around him, the pointed toes of her black heels stopping beside Van.
He lifted his upper body, his bruised muscles screaming in protest, and lugged his gaze to meet the frigid sharpness of hers.
Van rose and tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. “It’s okay, Liv. He doesn’t have to kiss me.” His tone was casual, but his gaze was molten silver and aimed on her. “You’ll give me what I need.”
A flash of fear lit her eyes, and Josh’s blood ran cold. The scar on her cheek seemed to draw the corner of her eyelid downward into a miserable reflection of his own thoughts. He didn’t want her to give that man a damned thing.
She snapped her chin up and looked down her nose at Josh. Then her expression blanked, and she stared through him like he wasn’t there. With a roll of her hips, she stepped into Van’s body and cupped his groin, squeezing him through the denim. Josh slammed his teeth together.
The slide of Van’s hands up the back of her thighs pushed her skirt to her waist and revealed her panty-less backside. The profile of their hips pressed together and Van’s grinding and groping sent Josh’s pulse careening, his heartbeat pounding, and every muscle in his body tensing. He tried to shake off the anger. It was just a game, a psychological torment meant to break him.
Van freed the button at his waistband, shoved his jeans to his bare feet, and kicked the material away. Naked from the waist down, he grabbed her hand and curled her fingers around his erection.
The chains held Josh to the floor, but it was the heaviness in his chest that pulled him down and squeezed his lungs. Would Van rape her? Was it rape if she wasn’t struggling?
She captured Josh’s eyes and pierced him with a look so cruel, it struck harder and deeper than any implement she’d used on him.
He dropped his head, eyes burning and arms hanging numbly at his sides. What was the purpose of this?
“Watch us.” The snap of her voice splintered through his spinning world.
His neck ached with tension as he raised his head.
The manifestation of her sudden smile seemed forced, blanching along the seam despite the glaring curls at the corners. She angled her chin away, and Van caught her mouth.
He attacked her lips, licking and sucking. With a hand in her hair, the other wrapped around her fingers, stroking his fully aroused length.
Josh’s throat thickened, and a guttural roar burst from his throat. “I’ll do it. I’ll kiss you. Just…” He trembled with the violent need to bash Van’s face in. “Just get away from her.”
Why did he care? She’d whipped him for days. He should hate her. Yet the pain of watching her with another man eviscerated his insides and destroyed his ability to see a future beyond that room.
Van released her lips, his arm pinning her against him, and cocked his head. “Maybe next time.” He returned to her mouth, his tongue whipping aggressively, dominating the movement of her jaw. He lifted her, hooked her legs around his waist, and backed her into the wall a couple feet away.
When Van’s hand shoved between their hips, Josh barreled forward, the strain of his body caught by the web of chains. He jerked and yanked, the cuffs on his wrists scraping along his skin. “Mistress? Mistress, don’t let him do this.”
Her glassy eyes peered at him over Van’s shoulder. She lay her palms flat on his back, her shoes dangling from her toes where they hung behind Van’s flexing thighs.
A vicious force of nausea spun through his gut. Why was this affecting him so furiously? There was no love between him and that woman. He sucked in a breath, his mouth thick with salvia. Wasn’t this possessiveness he felt for her a method of control? Maybe he was supposed to feel sorry for her. Sympathy was more effective than hating her. The proof was in the painful collapse of his chest as Van thrust his hips, sinking inside her and grunting his pleasure.
His ears burned with the sound of his heart ripping, bleeding with loss and crushing into the shape of betrayal. Why the hell did he feel betrayed? Because she didn’t fight? But the skin around her mouth blanched and strained. When he snagged her eyes, she looked away.
The hammering of Van’s hips accelerated. The color drained from her face, and she pressed her grimace against Van’s shoulder. Josh aged ten years as he watched beneath the weight of his chains, his perceptions grinding into a jaded palate of anguish, helplessness, and jealousy.
The fact that she wasn’t struggling snarled and thrashed through his head. If he thought about it, really pushed past the shock and fury of his emotions, the truth was painfully obvious. She couldn’t control him with punches and whips, but this…this would leave a permanent mark. She was doing her job by any means possible. His lungs constricted, his mind a mess of twisted conflict.