He drew away, and his hands went to his belt. “Did you touch yourself since I saw you last?”
“No, Sir.” She shrank back as he pulled it off and clutched her hands together. “I wanted to… but I—I didn’t.”
He scrutinized her as if gauging her truthfulness. Then he doubled the belt over and pointed to a spot on the floor.
“Kneel. Bend over. Forehead on the floor.”
Her mouth fell open. She’d told the truth, and he was going to punish her anyway. “Please, I didn’t—” At a sharp crack of the belt on the floor, she scooted forward. She knelt and braced herself as he pulled up her skirt. It was so unfair!
She made fists next to her face when the first blow fell. She was terrified that soon she’d have to use them to shield herself, to push herself up from the floor and run away. Two, three, four, each harder than the last. She didn’t know what was more painful, the bite of the leather on her flesh or the fact that she was being punished for no reason at all. She supposed there was a reason—he wanted her to take it. But each new blow had her doubting her ability to please him, doubting her ability to take the pain. His belt fell hard against her ass, impact that grew and bloomed into a raw, burning sensation. She whined against the floor, taking deep breaths to steady herself. The strokes fell on top of one another, building to an impossible level of stinging torment. She shifted away from him, collapsing on her side, automatic self-preservation. His displeased grunt barely registered through the panic in her brain, the fire in her ass cheeks. He tapped her hip with the belt.
“Up.”
His voice was low and stern, a provocative rumble that made her shudder. She righted herself, put her ass back in the air, and braced for more pain. He was trying to hurt her, and that thought both aroused and scared her. Five, six, seven, eight! She tensed between blows, waiting for the next one in dread. She wanted to pull away each time, shrink away from the cruel torment, but she didn’t want to fail him. How many would he give her? Her ass throbbed, and she cried out into the carpet at each fresh explosion of pain. When she was a tense, quivering mess and was sure she couldn’t endure one more, she heard the belt drop on the floor.
He knelt beside her and ran his hand up her back.
“Okay,” he said in that voice that really did make everything seem okay, even when everything really wasn’t. His rough, warm hand caressed her cheek and then clamped over her mouth. He knelt behind her and leaned over her back, enveloping contact that calmed and excited her at the same time. He left her a moment to push his pants off and put on a condom. Her breath rasped heavy and frantic, like an animal pursued. Maybe that’s what she was.
He put his hand back over her mouth as he returned and drove inside. She reached back for him, needing the contact. Needing to know he wouldn’t let her go.
“I’ve got you,” he said against her ear, his soothing voice a bizarre contrast to his violent thrusts. “Keep your hands right there on the floor.” He fucked her roughly, and his firm hand over her mouth aroused her as much as the cock between her legs. She felt forced and possessed in a primal way. With each thrust he contacted her sore ass, her aching cheeks. She began to pant. The hot pleasure at her core spread, growing and unfolding. She wanted to touch herself. She needed release.
“Do you want to come, Prosper?”
She moaned behind his hand. How could she possibly form words? She tried to focus, she tried to think, but her entire world was the throb and jolt of his cock filling her. Yes, she wanted to come, yes! She nodded, arching her back.
He reached beneath her and pinched her clit, then massaged it with his fingers. She shivered under him, overwhelmed by the sensation of tingly pressure in her pussy that spread through her entire pelvis. His rough fingers conjured hot pleasure so it seemed to slide all around her body, making her wiggle and arch for more. He slapped her sensitive nub once, twice, then stroked it with a dexterity that made the whine in her throat rise to a cry and made her hips buck wildly.
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know it feels good.” The pounding never stopped. It drove her; it held her. It pummeled her into a frighteningly submissive space. At the same time his fingertips played over her clit, made her writhe and squirm and, finally, cry out in an attenuated wail against his palm.
“Come for me, girl. I want to feel it.”
The intensity reached a peak she could hardly bear, and she let go. Everything swirled together in one great jumble of hectic pleasure: his thick cock, the slap of his hips against her sore ass, the immovability of his hand over her mouth, the tortured cry she released behind its grasp. The force he’d created inside her, all over her, broke wide in a shimmering orgasm that possessed every part of her: lips, breasts, nipples, knees, even her toes, which curled with the intensity of the release. She felt a warm, shuddering ebb of tension that left her limp and satiated.
Then he gathered her close as his hand left her mouth and twisted in her hair. He thrust in her right to the hilt, clutching her so tightly he squeezed the air right out of her. She gasped and gave her body up to his power, to his hard, animalistic fucking, to the scratch of his chest hair on her back, the taut muscles of his abdomen pressing her down. His cock was the fulcrum that held her and defined her, and she wanted nothing more at that moment than to be defined by him. She felt owned, possessed, each shallow breath drawn only as far into her lungs as he allowed. When he finally grew still, when his shudders subsided, only then did his arm loosen enough to let her take a deep breath. His fist in her hair unfurled, his fingers weaving themselves through her locks down to her nape. He squeezed the back of her neck, and she sighed from the pleasure of it.
He pulled away. He slapped her sore cheeks and pulled her up so her head fell back against his chest. He held her there, reached around, and pinched first one nipple, then the other. She was still painfully sensitive from the orgasm. She made some plaintive sounds, but he only pinched them both harder and held them until she settled into the pain.
“Good girl. I do what I want to you, don’t I?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He nuzzled her, breathing down the curve of her shoulder. “I hurt you even when you haven’t been bad. Then I fuck you like a little slut, and the harder I fuck you, the harder you come. Isn’t that true, girl?”
What other answer was there? “Yes, Sir.”
“‘Yes, Sir. I love to be hurt and then fucked like a slut.’”
She repeated it nice and loud, the way he liked.
“Get dressed,” he said when he finally released her. “We’re going out.”
He sat across from her and stared, his face set like stone. She looked back, looked down, looked around the darkened restaurant, a small, authentic Chinese place. Tinkling ethnic music came over the speakers. Prosper didn’t know if it was actually erotic or only sounded erotic because of the way she felt. She took a deep breath and tried to calm the agitation surging in a part of her body that felt like her heart. Not her real heart, but that cartoon heart that pounded a foot out of the character’s chest when they fell in love, two curved arches tapering down to one point.
“So.” Jackson leaned back and looked away from her. She couldn’t read his expression. She didn’t know him that well, not yet. And he wasn’t one of those men who wore his emotions on his sleeve. “So,” he said again, turning back to her.
She wrung her hands under the table. “Are we still playing?”