“That won't work, Sonya. I won't let you shut me out,” Nimbus murmured. “Your lovely lips may deny me, but your trembling body never will. You can pretend with other cruxim and deceive yourself, but I know you're inflamed for me.”
His words made her feverish and she felt chills when he grunted and accelerated inside of her. His plunges were hard and deep as though he wanted to drive his point home deep inside of her until she could no longer shut him out. He raised her pelvis up and gripped her buttocks as he rammed into her repeatedly.
“Nimbus,” Sonya panted his name, trying to stop him, even though she never wanted him to stop.
Her name on his lips seemed to drive him crazy and he pistoned into her faster still.
Drakkar spoke from up front. “Fuck, that's hot. It's my turn next.”
Her subconscious screamed in protest, but her concentration honed in on the lover pumping his cock into her body. Nimbus' balls slammed against her ass as if to punish her for denying her feelings for him. The internal friction of their genitals communing made her wetter and stirred erotic sensations to life inside of her.
He cried out and jolted against her body as he emptied his release into her with several breathless thrusts. Sonya couldn't stop shaking and repeatedly swore at herself inside for the way her heart and libido soared to an unhealthy high.
He tucked his prick away and closed his jeans, but he left her on the floor with a drenched twat and her full breasts exposed.
“We're here,” Jude told them.
Nimbus glanced down at her and rubbed the sole of his shoe on her bare thigh as though she were a rug for him to walk on. “Are you ready to pay for what you've done?”
She swallowed nervously. “I thought I had.”
“No, Sonya. You have not even begun to suffer for your infractions.”
Chapter Nine:
Retribution
Sonya tried to make a run for it once they got out of the minivan, but her attempt proved futile and only pissed her captors off. They went inside the sex club,
Ane Rouge,
and Nimbus took her into a room alone.
Now she knew why it was called The Red Room. The king-size bed had a scarlet bedspread and the sheer, crimson mosquito netting that draped down the four-poster cherry wood supplied the answer. The gold and white walls blended well with the extravagant chandelier that hung overhead.
There were plenty of sex toys, BDSM furniture and implements of pain and pleasure. The room excited her as much as it scared her.
Nimbus ordered her to undress, feeling her up with his eyes when she obeyed. He made her bend over a spanking bench and secured her hands with the attached cuffs. The
clink
sound of his belt being unbuckled electrified her and she secretly hoped he would take her again.
What was she thinking? He mustn't. It wasn't right. She would burn in hell for it.
“God knows your thoughts, Sonya,” Nimbus told her as he removed the belt from the loops on his jeans. “He knows what a shameless little whore you are.”
Her head hung in shame. He was right. She must force herself to hate Nimbus and to somehow become sickened by his touch, but how?
Sonya’s eyes widened and her lips parted when she glanced over her shoulder and saw him double the belt up. She gulped and tugged on the restraints that didn't give. “Why?”
His alluring eyes narrowed at her question. “You know why and if you don't then you need to have the remorse beaten into you.”
She grimaced. “Please let me go. I'll never bother you again.”
She yelped in misery when he struck her with the belt, igniting an inferno of fiery anguish on her rear.
“I told you you're not leaving. Bring it up again and you will regret it. Let's start with your first offense. You left me and our son. Do you know how worthless that makes you?”
She screamed at the intensity of the blows as the leather bit viciously at her ass. “I'm sorry.”
“Not yet you aren't.” He lashed at her with twice the severity, making her cry out with suffering. “You became a black angel.”
She choked on a petrified scream as he spanked her twice with the belt. He hit in different places and she was grateful he avoided her tattoo. Oh dear god, her tattoo. He would see his name inked on her ass. Sonya cringed when she recalled that he was the one who put it there back when he was disguised as Dante.
“You slay vampires. Some of my dearest friends are vampires. Our son was a vampire for Christ's sake. What happened to him, Sonya?” He delivered several brutal slaps to her fanny until she whimpered in tears.
“He died.”
“How did he die?”
Her eyes closed as they flooded with tears. “I can't.”
“Answer me, you bitch!”
A scream tore from her throat at the severity of the next few strikes. The sound of the belt making violent contact with her flesh made her fearful and the agonizing stings hit with such force, she knew he must be leaving marks on her. Her ass bloomed and heated with the same fiery rage she felt emanating from Nimbus.
“A black angel killed him.” A startled gasp slipped from Sonya when he grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head up so she could see him kneeling beside her.
“Which black angel?” His face was a boiling cauldron of fury as he interrogated her for answers he already possessed.
Her eyes lowered, unable to hold his gaze while she struggled to tell him what she couldn't bear to.
“Look at me, goddamn you!”
Her eyes ascended swiftly to meet his angry ones.
“Look me in the eye and tell me what you did to our son,” he ground out in a ruthless tone.
Tears poured down her cheeks. “I killed him.”
She wept and closed her eyes, feeling tortured inside.
“Why did you kill him?”
“Because he was attacking Portland. I had to save the people.”
“Goddamn it, don't you dare lie to me!” He grabbed her jaw so tightly her lips puckered. She choked on a sob at the anguish in his furious eyes. “Why were you required to do so in the first place? What is at the root of your motive for killing Sully?”
Her eyes squeezed shut. A tiny cry of pain mangled in her throat when he twisted her breast in retaliation for her disobedience.
“Close your eyes again and I will torture you. Now look me in the eye and answer the bloody question.”
“I wanted to be forgiven,” she whispered.
He released her chin and slapped her hard across the face before standing. “Was it worth it, you two-faced traitor? Is your redemption worth the life of your son and losing my favor?”
She wept silently as her lids descended.
“Answer me!”
Sonya cried out when the belt bit at her ass in several violent slashes. A bloodcurdling scream tore from her when he lashed at her thighs with the punishing instrument. “I don't know!”
She bawled uncontrollably through the storm of physical and emotional agony.
“You always were torn,” he snorted. “You never could commit fully to God or to me. He doesn't want a divided heart. Do you think I do?”
Her heart ached and she sniffled as she watched her teardrops ping onto the floor. “Why did you come back? I was doing just fine and now you want to damn me again?”
“You were not fine.” Nimbus belted her across her butt and thighs, ignoring her pained outcries. “You got my name and Sully's tattooed on your ass. You regret turning your back on us every day of your life.”
“No! I don't. I want to be good.” She refused to examine his accusation for any signs of truth.
“You're no good.” He spanked her harder all over her legs and backside. “You slept with other men without my permission. You told Dante you loved him.”
Sonya wailed at the beating and how tormented Nimbus seemed by her actions. “But it was you all along.”
“You didn't know that!”
Her butt cheeks and thighs felt like they were on fire and they ached terribly beneath the punishing force. She sobbed and pleaded for him to stop, but he wouldn't.
“And you rammed a stake into my chest earlier.”
“I didn't know it was you.” She cried as he continued to spank her hard.
Nimbus let up and came around to the front of her. He fisted her by the hair and made her look at him as he knelt down to her level. “And if you had? Would you have killed me in your pursuit of redemption?”
Sonya stared at him, not knowing how to answer that without condemning herself. “You're not a vampire.”
“What if I was?”
“I don't like to play what if games.”
He stood and set the belt aside, returning to her with a wooden paddle. His features tightened with sadistic authority. “Did you really think your spanking was over? Your crimes against me were unforgivable. Your punishment shall be likewise.”
“But I'm already in so much pain.”
“Good. We're just getting started.”
Sonya sobbed and cried out as he whacked her ass and thighs with the broad paddle. It sounded like a volley of gunfire as it cracked against her skin with merciless thuds that inflamed her flesh in every place it touched.
“Cruxim take orders from Cassiel. Do you think I want you taking orders from him, Sonya?” Nimbus paddled her harder. “You know how much I despise him.”
“I can't help it. He's in charge of the black angels.”
“He's not your master,” Nimbus growled as he beat her fanny, making it flare with hot, aching misery. “Who is your master?”
“God.” Sonya cringed when he beat her good for that one. She knew it wasn't what he wanted to hear.
“Who is your master, Sonya? To whom did you lose your virginity? Who was it that made you into a pony and got you to piss on yourself in public?” He emphasized each question with a fierce slap on her sore bottom. “For whom did you willingly sleep with twenty demons in hell? Who was the one you sold your soul for and mated with in human and demonic form?”
Her heart moved and broke in remembrance. “You.”
“Call me Master, Sonya. Earn back my forgiveness with your allegiance.”
It scared the hell out of her that she was tempted to. She shook her head frantically. “No. I don't need your forgiveness. I want to be good.”
“You creamed all over my cock while we were in the van. Is that the behavior of an angel, Sonya?” he taunted coldly.
“I'm ovulating.” Her eyes burned as she tugged in vain against her confinement. “I'm not a slut. I'm good. Why can't I be good?”
“You tell me.” He didn't strike her. Merely let her wallow in her tears in the awful, telling silence.
“I don't want this. Please let me go.”
“I'm an incubus, dear girl. If I let you go, I will have to seek gratification elsewhere.”
His words stabbed her in the heart, but she mustn't show any signs of heartache for him to use against her. “I know.”
“And you can live with that? You can go on with your life without being tormented by the knowledge that I'm caressing another woman's breasts and my cock is filling another woman's pussy with the semen I used to pour into you?”
She swallowed down the lump in her throat as a bitter tear slipped down her cheek. “I'll be too busy with other men to care.”
Nimbus walked around to the front of her. “Suppose I give my heart to another woman, or have a child with someone else. What then?”
She broke down and cried, unable to hide the sniffle of regret from him. “You're such an ass.”
He knelt in front of her, features softening with sympathy and tenderness. “I can see that tears you up inside. You can't tell me you feel nothing for me. I felt your surrender in the van. You still want me, even if it's considered wrong in heaven's eyes. You still love a demon.”
Sonya shook her head rapidly.
“You're a liar.”
“No, I'm not. Please, just let me go. I don't want to go to hell.”
Nimbus stood, becoming shrouded in a veil of hostility and resentment as he returned the paddle to a table. “Then you should have fallen for a different man.”
If only she had, then she would've been spared the torture of this impasse. Sonya had always seen an angel when she looked at him, but he wasn't an angel and hadn't been for thousands of years.
Hell wasn't made of fire and darkness as she once believed. She'd known fire and darkness. The fire of passion. The darkness of searching in vain while clinging to a fading dream. Hell was cold, empty and bright. The coldness of the truth. The empty feeling of closure left her lonely and chilled to the bone with regret. A heartache that was as biting and numbing as the frigid winds of an approaching winter. Hell was facing the truth and losing everything that meant anything to you. She would've preferred flames and darkness, but the winds of change and the light of reality piercing through her clouds of false hope were a far bleaker fate.
She and Nimbus could never be together. That was hell. The unforgiving silence filled with unspoken words they were forbidden to utter. The psychological sound of a door closed in her face forever - the door to the past. The paradise she still secretly longed for.
“I should really be thanking you for your heartlessness,” Nimbus said as he approached her with a cane. “If you still had feelings for me I would've gone easy on you. But since neither of us gives a shit about each other any longer, my hands are untied.”
Nimbus felt a sadistic sense of glee at the horror on Sonya's face when she saw the cane he carried.
“Not the cane,” she pleaded as her eyes welled again.
“Yes, the cane. This is nothing compared to what you put me through.” He struck her once with it, thrilling at her shrill scream of suffering. It served the bitch right. It pissed him off to think of all the men she'd slept with during their separation even though she'd been mated to him all this time.
“Please stop. I'm sorry I hurt you. Oh god!” She cried harder at the next two blows.
His cock tightened at the way she bawled and pleaded for mercy as he punished her for her infidelities. “Did you enjoy being fucked by other men, Sonya? Do you like throwing your body around like a bloody tramp?”
“No!” she sobbed. “I was lonely.”
“Are you lonely now?” he taunted as he flayed her with the cane. “Should I call Jude and Drakkar in here to take care of your needs?”