Judgment II: Mercy (5 page)

Then of course things had changed and it was the Interlopers who'd had to face his temper.

Mary rested her forehead on the tiles, not sure what to want for now to take her mind off her aching knees. But she had come a long way to be put in this position again; she certainly didn't want to wish herself back into neglect. She winced, shifting her weight slightly off-center. Maybe she could wish for Master Boyden to hurry up and get here so she could get up off the floor.

What if he made her kneel here all night?

Mary bit back a groan. She shifted again, but there was no position more comfortable in which to spare her legs.

No sooner had she shifted back, then did the barracks door swing open, and she heard the heavier tromping of a man coming down the stairs. Mary didn't raise her head, but it didn't matter. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to come instantly awake, as though a charge of static electricity had coursed in through her skin as Boyden's familiar black boots strode by her. She felt the breeze of his passing ruffle through her hair, followed by the faint scent of his cologne.

There was a dry rattle of bamboo clattering against wood as he set several items on a neighboring bed.

"Close your eyes," he told her.

This was it. Mary stared down at the tile just beyond the tip of her nose, her breaths quickening as her body came to tingling awareness. This was what she'd wanted. It was silly 41

Judgment II: Mercy

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to be afraid now. What could he possibly do to her that Richard had not?

The thought did not ease her nervousness, but Mary closed her eyes anyway.

"Sit up," Master Boyden said.

Slowly, her knees and shins screaming out in agony, she rose to a kneeling position on the floor. The brush of cloth touched her cheek as, without a word, Boyden managed to do the one thing her husband never had: he tied a blindfold over her eyes.

Mary stiffened. Only by sheer force of will did she keep from reaching up to pull it off again. Richard had always wanted her to see what was coming; he'd liked to watch the fear on her face and to breathe the scent of it off her skin.

Mary was familiar with that method. It felt comfortable to be able to see what was coming. As though she could almost handle it better then. But this ... How could she brace herself against something she couldn't see?

She stifled a frightened gasp as Boyden tipped her head back all the way. She swallowed hard, flinching just a little when she felt a gentle touch at her temple. It wasn't until the bristles sank into her hair and slowly began to stroke through the thick mass that she recognized the thing that touched her as a hairbrush.

Master Boyden quietly and patiently combed her hair until it was free of tangles and very nearly dry. "Gives me something to hang onto," he said as he wove the long blonde tresses into a single, fat braid that dangled midway down her back.

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The ache in her sore legs was almost forgotten when he took that hairbrush and gently stroked her bare back with the bristled side. He rasped it softly across her shoulders, caressing down over her breasts and winning another sharp gasp from her lips as the brush pricked across the rapidly stiffening peaks of her nipples.

She hunched her shoulders, but that was as much as she dared to draw away.

"New-Comers," he said, trailing the bristles down over the flat of her belly, "are generally given gentle spankings. Canes, birches and prolonged thrashings are deemed much too severe for young girls who have never had their bare bottoms smacked before. But you're not really a New-Comer to this, now are you?"

The hairbrush pricked down over her thighs, rasping in soft strokes from her hips to her knees, Mary shivered, something that had—this time—absolutely nothing to do with the cold.

"Are you?" he murmured against her sensitive ear.

Mary shook her head once. "No, Master."

"Master is a title given to Tane alone, and then to whomever takes you as his own," Boyden told her. "You will address me as sir."

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl." He kissed the shell of her ear, drawing it into his mouth and suckling it even as the prickly brush moved down between her legs and pressed against her newly shaven mons. The wooden head of it was so wide that she could feel the edges pressing against her thighs and the size of it was large enough to cover her trembling sex.

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"Six months," he said, as he kissed the sensitive hollow of her ear. "Three weeks and five days; far too long for any female to be so neglected and misused. We'll have to fix that."

He wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her back against him, lifting her up off her knees and bringing her back to sit on his. He lightly slapped the acutely tender flesh of her pussy with the prickling bristles, and she felt that smack throughout her entire body. Her hips bucked, brushing upon the large and very solid bulge of his manhood, uncomfortably contained within his pants and pressing up between her naked buttocks.

"I'm going to give you one stroke for every day you were ignored." He turned the brush over and slapped her pussy again, this time with the flat, wooden head. Mary stiffened, blindly throwing back her head against his shoulder. She mewed a soft sound of protest as he said, "We'll round up.

Two hundred and fifty is a good number, don't you think? But not with this." Wood clattered on tile as he set the implement down. "Hairbrushes are for beloved Personals and tender little New-Comers. Experienced, naturally submissive women like you, mm," Boyden chuckled, a dark aphrodisiac of sound, in her ear. "You can take a proper thrashing."

Mary trembled as he began to lift her. Unable to see, she didn't fight as he brought her up onto her feet and turned her around. His hands left her briefly, returning seconds later as he gave her a thick strap to hold.

"You've never been whipped until you've suffered the kiss of Judgment leather," Master Boyden said.

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The strap was heavy, at least four inches wide, and her hands could not close all the way around it. She barely breathed as her fingers explored the length of it from the end of the triangular tongue to the wooden handle with its wrapped, slip-resistant grip.

It had been so long and the count was so high...

When Master Boyden again touched her, his hands settling about her waist as he tried to move her, a shock of belated reluctance had Mary digging in her feet. "W-wait, please..."

"Come on," he tsked. "None of that. You don't really want to fight me, and it won't help you anyway. Now, bend."

Breathing hard, very near to tears, Mary blurted, "But I can't see!"

"I don't require you to."

"Please, sir, may the blindfold come off? I could bear it if I could see it coming!"

"Then you had best learn how to bear it blind, since I intend to light a fire in you that will take days to extinguish.

And I promise, you'll feel every stroke far more intensely this way."

She shook. "Please, sir—"

"No." He placed his hand between her shoulders, applying gentle pressure until she bent down.

Hugging the strap to her chest, she found herself laid over the foot rail of her bed, the thickness of a pillow propping her hips up and softening the pressure of the metal against her pelvis. He wrapped a length of strap through the foot rail's bars, then looped it around her waist, buckling it at the small of her back and pulling the strap firmly taut. The thick edges 45

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of the punishment strap bit into Mary's fingers and palms as she clutched it, bowing her head to bury her face in the neatly made mattress. There would be no escaping now until he let her go, and she felt a little relieved to have the option of that disobedience taken from her.

His hand patted the soft inner slope of thighs. "Legs apart."

He dropped to one knee behind her, taking hold of her left ankle and bringing it out to the corresponding leg of the bed where he secured it with a leather restraint. He did the same to her right, then adjusted the strap at her waist and tightened it down until Mary could not move her lower body at all.

Boyden patted her hip, his hand never leaving her skin as he walked around the side of the bed. From her back to her shoulders, his hand then caressed down her arm to take hold of her wrists. She groaned her trepidation into the bedding as he stretched her out, securing her hands together to the head rail via a second set of restraints.

He caressed her body back down to her thighs, feeling the tension in her limbs and tightening the straps wherever needed. Until Mary could feel the strain in her arms, shoulders and the backs of her thighs. Until she could not move so much as an inch to relieve it.

She had paid for this. She had come halfway around the world for it.

Master Boyden had to pry the strap from her tightly clenched fingers.

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"Don't worry." He bent to press a kiss to her hip, just above the target he then caressed with his warm palm, stroking the entire surface of her bottom, down the backs of her thighs, up between to cup her intimately. "Every fifty strokes, we'll pause to give this a bit of attention. After all, we don't want your bottom to become desensitized to the strap.

Where would be the fun in that?"

He kissed her again, giving her quivering sex a final pat before stepping back from the bed.

Every mean thought Mary had ever entertained about China and how quickly she had capitulated her screams to Richard's enjoyment, she took back with that first crack of leather upon the skin of her bare buttocks. It wrapped her in its loving embrace, branding her with a fiery pain that consumed the entire lower portion of her bottom without mercy. The sound of it was sharp and crisp, like a gun shot that echoed impossibly loud in the near empty barracks room.

She had forgotten how much it could hurt to be so needed.

All those nights, when she'd lain awake wishing it was her bottom that burned and ached, she had forgotten all about the many levels of hell that had to be suffered first before she could be consumed by torment's almost pleasurable afterglow. Boyden's strap provided her with a very thorough reminder, and Mary didn't even try to bear it bravely.

The first two strokes covered her bottom entirely, the broad width causing them to overlap, with the pointed leather tongue licking around her hip to sink its bite into her tender side. The loud snaps would have left her hopping were she not secured so completely over the foot rail. Every 47

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subsequent stroke after that only heightened the fire, deepened the agony, and stole her voice with ragged screams that felt torn from her throat. Though she tried to keep count, the pain had her overwhelmed by the time the tenth stroke seared across the base of the buttocks. How was she ever going to survive two-hundred-and-fifty? Mary began to cry, and the blankets beneath her became soaked with her tears and her sweat.

"You may scream and cry all you want," Boyden told her as he swung that wicked strap low enough to partially catch the tops of her splayed thighs. "It's not going to spare you a lick." He paused to caress her scalded nether cheeks. "My, you are marking up nicely. Twenty more to go with this first set."

There was another vicious crack of leather, this time catching her thighs fully, and Mary howled as the agony of it chewed into her.

"That's it," Master Boyden cheered. "Wail like that some more. You've got me hard as a rock just listening to you."

It felt so much more than fifty before he dropped the strap onto the bed beside her and unfastened the front of his pants.

He wasn't any less punishing as he shoved himself inside her, grinding his hips into her wealed and wounded flesh, winding his hand in her braid and pulling back her head so he could more clearly hear her cries.

"Cry all you want," he grunted, battering her womb with the force of his thrusts. "You are as wet as a fountain. Your body remembers the hurt. It likes it."

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And he must have been right, because Mary's orgasm was so powerful that it left her weeping, and he had only just begun to pump in and out when it overwhelmed her. The leather restraints squeaked as she strained in their hold, her entire body devoured by a pleasure that seemed to come from out of nowhere.

"God damn, you are tight!" Boyden growled. He swatted her hips twice as he rode her, and made her come again before he was through, pushing hard and deep before withdrawing from her body to spill his seed on her battered flanks.

He took his time rubbing the milky fluid into her burning skin before picking up the strap again. When he touched the length of it to Mary's lips, she kissed it, and he took her back to Hell all over again.

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Judgment II: Mercy

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The air was brisk, but not unbearably cold as Mary took her third lap around the exercise tracks. Though snow blanketed the rocks of the mountain walls that surrounded the field, the track itself had been shoveled bare and salted to reduce the danger of slipping, turned ankles, or broken legs.

She was naked but for her running shoes and a light jacket to protect her from the chilling bite of the intermittent wind.

Despite the cold, she loved this part of the day. She loved to run. The exercise was almost relaxing and it was one of the rare few times when she actually got to be alone. The wide scattering of footprints beyond the track, however, betrayed the illusion. The other mountain inhabitants, the Product, had been brought up to the bowl at the top of Judgment for their daily exercise much earlier that morning. In the five weeks since her arrival, Mary had yet to see one of them in person.