Mentor (An Impossible Novella) (13 page)

He ran a hand down the length of my side almost reverently, His rough callouses skimming from the side of my breast, down my waist, over my hip.  When His touch met my upper thigh, He reached around to grab my ass, kneading my flesh between His strong fingers.  I gasped and arched into Him.  Wetness gathered between my legs.

I was ever at His mercy, but this new position made me particularly vulnerable.  I was restrained as I usually was on my bed, but He had access to my front and back now.  The hardness of His cock pressing into my belly let me know that He was enjoying the new arrangement as well.

Keeping my body flush against His with His hold on my bottom, He reached behind Him to retrieve something from His back pocket.

A whip.

He gazed deeply into my eyes, relishing the budding terror He found there.

Releasing me, He stepped back to uncoil the whip.

Crack!
 

It flew through the air faster than my eye could follow, and a small, frightened cry popped from my mouth at the shock of sound.

I trembled as He circled behind me.  Fear flashed through my system more viscerally than it had in a long time.  I submitted completely to Master, but I was afraid of the pain that I knew was coming.

“Shhh.”  His heat was at my back, and His arms wrapped around me.  He tweaked my nipple, and it pebbled instantly under his touch.  His other hand found my clit, stroking it and giving me a reassuring wash of pleasure.  I leaned against Him, my head dropping back on His shoulder.  His lips brushed across my exposed nape, teasing and nibbling at the sensitive spot where my neck met my shoulder.

“Yes, pet,” he whispered at my ear.  “I care.”

The words seeped into me, through my skin and into my mind.  My tears were drawn from a well at the core of my being, shedding little drops of my soul in offering to Him, giving Him everything.

The first lash hit my shoulders with a force that took my breath away.  The air left my chest in a rush, and my lungs instantly collapsed.  My mouth opened to unleash a scream, but I couldn’t draw breath.  The line of pure fire on my back sent a searing wave racing across my skin, through my entire body.  Everything was pain.

The second hit landed, knocking the wind out of me all over again.

When the whip found my flesh for a third time, my scream came.

A hundred beats pounded through my aching heart in the seconds that it took for Him to bring the lash down on me again.

He gave me a fifth hit, and I thought I would die.  Surely my heart would explode from its erratic pounding; surely my lungs burn up from my scorching screaming.

Then His voice was at my ear, His hands upon my waist.

“It’s over, pet.”

I collapsed as relief ripped through me.

It’s over.  It’s over.
 

His hot tongue traced just above one of the lines of fire that throbbed across my shoulders.

“You’re like me now,” He murmured against my burning flesh.

Joy poured over pain, coating it like sweet syrup.  He cared.  He didn’t just want to make me
His.  
He wanted to make me
Him.
  I was a part of Him now, irrevocably and inextricably bound to Him.

“Yes, Master.”  I pressed the words through pain-clenched teeth.  “I’m you.”

The marks on my back still ached where they pressed into the mattress beneath me.  For a while, Master had kept me on my front when He was absent.  Even if He hadn’t granted me that mercy, it wouldn’t have mattered.  I didn’t exist when He wasn’t there, so things like discomfort held no meaning.

When He came to me, He rubbed salve on the wounds, soothing me and petting me.

He cared.

I lived on that knowledge.  It stayed with me, even in the dark.  It was a warm glow floating in my nothingness, a constant comfort.

The creak of the door heralded my return to existence.

“You down here?  I want my money, you fucker.”  The voice was a rough rumble, as though the man was speaking through a mouthful of gravel.

And he wasn’t Master.

“What the fuck?!”  His footsteps pounding down the stairs was a foreign sound.  It was fundamentally
wrong.
 

Strange, sausage-like fingers touched my arms, tugging at the cuffs around my wrists.

“Where’s the key, missy?”  His breath was hot and putrid on my face.  It smelled like dirt and rubbing alcohol.

I tried to jerk away from him, but I was secured as thoroughly as ever.

“Don’t touch me!”  I managed a strangled shriek.  It had been so long since I had demanded anything, so long since I had done anything but submitted.

But this vile man wasn’t Master.

“Stop squirmin’.  I’m tryin’ to help you, stupid bitch.”

His grubby hands pushed back my blindfold, and his lumpy potato face materialized just above me.

He was touching me.  No one but Master should touch me.  No one else should exist.

Adrenaline rocketed through me, piggybacking on my terror.  I threw my body as far forward as I could manage in my restraints, and my teeth sank into his fat cheek.

He reeled back from me with a snarl, and a second later, his wasn’t the only coppery blood filling my mouth.

My cheek tore against my teeth when he backhanded me.  Black fireworks burst across my vision, and my ears rang.

“You like to play rough, cunt?  That why you’re down here?”

He fumbled at his belt.  I knew what was coming; I recognized the cruelly delighted gleam in his small black eyes.

“Master!”  I cried out for Him.  He had to come.  He had to.

Cold hit my stomach like a block of ice.  Surely Master didn’t send this man to me?

No.  He couldn’t have.  He cared.  He cherished me.  He loved me.

“Yeah, call me ‘Master.’  I like that.”  The disgusting man removed himself from his dirty jeans with a leer.  He was short and stubby, but there was no mistaking his hardness.  His eagerness to violate me.

“MASTER!”  I screamed at the top of my lungs.

He would come for me.  He wouldn’t let this man-

His feral roar was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.  My molester’s eyes widened, but he didn’t even have time to fully turn his head to face the threat before Master was on him.

His hands closed around the man’s shoulders, pulling him from me and throwing him down on the concrete.  Master was atop him in an instant.  His beautiful muscles rippled and flexed as His fists came down on the man’s face again and again.

The crunching sounds and agonized groans should have made my stomach turn, but I thrilled at them.  I was drunk on adrenaline and Master’s residual bloodlust.  I was a part of Him, so everything that He was bled into me.  I gloried at the sight of my attacker’s blood pooling on the floor.

When the man’s heels finally stopped drumming against the concrete, Master pushed himself up.  He was at my side, tender concern threading through the vengeful lines of His gorgeous face.

“It’s okay pet,” he cooed.  “He’s gone.”

He lovingly rubbed His bloody knuckles over my cheekbone.  I couldn’t help flinching as they rubbed against the bruise where the man had backhanded me.

Master’s low growl was one of barely-controlled rage, and He glanced back at the unmoving body.  He glared at it for a moment, then closed His eyes and took a deep breath.

“He’s gone,” He repeated.  “Did he…
touch
you?”  Master’s voice was strained on the word.

“No,” I assured Him softly, wanting so badly to ease the anger that twisted His gorgeous features into something fearsome to behold.

Angry.  Possessive.  He cares.
 

“I love you, Master.”

He stared down at me.

A furrow formed between His brows.

He blinked.

His eyes shone gold, and He reached for me.  His fingertips brushed over my lips, as though He could better understand the words that had come from them through tactile exploration.

He blinked again.

His eyes turned to lifeless brass, and He removed His hand slowly.

“I’ll be right back, pet.”

He didn’t replace my blindfold when He walked away from me.  I wanted to protest, but it wasn’t my place to question my Master.

Moments later, I was alone in the light.  And I was terrified.  The world was around me, but He wasn’t in it.

Wrong wrong wrong.
 

All of my muscles tensed, and my chains rattled against the headboard as my body began to shake.  My teeth were practically chattering with my panic by the time He returned.

He immediately noticed my state of distress.  “Breathe, pet,” He ordered with a small frown of concern.

I obeyed, drawing air into my lungs in one long drag.  The sudden rush of oxygen sent me flying high, and I smiled up at Him as bliss flooded over fear.

He was with me.  Master was here.  Everything was all right.

The mattress dipped with His familiar weight, and He bent over me, smoothing my hair back from my face.

His eyes were enigmatic.  The gold and red played through one another, making His irises flash and go dull and then flash again.

He lifted something to His lips, gripping it between His teeth.

With a little jerk of His arm, He pulled the cap off the syringe and spat it out.  Fear quivered through me at the sight of the needle.

“What’s that, Master?”  I asked the question without a thought.  I no longer feared any consequence.  I would pay any price He demanded of me.  I longed for His consequences.  They meant that He would touch me.  And then He would take care of me.

His expression was almost… sad.  My heart squeezed for Him.

He eased the needle into my upper arm and pressed the plunger down slowly.

“This is your last consequence,” He told me softly.

What?
 

What did He mean by that?

“Master…”  His name was thick on my tongue, but I managed to force it to slur out of my lips.

“Shhh, pet.  It’s okay.”  He reassured me as He had done so many times before, even during the time when I had hated Him.  My other lifetime.

His fingers worked through my hair in a steady rhythm as blackness seeped into me.  It was different from my usual blackness.  Heavier.  More final.

“I love you, Master.”
 

I couldn’t form the words, but I willed them to shine out through my eyes and into His.  They flashed gold.

I sank into darkness.

“Kathleen!  Oh, my god!  Kathleen!”

A familiar voice shrieked in my ear.  Familiar hands grasped my shoulders, shaking me.

Familiar.  Familiar and
wrong.
 

My eyelids were heavy, but I forced them to open.

Master.  
I had to find Master.

I blinked hard, and the world came swirling in to existence.  But it wasn’t existence, because He wasn’t here.

Most people would consider it to be dark, but the indigo shades of the night were far brighter than my comfortable blackness.  Something cool and damp and springy was beneath my naked body.

Grass.
 

A woman was leaning over me, her hot tears falling on my cheeks.

Bea.  My sister.
 

“John!”  She screamed over her shoulder.  “John, call an ambulance!”

The silhouette of a man filled the doorway to the house.  My heart leapt.

Master.
 

But then the man stepped out into the night to join his wife on their front lawn, and I realized I was wrong.

Understanding coalesced slowly, starting as a sick feeling in my gut and oozing outward.  When it finally hit my brain, terror and anguish slammed into me.

“MASTER!”

I fought against the drugs lingering in my system, fought to get up, to find Him.  My sister held me down, whispering panicked reassurances.

“MASTER!”  I wailed his name over and over, screaming it out into the world.

He’ll come for me.  He has to come for me.  He cares.  He cares…
 

He didn’t come.  He didn’t care.

Chapter 11
 

The Mentor
 

June 4, 1978
 

I touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette, trying to catch it alight.  They were my father’s cigarettes.  I had never smoked before, but I had heard they calmed the nerves.

My shaking hands were proof that I could use that.  They also made me fail in the attempt.  With a curse, I flung the unlit cigarette away.  I didn’t need anything that used to belong to my father, anyway.  Not his cigarettes, not this house, not the farm.

I didn’t want any of it.  Not anymore.  Not without Her.

My fist lashed out, and I punched the wall.  The pain of my knuckles splitting helped to calm me.

I didn’t need Her, either.  She was the reason I was like this.  Out of control.  Confused.  
Hurting.
 

I punched the wall again.

She
hadn’t hurt
me
.  I hurt Her.  That was our arrangement.  And now I had hurt Her in the deepest way possible: I freed Her.

She said she loved me.  I had no use for Her after that.  She wasn’t broken, but She was ruined for me.

She ruined me.
 

Snarling, I grabbed up the pack of cigarettes and pulled out a new one.

No.  She had ruined our game.  I couldn’t win if She
loved
me.  I had demanded Her obedience, had been amused by Her devotion.  But Her love…

I dropped the cigarette and reached out for the lock of hair that lay on the mattress before me.  My fingers bushed over the silky auburn strands.  I had secured it with baling twine, but that wouldn’t do.  It was rough against my fingers.  Too rough to bind such soft beauty.

I stroked Her hair idly, for a moment imagining that She lay beneath me.

I jerked my hand away.  I didn’t need Her beneath me.  I would find another woman, another pet.

No.  Not a pet.  That had been my mistake.  I had tamed Her, but I hadn’t broken Her.  Even a tamed animal has some sense of free will.  I needed a toy that I could break and reassemble and break again, until she was finally too shattered to satisfy my needs.  Then there would be another.