“Cooperate,” he hisses, “and I’ll take it easy on you.” I believe him, because he never lies. Fighting will only make it worse. He undresses me slowly, tenderly almost. He caresses my breasts and stomach. He trails his hands over my back and buttocks and tells me how beautiful I am. He brushes my hair over my shoulder and kisses my neck. “I hate you for making me do this,” he presses against my ear. Trembling in his arms, I rest my cheek against his chest. “You don’t have to.” He lifts first one then the other arm, stretching them out horizontally. “I never break my promises.” He fetches rope and secures me to the bed frame like the last time, but instead of stringing me up, he ties each arm to a bedpost, making me kneel with my upper body on the bed and my ass in the air. Unlike the last time, I know what to expect. It makes the anticipation worse. When he pushes a ball of socks into my mouth and secures it with his tie, my fear skyrockets. I shouldn’t have gone to see Harold. I should’ve asked Damian to take me, but I never wanted him to find out what I was planning. Whatever he was so painstakingly building, whatever love he mentioned, is wiped away by this one, impulsive act. Turning my head sideways, I watch him pick up a cane from the chair. My heart stammers. He didn’t have to fetch it from the study. He had it waiting, because he made a promise. My courage fails. I protest around the fabric in my mouth. I want to beg him to believe me, but he won’t, not after the damning evidence he’s seen. He’s going to punish me for accepting a deal with Zane. He’s going to punish me for running to Harold, and for plotting my escape. Whatever I tell him now won’t matter. “Ten,” he says behind me. He runs the thin, smooth wood over my globes, letting me feel the potential viciousness of his instrument of choice. I pinch my eyes shut. When the first lash falls, my upper body bows off the bed. I suck in a breath, but gag on the ball in my mouth. It’s excruciating. I thought the whip was bad, but this pain is thinner, deeper. It burns to the bone. The second has me writhering, trying to make myself flatter on the mattress. Tears steam from my eyes. I bite into the ball in my mouth, but it doesn’t help. He hits me again before I have time to catch my breath. I wail around the fabric that muffles my sounds. It feels as if I’m suffocating. Spots dance in front of my eyes. I wish it was from a deprivation of oxygen, but it’s from pain. I can’t stand it. I won’t survive it. Every muscle in my body clenches. Cramps pull my calves and feet tight. I scream into the ball of socks, the cotton sucking up my saliva and leaving my throat dry and burning. I try to block it out, pray to faint, but I’m awake and sensitive, feeling every lash that whooshes through the air and turns my skin into a canvas of fire. There is a point of relief, after all. My vision starts swimming and something else pushes through the pain. Arousal. The lower half of my body is glowing. Heat devours my globes. My clit throbs. Grinding my hips on the edge of the bed, I seek distraction for the ache. Damian lets me, and just as well, because when he cries, “Ten,” the lash that follows cripples me. It hurts a thousand times worse than all the others. I don’t have to look to know this is the one that broke skin. Shaking, I half-choke and half-sob. The magic word is ten, but the hurt is far from over. It’s too deep under my skin. It’s traveled all the way to my heart and nestled in my soul. I’m clenching my knees and rubbing my thighs together when his hand comes between my legs. He touches me where it aches with pleasure until a new kind of burn starts to build. My sensory impressions are cross-wired. Raw need overtakes the pain until my lower body throbs with desire. I’m high on it, relaxing my muscles and giving over to the touch. Damian says pretty words of how good I’m doing, but they’re nothing but white noise. I home in on the rough timbre of his voice, letting it stroke my senses as the calloused pad of his finger strokes inside me. He enters me with another finger in my dark entrance. I’m hot with fever, burning up. I push back against his palm and make disgusting noises around the gag. I’m submersed in a fire where climaxing will be my only release. He stokes it higher, raining kisses over my back and in my neck, beckoning me to look at him. I try, but my eyes won’t focus. He’s got something in his hands. Lube. He tells me to tell him no and squirts cold, slick liquid around my anus. I pinch my eyes shut again, because I can’t cope with more than processing the different sensations I’m feeling. It’s already an overload, the way he puts pressure on my dark entrance with his cock, and how the muscles stretch to accommodate the large head. I can’t tell pain from pleasure any longer. It hurts when he pushes in, and it feels good in other places. It feels unbearably good where his fingers are pumping inside my pussy. He’s going too slowly. I can’t take it anymore. It hurts too much. I just need him deeper, to go from torture to pleasure. I push back, but he holds me down with his hands on my hips, keeping me still. “Shh. You’ll tear.” Everything is already torn. My heart is bleeding, and my skin is mourning the loss of what we could’ve had even as the burn twists into pleasure.“Cooperate,” he hisses, “and I’ll take it easy on you.”