chapter 18
Josh’s breathing grew heavier, louder. His body temperature boiled from his blood to his skin.
Liv’s bare feet skimmed over the floor and passed by his knees. Van’s sneakers trailed close behind. They stopped at the cot, and the mattress creaked under Van’s weight, a plate of food balancing on his lap. Josh’s stomach gave a miserable groan.
“Tell me what I missed, girl.” The cool clip of Liv’s voice sliced the air, but there was a strained edge to it. “I want to hear every word that was uttered.”
Surely her other slaves talked and even befriended each other when they were alone. Did she punish them for it? Locking his eyes on her feet was pure torture. He wanted to read her face, observe what wasn’t being vocalized. In the outer edge of his vision, Van raised a sandwich toward Kate’s mouth.
“He said his parents are cotton farmers. He plays football at Baylor…” Between meager bites and swallows, she repeated the conversation verbatim with much better recollection than his own.
When every morsel was consumed, and all of his words betrayed, she finished with, “I told him Master wasn’t a…rapist, that you love each other.”
The heels of Liv’s feet twitched outward so slightly the movement would’ve gone unnoticed if he’d been staring a couple inches higher. Her knees bent even more subtly as if she were pressing her feet to the floor to mute the reaction. A sign of objection.
He was so distracted by the dichotomy between her genuine responses and her facade that he hadn’t considered the consequences of Kate’s tattling until Van stood.
“Roll to your stomach, girl.” He moved out of Josh’s field of vision, his voice pitching through the room. “Face pressed against the mattress. Ass and p-ssy in the air and spread for your Mistress’s punishment.”
Punishment? The biting claw of dread shivered down Josh’s spine. No, it hadn’t been nice of Kate to tattle on him, but she didn’t deserve a punishment for answering his questions.
Van returned with a thin rod that resembled the riding crop Josh had used in his horse riding lessons as a boy. His brain twisted into knots trying to piece together what was happening and what he could do to stop it. And with his eyes on the floor, his field of vision was limited to below their waists.
When Van pressed the handle into Liv’s hand, she didn’t close her fingers around it. The exchange was swift, but Josh was certain Van bent her pinkie at an awkward angle to persuade her to take the crop.
She traced Kate’s raised backside with the leather-tipped end. “Boy, you violated requirement number nine.”
Requirement nine? He didn’t know them by number. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could recite them all.
But nine was the last requirement she’d taught him, right? The one about not talking—
Whack.
The crack of the crop left a red mark on Kate’s upper thigh. Her legs trembled, and her cry muffled against the mattress.
Josh drew a lungful of air and swallowed the protests springing forward. Kate would suffer even more for his outbursts.
Van crouched beside Josh, his scar pulling at his lips, intensifying the threat of his proximity.
“Hey, buddy. The Mistress is a real stickler about rules, but don’t worry. The girl will accept your punishment.”
A roar pummeled through Josh’s throat, and he slammed his jaw shut, trapping it. This horsecrap wasn’t directed by Liv, and Van knew that punishing Kate would hurt Josh the most.
Van stood, sidled up to Liv, and circled a finger on the back of her thigh, just below the hem of the minidress. “Twenty strokes. Right, Mistress?”
A battle of emotions coursed through him, heating his blood and rushing his breaths. He clutched the chains with white-knuckled fists and braced for the most messed up moment of his life.
And so it went. A garbled scream followed every whack, each one corkscrewing through his heart, stripping away pieces that would never be recovered. Liv kept unimaginable control of her swings, bringing down her arm in a rhythmic tempo as if moving to a cadence no one but her could hear.
He shuddered with the smack of leather on flesh, the pierce of Kate’s wails in his ears and the twitch of her small body receiving his punishment under his gaze. Guilt fisted his stomach and shoved the turmoil to his throat.
Each strike fell hard and steady, but the more Liv swung, the more noticeable the trembling became in her free hand. Her fingers pressed against her thigh and her body seemed to lose its upright, stiff posture. It was a subtle change, but something was definitely pulling at her resolve.
Finally, she lowered the crop. A pattern of red welts striped Kate’s backside and thighs but did not break the skin.
Liv circled around him to stand at his back. He hadn’t seen her face since she’d returned, didn’t know what mask she was wearing, if one at all. What was she feeling beneath her stony exterior?
What held her here, bending her to do things he knew she didn’t want to do?
Maybe he was just imagining her reluctance. Lord knew he prayed for it. There were so many unyielding barriers between them. Her masks. His chains. Van.
When Van released Kate from her restraints, she lowered her eyes and her knees to the floor, crawling toward Liv, legs trembling. “Thank you for the discipline, Mistress.” Her words plunged Josh deeper into the cold clutch of his new reality. It was a terrifying feeling to be enchained by people who could break a girl so unequivocally she thanked them for it. And while Liv delivered the strikes, he was convinced she was nothing more than an instrument operated by another.
Across the room, Van leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression slack but watchful.
No doubt there would be a profusion of defining moments in the weeks to come, but Josh suspended this one in his mind, branding it to memory, and made a vow to himself. He would adapt to this environment, but he would not become an instrument, an empty shell, or a grateful slave. His parents would surrender their lives before they’d want him to become something less than he was.
His heart ached at the thought of anything happening to them, but he sat lighter in his resolve, his shoulders loosened and his jaw unlocked.
“This training session will focus on requirement two.” Liv’s detached voice tiptoed over his shoulder. “Given your inability to remember the requirements, repeat after me. Slave will service Master sexually with exceptional skill, and his body will be prepared to make it easy for Master.” Ugh. He never wanted to hear that rule again. He climbed to his feet. “Slave will break through Mistress’s mask with exceptional skill—”
Crack.
Fire erupted on his backside, a concentrated burn in the crease of his butt and thigh. Dear God, she had an arm on her. He breathed through it and hung on the support of the chains. He glanced over his shoulder, not giving a crap about the rules. His throat dried at what he found there.
Red bled over the white of her left eye, surrounded by pink, swollen skin. His heart roared in his ears, and his fingers curled into his palms. With the ragged half-inch cut on her brow bone and the scar marring the length of her cheek, she looked like a battered mess. Worse was the pleading fragility softening the edges of her gaze. She was begging him for something. To obey her? To ignore the beating Van had obviously given her?
Van held his relaxed pose against the wall, but there were signs of edginess. His arms were crossed too tightly, his fingers pressed against his biceps, and the skin around the indentations of his grip blanched.
With Kate in her kneeling position beside Josh and Liv at his back, a division was drawn in his mind. There was a significant intersection in the room. Josh stood with the girls and faced the true threat.
A toothpick rolled slowly between Van’s lips as he studied Josh. Perhaps Van was measuring him the way he weighed Van. Josh’s limited counseling experience taught him that an abuser’s violence was rooted in arrogance, in a belief that no one was as good as he was. Liv was someone Van could control and possess, someone to serve him. That sense of ownership bred jealousy not love.
Van was a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a few anger-management sessions, not that the man would be willing to talk through his issues. Because even if he could be rehabilitated, one harrowing fact remained. Josh was on the wrong side of the bars—or chains.
If Van moved close enough, could Josh hold himself by the chains, swing his legs up, and wrap them around the man’s throat? What then? He’d seen them both remove weapons hidden in their clothes. Even if his arms were free, he would still be outmatched by muscle and whatever Van was armed with. Despite the challenge charging his nerves, there was nothing he could say or do to stop this training session.
To top it off, Liv’s pleading eyes held a desperate grip around his heart. He didn’t want to make this harder on her, and with that certainty, he turned toward her with his head lowered. Kneeling at her feet, the chains crisscrossing above him, he tried to repeat the requirement from memory, with a few adjustments. “Slave will service Mistress with exceptional skill, and his body will be prepared to make it easy for her.”
Her toes flexed. She seemed to be digesting his wording changes. “Slaves, stand and face me.” He rose with Kate, surprised by her wide eyes when they locked on Liv’s swollen face. Kate’s shock flashed for only a second before she averted her gaze. Van, who appeared bored by the whole exchange, picked his teeth with the toothpick. Was his abuse a rare thing? Or did Liv usually hide the evidence behind her masks?
She pinched Kate’s chin, capturing her focus. “We’re going to teach the boy the proper way to kiss.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Kate wet her lips, pressed her bare breasts against Liv’s larger ones, and tilted her head.
At a similar height, their mouths brushed with ease and familiarity. Slowly, enthrallingly, it bloomed into a jaw-stretching, tongue-touching, hands-wandering-curves pleasure to watch. The intimate slide of bodies and lips was sweet, gentle, and hell on his libido. Throughout the kiss, Kate held her mouth open and accepting, her tongue tracing her own lips as if inviting Liv to lead. The fluidity of their shared breaths drew him in, heating and hardening his groin. He gripped the chains to steady his balance.
“Very good.” Liv pulled back, her smile quivering. No doubt the muscle movement aggravated her injury. “A slave’s kiss anticipates her Master. It’s intuitive, an articulation in submission, total perception-by-feel. Return to the cot, girl.”
Beneath the delivery of her words lurked a strained emotion. It didn’t sound like a scripted speech. More like a remembered feeling leaking from a deep well within her. Something akin to the inviting kiss she’d let him steer in his truck. What did that mean? How did it fit with her motivations?
Those answers held the key to unlocking her.
“Boy.” Liv stared up at him. “As with all your requirements, number two is commanded by your future Master, for his purpose, which means you will learn how to kiss a man the way a man desires.”