Chapter Four
“Wakey wakey.”
When Elliot opened her eyes again, Mason was standing at the door of the cage, a light silk dress in his hand.
“Put this on,” he said. “We’re going to see Aiden.”
“Really?” Elliot squeaked with glee.
She was on her feet in an instant. He handed her the dress through the bars and she pulled it on before he let her out. She scurried to the bathroom and made herself presentable, as far as Mason would allow. He’d confiscated her purse entirely and did not seem to intend on giving it back. The lack of cosmetics was a real bitch, but she could at least brush her hair.
“I wish you’d let me have a little mascara, just some blush…”
“You don’t need them,” he said. “You’re beautiful without being made up like you’re trying to prove you’re something you’re not. Makeup ages you. It always has.”
“Well, it’s expected,” she said, glancing at herself in the mirror. If she had been made up, her eyes would be popping between dark lashes, her lips plumped up by the application of liner and lipstick. She would have looked sophisticated and powerful. Without makeup she just looked like, well, her. “If I went out looking like this at home, people would think I was ill. There would be stories run in newspapers.”
“You’re beautiful,” Mason rumbled from the doorway. The gruff compliment made her blush. If she had been wearing foundation, concealer, and blusher, it would have been hidden beneath those faux colors, but with her bare skin on display, the rush of heat to her face was utterly obvious to both of them and only served to make her squirm more. He was laying her bare in every way possible, not allowing her to hide in even the simplest of ways. It was so unfair, and she thought she might love him for it.
“Uhm, Mav?” She looked at him under her lashes. “When do we take the plug thing out?”
“When I say so,” he said. “Now come on. Let’s go see Aiden.”
She blushed even more furiously. “Mason, I can’t go see Aiden with this in my butt.”
“Why not? Do you usually show your brother your anus?”
“Well, no, of course not,” she giggled. “But, I’ll know.”
“Then that’s all that matters,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go see the troublemaker.”
She took his hand and he led her through the house to the garage. To her disappointment, they walked right past the Maserati and instead went to a big unbadged SUV-type behemoth that was far too clunky looking for her liking.
“We can’t take the car we took last time?”
“Not on this trip,” he said, opening the passenger side door for her. “Get in.”
Sitting with a plug in her bottom was quite a challenge, especially when he started the car and its powerful engine rumbled throughout the vehicle, making her plug vibrate too. She let out a little gasp and pushed her hands between her thighs. Mav’s dark smirk only made it worse as he revved the engine, increasing the frequency of the vibrations.
“This isn’t fair,” she whimpered as her nipples hardened beneath the silk.
“It’s not, is it,” he commiserated, reversing the vehicle out of the garage and turning them toward the road.
Elliot was thrilled to be on her way to see Aiden. She couldn’t wait. Finally, everything she was going through with Mason was going to pay off. It would be worth having this damn plug in her butt, making her quiver in a distracting way. It would be worth sleeping in a cage. It would be worth being slave to this devastatingly dark and brilliant man who made her question everything she knew.
They were soon on the highway, headed for… well, she didn’t know where, but it was where he was and that was enough.
As they were driving, she noticed that the car in front began to slow, even though they were in the fast lane.
“Ugh,” she complained. “What is wrong with people?”
Mason indicated to go around the car, but it moved in front of him again, mimicking his motions and as it did, two other dark vehicles flanked their car. Mason’s eyes flickered to the rearview mirror, confirming that there was one behind them as well.
Mason gritted his teeth. “Get in the back,” he said. “Climb between the seats and lie down in the foot well. The doors are bulletproof. You’ll be safe.”
“Safe?” The word immediately made her worried, but not as worried as ‘bulletproof.’ “Are we going to get shot at?”
“Hopefully not,” he said. “Don’t worry, Elliot. Nobody is going to touch you.”
The vehicle in front of them indicated right as the formation began to move off road, taking them with.
“Mason, they’re going to…”
“Don’t worry,” he repeated. “These are just bully tactics, making a scene. It’s all for show. We’re perfectly safe.”
“Who are they?”
“People you don’t need to know, and certainly don’t need to meet.”
“Looks like I’m going to be meeting them though.”
“Not if you get down and pull that cover over you.”
“I’m not going to hide in the back with a blanket over me like some big screen TV you have to leave in the back seat,” she exclaimed. “I want to know who these people are. I want to know why they’re harassing us. I want…”
“What I want is for you to do as you’re told,” he growled. “If I hear so much as a peep out of you, you’re going to be a very, very sorry girl.”
She knew that threat in his tone, and she had a feeling that hostage situation or not, she’d regret it if she didn’t obey him. She crawled through the seats into the back of the car and pulled a heavy cover that had been lying on the back seat over her head. She couldn’t see anything now. Her senses were completely blocked, aside from the smell of a well detailed car.
Not long after, they came to a halt. Mason got out of the car and left the door open. She squished around and peered out at events as they unfolded. Several men in dark suits got out of their vehicles and made their way toward Mason, who was standing next to the car.
Their leader was a dark-haired man who looked about as menacing as a damp mop. He was in his fifties, she guessed, and spoke with an accent she couldn’t quite place. Middle Eastern? European? South African? Some curious blend of all of them?
“You’ve been a hard man to find, Mason.”
“I’ve been busy, Henry,” Mason growled. She could only see his back, but she had a fair idea of how he would look glowering at the gangsters who had waylaid them. “And I’m busy now, as it happens, so if we can make this a short meeting, gentlemen.”
Henry looked around, apparently searching for signs of backup that didn’t seem to be there. “Don’t have your guards with you?”
“I’m on a personal errand,” Mason said. “I don’t appreciate being kept from it.”
“I’m sorry to say there’s been a problem with your payment.”
He sounded almost apologetic, as if he was a bank teller calling up to question some charges. If not for the platoon of suited men around him, he would have been utterly at Mason’s mercy. Elliot found herself very curious about who he was. He was almost certainly a criminal, and he definitely had an organized look about him.
“We know you’re hiding Aiden,” the man said.
“I’m not hiding a thing,” Mason replied. “I’ve taken him out of play and I’ve paid his debts. That should be enough.”
“Yeah, well, there’s debts and then there’s debts. I’ve got my money, but I’ve got a few more scores to settle with that little sonofabitch.”
“You’re going to have to write those debts off,” Mason said. “Cost of doing business. I’ve paid every cent I’m going to pay.”
“I don’t want money. I want flesh.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
In the back of Mason’s car, Elliot’s temper was starting to boil. How dare these people hassle Mason and demand her brother’s blood? Who did they think they were? Perhaps they were dangerous, but as far Elliot was concerned, they were no better than schoolyard bullies cornering one target en masse.
“I think you should reconsider, Mr. Malone. I don’t want to make your life unpleasant, you’ve been very generous, but…”
“My generosity is at an end. I’m going to continue my business now. If you have any further desire to speak to me, make an appointment with my secretary, Ms. Fenway. I know she can be intimidating, but there’s no need to drive all the way into the forest to avoid her.”
Elliot stifled a little snort. Mason spoke in mocking tones that showed that even though he was outnumbered and clearly being threatened, he was not at all intimidated.
Henry smirked unpleasantly. “You should take this seriously, Mr. Malone.”
“I’ve taken it as seriously as I’m going to,” Mason replied, his voice gritty and rough. “And this better be the last time you pull anything like this.”
“Next time we meet, it won’t be for a friendly chat,” Henry said, making a threat for a threat. “Next time you’ll find yourself making some aquatic acquaintances while wearing concrete shoes. Get it?”
It seemed to Elliot that the air in the clearing dropped several degrees when Mason replied, “Boys, drop the dots.”
For a second, his words didn’t make any kind of sense, then a series of red dots appeared on every single one of the men’s foreheads, except for Henry, the ringleader. There were three on his, making the shape of a little triangle on his cranium.
“You don’t threaten me,” Mason said in a low growl. “I know where you are every minute of every day. I know where you live. I know where you sleep. I know when you take a shit. I know your favorite brothels. I know where you go to gamble. I know where the bodies are buried. I. Know. Everything. There’s not an instant of any day when I couldn’t have you removed from this planet. If you’re ever so stupid as to try anything like this again, I promise you, you’ll spend every second of the remainder of your very short life regretting it.”
A chill went through Elliot’s belly as Henry fell back, looking shaken. Most of his henchmen were scanning the trees for signs of the snipers who must have been all around them. There wasn’t a sign. She had no idea how it was being done, and evidently neither did Henry and his henchmen.
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Malone,” he said, backing away slowly, his hands raised. “I guess we’ll consider payment made in full.”
“Good,” Mason said, the word falling from his lips heavy and cold.
He stood there, watching as the criminals took to their vehicles and made their way out of the clearing as quickly as possible. They’d been gone a full minute or so before he got back into the car and shut his door.
“Are you alright back there?”
“Yes,” she squeaked quietly.
He put the car into gear and she felt it begin to move, rumbling through the leaf litter.
“You can come back into the front,” he said, stopping the car just before they were about to go back onto the roadway.
She almost wanted to stay beneath the cover. Seeing him like that, hearing the darkness of his voice, it had transformed her image of him in a way that left her quite quivery inside. He had been surrounded by wolves and had not so much as flinched—because he was more dangerous than any of them.
“Elliot?”
She started to move, worried about what would happen if she didn’t. Crawling back between the seats, she managed to settle herself in the passenger side, avoiding looking at him directly.
“Are you alright, Elliot? Did they scare you?”
She risked a quick glance at him. “A little,” she mumbled.
He reached over, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and tucked it behind her ear. “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I didn’t expect them to come for me right now, but no matter what anyone does, I’ll always keep you safe.”
“Okay,” she said with a little nod, looking down at her hands.
He put the car into park and spoke softly. “Look at me.”
She risked another glance, but she couldn’t hold his gaze until he put his fingers on her chin and held her steady to look at her. It was even more confusing now, looking at him, trying to reconcile what she had seen with the man in front of her.
“I’m going to keep you safe from them,” he repeated.
“It’s… not… them…” she said hesitantly.
“What is it, then?” He released her chin, but a second later tipped it back up with his fingers as her head dropped back down again.
“It’s you,” she said in a soft breathy voice. “You were kind of… scary.”
Comprehension came into his gaze, quite late in the piece. It was as if he hadn’t even begun to consider that she might have found him frightening.
“Men like that need monsters,” he said. “So I’m their monster.”
“So you’re worse than them.”
“Worse? No,” he said firmly, before reconsidering. “Well. It depends what you mean by worse. I know who they are because they’re the people my company keeps my clients safe from. Them, and others like them. They know who I am, because once someone falls under our purview, that’s the end of it. The chase is off.”
“But not for Aiden.”
“Aiden’s irritated them much more than the average target,” Mason said. “They went a very long way out of their way and exposed themselves to try to intimidate me. That’s a move that smacks of either pure desperation, or deep anger.”
“So now there’s really angry swarms of men who are still looking for him? And even coming for you?”
“Aiden knows how to make a mess,” Mason said grimly. “But I promise you, you’re very safe. I was never in any danger. There are never any fewer than twelve men on my position at any given time. Or yours, since you’ve been with me.”
“Twelve men?” She looked around, trying to catch sight of some following vehicle, or figures in the trees. There was nothing. “I don’t see anyone at all.”
“You’re not supposed to,” he said. “They’re good at what they do. I recruit the very best ex-military operatives and I pay them very, very well. My personal team are elite in every sense of the word. They know how to stay back, they know how to take cover, and they know how to follow from the front sometimes. You won’t see them, Elliot, but they’re there.”
“Show me.”
Mason looked at her for a second as if he was going to refuse the request, then he relented and opened the glove box. There was a pair of binoculars in it, which he took out and handed to her.
“Those are heat sensitive,” he said. “See what you can find.” He lowered the window enough for Elliot to peer out with the binoculars. The world around her became a bluey-green plateau, marked here and there with yellow and red and orange. It took a few seconds, but suddenly she picked out a figure standing next to a tree. She lowered the binoculars and looked in the direction, her eyes just barely making out the outline of the man.
“I found one,” she said, turning to Mason with glee. “I found one!”
“Just one?”
She put the glasses back to her eyes and searched for more. “I think there’s a car or something out there,” she said. “I think I can see an engine of some kind, it’s sort of blocky.”
“Mhm,” Mason’s voice came from behind her, sounding approving and a little amused at the same time. “Anything else?”
She searched and she searched, seeing a few more reddish orange figures. She was about to announce that she’d found more when they moved with an ungulate gait and she realized she was looking at some wild deer.
“There’s animals out here,” she said. “But I don’t see twelve men. I don’t even see the first man anymore.”
“They’ll have taken cover behind the ridge,” Mason said. “See how the ground rises? The binoculars can’t see through solid earth.”
She lowered the binoculars and handed them back to him. “I guess I just have to take your word for it,” she said with a little smile.
“You were harder to convince than those criminals,” Mason smirked. “Then again, they’ve been around long enough to know me a little better.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He paused for a second, putting the binoculars away. “It means that once or twice, a display like the one you saw earlier hasn’t been enough.”
“You… someone’s gotten… hurt before?” She phrased the question just shy of asking him if he’d outright had anybody killed.
“Once or twice,” he admitted. “It’s not an ideal solution, but some people just don’t learn the easy way. They have to make everything hard on themselves. Word spreads though. People learn who they can push and who they can’t. Respect goes a long way in this business. When I promise a client of mine that they’re going to be safe, I mean at all costs.”
A chill went down her spine, and in that moment she was very glad that she was not a criminal, and that she wasn’t going up against Mason, or any of his special forces.
“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said. “And frankly, you should never have been caught up in it. I am sorry, Ellie. I know it frightened you. There are some things you didn’t need to know and definitely didn’t need to see. That’s why I didn’t want to take you out to see Aiden in the first place. He’s a vortex of bullshit, and everyone who gets close to him at the moment gets hurt.”
He put the car back in gear and turned back in the direction they’d come from. Elliot looked out the rearview mirror as they drove down the highway, and after a few seconds, when they were almost too far away to really see anymore, she saw three vehicles come pulling out of the side of the road: two heavy SUVs, one red, one black, and the third a sleeker car she didn’t recognize. It was moving faster than the others and soon overtook them, taking up a position a few cars in front. The others remained behind, one in each of the rear lanes. They were being escorted, she realized, but not in a completely obvious way.
It occurred to her that the guards likely served a dual purpose. They kept people with bad intentions out, but they could just as easily keep her in. Were they protectors or wardens, or were they both? The same question applied to Mason. He was keeping her as if she were a lesser version of the criminals he dealt with daily, caging her, punishing her…
They were heading back to the house, she realized suddenly, her heart sinking.
“Where are we going?” She asked the question, hoping that she was wrong. Mason quickly confirmed her suspicions.
“We’re not going to see Aiden yet,” he said. “We’ve obviously picked up a tail. I’m taking you back home and we’ll wait for analysis. Henry nearly got the drop on us. If my compound is being watched, I want to know by who, and I want to know how. You’re not leaving again until I’ve made sure we can be secure.”
Her disappointment was intense. A dull, sulking sense came over her. This wasn’t fair. She was doing all this for Aiden, and she kept being denied the chance to actually see him and make sure he was alright. Just as she was about to be taken to him, Mason found a reason not to go. He had a dozen operatives keeping him safe and yet he couldn’t make this happen for her. Bullshit. Total bullshit.
An idea flashed into her head. “What if, what if you just got a lot of cars, like six or seven of the same kind and drove them all out together? Then they could all go in different directions and the bad people wouldn’t know who to follow.”
“Cute idea,” he smiled over at her. “And a good one, but that’s a Hail Mary move. I’d only do something like that if it was absolutely necessary to leave. And it’s not. Aiden will wait another day or two.”
“He will,” she said. “But maybe I won’t.”
A sharp look made her squirm in her seat.
“And what is that supposed to mean?” His voice was dangerously soft, but totally composed.
“I agreed to this deal because you said Aiden would be safe, and then you said I could see him, but now you’re going back on your word.”
“I’m not going back on my word at all. I’m putting matters on hold until I can be sure you’re going to be safe. That’s all that matters to me. Your safety.”
“Sure, and according to you, the only place I’m safe is when I’m butt naked and locked up and crawling around eating food off the floor,” she said with bitter snark. “That’s real convenient, Mason. Every time I ask for proof that Aiden’s okay, there’s some reason I can’t have it. Well, maybe there’s a reason for all those reasons. Maybe the reason is you don’t want me to have it. Maybe you never lifted a finger for Aiden at all, maybe you set this whole thing up from the beginning!”
“That’s quite a conspiracy theory,” he smirked.
She was not amused. “You’re punishing me, you’re tormenting me, and you’re treating me like an animal and I don’t get to know a thing.”
“That’s right,” he said flatly. “You don’t. You don’t get anything I don’t choose to give you, because I know what’s best for you. You’re like a little kid who wants to go play in the park across the street, so you just run out into traffic. Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m going to keep you safe, Elliot, whether you like it or not.”
She settled into scowling silence as they drove back to Mason’s compound. He parked in the internal garage and told her to stay. He walked around the vehicle to let her out, but she snapped her seat belt off and got out of the car without waiting.
“Deliberate disobedience isn’t going to get you want you want,” Mason said, his arms folded over his chest.
“Obedience doesn’t seem to work either.”
“It might not get what you want right away, but it means you won’t be punished,” he frowned. “You’re acting like a spoiled little girl.”
She tossed her head and looked at him with vehement rebellion. “I’m not doing another thing you tell me to do until you take me to Aiden.”
He walked past her, into the house without saying a word. She followed him, incredibly irritated.
“Did you hear me?” She stamped after him. “I’m not doing anything.”
He turned around quickly, more quickly than she’d realized he could, and grabbed her by the front of her dress. She let out a squeal of fear as he dragged her up off her feet, his teeth flashing in front of her nose.
“You’ll do everything I say,” he growled in a dangerous baritone. He put a hand under her ass and hiked her up over his shoulder in one easy motion, carrying her with one strong arm around her legs as he strode up the stairs. Caught between fear and outraged anger, Elliot wanted to fight him, but the prospect of falling down the stairs wasn’t a pleasant one, so she waited until he was on the landing and heading toward his cage chamber of a bedroom before she started to struggle.
His hand landed hard on her ass, pain bursting across her bottom. She screamed and tried to buck off his shoulder, not caring if she fell, but he held onto her easily and spanked her with hard slaps all the way into the bedroom, where he dropped her on the bed and went to the closet, where he picked out a belt.
“If you so much as touch me with that, Mason, I swear…”
“Quiet. Now. Or you’ll be gagged for the rest of it. Do you want to be able to scream?”
His threat was chilling, but her agitation kept her from fully understanding just how much trouble she was in.
She bucked off the bed and he grabbed her, ripping her dress from her. It was utterly shredded in his hands, falling off her in hunks of silk and cloth. She growled and wriggled as it came free, leaving her red bottomed and vulnerable. He brought the belt into play, but not as she had expected. The leather didn’t land across her bottom. Instead he looped it around her neck and it pulled tight when he looped the belt back around into the buckle, creating a simple form of check collar. He used the infernal device to guide her toward him on her hands and knees. She saw the gleam of triumph in his green gaze, but made sure that it was short-lived. She was not in the mood to obey. She was disappointed, and scared for Aiden, and she was plain angry at Mason who seemed to genuinely think that she had no right whatsoever to know what was going on in her own life. She lashed out with her teeth, sinking them into the pad of his hand with a sharp, serious bite that made him instantly hiss and pull away.
She saw the outline of her teeth in a half-ring of his hand. She’d clamped down so hard that there were a few traces of blood visible.
“You broke the skin,” he noted plainly. “Bad girl.”
His calm tone belied his anger. She could see it burning inside him. Mason didn’t like pain being inflicted on him. He liked to be the one giving the punishment. She braced herself, half-scared that he was about to beat her to within an inch of her life, but he controlled his anger. He pulled the belt from around her neck and put it to the side.
Had she won? Was that all it took? Standing up to him with her teeth?
“Hey!” she complained as he scruffed her by the back of the neck, dragged her across the room and tossed her into the cage, slamming the door shut behind her.
“Asshole!” she screamed after him as he left the room. He shut the bedroom door behind himself and she was left alone. In a fit of rage, she picked everything in the cage up and threw it at the bars: the bowls, the blankets, even the mattress. It wouldn’t fit at first, but she tore into it with her fingers, pulling out the stuffing and pushing it through the apertures until finally everything that had been inside her cage was outside and she was left sitting naked on plain carpet. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she at least felt she’d made a point.
He left her alone for what felt like a long time, though she didn’t really know how long it was. Adrenaline made short amounts of time seem long. As it started to fade, she looked at the remains of what had been her bedding and the rest of the cage’s accoutrements and felt a little glimmer of remorse. Maybe she had overreacted, just a little. Biting him probably wasn’t a good idea, but dammit, he kept handling her like an animal, he couldn’t exactly complain when she acted like one.
She heard his footsteps outside the room before he returned and she took refuge in the back corner of the cage as the door opened. He stepped into the room and stooped down to pick up the belt he’d dropped earlier, the one that had encircled her neck a little too tightly for comfort.
He stopped when he saw the chaos outside her cage, and looked at her, both brows raised.
“I guess you got over your fear of me,” he said in smooth, unimpressed tones. “You were in enough trouble to begin with. I can’t imagine what made you do this. Do you want to be thrashed? Is that it? Have I not punished you enough?”
“I don’t give a fuck what you do to me, Mason,” she said defiantly. “You’re a liar anyway.”
“I’m a liar?”
“You said you’d help Aiden…”
“I have,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “I also said I’d help you, teach you some lessons about how to behave. I haven’t done that yet, obviously. You think biting and destroying property is the way to retaliate for being disciplined.”
“You think tearing my clothes off is…” Her words failed her as he strode to the cage, threw the door open, and entered after her. She tried to dodge him and shuffle around him, but he caught her easily, plucking her off her feet and carrying her out to the bed. He dropped her in the very center of it and stood over her, shaking his head.
“You know you’re acting utterly outrageously, don’t you, Elliot.”
“You caged me,” she said. “You’ve kind of lifted the bar on what’s outrageous, Mav.”
“And you’re doing your best to put yourself over it,” he replied grimly. “You’re a smart girl, Ellie. Have you not realized that I’m always going to match escalation for escalation?”
She didn’t know what that meant until he pulled a new contraption from his pocket. It was a long piece of leather with a shiny red ball suspended in the middle of it. She knew what it was, of course. Cheaper versions of those tacky gags had been at every single one of the ‘sexy’ parties her friends had held. The one he was holding looked as though it was constructed far better than anything she’d ever seen before.
“Girls that bite get gagged,” he growled.
“No…” She tried to squirm away, but it was far too late. Mason grabbed her, his powerful body joining hers on the bed as a small scuffle ensued. He pinned her down on her stomach, her arms stuck by her sides thanks to his strong thighs at either side of her body as he straddled her.
“Goddammit… mpph!”
Mason reached under, took hold of her by the chin, and pushed the gag toward her mouth. She was immediately put into a terrible position. If she opened her mouth to argue, he’d be able to push the gag inside. If she kept her mouth closed, she couldn’t tell him to go fuck himself. Tough call. Real tough call.
In the end, he removed both options by pinching her nose. She opened her mouth to breathe and the gag slid in. He was quick to pull the leather straps around her head and fasten the buckle in place with two Velcro straps that kept it snug.
The gag slid into her mouth, the ball resting against her tongue. When she bit down she tasted leather and rubber. He had taken the power of speech from her and she was furious, but she was also a fraction of his size and there was nothing she could do besides make grumbling noises as he slid back a little, still keeping her pinned, though with a little less force.
“You really know how to make a bad situation even worse, Ellie,” he said. “Must be a family trait.”
She felt him pulling her hands back and fastening them together with a tie of some kind. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel soft silk that was strong and immovable as she tried to pull her hands out of the tie.
He had her now. She couldn’t say anything, she couldn’t even grasp for freedom. She was utterly captured.
Mason pulled three pillows to the center of the bed and lifted her up, placing her over them. Her ass was left high in the air, vulnerable to his displeasure.
He stood back, looking at her. She would have sworn, but she couldn’t, so she laid there, bound and gagged, her eyes narrowed at him as his green gaze ran over her naked body. She should have known that he would up the ante. Mason had never been able to stand anyone else having the upper hand. He stepped back toward the bed, looped the belt double in his hand, brought it up into the air and then back down again across the center of her ass with a swift stroke that made her howl against her gag.
“This is for biting me,” he said. “And for destroying the contents of your cage, not to mention throwing a tantrum when I wouldn’t allow you to be put in harm’s way.”
The belt cracked through the air again, landing precisely below the first stroke. She squealed into the gag as the belt imparted a searing sensation that hit her nervous system at a much higher pitch than when he spanked her. It didn’t have as much weight behind it, and the effect did not sink as deep, but it was turning the surface of her cheeks into a molten Hades.
“You are an impatient, ungrateful, spoiled little brat,” he growled down at her.
She shut her eyes, trying to avoid the sight of the belt. She could still hear it as it swept through the air, cutting across her cheeks for a third time. It found the sensitive skin at the very base of her bottom, where her cheeks met her thighs. She screamed into the gag, her legs kicking furiously. She would have propelled herself off the pillows and perhaps the entire bed if he hadn’t grabbed her by her bound wrists, steadying her for another three swats of the belt, each of which landed more or less precisely where the first three had, painting the middle of her bottom to the tops of her thighs with pain.
Tears blurred her vision as she experienced pure pain and utter humiliation. He was holding her down, beating her like a dog, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. He was merciless, utterly cruel, and in that moment she hated him so much she wished she’d bitten him a hundred times over.
She lost count after that. The belt kept traveling up and down her bottom and she kept squirming and fighting it as her tears flowed until finally she practically choked on the gag with all the sobbing and coughing. There was a brief moment where she was sure she wouldn’t be able to breathe thanks to her nose being blocked with her misery, but Mason released the gag, enabling her to take a deep breath, which then emerged from her mouth in a howl as the belt landed again in a searing stroke that took both cheeks in a hard swat.
When he was done, she cried on the bed for what seemed like forever as Mason walked around her, undoing the binds holding her wrists, then settling in on the bed and pulling her up against him, her head on his lap as he began to rub his hand over her bare back and bottom, soothing the very same sting he had just imparted.
Elliot curled up, her tears soaking his pants, her entire body quivering. It wasn’t just the pain of having the belt taken to her bottom, it was the disappointment she’d felt in every single stroke. He’d punished her because she was bad, and she really did feel bad to her very core. Nothing was going right. She was his prisoner, totally vulnerable to him and to the nasty people Aiden had brought into her orbit. What could she do against any of these great male forces that seemed so intent on breaking her? The tears that had begun as an expression of pain turned to sobs of misery that stemmed from everything. Her life was falling down around her, she didn’t know who or what she was anymore. She had lost her way and every instinct she had, every impulse she wanted to follow now seemed to not only be wrong, but worthy of harsh punishment.
“Ellie…”
She lifted her tearstained face to him as he reached down, ran a soft hand through her hair and caressed her cheek. She couldn’t hold his gaze for more than a second before burying her face again. She wanted to hate him, but she couldn’t.
She felt his hands reaching down for her, taking her underneath the shoulders. He eased her up the bed until she was next to him, his mouth finding hers as he kissed her thoroughly, his mouth covering hers, his tongue providing a gentle massage that distracted her from her pain and made her arch toward him, her naked body finding his still clothed form.
There was intention in his kiss, a passion that must have been roused from the process of punishing her. She could feel the hard ridge of his cloth-covered cock as he turned toward her, the thickness of it pressing against her soft bare belly.
As their kiss deepened, he growled against her mouth, and as her tears began to dry, he turned her onto her stomach, positioning her with her legs open. She stayed as he had put her as he stood up. She heard the soft but unmistakable sound of clothing being removed: shirt, shoes, socks, all discarded onto the floor.
Then he was behind her. Over her. She felt the plug moving between punished cheeks as he covered her body with his own. She felt his cock, hot and hard against her sore bottom, then running down the crevice toward the entrance of her sex. He was going to fuck her. She couldn’t believe it. She was still sniffling into the bedding as he pinned her down, one hand on the back of her neck, the head of his cock lined up with her pussy. She let out a plaintive cry as he pushed inside her with a rough thrust. She heard the wetness of her pussy giving way to his rod and was shocked to discover that she was utterly soaked. Somewhere in the thrashing, her pussy had been responding not with remorse, but with rampant arousal.
Mason took full advantage of it, plunging inside her, his hips slapping her welted bottom as his cock sluiced inside her pussy. Every thrust made the plug move inside her as she was stretched in both her holes, his discipline throbbing inside her tight, sensitive little cunt.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he growled in her ear as he held himself deep inside her, his cock so thick her pussy was still struggling to adjust. “You’ve been a naughty little toy, and now you’re going to get fucked like one.”
Comfort was going to come only in the form of climax. Mason fucked her roughly, his teeth finding her neck, taking hold of her sensitive skin as his cock branded her over and over again, making her pussy spread for him. This was a punishment fucking, and he was making it as hard as he could, pulling free and plunging back inside, so she felt the full effect of his thick rod making her pussy spread over and over.
He took her like that until he tired of having her face down. He pulled out then and tossed her over onto her back, the world spinning as he used her like a doll, plunging his cock back into her wet hole. He held onto her legs, pulling them up to his shoulders, sliding her pussy onto his cock. She wailed as his shaft went ever deeper, his hands sliding down her calves and thighs to grasp her by the hips and work her on his hard rod, her gleaming slit sliding back and forth until her toes curled and she cried out all over again.
Still he was not done. Having ravaged her pussy to his satisfaction for the moment, he pulled his cock free of her lower lips, reached for her hair and swung her around on the bed, pushing his cock into her open mouth. She tasted her juices on his rod as he pushed it into her mouth, fucking her lips just as he had fucked her pussy. She looked up into his eyes, saw passion and dominance and utter determination in his green gaze.
“You’re mine,” he growled as the thick head of his cock pushed over her tongue. “Every part of you, and I’ll do as I please with you.”
She felt his cock reach the back of her tongue, nearly breaching her throat before pulling free. He let out a little growl and then stood up, shifting her to the edge of the bed so that her head was on the soft perimeter, tipped slightly back.
“Swallow when I go deep,” he instructed, using his grip in her hair to pull her head further back. When he pushed in again, his cock went all the way to the back. She panicked for a second, then swallowed and felt his cock slide deeper still. He was fucking her throat, using her mouth and beyond.
“Good,” he growled, pulling out to let her breathe before plunging back deep again. She was completely captured, pinned in place, his heavy thick balls swinging near her eyes as he fucked her mouth. Her welted bottom was still grinding against the bed as her hips swayed, her pussy still wet with arousal.
With her head tipped back and Mason’s cock plunging into her throat, she was left blinded to what was going on. She couldn’t see, but she felt his hand between her thighs, his fingers rubbing over her slit for a second before he pushed his shaft deep into her throat and swatted her sex, her puffy lower lips stinging under his discipline. Elliot cried out around his cock and felt it slide deeper before he pulled free and let her whimper and breathe again.
“What is it? You thought your punishment was over? Oh, no. With that tantrum and display… with you coming for me with your teeth?” He swatted her pussy again, and she pulled her knees up to try to protect the sensitive spot.
“Down!” He snarled the word. “Open your thighs.”
She didn’t have time to complain, for his cock plunged back inside her mouth, her lips tight around his thick dick as he swatted her pussy over and over, punishing her lips with quick little slaps that made them sting and swell.
Punished beyond any measure she had ever imagined was possible, she writhed beneath him, his cock pounding inside her mouth, his fingers punishing her pussy until he pulled free of her lips, reached down, took her inner thigh and swung her around so her spanked pussy was exposed to his hard rod again. She was whimpering, moaning, tearful, and begging as he came down over her, his fingers in her hair, his mouth against hers, his cock thrusting deep insider her poor punished pussy with hard strokes as he fucked them both to the orgasm they so desperately needed. Elliot screamed with pleasure pain, every part of her utterly overloaded with emotion and desire. She came with a ragged cry, as a climax was wrenched from her body, his throbbing cock swelling inside her, his cum filling her sore pussy with spurt after spurt coating the bare walls of her sex. He held himself inside her, locking the cum against her unprotected womb, the walls of her cunt clenching his cock, drawing his load deeper as they kissed. She whimpered into his mouth as his rough kiss deepened, his dominance complete as his seed seeped into her most secret places. She was still quivering, as he began to soften inside her, holding her close, cradling her against his chest as he laid back and finally her punishment was over.
Elliot took comfort in his touch and in his strong frame as finally he was gentle with her, caressing her cheek and her neck and down her back, all the way to her sore bottom, which he rubbed in soft little circles. He said little. He didn’t need to. Now she knew what it meant to have been ravished by a man, to have been used utterly and completely, to have her body be weak and sore in the aftermath of his lust.
It took time for her to recover her powers of speech, let alone get the courage to use them. When she did, an accusation left her lips.
“That was cruel, Mason,” she said, her voice hoarse. She didn’t know if it was because of the throat fucking or all the screaming and crying she had been doing.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said patiently. “You tested me. Swearing at me, biting me, throwing everything out of your cage. Every bit of that was a test—your way of trying to exert your will over mine. You needed a harsh response.”
“I didn’t need that,” she whimpered.
“Yes, you did,” he said, caressing her sweetly. “You saw me deal with criminals today. You saw a side of me you haven’t seen before. And you were scared. I thought I might need to reassure you that you’d always be safe with me. But when we got home, you didn’t just lose all that fear, you threw every bit of bad behavior you had at me. And that told me you needed a thorough punishment. You wanted to know how bad it could be. Well, Elliot Taylor-Chapman…” He leaned down, his lips brushing hers. “It can be all you just experienced and much, much worse.”
A naughty shiver ran through her. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“If I know you, you’ll find out one day,” Mason purred. “But I hope you don’t. Right now, you’re going back into that cage.”
She snuggled into him and cast a look at the cage. “But… it’s all ruined.”
“It is, isn’t it,” he agreed with a dark smirk. “Makes me think of an old saying about making beds and lying in them.”
“Can’t I stay with you?” She looked up at him with sweet hope.
He looked down at her with an expression that made her quiver at her very core, his voice rough with dominance as he gave her the order for the second and last time.
“Cage. Now.”