They climbed the stairs to the third floor of his dwelling. It was a few streets away from where most had installed themselves, which wasn’t surprising given who Ryke was and how he’d always lived. She’d been here before, but never to this floor.
It was stark, except for his large bed, which was draped with piles of cloth no doubt taken from one of the stores they’d unearthed and explored. He had chairs too, a few storage chests, water in a barrel, a sofa that looked battered, as if it’d been up here since civilization had collapsed on Aerthe.
“No windows,” she murmured. The lack of walls and windows wasn’t unusual for Mucha Hope.
“I find it freeing after the landship.” He smiled. “Sit, please.”
The chair was isolated and made of geometrically precise and straight timber – squares and rectangles and no padding. It had been placed in the middle of the open space. It was a piece of furniture she could imagine surviving an apocalypse as well as a lot of deliberate abuse.
Formidable looking.
The twin chains dangling from the ceiling near it were even more formidable.
She knew his kinks.
She hesitated but approached the chair, a little wary, a lot curious.
“Wondering why you’re here?” Ryke put a hand to her shoulder blade and guided her closer.
“Of course.” Her heart was wondering too, from the acceleration of her heartbeats.
She didn’t have much clothes left and wore the black shirt and leggings Ryke had retrieved from when she’d stripped for Ormrad’s men. She was probably overdressed. Did he aim to fuck her? He hadn’t expressed a blip of interest for so long.
That had irked her but that she’d actually been annoyed had bothered her more than Ryke ignoring her. If this was Earth, she’d find a therapist.
“I want you to trust me for a few seconds. Sit.”
She sat, unwilling to speak. The moment seemed fraught with possibilities, ones she dared not contemplate.
The sounds as he walked behind her then returned, the slight rasp of some object running in his hands, was enough to make her want to twist and see. She didn’t. Doubt nailed her in place.
“I want you to feel, and to think about what you feel, and why. You must have seen what was in my pack when you found it after the crash. You looked inside?”
She hesitated. His bag of things related to sex was what he meant. Things he could bind and tease with, things that did far more than that. Her muscles tensed, as if to let her get up and run but she didn’t move.
“Don’t try to leave. I will only fetch you back. Answer me.”
A blunt demand that went to the heart of her desires and wet her panties, instantly.
“Yes. I did.”
God. What was she doing?
Though she tried to hold back her need to swallow, Gio swallowed. The tiny movement of her larynx seemed a betrayal.
Unlike when she’d been trapped in his rooms, his voice held no sinister undertone, it was soft if rock steady, with an occasional hint of gravel. She was dying to hear more of that gravel.
Then a loop of rope dropped over her head and Ryke settled it onto her mouth.
As he nestled the rope between her lips, her hands gripped the edge of the chair. Sounds muted, closed in.
“There. Now, feel and think.”
Her eyes fluttered and lowered.
She lost her awareness of most sounds, for only he mattered, only what he did, and this rope between her lips linking her to him. She felt him tie it loosely then the small tap as he dropped the rest of the rope to the floor. The rough threads persistently reminded her of what was in her mouth and against her neck. She could move her tongue, her mouth, but the rope reminded her of him.
Her reaction was a blatant announcement that, to her, Ryke was not merely another man.
“I said to feel and think. Do you like this? If you lie, I will punish you.”
But how would he know if she lied?
He would because he knew her, intimately.
Did it matter if she was truthful?
The word was a small rock in her throat. She made it be said. Forced it. “Yes.”
“When you saw what was in my pack, you could have thrown it away. Why didn’t you?”
Her chest rose and she swallowed again, her fingers knotting their joints on the chair’s edge. “I...wanted to see...” What had it been? “I guess I wondered what you meant to use it for.”
“Or who?” His hands wrapped about her neck. He could strangle her in an instant.
“Yes.”
“Did you hope it would be you?”
Oh fuck. Too telling. Too intimate. She pulled a face, wrinkling every fold, tightening muscles, then finally saying it. “Yes.” She wriggled. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why do you think? You’re mine and I want you to know it, to admit it. You’re going nowhere, unless I go there too. That you haven’t run says everything, even without those words. Say you’re mine.”
“I don’t...” Panicked, she couldn’t think.
His hands left her. “You don’t what? Say it.”
Carefully, he slid a collar around her where his hands had been, then buckled and locked it at the back. Methodical, as always.
She let him, confused. Did she stay because he scared her? Was she paralyzed? No. She remembered all those other times, and she wanted those, but didn’t want to have to say she was his.
If he thought to make her, she wouldn’t.
“Look...” She spread her hands, searching for reasons he would accept.
Ryke walked to her front. He’d removed his shirt but still had on the black pants. The shirt was draped over his shoulder. The two of them were almost a match.
“I understand you think you should leave because of what I was. I’m not your interrogator anymore. I’m the man who wants to do nasty, dirty, kinky things to you, but I don’t want to irreparably hurt you. I’m keeping you. You’re mine.
“Say it. Admit it to yourself.”
“I can’t.” The words came out in a sob. “I did like some of what you did to me. I’ve said that before, but this is different.”
“Yes, it is, and it’s true.”
He pointed to the floor. “On your knees, here.”
He threw down his folded shirt then hooked a finger under the rope where it ran across her cheek. He tugged, keeping eye contact. It was that which undid her – his eyes. The one dark eye versus his lighter brown. The eyes she’d seen on the day of the blood-snack room. He’d rescued her.
He wanted her forever. There was no out if she did this. How could she say, yes, please, take me forever?
She should leave.
Here was different from before.
He bluffed.
She could go.
Those days after the blood-snack room, he’d torn out her soul, put it back into her with a few dozen stitches, figuratively speaking. He’d been inside her body and inside her mind.
Then he’d said, go, be free.
“Girl. Down.”
Like a bitch dog being trained. Her hands shook. “You said be free, at the ship, before the fight.”
“And you know why. I never wanted to release you. Down. Now.”
Something compelled her and it wasn’t Ryke alone. It was her own self. Her needs. She slipped from the chair to her knees and let her head lower.
“You like me commanding you.” Ryke pulled at the rope until she raised her head. Then he released it and traced the watery tracks running down her face. “Tears?” He leaned in and kissed her where the tears ran, whispering. “Perhaps you can’t say it yet?
“I could let you go and in a year, or two, I’d hear of your death at the hands of an animal or a man who just wanted to fuck you or steal from you, or I’d find out you’d been sold as a slave. No. That’s not what I will allow. You’re mine.
“I won’t demand words then. Nothing spoken. Nod. Do you want to be mine? My slave. Not my thing to hurt just to see you cry. Not a thing I don’t care for, because I do. I promise this.
“If you can’t say it, nod.”
His hand around her neck again. Possession, she loved this, she did, but it was the kindness. The kindness broke her. Forced her to see this an alternative. Kindness. That was all she’d required.
She hiccupped and spilled words, “I can say it.” Then she nodded like a doll with a broken neck, with her hands crunching onto her knees. Squeeze, release. The pain helped.
“Yes, I want to be yours.”
“Good.” Eyes firming, teeth showing for an instant, he went on. “I’m going to make sure you never forget who you belong to. I’m putting my mark on you. I own you, no one else.” Now he was growling, trawling the bottom of his octave range, as if he could scar her with that alone. “I need you still for this so I’m chaining you. I don’t want to risk you moving. Then I’m going to fuck you. Brand you then fuck you. Come.”
He could have taken her by the collar but instead he paused to tighten the rope about her mouth to make it truly sink deep between her lips, until her tongue licked at the rough fibers if she tried to speak. He wrapped the rope around and around her face, across her eyes so she must close them, lopsidedly over her nose, and he knotted it again, then he towed her, blind and trembling, to where he wanted her.
She couldn’t see where that was, and for that she was grateful.
She’d rather be simply put where he wished her to be.
Choice had become irrelevant.
“Put your hands out for me.”
Swaying, adjusting for her lack of visual cues, she put her hands forward and felt him wrap cuffs about them and tighten them to the brink of cutting off circulation before he loosened and buckled them. She’d not forget their presence. Ryke then stripped her, casually. Her clothes landed somewhere to the side. He added ankle cuffs. A breeze whispered by. Her clit swelled and her nipples erected, tight and almost painful, so turned on had she become. He must see her arousal.
She shouldn’t be ashamed. Shouldn’t, yet she was. She’d given in to him.
Because she had to. Because she had little choice. Because she loved this as well as feared it.
“Raise your arms.”
He joined the cuffs to the chains and the chains clinked as they moved. Then her ankles were attached to something on the floor, forcing her to move her legs apart.
She licked her lips, anticipating the unknown. Whatever sort of branding this was, she would not like this. Her toes pressed onto the cold, hard floor.
Did she trust him? More than ever before.
“Thank you.” His voice was soft in her ear, his hands roving over her breasts, pinching lightly, stirring her nipples, making her flinch and her breath hitch.
“Fuck.” She hissed when he pinched harder then bit beside her navel, on her mound. When his tongue swiped across her clit, she arched, seeking that tongue, leaning on the chains for purchase.
Ryke laughed and moved away.
The bastard.
Maybe she should be true to herself. She didn’t only like this. She loved it, adored it down to her last molecule. She’d forgotten how he made her sing, how she’d reveled in being manhandled...Ryke-handled.
She smiled, sighing, wanting more.
When he turned this part of him on...her feelings for Ryke were those of a worshiper who dreaded the punishments of her god. That he had in the past done anything he wished to do to her was part of why she both feared and loved this so much.
In truth, she’d brought him down from the clouds, from his lonely rooms.
“Forgive me,” she murmured. “For doubting you. For hating you.”
Did he hear her or understand?
“I forgive you.”
Then he held her hip and she heard him crouch behind her seconds before he put an object to her pussy entrance and shoved it up inside her, slow and steady, making her grunt and rise onto her toes. Not that it helped her escape the remorseless invasion.
It would be the dildo from his pack. His favorite toy. What other prophet kept a sex toy bag on his travels through a post-apocalyptic land?
When he stopped she felt full and stretched and took a moment before she remembered to inhale. The push never let up and she understood why when something went thunk and scraped on the floor between her legs.
He’d stuck a fuckspear inside her and had propped it below.
“If you move now, I will be surprised.”
“Oh. God.” She choked as her cunt squeezed down.
“Now the branding.”
She hung there in the chains, legs spread, impaled, with her hands winding around what she could reach, dreading this, yet yearning the bite of his mark.