Day two, midday…

“You want me to punish you?” I gasp.

“Do I stutter?”

I take a step back. “Punish you for what?”

“Do you really need to ask?” There’s a bite to his tone.

“Well, actually, yes, because you’ve done so many godawful things to me, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

He gives me a grim smile. “You’ve got me there. Fine. You are punishing me for committing the one unpardonable sin. Hurting children. I did use them as pawns, and it was not fair to them. Understand, they were not abused or frightened or threatened in any way. They wore the finest clothing, and ate the best food, and they had entertainment all day long, and they were tutored during the day. But keeping them from you was wrong.”

“So why did you do it?”

There’s a flash of impatience in his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. Pick one of the whips, and let’s do this.”

“I want to know why.”

Sergei’s brows draw together, and his eyes spark with anger. “Don’t presume too much, Willow. I am in command here.”

“I know that.” But I don’t move towards the whips. I am so tired of him shutting me out, I’m willing to run the risk that his mood might turn on a dime.

He stares at me, his gaze burning into mine, and I don’t know if seconds or minutes or hours pass, but I refuse to drop my gaze or blink.

Finally, he heaves a disgusted sigh and folds his arms across his broad chest.

“I was afraid that you were breaking down my walls, and I wanted you to stop. I was being an asshole so that you wouldn’t try to reach out to me anymore. You were making me look weak. I brought you here to humiliate your family, not take you on long walks in the moonlight.” He scowls. “Originally, I planned on sharing you with all of my men.”

“You did?” I stared at him in horror.

“Yes.” He shakes his head, angry at himself. “No. Not really. From the minute I first saw you at your uncle’s house, I wanted you. I manipulated you into offering yourself up as collateral for his debt. And I told myself about all the terrible things I would do to you once you got here, but I never went through with most of them.”

“You did enough,” I say bitterly.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to say you’re sorry?”

“That is not something I do, Willow. But I regret dragging your cousins, and Lukas, into this.”

Damn the bastard. I want an apology. I deserve an apology. What kind of sick fuck beats up a woman because he’s angry with her family?

Then again, what kind of sick loser craves that sick fuck with every cell in her body? What kind of weak, pathetic loser comes back for more, again and again?

Angry, I grab a whip off the wall.

He turns around, and when I see his back, the anger evaporates like a mist and horror washes over me.

I’ve never looked at his naked back before. Now I realize that there are silvery lines slashing all across it. There isn’t an inch of unmarred flesh. There are also scattered circular scars that look too big to be cigarette burns, but could be from a car cigarette lighter or a cigar.

Long ago, someone beat and burned him, again and again and again.

For a moment, I hesitate.

Then I draw back the whip, awkwardly, and slap at his back. At his scars. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound.

I do it again.

His bored voice taunts me. “I said hit me, not tickle me.”

I slash at him again, and he actually laughs at me. “I forgot how weak you are. So weak you can’t even keep your family safe. Do you know how easy it was to find you? Your cousins used to cry at night when I brought them here last time, and you didn’t even bother to protect them when you left,” he sneers.

Even though I know he’s provoking me on purpose, rage boils through my veins. I step back and focus on what I’m doing. I go more slowly this time. I make sure that I’m aiming, and I slash at him as hard as I can. When he flinches slightly, I feel a furious satisfaction.

I hit him harder and harder, until he’s flinching and grunting in pain with each vicious slash. And it feels good. Too good. All that rage and hurt and fear and frustration that was bottled up inside me – it’s roaring through me like a bonfire.

Is this what he feels when he hurts me?

What has he done to me? How can I enjoy inflicting pain on another human being? Defending myself is fine; I have no problem with that. I wouldn’t have a problem killing someone if they were a threat to me or my family – but hurting someone for pleasure?

But I don’t stop until I’m exhausted, panting for breath. I drop the whip. His back is criss-crossed with angry red weals.

“That wasn’t even a tenth of what you actually deserve,” I say between gulps of air. I stagger a step backwards and catch myself. Whew. It turns out that whipping someone is a real workout, if you do it right.

“I know.”

Then he turns around. His face is flushed, and there are beads of sweat on his forehead. I hate myself for wanting to lick them off.

“My turn,” he says.

“Excuse me?” I splutter.

“My turn to punish you. You ran away.”

I look at him warily. “You punished me back in the hotel room. Sir,” I add quickly, to try to get on his good side.

It doesn’t work.

“That?” he scoffs. “That was light foreplay. That was you stalling because you thought you were giving your family a chance to escape.”

I shake my head, trying to clear it.

Okay. He just admitted that he knew I was stalling. He’s given me a little information. Maybe I can coax him into giving me more.

“How long did you know where we were?” If he tells me, maybe I can figure out what I did wrong.

“You really think I’m going to answer that question?”

I keep pushing for answers. “What ever happened to Jon?”

“I’m sure you know.”

There would only be one end for someone who betrayed him. That means he killed him. Brutally.

Jon was a disgusting pig who threatened to rape me, so I’m not shedding too many tears for him, but still…knowing what Sergei is capable of, I feel faintly queasy at the thought of what Jon’s death must have been like.

Sergei’s gaze is too cool, too controlled.

“You knew he was my uncle’s man all along, didn’t you?”

A smile twists his lips. “Of course.”

“The counterfeit money.” It dawns on me. “That was you. My uncle sent real money, and you switched it out. There would have been no reason for my uncle to send counterfeit money.”

The look in his eyes confirms it, and I want to cry with frustration.

“I just want to know,” I plead. “Did you always know about the apartment in Columbus? Will you please tell me at least that much?” Had he let us all run there and then watched us for two months straight? Because it seems like he knew an awful lot about what we were up to there.

He shook his head. “No, I will not. And now you’re about to find out what happens to people who break their agreements with me. You should never have left me, Willow.”

Fear blooms inside my heart. His moods can change so quickly. His blue eyes have gone gray now, and his face is twisted into something ugly. He looks really, really angry. It’s like he stored away his anger in a vault until it was the right time to use it, and now is that time.

“What if I just apologize?” I say weakly. “For leaving early? Can’t I just say I’m sorry?”

“Trust me.” He grinds out the words. “You will be sorry.”

“But you drove me away. You know that.”

He steps towards me, merciless. That look in his eyes…it makes my heart stutter in my chest. “Doesn’t matter. You made me a promise. You broke that promise.”

“I… I…” I’ve got nothing.

“Strip,” he says coldly, and he doesn’t look at me while I shuck my dress, bra, panties and shoes. I leave them in a pile on the floor.

He goes over to a cabinet to fetch his tools of torture. He returns with a string of silvery balls and a bottle of lube. He rubs the silky-soft lube on my rectum, then slides the balls up inside me and does something that makes them start vibrating. It hurts, but the vibration and the burn are strangely erotic.

Then he leads me over to a device that looks likes sort of like a saw-horse, but with the middle board vertical instead of horizontal, with a planed edge sticking upward. There’s a chain with cuffs dangling from the ceiling right over the middle of it.

He lifts me and sets me down so I’m straddling it, awkwardly, then chains my hand to the cuffs. I have to stand on my tiptoes if I don’t want the sharp edge of the wood to bite into my pussy lips.

“You will stay there for an hour,” he says. “If you ask to come off it before then, I’ll move on to a punishment that will make you wish you’d never been born.”

Oh, like being born with the last name of Toporov hasn’t done that already.

And then he goes and fetches a book, and sits down in an armchair, and starts to read. Not even looking at me. I’m dismissed from his mind. And my back is to the only clock on the wall.

I’ve been working out the entire time I was on the run. At first, I think it will be easy to use my upper body to keep me off that damn edge of wood. After a few minutes, my arms start to ache.

Soon I’m bucking against the sharp edge of the wood. I sink down against it, but if I put my full weight on it, it’s agonizing, and I bounce back up. I try to shift, try to get more comfortable, but I can’t.

I’m panting with effort.

The vibrating balls distract me and drive me mad. If they were in my pussy, I could come. This is just sheer erotic torture. He’s dangling me over the brink, but not letting me have any satisfaction.

The seconds stretch out like elastic. After a while, he glances up at me, his steely blue-gray eyes glinting with malice. “Having fun there, Willow?”

“How long has it been?” I gasp. I’ve been trying to keep track, counting in my head.

“About thirty seconds.”

Panic billows through me. “No it hasn’t! You’re lying! I counted to at least five hundred, and that was a few minutes ago!”

He shrugs, going back to his book. “Then why ask?” he says, staring at the pages, not me.

“Because it really hurts!”

“That’s the point.”

I want to scream insults at him, threaten him, beg him…but I’m sure it will just amuse him. It certainly won’t make him let me down any faster.

The minutes drag and drag and drag. I sing songs to myself inside my head. I curse myself for not having stronger arms. I bounce up and down, and my pussy is on fire now, and so are my arms. I am gasping and panting. And Sergei doesn’t even bother to look up at me.

Finally, I start to cry. Sobs rack my body as I writhe on the wooden torture device. I hate the wood. I hate Sergei. I hate everything. And still he slowly flips the pages of his book.

“Sir, please, it really, really hurts,” I sob.

“Yes, I imagine it does.” He sets the book down and walks over to me, standing behind me.

He leans in, and I feel his hot breath in my ear. “Do you still think it was a good idea to run away, Willow?”

“No, sir,” I cry out.

Calling him “sir” in here feels right. I missed it. I want this. I am desperate for relief from the pain, but this ritual of punishment and pleading…I crave it as much as I hate it.

When he pushes me to my limits, there’s a strange kind of ecstasy that fills my body.

He runs his hands over my left butt cheek. “Do you like the Ben Wa balls?”

“No. I hate everything about this. How much more time?” I whimper.

He leans in and bites my shoulder, hard, then licks it.

The sensations of pain and pleasure are too much. I feel as if I’m going to pass out. I want to beg him to let me down, but I’m terrified of him selecting an even worse torture when this one has already weakened me.

“Will you run away from me again, Willow?”

“No!” It comes out as a sob. “Please. Sir. Please, I can’t take it! How much more time?”

He licks the curve of my neck and works his way up to my earlobe. He nibbles on it. He cups my breasts with his big hands and squeezes them.

Fuck me. Release me. Let me down.

“You’d better not. Because as bad as this is…it can get worse. Much worse.”

His threat should horrify me. It should sicken me. Instead it makes me want him even more. It makes me want to know what “much worse” could be.

His tongue traces the contour of my ear.

“I can last twenty-eight more days,” I gasp.

“Are you sure? Right now you’re having a hard time lasting an hour,” he taunts me.

That’s not what I want him to say. I want him to say he’ll never let me go, that twenty-eight days won’t be enough for him.

Sergei messes up my head like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. My life used to have rules. They were terrible rules, but at least I knew what they were. Behave a certain way, get a certain result.

With Sergei I never know what’s coming. I never know what he’ll do next. I have no control over what happens to me.

A wave of dizziness sweeps over me. I can’t hold myself up any longer.

I sag, and the wooden edge cuts into the tender flesh of my burning pussy, and I bounce up again with a scream.

“Tell me!” I cry out. “Tell me how much longer!”

“Is that an order?”

“No, sir. I’m begging you, sir.”

“Does it hurt, Willow?”

“Yes, sir!” I try to pull myself off the evil, evil wood, and sink back down on it again, and my body shakes with sobs. “Oh, God, sir, I can’t… I just can’t…”

He smiles pleasantly. As if we were discussing the weather. “One hour. Your time is up.”

He releases me, and picks me up in his arms. I’m trembling uncontrollably, and weak as a kitten.

He kisses my sweaty forehead. “Don’t leave me again.” His tone is harsh, but underneath it I hear an undertone of desperation.

“I won’t. I won’t. I won’t…” I’m shaking and stammering. His arms tighten around me.

He scoops me up and carries me over to the bed in the middle of the room. It’s freshly made up with crisp, clean white sheets, and of course it has a headboard and footboard with cuffs attached.

While he’s carrying me, I sneak a peek at the clock on the wall. The one that was behind me. It was only forty-five minutes. He let me down early.

That makes me cry harder.

He let me down early. He was merciful.

Everything that he’s giving me now is what I craved during those first terrible days in his service. He’s told me that he wants me. He’s stopped parading me around in front of his men, stopped insulting me and telling me he hates me. He’s being as kind as someone like Sergei is capable of being.

The fact that this rough, brutal man is changing for me means so much. But…it’s still not enough. He’s not asking me to stay.

I force myself back into the present. Nobody can know the future – and that’s even more true for me than for most people. I come from a family of criminals who are always waging secret wars. Why worry about what’s going to happen a few weeks from now, when I could be dead tomorrow?

He walks away from the bed, and I lie there, shaking, and wait for his return. I reach back behind me and slide the vibrating balls out of my rear channel and drop them on the floor. I hear water running. When he comes back, he’s naked – completely naked. So beautiful, he’s like an ancient Greek god, a marble statue that just stepped off his pedestal. His cock is rock hard. And he’s carrying a tray with a jug of water and two cups of ice.

He pours me a glass of ice water, and I gulp it down greedily.

“Lie down,” he says, his voice a gentle caress.

How many Sergei’s live inside his head? Minutes ago, he was smiling through my sobs of pain.

But I obey him. I lie flat on my back, exhausted. I close my eyes. The pain and fear fade away, and the only thing that matters is the earth-shattering pleasure I feel as he begins stroking ice cubes across my sore, throbbing pussy.

He bends down to suck my clit, while one hand still slides the ice cubes up and down my heated flesh, and I moan and stroke his close-clipped, silky hair.

He’s letting me touch him. My hands aren’t bound.

I’m close to exploding. When my breathing speeds up, he draws back, and I let out a shriek of frustration.

“Please, sir,” I beg. He likes it when I beg.

“I’ll give you a choice,” he murmurs. “Where shall I put my cock? Ass, pussy, or mouth.”

My pussy is too sore right now. It pulses with agony from the punishment he just dealt out to me. “Mouth,” I gasp.

“Then I’m going to make you come first.”

He drops the ice. He strokes me with his tongue and his fingers. The pain is receding, just a little. He kisses and soothes, and laps at me as if I’m made of honey. I am pushed closer and closer, until mercifully, I crest and go over the edge of ecstasy, squeezing my legs around his head, weeping with relief as wave after wave crashes over me.

Oh, oh, oh, oh…

He’s kneeling on the bed. I get on my hands and knees and take his cock into my mouth. It’s so thick, so round, that I can barely accommodate him.

I love his cock. I love the musky taste and smell, so earthy and masculine. I love its thickness, and the salty taste of his pre-cum. I suck it hard. I let it slide down my throat, and I suck and suck as his fingers tangle in my hair and he moans my name. My hand tightens on his shaft, and I move it up and down in rhythm with the bobbing of my head. His moans become wordless, and then he goes rigid and explodes in my mouth. I drink his come eagerly, swallowing it like manna from heaven.

Finally, he slides out of me and pulls me to my feet. I’m so weak he has to hold me up with his arms around my waist.

He draws me up against him. “I have no tender words for you, Willow,” he whispers in my ear. “But you do suck cock like an angel.”

I manage a shaky laugh. “Coming from you, that’s practically a sonnet.”