Bastard.

“Ten lashes. Count for me, Willow.” His voice is less harsh than I remembered, more like a caress than a snarling command, but no less terrifying.

He snaps the belt across my ass, a diagonal slash of pain running from the bottom of my left butt cheek to the top of my right cheek. I jump involuntarily and shriek.

“One!” I cry out.

I feel the familiar rush of heat pooling low in my belly, and the moisture of my desire oozing between my pussy lips.

He waits a few seconds before he strikes me again, and I’m forced to remember how a single second can stretch into eternity. Sergei is never predictable. He controls the pace. Like a deadly, weaving cobra, you never know when he’ll strike.

The second blow criss-crosses the first, and I jerk and whimper. “Two!”

“Did you really think that you could escape from me, Willow?”

Smack! My flesh quivers under the blow. Three red lines of pain burning across my skin.

“Three!” I gasp for breath. “I didn’t think you’d bother to come after me!”

Three slashes in quick succession, so fast that I’m left breathless. My ass is on fire.

“Four, five, six!” I wail.

He pauses to stroke me between my legs. His fingers are soft and gentle, trailing along my heated flesh, which already aches for him. “You love it, don’t you?”

The familiar frustration wells up inside me. It’s not enough for him to punish me physically. He has to get inside my head and stir with a blender. “Yes, sir. I love it when you touch me. And I hate your guts. Am I still calling you sir?”

“You know, I’ll leave that up to you. Some things have changed between us. You changed them. You’re more powerful than you know, Willow.” His voice is gentle, which means he’s going to hurt me.

Two more slashes. I gasp out the numbers. “Seven, eight!” I writhe, squirming. I feel as if flames are licking my skin.

Snap!

“Nine!” Almost over. Please, let it end. “You have all the power here!” I gasp. “You punish me as much as you want, as long as you want, whenever you want, and I can’t stop you!”

“Yes, that’s true. And you still love it. You crave it. The pain makes the pleasure so much more intense, doesn’t it?”

It’s so true. Pain and pleasure are twined around each other in my head now, like threads twisting to make a rope. I need both.

Snap!

My flesh quivers beneath the belt, and my whole body jerks.

“Ten!” I cry out, and stand up, frantically rubbing my burning skin.

“Did I say you could stand up?” His harsh breath is right in my ear.

I sneak another glance at the clock. A few more minutes have passed. It’s after six a.m. now. They’re on the road.

“No. Did I ask permission?” I spin around to face him. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re done. You had no right to make me pay for my uncle’s debt in the first place, and when you—”

He shoves me up against the wall, pressing against me, a giant wall of body heat and muscle. I feel his rigid cock pressing into my belly.

He cradles my face in his hands and kisses me. His tongue forces its way into my mouth and takes control, swirling, and I nearly swoon. I melt into him. The entire time he held me prisoner, he never kissed me once. All those times he fucked me…his mouth never touched mine.

Now it seems he’s making up for lost time. The kiss goes on and on, and he tastes sweet and warm. I never want it to end. I’d starve and die before I tore away from him. Pure pleasure flows from him and into me, through our connected flesh. He’s hungry, devouring me. My tongue swirls around his in an intimate dance.

Finally he pulls away from me, and there is a dark, feral look of hunger on his face. Without him holding me up, I stumble. My knees are weak, and I can feel the pain of the belt marks pulsing in time to my heartbeat.

“On the bed, now,” he barks at me. “On your back. Legs spread open, knees bent. Make me tell you twice, and your punishment will be fifty lashes.” He advances towards me until I’m backed up against the bed. “I’ll beat you until you pass out. Then I’ll revive you and finish the job.”

I’m drowning in an ocean of lust. Why? His threats are sick, they’re terrible. I will never understand why fear and pain are such an aphrodisiac for me.

In moments like these, he could make me do anything. My will is not my own; his words are my will.

I fall backwards onto the bed and spread my legs, drawing up my knees.

He starts kissing and licking his way down my stomach, and I hear him unzipping his pants as he’s doing it. Somehow, he’s shucked them by the time he’s between my legs, and kicked off his shoes and socks. He has a condom in his hand and he’s rolling it onto the thick column of his phallus that points straight up at the ceiling. Still wearing his shirt, though. Have I ever seen him without a shirt? It’s like if he got completely naked in front of me, he’d be baring his soul as well as his body.

“Sweet, sweet Willow.” His words caress me, his tongue laps at me, as the burning stripes of his punishment glow on my ass.

I stifle a moan. He moves to suck on my clitoris while one finger curves inside me, stroking my inner wall. It always finds exactly the right spot.

“Oh, God,” I wail. “Yes. Oh, please. Please.” What am I begging for? I don’t even know. I’m mindless, desperate. I’ve been starving for him for so long now. And he must feel the same way, from the way he’s devouring me, with small nips and the swirling lap of his tongue.

He moves up, and I stifle a groan of frustration, because I want his mouth on me forever. He keeps sliding up until he’s lying on top of me. He grabs my hands and pins them above my head.

I want to grab the perfect globes of his hard, muscular ass and pull him into me. I want to control the pace, to drive him into me until he pierces my core.

“Let me touch you,” I beg.

“Who’s in charge?” he says sternly.

“You.” It comes out as a sob.

“Don’t ever forget it.”

And then, to punish me for being needy, he slides into me ever so slowly. Inch by inch. Pushing into my tight tunnel, keeping my wrists pinned as I arch my back and thrust up towards him.

“Please. I want it.” I’m a shameless, pathetic beggar.

He stops, halfway inside me. “I know. You always have. From the moment you first saw me.”

It’s true, and it infuriates me that he’s so smug about it. He uses my feelings against me, taunts me for craving him. “I hate you!” I scream at him.

“Music to my ears.”

And with that, he thrusts into me so hard that I slide back on the bed.

Pause. He settles down, the hard wall of his chest crushing my breasts, his mouth on my ear.

The he starts pumping, slowly, his breath harsh, drawing out the sweet, evil torture.

He brings me to the brink, and then stops. Buried to the hilt. I’m on fire, burning to death from the inside out.

“Who’s in charge?” he asks again.

“You are,” I sob. “Please, please, please…”

He must like that, because he starts thrusting again, pumping into me, hard and fast, until I shudder convulsively and feel myself shatter. Wave after wave crashes over me, hard, and I’m crying and thrashing underneath him, and he goes rigid. He groans in release, his fingers tightening, then finally relaxes.

He slides out of me, lying there, breathing hard. He is next to me but not touching me. Not looking at me. A million miles away.

I feel a familiar wave of sorrow and loneliness wash over me, just like it did back at his beautiful mansion by the sea.

I let my eyes drift closed and pretend I’m falling asleep. I force myself not to sneak looks at the clock, instead counting out the minutes in my head. I count one Mississippi, two Mississippi… I count to sixty ten times.

And then I feel him sit up. Naptime is over.

I keep my eyes closed, dragging this out as long as possible.

When I feel him shift impatiently, I open my eyes and glance up at him. “You always make me feel horrible after we have sex.”

He actually looks puzzled. “How? I didn’t say a word, just now.”

“Exactly.” I lie there, letting the dull, heavy weight of my aching need settle in on me. “You make me feel like a used condom. Something dirty and tainted, for you to come in and cast aside.”

He sighs, stroking my face, brushing hair out of my eyes. That tender touch…it heals me and shatters me at the same time. It’s rarer and more precious than platinum. “You are not dirty or tainted.”

Please be like this forever.

“Once, you held me in your arms. For hours.” That was after his friend Feodyr dragged me to that nightmare rape-torture orgy that I barely escaped.

“Yes.” He gazes down into my eyes, and his finger slides along my cheek.

I bite my lip. “I still dream about that. I remember how it felt.” Tears fill my eyes and I look at the wall, blinking hard. “I felt safer and more…loved, more cared for, then I’ve felt in years. Maybe ever.”

What I’m saying is true, but it’s also calculated. I’ve been obsessively studying survival skills, and this is just one of them. Make your captor care for you, and he’s less likely to kill you.

I tried it before with Sergei, and it didn’t seem to work at the time, but now I realize that it did work, just very slowly.

Oh, he’s still dangerous and unpredictable, and he could still be the death of me. But I’ve learned to read his moods, and this is the most open, the most reachable, I’ve ever seen him.

He twines a lock of my hair around his finger. Like a normal man. Like a lover, not a jailer. “You know it has nothing to do with you. It’s me. What does love look like? I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know. My parents were drunken beasts who beat and clawed at each other. I grew up on the streets of the most dangerous neighborhood in St. Petersburg. I grew up among thieves and whores. Sex has never been about love for me. It’s a biological need, like eating, and once I satisfy it, I don’t need it anymore until the next time.” He sighs. “Or at least, that’s the way it was until I met you.”

I hate that anyone had to grow up like that, but it doesn’t excuse his horrible treatment of me.

I stare at him, and my gaze is unforgiving. “You’re a grown man, Sergei. Your past is your past. You can’t blame it for how you behave today.”

And I see the steel shutters descend behind his eyes.

Something happened to him long ago, something that made him hate my family. Bringing up the past was a dangerous mistake.

“My past shapes my present.”

He slides out of bed abruptly, and stands up. Still wearing his shirt, but naked from the waist down. His thick cock dangles from a dark nest of curly hair, and my gaze is drawn to the hard muscles of his massive thighs before I look up at his face again.

He’s retreated from me, and I can’t touch him anymore. Sweet Sergei is gone; cold Sergei is back.

“Get dressed. You’re coming back with me.” He starts pulling on his boxer shorts and pants.

I wonder where Anastasia and Yuri and Helenka are now.

“Can I take a shower?” I ask. Stalling a little more.

He shrugs. “Make it quick.”

I hurry into the tiny bathroom and shower for as long as I dare. The water is luke-warm, and the hotel shampoo smells like cheap fruity perfume. When I come out, I get dressed and we leave the room.

His men have been waiting outside for him the whole time. I recognize Jasha, Maks and Slavik. His most loyal foot-soldiers. They’d do anything for him, no questions asked.

Slavik has a bandage across his nose and two black eyes, I notice. That’s the kind of life these men lead.

There’s a dark car with tinted windows waiting in the parking lot. The last time I stepped into a car like that, I was subjected to a month of terror and ecstasy that broke me apart. Every choice was stripped from me. I became a flesh puppet, jerked about for the amusement of my cruel master. Never again, I vow to myself.

I slide my glance over to Sergei as he slams the motel room shut behind him, and I try to mentally calculate how far Anastasia and the kids could have gotten by now. Sergei still hasn’t asked me about them. He doesn’t care about them, never has. He thinks I’ll just walk away from them without a word. He thinks I’ll just let him take me back to his house, that giant, beautiful torture palace, so we can resume our cruel dance.

Let him think that for a while longer.