Anika:
He watches me from across the table and I feel the tension building between us like we’re both in an old fashioned quick draw waiting for the other to make the first move. I’m on edge, but mainly because of how he found me. I was desperately holding onto any semblance of sanity when I heard him calling my name. He caught me off guard when he asked about the blood, and I used whatever I could to get him to change subjects. Now hopefully I can make him forget that encounter altogether.
After sitting in silence for a couple of minutes, he cracks. “I don’t know what’s wrong, and it won’t do me any good to ask, but I know I can turn this birthday around for you. Let me show you something that I think can help.” He stands, offering me his hand and I toss my napkin down. As I slide my hand into his, this feeling of warmth fills me. I’m content, just to hold his hand and enjoy the moment. I’m feeling off. I got what I wanted and did what needed to be done, but I still feel empty. The problem is, Carter seems to be the only thing that can fill me up.
Carter tucks me into his car and straps me in, planting a soft kiss on my lips. The sweet, caring gestures are comforting, but in that comfort, there’s fear. I don’t want to sink to far, only to tear another hole in my already wounded soul when I have to say good bye. I’d say that it’s for his own good, but I’m selfish and the truth is any more heartache might finish off what little humanity I have left. I sit and think about how to handle this storm that’s brewing inside as we drive. Not a word is shared between us as I continue to stare out the window at the wet pavement as his hand rests on my bare thigh.
The drive passes quickly as we both seem to be lost inside our own heads, and we come to a stop outside an unmarked black building with blacked out black glass windows. A valet immediately meets Carter at his door, taking his key fob. Carter helps me out and the doors open for us. We step into the dimly lit foyer and are greeted by a pretty blonde girl that looks like she is imitating a pin up model.
“Mr. Linwood,” she purrs.
“Good evening, Margo. Make sure you put me down for a room,” he says and she hands him a key and her eyes slide past him, and to me where they land on our interlaced fingers and her lips pinch in distaste.
“I’ll need your guest’s name for the book,” she says, but this time her voice has cooled a few degrees.
“Anika Borkova,” I say and spell it out for her since it is unusual.
“You can mark her down as my permanent partner. Tell Ray to add it to my bill, and I’ll take care of it.”
“Yes sir,” she says, hitting a button and the glass panels behind her slide back into the walls revealing a luxurious bar and lounge area. The place drips with decadence and money as people sit around in small groups drinking and discussing business and social gossip, no doubt.
Carter snags a couple glasses of champagne from a passing waitresses tray and hands me one, clinking his glass to mine.
“To your birthday, pretty girl.” I smile and take a sip, eyeing the glass.
Obsidian is scrawled across the crystal in gold foiling and I should have known. He takes my hand bypassing all of the patrons who eye us curiously, and leads us down one of the low-lit hallways off to the side. Like he’s done it a thousand times before, Carter pushes back a heavy velvet curtain revealing a keypad. He enters a combination and the doors part revealing a hidden lounge, but the activities behind these walls are far less mundane than the activities in the front lounge.
I’ve heard rumors about Obsidian. I’m never sure what to believe and what to dismiss, but this is something else entirely. It’s dark and luxurious. It’s sin, taboo, heaven and hell and it’s all laid out before me like my own personal dark paradise. I can see it written all over Carter’s handsome face. He’s conflicted. He thinks that it will scare me off – that this isn’t the exact type of thing I’ve fantasized about. Little does he know, but he just gave me the keys to my kingdom.
“You aren’t running,” he interrupts my thoughts, and I hear the hope in his voice.
“I’m not,” I confirm, and I feel the wicked smile spread across my face.
“You’ve done this before?” his head tilts towards the various scenes in front of us, and I fixate on the one right before me. The woman is suspended from straps hanging on the ceiling that are connected to the ropes that bind her entire body in various unnatural ways. Her face is purple as her partner continues to fuck her with his hands circling her neck. It’s fascinating.
“Never,” I say on almost a whisper, answering his question.
“But you’re into it?” he questions again with an almost hesitant smile.
“Carter,” I say his name firmly and turn to face him completely so I can look him in the eye. Something I typically avoid, because it’s like he can see my soul, and all of the darkness it holds.
“I want this. I’ve never done it, but it doesn’t mean that I haven’t fantasized about it and thought about it as I get myself off in bed at night. I want you to do this with me. I want you to dominate and violate me in obscene ways.” I motion towards the platform in front of us. “I want you to punish me, choke the ever-living shit out of me until I can’t breathe and then fuck me until I can’t even begin to see straight.”
“You’ve got a dirty fucking mouth, Anika.” Grabbing the back of my neck, he pulls my mouth to meet his in a forceful, hungry kiss that almost hurts. “I love that, baby. God, you have no idea what I want to do to you. I’d sink into you right here and now.” He moans into my mouth before biting down on my bottom lip. His own darkness is showing and I revel it. I enjoy knowing that there’s someone out there to share in this tiny piece of my wickedness, even if I can’t keep him forever.
“If I’m not mistaken, I think that’s allowed in this establishment.” I smirk.
“Don’t tempt me, pretty girl. That will happen soon enough. I want people to see you and watch as I own your body. But not tonight. Tonight, is just for us. Come on.” He grabs my hand and leads me down another hallway with heavy velvet curtains.
Some of them are drawn completely on either side, but others are opened revealing smoked glass walls where you can see into the rooms behind them. They almost appear to be like bedrooms, but instead of typical furnishings, they are outfitted with beds, benches, ceiling beams and various attachments, and even human sized cages. Some of the rooms even have open bathrooms with tiled walls and floors with massive floor drains.
“It’s for wet play,” Carter says, catching what I’m looking at. “Some people like to urinate, some just like oils and other liquids. Some even like blood or fake blood.” He shrugs. “They like to accommodate all fantasies and fetishes here.”
“I’m gathering.” My eyes travel to the next room where there’s a group of six or more in a tangle of limbs writhing together as one on a massive bed of sorts.
“Don’t even think about it,” Carter warns mischievously. “I’m not sharing you.”
“I don’t think you have to worry. I don’t even like that many people.” I motion to the group and he laughs pulling me along. A few doors down we come to a stop and Carter finds an ornate golden key on his keyring and fits it into the lock of one of the doors.
Inside the lights are low, but I can see the outline of the bed situated in the middle. Carter hits a button on the wall, bringing up the lights enough that I can make out the details. The walls are covered in a deep emerald wallpaper that almost shimmers under the lighting and the bed is covered in a black satin.
“I love it here,” I breathe, running my hand over the leather bedframe that’s studded with antique brass trim.
“It reminds me of you.” Carter smiles that panty dropping smile he’s perfected as he begins slipping out of his jacket.
“Tell me what to do.” I look at him, and that predatory look is back as he eyes me.
“In here – with me, I want you to forget. Let go of everything, and let me have it. Put it on me, let me take it from you and give you back that pain you hold inside yourself in a way you like. Let me control you and your pleasure.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. It’s a lot to give up,” I respond, not wanting to meet his gaze.
He does it for me as he takes my face in his hands. “You can, and you will, Anika.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good. Now take of your clothes,” he orders, and a zing of excitement shoots through me at his low, seductive tone. Its laced with authority, but underneath it I can still hear the Carter I know.
“May I ask a question?”
“You may,” he replies stepping closer.
“Are you a serious dominant? Because I can’t give you complete and total control of my life.”
“Only in the bedroom, my sweet, beautiful girl,” he answers and I feel my eyebrows pull together, but I don’t have to wait long before he elaborates. “I like control in all forms. That’s no secret, but I don’t want to control every aspect of a woman’s life. I just want to control her pleasure and her pain. There’s something so raw and beautiful in the give and take. Something so fascinating about watching a woman reach her breaking point. That’s the point when she realizes she is absolutely helpless to the pain or the pleasure, and the only thing she can do is let it consume her, digest her and rebuild her from the inside out.”
“Good, because I want that. I want you inside me metaphorically and physically. I deserve to be punished, but I refuse to give up all control. I can’t. There are too many pieces in play. But in here? With you? I trust you to take care of me and give me what I need and deserve. I’m not scared.”
He stalks towards me, closing the distance and I can already feel my body responding to the desire that is near crippling. I know I’m attractive. My looks are partly how I’ve managed to accomplish the things I have. No one expects the pretty girl to be the one that will slit your throat and rejoice in your pooling blood. But the way Carter looks at me is different. He looks at me the way I want to look at myself – seeing only the beautiful and the good parts. He doesn’t know the monsters that live inside my head, or the things I need to do in order to feed them.
I stand here waiting for him to close the distance and take what he’s already claimed as his. The thought of being owned completely by Carter is more than appealing to me, but I’m also smart enough to know that it can never happen. I’ve already started compartmentalizing my feelings. This is all we will ever be together – I’ve already decided. What we have will be reduced to two people satiating this carnal need for pain, punishment, pleasure and raw uninhibited fucking.
Finishing the task I was given, he grabs the hem of my dress, and pulls it over my head, before wrapping his fingers around my throat and squeezing just enough that stars begin to dot my vision. The room is warm, but I still feel my skin prickle under his gaze.
It’s consuming me.
“When we are together like this, you obey me. When we are together, we will be honest with each other. It’s the only way it works.” He says, and I don’t know how much I can give him. There’s so much he doesn’t know and will never know.
He lets go of my neck and circles my body to unfasten my bra, leaving me only in my thigh high boots and thong. I notice his voice has taken on a different tone. It’s still seductive, but lower now with an intense authority about it.
He continues, “It will be intense, both in pleasure and pain. Do you think you have any hard limits, baby?” The way he uses that nickname curls around me, warming me up from the inside.
“I don’t know if it qualifies as a hard limit, but I’m not a fan of anal penetration,” I confess, and the memories of my face being pressed into a filthy mattress while I’m taken from behind try to claw their way out. Clenching my teeth and taking a deep breath, I try to force the rest of those memories back into the dead hole inside of me that holds all of those inhuman and vile parts of me. Those demons only come out to play when I let them, or when I need them to feed my aggression like they feed on my pain.
“Tell me why,” he commands, and for the first time in years, I shrink into myself not willing to take a stand. I can’t tell him this. It is far from the worst things I’ve done, but to me it’s more shameful because I felt like I was powerless.
“I can’t do that.” I drop my eyes, unable to meet his gaze.
“Anika, it stays with me in this room. Trust, remember? I need to know, so I don’t hurt you.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, cursing myself, hating myself. “I’ve had a bad experience. It was many years ago now, but I can still remember the feeling. I remember the burn, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was being ripped open…” I can’t finish.
“Christ, Anika. How old were you?” he wraps his arms tenderly around me. The softness of his embrace is at complete odds of the fire in his eyes.
“I’d just turned sixteen. I had already lost my virginity. I didn’t want… my brother… It was just something I had to do.” I leave it at that because I’m not sure there is really a way to describe how I basically whored myself out at fifteen- trading sexual favors to dealers and crooked cops just so my brother would not get beaten to a pulp or wind up in juvie.
“I promise you this, Anika.” He tilts my face to meet his. “You won’t feel like that with me. You can let that fear go. There will be pain, but it will be nothing you don’t crave more of. Trust me, Anika.” He soothes me, stroking my hair.
“I trust you.” I don’t think I’ve spoken those words in fifteen years, if at all, but I know they are the truth. I trust Carter because I know that even with these dark fantasies and fetishes, he is the light in my own darkness.
“I hope you don’t need it, but if you do, what do you want your safe word to be?” he asks, and I don’t hesitate before I say, “limit,” in Russian.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Predel.” I pronounce it phonetically for him. “It means limit in Russian.”
“Warning word?”
“I won’t need one, Carter. It’s time for you to trust me now.” He doesn’t look happy with my decision, but he respects it.
“We’re going to do this a little differently this time. Tell me what you want, Ani. Pain then pleasure, only pleasure? It’s your birthday – I’m allowing you to choose.”
“Pain first, then pleasure. I need to be punished, then fucked until I forget,” I say as he runs his thumb roughly along my bottom lip. I see the questions swirling in his eyes, but he’s wise enough not to ask.
“Take off your underwear, but leave the boots.” His tone has returned to the commanding voice of a dominant and I obey as my sex clenches involuntarily.
“In this room, you will not speak unless you have permission, you will bend to my will, and you will not cum without me allowing you to do so. If you can’t follow the rules, there will be more punishments. Understood? You may answer.”
“Yes, sir,” I answer him and he groans.
“Normally, my submissive for the night calls me by my name, but god if I don’t love you calling me sir,” he tells me almost as if it is a thought and not meant for my ears.
“Go to the bench, lean over it and grab the handles on the wall, Anika.”
Doing as he asks, I bend myself over the black leather whipping bench and hold on tightly to the handles. My skin tingles with anticipation as I feel him behind me, and I know he’s planning his next move. He’s so much like me in that every move he makes is deliberate. Calculated.
“Look at you, my pretty girl, dripping at just the thought of taking my whip,” he practically growls as he runs his full hand through my slick heat, and uses his wet hand to smack me harshly on my backside. It’s still slightly tender from earlier. I choke out a moan at the delicious warmth that spreads outward from where his hand had been.
“You like that? Hmm?” he asks, smacking the other side with just as much intensity.
“More,” I command, needing to feel something.
“What did I tell you about speaking? I know what you need, baby.” I feel him leave for a second, but I don’t look after him, determined to make this work. He returns, and I hear the steady slapping of leather on his hand.
“Normally I wouldn’t warn you, but since this is our first time playing, I’ll be considerate.” His voice is calm, and within a second I feel the sharp sting of leather on my ass.
Out of the corner of my eye I see him holding what appears to be a black leather belt with a handle. It has tiny studs dotting its surface.
“Head down,” he barks, and I obey as the leather hits me again with a loud snap.
It’s a biting pain, but not so much that I pull away. Instead, I find myself wanting to inch closer, press against it to feel it deeper again and again as the leather meets my skin along my back, bottom and thighs. I want to let it turn into that sweet, tingling warmth that edges me towards a release that most people don’t know is possible, and others can’t possibly understand. I feel it over and over, and I hear myself whimpering and making wanton sounds amidst the brutality that should do the opposite. But I’m sick, and I know it. I want and I crave things that would make most people ill. Suddenly the beast within me takes over and the leather on my skin isn’t enough any longer, I yearn for more pain. To hurt physically like I have emotionally and to receive the hurt I’ve dealt out. I want to earn the pleasure by enduring my punishment, and believe me, I deserve to be punished.
“More,” I choke out again, hoping he’ll feel my need and give me what I want.
“Anika…” he warns in a low voice, but I know he knows what my body needs and wants despite our lack of words. I know he wants to punish me and use me as an outlet for his own pain and torment, and I want it because I don’t feel the pain. I only feel the need for more.
“You’re getting five canings because you just can’t seem to keep your damn mouth shut. That is your punishment, and believe me it isn’t pleasant.”
“Good, I need it,” I say through gritted teeth as I hold onto the handles, my knuckles turning white from gripping them so tightly. I think he was just waiting to see what I’d say. I know the damage that a good caning can inflect, but I want it so badly. I wait for it, craving it.
There’s no hesitation when he lands the first blow. There’s a white-hot fire that sears against my already tender skin from where the cane hits. My vision turns hazy at the edges as I hold my breath to keep from coming unglued. The rage is surfacing and I can’t contain it.
“Breathe, baby. You’ve got to breathe,” he soothes calmly, forcing me to release the breath I’d been holding inside of me. When I do he takes his opportunity, and lashes out repeatedly, following through on his promise. The fourth time though, I scream in frustration and pain as tears prick my eyes. With the fifth strike, I nearly black out as I hear the instrument slice through the air and smack my flesh. When it’s over, I feel a lone tear streak down my face as he covers my body with his. Even with his weight on top of me, I feel like a million pounds of weight has been lifted from me and I’m floating as the blood pounds in my ears.
“You’re amazing,” Carter whispers, kissing the side of my neck and his words warm me. I find myself wanting to please Carter, make him proud because he’s different. Without knowing me or the details, he still gets me and what I need, and he makes sure I get it. In this moment of clarity, I know that I can’t continue my original plan to fuck him and let him go. I have to have more of him. I need him in my own sick and twisted way.
“Where did that come from? You’re a monster,” he says, and I hear the humor in his voice.
“You have no idea…” I say, and he wraps his arms around my waist and lifts me with ease as he supports my legs with his other arm. Laying me gently on the bed I wince from the purple welts that I’m sure are raising on my other side.
“You’re going to be sore, but I promise I’ll make you feel better when we’re done.” He strokes his thumb down my cheek and moves to take my arms and secures them with the velvet lined cuffs that are built into the bed frame. I watch every move he makes as he strips himself out of the rest of his clothing including his underwear, leaving him bared to me. His thick, hard cock is standing at attention, glistening with want and I squeeze my thighs together surprised at my level of arousal.
“Open your legs and keep them open for me. If you close them, your ass is getting another beating and I won’t let you come.” I spread my legs as wide as they will go letting him see me and I love how he looks at me. It’s not only with a hunger, but with acceptance and affection.
“Your pussy is begging for me, Anika. I can see it. It wants me to be buried inside you.” He moves to straddle my hips and rubs himself between my folds. My hips buck, seeking out satisfaction in the friction.
“Look at us Anika. See how wet you are for me. Does that tight, pretty hole of yours want my cock?”
“Yes, please. Please give me your cock, Carter.” I find myself begging like a whore because I need it. I need him. I need him to fill me- fill up the emptiness inside of me.
“Good girl. I like to hear you beg for me. Are you on birth control of any kind? I want to fuck you bare Anika. I need to feel your tight pussy on me.” He is the master of dirty talk and it has me dissolved into an unrecognizable version of myself. I’m quickly learning he’s also the master of my body.
“Yes. I get the shot. Please, fuck me.” I don’t even know who I am right now. I’d toss all of my caution to the wind just for one more second of this with him.
“What are you doing to me, Anika?” he asks, eyes never leaving mine. He takes my legs and hoists them over his shoulders, and plunges into me with such force, he bottoms out inside of me causing a delicious pain.
“Keep your eyes open and on me, baby. And for the love of God, I need to hear your sounds. Just the sound of your voice gets me hard.” He continues to drive into me relentlessly at a punishing pace our eyes locked on one another.
“I’m going to come, Carter,” I warn as the sounds of our fucking echoes off the walls.
“Good, but don’t think I’ll be done with you tonight,” he says, reaching down stroking my clit in just the right way. I feel my body building and building, climbing higher and higher just waiting.
“Come, Anika. I want to feel you squeeze my cock as I unload inside of you.” His filthy command, pushes me over the edge until I’m falling into his darkness, shattering into a thousand pieces. The only thing I know for sure is he’s falling with me.