18
I shut down mentally and physically, and I sleep better than I should tonight in my old bed, wrapped up in the darkness of my old room.
The door is wedged shut with a chair, and Charlie’s silent threat to belt me feels a million miles away.
I am safe in here.
Of all things, I dream of erotic sensations, warm oils splattering all over my body. Strong, rough hands rub the oils into my feet between my toes, and it tickles so much I giggle in a sleepy state, squirming about with my head shoved in the pillows. A sharp nail rakes down my left sole, and I sob with want, grinding at the waist. It makes my belly tingle.
I hum in delight as those strong hands drift up my slender neck to my mouth, circling the edge of my lips. My tongue slips out, seeking my masseur. I want to taste him. But he begins gifting my body the same attention. He massages my legs and my thighs, stomach and chest, rounding the curves of my tiny breasts.
“Ow!” I hiss, as a form of heat drips on my curling toes. It trickles down the front of my left ankle, snaking around the curves. It drip, drip, drips, up my shin and over my knee, getting messy as it streams down my inner thigh in a trail of fire. Double fucking, ow! It really does burn. It’s ruining my sensual dream.
When the heated droplets near my groin, electric zaps at my brain, screaming, wake up! Wake up!
My eyes bolt open to the sight of Charlie crouched between my open legs on his knees, holding a blazing candle in one of his hands. I freeze, unable to speak at first. Inky hair frames his savage face, framing those intense, piercing blue eyes narrowed in on mine. He’s naked, and the candle shimmers ginger against his bronze skin, blackening the rough hair on his chest and his tense stomach.
“Wha-what’s going on, Charlie?” I croak to ask, meekly sitting up on my elbows. That’s when I notice I’m not wearing my nightclothes anymore. My skin is moist and slippery, with certain areas on my body beyond sore.
I realize it wasn’t a dream, that Charlie must’ve undressed me while I was sleeping. I think he was the masseur of my reverie.
“Charlie, what are you doing?”
“You want to play with fire,” he says in his raspy, Latino accent, his usual look of desire for me replaced with anger and aversion, “then you’ll do it in a safe manner with me.”
Aware of its purpose, I glance at the candle, then I glance back up at him, obviously wary. “Charlie, put that down.”
Silence.
My eyes dart around the room searching for an escape, should I need it. The single, curtainless window is now shut, and the chair I wedged up against the door handle is gone.
“I don’t want to do this,” Charlie says, pulling my full attention. The large apple in his throat bops up and down as he confesses, “I don’t want to do anything that causes you harm. But I realize now, this is how you function.”
What?
“Rewards for being good and punishments for being bad, or there are no boundaries, are there? You could cause yourself harm. You did cause yourself harm.” His words ricochet around my head, an echo of Maksim and James.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I wet my dry lips. “Just put that down and let’s—”
He lifts a hand and I flinch, but he merely touches my face, his movement robotic and controlled. “You, are my queen”—my eyes widen with disbelief as he says that—“guilt has tormented me for the way I took your virginity. But I can’t have you thinking you can get away with burning yourself.”
I look at him from under my eyebrows, cautious. He continues touching my face, brushing his fingers under my eye and around my cheek to my jawline.
“Lie down,” he whispers.
“Charlie—”
“I said lie down!” he yells abruptly, and I cringe, elbows buckling under me.
I don’t know what’s going on. I squeeze-blink to wake up, sure I’m still dreaming.
Charlie gains height on his knees to lean over me, so he’s speaking in my face. “You’ll stay very still and learn a lesson. You understand?”
Swallowing past the dry lump in my throat, I nod. I sink into the mattress under him with obedience, square at the shoulders and tense in the legs.
Is he really going to burn me?
I remember the first time he fucked my ass, when he lit a candle to ignite those oils he used to help me relax. I thought he was going to burn me then—but he didn’t.
He crawls down the bed between my legs and tips the candle with a steady hand, causing the flame to dance like crazy against the paneled walls, disrupting the darkness in the room. My eyes flash with fear as I watch the nightmare unfold without being able to stop it. If I do, it means a fight. And I don’t want to fight Charlie for real if I can avoid it. I don’t want to hurt him.
Wax spills over the rim, and a hot stream slithers down my groin, burning me. I hiss like a snake, confused by the sensation. My legs tremble to shut, but he’s between them.
He turns the candle upright to let the wax cool and stick to me. The areas are tender and overly warm, though it’s a pain I can handle. I think the shock of what’s happening hurts more.
I chance a glance at Charlie, and he glances at me with his eyes glowing red from the flame. He shakes his head in disgust, and my eyes flicker away, just as the heat trails up over my navel and through my breasts, clinging to my skin.
“Ouch! Fucking ouch!” I yelp when a thick piece of melted wax lands on one of my nipples, and again when it lands on the other.
My hands fly up to protect myself, but Charlie warns, “Don’t, or I’ll start all over again.”
I shut my eyes and bite my lips closed, clawing at my sides to keep my hands down.
It’ll be over soon. Torture cannot last forever.
To add to the intensity, Charlie turns up my chin with a single finger, so I’m staring up at the wooden bedframe. I’m unable to see it coming when wax pools in the dip of my throat. My breath hitches, mouth opening wide for air. The wax slithers down the curves of my neck and dries in a line, turning hard on the pulsing vein there. I open my eyes as wide as I can, blinking in a state of anxiety.
“Charlie—”
“Hush, chica,” he whispers as he pours hot paths across my shoulders, collarbones, and around the boundaries of my arms.
I feel the bed dipping when he makes his way down to my feet. I screech as a thick layer of heat streams down the edge of my pussy, molding in the seam.
“Stop!” I scream, rolling onto my side with one of my legs buckled around him. That’s too far. That’s too much. My eyes screw shut in discomfort as the wax turns cold and solid in my groin, amplifying the abnormal heat down there. “Just stop! I-I don’t want to play this game anymore! It’s too intense!”
“Fire isn’t so much fun after all, is it?” Charlie says, and I glare at him from the side, cuddling my breasts.
Leaning over me, he puts the candle on the bedside cabinet, and I practically gasp in relief. But then he presses fists into the mattress on either side of my face, meeting me eye to eye. I cower into my shoulders. “Don’t EVER burn yourself again, and I mean it, Blaire.” His breath warms my cheeks where he’s so close, anger flashing in his eyes. “Or next time, I’ll tie you down and do this for hours—far past what you can handle. Do you understand me?”
I nod because I don’t want to do that again. Well, I don’t want him to pour it near my pussy again. That fucking hurt.
“I know you’re a little fucked up. I accept it. I like it. But”—he shakes his head, emphasizing on what’s disturbing him—“I don’t like it when you either threaten to or actually hurt yourself.” He punches his own chest, and I flinch in reaction. “It. Hurts. Me.”
Little hairs all over my body prick while my heart aches beyond guilt. I search his face, breathing his name, but it comes out choked.
Charlie curls his finger around a lock of my hair near my eye. “Do you remember when you put a gun to your head?”
I nod, jittery and awkward.
“Well, while I already suspected my affections for you, that’s when I knew for sure I was in love with you.”
The revelation renders me verbally stupid. The aching in my chest twists constrictor tight.
“I could have actually died inside when I saw you click back the hammer.” He lifts the piece of my hair to his nose and smells it, humming as he does. “I thought you were gonna pull the trigger.”
I would have if he didn’t answer my question. Death doesn’t frighten me. People do. He does.
“Don’t try to hurt yourself anymore,” he says softly, more like Charlie, “because in doing so, you’re hurting me.”
“I won’t,” I whisper, a painful sting rushing to the surface of my eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did it, Charlie.”
As if to apologize for what he’s done, he swoops down and takes my mouth, kissing me fiercely. I hold my eyes open, watching him to see if he’s going to do anything else. The candles’ flame has settled, burning evenly, but I don’t like it.
“What is it?” Charlie searches my eyes, pecking my bottom lip.
It takes superhuman strength to swallow and ask, “Are you keeping the candle alight to burn me again?”
Turning his head, he blows out the flame, and the room casts over in darkness. Silver moonlight streams in through the single, curtainless window, but it’s barely luminous.
Charlie clutches my arm and makes me roll onto my back, sealing his lips over mine a second time. Calmer now, I cup his bristly face in both palms and arch up to kiss him back, pulling him down on top of me so we’re body to body. His thick, veiny shaft rubs through my folds, sliding up over my clit. It sends shockwaves of sensations through my system, making me moan out of control in his mouth.
“I love you, Blaire.”
“I know you do,” I whisper, intensifying the kiss with hungry, ceaseless licks. His tongue is a saccharine dance, spicy with liquor. It adds to the high, driving me wild with want.
Charlie’s hands slip under my back to engulf my body in his arms, crushing me in the mattress under his powerful weight. He smells all clean and soapy with a hint of musky, aromatic shampoo. It’s so hot. I grind on his cock, stimulating my pulsing bud. I don’t want him inside me yet. I just want to bask in this skin on skin sensation. But Charlie draws back as he kisses across my jaw, down the wax trail on my neck and between my breasts. He sucks the underneath plumpness of my breasts while his fingers tweak my nipples, causing the wax to crumble from my flesh bit by bit. It hurts, but still, my every sense ignites. I stuff my head back in the pillows to relish in his attention, entwined in sensations.
His tongue licks one of my sore, peaked buds and I whimper, an upsurge of extraordinary pleasure tearing through me. His saliva is cold, heightening the burning. He licks the other nipple, and my whimpers come out choked and desperate. I think I like the pain first and the pleasure later. I don’t know. I’m so confused.
“Isn’t this so much better, baby, hmm?” he whispers in the darkness of my mind.
“Yes,” I breathe the word and reach out to tangle my fingers in his glossy hair, squirming as he kisses down my stomach, nearing my sex. My deeper muscles tense with anticipation as his warm, damp tongue lines my pussy where he burned me with the wax. I’m a squealing mess when he licks across my swollen clit, flicking it once on his way to pecking my inner thigh. Go back. Go back! I roll at the waist, mentally begging him to lick me there again. Cool puffs of breath come from his nose, chasing down my groin after his tongue, folding me inside out with need.
Please! Go back!
I gaze down at him with desire, panting passionately. At the same time, his eyes flicker up from between my legs, creating a moment of electric power around us. He’s flushed. Hungry too. He looks darkly beautiful.
“Why haven’t you touched me like this in so long?” My voice comes out husky, heavy with longing.
“It can’t be like that with us,” he whispers, his full lips shiny with moisture. “Dark, twisted...it’s not what you want.”
“You don’t even know what I want,” I say, because he doesn’t. I don’t even know what I want anymore. I mean, I don’t want him to belt me, but the rest...I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything. The wax did hurt, but if this is the end result of his torment, then I’m not holding back. I feel...rapturous, out of my element yet in the heart of my domain simultaneously.
“Control is my philosophy, Blaire,” he says, raspy and almost silent. “When I’m lacking in it, I find refraining from temptation and letting time heal works wonders.”
My eyebrows crease as I whisper, “What does that even mean?”
“I felt guilty for forcing you. Now I don’t. So, I’m gonna fuck you.” Before I can beg for him to elaborate on what he’s saying, his rough hands glide up the undersides of my thighs until they’re hooked behind my knees. He arches them up to my chest, splaying me wide open, and bows his head to taste me. His tongue parts my slick folds to tease and brutalize me, turning every sensation in my body into a full-on inferno of melted desire.
“Oh, fuck,” I sob, spiraling as he laps up all my juices, spearing my entrance before swirling his tongue on my sensitive bud. I wriggle about to escape the intensity, but at the same time, I want more. Orgasms—especially impending ones—are fucking mystifying.
“Put your hands on your shoulders, Blaire, and don’t reach out for anything,” Charlie says in a muffed voice, separating my tender lips with his tongue again, all the way up until he’s beating and working my clit.
I groan, biting and licking my lips. I do as I’m told, clawing at my own shoulders while squirming to cum. I’m almost at the crown of release. So close.
Charlie grabs my hips and lifts me clean off the bed, making me yelp with shock. My head rushes as my vision turns upright in the darkness of the room, and I realize he’s standing. My legs wrapped around his neck, he holds me here, mouth-fucking my pussy with his tongue and his lips.
The heat increases, tingles burning all over. My toes cramp, curled so tight it hurts where I’m trying desperately not to tense his head between my legs. But then he sucks my clit into his mouth, and my thighs break into tremors—and an orgasm-vault hits me so hard I fold over him, screaming at the top of my lungs.
Charlie steps back from the bed and throws me off his shoulders.
Adrenaline whips at me, pulse rocketing sky high. I land on the mattress with heavy bounces and wild, girly moans, legs tremoring out of control. I curl over on my side, whimpering, clenching my thighs together. I hide my face in the sheets while my body wrings dry with an orgasm so fierce I can’t see nor feel anything else.
Charlie stands there at the bedside dominating his eyes over me, under the moonlight. It seems to heighten the ecstasy, him enjoying the visual while I’m enjoying the actual. I cup my drenched sex and knead it with my fingers, drawing out the high. That’s when I feel the mattress sloping around me, and Charlie’s lips stroke up my wax inundated arm to my shoulder with tender kisses. He nuzzles the spot between my ear and neck, whispering that he loves me. I lift a hand to hold his face near mine, fingers dripping in arousal. I want to tell him that he means everything to me, too, but I’m certified mute.
“Do you understand why I burned you, Blaire?”
I nod, too high to verbally respond.
“Good,” he whispers in my ear. “You want to find an unnatural high, then you’ll find it with me. Never alone where you can hurt yourself, all right?”
“Yes,” I husk. “Wha-whatever you want.”
His thick cock slips between my soaked folds, nudging at my snug entrance, and my stomach somersaults. “You ready for me, baby?”
Hazy and starry-eyed, I nod again. I think I was made ready for him.