Savages Recruit (16 page)

His reaction was immediate. He tossed her onto the ground and started bawling her out. She barely understood anything he was yelling, but she was glad for the respite from physical activity, even if it meant she was wallowing around on the ground like a turtle turned over on its back. The weight of the pack made it almost impossible for her to get up.

"GET UP! GET UP NOW!"

The yelling started to sound silly after a bit and she started giggling. The more he yelled, the funnier she thought it was. She knew he wouldn't really hurt her after all, there would be hell to pay if he did. She wasn't afraid of him in the slightest.

"Dammit Matthews," Steve stopped yelling and frowned at her. "Take this seriously."

"I do take it seriously!"

A shadow fell over Zora. She looked up to see Savage looming over her. God only knew where he had come from, he moved like a spy sometimes, completely unseen. Before she could explain herself, Savage lifted her up, took the pack off her shoulders and slapped her ass hard enough to make her dance in place. "You will show Sergeant Bracknell respect, you understand?"

"Yes!" Zora gasped. She wasn't trying to be bad, she really wasn't. But she was discovering something about herself. For years she'd gone out of her way to be difficult and rebellious and now that she was trying to be good it turned out that being difficult and rebellious was second nature to her. Both men glowered at her as she endeavored to make amends."I'm sorry Sergeant," she apologized, very nicely she thought.

He grunted, not that taken with the apology. "Get running."

"I can't. I am all out of running," Zora shrugged, slipping back down to the ground.

Sergeant Steve and Savage looked at one another, then back at her. "You're not done with your punishment, Zora," Savage reminded her. "In fact, you've barely started."

"Do you have to be such a sadistic bastard?"

Again, it was the wrong thing to say. Steve looked shocked, but more disturbingly, Savage didn't show any emotion at all. His eyes had gone cold. "I'll take it from here, Steve," Savage dismissed the officer. He didn't look at the man as he saluted, his eyes were locked on Zora, like a predatory big cat might lock eyes on a helpless fawn left in long grasses. "You've really done it now, you know that, girl?"

"Have I?" Zora tried to be brave, but she felt herself starting to tremble. She might not be afraid of Steve, but she sure as hell was wary of Savage. He was going to do something very unpleasant indeed, she could feel it.

"Come with me," he ordered.

She struggled up from the ground and followed him back to the cabin. The other members of the team had taken the van and were off somewhere else, so the only other occupant was Steve, who was making preparations to shower.

"Take your time," Savage said to him. "Zora and I have business to attend to." Steve signaled his agreement with a thumbs up and a particularly pleased look. He obviously had some idea what 'business to attend to' meant. Steve took his leave to take a shower and without wasting another moment, Savage went into his pack and pulled out a short cane. It was perhaps a foot and a half long and very whippy indeed. It looked like something out of a museum, some anachronistic piece of equipment for the punishment of miscreants.

"What the hell is that?" Zora's eyes went almost as wide as her head.

"It's your comeuppance, young lady," Savage said, beckoning her forward. "You can strip down to your undershirt and panties please."

She colored with embarrassment. She'd dreamed about being with him in a state of undress, but not like this. It would not do to defy him though. She knew from experience that he'd strip her down himself. What could she do? The humiliation of stripping down like a naughty girl did not appeal, but what other choice was there? As her mind whirred, a sudden spark of mischief danced into her brain. What if she did let him strip her down, not as a naughty girl, but as a woman?

"If you want my clothes off, you're going to have to do that yourself," she said with a blatant grin.

He stared at her coldly and for just a moment, part of her died thinking that she'd been rebuffed. "Don't start playing games with me, Zora. You won't like the consequences." He was trying to appear aloof, but there was a slight throatiness in his tone that told her he wasn't quite as immune to the innuendo as he would have liked her to believe he was. It was just enough encouragement for her to stick with her mad plan.

"You're going to cane me? Okay. I guess I have no choice but to obey you." Mustering all the nerve she had, she turned around with her back to him and slowly undid her pants then pushed them down over her hips, arching her back as she did, making sure that her bottom slowly slid into view in the most tantalizing way possible.

Savage growled a low growl. "What do you think you're playing at?"

"I'm being obedient," she said in her best innocent, good girl voice. "That's what you want, isn't it, sir?" She let her hips undulate in a deliberate movement. All those evenings in clubs had not been a complete waste of time, Zora had learned to grind and dance with the best of them. She knew very well that the movement of her hips would translate to an erotic rolling of her bottom.

"Zora..." Savage's voice came out in a low growl that turned into a groan.

"Want my panties down too?" She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and teased at pulling them down, sneaking them down just a little until they sat across the middle of her cheeks. It was a wanton display of sexuality, but she didn't really expect him to take her up on the offer of her body, rather she wanted to throw him off balance and if at all possible, reduce the penalty for her misbehavior.

"You little minx." His voice came from directly behind her. He'd approached noiselessly and as he spoke his large hand descended on her bottom, squeezing it as he tugged her panties down below her bottom. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" His hand slid around to her hip and pulled her bare bottom back against the cloth of his crotch. She felt his erection through his pants as he leaned over her body and used his other hand to take her by the hair. Her efforts at arousing him had obviously been successful. He pulled her head back gently but firmly using his grip on her hair, making her arch her bottom against him as he murmured in her ear. "Be very, very careful what you wish for, girl." He was calling her bluff and she whimpered, feeling his raw masculine power. "Are you sure you want to do this? You want to play this game?"

She shook her head. "Nossir." Fingers of fear tickled up her spine. Savage was probably just as hard in bed as he was anywhere else. She would not get off more lightly if she teased him erotically, she would only end up deeper in his control. Already her body was responding to him, doing its best to shut off any remainder of common sense. She wanted to melt into his arms, to let him have his way with her. Only her fiercely independent streak was making her pull back from the edge.

"Wise girl," Savage purred. He stood up, but he did not let her go. His fingers remained wrapped in her hair as he walked her over to the table and bent her forward over it. She stayed in place, even when he tapped the cane across her bottom. "Time for you to answer for your misdeeds," he intoned. It could have been considered an overly dramatic statement in other circumstances, but in that moment Zora didn't find it overly dramatic at all. She whimpered with genuine fear. She'd gambled and lost, and she knew very well that once the punishment was over, the can of worms she'd opened with him was not going to close itself again easily.

The almighty sting of the cane was almost welcome as it drove thoughts of erotic embarrassment out of her head, replacing them with pain. She didn't struggle or fight during the caning, she stayed in place, accepting her punishment. He brought the cane down six times, laying each stroke below the previous one. It hurt with a blazing pain that captured her entirely and made her its slave. She barely held position, but whatever instinct that made her submit to the punishment in the first place kept her there just barely clinging on.

It was one of the harsher punishments she'd ever endured, but she didn't cry or pout. She stayed in place, breathing heavily as the sensation sunk into her bottom, melting into the arousal that had proceeded it. It didn't hurt as much as it should have done. Intellectually she knew that her bottom was lined and welted, but the hot pain was like a liquid fire in her lower belly, spreading between her legs. She didn't want to speak for fear of giving away how she was feeling.

"You can pull your pants up," Savage said from somewhere behind her. His voice was deep, gritty and it went through her, every word teasing her with promise of dark pleasures.

Breathing deeply, she backed away from the table and reached for her pants. Erotic pleasure pain or no, it was not pleasant dragging the material up over her bottom. She would not be sitting any time soon, that was for sure.

"Zora." His voice floated through the discomfort, sonorous and low. She looked up at him, hoping her confusion and desire were not evident in her eyes. She was burning for him. He looked at her with a curious expression. "Are you alright?"

She nodded quickly. "Yessir," she said, looking at a point just over his left shoulder. She didn't want to meet his eyes.

"Hm," he lifted the cane up and looked at it in surprise. "This is more effective than I thought." She smiled a little and shrugged, wincing as her bottom throbbed. The silence stretched out between them.

"You're quiet," he observed. Usually the aftermath of a punishment at his hands involved a whole lot of yelling and screaming. She didn't much feel inclined to do either in that moment, she felt strangely subdued, aroused and not inclined to bemoan her lot. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

She blushed. There was no way she was telling him what was going on in her head. Thankfully, Steve chose that moment to exit the bathroom. Zora muttered an excuse and took the opportunity to dash inside the one room that offered any kind of privacy at all. After locking the door and checking it twice, she pulled her pants back down and checked her bottom in the mirror. It looked much as she had imagined it would. Six perfectly parallel lines traversed the skin from the middle of her cheeks to the bottom. The lines were red and raised and a little bit of bruising was starting to show. When she ran her hand lightly over the marks the skin was hot and taut. He'd thrashed the hell out of her and she was sure that it would soon be very, very sore indeed. Not yet though. At that moment, all the heat and pain was being channeled into quite a different sensation.

She leaned up against the wall, keeping her bottom away from the hard surface and slid her hand down to the soft place of her arousal. Closing her eyes, Zora let her imagination run riot with all that could have been if they had not been out here with Steve in the next room. If they had been alone he could have pulled down her panties instead and slid inside her. The memory of the hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her bottom remained strong as she worked herself towards an immensely satisfying climax.

Chapter Eleven

Impossible. Surely it was impossible for a man to affect a woman this way, to change the pulse, the breath, to send rushes of chemicals flowing through the body with the merest flicker of a glance. Zora thought it impossible, yet it was happening to her and like a disease taking hold, the effects grew stronger every day. The Pandora's box unlocked when she'd tried to seduce Savage most outrageously had been thrown wide open and there was no putting back what she'd unleashed.

She sat on a hard wooden bench, material hard enough that she could feel the lines of her most recent thrashing sting when she moved slightly. He was at the head of the table and the rest of the team were assembled all around. They may as well not have been there. Zora didn't see them. She saw nothing but him. It was a briefing for something or other. Zora hadn't been listening. She didn't hear words anymore, instead she felt the rumble of his voice, luxuriated in the waves the sound made as they washed against her senses.

Every part of him had become magic, from the roughened skin on the back of his knuckles to the dark curl of his eyelashes. He leaned over the table and slid her a piece of paper. She didn't even look at it. She locked her eyes on him instead, swooning inwardly at the curve of his lips, the slight stubble creating a shadow around his chin. There was not a part of him that was not pure masculinity. There was not a part of him she did not desire. She imagined how it would be to feel that stubbled cheek pressed against her own, to hear words spoken breathlessly against her ear.

"Ms Matthews." He was only a couple of feet away from her, but when he spoke the sound seemed to float to her from far, far away.

She shook her head like a dog, her hair flopping from side to side with the exaggerated movement. "Huh?"

"If you would care to join us." The corners of his lips spread slightly as he smiled an ever so condescending smile. His tone put her in mind of a sarcastic teacher reminding a wayward student to pay attention, as did the soft titter of amusement from Anja.

"My pleasure," Zora replied evenly, meeting his gaze without shame. Her voice was slightly husky, as if she were getting a cold. Savage's expression grew serious for a moment as he gave her a quick, searching look. Perhaps he'd find her attitude lacking. She hoped so. That would probably mean another private interview with him, his hands on her body. She'd gotten cold feet when he'd responded to her initial advances, but she promised herself she would not do that again. The days since the caning had been ones filled with a wicked kind of regret, the regret of a prime sexual opportunity missed. Life was too short and uncertain to be afraid of fulfillment.

His eyes swiveled away from her and a brief pang of loss shot through her body. This was how far she was gone. She craved his attention so badly that even losing eye contact hurt. He was talking again. Something about the mission, something important. She tried to force herself to pay attention.