Echo of Redemption (6 page)

He cups my chin and makes me look up, though I stay completely bent over.

“We’re going to survive this. None of us are reacting very well.”

I nod, knowing the truth of his words.

He stands, leaving me kneeling. “Strip.”

His command gives me pause. It isn’t so much that we are in a public place, I’ve been naked in much more open and populated places than an empty parking lot, but that he is choosing to master me
now
, right smack in the middle of my much deserved nervous break-down. I pull my shirt over my head and unclasp my bra, neither being made more difficult by being bowed in obeisance, but unbuttoning and unzipping my jeans and shimmying out? Almost impossible, but I do it. Ditto for my panties.

Bared, bent, exposed. I wait. I rarely think about my nakedness anymore because I am usually so. Except for the four hours, four days a week I spend in my office at
The Darkness
, I am not clothed. Naked has become my normal. I have to assume having a child in the house will change that. The small voice in my head throws a temper tantrum.
I don’t want my life to change.

Life will be different.
It doesn’t matter. I’ve already decided to have this baby.

Come what may?
Yes, yes. Come what may.

Even suburbia? Even if it comes down to having only one man?

I sag against Master’s feet, and it seems to be what he has been waiting for.

“Come,” he commands and walks toward the elevator.

I follow after first picking up my clothes, carrying them balled under one arm, crawling with the other. I am certain my hand and knees stride isn’t as sexy as my well-practiced sway-slide-slide but it gets me to the elevator.

We don’t see anyone on the way back to the penthouse. No one to witness my public display of indecency. It’s quite disappointing. Once inside, Enrique is a witness that we are back and that I am naked, but he is used to seeing me so. I am not used to seeing him on hands and knees scrubbing an overlooked blood stain off the floor. We share a look. We are both owned and today, for the first time in ages, I’m feeling how that feels again. I smile, he smiles, and then the moment is passed. I leave my clothing in the middle of the floor for Enrique to sort out and continue crawling after Master.

He doesn’t lead me to the bedroom. I find him in the library. I lick my lips, anticipation shooting down my spine, making my pussy wet, my skin anxious and needy. I remember the times I’ve spent here, one blurring to the next, the floggings, the canings, the hours of torturous confinement trapped in rope or leather or chains.
God, yes. Oh God.
It’s been too long.

“Stand.”

I obey, noticing when I do that my knees are stinging. He drops a suspended hook and motions me forward to stand under it. I do, feeling almost giddy with excitement. He takes my wrists gently in his hands and wraps them in leather cuffs attached by a chain before drawing my arms up over my head to secure to the hook. With a press of a button on a palm sized remote, my arms are stretched out as the hook ascends, my body too stretched out, and then I am forced on tiptoe. Higher. He leaves me balanced precariously on the bare tips of my toes. I am not in pain, barely uncomfortable, but the potential is there…within minutes I will be feeling just how thwarting the ticking seconds will become. He pulls up a straight back chair and sits down, straddling it in reverse so that the back runs up his front. He crosses his elbows over the top and settles in.
Oh
,
hell
.

I watch him, watching me. My toes hurt and I haven’t even been standing on them that long. Mere minutes. I keep waiting for him to say something but he doesn’t. I’m sure as hell not saying anything. Everything I have to say is inappropriate. Just because I knelt, stripped, crawled doesn’t make me less angry. I am seething on the inside, and I don’t know why. I feel like a long-watched pot, refusing to boil, and now…if I open my mouth I will erupt toxic venom. I won’t be able to stop. There is so much
unsaid
between us.

If I was facing a mirror, I’m sure my stubbornness would be reflected on my face but I’m not, I have only Master, and his countenance is set in stone. Waiting.

I wish he would talk to me. It seems we haven’t talked in a year, not about anything of relevance. We’ve gone through the motions; we’ve been so busy. We’ve discussed the club, we’ve talked about my day at
The Darkness
.

My heart breaks in two, looking at him, seeing
him
for the first time in months. I love him. I do. I love him with every beat of my heart, but Thomas is so…overpowering, intoxicating…especially as Lord Fyre. I sometimes forget how wonderful and special Garrett is. How could I?
God. Look at him
.
If Lord Fyre walked into this room right this second, would Master pale by comparison?

Tears drip over my cheeks.

He stands, seeming to want to answer that question himself, and as he strides toward me I cannot understand how I ever thought he was less. What is changed? Me? Have the blinders been removed from my eyes?

Master closes the distance between us quickly, grabbing my jaw roughly, pinching my skin hard between bone. It hurts. A. Lot. I try to not moan, but lose that battle.

“Tears?” he asks sarcastically. “What thoughts go through that pretty little head that cause you to cry?”

I shake my head, refusing to answer, and he slaps me for the refusal. Shocked, I stare at him, realizing the difference. Not me.
Him
. “Lord Ice?”

“No, Kitten, you aren’t ready for Lord Ice. Someday, but not today.”

“Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Curse of Eve

Garrett

She trembles against me. Nervous? Fearful? I like it, quite a lot actually, knowing I can affect her so. After so many months of watching her slip away, to finally have her full attention…

I could blame Thomas, but I won’t. I knew exactly what we were getting into when this ménage formed. He is mesmerizing, all-absorbing…no one is immune from the spell he casts. I’m certainly not, I couldn’t expect her to be.

I’ve spent my fair share of time with him, and he’s made me remember who I am. It’s a shame really that now that I am ready to be all Kitten needs me to be, I can’t because she is pregnant. I must be especially careful with her. I can see the question still in her eyes. She isn’t certain motherhood is a path she wants to walk.

I meant what I said. I will not force her to have this child. It has to be her choice. It is most convenient that Thomas was called away to deal with his brother. He would never permit her to make the choice.

I kiss her shoulder. “Tell me what you fear.”

She takes a deep breath. “Nothing.”

I stroke her face, softly, forcing her with gentleness to look into my eyes. “Everyone fears something.” I caress her lips. “I’ll discover yours.”

She shivers.

I run my hands over her body. It has changed so much just from yesterday to today, or maybe I am just more aware. “Your breasts are larger.”

She gasps when I stroke them, telling me they are extremely sensitive, and when I pinch her nipples…her eyes flutter closed and she grits her teeth to keep from crying out. I take her nipple in my mouth, sucking hard, drawing at her core.

“Stop. Please stop.”

Stop and please are not safewords. I bite down on her nipple, making her cry out, making her keen. I pull as much of her breast into my mouth as will fit and bite, leaving deep impressions of my teeth when I release her. I am careful, being mindful of her developing milkducts, but not so careful that she will not remember this night for many nights to come. I didn’t break the skin, but the dents are dark red, tinged almost purple. She will be bruised for days. I switch breasts, giving her a taste of agony for her second breast.

“Master? Please!”

I release her flesh and look at my marks on her. I stroke her arms, then her ribs. Bending, I cup my hands around her slightly distended belly. I should have noticed
this
. I kiss her just below her belly button before straightening, tempering her pleasure by pinching her clit hard. She is so focused on her pain, she doesn’t notice that I lower the hook just enough for her to stand flat-footed on the hardwood floors.

I try to not be obvious as I examine her, measure her.

Tapping her thighs to separate her legs. I smack harder to force them wider, my goal distraction. “Don’t move.”

Going to the toy cabinet I select lengths of rope, lube, a vibrator, a butt plug, and ankle cuffs. As an afterthought I grab a ball gag.

Using the ankle cuffs and ropes, I spread her legs as wide open as I desire and am certain she won’t move. She cooperates, without comment. Sometimes, she does. She’s quite the sassy slave, always trying to up the ante a notch.

It seems odd that tonight she doesn’t say a word.

Obviously unnecessary, I lift the ball gag and she opens her mouth without being instructed to do so. Our gazes lock and hold. I wait to see challenge in her eyes but see only resolve.

With her gagged and bound, I hide what I am doing behind the guise of lubing her up, vagina and anally. Fingering her, I am more certain and even more concerned. She isn’t outwardly showing, but the top of her uterus is level with her belly button.

I don’t know how pregnant she thinks she is but my gut and limited medical training tells me she is farther along than either of us imagined and that worries me. I want to get her to an obstetrician immediately.

That doesn’t mean I intend to end the scene.

I slide a small butt plug in place and attach it to the ball gag straps. Each jerk of her head will remind her she is filled.

I face her, holding a ball-top vibrator. “Don’t even think about coming.”

I’ve given her an impossible command. Squatting in front of her, I intend to prove to her just how impossible. I lift the hood covering her clit and keep the bud exposed as I apply the vibrator. It is an immediate shock that has her dancing in her bonds. The sounds coming from behind the ball gag aren’t happy ones. I ease the pressure, but barely enough for the sharp jags of sensation to become pleasurable. I know the instant she is lifted into a stream of bliss, the moment there is no turning back. “Do. Not. Come.”

She crashes through her need, orgasm exploding despite my command or maybe because of it.

I don’t ease off the wand now that I have her sweet-spot targeted perfectly. Her orgasm doesn’t let up. Wave after wave of pleasure turns into wave after wave of overstimulation. Eventually, the overstimulation becomes pain. She is screaming and crying, snot and drool covered by the time I decide she has had enough.

When I turn off the wand and remove the gag, she sags with relief but I don’t give her a second’s reprieve. I strike her. Slaps on the tops of her thighs and the back of her legs.

“When did you first suspect you might be pregnant?” I expose the bud of her clit and begin again with the vibrator.

“December.”

“December what?”

She starts to keen, responding much more quickly to the sensation this time around. “The twentieth, maybe the twenty-first.” She is crying. “I regret not coming to you the minute I suspected.”

“You regret it, but you aren’t heartsick. You feel no grief, no remorse, even though you lied to me, kept secrets from me, and planned to go behind my back to have an abortion.” I think her blood is boiling, she is perspiring, and before she can answer the question another orgasm is lifting her. “Don’t you dare come.”

“I’m sorry!” She shrieks and I am not certain whether she’s sorry for the secrecy or the orgasm.

“Yes. Sorry. But what I want to know is what exactly went through your mind that you felt your responsibilities as my slave included keeping such a serious matter a secret?”

“I was scared.”

“You didn’t trust me,” I accuse. I remove the butt plug and reposition her, tying her in an inversion, feet secured with full-support ankle cuffs. She is upside down. This time rope is wrapped across either side of her pussy, trapping her genitals, cutting into her. More rope is attached to nipple clamps. All of the rope is anchored in front of her several feet away, forcing both nipples and twat to feel a constant sensation. It isn’t comfortable. Or pleasurable. I make certain she is experiencing pain before I hold the vibrator to her clit. I begin again with the questions. “What did I do that you stopped trusting me?”

She is mid-orgasm when she screams, “You didn’t trust me first.”

What?

I allow her to ride the wave out before demanding, “Explain.”

“When you found out I was a reporter, you chose to believe that everything we’d shared was a lie. It wasn’t a lie. You left me. I loved you and you left me.”

She is upside down and sobbing. She chokes. I get tissue and command her to blow. I command she stop crying, but she doesn’t, and so she is forced to blow again and again to keep from choking on the snot going down her throat.

I do not try to explain how betrayed I felt at the time, because she is right and I was in the wrong. I should have tried harder to see the truth. She was in an impossible situation, feeling emotions she’d never felt. I left her bottoming out with no one to turn to except Lord Fyre…and he was there…ready, willing.

Damn it.

“So, because I failed you once, you can never trust me again?” I do my best to keep my voice in monotone and my emotions in check. I dip my head to lick her clit, a gentler stroke than the vibrator can provide. I want her to come down a little. Not too much. But a little. Enough to make the next pleasure plateau her highest yet.

“Yes. No!”

I squat down, catching and holding her gaze. “Which is it?”