Shattered (26 page)

“It does kind of give you away.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Oh I know.  And I play it up sometimes too.  It makes me seem more exotic,” she said, and the last few words were little more than a lusty whisper.

Robin laughed at that.  “You know, you don’t have to stand over there.  You can sit down, if you like
.”

“
Oh.  I didn’t want to be in your way…”

“There’s nothing to be in the way of.  Is there, prince?”

Nathan wished for death in that moment, but when he opened his eyes he was still here.  He still knelt before her, her whip was still around his neck and the rest of it still hung between them and beneath her hand.  Robin pulled her feet free and set them back on the floor, just outside his knees. Her hand went beneath his chin and she lifted until she could look him in the eyes.

“Answer me,” she said, and grey
locked both of his eyes to hers.

“No Mistress,” he whispered.  He saw her smirk a little before her attention left him again.  She was enjoy
ing his distress.

He could hear the swish of Adara’s skirt she approached.  Everything else in the room was
unmercifully silent.  She sat down and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the outline of her beside Robin.

Robin tilted his face off to the side, away from them both, until he was staring at the
far corner of the bed instead.  It was kind of her. Unable to see anything more than the top of her knee he felt released from the need to fixate on their presence.  It was enough that he was able to shut his eyes again, and he savored it.

Robin’s
finger traced down his neck and sent goose bumps up his arms.

“I did these with
the flat side of my knife,” she explained.  “They’re not much, honestly.  He can take a lot worse, but I don’t want to mark him up too much.  These will probably fade within a few hours.”

“Do they hurt?” Adara asked.

It was like they were discussing livestock.  Like she was explaining the milk yield of a cow or the load capacity of a mule.

“She asked you a question prince,” Robin said.

He hadn’t even noticed.  He’d forgotten, for a moment, that he was capable of speech, that he was any more than an object.  But he could speak, as long as he didn’t have to look at her.

“Not anymore,” he said, to the bedpost, for it was incapable of judging him.

“But at the time?” Robin asked.

“Yes Mistress.  At the time it hurt.”

“Did you like it?”

Nathan’s voice dropped even lower.  “Yes Mistress.”

Robin’s hand moved further down his chest and stopped over the lash marks on his front.  She pressed her fingers into his chest and he sat back on his heels.

“These wer
e with my whip,” she said, and her hand swept over his chest.  That touch revived some of the earlier sting and he clung to it.  “Most of them were light.  Only these two, here, were with any measure of strength.”

“Why only two?” Adara asked, and Robin laughed.

“You may be made for this after all.  I’d have done more, but you were in the other room.  I didn’t want him to start screaming before I had a chance to talk to you.”

Nathan heard Adara get up and move around behind him.  He felt her hand on his back,
warm palm trailing down the sweat on his skin, tracing over his scars.  If he could remain any more rigid he would be stone.

“You did these as well,” she said, and her voice
sounded far more somber than it had before.

“I did, and I wish I hadn’t
,” Robin replied.  “I have a lot of regrets and that one ranks up there.  And not because of those marks, but because he trusted me and I lost control.”

Robin had never told him that before. 
Nathan turned back just enough to see her face and he caught only a glimpse before her hand touched his cheek and pushed him away.  But what he saw was enough.  This was hard for her too.

Somehow that made him stronger.  He’d forgiven her for all of it already.  It was never his intention that she should feel guilt still.

“You should see the ones on my ass,” Nathan mumbled.  “I asked for those.”

He hadn’t
meant to speak the thought out loud and the quiet that settled in now was terrible.  He felt his face flush.

Robin laughed a moment later and banished the tension and the silence both.  “If you want to get naked so badly you can just ask me prince.  And here I
thought you’d want to keep your pants on so she couldn’t see your erection, but since you brought it up, go ahead and strip.”

It wasn’t what he meant at all, but she knew that.  And he couldn’t say anything now.  He screwe
d up.

It took every ounce of his will to lift his palms from his thighs and bring them to his waist.  He could still stand, before that last shred of privacy was stripped away from him,
but he’d come too far to give up now.  He slipped his thumb beneath the button and felt it pop free.  His pants went down to his knees and, one leg at a time, without rising, he struggled out of them. 

He sat up on his knees now, thighs off his heels and body pressed close to the bed.  It still hid him somewhat and maybe from behind him Adara wouldn’t be able to see how much he wanted this.

Adara’s hands went flat against his back, her thumbs pressed in towards his spine, and slowly she slid them down towards the floor.  Her fingers ran over the darker marks on his ass and Nathan shivered.  When they lifted away he thought that might be the end of her exploration, that he would have a few moments to pull himself back under control, but then she knelt between his feet.  Nathan clenched his jaw and tensed the muscles in his thighs, his abdomen, all in an effort to remain still.

Her hands went to his hips and around his front. 
Her breath was soft against his back and her hands slid slowly down his stomach, brushed his cock.  She went further, cupped his balls, and with one hand she encircled the base of his erection.  The muscles there quivered and he thrust into her hand, and the breath he held through all of it came out in a moan.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be so fond of humiliation prince,” Robin chimed in, and Adara let him go and stood.

He let his head go slack and his forehead fell against the bed between her thighs.  “Please Mistress…,” he whispered, and he realized as the words came whimpering out he had no idea any longer what it was he was begging for.

Robin
pushed him back enough that she could stand.  She took Adara’s spot behind him, wrapped her fingers in his hair and yanked him backwards.  He twisted around and shuffled about on his knees.  Her whip fell from around his neck but she didn’t stop to pick it up.  She wrenched him around until he faced away from the bed.  Nathan kept his eyes down, for at the top of his vision he could see he knelt in front of them both.

His chest constricted until he thought he wouldn’t be able to breathe.  She’d taken the last vestige of privacy away from him in turning him from the bed.

“Look how hard you are,” Robin taunted, and he could hear her own enjoyment in her words.  “Touch it.”

It was a command and nothing less.  Nathan felt the sweat on his back, felt how hot his cheeks were, how shame anchored his eyes to t
he floor.  But more than that he wanted to obey.  His cock throbbed, as though to betray him, and the rest of his body shook in small, uncontrollable tremors.  He got his fingers around his shaft and that alone was a tremendous victory to his tired mind.

He kept his eyes on Robin’s feet, but he could see Adara leaning over
at of the edge of his vision.  He heard her whisper something inaudible to Robin, heard Robin laugh in response.

“She said you look miserable prince.  And I agree.  If you can’t even pretend you’re enjoying your own cock what makes you think
anyone else will want it?”

A
nother rush of blood.  Nathan grabbed the base of his shaft and stroked the length once, all the way to the tip.  As he pulled his hand back he smeared a line of precum along the bottom.  The muscles in his ass constrict as he struggled against a wave of pleasure.

He let out a moan and stroked
again, ran his hand all the way down his shaft and over his balls, felt them pull up against his body.  His flesh was hot in his palm and he whimpered as the pressure in the room faded to pleasure, as his hand slid back and forth.  He had to focus on holding back.  He was so hard and he felt their eyes on him.

“Look at me and ask for permission to orgasm, prince,” Robin said.

Nathan looked up without thought and he remembered too late that both girls stood beside one another.  His attention flashed to Adara’s face for only a second.  She dropped her eyes to the ground in the next moment, her cheeks pink with color.

He didn’t have a chance to decipher her expression before a
nother shock of pleasure shot through him.  His thoughts were hazy with the need to orgasm and he just barely pinched it off.  It coiled around his thighs and felt heavy in his balls.  He closed his eyes and moaned, then opened them again, remembering at last why he’d looked up at all.

“Please Mistress,” he forced out on the exhale, “May I cum?”

Robin took two steps forward and smiled down at him.

“Of course not prince,” she
answered sweetly, and kicked his hand away with her foot.

His thighs quivered as the friction of his hand lingered
in memory.  He couldn’t stop the groan that escaped from him and he looked up at her for understanding.

She scooped up his face in her hands. 
“I told you I was going to make you regret asking for this,” she said, and when she let him go his head felt suddenly too heavy.

Robin turned back to Adara and her voice lost all of its command.  “I want your permission to hurt him.”

Adara look at him and he realized Robin had been deferring to her the whole time.  And this time Adara didn’t look away.  She looked determined not to.

“How?”

“Candle wax,” Robin answered, without hesitation.  “It’s what I used the first time I hurt him without pretext, that first night he realized he had a choice.  I want to use it again, because that hasn’t changed.  He can still end this at any time.”

Adara’s head tilted ever so slightly to one side, like she was trying to gauge his reaction to Robin’s words from his eyes.  “I’ll go get one,” she said at last, and turned back to the main room where one still burned.

Robin let her hand dip to his cheek again, but it was gentle this time.  She used it to guide him around until he faced the bed, then forward, until he knelt before it. Her hand moved around to his shoulder and she pushed him forward until he leaned against the mattress. 

“Bite
down on the blankets if you need to prince.  I would prefer it if you didn’t scream.”

Nathan nodded and balled the sheets near his face, laid his arms out atop the bed like fortress walls around his head.
  He bit down preemptively, to push some of the agony of Robin’s touch out through the pressure in his jaw.  She was tracing little lines on his back so unbearably light that they only served to fan the need in his groin, to tease him with thoughts of a release he wasn’t going to be allowed.  He craved a different sensation, a harsher one, to replace it.

Adara returned and he heard the aforementioned candle exchange hands.  It wouldn’t be her that hurt him then and he found himself overwhelmingly grateful for that.  He thought he had wanted her to, but now he realized he cherished her as she was.  It was enough that she knew.

Adara climbed up on the bed and folded her legs beneath her, close enough that her weight dip the mattress beneath his palms.  Her hand cross the barrier he created with his arms and came to rest in his hair.

The first drop of wax fell and rolled down his back, and he thought it was Robin’s hand again until pain rippled up his spine.  It burned so sharp it was almost cold, like he’d been pierced with a needle and it was being dragged down his back.  The muscles in his lower back quivered and his hands gripped the sheets as the sensation tingled outward from that line, but as it progressed and cooled he was able to distinguish it for what it was.  He grunted out some of that pain and tried to relax.

But he hadn’t fully worked through it before another hot point made contact with his shoulder blade and followed the indentation of his ribs to his front.  It didn’t make it all the way around but stopped somewhere against his side.  Then a third, down the center again, and Nathan used the bed to muffle his voice.

He fought to overcome that pain, to find the pleasure in it, and the effort made him
hot.  Sweat condensed on his skin and made each new line burn hotter.  Another spot of wax on his lower back made him tensed anew.  It hadn’t even begun to cool before several more pinpoint spots dotted his shoulders.  Robin wasn’t giving him any time. She was going too fast if she expected him not to cry out.

He realized then Adara was stroking his head.  Her cool fingers felt comforting through the sweat that dampened his hair.  They brushed against his scalp, behind his ears, and with her thumb she wiped a bead of sweat before it could drip into his eye.  He was so grateful for her presence that he wanted to cry.