The Erotic Dark (9 page)

“She is learning well,” Gabriel said. “And remember that her life has altered irrevocably. She needs to get used to that.”

Lydia shot him a quick smile of thanks. She regretted the impulsive gesture the instant she saw Preston’s eyes harden into chips of ice. His mouth turned downward as he lifted his wineglass and took a sip. His lips left a greasy imprint on the crystal.

“And so she will,” he said smoothly. “As a matter of fact, she and I were discussing earlier just how different her life has become. She used to be quite in control of her sexuality. Didn’t you, Lydia?”

God, not again,
she thought. She didn’t want to have to relive all her youthful indiscretions, the dim movie theaters where she and her boyfriends had awkwardly kissed and felt each other, the vinyl smell of their old cars where she had stripped out of her bra and panties so they could fumble in their excitement to touch her.

Her cheeks burned at the notion that she had told Preston some of her secrets. In some dark recess of her mind, she knew he would force her to evoke even more intimate details of her past.

“You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Lydia used to jerk off young men in the back row of movie theaters,” Preston informed Kruin and Gabriel with evident enjoyment. “Moreover, she let them diddle her pussy. Can you imagine such vulgar behavior from our noble Lydia?”

Lydia felt both Gabriel and Kruin look at her. She didn’t know what they wanted her to say. She bit into a slice of potato, the mealy, herbed flavor melting over her tongue.

“I suppose their fingers met with a good bit of cream,” Preston continued. “Don’t you think?”

“If she was as easily aroused then as she is now,” Kruin said, “then yes.”

“What I wouldn’t have given at that age to have done what those boys did,” Gabriel muttered.

Preston smiled. “She does have a sensual nature, doesn’t she? I’m quite eager to discover just how lewd and debauched she can be. I suspect our recent liaisons have only been the beginning of Lydia’s depravity.”

Lydia’s fork dropped onto her plate with a clatter. Unable to help herself, she gave Preston a glare.

“I’m right here,” she said coolly. “There’s no need to talk as if I’m not in the room.”

Kruin’s mouth hardened with anger at Lydia’s remark. Gabriel gave her a censorious look, but Preston only continued to smile.

“Is that so, Lydia?” Kruin said, his voice icy. “I would remind you that we can speak as we choose. You have no say in the matter. None. Is that clear?”

Lydia faltered underneath the simmering anger in his eyes. She looked down at her plate, spearing her fork into the salmon as a hard sense of insubordination rose inside her.

She used to be a woman who gave orders, not followed them, one who demanded that people treat her with the utmost courtesy and respect. She used to be in charge of a staff of fifty people, all of whom answered to her harsh criticism if they failed in their work. She was not the kind of woman who allowed men to speak crudely of her.

“Kruin asked you a question, Lydia,” Gabriel said sternly. “Answer him.”

“Yes,” she said, unable to keep the snap from her voice as she flared with irritation. “Yes, it’s clear.”

“I don’t like your tone, Lydia,” Preston said, his blue eyes growing cold.

Lydia suddenly flung her hair back in a gesture of defiance as everything within her rebelled against the perpetual demand that she follow every order.

“What are you going to order me to do?” she bit out. “Whisper from now on?”

“Stop,” Gabriel warned.

“No, really. I’d like to know. After all, there’s clearly so much for me to learn here that you might as well tell me now. Better yet, write it down so I can study before bed. Then you won’t have to tell me how Preston likes his cock sucked or when you want me to lift my skirt—”

Her voice caught in her throat when she encountered the look on Kruin’s face and knew that she had pushed them too far. He folded his napkin and rested it alongside his plate before he stood and went around the table.

Lydia flinched as he approached. Her skin was hot with anger, her eyes flashing. When Kruin snapped his fingers, she wished she could snatch her impulsive words back, especially since he had just reprimanded her less than two hours ago.

“Stand up, Lydia,” Kruin ordered.

Her heart hammered like a drum inside her chest. She couldn’t move, her fingers tightening around the fork. She realized in that instant she had not reached the limits of her fear, that dread could sink to fathomless depths in her blood.

“Did you hear me?” Kruin’s voice was like thunder.

Lydia pushed her chair back and stood, her legs trembling. She thought she might fear Kruin more than Preston and Gabriel combined. She couldn’t look at either of the other two men, but she felt Preston’s amused and satisfied smile as if it were burning into her skin.

“Since you want so badly to know,” Kruin said coldly, “I’ll tell you now to lift your skirt.”

Chagrined, Lydia forced her fingers to curl around the cotton of her dress as fear swamped her previous anger. She pulled her skirt over her bare legs and thighs, exposing the round flesh of her bottom to Kruin’s dark gaze.

Before she could speak, he pushed her plates to the side and laid his big hand flat across her lower back. Pressing her down onto the table, his muscular leg nudged between her thighs to spread them apart. Her shaved labia spread like the throat of a flower, exposing the tight hole whose pleasures only Preston had thus far experienced.

“Kruin, I—”

“Quiet!”

Lydia gasped when his blunt fingers pressed into her sex, running along the pleats with an expert touch. To her further shock, her secret lips swelled in response, her nipples stiffening against the cool tabletop. Her hips thrust involuntarily backward, but met with empty air since Kruin had taken his hand away.

“She is already wet,” he informed the other two men, much to Lydia’s dismay. “Lydia, you are no longer allowed to achieve satisfaction without explicit permission. Do you understand?”

Lydia pressed her forehead against the wood and nodded, even as she wondered if she had the willpower to prevent herself from succumbing to the eruptions of rapture. She gave a little shriek when Kruin’s hand slapped her bare rump.

“Do you?” he repeated.

“Yes! Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Gabriel.” Kruin nodded at the younger man.

Lydia’s eyes widened with alarm as Gabriel moved into her line of vision, his hands working the buckle of his belt. With a few movements, he removed it and reached across the table to wrap it around her wrists.

He fastened the other end of the belt to an opposite chair, forcing Lydia’s body to stretch so tautly that she had to rise to the tips of her toes to remain in contact with the ground. The position provided the men behind her with a delicious view of her elongated body, the curve of her hips descending into the tense muscles of her legs and pointed toes just barely brushing against the plush rug.

Aghast, Lydia stared at Gabriel in a desperate hope that somehow he would voice a protest over what was about to take place. Then she noticed the heavy bulge already straining at the front of his trousers, and her hopes dissolved like salt in boiling water.

Disappointment settled heavily into her skin, for she had come to think of Gabriel as the gentle soul of the triad. Instead, as the evidence presented, the mere anticipation of her punishment incited a raging arousal in him.

For an instant, Gabriel’s green eyes seared into hers as if to remind her that she deserved the punishment about to be dispensed. That she had no one to blame but herself for her current, degraded position.

She swallowed past a growing lump in her throat as she felt Kruin push her skirt farther over the globes of her buttocks. None of the men spoke. Fear curled like a snake in her belly, and Gabriel’s belt dug cruelly into her wrists. She had to fight the urge not to pull against her restraints, knowing that struggling would only worsen the pain.

Lydia closed her eyes, silently cursing herself for her quick tongue. She strained to hear something, anything, through the thick silence, and then pure terror rained through her when she again heard the distinctive rasp of a leather belt being pulled from a waistband.

Her eyes flew open in shock.

“Wait…” Panicked, she yanked at her wrists, trying to pull them from the grip of the belt. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I…”

“You may plead as much as you like, Lydia.” Preston moved around to the other side of the table so he could look at their bound captive. “It’s pretty to hear you apologize so desperately, but it will do you no good.”

Lydia’s horrified gaze clashed with his blue eyes, which were as cold as a wintry day.

“You can’t,” she gasped, all dignity slipping away in the face of her fear. “Please, Preston, I’ll do anything.”

He laughed. “Oh, yes, my dearest, I know you will. Believe me, I know.”

Kruin’s hand pressed hard against her lower back once again, commanding her to remain still. Tears sprang into Lydia’s eyes. Her body began to quake when she felt Kruin step away from her, and then the leather belt whistled through the air and landed upon her plump bottom with a harsh bite.

For a shocked instant, Lydia froze with sheer terror as she felt the leather make painful contact with her skin. Her breath choked her throat and her legs turned to water when she heard the belt slice through the air once again.

Lydia cried out as agony lashed through her body, as Kruin wielded the belt again and marked her flesh with an unmistakable stripe of red. Preston’s face swam before Lydia’s tear-filled eyes, his expression shifting from cold anger into wicked pleasure as he watched the execution of her punishment.

In the depths of her overwhelmed soul, Lydia knew how much he loved this, how he had wanted to see her bound and lashed before him, how such degradation excited him. Disgust rose like a black cloud in her chest, even as she tried to remember that she had agreed to this treatment.

The belt landed with another crack, jerking a scream from Lydia’s throat. Tears of anguish and humiliation spilled down her cheeks as her hips writhed frantically to avoid another sting. Kruin lashed her with the flat side of his belt, causing a wide pattern of welts to appear on the full cushions of her bottom.

White pain scorched through her. Her arms ached with the strain of struggling wildly against her restraints. Her entire body grew hot with the effort of attempting to endure the power of Kruin’s belt.

“No! Oh please stop…please…” The sobs fell plaintively from her tight throat as the belt slapped her again and again, each lash punctuated by a cry of pain that echoed from the paneled walls of the dining room.

Lydia’s body jerked forward with every hard strike, her breasts rubbing repeatedly against the smooth wood through the cotton of her dress. In a frantic attempt to escape the blows, she tried to squirm onto the table, but only succeeded in spreading her legs farther apart to expose herself fully.

Preston moved behind her to obtain a better view of her utter helplessness, her white skin marked cruelly by recurring bites of the belt, the curve of her spine flexing with frenetic movements as she twisted and turned, the pulsing nub of her clitoris peeking shamefully out from between her moist sex.

A hot, red burn covered the quivering mounds of her bottom cheeks, scalding pain into her very bones. When Kruin stopped the rhythm of his beating, Lydia closed her eyes against the desperate hope that he would stop. Her unending tears became tears of relief when she heard the belt clatter onto the table beside her.

Her bottom burned like a volcano of pain, and her entire body quaked as she continued sobbing. In some distant part of her tortured mind she thought it was over, that they would unbind and release her, but through the haze of pain she heard the unmistakable scrape of a zipper.

Lydia pressed her cheek against the table, the smooth wood damp from her copious tears. She became vaguely aware of low voices behind her, but she could not discern their words. She shifted, straining against her restraints, her sweat-dampened body writhing with the need to be free.

Then Kruin pressed his big hands between her thighs to splay them. So insistent was his grip that her crimson bottom cleaved apart to expose the dark valley and taut ring of her anus.

Lydia gave a cry when Kruin pushed his blunt finger into the closed, little hole, but her body was so stunned by what had just occurred that she could not muster the strength to resist. For a panic-filled instant, she thought he would attempt to penetrate her there with his penis, but then she felt the hard knob nudging against the slicker hole just below.

Kruin spread his hands flat over Lydia’s scorched bottom, spreading her wide as his thick root began to ease between her slippery folds. His features were set like stone, his black eyes burning like coals as he began to push slowly into her gripping passage.

Lydia gasped with panic, her hands clutching frantically at the length of the belt as she struggled to escape the massive tip pressing against her most intimate areas.

“I can’t,” she choked.

“Yes, you can,” Gabriel murmured quietly.

“No…no, he’s too big…oh, God, I can’t…”