Fierce Enchantments Read online

  “That was all it took: a bite. He bit me, and then he did all the things he’d threatened to do us.” Shanna’s smile is bitter. “And you know what? After that I loved it. The sex. The pain. The humiliation too.”

  I remember her throat, enclosed by a braided leather collar, chained to a post behind where she knelt. Her nipples, tethered by twin silver clips on thin chains to the foot of the huge ornate bed. Every chain taut, so that she couldn’t move forward without choking herself, or backward without tearing the clamps from her swollen flesh. Her wrists bound at the small of her back. The smell of wet, well-used pussy. The round peachy flare of her ass below the black corset, split by …

  “That’s not your fault,” I say thickly.

  “He fucked with my head, Kev, even more than he fucked with my body. He made me want it. He made me love it.”

  She had been blindfolded, with a scarf of the softest black leather. She hadn’t known it was me, when I walked into the room, and I was too full of shame and pity to announce myself. But she’d heard my footfalls. And she’d turned her face toward me and wet her softly parted lips—in anticipation.

  My own mouth is dry now. “I’m so sorry, Shanna. You know we got to you as fast as we could. I wish it had been faster.”

  She doesn’t seem to hear the apology. It’s only the latest of many, after all. She bares her teeth in a little snarl, defying me to judge her. “Now I need it. I want it.”

  “Need …?”

  “I need someone to hurt me. It’s like … it’s like fire inside. Or hunger, chewing at my guts.” She wipes her fingers down her torso, seemingly unconscious of the motion. “It’s like all the demons in my head have slipped their chains and I need them to be whipped back into their cage.”

  “So you go online for … this?” I wave a hand at the machine as I circle the table end.

  “What else do you suggest?”

  “Jesus.” I shake my head. “Not that. Not that, Shanna. If you want to get laid, get laid. Find a nice guy who’s willing to spank your ass, if that’s what you have to do. I’m sure there’d be plenty of volunteers.”

  Her lip curls. “I don’t want a nice guy! Haven’t you been listening?”

  I grimace in apology. “Not nice, then—but someone you can trust. Someone who’ll give you what you need, but know where to stop. Someone who’ll take care of you.”

  “Where do I find that?” Her face is all twisted. “Who can I trust?”

  “Well,” I say, the knots inside me coiling and clenching. “There’s me.”

  “You?” She laughs derisively, so contemptuous that she actually struts in closer, closing the gap between us. I’m much taller than her, but she looks up into my face like I’m a raw recruit and she’s the meanest sergeant ever to walk the parade ground. “You couldn’t hurt me if your life depended on it. You won’t even kill female vampires, you’re so squeamish. You look all mean, Kev, but you’re a fucking pussy.”

  I slap her. Open-handed, across the face. Pretty hard too—not enough to stagger her but enough to knock her head sideways. When she looks at me again, her lips parted, aghast, there is a white handprint on her face that rapidly flushes pink.

  And there’s something else as well. All the twisted defensive scorn has dropped away in shock, and beneath that there is something so beautiful that I want to cup it and cherish it and keep it safe forever.

  So I slap her again. My other hand. Her other cheek. A bit harder.

  She’s stopped breathing. Her eyes are enormous.

  “That’s better,” I tell her, hoarsely. I tip her chin up, pushing her head back. “Lesson one, bitch.” The word is a horror: it hangs in the air between us. “Now, go into the gym and put your hands on the wall-bars.”

  Then I let her go, pushing her away a little. For a moment she just stares at me, and I can hear nothing but the roar of blood in my ears. Her full, intensely kissable, lower lip is moist and trembling. Then, without a word, she slips past me—heading for the gym door.

  I don’t follow immediately, even though I’m depriving myself of watching the tick-tock of her fine ass as she walks. Instead I take a moment to draw several deep breaths and collect myself. My hands are stinging lightly from hitting her, and the vibration runs up through my body, making me quake. I’m sweating under my leather jacket, burning hot from the self-blame that’s screaming in my head.

  This is bad. Really bad. Shanna’s got some serious baggage, by the looks of things. She needs care and comfort and probably a trained, experienced therapist. Whereas I’m … I’m a big gnarly guy with a well-honed talent for violence and no idea how to talk to her. The last thing she needs is me.

  But I’m what she’s going to get.

  Even while I’m coruscating myself inwardly, I’m turning and walking to the gym door. My stomach roils, but my balls are heavy like a clip of ammo. I’m loaded and fully cocked.

  My heart jumps as I step into the other room and see her. She’s there. She’s submitted to instructions. She stands with her back to me, her hands on the wooden climbing-bars and her long legs stiff with tension. Jeez: isn’t this everything I’ve fought against?—but right now I have to bite the inside of my lip to stop the Neanderthal grin that tries to rise there. Instead, I turn and shut the gym door. Every door in the Base has a bars and bolts, just in case we’re ever invaded. I slide them home noisily; I don’t want any of the others wandering in and finding us here.

  Then I saunter over to her, and as I walk I uncinch my belt so that the metal buckle hangs down and jingles. I stop within arm’s reach, but I don’t touch. First, I just look her up and down—from her damp hair that I know will be the color of honey when it dries, to her taut shoulders and the narrowing sweep of her back down from that muscled broadness to a silken waist; the concave of her spine that always makes me want to put my hand just there on the small of her back, and down again to the unwitting tease of her shamefully lush ass. Shanna never gives the impression that she wants to be sexy. She just is, even against her will.

  She’s quivering all over. Her hands squeak with sweat as she slides them nervously along the bars.

  When I’d found her in Appentak’s room, I’d said not a word. I couldn’t burden her with the shame of recognizing me when she was trussed and bound like that. Leaving her blind, I’d stepped in and unclipped the nipple-clamps first, releasing her beautiful tits from their torture and seeing her gasp and writhe and whimper as blood flooded again into the pinched points of her breasts, swelling them to fat dark buds. Then I’d unclipped the collar at her throat. She’d fallen forward over her knees, gasping for breath. Revealing … everything. That was when I’d reached down to the ornate chrome below—

  “Spread your legs wider.” My voice comes out as a confident drawl, God knows how. But it’s a test, sort of: a last-minute check.

  She obeys. She’s standing on the thin crash-mat below the bars, and her bare feet inch apart on the plasticized surface.

  The rush of my relief nearly makes me groan.

  “Good.” Now I shuck off my leather jacket and cast it aside. Underneath I’m wearing a white T-shirt, but it’s not going to stay white for long. I’m already speckled with sweat, and this is going to be hot work. I pull the belt out from my waistband, double it over and crack the leather straps between my fists. Shanna jumps, her shoulders bunching like they’re feeling the lash. I haven’t touched her yet.

  I take a risk. Dropping the belt over her head, I loop it around her throat and use the leash to pull her head up and back. My lips brush her ear, tasting the dew in her hair. I can smell the fear on her.

  “What did you learn in Lesson One, Shanna?”

  She tries to clear her throat but her voice is all hoarse. “You’re not a pussy.”

  I chuckle. “That’s right. Now.” I swallow hard, because this is a moment I never dreamed could happen, and these are word
s I never thought I’d say to any woman. It’s like giving myself the Pearl of Great Price that preachers talked about all those years back; it’s like crowning myself with a golden crown. “Now I’m going to hurt you.”

  I have to close my eyes because I’m dizzy with gratitude.

  Shanna whimpers. I feel it through the leather. My free hand is on her hip. I don’t know how that happened.

  “Feel free to scream, if you like. No one will hear you; no one will come save you. I’ve locked the door—you heard that, didn’t you? Scream or cry or beg me, whatever. If you think you really can’t take it anymore, you’ll have to let go of those bars and crawl away from me, Shanna. Do you understand?”

  She nods, tightly, constricted by the belt around her throat.

  “Clever girl,” I whisper sarcastically. Then I release her, pulling the long belt free. My hand on her ass has encountered a problem: with those black shorts of hers, brief though they are, I won’t be able to see where I’m hitting.

  I could pull them down … But something tells me that’s a step too far, too soon. Too intimate. I signed up to hurt her, not strip her. So I take the soft cotton-lycra and I pull the panties up higher, right into her crotch, like I’m giving her a wedgie. Then I run my fingers round the hems, front and back, ease them up as high toward her hips as they will go, bunching the fabric into the grip of her ass-cleft, baring only the twin orbs of her butt-cheeks.

  That sight takes my breath away. Her ass is so beautiful I want to cup and kiss it—but that’s not in the contract. I take a step back.

  “Arch your back,” I order, folding the belt up in my hand again. I want a short, controllable length for what I’m about to do. “Ass out.”

  She flexes, just as she’s told, and my cock surges. The blood is draining southward from my brain so fast that I’m in danger of losing control. I have to hit her. I have to hit her with the belt now, or God knows what I’ll do.

  So I do. The tongue of leather snaps out and slaps her right ass cheek, back-handed, with a crack like something breaking. It is the most beautiful, pure sound, followed almost before I can savor it by Shanna inhaling noisily through gritted teeth. And that noise—oh, that high-pitched quavering yelp—wraps itself round my guts. I want to hold it trembling in my hands. I want to cherish and soothe it into peace. I want to make it happen again. And again. And again.

  The strap leaves a pink stripe across her smooth butt, and then I swing the other way and lay down a matching line on the other cheek. The pistol-crack of skin on quaking skin is just as cold and keen this side, and my heart leaps.

  She tries not to scream. She’s proud, is Shanna. She squeaks and whimpers, she jerks and writhes, but she tries not to scream, at first. And I’m fairly gentle, at first, because I’m not sure what sort of punishment she can truly take. I’ve never done this. I’ve never hit a woman. Not even a vampire, except maybe in last resort when it’s someone’s life on the line. This is new to me, and I’m groping in the dark, my path lit only by burning, smoky need. But as I gradually pick up tempo and force, Shanna’s cries become wilder, rising to shrieks. There are gabbled incoherent words in there too; words of protest, perhaps. It doesn’t matter. I ignore them. It is her hands I have to keep an eye on; the white clench of her knuckles and then the spasming flex and furl of her fingers, spreading wide as if to thrust the pain away. Sometimes one splayed palm leaps off the bar: she is barely holding on. I know then to drop it down a notch, to slow my blows and eke out my cruelty.

  That’s how I reduce her to gasping and blaspheming and begging for mercy, crying, “Oh God no! No! No!” even as her ass thrashes from side to side. That’s how she keeps me going, my desire focused into a lightning bolt of incandescent force that flashes down my arm, over and over, to earth in her soft flesh.

  In the end it’s me that quits first, because my hand’s shaking so much that I’m starting to worry about my aim. But it’s not muscle strain; it’s adrenaline. I take a step back, panting hard, sweat running down my back, and I look at her. Shanna’s still clinging to the bars, ass still out-thrust. There are crimson stripes criss-crossed down her long thighs, and her beautiful ass is scarlet and swollen. Any redder and that glistening skin would shine on a visible wavelength. She’s making a soft keening sound, in and out on her breath. I can’t believe she’s still standing.

  My admiration does not alter the fact that I want to break her.

  Nor does it make up for the discomfort of my turgid erection, trapped down the trouser leg of my leathers. I pop the waist button and slip my hand in, easing my thick length to the vertical where it nests behind my fly, and adjusting my rucked ballsack so it’s not being ground by the crotch seam. I can feel the cum seething in my nuts.

  “Get those fucking legs apart,” I remind her with a growl, as I reduce the coiled belt to a lash less than a foot long. I close in to put one hand on her ass, rubbing my palm harshly over the tender flesh. She’s burning like a furnace. I picture Appentak’s poisons pulsing in her capillaries, making her crazy with need. You could heat the room with that ass. You could warm yourself through a Russian winter.

  It’s absolutely the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had my hands on.

  She whimpers and complies. Legs open, shaking. The hot smell of her sex rising.

  I hit upward, without warning. The leather belt-tip snaps up against her pussy, and all the shorts in the world couldn’t save her from the sting on her clit. She screams. One hit and her legs buckle; two and she goes down, sobbing. Her hips jerk.

  She’s coming. She’s actually coming. Fuck me, that is an incredible sight.

  I have so much wood right now I could stake a goddamn vampire through the heart with it.

  Yet she still hasn’t let go. She’s hanging at arms’ length from the bars. I’m glad she can’t see my face; she probably imagines my expression’s stern and masterful. Far from it, Shanna. I’m fighting to control my breath.

  I scoop her up bodily with one arm, pulling her back and her ass against me. Her toes barely touch the floor. “You can let go,” I whisper in her ear, dropping the belt with an ostentatious flourish.

  She wriggles. The scrape of my fly teeth and buttons must be agonizing on her whipped ass. Her hands stay locked on the horizontal bars.

  Oh Christ … I shouldn’t have touched my cock. This is killing me. I have definitely stepped over the line now. I press my lips to her temple and slide my free hand around her throat, quieting her sobs. The bite-marks have long-since faded, healing with that unnatural quickness we know so well, so that her throat is slender and smooth and horribly vulnerable. Her weight is nothing in my arms. That ass of hers is a fucking miracle, yielding to the jut of my cock. And my need is a furnace, its roar filling my head.

  “This,” I growl, the words spilling from my lips as I rub my stiff cock against her: “this is why I don’t stake female vampires.”

  And there. She knows. She knows my dirtiest, darkest secret.

  This is why I don’t get close. This is why it’s a different girl every time, why I stick to the guarded, limited interaction of a knee-trembling quickie up against a wall, a blowjob in the back room, some frantic hand-action in the toilet cubicle. The strange sort of politeness to even the roughest casual fuck, because you’re not intruding any further than the physical shell. You’re not asking for trust or secrets or any of that shit. Keep it casual and you never have to let them see what’s below the surface.

  She lets go of the bar. One hand, anyway; it falls away to where I cannot see it.

  Oh crap.

  Reining myself in, jaw clenched, I let her slight weight slip from my arms; I don’t let her go exactly—my hands are still on her, her throat is in my grasp—but I let her feet take her weight again. “You understand, don’t you?” I confess angrily. “The things that turn me on … they’re not right. The things I want to do. To you.”

 
And then I stop talking because her hand—I can’t see it—her hand is sliding between us, up toward the small of her back: rubbing over my leather-sheathed cock, searching out my fly, tugging, wriggling, grasping my hot hard length. Jesus wept, she has it in her hand; she is measuring its length with each stroke. I am dreaming, I am dead and I have gone to a heaven so wrong it is perfect. I hear my own grunt.

  “Fuck, bitch,” I groan. “Do you know where this is going to take you?”

  “Help me,” she whispers, her throat thrumming under my tightening hand.

  No. No, don’t. I don’t know the way out of this place. I’m as lost as you are.

  “Fuck,” I say. “You’re going to regret that.” I always carry a knife sheathed left-handed at the small of my back: a silver blade with a serrated steel edge. Whipping it out, I reach under her raised arm and slip the point beneath the stretched fabric of her sports top. “Don’t let go,” I snarl, and I feel her other hand tighten on my cock as I saw through the horrible elastic fabric, right up her breastbone. The cotton springs open and her tits bounce free. For a moment I let my blade lie along the valley of her sternum, while I contemplate the view.

  Shanna doesn’t trust her breasts: I can tell that from the way she always wears high necklines and sports bras to minimize their jut and their jiggle. She doesn’t like what they might do, unfettered. Right now they’re slippery with sweat. The last time I saw her nipples they were haloed in vampire-bites and swollen from clamping; they don’t look as big now, but exposure makes them pucker eagerly, like they’re begging for punishment. I like that. If I was a vampire, I’d never stop biting Shanna’s tits—except maybe to bite her pussy. Gently I prick her right nipple with the very tip of my knife.