Fortune Annabel Joseph (life books to read .TXT) 📖

of paper cranes still scattered on the floor. She thought she should pick them up. At least someone should. All that careful, intricate work. Behind her back, the same fingers that had folded the cranes whispered across her skin, punctuated sometimes by the touch of soft, scratchy rope. He got up at one point and moved back across the room. She heard a drawer opening and closing but she couldn’t turn her head up high enough to see what he returned with. He put whatever it was on the small desk against the wall and knelt down again. She was still, compliant. She was curious about what the hell was going on. She felt the rope almost like a blanket on her back, a crisscrossing pattern. She felt a little tug and then rope being tied around her ankles.

That finished, he stood a couple paces in front of her and said, “Come here.”

She started to move, rousing the usual muscles into action. She thought the rope behind her was loose enough to allow motion, but her legs stopped still. Her torso lurched, arrested. He caught her shoulders before she did a faceplant into the rug. “Jesus,” she snapped. “What the fuck?”

“Try again. Slowly. Come here. Think about how you’ll have to move.”

Kat felt sudden tears burn behind her eyes. She felt humiliated, helpless. “I can’t move at all. You tied me up.”

“I’ve hampered you, but you can still move.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” She hunkered over, resting her head on the floor. She hated the tremor in her voice.

He squatted down in front of her, patted the side of her hair as if she were a child or a pet. She wanted to pull away but she couldn’t. “Don’t be a quitter, Kat. And don’t overreact right now. How are you feeling?”

She pulled at the bonds, at her arms and legs hobbled and no longer under her control. “I feel restricted. Trapped.”

“Good. That’s how I meant you to feel.” He kept petting her, stroking her hair. “You’re trapped but I’ve got you. You’re okay. Do you understand? Now try it again.” He stood in front of her again, a towering pillar to her supplication. “Move. Come here.”

She moved more slowly, more carefully this time. He made an encouraging sound. She discovered that if she inched each knee forward and distributed her weight carefully, she could move forward without falling or tipping on her side. As she moved forward, he moved back. With painstaking progress she inched across his bedroom.

“Good girl,” he said finally. “Stop. Remind me what I said I was going to do to you here in the bedroom.”

“I was kind of hoping you were going to fuck me, but I’m not sure how you’d accomplish that with this—owww!” A slice of liquid fire lanced across her buttocks, and then another. Owww. It took a moment for it to register that he was doing it. There was a disconnect before she understood that he had brought back some implement from those drawers and was using it on her now. It took another moment for her to understand that she also had no power to get away, to evade any further blows. By the third stroke, the throbbing scary pain had her scrambling for an answer, any answer to make it stop. “Oww! Umm…ahh…”

“What did I say? Weren’t you listening?”

God, she needed to listen better. She thought back, thought hard. When I’m done bringing your things in, I’m going to take you in the bedroom and hurt you. “You—you said you were going to hurt me.”

“Very good.”

“Which you’re kind of doing right now—ouch!” She gasped and tensed at the sudden stinging pain, cursing her sassy mouth. She clamped her lips shut, drawing her legs in more tightly.

“Finished?”

“Yes Sir.” She heard him put the implement back down on the desk, a minute sound that still registered in the form of relief. He knelt beside her with something new in his hands, a small chain. “Can I—please—can I just ask a question?” she pleaded.

“Yes.”

“What was that? That you hit me with?”

“A rattan cane. And just so you know, I could have hit you with it a lot harder. That’s not a threat. It’s just the truth.”

She swallowed. Tears threatened again. “Why…why are you doing this?”

He put one hand on her back, brushed across it soothingly. “Because I like to hurt you and make you do things. I really do, Kat. But do you know what?”

He leaned closer. Kat felt the brush of his dark hair against her cheek, the warmth of his forehead on her shoulder. “What?”

“I’ll make it all worth it for you,” he whispered. “I promise. Just bear with me. Okay?”

She shivered a little at the promise contained in his low, gruff voice. His hand slid from her back underneath to her breasts. He squeezed and caressed them, then pinched one of her nipples.

“This is going to hurt too. Brace yourself.”

He reached under her with the chain. Just as it registered—that there were clamps on the chain, that they were going to be used on her nipples—pain blossomed where he touched her. The horrible clamp delivered hot hard pain that flared and settled into a dull ache. She hissed and tried to pull away from him but found herself arrested again by the inflexible web of rope.

“Please! Just give me a minute—”

He ignored her, moving to clamp the other nipple with the same horrible burst of pain. The chain hung down beneath her, cold and smooth against her knees.

“Please,” she said again, but it wasn’t a please begging him to remove them. It was a please of alarm, of confusion at the way she felt. She felt pain and terror and vulnerability and lust like a blanket over her. I’ll make it all worth it for you. He put his hands on her back again, calming her. He ran fingertips down across her hot ass. Please, please, please.

He backed away, went to the desk, sat in the chair