21

He’s wearing the goat-skull mask when he fucks my mouth. I keep my gaze fixed on it, on him, trying to communicate to him how much I’m enjoying this. How much I love this brutal, unbridled side of him. I love the sharp lines of his jaw beneath the edge of the mask, and the way his tongue writhes out and lashes in midair when he comes. I love the raw masculine groans, and the way he feeds me a little of his cum at the end.

I am immobile, and yet I feel powerful, not just because I chose this for myself, but because he is so helplessly, violently feral for me and my body. I’m fairly sure coming all over me wasn’t part of his torture plan, but when I released that small whimper of need, he abandoned the switch and the teasing, and he began jerking his enormous cock like he would die if he didn’t get to come.

I loved every second of it. And when he’s done, when he takes his hoof off the table and backs away, I want to beg him to put that long, toxic tongue inside my sex. I don’t care if I never get to move again, as long as he makes me come.

Krampus walks to the end of the table and bends close to my exposed pussy. Delicately, carefully, he uses two jagged nails to pull apart the lips of my sex. “You’re dripping, precious.”

As if he knows what I crave, what I need, he lets his long tongue slither out from between his jaws, right into the hole he’s holding open.

I can’t move. Can’t gasp. Can’t do anything but breathe and blink at the ceiling as his tongue wriggles deeper into me. It’s the strangest sensation, heightened by the smooth silver nubs that decorate the center of its undulating length.

Once he takes his tongue out of me, it will be another few minutes before I can speak, and several before I can move. When we fucked at the inn, I could buck my hips, rub against him, seek out my own pleasure. Now my climax is entirely in his hands… or his mouth. And there’s something excruciatingly erotic in being unable to react, utterly helpless to him.

He’s coaxing my orgasm to the surface slowly, deftly, as his tongue flexes and curls inside me. It’s coming, it’s coming, and I can’t stop it, can’t encourage it, can’t do anything but let him tongue-fuck me as I surge closer to the peak with every thrusting pulse. So close… gods… so close…

His tongue withdraws. Slips out of me. And I’m left quivering on the very edge, unable to tip over into bliss, unable to scream my frustration.

A single touch. Just one tiny caress against my clit, and that would finish me. But he stands there, masked, horned, and naked, with his red hair pouring over his shoulders like blood, and he does nothing .

This is agonizing. This is torture…

Oh.

The punishment he spoke of—it isn’t the beatings I’m used to receiving. It’s something wholly new. Physical pain, I could endure. Emotional pain—I’m used to that, too. But prolonged sexual torture like this, with blissful relief promised and then withheld—I don’t know how to respond.

Krampus strokes his palm along my ribs and stomach, then down my thigh. He even sweeps his hand along my inner thigh, but he doesn’t touch me where I need him most. Then he turns and walks away, granting me a view of his furred backside and his long, slender tail.

I struggle to moan, to murmur, to speak, but I can’t.

He waits with his back turned until a few minutes have passed, and then he picks up the switch and returns to stand beside the table. I try to speak again, and this time a faint whine of need passes my lips.

Krampus’s tail rises, its tufted end gliding along my leg, over my thigh. He brings the switch down in a quick arc, and its length bites the underside of my breasts while at the same moment the sinuous tail and its soft tuft glide along my pussy. I’m so agonizingly sensitive that the gentle contact feels like an explosion through my body. I whine again, shrill with need.

Krampus stings me lightly with the switch, here and there, each time in a new and unexpected place. And all the while his silken tail ripples softly over my clit and my pussy. Soon the furry tuft is soaked from my arousal, but he keeps teasing me with it until I’m gasping aloud, a fine sweat coating my breasts and collarbones. I’m straining so hard for the orgasm that I think I might burst. Almost… almost there…

He steps away, removing the switch and the tail from my body .

I clench my teeth and screech in frustration. A chuckle rumbles from behind the mask.

“Can you speak yet?” he asks me.

With an effort, I reply. “Yes.”

“Then it’s time. Tell me your secrets.” He rakes the tip of the switch along my inner thigh, gives my clit a startling tap with it. I hitch a frenzied gasp as the pleasure flares for a second.

“I did what I had to do, to survive,” I say.

“That’s not the truth. That’s an excuse. What did you do, Feather? Tell me.”

Now that it comes down to saying it aloud, I crash into the immense wall I’ve built in my mind, the blockade that keeps those words from finding their way to my lips. I can barely think about the details of what I did, let alone recount the story.

The switch flicks my side, then taps my clit. I let out a sob when he denies me the contact I need once again.

“Your resistance to confessing this is even stronger than I anticipated,” he says in a low tone. “That means it’s all the more important for you to break through this barrier, so you can be at peace with yourself. Tell me the tale, Feather, and I’ll let you come.”

“You’ll hate me,” I gasp, tears trailing along my temples into my hair.

“Never.”

“You’ll judge me. You’ll expel me from your house.”

He stalks over and takes my chin in his clawed hand. The goat-skull mask approaches my face, and locks of his red hair spill onto my breasts and shoulders. “Why would I expel my heart from my chest, or my soul from my body? Why would I deprive myself of air to breathe? Why would I banish all that is joyful and interesting from my life?”

“But I hate myself for it,” I whisper. “I did it, and I can’t take it back, ever. I can’t fix it. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it anyway, and that means I’m wrong inside. There’s nothing I can do to change it. I simply have to accept that I’m sick like him . And I don’t want to be like him in your eyes. But I can’t always control myself, Krael. Sometimes the anger and the jealousy take over my brain, and I do things…”

“What things?” he presses. “Tell me.” The switch glides up my leg, strikes my hip with a quick little sting.

When I don’t answer, Krampus growls in frustration and stalks to the end of the table, where he unshackles my ankles before coming back to unchain my wrists as well. At first I think he has given up on me, which sends a pang of disappointment through my heart—but he only frees me long enough to flip me over onto my stomach, and then he secures my wrists and ankles again. I turn my face aside, pressing my cheek to the smooth, worn surface of the table.

I can move my body a little now, but I can’t see him in this position. His voice resonates nearby, but he’s out of my sightline.

“Tell me, Feather,” he says.

The tip of the switch traces my spine. Then I feel its sting on my bare bottom. Immediately after the blow, his warm hand clasps one of my ass cheeks and squeezes it, soothingly but also hungrily. I feel more arousal leaking from my pussy as he taps me with the switch again, then gropes my other ass cheek.

“Who did you hurt, Feather?”

“Wife,” I whisper.

“Wife? Was that her only name?”

“No.” I swallow, and in that moment of hesitation I feel him climb onto the table between my legs. His fur is soft against my thighs.

His hand runs up the back of my right leg. “Tell me her name.”

“Colletta.”

“Good girl. And what happened between the two of you?”

“I don’t know how to begin,” I whisper .

“Try.” The hot, blunt head of his cock strokes along my slick pussy, and I moan softly at the gentle thrill.

“She was the worst Wife he ever brought to the cabin. I was eleven. From the moment she arrived, she despised me. She called me a half-witted little bitch, and worse names. She said I was a conniving, slack-jawed slut, that I made our captor hard for me and then she had to bear the violence of his lust. Then she began to make sly, critical comments about me in front of him, each night. She would set up situations to make me look foolish or rebellious in his eyes.”

Krael keeps stroking my pussy lips with his cock head, stimulating thrill after thrill, easing me through the agony of the confession. “What happened?”

“The way he looked at me changed.” I gulp back a sob. “She was influencing him. Teaching him to despise and hate me too. I knew if things continued that way, he would kill me and take another Little Sister. I didn’t want to die.”

The warmth of his cock vanishes, and I cry out, aching at the loss. But his deep voice persists. “What did you do?”

“I began to play her game. I whispered to him when I sat on his knee, and when he put me to bed at night. I told him that Wife was saying all kinds of terrible things about him whenever he was gone. I said she was planning to kill him, and I told him where he could find the weapon she had made—a long, sharp splinter of wood pried out of a log. It was all lies. I made the weapon, and I put it under her bed.”

His hands wrap around my hips, strong and comforting. “Don’t stop. Tell me everything.”

“I heard him that night, and I heard her, too. The screaming. It went on for hours. When he left the next morning, he told Mother and I not to help her, not to interfere. We peeked into the bedroom to see what he had done to her, and—” My voice breaks. “I can’t describe it, I can’t.”

“Did you help her?” he asks .

My answer comes out small, as small as my soul feels when I think of it. “No, I didn’t even try. I was horrified by what he did, but I was glad, too. She wanted me dead, but she was suffering instead. I realized that I had power over him. Enough power to keep myself alive. And that made me glad.”

“You were a child,” he rumbles. “A child raised in a terrifying situation, by a brutal man.”

“But I was wrong to do it.”

“You were wrong,” he agrees. “But you were afraid. And that fear gave you the strength to survive.” He pries apart my ass cheeks, and his big warm cock wedges between them, rubbing through the center. When he speaks again, his tone is low, fierce, unrepentant. “You destroyed the person who would have destroyed you, and I’m glad you did it. I’m glad you’re alive.”

The words startle me, cleave me right to the core, and spark a glow in the darkest parts of my being.

I’m glad you did it. I’m glad you’re alive.

It’s what I needed. Not forgiveness, exactly, but permission to be worthy of existing. Worthy of surviving that cabin, when so many others did not. My survival may not have been gained honorably, but Krael doesn’t care. To him, my existence right here, right now, is worth any sin I committed to achieve it.

“He kept her there for three days,” I whisper. “I don’t know how she survived, the way he had cut her apart, stretched her open—” For once, I don’t try to avoid or repress it. I use Krael’s touch, the sensation of his heavy cock and his warm hands, as a lifeline, grounding me in the present while I face the scene in my mind.

“I don’t excuse my actions, or blame her,” I continue, my voice barely audible even to myself. “Both of us did wrong, but our captor was the ultimate evil. When he finally killed her, I was relieved that it was over.”

“Did you ever do such a thing again? ”

“Not for years. With the last Wife, I thought I might have to—but then everything happened so fast. He killed them, and then you arrived.”

He shifts backward and presses the head of his huge cock to my entrance. My pussy quivers against him.

“I should have kept you with me that night, instead of taking you to town,” he admits. “I regret leaving you alone. It was a cruel thing to do.”

“It’s in the past now,” I say, both to him and myself. “You can’t change the cause, the action, or the result. You can only try to do better, from now on. And that’s why I had pity on your victim tonight… because I think people should have a chance to learn, and to make different choices.”

“Many people deserve that,” he agrees. “But in most cases, my victims do not. They have done evil beyond help or saving.”

“I thought I was becoming a good person again,” I murmur. “And then I struck Midrael with that candlestick.”

“You were a jealous little brat. Deserving of punishment.” He smacks one hand against my ass cheek, then grips the soft flesh, denting it with his claws as he forces the bulging head of his Krampus cock into my pussy.

“You won’t fit,” I gasp.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not in this form. But if I shift forms—”

I feel him moving, changing, fur being replaced by smooth, hot skin. His cock becomes slightly smaller, and the second it fits, he shoves himself fully inside.

He’s lying on top of me, humping against my body like the picture of two dogs in heat that I found in my book of creatures. My mound rubs against the table with every thrust, and my eyes roll up, my lips going loose as I give myself over to the bliss that is finally, finally going to be mine.

“Yes,” I moan in blurred ecstasy, “Yes, yes, yes, I’m going to come—”

He pulls out .

My pussy clenches around nothing, and the orgasm recedes.

“Fuck!” I scream. “No, please no. I told you everything, I swear I did.”

Krael bends until his face is level with mine. He has dispelled the mask, and I swear he looks more agonizingly handsome now than ever before. Perhaps it’s because I want him so badly.

He strokes my cheek, smiling, his face flushed with hectic lust. “What do you want, precious?”

“Please, please, please.” I’m broken, nearly crying, utterly desperate. “I’m begging you, please make me come.”

“How beautifully submissive you are,” he croons. “My little maid in chains. Tell me exactly what you want me to do to your pretty cunt.”

“Stuff me full of your cock,” I pant. “Thrust into me, fuck me until I can’t breathe, until I can’t stop coming. Don’t torture me anymore, please… I can’t bear it.”

He ducks in to kiss me, inhaling deeply as he presses his lips to mine. His tongue is no longer dangerous, and I welcome it into my mouth.

Then he climbs back on the table, orders, “Lift that darling ass for me, precious,” and he plunges into my pussy.

I’ve been so close to coming for so long that I’m violently sensitive, and he’s brutal this time, pummeling mercilessly into my cunt. My whole body jerks as I come with a heart-stopping, bone-jarring climax. Krael braces me while I shudder and scream, his claws puncturing my skin in a couple of places—and for some reason the pain only makes the pleasure more intense. I scream until my throat is raw, and with that scream, with that release, I expel all my guilt.

Krael lets me sink bonelessly onto the table while he pulls out and finishes with a hot spray of cum all over my back and my ass. I lie limp while he recovers his breath, unfastens my chains, and scoops me up in his arms .

Naked he carries me upstairs. Past the curious gaze of the Imp who’s perched on a wall sconce, eating shards of hot glass. Past the gaps in the wall through which I spot Wolpertinger’s long legs. Past an archway where the Bahkauv’s eyes glow in the darkness. None of them disturb us.

When Krael lays me down on the sheets of our bed, I stretch out, warm and relaxed and at peace.

Despite all the filthy things we did together this night, I’ve never felt so clean.