Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

DOMHNALL

I stride away and punch in the passcode, forcing myself not to show the weakness of looking over my shoulder at her no matter how much I want to. Still, it eats at me, and I have to fight myself not to turn back.

Mads, gorgeous Mads, laid out trembling, dripping, spread wide on the bench.

Is she still on the apparatus? Is she flipping me off? I can’t wait to get upstairs to see everything. To watch exactly what she does next. She was playing at obedience so well today. Will she keep it up when I’m gone?

I’m painfully hard and every instinct tells me to reach a hand down to offer myself relief as soon as the elevator doors shut behind me.

But today it felt like we reached a new… level.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had a sub around this long. I’m a strictly one night and done sort of dom. Is this what Caleb meant when he said there was something to having a sub around for longer. By… bonding with one.

I bark a laugh at the thought. I’m not bonding with her. I’m playing the game. I’m bonding her to me .

I am the one in control here. Just look at the way she trembled beneath me in spite of herself. If I was shaking a little, too, well, I was still the one doing the tormenting.

Once I’m upstairs, I immediately slide in behind my desk and pull up two of my cameras. I’m delighted to find her only now climbing off the bench.

Did she wait for me intentionally or was she just so affected by our little scene that she couldn’t move till now? Most subs telegraph everything they’re feeling on their faces, but Mads is the ultimate chameleon. Apart from pleasure, I’ll never know what she’s actually feeling, will I?

My cock leaps in my pants.

Every muscle in my body is clenched tight as I watch, breath bated, as she walks unsteadily over to the bed and climbs on. At first, she just sits on the edge of the bed. For a moment, she stares straight ahead, and then, her chest visibly inflating as she takes a large breath, she looks up at the O-ring camera.

I almost fucking nut right there.

But at the same time, the phone rings.

I snatch it up and bark, “What?”

“Jesus, Domhn. Caleb just told me Quinn told him that you still have the girl at the house and you aren’t letting her go. Do you know what kind of liability you’re exposing the club to if this girl comes back and sues?”

It’s Marcus on the phone. He’s a corporate finance lawyer and club member who helped with the auction. Of course Quinn went squealing to him. I thought I’d gotten her off my back, but now here she is starting shit.

Marcus continues on his tear, “You know NDAs aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on these days. What the f?—”

He cuts off mid-rant, his voice suddenly lowering. “Oh! What a beautiful drawing, sweetie. Why don’t you color it in with the purple crayon and Daddy will be right back after this little phone call?”

I hear the noise of a door slammed, my eyes still drilling into the screen as a naked Madison slowly scoots to the middle of the mattress. I zoom in on her face, loving the embarrassed bloom to her cheeks.

“I’m in the middle of something,” I say. “I’ll call you back.”

“No, you can’t fucking call me back,” Marcus whispers heatedly. “Did you hear a word I said? What the fuck are you doing with this woman? You need to let Quinn pick her up immediately. And pray she’s happy with the payout and doesn’t decide to take legal action against you. Because we both know she could get an even bigger payday than fifty million if she seeks restitution for mental and physical suffering?—”

“She won’t call the cops. She’s a crook,” I quip. I don’t have fucking time for this. Madison’s just spread her legs. Her hand descends shyly down her stomach. “She conned her way across the better part of Ireland, the rest of Europe, I imagine, and I’d be shocked if she hasn’t done the same here in the States. I’m doing the world a favor, really, and locking up a dangerous criminal.”

At least one half of a dangerous criminal enterprise, anyway. Her father might have been the one with a penchant for violence, but she was the hunter who put little stupid fishes like me on the hook for him.

Now I’m furious that my cock is so hard. I yank out my key ring from my pocket and unlock the bottom drawer of my desk. I don’t reach for what’s inside yet.

Marcus starts to say something else, but I hang up on him and ignore when the phone rings again.

Instead, I calmly unbutton my starched white shirt. I’m painted in unholy tattoos. Christ is impaled on his cross on my chest, far bloodier and more lifelike than the normal, sanitized versions worn on all those nuns’ necks back at school when I was growing up. No, in the ink on my chest, blood pours down his face from the thorn crown piercing his forehead. Same with the nails in his hands that stretch around to my back and the slice marks in his wan chest, across the bottom of my ribs.

Everywhere else, more macabre scenes of demons, skulls, and reapers cover me, neck to wrists. During business hours, I’m respectable as fuck. But underneath, I always know what’s there.

I shrug out of my shirt as on the second monitor, I see Madison’s hand slip between her legs. On the first monitor that’s still focused in on her face, I see her confused pleasure as she begins touching herself. It’s a scrunch of her features that looks almost like pain.

I grit my teeth, my own pleasure flashing. My cock leaps again and I reach for what’s in the bottom drawer. My fist closes around the handle of my nastiest whip, coiled like a snake here for only the most special of occasions. Underneath is the collar I bought for Madison long ago. Elegant, with the Callaghan crest at the back and a large diamond at the front. I always knew one day I’d make her mine.

But first, I have to get myself back under complete control. I have to remember who is meant to be the owner of whom. Every time I draw out her pleasure and see the things she can’t deny as truth, it lures the foolish boy I was back to the surface.

It’s time to remind him just what happens to na?ve young men who let themselves be tempted by beauty and apparent vulnerability .

My grip on the whip’s handle tightens as I pull it out, letting it uncoil like a viper.

I’m not a masochist.

I like to inflict the pain, not feel it.

Usually.

It’s only on the very rare occasions when the demons get to howling like banshees?—

I take three steps back from the monitor and let the cat-o’-nine-tails wail, flipping it in the particular way I’ve learned to do over the years so that it lashes backwards, whipping around and over my own shoulders.

I take it silently when the knotted horsehair ends of the leather tails lash my back. I was far from quiet the first time this instrument of torture hit my flesh. But I was trained to take it and thank my master for the favor of his touch.

On screen, Madison’s forehead scrunches in pleasure and her legs clench together around her hand as she continues rubbing her sweet little clit. I reach down and unbutton my slacks, shoving both them and my boxers down until my straining cock stands straight out like a ship’s mast.

Madison’s back arches in unconscious pleasure, perfectly mounded breasts topped with hard, pebbled little nipples. As she starts to squirm in bed, I land the second lash, on the opposite shoulder.

My entire body reacts from the pain that’s intense enough to steal my breath. My cock only throbs harder as Mads rolls over on her side, her hand sawing against her clit as she fucks herself.

I land another strike. And another. I feel blood pouring in rivulets down my back that’s on fire now, soaking into the top of my pants and dripping on my polished wood floor. I only continue with another ruthless strike. The next sends me to my knees, mouth dropped open in eye-popping pain. My cock strains harder still.

On the screen, Madison’s face twists in longing. She’s almost there. Her pleasure is a moment away. She yearns for it. The release would be so sweet, the endorphin rush a reward for all she’s been through for the last few days. I’ve demonstrated to her just how good her body can feel if she works at it.

I hesitate, my whip paused, the wicked ends dripping with my blood onto the floor, waiting to see her choice.

Will she take what most humans in this world do? Will she grasp for the immediate pleasure?

Or will she obey?

I breathe hard, my own chest bellowing up and down, on the edge of a pin as, at the very last moment, she yanks her hand away in denied pleasure, twisting in the sheets and screaming into the pillow.

My hand flicks for one last lash.

Right as it lands, without once touching myself, my cock explodes with cum, milking itself in pleasure at her obedience as pain spasms through my back. “I am in control!” I shout, and fall to my knees, whip dropping from my hands.