Chapter 7

CHAPTER7

The trip to the mortal realm hadn’t gone as expected, but neither had their arrival back home. He’d planned… well, a much different welcome for her. It would be romantic, and she’d be lost in excitement. Then he’d tumble her into his bed to finally show her all the things she’d been missing.

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d felt it would go that way, but the reality had been very different. Somehow, he’d forgotten how good humans were at refusing to believe things. His normal visitors tended to accept their new reality immediately, but that was because they were terrified.

He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.

There was some nervousness and the occasional fear of her situation, but that wasn’t the same as being scared of him. She’d been brassy enough to play a prank and that was something he’d never experienced before. He liked it.

Even the way she stubbornly sat on the floor, instead of the soft pillow he’d provided, amused him. Aline was definitely a fighter. But she was also in need of a firm hand, and it would be a real challenge to temper her fire without breaking her spirit. It was a challenge he was looking forward to.

Immortals were patient. They dealt with time on a grand scale and usually mortal lives were just a blip. The weeks he’d waited to claim her were nothing. And yet… he’d found himself counting the minutes, desperate to go back for her.

Now she was here and all he could think about was what he was going to do to her, but he’d forgotten about the realities. She would need to know who he was, and why she was here.

He’d taken care of that, though she’d had fewer questions than he’d expected. It was obvious she didn’t really believe any of it yet. Maybe he could convince her and take care of punishment at the same time.

“Aline, I promised to open your mind… and your body to new experiences. I wanted to begin your time here with pleasure, but I believe some rules have been broken. That changes things.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m an adult, not a child. I shouldn’t need to follow rules just because a man says so.” Her tone was snippy, but that was just a show. Underneath the façade was nervous excitement.

Her pulse jumped when he leaned forward and stroked her face with the back of his hand. “I’m not a man, not by any definition. I am Krampus and I am your Master, little girl.”

His hand moved under her jaw, fingers wrapping around the smooth column of her throat. They tightened just enough so that she could feel his grip. “Say it.”

“S-say what?”

“Admit that I’m your Master and you belong to me—as per our deal.” He could feel her swallow hard under his hand and his fingers pressed a little more when she didn’t respond. “Say it or the punishment will be worse.”

Her eyes narrowed and she looked to the side. “No.”

It seemed to surprise her as much as it did him. For a second, he just looked down at her. “Well, that would be your ‘make me’ streak getting you in trouble. I really did expect to have time to ease you into your new life, but you’ve made it impossible.”

His fingers tightened, carefully pressing into the sides of her neck until she gasped, and her eyes widened. She tried to pull away, struggling as panic set in, but he slid an arm around her waist to keep her still as the seconds ticked past.

It lasted just long enough to let her feel completely helpless, but it probably seemed like an eternity to her. He waited until her eyelids fluttered and started to close against the dizziness before he relaxed his grip, letting her catch a breath. Humans were fragile, but here in his realm he had no worries about her safety.

He controlled everything here. How could he torture his victims for a full year without losing them if he didn’t? She was in no danger and pain would last only as long as he wanted it to. Of course she didn’t understand that yet.

He let her go. “Up.” There was a snap to the order, as he released his hold on her.

She scrambled to her feet, though he was sure her quickness to obey had more to do with getting out of his reach. Not that she would be for long, since he rose as well.

“I want to see you naked. Now. And before you consider taking your time or disobeying, I’ll warn you that I’m fine with ripping the clothes right off your body, but if I do that… then you’ll have nothing to wear.”

Her hands twitched, clutching at the hem of her t-shirt and tugging at it with sharp nervous gestures. “I-I have more clothes in my suitcase.”

“Do you? And where’s your suitcase right now?”

“It’s...” She turned to look and then remembered it had been left where they’d first arrived. “Oh, I guess it’s back in that other room.”

“Yes. And if you learn to behave yourself, maybe I’ll arrange for you to have it back sometime soon. For now… the clothes you’re wearing are all you have. So, take them off before I ruin them.”

It wasn’t quite a dare, but he would have enjoyed ripping the clothes off of her.

She took a small step back, arms wrapping around herself. “I’ve… never undressed in front of a man before. I mean, not like this.”

“I told you. I’m not a man.”

That didn’t seem to make her feel any better. “I don’t even know what that means. What are you then?”

He tilted his head, examining her. “Would you like to see my real form?”

She rolled her bottom lip under, biting down on it for a second, and then nodded.

“Fine, but don’t scream or run away,” he warned her. His modern look wasn’t an illusion, but shifting to his original form was a simple matter of desiring the change.

It happened in an instant. One minute he was clean-cut and appeared like any attractive human male, the next his original shape slipped into place. It was comfortable, like a warm coat and he relaxed into it.

Being in that form always stirred up his wilder side. It brought up the old instincts, from before they’d become civilized. His control was always a little looser—and he liked the freedom of letting his animal urges run wild.

“Do you understand now, zaychik?” Even his voice had changed, deepening, almost into a growl.

“I… you…” She was speechless, which was no surprise.

He could taste the heavy sour scent of her fear, but … he could also smell her arousal. It flowed between her thighs like honey mead. She was turned on by his monstrous shape.

That was interesting. Not what he would have expected. He flexed his hands, and claws grew from his fingertips. “Are you afraid of me now?”

“No… yes.” She licked her lips, and then took a deep breath as she reached out to touch him with a shaking hand. Her breath went out with a whoosh when her fingers sank into the fur. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. I wasn’t even sure this was real, but I can’t explain how you just changed like that.”

“The sooner you let yourself believe, the easier this will be.” He moved closer and pulled her other hand up, placing it on his chest. “Feel. This isn’t a costume.”

She took it as permission to explore, hands running backwards through his fur so she could see the skin underneath. She leaned in, tilting her head as she pressed it to his chest and listened to his heart.

And then her eyes dropped lower, and she made a choking sound. “Wow. You’re…”

He wasn’t wearing pants and thinking about her over the past few weeks had kept him on the edge of excitement almost constantly. Now that she was here, his body had reacted in the natural way. “Yes?”

Two bright spots of red were rising on her cheeks. “You’re just… huge. I don’t think—I mean, I’m not sure how we could…” She went silent and shook her head.

He laughed. “You don’t think I’ll fit?” He caught her wrist and pulled her hand down to his erection. It jutted out between them, hot and ready. As he wrapped her fingers around the shaft, it jerked, thrusting towards her. “Don’t worry, little virgin. It will fit.”

“But it’s so thick.” Her voice trembled, but underneath he could taste her excitement. Without prompting she pumped her hand up and down the length.

He groaned and fought the urge to bend her over and fuck her right on the spot. His body ached to claim hers, and it took all his willpower to hold back. She would be able to take him in this form, but not yet, not untouched as she was.

“I’m larger in this form. It will be better if we wait, but my cock isn’t the only thing bigger in this form.” He waited until she looked up, hand still wrapped around him, and then he let his long tongue roll out of his mouth.

It coiled like a snake and her eyes widened. “Your tongue is so long!” she blurted out. And then she swallowed, and her fingers tightened around him.

The Krampus tongue was universally known, and featured prominently in most of the artwork featuring him. But it was rare that he was shown using it the way he wanted to use it on her.

One thing he couldn’t do well with it however, was talk clearly. So after she stared at it intensely for a moment, he sent it away. “Can you imagine what I can do with that, Aline?”

“I—”

“Can you picture me fucking you with my tongue? Thrusting it deep inside of you and twisting to touch you in places no cock ever could?”

Her mouth hung slightly open; eyes glazed as she stared at him. But her hand kept playing with his cock, stroking, teasing.

It was driving him insane. “Stop.”

She didn’t until he grabbed her wrist and forced her hand to still. “If you keep going, I won’t be able to hold back. You don’t want me to be that rough with you your first time,” he warned her.

She frowned, lips pursed as if considering and then finally let her hand drop away.

“Smart choice. Now, I believe I told you to strip.” He took a step back, resuming his human shape as he dropped into the seat and got comfortable. “Take your time and give me a show, if you like. Maybe if I’m pleased with you, I’ll be merciful about the punishment.”

He didn’t actually expect her to give him a show. In fact, he was pretty sure telling her to do it made it likely she’d do the exact opposite. Which meant he didn’t need to consider any extra mercy.

Punishing her was going to be fun and he wanted to enjoy it. Besides, he was already being extremely kind in comparison to how he normally treated his visitors. She would be trained, and disciplined, but there would be no torture, nothing that pushed her past what she could handle—though she might think otherwise.

He knew her limits, better than she did. It was part of the magic of Krampus to know how much a mortal could bear, and how the pain he was inflicting was affecting them. There were no safewords with Krampus, but when it came to his mate, none would be needed because he would always know when she’d learned her lesson.

Repentance and regret had a special rich flavor that sated him like nothing else. He could hardly wait to taste it and it wouldn’t be long now.

Aline began to undress after a long hesitation, slowly, but not with any seductiveness. She looked like the shy, embarrassed maiden she was, trying to remove clothing without showing any of her body. She stopped when she got down to her underclothes.

The bra and panties were matched and looked good against her skin. Not a surprise, since he’d picked them out specifically for that reason. He took a minute to admire the effect. “Keep going, Aline. I want to see my mate.” He waved a hand at her.

She huffed and then, with painstaking slowness, reached back to unhook the bra. The moment it dropped to the floor, she had her arms crossed over her chest.

The modesty was amusing and oddly arousing. “You’re almost there,” he said, trying to sound encouraging. “Come, don’t be shy. We can’t explore all those fantasies if you won’t even show me your body.”

“It just feels weird to get naked in front of someone I’ve only met twice.” The complaint had more than a little whine in it. “I don’t even know your name.”

He laughed. “Of course you do. It’s Master.”

“That’s not a name; it’s a title.” She sniffed.

“For humans maybe. It’s different for us. We don’t have individual names until we decide to find mates and then we pick one.” Or names were chosen for them. Some of his siblings had found, to their surprise, that their mates could affect the choice of names. He didn’t want that to happen to him.

She stared, forehead creased. “You… don’t have names?”

“We don’t need them. We’re Krampus.” It wasn’t like anyone ever ran into two of the Collective at once.

“But…”

“Aline, you’re stalling. I promise you’ll eventually have answers to all of your questions, but this is not the time.”

“I’m not stalling! I was just—”

He cut her off with a growl, lunging forward to grab her arm and yank her across his lap.

A panicked squeal burst from her as she landed across his knees. “What are you doing? Stop!”

“I did warn you not to lie to me, Aline.” He made a tsking sound as he gripped the back of the pink silk panties and used his supernatural strength to rip them from her body.

“Hey!”

“I also warned you what would happen if I had to remove your clothes. Be happy it’s just your underwear. You still have the rest.”

“But I liked them, and I only wore them a couple of times,” she blurted. She twisted to look over her shoulder with a pouty expression.

The fact that she was more concerned about ruined panties than what he was about to do to her amused him. Clearly, she hadn’t yet adjusted to that part of their deal. He’d promised her a much better life, and he had every intention of spoiling her with beautiful new things. It would balance the stern, sometimes severe, discipline.

He brought his hand down sharply across her smooth rounded bottom cheek. “Is that really your biggest concern right now, zaychik?”

She gasped, hissing in a deep breath as her eyes widened. Her lips parted as if to say something but then she turned her head away without a word.

He couldn’t see her expression anymore, but he didn’t need to. As a bright red handprint began to rise on her skin, he could feel her body reacting. He swept his hand down to decorate the other cheek and then waited for the matching mark to appear.

The smacks were nothing really. Just a little heat and sting, barely an appetizer, but for her it was the culmination of years of fantasies. She was finally getting a taste of what she’d dreamed about for her whole adult life.

He let her accept that it was happening, and then he began the real spanking. He almost never got to spank. Only rarely was it part of the tortures his usual victims deserved, and even then, it was usually just brief set dressing. This was different.

He loved to spank. It was such an intimate, special way to punish. Entirely suitable for disciplining or enjoying a mate.

Her reactions were beautiful as she trembled with frantic suppressed energy. Her muscles flexed and tightened while she fought to stay still. She was making such an effort not to fight him, and that had to be hard.

He didn’t understand why she was bothering. Other than her toes tapping on the floor and the occasional aborted kick, she was staying so still. Struggling would have added to the experience for her, but she remained stoic.

The tempo of the spanking increased as he pushed for more of a response. He tilted his hand to catch the tender undercurve more often. She barely moved, and other than an occasional whimper or gasp, she remained silent.

It was interesting that even though he wasn’t making any effort to be sensual, she was still slightly aroused. Even when the pain grew it didn’t change. That pleased him—the lack of reaction did not.

Her skin turned from pink to rose, and finally to a fiery red. As the color spread out to cover both cheeks, he could feel the effort it took for her not to react dramatically to the burning pain.

His curiosity got the better of him. “I must not be spanking hard enough if you’re able to remain in place,” he commented, pausing to lightly stroke his fingertips across the hot skin.

She shook her head quickly without looking back. “You definitely are! P-please don’t spank harder.” Her voice wobbled and sounded thick.

“Then I guess you better make an effort to show me how much you’re feeling it. I want to see your reactions… all of them— physical, emotional, pain, and pleasure.” He let his fingers trail down between her thighs as he finished, and she moaned.

Her legs eased apart, opening to him. He dipped one finger between her lower lips, stroking through the slippery juices.

“You have no trouble showing reactions to pleasure; why hide the pain from me?” It was interesting. Most people would have hidden the sexual heat out of embarrassment but been vocal about the pain. She was the opposite.

It was obvious the fierceness of the spanking had tempered her arousal somewhat, slowing her down to a trickle instead of a river, but the excitement was still there. He tugged a damp curl to get her attention. “Well? Why hide one and not the other?”

“I…” She trailed off.

His fingers curled in the damp thatch of pubic hair and yanked.

That startled a yelp out of her. “Ow! Wait, don’t do that,” she blurted, as she tried to close her legs.

He slid one finger between her folds to tease her clit, and suddenly she was no longer trying to clamp her thighs together. “Answer the question.”

“I just… I thought you would stop if I reacted too much. You’d think you were hurting me and you’d… stop.” The explanation was halting and slow. To be fair, he was distracting her.

A short bark of a laugh burst from him. “Aline, you do understand the point of a spanking is to hurt you, right? Did you not understand what I told you before? I am Krampus. I thrive on delivering pain. I want to hurt you. I enjoy it.”

There was a long silence, then, “Oh.”

“I know you’re struggling to believe all of this, but the one thing you shouldn’t have trouble with, is that I am fully enjoying spanking your ass.”

She squirmed, rolling her hips as she ground her clit against his teasing finger for more. “I tried before… to get boyfriends to spank me. They would always stop as soon as I acted like I was in pain. Or they’d give me a few light smacks and then try to push for sex like that should have been enough foreplay.”

That explained a lot. “Is that why you’re still a virgin? Not common at your age.”

“I’m not a virgin!”

He shook his head and pulled his hand away from her soaked pussy. She started to protest but she’d barely made a sound before he began peppering her ass with a dozen stinging slaps. They landed so fast his arm was practically a blur.

Maybe it was what he’d said, or maybe it was just the suddenness of the return to pain, but this time he did get a reaction from her. Both legs kicked up at once, and she yelped.

After the twelfth landed, he let his palm come to rest on the heated skin. “We’re going to break you of this lying habit, zaychik.”

“I’m not! I’m not lying… I mean,” She was quiet for a second. “I-I guess technically I’m a virgin, but there’s other stuff besides penetration. It’s not like I’ve never had any kind of sex.” The embarrassment was heavy in her tone.

She didn’t like talking about her lack of experience, which was interesting. He liked embarrassing her. She responded so vividly to the slightest humiliations.

And Humans did like to change their definitions constantly. His idea of virginity was perhaps outdated, but by his standards she was barely touched. So, maybe it didn’t count as a lie. He spread her thighs and went back to teasing her with his fingertips. She was much wetter now, slick and practically dripping.

“Tell me about your experience then. Have you had a man’s fingers in your pussy like this before? Did you let them fuck you with their fingers?” He started to ease one finger inside of her.

“Y-yes, a few times.”

“And did you clench around their fingers and soak their hands when you came?” He began to work his finger in and out.

She gasped and it turned into a moan as she clutched at his leg. When she replied, the words were full of starts and stops. “I d-don’t want to talk about it. Why do you even want to know? Men never want to know what girls have done before them.”

“Human men are insecure. They like the idea of being first, because then you can’t compare them unfavorably to your previous experiences. You have no expectations, so they don’t have to work for it. I’m not human and I want to know everything.”

Whatever experiences she’d had before couldn’t possibly compare to what she’d have with him, and she would be learning that soon. But he was curious and aside from that, having to talk about it was mortifying for her. Every time he forced her to answer his embarrassing questions, the river between her legs surged.

Her shame was beautiful and hot as fuck.