When I woke up this morning, I had no idea my world would go to shit so quickly.
Then again, perhaps I’d been waiting for it to happen. After all, things had been going to shit pretty much since the day I was born. I would say you could ask my mother, but I didn’t know who she was, other than the person who’d left my tiny body bundled up on a bus stop bench for someone to find when I was a whopping two days old.
Yep. My life started out on a bench, and based on what was happening here in this fancy dungeon, it looked as though it was about to go down on one, too.
“You are a pathetic excuse for a sub,” Josh hissed in my ear as I knelt on the floor before him. “So fucking pathetic.”
Perhaps he could come up with another adjective, no?
“Ungrateful, irritating, pathetic…”
Okay. Not exactly what I was hoping for but this was Josh. He wasn’t the nicest man in the world.
“Did you hear me?” he taunted. “You’re a pathetic mess.”
Yep. Pathetic. Loud and fucking clear.
Despite my mounting irritation, I kept my trap shut, knowing that if I said anything at all, it would only end up worse for me than merely enduring Josh’s unimaginative verbal humiliation.
What I wanted to do was give him the finger and tell him to go to hell, but biting the hand that fed me wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had. And since we were already drawing the attention of other club members who were congregating down here, I was hoping to move on with this. Once we got back to Josh’s house, he would calm down, and in a couple of days, everything would be fine. Or as fine as it could get, anyway.
“What? No smartass comment, Addy?” he snarled, his thin eyebrows pointing up toward his hairline.
I hated that nickname as much as I hated the degrading comments. And truth be told, I was starting to hate him.
“Well, then I’ve got an idea…” Josh grabbed a crop from a nearby table.
Crap.
My body instinctively tensed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the crop. However, when he wielded it, it meant nothing but severe pain, numerous welts, and days to heal. Now that I thought about it, the guy took all the fun out of the whole spank-my-ass-until-I-orgasm thing I’d been aiming for.
“Oh, come on, now, Addy. I want to hear you call me Master.” He laughed, a cackling sound that grated on my nerves. “Yes, Master. You’re right, Master. Beat me, Master. I enjoy it…Master.”
This was getting old fast.
His eyes drilled into me as though he could will me to say something I had no desire to say.
Don’t get me wrong, I contemplated it. For about two seconds. If for nothing else than to get this show on the road.
Nope.
Couldn’t do it.
When it came to Josh, Master wasn’t in my vocabulary. And he knew it, too. For one, he hadn’t earned the title. And everyone who knew anything about BDSM knew that a Dom wasn’t a fictional character who had all the power and none of the responsibility.
Sure, he’d asked me to refer to him as such. I told him it wasn’t important to me, which was a lie. I longed for the day I would find the man who I could respect enough to find a suitable honorific. It wouldn’t be Master, though. That was reserved for titles at the club, outrageously overused, in my opinion.
Unfortunately for all of us, today wouldn’t be the day I caved.
For the most part, the only reason Josh and I were still together was because I lived with him and I also worked for him. Basically, I was dependent on him for a place to sleep and food to eat. Otherwise, I would’ve been gone a long time ago.
Not a good reason to endure the hell he put me through, I knew, but at this point in my life, survival was key.
“Fucking bitch,” he snapped, grabbing my arm and jerking me to my feet.
I hurried to get my legs underneath me as pain shot through my arm. If he wasn’t careful—which he wasn’t—he was going to dislocate my shoulder and that would only make the situation worse. Up to this point, he hadn’t done anything that required a hospital visit. I was actually grateful for that.
“What do you say?” Josh growled with amusement, his eyes alight as he scanned the ever-growing crowd. “Let’s do twenty for that infraction.” He cackled. “With the crop. That should certainly teach you a lesson.”
I swallowed hard, praying he would stop before he went too far. The man wasn’t known to be gentle. He’d also been known to draw blood from time to time. Not with a crop, but, hey, there was a first time for everything.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
“Bend over the bench, slut,” he commanded, a rough bark that had me flinching.
Josh knew I wasn’t turned on by humiliation in any form, yet he was always calling me names and talking down to me. Of course, I didn’t think he did it because it was a fetish, more like a way to make him feel better about himself.
“Josh,” I said evenly, trying to remain respectful, all while eager to pull him back from the edge.
“Did I ask you to speak?” he yelled. “No, I did not! I told you to bend over the fucking bench, bitch. I’ll give you a choice. Ball gag or five more.”
For fuck’s sake.
No way in hell was I letting Josh gag me. Not only because I hated that shit but also because it would take away my ability to put a stop to this madness if and when it got completely out of control.
“Five more,” I uttered meekly.
“That’s what I thought.”
With my knees trembling slightly, I stood near the spanking bench but didn’t move into position. Truth was, I was scared. I used to know that Josh would be able to stop before he hurt me; however, that wasn’t the case anymore. I’d endured quite a few wounds in recent months that took more than a couple of hours to heal.
He pushed me from behind and I stumbled forward. Going for that whole respect thing again, I kept my glare shielded by my hair as it fell around my face. Considering I was as naked as the day I was born, it was the only buffer I had.
I could hear people whispering around us, knew they were likely concerned for my safety. Hell, I was concerned at this point. Yet I didn’t call out my safe word. Not because I didn’t want to. I did. But should I use it, that whole place-to-sleep thing I’d mentioned would go right out the window.
It was a catch-22. A Dom was supposed to be able to trust me, his submissive, to know my limitations. In that, I was failing. However, when weighing my options, having a place to sleep that didn’t involve a park bench was pretty damn important.
Now, if you were thinking I was a pitiful excuse for a human being, well, fine. Maybe it sounded that way. But I could assure you I was not. At the ripe young age of twenty-nine, I’d been around the block a time or twenty. I’d learned long ago not to rock the boat. At least not until I had a backup plan. At midnight, in a dungeon of a BDSM club, that backup plan resembled smoke in the dark.
Even though I’d put up with Josh’s shit for the past nine months, I was hoping for something to come along that would allow me to get out from under him. And to be fair, he wasn’t like this all the time. Mostly at the club. Which was the reason I’d been refusing to go with him. I honestly thought tonight would be different. I should’ve known better.
The next thing I knew, Josh was roughly shoving me onto the spanking bench. I managed to get my knees into position on the pads while I flailed for the flat, cushioned part to keep me from toppling to the floor.
Disaster averted.
“Fuck, you’re a clumsy bitch,” he hissed in my ear. “You think this’ll hurt, wait till we get home. Tonight, I think I’ll let you sleep on the back porch like the dog you are.”
Yay. He was in King Dick mode.
“Is everything cool here?” one of the dungeon monitors asked.
I peered over my shoulder, wanting to put a face to the voice. Great. His name was Chad and he was new and he sounded slightly hesitant to ask the question. If I was looking for a knight in shining armor, he would be considered rusty at best.
“Everything’s fine, Goldilocks,” Josh told him. “She likes the rough shit.”
No. No, I didn’t. But for the sake of argument, I wasn’t going to contradict him.
“What’s your safe word?” Chad asked me directly.
“Houston.”
Like, you know, Houston, we have a problem. I’d never been to Texas, but the saying seemed fitting for this instance.
I actually preferred red as my safe word because it was simple and also the same one the club used, but Josh had insisted on something else, so that was what I went with. Pathetic might be what I chose next time. It seemed to be the word of the day.
“Very well.” Chad stepped back.
Great. Another pushover Dom. Just what I needed.
I swallowed hard.
“Thirty now,” Josh declared triumphantly. “For drawing attention to your scrawny, pathetic ass.”
Annnnd we were back to that.
I draped myself over the bench, silently praying he would go the route of the squirrel. You know, find something shiny and go that direction. The man had a short attention span. Then again, when it came to dishing out pain, that wasn’t always the case. He wasn’t a sadist in the true sense of the word, he was merely an asshole.
There I was, laid out naked on the spanking bench, my ass bared for the world to see, and I could hear Josh laughing behind me. I tried to relax, knowing it would only hurt worse if I tensed up.
He didn’t offer any warning when the crop came down on the back of my right thigh.
Son of a bitch!
I screamed.
He grabbed a fistful of my hair, jerked my head back, and laughed. “We’re just getting started.”
The next blow landed on my right hip. That fucking hurt.
I focused on breathing, refusing to let him break me. I knew that was what he was after.
The next one hit just above the last and I hissed, shifting over, hoping it would change the angle of his swing.
“I said don’t move, whore. Not even an inch.” His voice was low and ringing with anger, but he released my hair, which was a relief. However, his palm took up residence between my shoulder blades, holding me down with more force than was necessary.
My chest tightened and I knew the tears weren’t far away.
The next slap landed just above my left butt cheek, on my lower back. I hissed and that was when the first tear fell. Quickly followed by another.
“Aww. Does it hurt?” he goaded.
“Suck it up, you pain slut. I know you like it.”
The next slap landed in almost the exact same spot as the one before it and the tears started to drip down my face. The one thing about the crop, it was small enough to cause serious pain when used by an inexperienced person. The leather snapped against my skin again and I knew I couldn’t take thirty. There was no way.
I choked on a sob and he hit me again, this time catching me with the edge of the crop instead of the flat part.
Arrrggghhh!
It felt as though he had sliced me open with that one and I knew I couldn’t keep up the ruse.
Before I could catch my breath, another slap quickly followed, this one at the base of my spine.
Nope.
No more.
“Houston!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“Shut up, you whiny bitch,” he snarled, then smacked my left thigh. Twice.
Fucking hell.
Where the fuck was Chad? He needed to hightail his rusty ass on over, because I couldn’t wait any longer. The pain was debilitating. Josh had never hit me this hard before.
As I tried to push myself up, I slipped forward when another smack landed on my lower back, right over my kidney. I screamed again.
“Houston,” I murmured around a sob. “Please…Houston.”
“That’s enough!” A deep voice reverberated around us and suddenly the room was eerily quiet, with the exception of Nine Inch Nails pulsing through the speakers.
Right up until Josh opened his damn mouth.
“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, little boy? That collar around your neck says you need to shut your damn mouth or you’ll be joining her,” Josh yelled, then managed to get another hit in, this time on my left ass cheek.
“Count for me, bitch.”
“One!” The deep, booming voice sounded from behind me again. “That’s the number of seconds you have to back the fuck up.”
“Screw you, man. She belongs to me and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with her,” Josh countered, his tone belligerent.
“I’m only going to—”
Another deep voice interrupted, this one raspier and far more controlled. “It’s all right, pup. Let me handle this.”
I noticed immediately that it didn’t belong to Chad, the runaway dungeon monitor.
“First of all, you owe me an apology for speaking to my submissive without permission,” the second voice continued. “Secondly, you touch her again and I’ll break your fucking hand. She used her safe word. Respect it.”
The man’s voice was so calm—downright lethal, actually—I was surprised Josh was challenging him. Whoever he was, he definitely didn’t sound like he was joking.
“Her safe word doesn’t mean shit to me if I don’t want it to. I can do wh—”
“Raise the crop near her again and you’ll be leaving in an ambulance.”
I couldn’t see who was talking because I was letting my hair form a curtain around my face as I tried to catch my breath. Plus, I was hoping to hide some of my shame by remaining as inconspicuous as possible. Yeah, my naked ass was still on display, but that was nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“You think you’re a big man?” Josh cackled. “Obviously not man enough if you’re resorting to playing with boys. What? Can’t get a woman to take it in the ass for you?”
Christ Almighty. Someone needed to shut Josh up before he said something—
A big, sturdy hand was suddenly on my shoulder and then my hair was being brushed back from my face as warm breath fanned my right cheek. Instinct had me turning my head the other way, not wanting this person to see those damned tears that had fallen.
“Let’s get you up from here.”
I racked my brain to tie the voice to the speaker. It wasn’t no-show Chad, so it had to be one of my two white knights. I was pretty sure it was the first guy, only his tone was much more controlled than before.
Hell, it could’ve been a third guy. I wasn’t sure.
Not that it mattered.
At this point, any good Samaritan would do.
