Currency in Flesh

Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

B efore I had even taken a breath, we appeared in the pit. Lady Cora’s knees still framed my hips. We were soaked from the spring, the barely-there fabric of my nightgown doing nothing to hide the hard nipples that studded my full breasts, spreading toward my sides. The goddess stood, leaving my body cold, and with a casual motion like she was brushing lint off her dress, she was dry once again—looking impeccable, not a hair out of place.

I glanced down at my drenched, tiny nightgown, my broad, bare thighs pale like the moon against the dark marble floor. My warm-chestnut hair fell around my face in a chaotic tangle. I laughed at the contrast, and was pleased to see Lady Cora’s lips quirk up as well. “Are you gonna help me out, too?” I asked, grinning.

She shrugged. “I could, or I could leave you nice and wet.”

“You could always help me dry now and then see how wet you can make me later…” I winked.

She waved her hand my way as she rolled her eyes. In an instant, I was dry. Pushing myself up to my feet, I ran my fingers through my hair, happy to find it soft and untangled. “Thank you, Lady Cora,” I said, dipping my chin.

I turned to find the cabinet, somehow menacing despite being little more than a black box. Lady Cora clapped once and the small table of tools reappeared beside it. “Would you like me to give you your privacy?” she asked.

I reached for her, taking her hand and tugging her close. I waited for her eyes to meet mine before I spoke. “I told you, I want him to see us together.”

“Very well,” she said, opening the cabinet and tugging on the rope. Sean swung into view, bound at the wrists and ankles, a gag tied tightly between his teeth. His eyes had the wide, blown terror look of a rabbit facing a wolf, and I giggled. My hip bumped against Lady Cora’s and her palm slid against the small of my back. We looked like we were posing for a family photo.

The rapidly growing terror written across Sean’s face turned my giggle into a full-blown laugh, and I let my head tip back, reveling in the feeling of lightness and mirth. It wasn’t that I had forgiven Sean, I didn’t think I could ever do that, but I had forgiven myself. I’d let go of the heavy burden of guilt and self-reproach. I no longer blamed myself for allowing his abuse to go unchecked. I recognized the years of slow manipulation that led to my acceptance of all the terrible things he had done. I hadn’t had a real chance to become someone—I’d gone from my mother’s misguided control to Sean’s insidious evil. But now I had the opportunity to find my own joy.

Sure, Donna the therapist would certainly have had some choice words to explain why I found comfort in giving up control. But Donna wasn’t here, and Lady Cora was. I thought about the press of her heel to my sternum, the crack of her palm on my cheek, the way my tongue slid over the patent leather of her Louboutins, the strike of her crop against my clit. That is what I wanted. I wanted to choose submission .

Lady Cora bent to whisper into my ear. “Would you like to show him how you should be treated, marigold?”

I nodded, eyes fixed on Sean’s heaving breaths. He was scared. It probably said something about my morality that his fear made my skin tingle, but I felt no shame. Shame didn’t exist to cause me pain and distress anymore.

Shame existed to make my pussy wet.

Lady Cora maneuvered Sean so that he faced the platform, securing his gag to a rope attached to the beam he hung from. He couldn’t turn away.

The platform was lit by candles, encircling the base in a warm, flickering glow. Just looking at the space already had my heart racing, so when Lady Cora plucked a flogger from the table and whipped it across Sean’s face, his scream sent my mind into overdrive. It was all prey animal hindbrain, my muscles freezing while my mind shot frantically between run and fight and freeze.

Lady Cora held her palm over Sean’s drooling, whimpering mouth. “Be still and silent,” she stated coolly. “Or you will find your lips stitched together again, and this time I will sew them by hand.”

His blubbering noises quieted, only a thin, occasional whine accompanying the soothing crackle of candle flames. “On your knees, pet,” she said, pivoting on her heel to face me and turning her back on my hogtied husband.

For a moment I was unable to move, still stuck in the pinball machine of runfightfreezerunfightfreeze , but the sound of the flogger striking Lady Cora’s thigh shocked me out of it and I dropped like a stone. Her perfect, pale thigh bloomed with color, a rosy starburst appearing through her dress’s long slit. She clicked her tongue at me, shaking her head.

“I should not have had to do that. Come kiss it better, and if you do a good job, perhaps I will not punish your insolence.”

I kept my eyes on her as I crawled across the cool marble. Down here, the candlelight was more vivid, playing over her skin and painting her in shades of orange and gold. She was every bit the Goddess of the Underworld. I tried to crawl in a way I thought she might like, back arched to expose my bare ass beneath the short nightgown, looking only at her. She dragged the leather flogger up and down her side and the anticipation of feeling it on my skin was almost too much. I could feel how slick it was where my thighs rubbed together, and I knew that soon, I would feel it spread down toward my knees. I reached her feet and sat back, keeping my palms to the floor and my eyes locked on hers, waiting.

“Well?” she said expectantly. “I said to kiss it better.”

I moved slowly, crawling until the hem of her dress grazed my knee, and beginning at her mirror-shined, pointed toe, began to place gentle kisses up her foot. She kicked out suddenly, catching me in the chin, and I yelped. “Did I say to kiss my shoe?”

“No, Your Highness,” I replied, sitting up like a rabbit on its haunches. She cocked her head expectantly, and I leaned in to press my lips to her thigh. Her skin was hot and smelled of amber and jasmine, the musk of her desire taunting me from only a few inches away. My mouth and my pussy grew wetter, and I let my mouth fall open and my tongue to slide over the small pattern of raised, red flesh. She hummed a tiny sound of approval and I took it as encouragement, fully kissing her thigh and imagining my tongue was somewhere else. I licked and sucked, peppering her leg with sweet, small kisses along with deep, passionate strokes.

Tentatively, I moved one hand to the back of her thigh and she permitted it, shifting her weight forward and bending her knee slightly to give me more contact. My other hand moved between her open legs, wrapping her muscular thigh in a reverent embrace. My fingers pressed into her flesh, moving up and down, barely grazing the curve of her ass before dropping back down to hold her thigh to me like a lover. After a few moments, she stepped back, pulling her leg from my arms and leaving me breathless, looking up at her with spit-slick lips and wide eyes.

“Good girl,” she said, running her hand over the back of my head. I waited, unsure if I had done as she asked or not. One side of her lips lifted, and I recognized the smirk, knowing exactly what would come next.

“Show me your tits, blossom,” she commanded, gesturing with the flogger. “I want to look at all that soft flesh I own.”

My cheeks flushed, but the shame sent a bolt of white-hot arousal down my spine. I shrugged the thin straps of my nightgown off my shoulders, the lace and silk falling down my chest to leave my full, low breasts bare. My nipples were tight and peaked, pointing down toward her feet and resting on the swell of my stomach.

She bent at the waist, her back straight, and pinched one sensitive bud between thumb and forefinger. I hissed in pain as she twisted. My entire breast lifted and moved with it, and when she released her grasp, it fell back down with a humiliating slap. The pink of my cheeks deepened to a fiery crimson, and she smiled as she repeated the motion on the other side. “So perfectly soft and pliant,” she said, walking around me in a slow circle.

“Tell me your body is perfect,” she said, taking me completely by surprise.

“Wha—” the crack of the flogger against my tender chest stole the question from my lips. I let out a strangled sort of bark, snapping my jaw shut before I could make any more embarrassing sounds.

“I will repeat this only once,” she said, running the handle of the flogger beneath my jaw to raise my face. “Tell me that your body is perfect.”

“I-I—” My entire body shook, my eyes filling with tears before I even understood why. “My-my body—” She hit me again, hard enough to send me falling to the side as my body instinctively tried to turn away.

“No,” she snapped. “Sit up and do as you were fucking told.”

The tears spilled over, running down my cheeks and falling onto the hot, red skin of my smarting tits. I didn’t look down, but I was almost certain my right nipple was bleeding. It hurt, but the thought of saying what she wanted me to say was much, much more painful.

But then, from behind her, I heard Sean. I recognized his derisive snort, even through the gag. It was the sound he made when I came out of our bedroom feeling pretty, the sound that crushed the tiny bit of confidence I had found beneath all his cutting remarks and underhanded comments. That sound had struck me far harder, and so many more times than his fists and hands ever could. And it was that sound that reminded me which one of us was going to survive the night.

My spine straightened, and I lifted my chin. “My body is perfect,” I managed to say. The words trembled slightly, but I said them. “My body is perfect,” I repeated, stronger, my voice steady.

Lady Cora smiled down at me, and for an infinitesimal flash of a moment, I saw something in her eyes I had never seen before. My heart lurched in my chest, and my lips parted, but it was gone so quickly, I must have imagined it. Instead, what I found in her expression was a challenge. “Tell me your body is mine,” she said.

That was easier. “My body is yours, Your Highness,” I replied.

“And who does he belong to?” she asked.

I froze, not sure what I was supposed to say. Was I supposed to say he belonged to her? That his attempt at paying his bargain had failed, and he was still the cost? That he was tied up in the Underworld, and under her dominion? She quirked a brow at me, waiting.

“He belongs to me.” Lady Cora’s answering smile was all the confirmation I needed that I had replied correctly.

“Yes, he does,” she said, turning back towards where his bound and suspended body swung gently from its bloodstained rope. “Show me.” I didn’t move. This hadn’t been what I wanted, I wanted to show him how she and I were together, to make him watch me please the Queen of the Underworld and see how much I wanted her.

With a wicked gleam in her acid-green eyes, she licked her lips. “I will make you come when you make him suffer. You want to taste me? I want to hear him scream.”