Sanctum_Saving Setora Page 14

  Sheriff bent over me, his breath fanning my ear. “Puts your ass at the perfect angle, doesn’t it?” He straddled me, swatted my ass hard enough to make me yelp, and then grabbed each of my hands, slipping my wrists into the hanging straps. They hung low enough that, with them being slightly stretchy, allowed my wrists to touch the mattress, but just. I rested comfortably, without them tugging, but I wouldn’t have been able to fight him.

  “Watching me beat off made you hot, didn’t it, little spy? There’s no reason to deprive your body of what it wants, but something must be done about your behavior first.”

  “Master, I didn’t mean to—”

  Sheriff bent over me, his voice rough in my ear. “Shut. Up.”

  The bed creaked, and his weight shifted as he bent down for something. I snatched a look over my shoulder. He had that belt in his hand, folded over.

  I threw my face into the mattress, with a wail of desperation.

  He smacked my ass five times, hard, with the folded slack of leather. A spanking for misbehaving, without brutality or anger, almost matter of fact. Except he wasn’t fooling me. He hated me, and I would feel his wrath soon. With every slap, I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms, tugging on the straps until they bit into my wrists. My own tiny, helpless whines sounded unrecognizable to my ears. Those whines only made him hit harder.

  The belt slid away from my ass a final time, insidiously slow. Tears leaked from my eyes. The sound of the belt hitting the floor, a dull thud and a clank, never sounded so wonderful.

  “Hurt?” Sheriff ran his palms over my freshly reddened ass. The heat of them intensified the sting, and the sting reached down, down into that twisted part of me that wanted him and tweaked it until I squirmed under him, rutting against the pillow.

  “Yes, Master,” I sniffled.

  “Good girl.” I heard him smile, and it twisted me up inside. “You’ll think twice about lurking in my fucking doorway and watching me get off, won’t you, little spy?”

  I nodded silently.

  He repositioned himself so that my legs were spread wide and he knelt between them, working his cock through my dripping wet folds. He slicked it up, teasing until my hips wriggled.

  “Next time you want to watch me, ask me.” His mouth was at my ear. “Ask, and I’ll let you. Then I’ll come down your fucking throat.”

  His fist grabbing my hair was all the warning I had. He yanked my head back so hard I cried out, and then thrust into me with a grunt. I bucked and groaned, feeling him all the way to my toes.

  Sheriff wrapped my hair around his fist long enough to plunge into me a few times, gripping it like a collar. Then he leaned over me with his palms on the mattress by my head, pumping in and out of me in long, masterful strokes, his chest pressing me into the mattress.

  “Oh, fuck. So perfect. You are the perfect fucking trap for a man, aren’t you? Sweet little fucking spy.”

  His words fanned the flames of both my hatred and my need at once. If he called me spy one more time, I thought I’d claw his eyes out, but with the straps holding my wrists in place and that wretched pillow raising my hips, cradling them, there was nothing for me to do but lie there and take it while he fucked me. While he did whatever he pleased with me.

  Hatred boiled in me, hot and bright and caustic, a poison my blood craved the way my body seemed to crave him. It made me want him more, made me thirst for him until I chanted my assent like an oath.

  “Yes. Yes, yes…”

  “Yeah, I’ll keep you here for hours, slaking myself in you.” He slid out and thrust back in, stopping, and then doing it again, so hard I felt him bottom me out. “You’ll lie there and take everything I do to you, won’t you?”

  There was no point in trying to talk my way out of it; it would only make him drag things out. “Yes, Master.”

  His hungry rumble made my sex tighten around him and his control seemed to snap. With a curse and a hard clap on my hip, he fucked me like a savage. His hips slapped mine, and my need sent me reeling until I was rocking into him.

  “Tell me how much you want it.”

  “I want it, Master.”

  “Tell me what a good little spy you are.”

  Maker, save me. “I’m a good little spy,” I sniffed, a piece of my heart breaking off and cutting me like glass.

  Sheriff chuckled, cold triumph. “That’s right.” He licked and then bit my ear. He turned my head to the side and ate at my mouth, licking greedily. Then his hand grabbed my throat from behind, adding just enough pressure to let me know what he could do to me if he chose.

  The power he held in that single gesture terrified me, but it also made me crazy with lust. I moaned, telling him everything he needed to know.

  He thrust into me wildly, and I screamed, white lights tearing across my vision. Sheriff cursed and pulled out, and hot liquid splashed across the curve of my back.

  Slowly, he leaned over me and brushed my hair away from my neck gently. “I wish I could keep you here all day, but I have work to do.” He inhaled me deeply and slowly removed those straps from my wrists. “I’m going to go take another bath. You’d best be gone when I get back. Unless you want it up the ass next time.”

  I made to get up, but he fisted my hair and I stilled.

  “Oh, and one more thing.” His voice was a low, dark rasp. “The only reason I’m not getting rid of you is because I love the way you feel on my dick, and it gets me hard fucking Damien’s prized piece of ass. But if I ever catch you spying on me without my permission again, I’ll flog you so hard you won’t sit for a month. Now get out.”

  Sheriff didn’t give me a chance to grab my clothes before he called on Gore to take me back to the laundering hole.

  For the second time since I’d met him, I left Sheriff’s rooms, naked for all the world to see and wishing I was almost anywhere else.

  Chapter 12

  A Master’s Right

  I followed Gore back toward the laundering hole in silence, my thoughts spinning like a sand twister in the desert. Would every encounter I had with Sheriff end the same way, with me leaving his rooms naked and bruised, baring only my humiliation like a cloak?

  We walked past the main clubhouse, and the men there turned and smirked and whistled. Gore just chuckled and led me onward. My insides twisted with shame.

  “Someone had fun,” Bear said, and I turned my head to see him lean over as I passed, peering closer at my bare backside. At the welts from Sheriff’s belt.

  “I really need to get me one of those,” his friend Dozer said, puffing on a smoke and winking at me.

  I continued after Gore, hiding my rolling eyes. Bear and Dozer had always been nice to me, but right then, I wanted to swat them both.

  The worst part was, I couldn’t make sense of the emotions swirling through me. Sure, it disturbed me that Sheriff seemed to simultaneously hate and want me all at the same time. The conflict in him seemed to feed off of itself, and he’d told me as much; he saw me as Damien’s whore, and that made him hard. He got off on taking out his anger with Damien on me. A large part of me wanted to put as much distance between us as possible.

  Unfortunately, now that I was away from him, with that belt of his no longer stinging my ass cheeks, a sense of rightness settled on me, insidious as poison. Just the memory of him taking me, vicious and savage while those restraints bit into my wrists made my sex tingle all over again.

  So much easier if I felt only anger and dislike for Sheriff but, as I was learning, being with men of the Dark Legion was never that simple.

  Besides, fact was, he was my master and the leader of the Dark Legion, which meant he wasn’t going anywhere. Finding a way to make peace with him was my only option. If I was ever going to do that, I’d have to find out what Damien had done to him and somehow make it right.

  Still, being forced to walk around naked like this every time I emerged from his rooms had to stop.

  We clattered down the wooden walkway toward the laundering h
ole. With the green only one storey below us, the voices of the other slaves drifted up on the early afternoon breeze, chattering and laughing. Dread stabbed at me. Not only was I returning to my chores stripped naked and looking like, as Bear had so eloquently put it, “someone had fun” with me, but I was coming back almost two hours after my break had ended.

  The slaves already disliked me. This wasn’t apt to improve the situation. And I wasn’t looking forward to Cherry’s reaction, either.

  “Gore, sir?” I stopped him close to the ladder that led down to the green. He looked at me impatiently. “Could we please stop at Pretty Boy’s quarters? I’d like to put on some clothes before I return to my chores.”

  The way his thick dark mustache twitched with the turn of his mouth in amusement made me wish I hadn’t asked. “Not a chance. If you did something to piss Sheriff off, then it serves you right. Your master wants you to walk around naked as a whore, then naked you’ll be.”

  Sighing, I followed him down the ladder. My cheeks reddened, knowing all he had to do was lift his head to get an eye-full of my bare backside, my every move showcasing my sex in full view. The quiet hum of approval told me he’d looked.

  On the green, half of me longed to hide myself behind Gore’s tall, bulky frame, but it would only delay the inevitable. When we arrived at the laundering hole, most of the women had finished the washing. They went about gathering the clothes, picking up the baskets, others finishing hanging the wet clothes on lines strung near the edges of the green, between the cliffs.

  Tanya and some of the others lifted their heads, disapproval falling over every face. Gore left me with the slaves without a word. Cherry stood, worry pulling her russet brows together as she came over to me.

  “Violet?” Her voice was pitched low. I heard the unspoken question.

  “I’m fine, Cherry. Just put me to work.”

  “Where the fuck are your clothes, girl?” she hissed. She plucked up my wrist. “Hawk do this?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who?”

  I closed my eyes, feeling all the women’s eyes on me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She made an angry sound and waved at me to follow her toward the slave quarters. To her room.

  “What is it with those men and depriving women of clothes?” she said when we were alone in the passage that led to the many slave caverns, including hers.

  In her room, she traipsed over to her small dresser, fished a clean, new pair of underwear out of a drawer and shoved them into my hands.

  “It’s bad enough they insist on not letting you wear underwear, but naked?” She grabbed one of the white frocks slaves usually wore out of her closet and tossed it at me. “Put those on. Honestly, Violet, I can’t keep giving you clothes like this. Your masters must think I’m a clothing merchant.”

  “I know. Really, Cherry, thanks.” I quickly washed up in her little water closet and pulled the underwear and frock on.

  Straightening the frock, I looked at it sadly, reminded of the day when I’d first come to the Grotto. Having to wear something so obviously associated with my position made me feel like I’d lost something. Something that, perhaps, wasn’t mine to begin with. Silly, since as soon as I visited Pretty Boy’s quarters, I’d be able to put on another cadris.

  “Sorry I’m so late, Cherry,” I added as we walked back out to the laundering pool.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?” She stopped at the entrance to the tunnel and turned to me. Thankfully preventing me from having to talk about what had happened in front of the other slaves. “What did Hawk say to you?”

  Maker, she was still under the impression my state had something to do with him. “I didn’t even see Hawk. T-Man took me up to the mountain, but Hawk wouldn’t let me in.”

  I distinctly saw a flinch pull across her pensive face at T-Man’s name. One of these days, I’d have to get her to tell me what her problem with him was.

  “Then what the hell happened to you?”

  I said nothing.

  She dropped her shoulders. “Okay. Whatever. But…if you were in trouble, you’d tell me, right? If you needed help?”

  Appreciation for her support brought a small smile to my lips. For some reason, my throat tightened. Would Sheriff ever stop seeing me as his enemy? “I’d tell you.”

  “You’d better. Come on, let’s put you to work.”

  All of the women were hanging clothes now, letting them dry in the breeze. Cherry handed me a full basket of wet clothes for hanging.

  “How convenient,” Tanya said from beside me. She had a clothes pin between her teeth, rising on tip-toe to clip a pin onto a shirt. “You came back when the work is all but finished. I suppose taking cock is more fun than scrubbing man-sweat out of clothes.”

  She ignored a glare form Cherry.

  “Is that what you think I was having? Fun?” I snatched up a freshly cleaned, damp pair of socks from my basket.

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Tanya,” Cherry snapped, starting on her own pile at the end of the line.

  “What?” She looked at me again. “Which one of your men had you?”

  “Tanya.”

  “Was it Sheriff? I heard you’re the General’s favorite.”

  Gretle snorted.

  “Tanya!” Cherry barked.

  “What?” She grinned innocently.

  “Stop being a bitch.”

  I finished hanging the socks and fought off a smile. I kind of adored her right then.

  That evening, shortly after the end of workday whistle in the mines blew, I expected one of Hawk’s men to come for me as usual and bring me to the clubhouse. Instead, Hawk came for me himself.

  As soon as I saw his shadow growing larger as he crossed the green, a burst of joy hit me. Sheriff had been right, he was fine. Seeing him was like seeing a glimpse of heaven. But irritation quickly rose in its place. Since we’d returned to the Grotto, he’d virtually ignored me. It bothered me that I couldn’t stamp out the tiny glimmer of hope that he was coming for me because he wanted my company.

  “Kitten,” he said when he filled the entrance to the slave’s tunnel.” His tone was stony, to the point where the name sounded out of place.

  “Master.” I’d tried to make my voice sound indifferent, but it came out off-key. “Will I be spending the evening with you?”

  Maker, that sounded so…desperate. So needy. The man gave me so little of himself, it wasn’t right that I clamored for a scrap of affection from him, but this close, my skin hummed with need for him.

  He stepped into the tunnel. “Let’s go. I only have a few minutes.”

  Disappointment tugged at me. Not only did he sound irritated—with me or with himself—but his expression was a cold scowl. The circles under his eyes were dark as ever, and his face looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept in days. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers like he had one of his headaches again. The urge to help him rose up just like it always did, and I hated that, when all I saw in his eyes was cool indifference.

  I said goodbye to Cherry and followed him across the green. We headed toward the walkway that led to the string of caverns belonging to Pretty Boy, Steel, and some of the other men.

  “Master…” I pushed down the inexplicable nervousness that ate at me.

  “Yes, Kitten.” He glanced back at me, sounding as worn—and impatient—as he looked.

  I forced myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. “How are you? Have you been sleeping?”

  For an instant, his eyes softened, along with his voice. “You need to stop worrying about me, slave. From what I hear, it’s already landed you in trouble once.”

  Sheriff. He’d heard. Wonderful.

  “I can’t help it, Master. You look terrible.”

  His soft chuckle made my insides heat. “We’re here.” He stopped beside Pretty Boy’s quarters. “Pretty Boy and Steel will be with you tonight.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. After all that had
happened, that was it? He sounded like he couldn’t care less. Confusion bit into me. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know how to even start.

  “Yes, Master,” I said a little stiffly.

  But I was hardly a step into the entrance to Pretty Boy’s living room—having nodded to him and Steel when they waved from the couch—when Hawk grabbed my nape from behind. He yanked me back onto the walkway. I yelped in surprise.

  Next thing I knew, he’d spun me to face him, shoved me against the wall with his fist in my hair, and devoured my mouth.

  I whimpered at the sudden feel of his strong lips bruising mine, his yanking my head back so I had nowhere to go, and the way his other hand slipped slowly around the front of my throat. He added no pressure, but his palm was so hot it nearly seared my skin.

  Indignation pricked me, and I let it burn away the desire that heated my blood. I was a slave, that was true, but he’d led me to believe I was more than that, and now he was taking that away. I couldn’t fathom his switches in behavior.

  Then, before I could think how to respond to him, he broke the kiss and spun me around to face the wall, pinning me between it and his frame.

  “I’ve wanted you for days, Kitten. It’s tearing me apart not to have you, but I can’t. Don’t you understand that?” His voice was dark, rough in my ear.

  I panted and shook my head, not understanding at all. His hand slid over my backside, his hard cock pressing into the crack of my ass. My heart hammered in my ears, especially when he shoved the back of my frock up to my waist, right there on the walkway where anyone passing by could see. There was no one there now, but any moment…

  Hawk inhaled my hair. I tried to turn around, to see his face, to understand what was going on with him, but he pinned me in place. Something hot and intense and almost frightening pounded through me, and I couldn’t figure out if I wanted him to take me or if I wanted to run.

  “Don’t turn around. Don’t look at me.” His breath was hot on my nape.