toward him. “Would it be too strange for you if I asked you to
whip me next time? Not beat, you understand, but lightly whip?”
Slight discomfort flitted over Eanan’s face but he shrugged it away. “If that’s what
you want.”
Her green eyes sparkled. “It is! I even have a quirt for just such pleasure.”
Flogging someone was not Eanan’s idea of pleasure but he’d do whatever it took to
please the redhead. She was—after all—his responsibility now.
“I draw the line at scarring you, Red,” he stated. “No matter how much you ask,
how much you desire it, that I will not do.”
“And I’ve no yearning to be scarred, Reaper,” she told him. “Just dominated and
made to submit to your every wish.” She laughed at his expression. “Isn’t that every
man’s dream?”
He grinned. “Aye, I suppose it is.”
“A moderate amount of pain would be nice though.”
51
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
“As much as it grieves me to do that…”
His thumb and middle finger closed around a ripe, rosy nipple and pinched just
hard enough for her plump little bottom to squirm on the bare mattress.
He had been surprised at her quarters when he’d entered. Expecting a frilly, silken
suite of rooms, instead he had found stark furnishings that reminded him vividly of
what a nun’s quarters must be like.
Bare walls devoid of everything save an emblem of the goddess done in copper
paint, bare floors, a full-sized iron bed with utilitarian footboard and headboard, a
single armoire done in rough, unstained pine, a bare-topped desk and a single straightback chair without a cushion that looked very uncomfortable made up the bulk of the
room’s fixtures. A small room off to one side contained a toilet, lavatory and a
galvanized tin tub.
There was no lace, no satin or velvet. The bed did not have covers or pillow and the
temperature of the room was on the chilly side without benefit of windows to allow in
light or air.
“This is not a bedchamber, Red,” he had commented. “This is a cell.”
“A dungeon cell,” she replied, sweeping a hand to offer him the bare stone walls
and floor. “I am a no-frills woman and I like stark things. It is where I am comfortable.”
Comfort was not something he would have equated with this dank, dismal and
dark room, but if this was where she was happy, he could bide his time here as needed.
Although the room reminded him vividly of a prison where he’d spent too many weeks
cooling his heels until Morrigunia rescued him.
“Argent says you are worried that you will not satisfy our needs,” she said as he
moved his fingers to her other nipple.
“I want to make all three of you happy,” he said.
“You are doing that already,” she said then swept a pretty little tongue over her
upper lip. “Now untie me and take me into the punishment chamber.”
52
Embrace the Wind
Eanan’s brows drew together. “And where might that be?”
“Through there,” she said, nudging her chin toward the foot of the bed, and when
he looked, he saw a door he could have sworn had not been there the moment before.
He realized he should learn to simply go with the flow and take things as they were
presented to him so he began untying her wrists.
“It has always been my dream to have a master,” she said. “One dressed all in
black. One with a heavy hand, a powerful body and a thick cock to stretch me.”
Eanan’s cock stirred at her words. He could have sworn he heard the treacherous
little muscle shouting, “ Come on, Reaper! Come on, come on, come on ! Hurry it up! Time’s
wasting! Hop to! Get a move on! Don’t keep the wench waiting !”
Mentally shaking his head, he made quick work of untying her ankles.
“Now command me to crawl to yon chamber, Master,” she said as she sat up, and
looked at him with adoring eyes.
“Ah, wench, I don’t think…” he began, but she was off the bed and on all fours as
she crawled slowly across the cold stone
John le Carré
Charlaine Harris
Ruth Clemens
Lana Axe
Gael Baudino
Kate Forsyth
Alan Russell
Lee Nichols
Unknown
Augusten Burroughs