Page 53 of Lost Petal

Chapter 30

Petal

I don’t even know where this is coming from. This foreign sound. My own laughter. It scares me, it baffles me, just as much as it amuses me.

Because only a crazy person could laugh at this. Only someone who’s gone completely insane.

Or someone who feels at ease and comfortable with the person who’s next to them. His touch on my cheek didn’t feel intrusive and threatening. On the contrary; it gave me solace and a place to retreat to while everything around me is just an ominous cloud of uncertainty. I managed to call him master, like he wants me to.

And it didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel wrong. It didn’t make me want to scream and thrash around helplessly, hitting whatever—or whomever—was within reach.

It felt just as right as my laughter does right now.

“Are you making fun of me?” I ask, finding myself able to rest comfortably in a place that should be nothing but terrifying. I’m still tied, still exposed in front of him, still feeling the sting of clamps around my nipples and the throbbing wetness between my legs. It’s there, unaffected by the twists and turns my emotional state takes.

His handsome face is so close to mine that I can feel his hot breath on my skin, and when I feel his hand gracing along the inside of my upper thigh, I sigh in relief instead of trying to fight an unwanted assault. This time, it’s desired.

Only this time.

“I would never ridicule my Petal,” he whispers, leaning in while his hands journey closer to my core. “But I will admit: Your smile, your laughter—it’s just as intoxicating as those divine tears of yours.”

A gasp flees me, blending in with our kiss when his lips meet mine with carnal need. The urge behind his kiss is less staggering than the last time, allowing for me to respond instead of simply letting him take from me while I lie here overwhelmed and stiffened with fear. There’s more room for passion, for a desire that’s shared between us.

I blame him for dazing me like this. How could I be myself and be strong in my convictions if he robs me of my sanity like that? Of course I’m not myself. I’m aching with unfulfilled craving—and he is finally answering my call for release.

A moan underlines our passionate kiss when his fingers find my center, gently parting my lips to hopefully finish what he started an eternity ago. My entire body responds to his first brush across my clit. My back arches and I lift my head off the mattress, hungry for more of his exquisite kisses. I feel elated, reveling in the hot kindling that incites my core, my limbs, my mind, my heart. I willingly let him take over, granting him access to everything that I am, because I can already feel the first breezes of my long-awaited rapture.

He joins my moans while our tongues intertwine with a wild demand for more. It makes everything so much better. This kiss, it fuels the want in me, making it ravenous and impossible to endure much longer.

“I-I—”

My voice is hoarse and suffocated by our voracious kiss, making it impossible to speak. But he doesn’t need to hear the words. He knows. He can feel it in the way my muscles clench around his fingers when he lets them glide inside my channel, spreading me while he continues to massage my swollen nub. He can feel the tractions when unbridled lust sends tremors through my entire body, telling of the climax I’ve been denied for way too long. Crest after crest, I’m rocking through the motions, holding on to nothing but myself, and him. Always him.

Through it all, we never stop kissing, and it pains me to realize that, despite the beauty of it all, there’s a dark cloud tagging along, only waiting for my rapture to end so it can unleash its dark terrors on me. I see it emerging when I’m still in the midst of bliss, trying to hold on to the magic of the moment while I feel it slipping through my fingers, as everything that’s measured in time does.

I can’t stop the tears when they force their way down my face. I can’t stop the shaking as my lust-filled tremors are replaced by forces beyond my control, churning my body in pained upheaval as ecstasy is replaced with fear and sorrow.

He breaks our kiss, worry lacing the dark hazel in his eyes for the very first time he’s looked at me.

As far as I know.

He’s right. I can’t use the word “never,” because I lack the knowledge about my past that would have to be attached to it. I can’t refer to anything before the moment I woke up in a cold and gray cell. A cell he put me in, with my mind blank as an empty canvas, and my body exposed to his every whim and desire.

And when I was visited by a first taste of memory, a vision that could possibly place him and give some—albeit frightening—meaning to all of this, he denied it with such persuasive power that I found myself at the very beginning once again.

I close my eyes, barely noticing his fiddling around with my wrists and ankles as he frees me of my ties. I yelp when he loosens the clamps around my sore nipples, each release coming with a fresh jolt of fiery pain that doesn’t last for more than a second. My heart is still racing and my core still throbbing with a slight aftertaste of the bliss I was allowed to experience before the harsh reality of my situation comes crashing down on me yet again, with a force so violent that I have nothing to hold against it.

I don’t know what to think of the fact that he picks me up in his arms, holding me in a tight embrace against his chest while I start sobbing uncontrollably.

It’s too much. All of it. How am I supposed to bear this deceiving back and forth?

“Why would you do this?” I bring forth, my trembling voice muffled as I’m pressed against his dark shirt. “Why would you make me feel like this but refuse to give me any answers?”

He squeezes me in his strong embrace. But once again, he remains silent.

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