Page 90 of Sin & Sapphire

When I didn’t move, he smiled and reached into his pocket, then revealed two clamps that looked like metal clothes pins. He crouched beside me, taking my left nipple between his fingers and rolling it gently. Pleasure rushed through me, straight to my clit, even as I tensed, preparing for the pain that would follow. When he pinched hard, I whimpered but didn’t move.

Like the good girl he wanted me to be.

A moment later, he clamped my nipple, tightening the screw until it hurt. I whined but held absolutely still until the pain dulled to a sharp, pulsing ache.

He reached across me to do the same to my other nipple, and when his sleeve brushed the clamp, pleasure and pain mingled together, making my core throb. I was soaked between my thighs, and the thought that I didn’t have to be embarrassed about it was strangely freeing.

I hated him for locking me up and for making me want him. For hurting me. And I hated him for how much I loved it when he hurt me.

I couldn’t do anything about it, only hurt more. So why was I fighting so hard? With that thought, I relaxed. I closed my eyes and focused on the dull ache of my nipples, and the corresponding throb between my legs.

When Valentin stood and said, “Hands and knees, toy,” for a second time, I obeyed, my breath coming out in sharp exhales as my breasts hung, the weight of the clamps agonizing. “Fucking perfect,” he murmured. “Now eat.”

A tear streaked down my face before I could stop it, before I could pull myself together.

“Please, no,” I whispered, unable to face the humiliation of eating on my hands and knees like a fucking animal. “I can’t.”

Quick as a fucking snake, Valentin pulled a whip out of his pocket and flicked it across my ass.

I wailed with surprise, and then with disappointment as need gathered between my thighs. I’d missed his brutal punishments that allowed me to forget myself and everything I’d lost.

And after days of being locked up by myself with Angelo as my only company when he came to feed me, stewing in my own filth, I was desperate for human contact, for anything besides the four walls that surrounded me.

I’d do anything to get out. I had to.

“Eat,” Valentin said, his voice gravelly.

My clamped nipples scraped against the tile floor, agony searing through me with every movement, but I lowered my lips to the plate in front of me and picked up a piece of pasta with my teeth, blood rushing to my cheeks when my nose scraped through a puddle of sauce.

I raised my chest and head back up to chew. Valentin leaned back against the door, one knee propped with his foot against the wall and his hands in his pockets, a casual god, with his supplicant on her knees before him.

“You’re gorgeous,” Valentin rasped, meeting my eyes, his pupils wide with desire. “A born submissive. You just needed a little push to understand how much you need it.”

A what? No. I’d read about BDSM on the internet, and this was not a safe, sane, and consensual scene with hard limits and a Dom who cared about his sub.

I shook my head.

“Eat, princess,” he said once again.

I lowered my face to the plate. When my tongue poked out to help grab a piece of steak, Valentin groaned.

“How do you not fucking realize it? You’re so goddamned smart and so goddamned blind at the same time. You need this as much as we do. You crave the pain. You crave the submission.”

I shook my head. No I didn’t. Giving in meant giving up everything. It meant giving up my dreams. It meant giving up?—

I blinked and sat up, staring blankly at Valentin.

It didn’t mean giving up anything. I didn’t have anything left to give up.

Why had it taken me so long to figure this out?

Valentin didn’t chastise me. Instead, he waited, calmly, quietly, for me to think.

If I gave in, what would I lose?

Fucking nothing.

I didn’t even have a roof over my head.

---