Page 58 of Sin & Sapphire

I hated the way that made me sound, like I was needy and desperate for male attention.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Valentin said, as if he could read my mind. “Being a spoiled product of a rotten system, a selfish bitch who’s never had to work for anything a day in her life and doesn’t realize how damn good she has it? That’s what I’d be ashamed of.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. Hot tears welled behind my eyes, and I bit my lip to distract me from the knife slicing through my heart at the accuracy of his words.

“Fuck you, Valentin. Fuck you and your billion-dollar businesses. Fuck you and your dick that lets you do whatever the fuck you want. But mostly, fuck you for thinking anything about me at all.” I spit at his feet, my stomach a roiling mess of confusion. How could I crave approval from a man who enjoyed being so mean?

He crouched down in front of me and slid a finger under my chin so I had to meet his eyes. To my surprise, they were filled with sympathy. My chin trembled, and he frowned.

“Don’t move, princess.” He left the room, only to return with several implements in his hands.

He held up the first one—a thick handle with a bunch of soft leather strips hanging from it like tails. “To warm you up.”

Without another word, he began striking me with it, the strips hitting my back, my breasts, my stomach, and my thighs, leaving a pleasant warmth in their wake.

“Yes,maître,” I whispered as he struck me harder and harder, until the soft burn became quick stings, each one a welcome distraction from the misery in my head. When the strands of leather hit my nipples, the pain shot to my clit, agony and desperation, aching need mingling together. I couldn’t stop the throaty moan that escaped me. What was wrong with me? How was I getting off on this?

Valentin laughed quietly, as if to himself. “Incredible. Angelo found himself a pain slut. And he doesn’t even like inflicting pain.”

I looked up at him through my lashes, unable to interpret the wonder that softened the harsh angles of his face.

He dropped the leather implement and grabbed another, no two. Both had handles like the previous, but the tails were shinier, and different leathers and widths. I tracked him with my eyes as he swung them with his wrists, and then?—

I gasped as he struck me with one, and then the other, an endless cycle of stinging impacts, heating my skin, punishing every inch of my torso and my upper legs, until I shrieked for him to stop.

But I didn’t move. Didn’t take my hands from behind my back. Just let him hit me, the sensations blending. And then he hit my breasts, one then the other, and need flooded between my thighs.

“Fuck,” I gasped, heedless of whether I was breaking the rules as the impacts continued.

“Fucking gorgeous,” Valentin said. “So responsive, so obedient, sitting there so perfectly as I flog you.” Impacts hit my breasts, my thighs, my back, my ass, and back to my breasts again, the pain as arousing as it was miserable.

“Your tears, dripping down your face, knowing I put them there, that you don’t have a choice but to accept them. Perfection.”

I relaxed into the punishment, the pain sending me soaring alongside his words, the sweet praise melting my resistance. Why did I crave it so fucking much, especially when Valentin made it heartbreakingly clear how little he thought of me as a person?

His wrist flicked again, and the intensity of the strikes against my skin increased, the burn turning to agony. I was sure he was tearing strips out of my skin, but still, I said nothing, didn’t ask him to stop, just knelt there, tears streaming down my cheeks.

It felt right. It felt cleansing.

“Spread your knees,” Valentin instructed.

The first time he struck the sensitive insides of my thighs, I shrieked in pain. The second, I sobbed, and then I couldn’t hold the tears back as he struck me, again and again and again, each impact on my clit driving me higher even as I wailed my misery.

But I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I couldn’t fight back, I couldn’t close my legs, I couldn’t jerk away. My mind floated between agony and euphoria, utterly disconnected from my body and reality.

Until.

Stars exploded across my vision as he landed a hard smack on my pussy, the tails hitting my clit and sending me over the edge into an intense orgasm. I screamed as the pain and pleasure merged into a sensation I couldn’t name, intense, overwhelming, like no climax I’d ever had before. My limbs seized and I stopped breathing, my brain silent as bliss swept over me like a tsunami, obliterating my sense of self in its wake.

Valentin dropped to his knees and caught me with an arm across my chest before I could collapse forward.

“Mon dieu,” he swore. “You came. You fucking came from that.”

I didn’t register his words. I couldn’t. My sobs were too loud, my thoughts too incoherent, my confusion overwhelming. My body had transformed the agony of his beating into the most intense sexual experience of my entire life, and I couldn’t stop crying.

“Merde.”

When Valentin picked me up and carried me into the living room, it barely registered.

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