Page 39 of Claimed By the Billionaires

Winter was startled with shock when, behind her, Houston sliced the whip through the air, and it felt as if she were struck with lightning without being physically touched.

“Ready, sweet Winter?” Houston asked behind her.

She shook her head. She was being thrown into a pit of terror with no way of getting out.

“Please,” she cried seconds before Houston cracked the whip diagonally across her back. The pain didn’t register immediately. Time seemed to stand still. The pounding in her ears was her heart falling apart.

“Breathe, Winter.”

Konnor’s voice reached inside her as if he had waded through the thick barriers, she’d put up inside her to find her. Her eyes widened as she stared at him, and then she was gasping and spluttering for air.

Houston struck her again in the same place, and the vehement sting on her skin blasted her through the throes of red-hot agony.

He didn’t waste any more time as he angled himself to create two diagonal lines that crossed in the middle of her back.

Her descent into madness was rife with excruciating torture that hardened her nipples and caused a flood of wetness to seep from between her thighs. Her body had no idea how to react. Fear and avarice created a rapacious, dark, and deviant arousal in her that stunned her.

She couldn’t bear another minute of it. But a new level of strife was born when Aston lazily rose from his throne, picked up a branding iron, and held it to the fire.

Her stomach curled inward, and her spine threatened to break.

She shook her head so hard that she saw stars.

“Please. Please. Please.” She pleaded on repeat. She’d been prepared her whole life for this branding; she reminded herself of it for the umpteenth time.

But this was different.

The men she loved were branding her out of revenge. She was collateral damage to get back at her father for his family’s role in their annihilation. They were making them pay for something that happened before their time, and they were being held accountable for something they couldn’t have stopped, even if they wanted to.

Panic gave her new strength. She jerked so hard at the chains that they echoed deafeningly around her.

She shuddered as Aston passed her, his heat draping over her just the way Konnor’s and Houston’s had.

She stilled.

“Look at me, Winter,” Konnor commanded. But she closed her eyes against the touch of Aston’s hand on her back, between her shoulder blades, knowing in his other hand he carried the smoldering branding iron, bearing the crest of a phoenix.

She’d gone inside herself now, feeling her subconscious drift away as she slowly started to pass out, knowing she wouldn’t be able to stand the branding, not now when its meaning was different.

“Winter.” Konnor’s harsh, thundering shout of her name brought her back, but her eyes drifted closed again.

In the midst of the silence in her head, she heard him unzip his pants before his fingers dipped into her wetness, testing her.

Her eyes flew open as he penetrated the abundant wetness of her pussy with his fully erect cock. At the same time, the touch of raw fire on her back made her feel as if she were drowning in lava.

A scream wrenched from the depths of her soul fell defeatedly from her lips as her body clenched down on Konnor’s cock, squeezing him as if he could give her life. Her stomach dipped, her womb tugged and contracted, and the most sordid orgasm of her life played along the rock-hard length of Konnor’s cock.

She died a silent, sad death of shame, and nothing could take that away from her.

Her sobs wracked her shoulders. She faced even more ignominy when her pussy still clutched Konnor’s cock with a death grip, forcing him to use his hand to remove his cock from her.

“Why? My father had nothing to do—”

“Your father had everything to do with it,” Aston said quietly. “It was he and his friend who burned the scrolls that would end the Pegasus dynasty and put the Phoenix monarch where it belonged yet again. Forty years ago, he’d made a deal with the head of Pegasus that his daughter would be their virgin.”

Winter lowered her gaze. Her father would have done anything to get himself reinstated into the good graces of the Pegasus dynasty, but she didn’t know he would go this far.

“Are you going to kill him?” she asked, trying not to crack.

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