Fearless Read online

  This was how it used to feel, back before Ethen. Back when BDSM was all fun and games, and she still went by the name her parents had given her. She remembered a moment almost like this with the very first dom she’d ever had. He’d liked roleplaying games. In particular, he’d liked disapproving Daddy-themed games and his favorite was when he got letters sent ‘home from school.’

  She’d loved getting spanked back then. She’d loved the fun, exciting playfulness of it. But then, none of those ‘punishments’ had been real. Oh the spankings had been, but the offenses were nothing but make-believe. There was a big difference between being sent to her room to await ‘Daddy’s’ displeasure and the icy terror that twisted in her guts every time Ethen locked her in one of his death stares. Like he would do if she was more than three minutes late getting home from work or she failed to get dinner on the table in time, or if he found a cobweb during a house inspection or like when the belt on the vacuum broke and Puppy could only vacuum half the carpets. They’d all grabbed brooms—Puppy, Kitty even Pony had swept until her arms hurt—but the floors had not passed Ethen’s standards of cleanliness and they’d all been punished.

  But that had happened around Christmas time. It had been months since last Kitty had been punished for anything. Months since she’d been rewarded, too. Simply months, without the thing that once upon a time she’d thought her world could never have revolved without. Not impact play, per se, although once upon a time she used to love it. Crave it. So hungrily that she used to write those silly letters from ‘school’ at least once or twice a week to help provide Daddy with fun reasons to spank her.

  Yes, she missed impact, but more than that, she missed being allowed to submit. She missed being bent to another’s will. Not forced so much as seduced into it. And God, could she be seduced. She’d fallen for Ethen’s seduction so completely that here she was, even after all he’d done, pining for him.

  No, not him. It. The routines and rituals. Showing her respect and appreciation for another by keeping his house, cooking his meals, bending her body to his desires… warming his bed. Being the canvas upon which he exorcised his sadistic impulses because in turn it sated all of her own masochistic hungers.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the belts. Closing her eyes, Kitty saw them, hanging in the closet, ready for use when and if required, and a low thump of heated arousal pulsed between her legs. Heady and unexpected, something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  Trying to ignore it, she rolled onto her stomach, but from there it was such a short and seductive impulse to rise up onto her knees. Head down, ass up, hands clasped above her head to keep her from reaching under and between her splayed thighs to touch where she knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t even pretend this was a come-to-Jesus moment. A real punishment would never be initiated with her hiding under a blanket.

  Cool whole-house air conditioning moved over her as she slipped the patchwork quilt off her. Hoping the squeak of the hinges weren’t as loud as they seemed with her head lying on the mattress, she adjusted herself to the center of the bed. Spreading her knees wider apart, she bowed her back and arched her hips, making herself properly submissive… to no one.

  This was ridiculous. Burying her face in the sheet, she bit the inside of her cheek until the stinging rush of tears was forced back. She shouldn’t want this. No person who’d truly, legitimately gone through the hell Ethen had put her through would want any part of this again; she could already hear people saying that, whispering it behind her back. It was why she hadn’t gone to the police when Garreth had tried to convince her to, because no one who didn’t want this to happen would have put themselves in the position she had. And they wouldn’t cry themselves to sleep at night because they were so empty without it, so desperate to run right back into it all over again.

  Pushing herself up onto her knees, Kitty stared at the darkness of her shadowy bed. She needed punishment. She wanted it; at least then she might be able to sleep afterward. A real punishment wouldn’t have been given like this, though. Not with her in this position and not with a sink full of dirty dishes.

  The muffled rumble of a man’s steady breathing told her Noah was probably asleep, but that was almost a secondary concern. She crawled out of bed on all fours and crept to the door. Her heart was in her throat; her stomach was nothing but knots, but though she paused at the closet, she could not make herself open it. Couldn’t make herself face those straps, not even long enough to snag a nightshirt that would only itch at her for putting it on.

  The rules here were different than the ones Ethen enforced, but still clothing shouldn’t be allowed. Not for traitorous submissives who, above all, needed reminding of their place.

  Knowing she risked being seen, she left her bedroom. Any inadvertent sound could bring Noah out into the hall. She was terrified of that, but the hunger was awake in her now. Her flesh vibrated with every hand and knee step she crawled down the hall to the kitchen.

  She hadn’t been Kitty-girl since she left Ethen. Living with Hadlee and Garreth had made that impossible, not when any sight or sign of Kitty-girl might reopen Piggy-girl’s wounds. She didn’t even have her mask anymore. Hadlee had snatched it from her hands and thrown it as far as it would go. She hadn’t even allowed it in the car the night she and Garreth had rescued her, and Kitty never told her how it had made her feel to watch that mask go flying off into the snowy dark. It had hurt. Like seeing a piece of her unloved self being cast away, it had physically hurt like hell.

  That was okay. She told herself she didn’t need the mask. She had been Kitty before Ethen; she could be Kitty without that mask.

  One could tell one’s self that all day long, but standing in front of Noah’s sink on two legs instead of four, without the mask it was harder to keep her Kitty-self in mind. It took all of two minutes to wash the dishes, dry them thoroughly, and search the cupboards for (hopefully) each item’s proper place. She wiped down all the surfaces and when she was done, the whole house was silent and she could almost pretend that she was the only person here. Or that she was back in Ethen’s house, going about her daily chores—her normal routine—and that once more she was back in her place as the most favored of his Menagerie.

  She hadn’t felt the security of this in so long, she didn’t even try to fight the urge. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled back to her bedroom.

  She hesitated—bad Kitty—but in the end, she left the door open, because her body was not hers and never had been. She had no need for privacy. She was to be open and available to her owner in all places and at all times, even when she did not want to be—even when the consequences might include Noah wandering out of his room, something that truly, deeply terrified her. Still, she left the door open and continued on hands and knees all the way to the foot of the bed.

  She knelt there, a position of penance with her knees wide apart, hands behind her head, waiting for someone who would not come. Aching for the discipline she didn’t deserve and hadn’t earned, but which she wanted so desperately that, when her time of reflection was done, she rose up to bend over the foot rail. Feet spread apart, she put herself into position for either whipping or fucking, the choice was not and should not ever be hers.

  Except this wasn’t right. This wasn’t realistic. Bad kitties were always sent to await their punishment with an implement, even if one might not be used.

  She didn’t want to, but then it shouldn’t ever be about the things she wanted. Sometimes, it should only be about following what she knew was expected of her. She got back down on the floor and crawled to the closet. With her bedroom door now open and the dull light of the mostly closed bathroom door seeping into her room, the straps in the back of her closet looked less like snakes and yet far more formidable than before. She selected the first one she touched, her hand erupting into the same prickles of dread now dancing across her flanks. Carrying it in her mouth, she crawled back to bed.

  Back into position she went, this t
ime careful to balance the strap so it lay across her back, above her hips. The weight of it there was both heaven and hell, familiar and comforting and painful because no matter what, she had lost all right to have this. She’d run away from the one dom who had understood her. And yes, he’d been an ass, but wasn’t everybody at some point? And yes, that last night he had hurt her terribly, but it wasn’t really all his fault. Didn’t she deserve some of the blame? Had he really been so bad that she needed to run away?

  The important thing here was, she had lost all access to the discipline she loved the most because of her actions, not his. It was gone and she would never get it back again. Because everyone who knew her also knew Garreth, so eventually, sooner or later everyone was going to know what had happened between her and Ethen. They were going to know she was a submissive who couldn’t be trusted. That she had failed and betrayed her dom in the most subversive way. Betrayed his trust by revealing to both Hadlee and Garreth how she’d gotten all those welts the night they’d rescued her from that freezing cold telephone booth.

  Nobody needed to know about the other thing, the rape. If rape it could even be called, because really, if it had been rape, then why was she doing this—bending over in naked remembrance of all the things Ethen would do to her if she were with him right now? Why was her heart hurting, her legs spreading wider and her hips pushing back to make her even more available for nobody’s use?

  It had been so long since last she’d been used in that way she so deeply craved. Broken with need, her hand moved down, covering her achingly empty pussy. Such touches were forbidden; a submissive’s pleasure was never for herself. She tried to make her hand feel like someone else’s as she pressed. She didn’t dare rub, no matter how much she wished just once to feel the caress of fingertips circling her waking clit. But she held, knowing even this much would have been enough to bring the strap laying across her back into extensive and painful use.

  Kitty buried her face in the mattress. She tried to remember. When she’d been a little girl, everyone used to say she had a great imagination, but she must have lost that skill. Try as she might, she couldn’t summon a single lashing memory sufficient enough to bring those echoing lines of real pain snapping and stinging and burning across her ass and thighs. She felt only pulsing, the slow, languid throb of her own needs coming to life beneath her hand.

  Just one rub. Who would know, or care?

  Covering her eyes with her other hand, Kitty gave in to temptation, but it felt awful. A pale mockery of what it could have been with a strong man standing behind her, one fist tangled in a leash of her own hair, breathing those intoxicating words of censure into her ear. Things like, ‘Is this what you think bad girls deserve? Is this how you think I’ll treat you? Ah, love, you haven’t earned a pet on the kitty from me.’

  Pussy molten and throbbing, Kitty opened her eyes. That wasn’t Ethen’s voice. That was Noah’s, his thick Australian accent making those words echo in her head.

  Her chest was tight, but for the first time in days, it was tight because it was lust (not fear) making it hard for her to breathe.

  She took her fingers off her swollen clit, pulling her hand back to take the belt off her back so it wouldn’t fall when she stood. She should have put it back in the closet. She should have closed her bedroom door. At the very least, she should have put her clothes back on, but Kitty didn’t do any of that. As quiet as she could, she crawled into bed alone.

  Pulling the quilt up over her head, she buried her face in the pillow so as to muffle the sound and hugged the strap to her chest while she cried.

  Chapter 5

  Noah stood frozen in his own doorway, knowing if he moved any further out into the hallway he risked the bathroom light casting his shadow into her room. But then, he didn’t need to lean out any further. From here, he could see the metal rail that made up the foot of her bed. And, up until a minute ago, he’d seen what she was doing to herself as she bent over it, hips thrust back for punishment, strap laid across her back as if waiting for someone to take it up. God help him if his own hand didn’t itch to do exactly that. When she’d slipped a hand down to touch between her thighs, it had itched even harder… but not for the strap.

  The thing about having thin walls, it was easy to hear how restless she was. When he’d heard her leave her room, for a moment he’d wondered if she was planning to run. He’d actually gotten dressed, in case he needed to chase out after her into the night. But she’d only gone to the kitchen. He’d heard the water run, heard her washing and putting away the dishes he’d left in the sink. He’d then heard her make her way back down the hall, past his closed bedroom door and into her room again. The sound of her passing had been a singular sound, not the padding of two feet, but the crawling of all fours. He knew that sound. Hell, his cock had recognized it before his perking ears did. The whispering brush of bare hands and the slightly louder thump of bare knees on wooden floorboards. Oh yes, she was crawling.

  Before he could stop himself, he too was down on hands and knees, cheek to floor as he peeked under the door and caught that first intoxicating glimpse of confirmation before she neared too close. The tip of a naked breast. The shadowy curve of a mons shaved naked and smooth. He’d never been as frustrated with an inanimate door as he became a half-second later, when she closed the distance and all he could then see was her hands and lower legs as she crawled into her room.

  She didn’t close her door.

  She was absolutely naked, in his house, and she did not close her door.

  She did not go to sleep, either. Instead, kneeling at his own door but staring incredulously at the shadow-blackened wall that separated his room from hers, Noah listened as her whispered movements continued restlessly for some time. From her bed to her closet—the door scraped open and bumped closed once more—and then back to her bed again.

  He should stay hidden. Hell, when it came to ‘should’ he should go back to bed and give her her privacy. He didn’t. Instead, knowing if he got caught he’d have a lot of hard explaining to do, he opened the door far enough to lean out. No more than an inch, maybe three. Just far enough to glimpse around the span of wall that separated their two doorways and into the darkness of her bedroom.

  The bathroom light was on, but the door was only cracked. That left enough light to illuminate her bent-over position. The slope of her long legs; the curve of her hips as she arched her back to offer her ass. The minute wiggle as she pushed her hand down under her, between herself and the railing, and touched herself.

  She was beautiful, and yet she covered her face with her hand and buried both against the mattress as if she were ashamed. The strap across her back—one he’d patterned after his grandfather’s razor strap; one of the first Noah had ever made when he was first learning how to leathercraft—spoke volumes as to her desires.

  Was she aching for impact play for the sake of release alone, or was her need for something more? Something disciplinary. Offenses could be real or imagined, with some submissives the two were often the same, but he didn’t think it mattered. If she were his, he would not have left her waiting long. He’d have given her what she needed—not the punishment she was offering herself for, but the peace of mind that would follow.

  How long had she been doing this, trapped, her submissive needs going unrelieved? If she was his—

  But she wasn’t his, the sensible part of his brain replied. That’s what the problem was, she wasn’t anybody’s.

  Her soft breath hitched. A moment later, Kitty carried his strap into bed with her. Though she kept it quiet, he knew when she started crying.

  Noah stood in the doorway, every inch of him straining to lock back the urge to go to her. It wasn’t a creepy moment. For all that he’d wanted her body beneath his hands a raw second ago, what was in him now was nothing more than one human being’s selfless ache to comfort another in her misery. He would have stroked her hair, rubbed her back, lain behind her on top of the blanket so he could wrap her
tightly in his arms and whisper that, believe it or not, things really would be okay. For all that she might feel lost in the middle of nowhere right now, she was in the middle of his nowhere and he would keep her safe. Whatever or whoever was out to hurt her in the States, they couldn’t get at her here.

  Comfort might be his only motivation at the moment, but deep inside, Noah knew if he went into her room right now, she would neither welcome nor accept his touch, his sympathy or his whispered words of anything. She had completely cocooned herself within the folds of her blanket, but beneath that thin barrier she was naked and they were strangers. No, she wouldn’t welcome him at all and, frankly, if he’d heard of another dom doing what was right now burning through his brain, under these very same circumstances with a traumatized submissive, he’d have called the man an idiot for not thinking it through.

  Police got involved over less.

  Closing his bedroom door did little to muffle the plaintive sounds of her weeping, but Noah forced himself to go back to bed. He lay down, but after what he’d witnessed, sleep did not come for him until long after Kitty had cried herself out. And when it did come, it was fitful at best. He tossed, he turned. He had questions, and every time he startled awake in the night after dozing off, it was to find his questions had multiplied and he didn’t have the answers for any of them. But he knew who would.