Stealing Cinderella(49)
“Thorsen,” I whisper.
He opens his eyes again, and in a split second, everything changes. The shutters come down, and whatever softness I saw in him has been exiled to the darkest pit of his soul.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He grabs my hand and pulls my fingers away.
I blink, startled by the raw anger in his voice.
“I want to touch you,” I croak. “I like to touch you.”
“You want to trick me,” he accuses.
A million different emotions flash through his eyes in the span of a second. Fear, mistrust, doubt, confusion.
“It’s not a trick.” My voice wavers. “Not everything is a threat. Least of all me.”
His nostrils flare, and whatever trust I was hoping to gain obliterates when he pulls his cock out of me. Within seconds, he’s dragging me across the room and back to the cross. He intentionally turns me against the wood, so I can’t see him, and I realize as he’s restraining my hands and feet that this is his defense mechanism. He’s never allowed anyone to get close to him. He has to be in control. He has to have dysfunction. Is that why he’s shared every other woman with Calder?
“Who hurt you?” I demand.
Thorsen freezes, his hands on my ankle, and for a second, I think he might even answer me. But then he cinches the cuff tight, strapping me in for whatever punishment he thinks I deserve for getting under his skin.
His footsteps pad to the wall with all the devices of pain and torture, and I crane my neck to find him selecting a paddle. When his eyes meet mine again, they are so empty it scares me.
“Nobody can hurt me, Ella,” he says as he comes to a halt behind me. “Least of all you.”
He whips the paddle against my ass, forcing my body into the wooden frame as I suck in a sharp breath. There isn’t even time to think about it as he slaps me three more times, and I quickly notice a pattern developing. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Always sets of four. Even when he’s sadistic, he’s ritualistic.
He isn’t going easy on me, and this isn’t like the crop. The wood bites into my skin with every extension of his rigid arm and warmth blooms across my backside as blood rushes to the surface. It’s intense, and the vibrations of the paddle so close to my sex leave me with an empty ache to have his cock all over again, even as his come drips down my thighs. The sickness inside me finds comfort in the pain as I resolve not to let him prove his point. He can’t hurt me either. Throughout all of it, I don’t make a single noise, even when he slaps me harder, and I think that’s what pisses him off the most.
“You think you are so clever.” His fingers pinch at the raw skin, groping my ass cheek as he discards the paddle. “Let’s play a game, Ella. We’ll see how clever you really are.”
He disappears again, rummaging through the cabinet against the wall until he finds what he needs. My beating heart slows for just a second as I catch my breath and strengthen my resolve. It doesn’t matter what he comes at me with. There’s nothing he can do to truly hurt me. I want to tell him so. But then I hear the familiar flick of a lighter, and all my bravery goes up in flames.
“Thorsen?” I crane my neck, frantic, but he won’t look at me.
His eyes are on the candle. And I’m not strong anymore. My body thrashes against the restraints as I begin to murmur my protests.
“Please not that,” I whisper. “Anything else. Anything else. Just not that.”
I don’t know what he’s going to do, but in my mind, the only scenario playing on repeat is that flame igniting my flesh. White-hot pain. Singed nerves. The burning smell. It all comes back to me, consuming my thoughts and stealing my breath.
I squeeze my eyes shut, chanting the same thing over and over again. Please. But Thorsen isn’t listening, or if he is, he isn’t responding. And I realize I was so wrong. He does have the power to hurt me because he knows my fear, and he’s hell-bent on exploiting it.
“Thorsen, please—”
Heat licks along my back, burning a path all the way down to my ass, and I release a blood-curdling scream as I arch into the frame, desperate to get away. Another path ignites, this time over my thigh before yet another trickles down my arm. And that’s when the true terror takes over.
I can feel it happening before I’m truly cognizant of it. The dimming noise around me. The explosive rhythm of my heart. And finally, the elephant on my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.
My vision narrows to a pinpoint, and I try to reach for my throat as the panic attack consumes me, only to find that I’m still strapped to the cross. Darkness threatens, and I sway before my feet collapse, and my face collides with the wooden frame. The last thing I hear in my conscious state is Thorsen’s startled voice.
“Ella?”
22
Thorsen
“Ella.”
My fingers slip on the buckle around her restraint, and I swear under my breath as I yank one ankle free, then the next. My hands are trembling. My throat feels hot. I don’t understand what’s happening to me as I fight to get her wrists free.
Heat licks along my throat as she touches me between my legs, raking her nails over my penis. She tells me it feels so good, and how lucky I am that she’s teaching me how to be a man. Acid coats my tongue, and I try to choke it back, but I can’t. When I vomit, she curses at me, reaching for the broomstick she keeps next to her desk.