The loss of the stranger immediately settled over me as he pulled out. He left me in the bed to dispose of the condom, and that empty hollowness that had threatened since the moment my mother had died claimed me once more.
I’d been foolish to risk everything for one night with a stranger who didn’t even know my name. I’d risked leaving Malva entirely vulnerable if anyone discovered what I’d done. Considering that I had to behave for the right to even spend time with my younger sister, my father wouldn’t hesitate to remove me from her life entirely.
I’d be a bad influence on her, and in that moment, my father’s voice that echoed in my head was right. I would never have allowed her to do something like this. Not knowing what the cost might be.
I sat on the edge of the bed, curling my fingers around the edge of the mattress as the sore place between my thighs throbbed with pain.
And for what?
Pushing to my feet, I grabbed my underwear off the floor where he’d tossed them and tugged them up my thighs. I winced when the wet mess between my legs touched the fabric, but using the bathroom was the last thing on my mind.
I needed to get home before someone noticed I was gone.
‘You wound me, trying to sneak off without even saying goodbye,’ the stranger said as he stepped out of the bathroom. He hadn’t bothered to cover his manhood, leaving it to swing indecently between his legs. Even softening after his orgasm, the length caught my eyes and I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how that had fit inside me.
‘My apologies, I know you care about my manners,’ I spat, turning to give him my back as I grabbed my dress off the floor.
The air around me went still as I stood straight, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him staring at the scars crisscrossing my back and the flesh of my ass intently. His nostrils were flared, his jaw tightly clenched.
I shut mine briefly, drawing in a deep breath as I realized my mistake. The light from the open bathroom door illuminated the faint white lines that had faded over the years. It had been a long time since I’d done something to earn a caning quite like those.
Raising my arms to pull my dress over my head, I winced as rough fingers ran along the thick scar on my lower back. ‘He will get what’s coming to him,’ he said, leaning forward to touch his lips to the scar. My skin twitched beneath his mouth, the gentleness and care in the contact drawing a shiver from me.
I would never know such a sweet touch again.
‘Who said it was a he?’ I asked, trying to deflect from the well of emotion surging inside of me. My father wasn’t the only abuser in that house of nightmares, and even though the worst of the blows had come from his steady and unrelenting hand, my stepmother had never been innocent.
Neither had the many guards who’d watched my father abuse and humiliate me, getting off on the searing pain that split my skin in half.
The stranger took my dress in his hands, tossing it to the chair at the side of the room as he grasped my chin in his grip and turned me to face him. ‘You’re beautiful, even more so now.’
‘Sounds like you have a kink for hurting women,’ I snarled, flinching back as his lips came closer to mine. The heat of his breath against my swollen flesh reminded me of all the savagery in his kiss when he’d taken me, bringing a flush of heat to my sore core that I wished I could deny.
Nothing about this conversation should have been a turn on. Talking about my caning with a stranger who would never be able to understand the misery of a life that wasn’t my own should have cooled all the impulses that seemed to drive me toward him relentlessly.
I couldn’t explain the connection or the feeling that I’d met him before. That I somehow knew him or that he meant the words when he said that the person who hurt me would get what was coming to him.
Those plush lips of his brushed against my cheek as his light eyes drifted closed. ‘I have a lot of kinks, but that is not one of them,’ he said with a smirk. ‘A mysterious, strong woman who bears the scars of her abuse without fear however…’ He slipped a hand around the front of my hip and between my thighs. His fingers slid inside my underwear and through the wet mess he’d left, a groan rattling in his chest when my hips moved of their own accord and my ass pressed into his hardening length. ‘That, my cock can’t seem to get enough of.’
He dipped a finger inside me, watching my face for the pain he knew I must have felt. I didn’t give him a reaction, keeping my face as stoic as possible. While I didn’t think he would hurt me or use my pain against me, I needed the distance between us. My scars out in the open had left me feeling vulnerable, knowing that I’d dreaded the moment the rejection came from any man who saw me without my clothes.
Who wanted to look at an ass covered in white lines?
‘How sore are you?’ he asked, walking forward and maneuvering my body so I had no choice but to move with him. The bed loomed closer and the breath caught in my lungs from the implication that I wouldn’t be leaving the room just yet.
I still had time, but was I able to take him back inside me so soon? With all my old vulnerabilities in the open? The scars made me more me, not just a strange girl in the night who would be gone by morning.
My knees and thighs hit the edge of the mattress, and his hand touched the space between my shoulder blades. He pressed me forward, bringing panic to the surface as memories threatened to overwhelm me.
I whimpered, and his hand stilled so suddenly I knew he must have understood that it wasn’t a whimper of anticipation. My heart thumped in my chest as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, trying to chase away the phantom hands of my stepmother tasked with putting me into position, pinning my hands to the surface and reminding me that it was my own fault.
Trying to remind myself that the softness of the mattress was different than the cold wood of my father’s desk.
‘It’s just me, my beauty. I will never hurt you,’ he murmured, sweeping my hair off my neck. He paused, waiting for a moment to allow me to catch my breath and chase away the shadows of my nightmare. ‘You didn’t answer me.’
His voice took on a teasing lilt, pushing back the demons as that inexplicable urge to argue with him rose in me.
Not because he was wrong, but because I could.
He wouldn’t cane me for talking back or tell me to remember my place; he’d take anything I said with a grin and enjoy the banter for what it was. I hummed, considering my answer as I tried to embrace my last moments of freedom before I went back to my gilded cage.
‘I’m not sure you fucked me hard enough for that,’ I murmured. His deep chuckle vibrated the air behind my back, his hand returning to my shoulders and pressing me forward until I bent over the bed. When my nipples brushed against the bedding, they pebbled in response to the friction as his hand trailed down over my spine and made me arch my back.
His weight disappeared from behind me for a moment, and the crinkle of a foil packet sounded. When he returned, he peeled my panties down and let them bunch around my knees. The swollen head of his cock slid between my legs and rubbed against me as he groaned. ‘We’ll have to fix that then,’ he said, not bothering to call me out on the lie. He trusted me to know my body better than he did, and even though he was a stranger that made something pang inside my chest.
A dull ache that reminded me of all I’d lost, and everything I would never have again.
He slid inside me, pounding deep enough on the first stroke that I cried out as the ache flared to life. ‘But I thought you weren’t sore, Beauty?’ he asked, gripping my hips in his hands and tugging me back further onto his cock. He brushed against the end of me, threatening to fuck through me if he got any deeper.
‘I think you’re terribly full of yourself,’ I said, my voice arching higher as he drew back and pounded inside me again.
‘No, Little One,’ he said, his voice dropping lower as my heart seized in my chest. Even as a coincidence, the name was wrong to hear a man say as he moved inside me. A bastardization of everything Calix had meant to me.
But Calix was gone. He’d left me behind and moved on with his life without once trying to come back for me to save me from what he knew must have been a miserable existence. The man who slid his cock through my pussy was real flesh and blood, and warm.
Making me feel for the first time since I’d lost Calix and my mother to my father’s vindictiveness.
‘You are the one full of me,’ he growled, wrapping my hair up in his hand and pulling back. I rose up to my hands, moaning as his hips slapped against my ass and he set a punishing rhythm. He didn’t seem concerned about the scars covering my skin or anything other than chasing his release inside me. The weighted stare of his eyes on those marks on my ass should have made me uncomfortable; instead it only drove me higher. Being seen for who and what I was and still found beautiful was heady. ‘Touch yourself,’ he ordered.
When I didn’t move to do just that, he reached between the mattress and my body. Pulling me back from the edge of the bed slightly, he slapped his fingers against my pussy just hard enough that I jolted in his grip. ‘What the hell?’ I asked as he shoved deep and held still.
With his head pressed against the end of me, the pressure felt endless. ‘When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it,’ he growled. His hand left my pussy, gliding up to where I grasped the bedding tightly and grabbing one to position between my legs. ‘You expect me to believe that these beautiful fingers don’t dance over your pretty little pussy when you lie in bed at night?’ he asked, guiding them into a slow roll over my clit as he drew his length out and then drove back in sharply. ‘You’re going to need the pleasure when I’m done with you.’
He abandoned my hand there, pausing for a moment to make sure that I did as he told me. His hand traveled up to my throat, grasping me around the front and pulling my back into his chest as he fucked me. My breathing restricted, my head going light until all that remained was the feel of him pounding up into me. His warm breath on my cheek as he panted and groaned his pleasure.
Still, my fingers circled my clit frantically, driving my pleasure higher to combat what would undoubtedly make me very sore come morning. ‘Fuck,’ I whispered as my vision blurred, the shadows of the room fading into bright white light that overtook my senses.
My ears rang with the force of my orgasm, only faintly aware of the driving thrusts of his cock still moving inside me and the brutal roar of his orgasm as he pulled me down onto his cock and came.
When he released my throat, I fell forward. My body went limp and languid, and I cherished the moments when there was no consequence. When there wasn’t the threat of nightmares looming on the other side of sleep, and I could just curl into the bed he placed me in peacefully.
He left for a moment, returning quickly and curling himself around my body. ‘Sleep, Little One.’
Sleep evaded me, knowing I needed to leave shortly enough, but I allowed myself to enjoy the way his breathing evened out as he found his own rest.
It was only after he’d fallen asleep that panic seized my lungs and sent me hurrying from the bed as quietly as I could. My heart wanted to let him in, to accept him as someone I could care for when I could never.
But that wasn’t what had made me panic.
He’d somehow known to guide my left hand between my legs.
