“God, I love your tits.” With a moan, he rubbed his rough cheek against them. Retrieving the switch from the floor, he took a step back, and we exchanged a moment of understanding, of silent communication between punisher and punished. Still, I wasn’t ready.

He’d hurt me before, with his hands, his teeth, but when he swung that stick down on my breasts, the point of contact served as an epicenter, and every muscle in my body spasmed from the deep ache. I clenched my teeth to keep silent.

He lifted his arm again, a tilt to his head as he regarded me, and I yanked at the bindings, composure slipping. “Don’t.” I twisted my hands, but that only made the rope dig into my wrists. “Please, please, please! Oh God—” The stick cut across my nipples, and I screamed his name. For the first time ever, he made me cry. More than cry. I bawled, begged, sobbed under each brutal lash.

“Shhhh.” He kneeled, bringing him eye level with my heaving chest. “Lex…” His whisper carried a strangled plea, and I wondered what the hell he had to plead for. He wasn’t the one on the receiving end of that stick. “Why do you make me hurt you? I should be inside your tight cunt, exactly where I belong.” He wedged my thighs apart and dipped his fingers into dry heat, then pulled back with a frown. “I want you drenched. You know how hard it gets me.”

Fingers spreading the lips of my mound, he buried his face there and dragged his tongue over my clit. I groaned, repulsed by the slick heat of his mouth. He kissed up my stomach, leaving a wet path to my breasts, and I stiffened. He licked the peaks, first the left then the right, and when he moved away, crimson stained his lips. My blood.

“This hurts me as much as you.” The muscles in his left arm tensed, fist tightening around the switch, readying for another swing.

Nothing on Earth prepared me for strike after strike on my breasts and stomach. “Stop!” Fire danced across my flesh, and I howled at the excruciating sting. I resisted glancing down, scared to see the blood smearing my skin, the ugly red welts he must have left behind. Instead, I focused on him, on the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the rigid set of his jaw. The regret in his eyes that made me want to gouge them out. He had no right to feel regret or pity. If either of those elusive emotions existed inside his cold heart, they were fleeting—like dust obliterated by an unstoppable storm.

The stick struck the floor an instant before he gingerly probed my pussy. His frustrated gaze clashed with mine, and I knew I was in deep shit.

“Zach,” I whispered. “Please…”

“Please what? What do I need to do to make you wet? What did he do?”