I will erase this fear holding you hostage. Fuck it right out of you.

Whenever she felt the panic rising, his fingers moved more insistently, making her forget she could rip the blindfold away with her bound hands. Making her forget she could say the word that would make all of this stop. She could not stop him. Not when she was climbing higher and higher and crumpling for him all at the same time. He was pushing her over the edge, and she couldn’t even see the abyss that would swallow her whole.

“Yes, Christ above, there. Right there is my sweet girl. My good girl. Come for me, pet. Let the darkness take you and fight back against it. You are stronger than it could ever be. I’ll be here to catch you.” Gabriel’s words became a litany Celia clung to, and when she finally screamed her release, sagging against her bondage at the height of exquisite, pulsing madness, she was jolted anew by the leather crop snapping lightly against one buttock cheek.

The sound was a slap of reality she could not see coming nor anticipate its arrival. A sensation she could only absorb as she helplessly trembled from the climax and shudders rippled through her.

That stinging line of fire was somehow enhanced and tempered when Gabriel’s finger was joined by a second digit, both plunging even deeper into her core. She choked on a whimper when the crop struck again without warning. And yet, in this confusing tangle of fear and insanity, her body responded with a jerk of pure lust.

“Again, ma dragee piquante. Come for me again.” The riding crop bit her flesh several times in a row, and Celia jerked against her restraints with a low wail.

But it was not a cry of pain. It wasn’t a cry of terror. It was a plea for more.

More. More. More.

And Gabriel, as always, knew what Celia needed.

The popping sounds of the crop melted into the rhythmic thrusting of his fingers, and Celia sank into the darkness surrounding her. It enveloped her until there was nothing other than her husband’s hands on her body. The sting of the riding crop. The burn of her flesh accepting it. She cried for him, cried for herself, tears running down her cheeks in a cathartic, cleansing rush. Washing away the shame, the terror, the pain from before as though it were water swirling down a drain.

This went on for what might have been hours, or maybe only minutes. It was difficult determining the passage of time when pleasure and pain merged into one. But, somehow, the memories of that awful night were being erased. Erased until all that mattered was Gabriel and how he made her feel. Outside of this room, the world did not exist.

He coaxed her again and again into mindless pleasure, and when his cock replaced his fingers, Celia welcomed him by arching her back, allowing him to drive everything from her mind as surely as his body drove into her own.