The Dancer and the Masks by Bea Paige

Chapter 26

KONRAD

Naked and strapped to the St Andrew’s Cross I keep for special occasions such as this, Zero’s eyes flutter open. She’s only been out twenty minutes, but long enough for Leon and I to undress her and fix her in place, spread-eagled, vulnerable and locked in this cell with us. Down here in the dungeons no one will hear her scream, and fuck if that doesn’t make me hard.

She moans, her head swaying between her shoulders as she fights her way back to consciousness. Her back is bare, her scars a tapestry of healed trauma against her otherwise perfectly smooth skin.

When she’d turned her back on us in the Grand Hall, baring her secret, there wasn’t a dry cock in the room. She’d thought we would be disgusted, but fuck, her scars had the opposite affect.

Leon saw pain endured and overcome.

Jakub saw beauty within the ugliness.

And me? I’d seen something that still needed healing.

Inflicting pain might harden my dick, but healing the wounds I make gets me off.

“Please…” Zero moans, her long, fiery hair tickling her bare breasts as she lifts her head and fights to stay awake.

“Shh, take it easy,” I whisper, pressing my lips against the pebbled flesh of her arm. Tasting her sweetness. My tongue licks over her skin, loving the way she trembles beneath my touch.

“D—don’t.”

The sound of her voice is both ecstasy and agony. I’ve thought about nothing else since the evening in the Grand Hall when she came so beautifully beneath our touch then fought so valiantly to regain control of the situation. She will never know, but in that moment, when she bared her true self to us, she’d owned us. All three of us, including Leon. And no one has ever owned him.

Keeping away from Zero hasn’t been easy. Never before has a woman got beneath our skin quite like she has. Jakub was right, she is a distraction. A dangerous one.

Saturday night we’ve got clients arriving to watch the Numbers perform in The Menagerie, and to indulge in pleasures afterwards. We need our heads in the game, but keeping away from Zero has had the opposite effect.

For the last few days we’ve been a trio of fucked-up-ness.

In one last ditch attempt to get control of the situation, Jakub confessed to what happened between them in his room of curiosities. Short of fucking her or killing her, Jakub gave us carte blanche to take what we need in order for us to get over these sudden debilitating feelings.

Feelings that The Masks are not supposed to have.

It’s a solid plan, but it’s fucking flawed.

Jakub’s a damn fool if he doesn’t see that.

Zero is damagedby her past. She’s deformed by her birthmark and scars, but still undeniably beautiful, and different enough to be classed as unusual with her red hair, strange eyes and body covered in freckles.

She’s Jakub’s perfect woman.

She’s our perfect woman.

And fuck if my cock doesn’t weep for her.

I’ve been hard, manic, since that night she bared herself, crazed and out of my damn mind. Countless times I’ve headed towards Thirteen’s room only to return to my own so I could wank myself off with violent tugs, and curb my need for her.

Right now I want to thrash her raw for making me feel this way. I want to redden the skin on her arse and thighs, then I want to soothe and heal the parts I break, stitch her up, and piece her back together only to do it all over again.

It’s a sickness. A need that I must fulfil.

If I’m feeling that way, then fuck knows how Leon is faring. By the look on his face, not well.

He’s been like a bear with a sore head, working out in his gym until he passes out, all so he can keep away from Zero and not let loose. Admittedly, him being here is a risk, but at least I’ll be able to stop him should he go too far. The fact of the matter is, we both tried to stay away, but the second Jakub admitted what he’d done, it was game over.

He took from her. Now it’s our turn.

“It’s time,” Leon remarks, pushing off from the wall and testing the lock on the door.

“It’s secure. No one can enter,” I reassure him.

Down here, in my domain, our masks have been removed. We won’t be interrupted.

Stepping in front of Zero, Leon lifts her chin, studying her face, then says, “Hello, Nought. Konrad and I are so looking forward to playing with you.”

“No!” she shouts, jerking in his hold. Her skin flushes from her feet upwards, tingeing her in a shade of pink as pretty as the dress One picked out for her performance this weekend.

“Yes,” he croons, stroking his fingers down her ribcage and skirting across the side of her gently rounded stomach.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” The chains rattle in her attempt to free herself, and her head snaps upwards as she realises that she’s once again held captive. “You arsehole!”

“Arseholes,” Leon corrects, casting a look at me. “You’ve got two for the price of one. Think you can handle us?”

“Not able to manage me on your own, is that it?” she taunts, fighting with her words.

Leon laughs, his fingers digging into her chin as he plants a hard kiss against her mouth, forcing his tongue between her teeth and fucking her lips like a demon possesed. She stiffens, her muscles straining beneath her skin as she tries to rip her face away from his. Leon, however, doesn’t let up. Grasping her roughly, he kisses her like he fucks. Brutally.

I can’t say that my cock isn’t hard, because it is.

She screams into his mouth, and he jerks away.“Fuck, yes! Do that again,” he hisses, his lip bloody from where she’s bitten him. “Your fight is one of the things I fucking love about you.”

“Love? You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word, you sick prick!” Zero spits venomously.

Leon grins, his teeth stained red. “You’re right, I don’t know anything about love, but I know a great deal about pain. You’ve no idea how much I crave yours.”

“Leave me the hell alone!” she shouts, trying in vain to release her wrists and ankles.

The sound of the chains rattling makes my cock leap with anticipation. Today Leon and I will inflict pain and draw out her pleasure. Then I’ll heal her wounds, soothe her, care for her, fucking dote on her.

“We don’t want to,” I say, pushing off from the wall. I move around her, my fingers trailing over the bare skin of her arse, then up across her ravaged back. Her teeth chatter from the contact and the fear. “You can fight this, but it will only hurt more. Just let this happen, Zero, it doesn’t have to be all bad. We can make this good for you.”

“It will never be good for me. Never,” she seethes, her lips tainted with Leon’s blood.

She looks wild. Fucking beautiful despite the birthmark marring her skin. I’ve no doubt if she wasn’t chained up she’d fight us until her last breath.

“Then we will take your pain, and gorge on it, if that’s what you want,” Leon says, reaching out and twisting her nipple hard.

She cries out, her spine arching. “I don’t want to feel pain, you arsehole! I’ve lived through enough of it!”

Leon flinches as though slapped. Then he schools his features. “Too bad.”

“Let me counter it with pleasure,” I jump in, wanting to soothe, to ease the growing tension. I replace Leon’s fingers with my mouth, sucking her puckered nipple between my lips and gently easing the throb with my tongue. She bucks against the cross, but I reach around her back, pinning her in place so I can suck and tease. Taste and lick.

“Please,” she whimpers, her teeth grinding together when Leon twists her other nipple.

“Please what, Zero?” I press, trailing my finger around her areola, spreading my saliva into her pink-tinged skin.

“Don’t hurt me.” Her voice cracks on a sob, and Leon tips his head back revelling in the sound.

“That’s like asking me not to breathe. I will hurt you, Nought, but Konrad will counter that with pleasure. That’s all we can offer,” Leon says, stripping off his t-shirt and baring his chest to her.

Taking that as my cue, I begin to undress as well.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her eyes frantically flicking from me to Leon and back again as we both strip naked. It’s a shame she’s still trussed up in that chastity belt, but Jakub was right to do what he did. Fucking her will only release the beasts within us, so for now this will have to be enough.

“This is how it’s going to go,” Leon says, lazily stroking his cock as he addresses her, the muscles of his chest and thighs rippling beneath his black tattoos. Of the three of us, his skin is covered the most. Black reed-like tattoos wind up from his feet, legs and torso. He’s never told me the significance of them, and I’ve never asked though I suspect it’s to do with the underground lake he loves to swim in. “For every cut—”

“Cut?” she screeches, her voice pitching higher as she cuts him off.

“For every cut I give you,” he continues, rubbing his thumb over the thick head of his dick, smearing pre-cum, “Konrad will pleasure you.”

“No, please,” she whispers, tears pooling in her eyes and tipping over her lashes.

Unable to help myself, I lick them from her skin, my tongue trailing across her cheek towards her plump lips. Capturing her mouth with mine, I kiss her, pushing my tongue past her lips as she sobs.

“Concentrate on me, on the pleasure I will give you,” I say, pulling back slightly so that I can cup her face. “Trust me to take care of you, Zero. I will take care of you.”

I’m asking a lot. There’s no reason why she would trust me, but right here and now, I’m the lesser of two evils. I think she knows that.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leon reach for his knife that’s resting on the chair behind him. Its blade is no bigger than a few inches, but it’s sharp and entirely deadly. In the wrong hands it could do untold damage. In his hands, it has done untold damage, but I know my brother, he won’t kill her... Not yet, anyway.

The thought of him unleashing himself completely on her quickens my pulse, stirring up unwelcome feelings. Feelings I haven’t experienced in a very, very long time.

I push them away forcefully.

“Oh, God,” she whimpers.

“Look at me. Concentrate on me, okay?”

“Okay,” she nods, her gaze flicking back to mine. Her strange eyes cut me deeper than a knife ever could, slicing right into the black tar of my soul, slashing through the viscous darkness, twisting, churning me up.

Fuck, her eyes are so expressive. Haunting, actually.

Ever since we stole her she’s haunted my dreams. I’ve dreamt about her eyes welling with tears, her lips wrapped around my cock, her hair fisted in my hand. I’ve lain awake at night fantasising about fucking her pretty pink pussy. Taking and giving. Fucking and fighting. I’ve orgasmed into my fist like a fucking teenage boy remembering the lashes I’d given her and imagining how it would feel to do it all over again. I’ve practically lost my mind thinking about healing the wounds I inflict.

Inflict pain, then heal. Whip, then soothe. Fuck roughly, then carress gently. I’m a man of two halves. Black and white. Yin and Yang. I can separate both sides of me. Be one or the other at any given moment. Leon, however, is Yin. All darkness. Jakub is the grey in between, a mixture of both. He doesn’t belong with light or with dark, only the shadows.

Truth be known, Zero’s sunk so deep into my head that most days I feel like I’m fucking drowning. I need to anchor myself, and she’s going to help me to do that. Right the fuck now.

With her face clasped gently in my hands, we breathe in tandem, a steady rhythm linking us in the moment. She searches my face, frowning. Her hot breath tickles my face, sending goosebumps scattering over every inch of my skin. Fuck, this woman makes me insane with want.

Blinking back her shock at Leon caressing the skin of her back, Zero clears her throat, struggling to comprehend what’s about to happen. “Who hurt you?” she asks, her voice soft, gentle, kinder than I deserve as she stares at my scar. She’s trying to take her mind off what's about to happen, knowing that soon Leon will hurt her. I understand that. I indulge her.

“A client got out of control. He broke our rules and almost killed Eleven. I fought him, he cut me.”

“What happened to him?”

“Leon killed him,” I say, pressing my lips against hers.

“He deserved it,” Leon mutters. Her body quakes beneath his touch as his fingers trail over her scarred skin, searching for the perfect spot to cut. “The fucker wouldn’t take no for an answer. He hurt Eleven...”

“And yet, you’re hurting me,” Zero whispers.

“Yes,” he admits. “But it’s not the same.”

“It isn’t? How so?”

“Because Eleven wasn’t his. You, however, are ours.”

“Even when I don’t want to be?” she asks, her voice quivering as he traces her ruined skin with his fingertip.

“Especially then.”

“Then nothing I say will stop you. Just do what you need to do. I want it over with,” she says, steeling herself, blinking back the tears, toughening up. The transformation is exquisite.

She might’ve shown her fear, but now she shows her courage.

Taking that as his cue, Leon raises the knife, and locks eyes with me. “Take a deep breath, Zero. I’m going to cut you now,” he whispers, before sliding the knife across her skin a few inches beneath the base of her neck where the burns start. It’s a small cut, no bigger than half an inch, but it bleeds beautifully.

Leon’s gaze is transfixed on the spot as he watches her blood rise to the surface then spill in tiny droplets down her back. Zero gasps, her eyes widening, her muscles flexing, skin flushing. Her mouth pops open and I kiss her, swallowing her pain, consuming it. My tongue soothes her whimpers as my hands gently cup her breasts.

“That’s it. Easy now,” I say against her blush lips.

We all take a breath, centering ourselves back in the moment, then with a wicked grin, Leon bends over and licks the cut he made, sliding his tongue along the slit, tasting her essence. He’s fucked up like that.

He wasn’t always that way.

Leon used to be the kind of person who protected the people he loved from pain. The amount of times he shielded Jakub and me, accepting our punishment from The Collector as his own. He did it out of love, knowing that of the three of us he was the strongest. That he could take it.

But it fundamentally changed him.

The lessons we endured. The teachings our father bestowed upon us.

It changed us all.

A switch was flipped in our minds. Turning off compassion and empathy and replacing it with a craving for twisted, dark things. The men we are today are so far removed from the boys we once were, it’s as though they never existed. Our father wiped them off the face of the Earth and the three of us grew up in their place.

Stronger. Tougher. Fucked up. Less... human.

Knowing that, understanding who we are, I kiss Zero deeper, getting off on her whimpers that she’s so desperately trying to hold in, revelling in the growing heat from our combined bodies locked in this cell together. My cock fills with blood, my erection punching the air, weeping for her.

I fucking weep for her.

Pre-cum dribbles from my slit as blood dribbles from her cut. It feels right somehow, Leon cutting her, marking her, whilst she conjures up our pleasure with her pain.

Everything needs balance. Of the three of us, I’m usually the best equipped to provide that.

Tonight, however, we work together. Leon punishes, whilst I pleasure.

Kneeling on the cold stone floor, I fist my cock, covering her nipple with my mouth, swirling her rosy tip with my tongue, sucking and coaxing. I’d told Zero that Leon can make a woman come just by playing with her tits, and he can, but so too can Jakub and I. We were taught from a very young age how to fuck a woman right. Our father knew the power inflicting pain could wield just as much as he understood that pleasure can be used to manipulate and coerce. He made sure we experienced both from the women he brought home for us to practice on. By the time One arrived, we’d all fucked dozens of women, our adolescent bodies experiencing the kind of pleasure only men should.

What can I say? We had a fucked-up childhood like that.

As I cup the globes of Zero’s breasts, squeezing gently, Leon makes another small cut. She shudders against the cross, her tits wobbling, thighs trembling, a soft whimper escaping her lips.

Lowering my hands over her rib cage towards the waistband of her chastity belt, I give it a gentle tug. The leather is soft, pliable, but too tight for me to access her pussy and pleasure her with my fingers. That doesn’t mean I can’t rub her over the leather though, or use the chastity belt as friction against her cunt.

Licking and sucking on her tits, I rub my fingers between her parted legs, making sure to pay attention to her clit with my thumb. Even with the leather separating us, I feel the heat, smell the heady scent of her arousal. She moans softly, her head resting against her arm. Lips parted, eyes unfocused.

Leon licks at her blood, his tongue smeared claret as he fists his cock. Then he makes another, deeper cut and I watch as he covers his palm in her blood and grasps his cock, using it to slicken himself up.

Twisted motherfucker.

He wants her virginity, and this is his way of staking a claim. Well, he can enjoy fisting his dick covered in her blood from the cut he made, because I’ll be fucked if he takes her virginity.

That’s all mine.

“Fuck, yes,” he groans, locking eyes with me.

There's a challenge in his gaze. I know what he’s thinking: can I override the pain he’s dishing out? It’s a tough ask, given I don’t have every inch of her at my disposal, but I’ve never shied away from a challenge.

Lifting upwards, I kiss her again, tugging on her breasts, her nipples, pulling on the chastity belt and capturing her whimpers. Her body is lax, loose, not strained as I’d expected.

She’s responsive, but not pliable.

She’s taking as much as she’s giving.

When I kiss her, she kisses me back, her tongue searching, her moans sending red-hot lust straight to my cock. My balls tingle and without thinking about what I’m doing, I break the kiss and slide my fingers into her mouth.

“Suck,” I demand.

She sucks, wetting them up good.

Fisting myself, I kiss her.

She groans, I moan.

I drop to my knees again then slide my tongue up the inside of her leg, her scent like raspberries and sunwarmed skin. When I reach the apex of her thighs, I run my tongue over the tendons stretched taut from her position, showing me a sliver of her outer pussy lips. I lick her there as Leon cuts her back again. She lets out a cry of pain, and I drop my dick, wanting her pleasure more than my own. Adjusting my position, I press the pads of my thumbs against her pussy and find her clit pressing against the leather, rubbing in small, circular motions with just the right amount of pressure.

“Please,” she murmurs, but she’s not pleading for us to stop this time, she’s pleading to come.

Sweat beads across her forehead. Her eyes are heated, angry, but lust-filled.

This is turning her on.

“You like this?” I ask, but it’s more of an observation really. “You like the pain and the pleasure?”

“No!”

“You’re lying,” Leon says, bringing the blade up to his palm and cutting into the flesh. With blood dripping from the cut, he reaches around and slides it up her neck, marking her with his blood. “You like being touched like this, cut like this. There’s a need in you, Nought. We can sense it. I can sense it. You’re not as pure and innocent as you’d like us to think. You’re different too.”

“No. You sick fuck. No!” But even as she’s cursing him, she’s opening her mouth and wrapping her tongue around his finger, sucking his blood like she’s been into blood play her whole damn life.

“Do you want us to stop?” I ask her, grasping her breast and drawing her nipple into my mouth.

“Yes…” she hisses.

“Liar!” Leon insists, withdrawing his finger and pinching her other nipple whilst he whispers in her ear. “You want to feel alive. Nothing does that quite like being strapped to this cross with one man desperate to fuck you raw and the other wanting to bleed the life from your veins. We both want you but for very different reasons.”

“You want to kill me?” she asks, tears seeping from her eyes.

“I want to do so many fucking things to you, Nought. So many fucking things… I want to put my dick in your mouth and watch you choke on my cock. I want to take your virginity and smear myself in your blood. I want your tears and your cries of pain. I want your silence. I want you to scream my name with fire in your blood and violence in your soul. I. Want. It. All.”

“No,” she whimpers, tears streaming from her eyes.

“But I can’t have any of that right now because you don’t just belong to me, you belong to Konrad and Jakub, and they need you too.”

Leon reaches up and grabs her hair, fisting it. Pulling her head back he bites her neck, sucking and licking and running his lips all over the tender flesh. He tugs her earlobe between his teeth, before scraping his stubble over her birthmarked cheek. Despite her fear, she moans at his attention, at mine. She’s so fucking twisted up by the fear, pain and pleasure, that she can’t unravel herself enough to fight back with words.

She’s lost herself in the moment.

And if that isn’t freeing, I don’t know what the fuck is.

Right now she’s more free than she’s ever been in her closeted little life.

“Fuck!” Leon grinds out, fisting his bloody dick violently as he lets her hair go and loses himself to the moment too.

He jacks off whilst I coax out her pleasure, his free hand sliding over her back, smearing blood over every inch. As far as I can tell, he’s only made two shallow cuts and one deeper one, but her groans of pain would indicate that it isn’t just the sting from cuts that hurt her, but him simply touching her back. But how is that possible? She said that she was eight when she was burned in the fire, that was years ago. How can her scarred back still cause pain?

Then it dawns on me. It’s psychological.

Her pain is in her head.

And fuck if my dick doesn’t grow in size at the thought. “Jesus, fuck,” I mutter.

When I look up at her bowed head, her hair hanging around her face in a curtain, I see how her gaze goes in and out of focus. It’s as though she’s trying and failing to switch off the pain. We’d all witnessed how she’d done exactly that when I’d whipped her in the Grand Hall a few days ago, but she’s finding it difficult to do so now. The pleasure she’s feeling is keeping her in the moment, anchoring her in her body. She’s riding the knife edge, literally, and there’s something so fucking hedonistic about that.

“Leon. She’s trying to escape. Cut her again,” I demand.

He’s already pressing the tip of the blade into her skin before I’ve even finished the sentence. “There, that’s it. Bleed for me, Christy,” Leon says, too in the moment to realise what he’s just said.

Christy.

Fuck!

Her spine bows, her tits pressing into my face as her head tips back. Dropping the knife to the floor with a clatter, Leon presses up against her back, and wraps his hand around her throat. I meet his gaze, recognising the hunger in his eyes, the need to own and destroy, for violence, but there’s a shadow of something else too. He wants to keep her. He wants to keep the girl, Christy, not the Number.

“You’re ours. For as long as we live and breathe!” he says possessively, and with that promise he bucks against her ravaged and bloody back squeezing her throat, strings of cum spurting all over her as he orgasms.

Moments later he steps beside me—his cock covered in their blood, his release—and does something that surprises me. Leon cups Zero’s face and kisses her with utmost care. He isn’t rough, he doesn’t take, he gives. He gives her a sweet, lovingkiss as his thumbs stroke her cheekbones gently, reverently.

For the first time since we became The Masks, I see Leon the boy and not the man and in that defining moment, I know one thing; we’re all fucking screwed.

“Make her come,” he demands.

I don’t hesitate, I make her come.