Hell by J.L. Beck
18
Lucian
She’s perfection.Nothing less than that. The fulfillment of my every fantasy come to life. Like she was made just for me.
I come with a roar, filling her cunt until my cum drips from her when I withdraw my cock. There’s a sense of satisfaction in that, in watching my seed drip from her. Because I’ve claimed her pussy. I’ve claimed her ass. She’s mine.
With a sigh of satisfaction, I collapse at her side. I’m spent, truly and completely, a blank slate. As if every ounce of tension, concern, anxiety over every mundane, everyday bullshit has fallen away. There are no accounts to balance, no clientele to satisfy, no palms to grease. Just peace and quiet and stillness; it’s euphoric, and it’s all thanks to Rowan.
It takes a minute for me to come back to my senses, for my breathing to slow down, my thoughts to clear. I’m exhausted down to my bones. The evening’s activities have left me spent—but happily spent.
It doesn’t take long for me to realize I’m the only one who’s happy at the moment. Once the pounding of my heart settles, and I can hear more than the rush of blood in my ears, the sound of broken sobbing makes its way into my consciousness.
I lift my head, rolling to the side toward Rowan. She’s worked her way onto the bed, facing away from me, still bound as I left her. And sobs wrack her body, a gust of emotion that shakes the entire bed. How can something so small be so powerful? For a moment, I’m afraid she’s having a seizure—but when I reach for her, my fingers barely grazing her skin, she jerks away like my touch is fire. So she is conscious, at least.
“Rowan. Look at me.” All she does is shake her head, and her sobbing gets louder. This isn’t put on. This isn’t a show. This is the sound of a woman weeping for all she’s worth, weeping like her heart has been broken.
For a moment, I consider letting her cry herself out, letting her get it out of her system before questioning her again. To try to talk to her right now would be a waste of time, anyway—she’s in no condition.
I can’t just leave her that way, though. Knowing there’s something wrong. “Did I hurt you?”
All that question does is cause her to curl into a ball, bringing her knees up to her chest. I’m starting to become irritated, and she doesn’t want that. “Can you talk to me?” Finally, after receiving nothing in response but fresh tears, I’ve had enough.
Despite her trying to flinch away, I turn her onto her back, so I can at least get a look at her face. When she tries to turn her face away, I take her by the jaw and tug.
She opens her eyes, and they find mine, and what I see there stirs something deep inside me. Something I didn’t know existed, something that’s never bothered me until now.
She’s broken. I’ve never seen someone so broken. And I’m the cause of it.
“Please.” It’s barely a whisper, nearly inaudible. “Please, untie me. I’m hurt.”
I do just that, confused by all this. Why do I care so much? So she had a rough time. Plenty of girls do. They’re my stock and trade. What makes me more money than any of the vanilla kink my club provides. I’ve even participated with a few of my clients, and I’ve witnessed the depth of their depravity. I’m well aware of the depths of my own, too—that’s one thing I’ve never kidded myself about. I know who I am, what I like, and what I’m willing to do to turn my fantasies into reality.
Why, then, do her tears stir up something like sympathy? I can’t remember the last time I felt genuinely sorry for someone. She might be the first in years.
Once her hands are free, she examines her right knee. Now I see it’s scratched and bleeding with what looks like a puncture mark. “There was a nail sticking out of the floor, and I tried to make you stop, but you didn’t. How could you do that to me?” she whispers, rocking back and forth as if to comfort herself.
“What did I do? I thought—”
“You know exactly what you did. What was all that talk before, in the library?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The safe word!” she screams, her face going red. “It was your idea to have a safe word. All the shit you put me through tonight was okay because I told myself there was a safe word I could use. I could stop it if I needed to. But what happened when I used it? Nothing! You ignored me!”
She has me at a loss. I hardly remember the specifics of what just happened. Was I in a trance? Certainly, there’ve been times when I was at the height of arousal, and nothing else around me mattered much. When I was able to ignore everything else in the world but the sensations rolling through my body. When the only thing in the world was satisfaction, and I was just on the cusp of achieving it.
But I never completely lost myself. There’s always been some sliver of my consciousness still alert, prepared to step in and take control if need be.
Did you ever intend on honoring a safe word at all?My inner consciousness recoils from the question, but there’s no escaping it. Not with Rowan’s hard, tear-filled, accusatory eyes boring holes into my skull. Is it possible I accepted her safe word as a way of shutting her up at the moment? A desperate attempt to keep her with me a little longer? Because I don’t even remember hearing her say it, though I have no doubt she did. I lost myself. I had no intention of keeping myself under control tonight, and I realize that now.
And look what I did.
I’m not sure what to do now. It’s rare for me to be in a situation like this, where there’s any sort of need to apologize for wrongdoing. I don’t apologize because I never think much about how my actions affect others. I live in a transactional world. So long as the books are balanced by the end of the day, I have no troubles.
This isn’t so easy to balance. Judging by the way she glares at me while protecting herself from me, I wonder if there’s any way I can undo what’s been done.
I reach for her since that’s what instinct tells me to do. I only want to hold her, to comfort her, to try in some way to explain what came over me tonight. There must be some way I can make her understand.
When she scrambles away from me, eyes filled with terror, I know it’s no use. There’s no coming back from this, at least not right now.
“Don’t touch me.” It’s a hiss filled with all the venom of a snake prepared to strike. “Don’t ever put your hands on me again. I don’t know what I was thinking, trusting you. Why I wanted to believe you. I forgot who you are.”
“And who would that be?” I ask, fighting to maintain my self-control.
“You’re a monster. You get off on hurting people. You’re no better than—” She cuts herself off, eyes darting away from mine. She’s too smart to say it, though there’s no question who she’s thinking about. I wonder what she would do if I told her right now at this very minute what became of him. How much joy I got out of watching him get taken apart piece by piece in that little room. How the memory had fueled more than one jerk-off session in the days since then. Remembering his screams, his pleas, rolling them around in my head the way I roll an exquisite wine over my tongue.
She thinks I’m a monster? She has no idea.
Her jaw is set in a firm line. “That’s it. That was your fourth time. This is over now.”
How can she say that so casually? Like it doesn’t matter?
“Well?” she demands. “Wasn’t that the terms of our agreement? You’re the one who’s always bringing them up and throwing them in my face. How does it feel?”
“Rowan, I—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I’m tired of listening to men tell me after the fact why they couldn’t help but hurt me.” She slides off the bed, hunched over in a defensive position, pulling herself together. She walks like someone in pain, and another sharp blade of guilt slices its way into my heart. I did that to her. She isn’t some faceless, nameless stranger whose existence I was unaware of until this moment and will never cross my consciousness again.
“I’m going to my apartment. I’m not coming back to your house.”
That causes me to wince. I’m glad her back is to me so she can’t see. “Very well.” What am I supposed to do? Argue with her? Beg her to return? I see now that trying to come up with an offer that would make her continue our arrangement was pointless. She was in it for money, nothing else.
And now, I get the feeling I’ve destroyed whatever might’ve existed between us. Any hope she might have reconsidered and agreed to continue our strange relationship is obliterated.
I get up, dressing quickly. I can’t stand to be in this room, in this house, with her. There’s too much guilt and shame in the air. It makes it difficult for a man to breathe. Yet I can’t keep myself from sneaking looks at her, watching her as she slowly, carefully puts herself together.
“Is there anything else you would like to say to me? Anything you need to get off your chest?” This isn’t a kind question. It’s not made out of concern for her. So what is it, then? Maybe I want to punish myself. Maybe I deserve it. I must, or else why would I feel remorse? Until this point in my life, remorse has been as remote as the moon now shining through the windows.
She turns her head slightly, just enough to catch me out of the corner of her eye. “I never want to see you again. Don’t contact me. I want to forget this ever happened.”
I take this as well as I can, nodding once before going to the door. “Rick will be back to take you home. Anything you brought to the house will be dropped off to you in the morning and left at your front door.” She only grunts softly in response, which I choose to take as an affirmative before leaving her alone.
My car is parked behind the house, and I waste no time getting out to it. I text Rick that she is ready for pickup before I start my own car.
How could everything have gone so wrong? I can’t shake the feeling as I drive home, passing Rick along the way as he goes to fetch her, that I’ve destroyed the best thing that’s ever come into my life.
What a shame we only come to these realizations after the destruction has been done.
