Master of the Abyss

“I…” She knew it was a game, but it didn’t seem to alleviate the helpless feeling growing in her. “I didn’t.”

“Wrong answer, little spy. You’ll regret that.” He pulled something from his pocket. Setting an arm behind her waist, he bowed her back and took her nipple into his mouth. And he sucked, oh, God, he sucked so powerfully she felt a whirlpool pulling her down to the bottom of a river. Apparently satisfied with how far her nipple jutted out, he fastened something on the swollen peak.

Tiny teeth bit into her areola and didn’t release. “Ow!”

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

The nipple clamp pinched, sent throbbing aches through her, and somehow made her pussy pulse in unison. Her other breast swelled as if to complain as well.

And Jake bent and sucked on that breast. Her knees wobbled, and a humiliating whimper escaped. When he put on the second clamp, her legs buckled. She tried to grab him to keep from falling but couldn’t move her arms. He locked his arm around her, holding her up as easily as if she weighed less than a doll.

She stared down at the clothespin-appearing silver clamps.

When she looked up, his eyes were intent on her face, studying her expression. “Do they hurt?”

“Yes.” She stopped, confused. The pain felt…hot. Made everything more sensitive. “No.”

The crease of a half smile appeared in his cheek. “Very good.” As her nipples burned with a mixture of arousal and pain, he paced in a circle around her, hands behind his back. “We’ve searched the men delivering supplies to our camps, but never suspected women might be involved. Your countrymen are barbarians”-he gave a disgusted grunt-“and now you will be the one to suffer for it, not them. Kalinda Masterson, tell me where you have hidden the poison.”

Her brain had trouble moving past the “suffer.” “But… there is no poison.”

His face turned hard. “You’re lying.”

A jolt of anxiety shot through her…even as her arousal deepened.

He strode over to a fir and broke off a branch. As he walked back, he stripped it, leaving only a whippy stick just over a foot long.

She eyed it warily, her heart rate increasing.

His cold gaze ran up and down her body. “I need to search you.”

“B-but I’m naked.”

Standing at her side, he tapped the stick against her mound. “Open for me.”

No way. She wasn’t going to-

He swatted her butt with the stick, hard enough for a nasty sting.

“Hey!”

“That was just a warning, Yankee spy.” He repeated again, “Open for me.”

She glared at him, and he hit her other butt cheek. Harder. The burn sizzled across her skin straight to her clit. It hurt, dammit, and how the hell could that make her want his touch so badly that she shook with it?

“Open your legs, Miss Masterson.”

Gritting her teeth against the embarrassment, she moved her legs apart. The air felt warm against her thighs, yet oddly cool on her overheated pussy.

“Very good.” To her relief-mostly relief-he slipped the cane under his belt. He clamped a hand around her upper arm in a cruel grip, and then reached down between her spread thighs to touch her intimately. “You are very wet. Appears you enjoy a bit of pain, little spy.”

His merciless grip kept her from moving away from the slow, slick slide of his fingers over her labia. Oh God. Each brush against her clit sent need boiling into her veins until the air itself simmered with heat.

Suddenly he pushed his finger up into her, and the shocking, searing pleasure made her gasp. Her insides clenched around the intrusion.

“So, Miss Masterson, have you hidden anything in your womanly recesses?” His finger stroked deeper, in and out, his thumb rubbed against her clit in a way that eroded her control, and the feeling of him touching her, of doing what he wanted, was almost too much. Her head spun.

When he stepped away, leaving her empty inside, she moaned.

“I find nothing. Perhaps it’s deeper than I can reach. Or elsewhere.” He pulled the cane from under his belt and idly slapped the weapon against his palm in a way that totally fixed her attention despite the need throbbing inside her. “But as long as we’re at this, you will now provide me with the answer to something else.”

After a minute, the ominous silence registered, and she managed to pull her gaze from the stick. Oh my… His eyes were so blue and as clear as the sky above. The ground under her slid sideways and-

“Kalinda?”

Hellfire. She blinked and forced herself to turn toward the forest, trying to get her brain to work, but her mind had melted away with the rest of her body.

He set a finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze again. “When I arrived and said we didn’t need to talk…what were you thinking that hurt you?”

She stiffened as she remembered how she’d thought: He only wants me for sex. That’s all. She bit her lip. Uh-huh, share that thought with the nice dom. Not. “Nothing important.”

The cane tapped the outside of her left breast, just enough to sting, to startle her, to jiggle the clamp. She hissed as pain sizzled through her breast and streaked straight for her pussy. She tried to raise her arms. Trapped. The pain and the reminder of her restraints-how the hell could that turn her on like this? Her bones felt like boiled noodles.

“Kalinda, I would like an answer.”

She tried to think of something adequate…and took too long.

The cane slapped the outside of her right breast, then the tender underside, and- oh, God!-right over the excruciatingly sensitive nipple already pinned by the clamp. She yelped. And yet fire seared straight to her clit.

He looked down at her, face expressionless. The utter authority in the lift of his chin destroyed her determination.

“I decided we should have a nice clandestine affair.” Her words spilled out as if a dam had crumpled, but she still managed to divert the flood into a side branch. “Never be seen together in public.”

“All right. I believe you had those thoughts.” His jaw hardened. “But I asked what made you hurt.” He closed his hand around her arm and then tapped the cane against her pussy, just below her clit, hitting her swollen labia.

She rose right up onto tiptoes at the burning, stinging pain. “Aaaah!” She tried to step away, but his grip seemed more inflexible than handcuffs.

Whap, whap, whap.

When he stopped, she panted against the pain-only was it pain? Because if he did it again-if the sadistic bastard touched an inch higher on her clit-she’d come, right then and there.

He chuckled. “You might like this too much for it to be a punishment.” When he rubbed the cane against her cheek, the scent of her arousal clung to the wood. Shaken to the core at her own response, she stared up at him.

His gaze was gentle and yet…uncompromising. He wouldn’t accept anything less than the truth. “Tell me, Kalinda.”

Her dry throat didn’t allow her to swallow. “I didn’t like knowing you wanted me