“Better, but not good enough to deserve any pleasure.” His hands disappeared, leaving nothing on my cunt or my breast but a frigid pain that ripped a small cry from me. “Yes, this shall make the perfect punishment. Dare touch yourself, and I shall relieve you of your hands.”

Frustration mixed with fury.

Curse this devil and his games!

I kept my face as straight as possible, not letting a single mewl or sigh voice my dismay. “Perfect, yes, but rather predictable. Or do you think I expected, for even a second, that you would bring me to completion? You’re toying with me. Don’t think for a moment that I don’t know it.”

“Once again, I seem to find myself in a predicament where my wife and her punishment is concerned. How dreadfully complicated this mortal custom proves itself to be… marriage.” In one quick move, Enosh swooped me off his lap, only to lay me over it like a girl who’d ruined her new ribbons. His hand shoved the cotton of my chemise up to gather around my middle before his fingers dug into the flesh of my buttocks. “How about this? One strike of my hand for each day I spent being cut up, burned, and spread wide in places we ought not to mention. Yes?”

A shiver of uncertainty trickled across my body, leaving pebbled skin in its wake for my husband to snicker at. I’d been whipped, beaten, and paddled many times in my life, yet his suggestion caught me off guard.

As did the reaction of my body.

Draped over the god’s lap, I found myself rocking against his thigh in search of friction, more fervently whenever he circled his warm hand over my buttocks. He didn’t seem inclined to interfere with how I rubbed myself on him, and I had no interest in stopping, chasing any sensation to replace the dullness of death.

The humiliation would burn something fierce if he spanked me, but not nearly as hot as the impact of his palm on my chilled skin. My nipples hardened at the thought of his hand slapping my arse, setting the skin ablaze for days to come. If he did it right.

I dug my fingers into the leather of his breeches, braving myself for his first strike. “Do it.”

“Do not command me, little one. You might be my wife, but you are not my equal. Try again.”

I swallowed past a knot of pride the size of my fist, nearly choking on it. “Please spank me, Master.”

“If you so wish.”

Tendrils of nervous anticipation weaved through me. My muscles tightened, turning me stiff as I braced for his first strike and the uncertainty of how much strength it would hold. How many times was I due? Would he allow me a few moments between each to let me gather my composure? What if he—

I gasped.

Not at the first strike, but how his fingers glided from my buttocks to between my legs. Enosh circled my entrance with one finger, spreading my wet lust around the needy flesh before he dipped inside with two. Each sensual thrust pushed me against his thigh, teasing a new throb into my clit and sparks of pleasure into my womb. Oh, I wanted more!

“I take no pleasure in hurting you…” a beat of considering silence, “…too much.”

His fingers pulled out of me at lightning speed, only for his palm to come down on my buttocks like thunder. Pain crackled through my skin, through my muscles, and into my bones. It wrenched a squeal from my throat, which came out as nothing but a puff of air that parted my trembling lips. By the time its remnants tumbled from my tongue, they shaped into a long moan as the pain faded into wicked, blissful heat.

“Perhaps I have never acquired the taste of it... until now.” Enosh’s breathing altered as he slipped his hand between my legs once more, letting his fingers fuck my drenched cunt. “And even this arouses you.”

I wiggled, not in an attempt to escape my punishment, but to dole out one of my own with how my ribs shifted over his swelling length. “No more than you.”

“As impudent in death as she was in life.”

Slap.

His next strike disabled my lungs, turning my splutter of curses into a tangled mess of dying whimpers and groans. Even without air, the scorching pain, the intense pleasure of it, made me feel warm and brutally alive.

A caress along my cunt followed, if to tease my clit or simply to wet his fingers and worsen the impact of his punishment, I couldn’t say. Didn’t care, either. I only moaned at how his fingers hooked and curled with each thrust, letting me clench around them. I was so close again.

So damn close.

Slap.

“Did you think I would let you come?” he tsked. “No, little one. I might tease you for years, torture you like this for decades.”

He continued his pattern of brutal, shuddering swats interwoven with teasing, pleasure-inducing fondling on my cunt until my mind surrendered to the sensation of all-engulfing heat. Heat of pain. Heat of anger. Heat of pleasure.

Just… heat.

Enosh lured me toward release more times than I could count through the haze of rapture, only to abandon me on its biting ledge. Between my sore bottom, my aching muscles, and my flayed pride, my convulsing womb enraged me the most—how it tethered at the edge of harrowing bliss without bursting into release.

At Enosh’s next swing, the heat seared straight through my muscles, crumbling all tension, making me hang slack from his lap. Tears blurred my vision, not from pain but from the distressing need and disappointed want.

His next swing never landed.

“I counted seven. Not nearly enough, though I daresay you are sufficiently warm now.”

Hands on my waist, he lifted me and sat me on the infuriated flesh of my bottom. With one hand, he stroked my tousled hair back, while the other trailed a finger along the underside of my eye, from the outer corner to the inner one, collecting a tear which he presented to me on the pad of his finger.

“This, little one, is your very last tear. There are no more left in you.” His ungiving stare held mine as he licked it off, then swallowed it with a moan. “Mmm, what a gift you gave me.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 7

OceanofPDF.com

Ada

Hot anger spiked between my ribs.

Stripped of my pride and my last tear, I blinked Enosh’s face into focus, from the smug arch of his left brow to the non-smile framing his lips. Devil be damned, did his facial muscles ever tire of faking cruel detachment?

I was sick of seeing it and my palm itched with the urge to slap it right off. Where I had understood the source of Enosh’s anger before, now I could no longer bring myself to care. My own anger was growing thicker with every nasty encounter, every attempt at prying that damn mask off, which left me with only emotional cuts and bruises.

I’d tried to explain, to apologize, to reason… had even tried to unleash his carefully camouflaged rage. Nothing worked. Just what did it take to lure the King of Flesh and Bone out of his skin?

Might as well try that slap.

The moment my arm lifted by a mere inch, Enosh’s eyes flicked to the limb in question before they pinned my gaze down like nails. “I advise you to reconsider.”

My spine snapped straight at the sharp undertone that roughened his voice. “You spanked me!”

“How could I deny my wife? Please spank me, Master… Oh, how she pleaded. And so, I gave in, cherishing my wife as I ought to.” His arm came around my middle, shifting me on his lap until I hissed. “Ah, how nicely your bottom throbs in lieu of a pulse. I daresay the imprint of my hand on your ass makes for a lovely mark. Now, if you wish for another spanking, you only need to say so.” For the fraction of a second, his smugness contorted around the edges, letting his pretense slip beneath the snarl on his upper lip. “Strike me, and you can be certain I will retaliate, for I have never raised my hand at you in anger, nor whipped you or beaten you for any of your many transgressions.”