Shattered Read Free Page B

pain, but he couldn’t move, the knots didn’t give, and he turned his struggle towards regaining control of his reflexes instead.  His deep breaths now served to hasten the dispersion of pain, pain which galvanized a new, silent rebellion.  He couldn’t stand, he couldn’t escape, but he might be able to deny her satisfaction.  Slowly he brought his eyes back up to hers.
    Robin smiled slightly , as though she could read all that in his face.  “I’m still warming up, prince.  You’ll be screaming by the time we’re done.”
    “Fuck you,” he whispered.  But she just smiled at him and swung again.
    She laid two more into him.  One landed in symmetry to the first and the other to his stomach.  Between each she waited until he was looking at her again, and each time that took longer.  The pause was enough that each warm sting had a chance to spread slowly across the surface of his skin.  In its wake a new sensation began to creep in.
    Nathan clung to the afterglow of each victory, eac h blow he took and transformed, each blow he did not cry out.  She stripped him from shoulder to abdomen, stopping just above the band of his pants.  Robin was a sight.  Her movements were fluid and focused.  Her hair flew around her when she swung and settled around her shoulders when she was still.  The control she exerted into each swing, the long extension of her arm and the sharp snap back had begun to wind her slightly.  And her breasts, constricted in that wrapping of leather, rose up and down as she breathed more heavily.
    She paused when she marked the last clean patch of skin , just below his navel.  In the reprieve Nathan looked down at the thin red lines that streaked him and to the unwelcome erection that bulged in his pants.  It seemed impossible and he stared at it in disbelief, yet the more he focused on the heat radiating from his front the more he felt the burning between his legs.
    He was conflicted, again, as mind and body did war in the span of two seconds.  But Robin settled hi s inner monolog with one hard lash across his chest.
    Nathan’s attention shot up and he pushed out the breath he held between his teeth.  He wanted to yell at her, to tell her she wasn’t to hit him until he was ready, and he realized just in time how utterly stupid that thought was.  He caught her expression as the shock faded.
    Robin’s amusement with his resolve had faded at some point.  She was frowning down at him now.
    Before he could comprehend that look she let loose a second strike.  He watched the arch of her arm and the last second pull back of her wrist, watched the tip of the whip cut through the air and collide with his skin, and then nothing.  For the longest second of his life he felt nothing.  The pain that followed, that ripped across his chest like a line of hot iron shattered all his prior resolutions in an instant.  He let out all of his breath in a single scream.
    He gasped f or air as stinging aftershocks resonated out from the center of his chest.  Yet as they swept over his body he found himself clinging to the subtle sensation beneath the pain, internalizing it and drinking it in, until in its wake he found relief.  Nathan closed his eyes and let it all wash over him.
    Robin had him in tears by the time she exhausted herself.  But she never hit as hard as she had on the blow that broke through his tenacity.  She was paced and methodical.  After that he shouted out on each strike, but each scream trailed into a moan.  Nathan hung limp against his ropes, tears and sweat dripping down his face, a painfully needy erection between his legs.
    Robin was sweating too.  She stopped and dropped the whip to the floor and she stood over him now as though deciding some course of action.  But Nathan wasn’t in a place to notice or to care.  He was exhausted, tired, he was lost.  He was aroused.
    Only when she knelt in front of him and tugged free the drawstring around his waist did Nathan