Page 2 of Brave
As if he were a king.
She felt sick.
He gestured to his left and Pony gratefully took her seat as close to his side as the prison rules would allow.
With a thin smirk on his lips, and that same viperous challenge in his stare that always left her shaking, he did not grant Puppy the same luxury.
Small wonder Piggy-girl had fled, she thought, not for the first time and also not without those old familiar stabs of guilt that nettled her subconscious. It was because of this kind of disloyalty that she deserved to be left standing, invisible and ignored while Ethen played his smirking cat-and-mouse catchup with Pony.
“Are you going to work?”
“Yes, Master.” Back straight as a broom, she balled her fists in her lap, fingers clenched to keep from reaching out to him. Not only would the guards shrill their whistles at them, but if Ethen wanted to be touched then he was the one who did the reaching.
“Are you going to make the usual transfer into my commissary account here?”
She nodded, enthusiastically. “Yes, Master.”
“Are you going to any of the parties? Are you talking to anyone?”
“No, Master.” Just as enthusiastically, she shook her head.
“Is Puppy-girl?”
“No, Master.”
“Mm.” For the first time, he looked at Puppy and when he did, the rolling in her stomach became less like moths and more like snakes. Slithering. Constricting. The effect crawled up into her chest, making it hard to breathe.
Standing where he’d left her, shame-filled heat crept up to burn her face as she tried hard not to show him any reaction at all. Motionless, like stone, she tried to pretend she was part of the wall.
“Two more months,” he told her, but his stare was locked on Puppy and all she could see in the depths of his unblinking gaze was the promise of future punishment just as soon as he was paroled. “Two more months and then I’m free.”
When that happened, Pony would go back to him and everyone at this table knew it. Just like they all knew exactly what he would do to her if Puppy did not.
Ethen never did grant permission for her to sit, but eventually visiting time was over. Although he assigned a punishment because Puppy did not look properly subservient, Pony walked out of the prison smiling.
“Two more months,” she said, hands clasped over her stomach as if she could hardly hold the butterflies in. “We’ve almost made it through this nightmare. Can you believe it? Just two more months, and then he gets out and we can all go home. I don’t know where that will be, but at least he’ll be with us.”
Swallowing hard and repeatedly, Puppy managed to keep herself under tight control until she made it out the main doors. Her knees started to wobble, but she descended the cement steps to the parking lot, calmly veered into the nearest flowerbed, caught her hair as she bent over, and threw up all over the rhododendron.
Two more months.
Shaking, she scrubbed her wrist across her lips.
Two more months of freedom, and then she was going back to hell.
Chapter 2
Puppy bolted upright in bed with the sting of phantom flogger tails still lashing across her back and her throat choked so full of unloosed screams that it might as well have been the cock in her dreams still gagging her. She fought free of the blankets and sheets that twisted her nude body, every nerve inside her convinced it wasn’t bedding but the sweaty arms of all those men still vying one another to pull her back down beneath them. Ethen still laughed in the background, his casually drawled, “Don’t worry, she can take it,” chasing after her as she yanked free of the last twist of cloth. Every inch of her begging to run, she walked from the room, careful not to crash into anything and quiet in the suffocation of her panic. If her time with Ethen had taught her anything at all, it had taught her the invaluable self-preservation of being quiet. Especially when breaking the rules.
Rules like the one about getting out of bed at night.
Or being out of Pony’s sight when she was outside of Ethen’s.
Or shutting herself up in the bathroom, with her nipples still throbbing and her pussy still pulsing, and that dreadful ache still demanding to be assuaged by her own fingers, if nothing else. That was definitely breaking the rules, and the worst violation of them all. The one that she still to this day, after a year out from under his control, could not make herself break.
No matter how often she was raped in her dreams, that son of a bitch still made her want it.
Shutting and locking the bathroom door, Puppy grabbed a hand towel off the rack and crawled into the bottom of the tub. Yanking the curtain closed, she managed to keep back the wails until the wadded terrycloth was crushed against her lips. Naked, she rocked, shoulders shaking, body humming, knees drawn up to her chest and legs squeezed together. It wasn’t anywhere near tight enough to kill the lust and the shame of it all was suffocating.
