Page 15 of Tick Tock, Boom!

NATALIA

Ithought I would be ready for him. But I was so wrong.

I still felt the sting of the belt on my ass. It was different from the flogger. Hot and pulsing, a brand etched into my skin like a filthy little love note. My knees were raw from kneeling on the hardwood floor. My lips were kiss-swollen, my pussy aching and soaked. He had devoured me. Licked me so good I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t breathe without feeling him. I wasn’t a woman anymore.

I was his toy.Played with and discarded.

And that’s exactly what he did.

There was no aftercare, no kiss goodbye. Absolutely no warning. Just one last look, that dark smirk playing at the corner of his mouth like he knew he’d ruined me, and then he walked out.

Just like that.Gone.

Leaving me on the cold floor, thighs sticky, heart racing, cunt clenching around nothing but emptiness.

I should have been pissed. I should have yelled, screamed, done something. But all I could do was kneel there in the silence, pulse pounding between my legs, my mind spinning with one filthy thought after another.

What if he never comes back? What if he did this to other women? Just walked in, fucked them senseless, then vanished without a trace.

I wasn’t special. He made that clear.

No collar. No leash. No name.

Just his fingerprints left behind in places no one else had ever touched. Bruises on my hips, a sting on my ass cheeks, and a pulse that still beat for him. It was loud, like the sound of a drum I didn’t think I could ever silence.

But the way he touched me… the way he looked at me. The look in his eyes made me shiver. He wanted to break me open and crawl inside my soul…\ he wanted to own every breath I took and ruin every inch of innocence I had left.

He’d be back. He had to come back. Because monsters like that never let go of their favorite prey.

* * *

Three days passed.

I waited every night for him to show up. At first, I followed his demand. I continued working the floor like usual, latex corsets, stilettos, leash in hand, but I didn’t allow anyone to touch me. Not really. Not the way he had. Every time I felt a pair of eyes on me, my heart would skip, but it wasn’t him.

This place had become my sanctuary. My escape. Outside these walls, I was just another curvy girl in a world that didn’t see women like me. Well, not really. People looked past me, through me, like I wasn’t worth a second glance. No one asked who I was. No one cared to know.

But here? Here, I was someone that could be desired. I could be anything I wanted, a brat, a kitten, a mistress, a sinner. No judgment. No expectations. Just raw expression wrapped in leather and lust. I was safe behind the masks we all wore. Safe to play, to hide, to forget the real world that wanted to tear me apart limb by limb.

The club gave me that freedom. Untilhecame in and ruined everything.

I hadn’t even gotten his real name. I knew what I was getting into the second I saw that patch on his back. That skull. That crown. That aura of don’t-fuck-with-me energy pouring off him in waves. The second I saw him leaning against the wall like sin in a leather cut, I felt it in my bones. He wasn’t some stranger stumbling in off Bourbon Street because he wanted to play.

He was one of them. A Royal Bastard.

I ran because I’d heard the stories and I knew a man like him would kill anyone for getting near me. But I also ran because I'd heard the stories. The Bastards ran chaos through the city like it was their birthright, guns, blood, whispers of demons and devils riding in on midnight engines. Their red flags just waved in the air and I completely ignored them because I thought I could handle it. I’d lived with danger before.

But he wasn’t danger. He was destruction.

The kind that licks at your thighs with a smile, then burns your entire world to ash.

He didn’t fuck me. Not technically. But he’d still taken something from me. My innocence. My control. My carefully crafted idea of who I was. He ripped through it like it was nothing, devoured me with his mouth, claimed me with his hands, made me tremble on the edge of something I’d never felt before.

I’d never been with a man. Never let one past the walls I’d built, not fully.

Until him.

And that’s what pissed me off the most. Because I wasn’t just something to kneel and beg. I wasn’t supposed to be some virgin sacrifice tossed at the feet of a Royal Bastard. I was supposed to be so much more and yes, I was a kitten. Trained. Curious. Powerful in my own way. I knew what submission meant, I wasn't stupid. I knew I could give it onmyterms.

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