Forbidden Desire

8 - An Unspoken Tune

I clap a rage into her cheek that collects the soak of the rain, a new sort of throb welted into confusion. "Kneel," I slap her again. She slowly meets the ground, her fingers finding the gravel instead of searching for her master's detachment.

The walk - no, the crawl - back to the library is met with the pressing of hard-soaked stares. Academics, scholars, professors, all clear the way for Dominic Blackwood. It's a symphony of wet stones and shattering dignity. I didn't help her up. I didn't offer a hand as she struggled through the mush. I walked slowly, lingered. I revelled in the excitement of exerting my control to a point of humiliation and reasserting my claim of ownership.

I am not the shield she believes me to be. I am her cage, "You used my name as the business price to save your life. Now pay the incurred debt and interest." We reach the center of the courtyard, the rain tapering into a biting mist that kissed her damp hair. The area was swarming. Packed with Lords draped in velvet capes, students with ink-stained fingers, Ladies hidden behind the ruffle lining of their silk fans and shielding umbrellas. They all stopped, not to understand. To assess. To be entertained. They stopped to watch Dominic Blackwood lead his "street rat" across the open square on all fours.

I felt the heat. The thousand stares biting back, waiting to be stated. I saw their judgement, the curiosity and the dark thill of promised enjoyment.

Easton watches in the distance. He begins his descent, his pet hovering his shoulder like a ghost, "A bit spirited today, isn't she, Dominic?" He reaches, not far, into his coat and pulls a leather, tanned belt, colliding with the wet bite of the storm. It was meant for the horses. The most stubborn of livestock. He's offering it to me like a ritual. An olive branch for the taking, "Remind her where she belongs."

I take the leather. It's cold and holds the scent of old oil, unriddled in my touch.

"Hold her," I didn't say it to a guard. I said it to the air. Easton positions her ready, her ass high. The command was for Lyra. "Do not move. Do not rise."

CRACK

The white silk of her skirt was no longer with its color. Her crimson blood covered the lash, adorned with the craft of my whip. It lined her so that it became a translucent second layer of skin. A sodden shroud of protection. It didn't just cling. It suctioned to the curve of her hips and the trembling line of her thighs, mapping her vulnerability for the ground to devour. The deep, angry, and metallic iron began to seep through the fabric, a blooming stain that matched the roar of blood in my ears. The sky broke with a brutal, torrential downpour, hammering against the library stones. Turning the scene into a blurred arena of grey shadows. A set of melting wax figures.

I stood over her, the rain drenching my hair, the cashmere of my coat, until it plastered permanently like black ink. Etched into forever. Slowly, the crowd dissipated despite my ongoing onslaught. The "civilized" elite of New London could handle a collar, but the raw, rhythmic violence of the weapon I wielded, much too faint of heart. The professors and scholars fled the 'cleansing' rain, leaving only rhythm and the wet sound of leather against silk. They hurried away, whispering behind their fans, rumors spreading like wildfire. Soon the witnesses of her shame remained: the professor, the students, Easton, and his own slave.

I don't give her time to recover. I let the rhythm of the storm dictate my orchestrated pace. SNAP! CRACK! HISS!

The rain interacts with the belt in a way that felt like a ritual. Every time, finding its mark and able to clear a path through the water clinging over her body. Only for the sky to refill the wound with cold, stinging needles. The group that remain, turn. Easton retreats with his slave, a satisfied look taped. They leave with their wide eyes, a mixture of horror and fascination, their gluttonous hunger more than satisfied.

The courtyard was empty. Safe from the mist and the sound of Lyra's broken, hitched gasps. Her helpless sobs morph into the screech of nightmares.The ivory of her silk not near ruins. Beyond that. It plastered tight against the rising, angry heat of her crimson buttocks. The flesh beneath festers into a violet-red canvas. A vivid art of my own suppressed imagination. Terror and rage, the inspiration that had struck me. My wrist moved with a mindless, mechanical precision, driving the lesson into her brain with every flick, at every drop of water that fell.

As the tan leather cut through the rain, it became heavier, gathering moisture, becoming a more lethal instrument. It didn't just thud. It hissed. A spray of silver droplets explodes from the point of impact, atomizing into the mist. The rain should have numbered her, but the belt brought a rhythmic, pulsing heat that turned the water to steam where it touched her. My blood boils even more as I throw the last strike, followed by a static buzzing of numbness.

The belt slips from my hand, splashing into the puddle beside her, looking like a dead, scaled serpent. I watch the water run off the tip of the belt. It too, leaving us in total isolation. A silence that spoke twice as loud as the punishment I had just inflicted. The faint hues of pink washes the puddle below me. My arm felt like degraded lead, my heart like burning ash.

I reach out, my fingers trembling as I tried to brush the damp strand of hair from her face, to smooth her destroyed back and tell her it's over. I'm done. That the leather won't bite her anymore. In truth, to see if she is still breathing through the agony of my masterpiece. A genuine gesture from the man who had sat by her bed for three fortnights.

Lyra flinched, recoiling from my touch as if it were a hot-steaming iron. She scrambled, running through the water as her form curled into a ball on the cold floor. Her hands skid on the marble stone, a small shivering heap of ruined silk, bruised flesh, and undeniably, dignity. Only the 'street rat' remained.

She didn't look at me. She just cried. A soft, rhythmic sound louder than any scream. I had saved her from the alley, but in doing so, I had become the very terror she saw behind the curtain.

I left her there. Not for her. To gather my thoughts, to gather my research, her investigation between my fingers. She remains as she was when I left. I grip the metal of her collar, through the hiss it marks, and drag her back into the motor.

Deathly silence follows, staying behind as we arrive home. The staff stretched into two rows, awaiting the master of the house.

"Crawl." The sound is barely a command. It's a hitched whisper. She falls down, not in embarrassment. Not in heat. In submission.

________________________________________________________________________________

Thick, hot silence passes through my estate for seven days and seven nights. Lyra occupies her room for the duration of our dispute.

The scotch in my glass was the color of a bruised sunset. It tasted bitter on my tongue. I lean back into the comfort of the high-backed wing chesterfield, the business of my work a worry for another day. My study looms with the glare of the clouds, the only warmth reaching me from the embers in the hearth. A clinical glow casting shadows over the files on my desk.

A soft, rhythmic tap at the door signalled Andrew's arrival. My butler didn't wait for a command. I was drowning in silence. He knew that. The tiles know, the kitchens knew. The staff did as well. They all did. He stepped in. A calculated caution drawing his steps closer. His shadow stretched long and thin across the carpet.

"The evening report, my Lord," he cleared his throat, a steady voice of emotionless anchor.

I don't look up, "Speak."

"The girl... the slave, Lyra," he corrected himself, noting the twitch in my jaw, "she remains weak, but is fast healing. The doctor has moved her from a critical state. The hybrid maid, the one you assigned to her shadow, has changed the dressing twice today."

The dressing.

My mind conjures the image that I had been outrunning for days. I didn't see the 'street rat' or the 'pet'. I saw the way the belt had bitten into her skin under the library storm. I saw the ivory silk soaking a sodden, crimson ruin. Every time Andrew mentioned the bandages, I felt a phantom sting in my back. The ghost of my past cruelty. A sympathetic ache made my blood curdle with a shame I wasn't supposed to be capable of. Shame she had introduced me to.

"And her mood?" I asked, my voice sounding like gravel under a wheel.

"Silent. She does not speak to the maids. Eats only what is required. She has taken to the books you sent up, though the maid reports she spends more time staring at the covers than turning the pages."

A fresh spike of irritation flared in my chest. I had sent those books as an olive branch. A silent "I'm sorry," wrapped in gold-feathered packaging. A romance to calm her heart. Swoon the chambers. Hearing she couldn't even find comfort in them, much less read two syllables, felt like hot rejection. I was the master and Lord of this estate. Of House Blackwood. I influenced distinguished men and leaders. My gold could buy entire libraries. I could buy her a lifetime of safety, but I could never buy back the flinch she had given me in that courtyard.

"And the scar?" My voice dipped below a whisper. Even that, I feared the answer he'd give. "Did the doctor find the one from the Auction House? The one they omitted?"

He shuts his eyes, "He did, my Lord. Just below the fresh ones. It's old. Deep. Faded with time."

I close my eyes, turn my back to him. The fury I felt for the Master of Auctions was a cold sharp thing, however, nothing compared to the rage I felt for myself. I had added my paint to a canvas that had already suffered defilement. That they had desecrated. I was searching for ways to break her mind when her body was already a map of those who had tried and failed.

"Leave me," I whispered, the words a harsh grunt.

"She is awake now, my Lord," Andrew lingered, unsure of his unwanted proximity, his eyes mirroring the dying fire, "She is... sitting by the window. Waiting."

Waiting for what? I wonder as the door clicked shut. Waiting for another blow? Another Lash? Waiting for another insult from the very master who has whipped her into captivity? From the monster she believed would take her between the bite of wood?

Her files took the space of my desk. I looked at them. The clinical data of her height, her age, the brother named Leo who lived just an hour away. This was her foundation. The base. I had all the pieces of her life laid out like a puzzle, but the most important piece was currently shivering under the wing of my home... wrapped in gauze I'd forced her to wear.

I stood up, the leather of my chair creaking like a warning. Warm and humid from sweat. I wouldn't wait another week. I would see her this very morning. A mission I swore to complete. A promise. And I would see if the companion I wanted remained beneath the pet I had shamed.