Tender Mercies - By Kitty Thomas Page 0,55
eager and ready to be fucked.
“Grace, I have something important to talk to you about.”
She got very still, the combination of his tone and the use of her first name causing her to grow wary. There was no sense dragging it out. He might as well just say it.
“I’d like to brand you.”
Her head snapped around as she twisted to face him, that scared, pleading look in her eyes. God, it was so wrong, but he missed that look. It might be time to move them into edge play. His cock hardened, and if he didn’t want to actually talk the issue out, he would have fucked her right here.
“Please . . . Master, why? What did I do wrong to deserve . . .?”
He gently but firmly pressed her head back down so that she was lying on the blanket again and started rubbing the cream on her other leg. “It’s not a punishment. I know I said I’d never leave permanent scars. This isn’t something I’ll make you do. I’ll let you choose. But it would really please me if you did it.”
She twisted so she could see him and bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know if I can take it.”
Asher laid her other leg down and started massaging the cream into one of her arms. “The type of branding we would use on you is called strike branding. It will hurt, but probably not as much as you think. We’ll heat hot enough to kill the surface nerves but not enough to reach the deeper tissue. It’s not a pain that will linger like a minor burn does. It’ll be sore during the healing process, but it won’t feel like a burn afterward. I’d hold you while the brander did it.”
He finished with her other arm and shoulders, then closed up the cream and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket onto which he’d drawn his estate symbol. “This is the symbol on the front door. Each estate on the island has a different one. The symbol is sometimes branded into slaves so others know which house she belongs to.” He wasn’t sure if she’d been exposed to enough other slaves to have seen a brand before. They weren’t all that common on the island. “A master only brands a slave if he intends never to sell her, because you get very little out of a girl that’s been branded by another man’s symbol. Do you understand what this means, Grace?”
“It’s like a promise? That I’m always yours no matter what?”
He smiled. She understood. “I won’t ever break a promise to you, kitten. Ordinarily I’d just do it, but I already told you I wouldn’t leave permanent scars. So think about it. I can get you some reading material so you understand more about what will happen and what the healing process will be like––”
“I want to do what pleases you.”
Asher pulled her up off the blanket and held her. “You’re such a good girl.”
***
Grace fidgeted in the back of the limo. Asher sat beside her in a crisp, white shirt with the first couple of buttons unbuttoned, jeans, and casual shoes that the islanders were fond of wearing. He seemed at ease; meanwhile, she was falling apart on the inside.
Why did I agree to do this?
From the moment he’d first mentioned branding, she’d loved the idea of it, but feared the reality. In theory, it felt like the strongest bit of protection he’d ever given her, the most firm oath that she would always be his, and she’d always be safe and cared for. But the reality of the pain involved had caused her to wake in cold sweats thinking of it.
Asher had believed it was nightmares of Lucas again, and Grace hadn’t corrected his assumption. She was afraid if she did, he wouldn’t make her go through with it. And she needed to. She needed to see his brand on her forever, as if that one carefully placed mark could erase all of Lucas’s careless marks.
Each time she woke in terror over the branding, he took her to the dungeon. She let the flogger fall over her, cried out her fears, and allowed herself to be taken where her master wanted her to go. She felt guilty he didn’t know the real reason for her upset, that he thought he was spanking her for a different reason, but she kept the truth inside.
In the weeks following his request, he’d stayed true to his