The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,77
one-footer on the wall by the med table.”
“Ankle cuffs?”
“In the cabinet over the sink.”
S?ren—magnificently naked—strode from the little bedroom into her dungeon. Like she’d go anywhere with that view… He returned quickly with all his little wicked implements—the spreader bar and the ankle cuffs.
And one leather strip, about a foot long and a couple inches wide. He must have cut it off her flogger with the thick fat tails.
“What’s that for?” she asked as S?ren passed her the leather strip.
“You may need to bite down on something,” he said. “Turn over.”
Just like that…all the punch-drunk half-asleep joking stopped. It stopped like someone had flipped a switch, turned off the lights, turned on the pain. He could do that, S?ren, with a glance and a subtle change of tone that came with the standard warning—I am not playing anymore.
She turned over as ordered and rested her cheek against the cool white sheets. S?ren took each ankle in his hands and wrapped and buckled the cuffs around them. With small hooks, he secured the cuffs to the spreader bar.
Then he picked up the misery stick.
Then he grabbed the metal bar in the middle and pulled her into place as if she weighed nothing.
Then he lifted the bar, forcing her to bend her knees. Her feet were at his stomach on either side. Nora started breathing hard.
“I’d bite down on the strap now if I were you,” S?ren said.
“You’re going to beat the soles of my feet, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” Nora grabbed the leather strap and put it between her teeth.
She hated foot torture. Hated it. Not the good kind of hate. Not the playful kind of hate. Not “Oh no, not that, Sir, anything but that, Sir.” She would rather take a hundred cuts from a scalpel, an hour-long session with a single-tail whip, or even red-hot wax-play that left her covered in first degree burns. Foot torture was one of her limits. But it wasn’t a hard limit, which meant she wouldn’t safe out if S?ren tried it.
No, she wouldn’t safe out. But she wasn’t going to enjoy it.
She couldn’t even enjoy S?ren’s thumbs on her insoles, caressing them tenderly. She was too tense, too scared, already breaking out into a cold sweat.
“You broke someone’s foot tonight,” he said. Nora didn’t say the kid deserved it. S?ren knew that. “There is no one in the world that respects your sadistic impulses more than I, but I would be very disappointed if you got yourself arrested or sued. One of these days, Eleanor, you really are going to have to learn to control that temper of yours.”
He caressed her ankles, all those delicate little bones. She wanted to cry. Instead, she grabbed a pillow and shoved it her under her breasts. It would help to have something to cling to during…
“Only five, I promise.” He ran his fingertips gently over the tops of her feet.
Five.
She could take five. She could survive that.
“On each foot.”
He picked up the misery stick.
The thing about misery sticks, Nora knew from experience, was that they were deceptive little toys. They didn’t look like they could hurt much. Nothing but very long, very thin metal rods. That’s it.
Except when you pulled the tip of the rod back and let it go, flicking it against the bare skin, it hurt worse than being sliced open by a knife that had been sitting in a red-hot fire.
And she was about to take five strikes on each foot.
The metal spreader bar rested across S?ren’s stomach. She could flinch and twist, but there would be no getting away from him.
“Left foot or right first?” he asked. Nora shrugged. “I wasn’t asking you. Only talking to myself. Flex your feet. No curling the toes or I’ll make it ten.”
Nora had to fight every instinct in her body to flex her feet. A hot tear ran from her eyes and down onto the Millesimo Egyptian cotton sheets.
Her entire body was tense as a violin bowstring. And S?ren plucked it.
One.
He flicked the misery stick once and the strike landed at the back of her left heel.
Nora flinched. She couldn’t help it. Flinched and whimpered again as her teeth dug deep into the leather strap in her mouth.
Two.
He flicked it again, half an inch down the heel, inching closer and closer to the sensitive arch.
Three.
The arch was next. She knew it. She braced herself and wasn’t surprised when the next thing she felt was nearly the worst physical agony in her life.