Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [143]
“You said no rules,” Butch gritted out. “Do you still mean that.”
With no way to nod or shake his head, V did what he could with his feet, moving them up and back on the floor.
“Are you sure.”
When he repeated the motion, Butch’s eyes glittered in the candlelight—as if there were tears in them. “Okay, then,” he said hoarsely. “If that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Butch wiped his face, turned to the wall, and then walked down the lineup of toys. As he approached the whips, V imagined the spiked fringe cutting into his back and his thighs . . . but the cop kept going. Next were the cat-o’-nines, and V could just feel them lashing his flesh . . . but Butch didn’t stop. Then it was the nipple clips and the barbed, stainless-steel cuffs that could be applied to ankles, forearms, the throat. . . .
When each section was passed, Vishous frowned, wondering if the cop was just being a tease, and how unimpressive was that—
Butch did stop, however. And his hand reached out—
V moaned and began to thrash against the binds that held him aloft. Eyes peeling wide, he did what he could to beg, but there was no moving his head and no way to speak.
“You said no limits,” Butch choked out. “So this is how we’re going to do it.”
V’s legs spasmed and his chest started to scream for lack of oxygen.
The mask the cop had chosen had no holes in it, not for the eyes or ears or mouth. Made of leather and stitched together with thin stainless-steel thread, the only way oxygen got in was via two mesh side panels that were far enough back so that there was no leaching of light—and the air would be circulated across hot, panicked skin before it went through the mouth and down into the lungs. The contraption was something V had bought but had never used: He’d kept it only because it had terrified him, and that was reason enough to own the thing.
To be robbed of sight and hearing was the one thing guaranteed to make him lose his fucking shit—which was precisely why Butch picked the mask. He knew too well the buttons to push—physical pain was one thing . . . but the psychological stuff was so much worse.
And therefore more effectual.
Butch walked slowly around and out of sight. With furious paddling, V tried to get himself repositioned to face the guy, but his toes couldn’t quite manage good purchase on the floor—which was another success of the cop’s strategy. To fight and squirm and get nowhere just heightened the terror.
On a oner, it was lights-out.
Jerking uncontrollably, Vishous tried to fight, but it was a battle he was going to lose: With a quick yank, the mask went tight around his neck, secure and going nowhere.
Mental hypoxia set in immediately. There was no oxygen to be had, none coming through, nothing—
He felt something on his leg. Something long and thin. And cold.
Like a blade.
He went utterly still. To the point where his previous exertions swung him back and forth on the chains above him, his body a statue suspended by twin strings of metal.
V’s inhales and exhales inside the hood were a roar in his ears as he zeroed in on the sensation below his waist: The knife traveled slowly, inexorably upward, and as it went, it moved to the inside of his thigh. . . .
In its wake, a liquid trail welled and eased down over his knee.
He didn’t even feel the pain of the cutting as that blade headed for his sex: The implications were that much of a sucker punch to his destruct button.
In a flash, past and present mixed, the alchemy ignited by the adrenaline pumping through every vein he had; he was instantly ripped back through the many years to the night when his father’s males had held him down in the dirt at the Bloodletter’s command. The tattoos had not been the worst of it.
And here it was, happening again. Just not with the pliers.
Vishous screamed around the ball gag . . . and kept at it.
He screamed for all he had lost . . . screamed for the half male he was . . . screamed for Jane . . . screamed for who his parents were and what he wished for his sister . . . screamed for what he