Free Unholy Promises by Roxy Harte

and she’s been very naughty, but a spanking will right your world, won’t it, darlin’?” Hans chimed in, smiling for the first time all night, his blue eyes dancing mischievously.
    Darkness enveloped us as soon as the heavy dungeon doors closed. Hidden lights along the floor blazed a red, eerie runway along the strange corridor, music threaded with soft moans and the occasional scream heightened the drama. Flaming torches mounted in wrought-iron sconces added to the effect that we had truly entered a medieval dungeon.
    In the semi-darkness, it was easy to sneak peeks at Luka. He really was wonderful to look at. His deep brown eyes glowed back at me from beneath hooded lids, not seeming to mind my silent appraisal; his confidence was devastating, shaking me to the core.
    His smile was equally overwhelming. In one word, he was charming, in two words, charming and feral.
    He stopped beside a glass window, voyeurism at its finest, and I found myself speechless, perhaps for the first time in my life as we watched through the soundproof glass. A man wearing a leather hood poured melted wax onto his tethered victim. Spread eagle, she tossed her head back and forth, but didn’t make a sound. Her eyes closed, opening only when the man leaned over to kiss her lips. It seemed to be a signal between the two. Was that the end of it then, I wondered? No, a signal that the tempo of the scene was changing, evidenced when he lifted a black candle and poured a stream of wax that would become a necklace. The woman’s eyes closed and her entire body tensed.
    “Does it hurt?” I whispered.
    “It can,” Luka answered. “It depends on the height of the candle; distance allows the wax to cool a little. Color too makes a difference, the lighter the wax, the cooler the melted wax, except beeswax. Never underestimate beeswax, it melts as hot, if not hotter, than the black.”
    “But is he hurting her now?” My voice cracked, watching the woman’s face, and it irritated me that I had so little control over my emotions. What was happening to me?
    The woman seemed to be trying so hard to remain still, to remain silent.
    “She isn’t … comfortable,” he answered slowly, something different, changed, in both voice and demeanor. No longer smiling, his eyes glowed wolflike in the blazing red corridor. The scene we’d been watching wasn’t over, but it seemed obvious we weren’t going to stay for the completion. His hand closed around the nape of my neck, but I wasn’t afraid.
    “Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he whispered.
    A loud, resounding bell clanged then.
    “It’s the midnight hour,” Luka offered in explanation.
    In my mind, I visualized a large, heavy church bell, hidden somewhere in the building with a choir boy pulling on a thick rope and the rope lifting him off the ground as the bell rang out over and over again. It felt ominous, the reverberation filling my chest, then the music changed to the solemn chants of Benedictine monks and a misty fog started to rise from the floor. Dry ice, its scent unmistakable, and even knowing its man-made origins, I still sensed a feeling of apprehension and fear in the space.
    A final glance through the observation window revealed the woman tethered to the table obviously in too much pain to continue lying still. Her mouth stretched open, I couldn’t hear her scream, but knew she was. It suddenly seemed too real, too strange; yet Luka’s hand remained a firm constant on the back of my neck, a tether to my own reality as our eyes locked. “They’ve been playing together for years. He knows to what limits he can safely take her. I didn’t want you to see her get that deep into her head space.”
    “She was screaming.”
    “Not so much from pain, but inner demons.”
    “She was in pain.”
    “Someday, I’ll let you experience the wax and you can argue the point with me from inner perspective.”
    “Auh.” An unintelligent syllable choked back anything further I might