Free Shattered by Alexia Foxx Page A

penetrated the outer most parts of his awareness.  He surrendered to his despair, to having hope and losing it, to whatever it was she would do to him for his gross disobedience.  Worse was realizing it was the same thing she’d do to him even if he hadn’t.  She enjoyed his suffering immensely, and no wonder, she did it for a living.
    “Have you figure out what you did wrong yet prince? Or did you spend the entire walk back concocting that miserable little plan?”
    Nathan didn’t respond.  He didn’t see the point.  And when her whip connected across his shoulder blades he knew one wasn’t required of him.  His head shot upward and he cried out , in surprise and in pain.  There was no warm up, no testing of her aim.  Robin laid that first one into him harder than she had any of the last.
    There was nothing arousing about the beating she gave him as he hung there.  He could feel her frustration behind each blow.  The blindfold made it bad and the rope made it worse.  He’d never felt so helpless in his life.
    He twisted and pulled as she vented into his skin.  There was no pace this time and he was out of breath from screaming long before she stopped.  He was covered in sweat and he couldn’t stop his shaking, and somewhere in between blows he found time to beg her, but never in more than a few pitiful words.  If she heard him, if his whimpering was even comprehensible, she gave no sign of it.
    S he paused for breath and Nathan sucked down gulps of air too.  His throat burned nearly as bad as his back and Robin had him crying again.  He had no dignity left, no will, no purpose.  His whole body shook in between gasps.  He wasn’t aroused.  He didn’t want this.  He didn’t want her to be angry.
    Robin yanked the blindfold off and pressed the hardened end of the whip’s handle beneath his chin until his head was raised enough that he met her eyes.   He saw her face, saw her neutral composure sundered by her rage.
    Her hair was disheveled around her shoulders and her cheeks were rosy.  The candlelight around them gleamed off the thin sheen of sweat that matted a few strands of hair to her neck.  Her chest, exposed from the rise of her breasts and up, rose and fell against the exertion she pu t into beating him.  Her brows were knit together in a tight frown.
    “ I can’t believe I fell for that this morning,” Robin said, speaking more to herself than to him.  She’d exhausted herself but she seemed no less angry, no less disappointed.  “So you thought you could manipulate me, is that it? This was some game to you and you thought that was what I wanted to hear?”
    Nathan hung limp from his arms.  Although his feet reached the floor he wasn’t supported by them.  It was simply too much effort to get them beneath him properly.  What was a little more pain in his wrists when he hurt everywhere else.
    “I don’t have anything left to give you Mistress,” Nathan whispered.  Tears that sat trapped against his eyes by the blindfold fell free and streaked his cheeks, but no new ones fell.  He was too tired to cry any more.
    Robin continued on as though she hadn’t heard him.  She dropped his chin and paced back and forth in short steps in front of him.
    “ Lying is the worst thing you can do.  Lying tells me you have energy to spare, that I’ve been too easy on you.  You must think I’m stupid.  Is that it?  Because I can’t even write my own letters?”
    “No Mistress .”
    “Then why would you try to manipulate me? I thought I was clear with you.  How many times have I told you that you don’t control this, yet you try to by lying? Of all things!”
    Nathan was confused , exhausted, but he felt the smallest rekindling of strength as her will began to show itself.  He had none for himself, she had destroyed it already, and he had been borrowing hers to survive.  Without it he had nothing but despair.
    He gathered some of it now as he lifted his chin just high enough