that you actually want to be with me, and not just for revenge.”
He dropped her hair suddenly and grasped her hand, placing it firmly over his groin. She quivered when she felt his hardness. “Does that feel like revenge?”
“Because my husband can never find out about us,” she continued.
A small, almost imperceptible change came over Jack’s face when she said this. All the humor left his expression and he looked at Pansy with a mixture of irritation and indifference. The irritation did not bother her half as much as the indifference. She wished they could put this behind them and begin on a different note.
“Look, Jack,” she began.
“What if I told you that your husband is going to find out about us?” he said spitefully. “I mean, what am I supposed to do with the video of us if I can’t show it to your husband?”
Cold steel seemed to close over Pansy’s heart when she heard his words. It was suddenly difficult for her to breathe.
“You’re lying,” she choked out.
“Am I?”
She looked around the room. There was no evidence of a camera anywhere, but she realized it would most likely be hidden. It occurred to her that both hotel rooms had been secured by Jack before she had arrived.
“I’m leaving.” But she couldn’t bring herself to move. Her eyes were wide with fear.
“Pansy, Pansy, Pansy,” Jack said then, all of a sudden smiling again. His anger had abated as quickly as it had appeared and he was once again good-humored and charming. “You’re so much fun to tease,” he said smoothly. “There’s no video of us. I wouldn’t want to be caught in a video like that any more than you would.” He began to laugh wholeheartedly, as if at the absurdity of her believing such a thing. But Pansy was deeply shaken.
“I don’t like that kind of teasing,” she said, upset. Her excitement had been squelched as thoroughly as embers doused with ice water.
“Then you shouldn’t be so naive and trusting,” he said with cheerful finality. The subject was abruptly closed and Jack was determined to move past it. He approached Pansy again and this time he put his hands on either side of her face, holding her just below the jawline in a firm but gentle caress. Her breathing stopped at the intense longing that came over her from this simple contact. She gazed up at him in abject adoration mingled with anguish. He appeared to her as a sumptuous feast, perhaps a poisonous feast; but like an animal, wild and starving, she would devour every last morsel to her gluttonous death. Jack saw the blatant hunger in her eyes and it caused the blood to rush to his groin in a violent surge. He continued to stroke the sides of her face with his thumbs. “Should you?” he whispered huskily.
Pansy was beside herself with a wish to appease him. “No, I guess I shouldn’t,” she whispered back, although she had forgotten the question. She felt weak and somewhat foolish, too. She vaguely wondered if Jack found her lack of self-control contemptible. But at that moment, there was such a look of tender passion in his eyes that it startled her. She looked away from him, saying, “I feel like a fool.”
“You’re no fool,” Jack told her adamantly. He held her face in both his hands and forced her to look at him again. His expression was grave. “No woman has ever revealed her feelings so openly, right there on her face, with me before, Pansy,” he told her. “It’s truly humbling, and I’m the one who acted like a fool.” Pansy was stunned by Jack’s admission and silently waited for his next move, floating helplessly in a deep sea of arousal, and knowing no relief without him.
Jack continued to lightly caress Pansy’s face as he went on talking to her, moving leisurely over his words, meandering in and around the pleasure to come. His voice was low and gentle, like his caresses. “But you shouldn’t look at me like that,” he repeated huskily. “Someone should have taught you never to let a man catch you looking at him like that.” Pansy just kept staring into his eyes and listening to him, hypnotized by his voice and the gentle, steady strokes of his fingers on her face. She watched him with an almost ludicrous devotion. But Jack appeared to find nothing ludicrous in her expression, and he continued speaking to her in the same vein, tantalizing her with his words. His voice was so heavy and laden it seemed to be moving over her, even fondling her. “Perhaps I should teach you why you shouldn’t look at a man the way you’re looking at me now.” He noticed that her eyes widened with anticipation when he said this, and he couldn’t suppress a laugh. “You would like that, wouldn’t you,” he said, amused. “You would enjoy a lesson from Taskmaster Jack?”
Pansy began to shake. His unhurried attentions produced a bounty in her desolate existence that she could not resist. She nodded her head shamelessly to his rhetorical question, as if to assure him that yes, she would indeed welcome any lesson he would care to give. Jack laughed once again, and his desire seemed to increase suddenly in reaction to hers. “Let me see the marks I put on you yesterday,” he said. “No, just turn around and take down your pants. Yes, like that.” He stared at the red and purple welts on her bared buttocks and thighs. Pansy stood quietly trembling with her pants halfway down her legs. The cool air made her more aware of the wetness between them. Jack, as if reading her thoughts, reached down to touch her and with a moan he let his fingers wallow in the silky fluid.
“Christ, Pansy,” he murmured. He moved onto his knees behind her and grasped her hips violently, causing her to cry out. “Bend,” he said simply before pressing his face between her legs and burrowing his tongue into her wetness. Pansy was bent awkwardly at the waist, light-headed from the dizzying pleasure he was giving her. His tongue wriggled and writhed its way into her, first into her front passage and then into the back, repeatedly switching back and forth between the two as he ravished her thoroughly. Pansy struggled to maintain her footing as she basked in the heady sensations that were rushing over her. She positively loved the way he opened her up and exposed her to his every wish as he took and gave pleasure in equal parts. She knew she would let him lead her anywhere, no matter if it brought her pain, shock, embarrassment or anything else. But even before she could fully consider the possibilities of where Jack might lead her, he was already taking her there.
Jack grudgingly pulled himself away from her, pausing to kiss her buttocks on and around the welts. “I won’t spank you again until you heal,” he told her. Pansy captured from this remark the promise that they would be seeing each other more in the future. “I have something else in mind anyway,” he added offhandedly. Pansy thrilled to his words. She noticed that his eyes were fixed on something across the room as he spoke, and she followed his gaze to an odd little statue that she hadn’t noticed before. It sat upon an elaborate footstool next to the bed. The statue was of a vicious-looking gargoyle with a sadistic grin on his hideous face. She wondered suddenly that she hadn’t noticed it. The gargoyle held a sword in its hand, the tip aiming downward and the handle turned outward and up, so that it was pointing toward Pansy and Jack. Pansy did not fail to notice that the handle of the sword was of a similar shape and size of a man’s penis, perhaps a bit larger. She felt a mixture of dread and longing curling up within her. Jack’s eyes remained fixed on the statue.
“Pansy,” he began slowly and thoughtfully, “take off your clothes.” As she removed her clothing he walked over to where the statue stood. He seemed to be studying it. “Come here,” he said after a minute or two. She shook off the last of her clothing and went to him. He looked her over. There was a lazy smile playing at his lips. “I want to see you ride the gargoyle’s sword handle.” Pansy closed her eyes. It had been exactly what she was thinking, and yet…
“Now,” he demanded, sitting down on the bed. Pansy was uncertain of how to proceed. That she would do it was evident; yet it was extremely
