The Assassin and the Soldier Page 8

  “And your friend? Caden?” Her saying his name was like breaking a spell, a spell that turned everything hazy into the cold, hard, solid truth. “What happened to him?”

  “He didn’t make it,” Callan admitted numbly. All the emotions pertaining to the subject had already been used up. “He died that night, with the rest of them.”

  She didn’t apologize. She didn’t need to. She already felt the same heaviness that he did, the weight he could never put down. Instead, she did put her hand on his shoulder, her fingers as soft and as delicate as a breeze. His breath caught in his throat as he turned to her, sitting there on that beach, all glowing skin, flowing hair and red lips dewy as flower petals. For the first time, he realized how much he wanted to kiss those lips, had wanted to for a while, so much so that each second that ticked by that he didn’t, felt like the worst kind of torture. And so before his body burned him up alive, he scooped her into his arms, and put his lips to hers.

  Chapter 9

  Kaelia

  So this was what it was like. Kaelia’s eyes widened at the surprise of finding their lips touching, before her long-lashed lids fluttered gently closed in bliss. Except he didn’t guzzle her down like she was a cold drink of water to a person dying of thirst. He sipped her slowly, savoring each taste down to the very last drop, like a king with a goblet of nectar from the gods, one he might never ever have the privilege of sampling again.

  He laid her down onto the beach, still kissing her, his arm cradling her around the back of the shoulders, guiding her. The sand was as warm and as comforting as bed sheets straight from the dryer pressed against her back, their legs tangled together in the water, the gentle waves bobbing them up and down. As Callan’s mouth slowly and expertly parted her lips open, like a sculptor molding some clay, his hand wandered down her torso and to her thigh, squeezing and rubbing fervently. It was like he wanted to experience every inch of her body all at once, and was frustrated because he couldn’t.

  Kaelia ran her own hand across the rigid, sculpted muscles of his back as she got the hang of kissing him back. It was like dancing, or fighting, learning to match her movements to his, to anticipate what he’d do next. After a few minutes, it seemed to come naturally to her, and they melted into a comfortable rhythm. Kaelia remembered the short, peck-like kisses Pierson used to plant on her mouth, scrunching up his lips exaggeratingly like a fish. Or the deeper ones, more him smashing his lips against hers than real kissing. It hadn’t been anything like this.

  Kaelia wrapped her legs around Callan, holding onto him the same way she had held onto the top of that tree trunk, pulling him close. She could feel the bulge under his thin swim trunks, nearly as large and as hard as one of those coconuts she picked and drank thirstily from. The warm, smooth skin of his bare chest and abs pressing into her own torso felt like an intoxicating dip in a magical sea. His chiseled stomach and bulky chest had been driving her wild for days now. They spent so much time in the water, plus it was always so hot, they both found it most convenient to train only in swim attire.

  “I want to have you right here,” he suddenly spoke, his voice as gravely as the sand underneath them as his lips wandered down to her neck. “I want to rip off your bikini bottoms and throw open your legs and fuck you absolutely senseless.”

  “You could,” she murmured, her voice breathy. Their beach was deserted, not that it mattered if anyone saw them anyway. Contestant No. 69, Lux Beacon, and his trainer Maddie Drew had been flaunting their affection for one another since that first time Kaelia had witnessed them kissing in the pool. “I want you to.”

  “Hmmm,” Callan sighed as he worked his lips against her neck, making little sucking sounds, tickling her behind the ear. “You do, do you?”

  “Yes. Please.” She was nearly begging him. In that moment, there was nothing in the world she wanted more. Nothing in the world that even existed.

  He sat up, bringing Kaelia with him, her legs still wrapped around his hips as they kissed. She arched her spine against his hands and lifted her throat, felt her hair tickling the small of her back. Callan brushed it out of the way as he reached for the halter tie at the back of her neck. The knot was twisted and tight, and he tugged for several seconds, like trying to free a new toy from frustrating anti-theft packaging.

  It was a relief to feel it coming undone, an irritating constraint no longer binding her. Her breasts toppled forth, spilling over her bare chest like something alive and ready to play. Callan took each one in his warm, calloused hand, squeezing and massaging. Kaelia let out a small noise of surprise, the feeling painful at first, though she soon grew used to it and began to enjoy it. She leaned away from him, propping a hand behind her in the sand so her body made a crude triangle, letting him fondle and caress her, Callan’s big hands wandering all over.

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” Callan murmured, running his lips along her ear, his breath tantalizingly hot. “You know, I’ve never had anyone who could keep… hmmm… keep up with me before.”

  Kaelia felt a shudder flutter through her, and the only form of response she could give was a small whimper. Suddenly, she felt slightly fearful. Would she be ready for what he was going to do to her? His words keep up with me set alarm bells off in her head, but then she remembered Pierson, and she thought she might know what he meant.

  Swag-walking, slick-talking, womanizing Pierson. Though his previous girlfriends could never seem to keep their mouths shut about the otherworldly things he did to them between the sheets (or on the kitchen table, hood of a car, back row of a movie theater, etc.), Kaelia had found their own lovemaking sessions to be, well, bland. Like a plate of white rice and boiled potatoes with no seasoning—boring. She had to wonder what his other girlfriends had been raving about after he had her those first few times. Were they lying, delusional, just trying to save face? Though Pierson seemed to enjoy what they did together in the bedroom well enough, Kaelia was always left dissatisfied, and she eventually began to wonder if she was doing something wrong.

  But now she began to wonder if her predator DNA might have had something to do with her lack of satisfaction with Pierson. Maybe she needed someone with more stamina, more skill, more strength. Someone more like her. Straddling Callan, she began to grind into him, nudging and wiggling her hips until he sighed yearningly. Kaelia could feel his hard bulge, still constricted inside his swim trunks, nearly threatening to tear open the material, desperate to get out. She wondered if she’d be able to accommodate him, or if he might tear her apart with his size.

  All at once, she was desperate to see it. To grip the length of him in her hands and take his fully erect form down her throat. She pressed a hand into his chest, pushing him away from her to get leverage, and then sank to her knees before him. She ran her hands down his sculpted form to the waistband of his swim shorts, pulling and pawing to get them down. He tickled the length of her spine with his fingertips, and then she felt them around the base of her upper arm, much more firmly. Without warning, he flipped her around in one fell swoop, and before Kaelia could even fully realize what happened, he was bending her over so she was lying across his knees in the sand.

  Kaelia gasped, more of a scoff really. It made her indignant, to be tossed around like a ragdoll when she was a lethal, predatory, killing machine. At the same time, she could feel her pussy lips pulsating and becoming slick with moisture, throbbing achingly in a way they never had before, except for that one time, a few days ago, in her bedroom, across his knees. She had tried to deny it before by playing it off to herself as some kind of coincidence. But there seemed to be no denying it now that it was happening again.

  No. No, no, no, no. This wasn’t what she wanted. This was mortifying, and she wasn’t about to allow him to keep on doing this whenever he wanted. She bucked and twisted herself halfway around to face him, her expression fierce.

  “Really?” she seethed, the word coming out in a stream of air from between her clenched teeth. “Again? Here?”

  Calla
n pressed a hand into the center of her shoulder blades to turn her back around, and then bent low over her to speak. “How long did you think I was going to let you get away with that stunt you pulled up in the tree?”

  Kaelia tensed, recalling how he had asked her over and over again to come down, and she had teased and played on his apparent fear of heights. Well, it had only been a joke. Couldn’t he take a little joke? She wriggled around under the weight of his heavy palms, holding her down against his thighs, and pressed her toes in the sand and tried to launch herself forward with her legs. She was stronger than she was three days ago. She could free herself now; she could get away, and when she did, she would knock his ass out. But the sand gave away under her toes, useless as leverage, and her legs weren’t doing anything but kicking about pathetically.

  “Let me go!” she finally burst out, frustrated. How had she gone from about to make steamy, passionate love on the beach, to pinned over his knee about to be punished. It wasn’t right, yet somehow, deep inside of her, Kaelia wondered if it was. To be put in her place by somebody stronger than her might have been a yearning she had carried with her for years, though it was one she thought might never be quenched. “I was perfectly safe up in that tree the whole time!”

  “And what if somebody saw you?” Callan quizzed her, and Kaelia could just imagine the pompous look on his face, even though she couldn’t actually see it. “I’ve been telling you from the start; you need to be more careful what you reveal of yourself to others.”

  “Nobody saw me!” she insisted, twisting and struggling with a new sense of determination, refusing to succumb to her predicament. “What if somebody sees you now?”

  Callan shifted his weight, Kaelia’s body bobbing up and down in the process, and then she felt him lift his leg and clamp it over her thighs. At the same time, he caught hold of her wrists, clasping them down securely in one hand against the small of her back. Kaelia felt a tremor of panic in her belly, realizing just how fully immobilized she was now. It also began to sink in that the spanking would start soon, which made a terrible anticipation well up inside her. The one he had given her a few days ago had hurt. Kaelia wasn’t used to being hurt, and she was pretty sure she didn’t like it.

  “If somebody sees me now,” Callan began to answer her, his voice low and steady. “I guess they’ll just assume someone was being a bratty little girl and needed her bottom warmed.”

  “Oh, please,” Kaelia spat at him. Though she was staring out into the ocean, she could barely see the serene lapping water, she was so incensed at the demeaning, inferior way he spoke of her. Well, she could taunt him too. “You weren’t worried someone was going to see me in that tree. You were terrified I was going to fall. Would you get down from there,” she began to mimic him in gruff, throaty voice, rotating her head from side to side for effect. “You better get down, because I can’t tell you what to do from up there, I’m too afraid of climbing too high in the big, bad, scary tree…”

  It wasn’t until his hand cracked down across her ass that Kaelia remembered just how inferior she was. Terrible pain spread across her cheeks like a swarm of biting fire ants. Her face twisted into a permanent cringe as she gritted her teeth, trying to brace herself for more. They came on all at once though, one right after another, his gigantic palm nearly covering the entirety of her bottom as he thumped her with burning, biting blows, and before long Kaelia could barely distinguish between slaps. Instead it was like one, long, continuous pool of agony raining down on her poor, helpless bottom.

  “Ow!” She hung her head and began to whimper, wriggling despite the fact she knew she couldn’t get away. “It’s hurting…” She hated to give in to him, to reveal just how much anguish she was in, but at the same time she figured if she didn’t show she was properly chastised, he might not ever stop.

  “Not so tough now, are we?” Callan goaded her, his arm continuing to rise and fall as he filled the whole beach with the sounds of his palm smacking the tender meat underneath Kaelia’s bikini. “Just remember that, will you? No matter how much you wanna show off or get too big for your britches, you can always end up back here, getting your butt cheeks smacked like a naughty little girl.”

  Kaelia felt something torturous unfurl inside her as her pussy lips slickened and swelled. What was happening to her? Was she enjoying the sounds of his scolding her? Unfortunately, she was too distracted by every horrible, smarting slap that jolted down across her buttocks to give it too much thought. Kaelia began to moan in misery, though she was doing her best not to break down and cry.

  Suddenly, Callan paused in spanking her, and Kaelia quivered to feel a cool breeze rustle past her sore, prickling cheeks. She clenched and unclenched her buttocks, trying to find some relief from the excruciating sting. “Is it over yet?” she asked, as if annoyed, as if this was some sort of inconvenience she didn’t have time for, just to realize she’d spoken too soon. Callan was digging his fingers around the waistline of her bikini, and she remembered last time and knew she was getting the rest on a naked ass.

  “Did you just sass me during your spanking?” Callan asked her, tugging her tight-fitting bikini a little at a time across her jiggling cheeks until they wrapped around her thighs like a band. “You did, didn’t you?” he went on when she didn’t answer. “You really do act just like a naughty little girl, you know that? And naughty little girls always get spanked on the bare, until their bottoms are nice and red and they’re promising to be a good little girl instead.”

  Kaelia jerked defiantly away from him, not that she actually went anywhere. He simply tightened his grip around her wrists before he began to spank her again, his huge, mighty paw digging deep into her tender sit-spot, sending her cheeks bouncing and wobbling about like a gelatinous dessert after each impact. It was humiliating and degrading to be held down and thumped back and forth, but what was even worse was that there was nothing she could do about it except protest.

  “Oww,” she began to whimper and whine, her voice rising pitifully. Without her bikini on to offer a deflection from the smacks, the intensity of the spanking had been driven up on the pain scale by several notches. Kaelia wasn’t sure if she could take much more. She wanted it to stop, like yesterday. “It hurrts.”

  “I know it hurts, Kaelia,” Callan spoke nearly sympathetically despite the fact he went right on delivering a barrage of heavy swats. “And if you want to avoid it hurting again in the future, you better learn to be a good girl.”

  “Oh, stop!” she wailed desperately, utterly over this as her bottom began to burn and throb. She felt mortified to be reduced to begging him, but at this point, she’d do anything to escape his brutal bombardment of smacks. “I learned my lesson, okay? I have! Just stop spanking me!”

  Somehow, she could feel his satisfaction as if it were a tangible thing. As much as it humiliated her to plead and promise, she realized she was on the right track. The rate at which he spanked her slowed, and Kaelia nearly managed to compose herself and catch her breath. Then, just as she started to relax and think it was over, really over, it was like he wound up his arm again, and suddenly she was getting it full throttle.

  “You think you get to tell me when to stop?” he began scolding her as he spanked. Kaelia’s bottom was searing hot now, and she began whimpering and moaning continuously from the excruciating pain, though Callan paid it no mind. “You really are an insolent little thing,” he said, as he carried on delivering thunderous blow after blow. “I’ll stop when I’m ready to stop, and that will be when every little bit of your bottom is throbbing with heat and as red as a ripe tomato, and not a second before, do you understand me, young lady? For scaring me up in that tree like that, you deserve a nice, hot, red bottom, don’t you, little girl? Isn’t that what bratty, disobedient little girls like you get whenever you misbehave?”

  Kaelia realized he wanted her to answer him, so she offered what she figured he wanted to hear. “Yes!” She’d been struggling to hold in sobs, but letting the word esc
ape her lips released them, and they came gushing out as if she’d opened a floodgate. “I’m sorry!” She was blubbering freely now as her bottom scorched and flamed. “I won’t do it again! I promise!”

  “Because you’ll get a sore, red bottom, won’t you?” Callan kept on with both the scolding and the spanking while Kaelia hiccupped and sobbed in anguish.

  “Yes!” she bawled again, the tears spurting from her eyes dripping down her cheeks as she sniffled and wept.

  “Tell me!” Callan ordered her vehemently, the spanks coming and coming. “Tell me what you’re going to get!”

  Despite the direness of her situation, Kaelia gave pause, unwilling to say the words. Callan seemed to sense her hesitation and suddenly, there was more strength and urgency behind his rock-like palm smashing down against her swollen, sore cheeks.

  “I’ll get a red-hot bottom,” Kaelia finally relented, sobbing all the while in sheer misery and defeat. She hung her head so low her forehead grazed across the sand, and she realized the irony of being so humiliatingly punished in such a beautiful place as this.

  “That’s right. That’s exactly what you’ll get, and it will do you well to remember that.” Callan spoke more gently now, and the rate at which he spanked her slowed until there seemed to be a full minute between each smack. But Kaelia’s sense of time was shoddy as she lay across his lap crying piteously and taking the last remnants of her spanking. Her bottom was so scorching hot and blistered, every strike against it was like being dipped into molten hot lava, and she yelped, screeched, and gasped at each one, until finally, a long time passed until his palm collided with her burning flesh, and Kaelia felt her breathing grow steady as her sobs slowly subsided.