Somebody's Angel (#5 in a Military Romance / BDSM Romance series) (Rescue Me) (59 page)

She returned to his side and surprised him by rubbing the paddle over the backs of his thighs. She used the smooth side of the paddle until she flipped it to run the raised tacks over the cane and tawse welts on his ass. She warmed him up with a number of light taps to bring the blood to the surface and prepare him. Marc’s fists clenched in rage and humiliation as his cock began to stir to life.

Grant laughed again. “Does my boy like that?”

“No, Mistress. Anyone touching my ass like that could get a rise out of my cock.”

“How about when I touch it like this?”

Whack!

Marc growled, but the impact ended any chance of arousal. A masochist he was not.

He gritted his teeth and spat out, “Bring it.”

She gave a menacing chuckle before delivering four more swats in rapid succession, alternating between two spots, one on each cheek. She seemed to be using the smooth side of the paddle, but the stinging on his already raw skin grew worse with each swat.

Her scratchy-gloved hand stroked over his burning skin, further irritating the marked areas. She smacked him with her hand, the rivets or whatever digging farther into his skin.

She delivered the next twenty-five swats with the smooth side of the paddle, as well.

Anger boiled up. “Fuck you!”

“Now, boy. I see we haven’t broken you of that nasty defiant habit yet, have we?”

Before the paddle even hit, he knew she’d flipped it over to the tack side.

Gesù
.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

The sting hadn’t begun to dissipate before she landed another blow. Marc fought his bonds. “I’d rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck if I wasn’t restrained!”

The bitch did nothing but smile. “Silly malesub. Think you’re a match for Mistress Grant?”

“I’m
not
a sub.”

Whack!

Rather than alternate cheeks, she landed this blow on the same spot as the last, and it took Marc longer to regain his senses. He wasn’t sure he could speak without betraying how much pain he was in. How many had that been? Was she even counting?
Merda,
could he handle any more like that one?

“You’ve had two more added because you can’t fucking police your mouth, sailor boy.”

Raking her gloved fingertips over his sore ass and up his back, she leaned toward his ear and whispered, “Tell me who else paddled you, boy.”

Marc refused to answer.

Whack!

She put her mouth up to his ear. “Tell. Me. Who was the first to paddle you?”

Marc remained silent.

Whack!

“I’ve got all fucking day. You’ve earned ten more.” Again, she rubbed the raw skin on his ass before stroking more gently up his back to his neck. Maybe it just felt gentler because the skin on his back hadn’t been pummeled.

His focus concentrated on the burning in his ass.

Whack!

“I can’t
hear
you, sailor. Who was it?”

“Fuck off.”

“If you can’t obey and speak to me properly, I might as well remove your ability to talk and give you more time to think about obeying and answering my fucking questions. Open.”

He kept his mouth closed tightly until she pressed the joints of his jaw causing him to lose control of his muscles. His mouth opened and she rammed the ball gag inside with ease, strapping it snugly around his head.

“How does that feel, Marco?”

Why was Grant calling him by his childhood name?

Damn you, Adam, for unleashing this bitch on me and giving her just enough ammo to take me back to that night.

The next two blows on the same spot elicited an uncontrolled scream into the gag. Sweat ran down his forehead to the side of his head, but he’d lost the ability to fight any longer.

“Does it make that cock of yours hard?”

No!
Mrs. Giovanni’s voice shattered through his psyche.

His screamed obscenities were lost in the ball gag. She dragged her nails down his back and onto his inflamed ass. He hissed as he drew a breath and tried to hold it as she ventured farther down to his balls and squeezed them. His cock sprang to life under him. He hoped and prayed she couldn’t see it. His face grew as red as his ass must be.

She reached under him and grabbed his erect cock. Her chuckle made him boil with impotent anger.

“My own Italian stallion. If only my husband were hung half as big as you are. You’re going to be God’s gift to women for the rest of your life.”

Marco didn’t want to be any woman’s gift.

Whack! Whack!

Why was his cock so hard, throbbing?

She continued to paddle him with her carved wooden hairbrush. “Come for me, Marco. You will come for me now!”

His cock exploded onto her bedspread. He’d fucking come! Of course, it didn’t take much at his age to get an erection, but he felt mortified nonetheless.

Anger seethed beneath the surface. If he ever got the chance, he would let Mrs. Giovanni feel the bite of that hairbrush. He would show her no mercy. But he fucking wouldn’t make her come. She’d probably like that way too much…

* * *

Hour sixty-six under way. Adam stood next to Grant trying to determine what to try next. Adam hadn’t counted on Marc regressing to a time he didn’t speak English. When Grant removed the ball gag, they’d had difficulty understanding what was going on in Marc’s head.

Grant adjusted some knobs on the surveillance equipment. “My training focused more on Arabic and Farsi, Top. We need Angelina in here. She’ll be able to communicate with him in his native tongue.”

“No way we’re bringing in anyone who didn’t train at SERE School. Let’s move him, then give him some water.”

He and Grant removed Marc from the spanking horse, and Grant helped Marc down his daily eight-ounce allotment of water. Together, they laid him on a mattress in the back of the room. She applied ointment to his welts to help ease the pain. Grant had followed his orders perfectly and had taken him back to the memory with Mrs. Giovanni in record time. Adam knew a woman’s voice would succeed much better than his own.

But what the hell had happened at the end of that triggered memory? Marc had reverted to Italian gibberish in a small boy’s voice. Adam watched on the monitor as Grant reentered the dungeon and helped Marc drink. The past two hours had been under Grant’s control. Marc didn’t take well to women having authority over him.

A litany of Italian shouts spewed from his mouth, and Adam watched Marc thrash around on the mattress.

Had they managed to get Marc to a point where he’d be able to remember some of what had blocked him and wreaked havoc in his relationships with women?

As they returned to the weight room, Grant said, “I can call her. Just say the word. You’re in charge, of course.”

Marc let loose with another string of words Adam couldn’t decipher.

Adam scrubbed his face. He wished he’d never started this fucking scene. Watching Marc go through so much shit, even if he didn’t understand what was happening, and not being able to provide him with anything that would help him resolve the demons from his past made him feel as if they’d only made it to the edge of the abyss.

“No, mamma!”

Those words he understood even with the accent, but Marc added more Italian and lost him again. What the hell had she done—and which mama was he remembering?

“Call her.”

Grant nodded and left the dungeon.

“She’s gone.” The lost tone in Marc’s words led Adam to return to him. He hunkered down next to Marc’s face. “Who’s gone?”

The word barely came out in a whisper. “Mama. I didn’t help her, and she went away forever.”

The flashback crashed through his defenses. Adam saw his father lying in a pool of blood. His mother lay next to the body and told Adam to run. He’d left her lying there paralyzed.

This isn’t your scene
. Adam shook off the memory. He needed to regain his focus on Marc.

Adam’s attention returned, but his heart raced until he was able to put a lid on those feelings about his own past. He’d made peace with all that.

“What were you supposed to do to help her?” Had Marc’s mother abused him?

“Get her some water.”

“How would not having a drink of water kill her?”

“It did! Mama needed water because…” Marc’s voice trailed off.

Adam waited and watched Marc’s eyelids flutter rapidly as images of the past bombarded him in his trancelike state. Nothing made sense to Adam yet. He needed to dig further. At least Marc was remembering in English now.

“Tell me what happened.”

Marc’s brows furrowed. “You won’t understand.”

“Try me. What’s going on?”

Marc became silent, but the expressions flitting across his face told Adam the movie of his past continued to play out. Tears trickled down his cheeks unheeded, not that Marc could have wiped them away if he’d wanted to. His hands remained tied.

“Tell me who is with you now.”

“No one. I’m alone. In my safe place.” He paused a moment before adding, “She’s dead. My fault.” Marc screamed in anguish, a sound filled with so much pain, Adam felt it in his gut.

“Slow, deep breaths.” Adam wasn’t sure if he was instructing Marc or himself.

“
Mio Dio
, no! What have you done to him?”

Marc gasped for air and struggled against the ropes as Adam turned to see Angelina rushing toward them. How’d she gotten here so soon? She had to have been waiting upstairs. Who had let her know what was going on? Karla?

Adam wasn’t ready for her to enter the scene. He needed to brief her first. When she knelt down beside Marc and reached out to him, Adam motioned for her not to touch him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. He needed for her to regain composure, to have some assurance she’d maintain her focus and control before he let her into this interrogation. There had been too many distractions already. They were so close.

He hiked his thumb in the direction of the doorway. She stared at him with defiance before standing, taking one more glance at Marc, and walking back to the entrance.

Adam left Marc, who calmed down after his initial response to hearing Angelina’s voice. When Adam reached her, he grabbed her upper arm and steered her out of the dungeon and into the weight room.

“Sit.”

She looked around and sat down on the bench press nearby. He placed his hands on his hips and towered over her. His dominant stance had the desired effect. Some of the anger left her expression, and she waited for him to speak.

“Interfere in my scene again, and I’ll make sure you don’t come back into this club again while I’m in charge. Understand me?”

Her eyes opened wide, but she nodded, hugging her hands to her waist for self-comfort.

Adam went to the camera monitoring equipment and queued up the video Marc had taped before entering into this. “Watch this.”

He watched her expressions as she watched Marc give up all rights and safeguards, turning himself over completely to Adam. He switched off the video and went back to the live feed from the dungeon.

After assuring himself that Marc was still huddled on the mattress, probably sleeping, Adam turned back to Angelina. “Grant called you down here because we need someone who can speak Italian to help decipher what’s going on in case he lapses into his early childhood memories again.”

Angelina nodded. “What has he revealed so far?”

Adam filled her in on what he knew about Mrs. Giovanni, Gino, and now his confusion about his mothers. “I’m trying to get at something he just remembered. Has to do with his mother’s death.”

“So he thinks of Emiliana as his mother.”

“Which one is she?”

“Mama’s sister. She raised him until Mama and Papa adopted him and Gino after her death.”

“Seems to blame himself. How’d she die?”

“Cancer, I think.”

“Why would he blame himself for killing her?”

Angelina seemed as confused as he was and shook her head without answering.

“I need to get back in there, but if you join me, you’d better not speak unless spoken to. I want you to only speak to me, not Marc, unless I tell you otherwise. And if you so much as touch him and bring him out of the scene, I’m going to string you up in the great room and let every member of this club have a crack at your butt with their implement of choice. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Adam started back to the dungeon and motioned for her to follow. He hunkered down again next to Marc and Angelina knelt in submission across from him on Marc’s other side. She kept her hands clenched on her thighs, though, indicating she was anything but relaxed or submissive. Maybe she was just afraid those hands would accidentally get her hauled out of here for good.

Good girl, for obeying
.

He turned his attention back to his subject. “What happened to your mama?”

Marc shook his head. “I don’t want to see that anymore.” His breathing became agitated again, and he turned from his side to his stomach, facing toward the silent Angelina.

“No, Gino! Don’t make me!” He fought the restraints. Was he still in his childhood, or had he moved forward in time? He spoke English, so probably the latter.

“What’s going on?”

Tears streamed down Marc’s cheeks. Angelina reached out to him but pulled back when Adam glared at her. They were close to something, but comforting him now would break that connection. The time for aftercare would come later. That’s when Angelina would be able to do the most to help. Right now, Marc needed to remain agitated and be forced to face whatever had happened that he’d kept buried his entire life.

“Mama woke up.”

“Does your mama know you’re there?”

“No. I’m hiding in the closet.”

“I’ll be good. Don’t lock me in there, Mommy!”
Adam realized those words sprang from his own memories and shook with the effort not to be pulled back into the nightmares of his own childhood. Why was he having so much trouble keeping the past in the past?