To Disappear by Natasha Rostova Page B

an instant it was Preston coming to submit her to further insults, but then she recognized Gabriel’s touch. She shifted into a wedge of relaxing sunlight that spilled across the bed, letting it warm her face and shoulders. The long fingers of the sun teased her nipples into tight points.
    She stretched long and hard, feeling the glorious pull of her muscles as blood flowed through her body. In that brief instant she felt wholly herself, unfettered from the mental shackles that bound her to this place and these three dark men.
    How long had she been here? She tried to think. Three weeks at least; perhaps longer. After her whipping under Kruin’s authority, followed by relief at the hands of Gabriel, she had been granted only a short reprieve. The three men had all appeared preoccupied for the past couple of weeks, although clearly still determined to sustain their control over her.
    They were forever reminding her to keep her legs parted, but Gabriel was the only one who had not indulged in her body. Several times Kruin had ordered her to bend over the rounded arm of a sofa so he could administer a quick, vigorous fuck that seemed as much for Lydia’s debasement as it was for his pleasure.
    Rebelliousness seethed inside her as she pressed her face into the sofa cushions and accepted Kruin’s deep, aggressive plundering of her cunt. His pillaging cock inevitably summoned Lydia’s unwelcome arousal, which she tried desperately to suppress through a concentrated gathering of willpower, but still she twice failed in her efforts, climaxing with such abandon that he punished her with a brutally hard spanking. Although the fierce blows of Kruin’s large palm left her sobbing into the sofa cushion, such punishment was not as difficult to bear as the belt whipping had been.
    To her confusion, Lydia found it equally difficult to maintain control over her excitement when Kruin was fucking her as when Preston was. She had hoped that with the latter her dislike of him would temper her natural yearnings, but as his pleasure seemed to derive both from her humiliation and the sexual act itself, he had particularly begun to enjoy coercing her into lewd activities at odd times, and this definitely aroused her beyond belief.
    On one occasion he insisted that she kneel between his legs beneath the dinner table and fellate him until he ejaculated while he ate his coq au vin. And on another, when she had returned from a horse ride with Gabriel, after which they spent several hours wiping down the horses and cleaning the stalls, Preston forbade her to shower, instructing her instead to strip and, as he phrased it, ‘ride his steed’. Which, reeking of horseflesh, stained with sweat and grime, Lydia shamefully did. And both times she had not been able to prevent herself from climaxing powerfully.
    Although Preston remarked with harsh amusement about her frequent failure to adhere to their mandate, thankfully neither he nor the other two men had subjected her to more barbaric punishments than Kruin’s beatings. Lydia could almost bear their control over her if it meant a reprieve from the variety of harsher punishment they all appeared to enjoy.
    She stretched again, feeling the sun warm her skin to a burnished gold.
    ‘Lydia.’ Gabriel’s voice broke through her temporary bliss.
    Her eyelashes fluttered open, and she brushed a few strands of tousled hair away from her forehead as she gazed at him standing over her bed. She searched his face for a hint of the gentleness that seemed such a part of him, but his expression was shuttered.
    ‘Your presence is required downstairs,’ he said. ‘After your shower, I have something new for you to wear.’
    ‘What is it?’
    Gabriel frowned. ‘You ask far too many questions, Lydia. Now hurry.’
    She slipped out of bed, reaching for the sheet to cover herself as she moved from the bed to the bathroom, but before she could wrap it around her body he snatched it in his fist and yanked it away