Archive of Our Own

There should be nothing unknown to fear. Isabelle has done all of this—almost all of it—what feels like thousands of times before. In the preparation she tried to lose herself and the prickles of anxiety lingering at the nape of her neck, to pretend that nothing will happen tonight that hasn't happened already. By now she's been waxed, her lips and nails painted a soft pink, her muscles stretched to help her into the rigging that binds her. She opens her mouth to let the ball of a gag slide home, and Isabelle tastes rubber as it comes to nestle against her tongue. It’s a familiar taste, and a soothing one. 

So much of this is familiar. Rope and rubber, polished perfection. There are many ways Isabelle falls short, in her madness and her weakness and her rot, but a strange grace comes to her in times like these. Her father cups her face and she closes her eyes, sinking into the touch as he buckles the gag beneath her mane of curls. He’s the focal point toward which she can walk without stumbling. To serve him is to be better than herself.

Alec’s hands linger. They always do. Her pulse throbs gently beneath his palms, and when she opens her eyes, his are black and endless before her. Sometimes that intense stare makes her cower. Tonight it makes her square her hips, arch her back, and inhale deeply through her nose. The scent of his cologne fortifies her against the one part of tonight’s performance she doesn’t already know well, hasn’t been taught in her past four years of abject submission. The one drop of bile in her cocktail that makes her stomach turn and her mouth dry. 

Somewhere beyond the stage curtain, the only barrier between them and the theater house, his guests are waiting for her. 

You’re going to be good for me, little rose. For me, and for the chosen few I’ve invited tonight. This will be quite an experience for you—one you may even enjoy, if you permit yourself. Come whenever you can, suck every cock as if it’s mine, and lick every cunt like it’s your own. I will be watching from beginning to end. Make sure they enjoy it.

Alec presses a kiss to Isabelle’s forehead before he straightens, caressing her jaw on his way up. He circles around her, testing the tension of the ropes that hold her in place. Her ankles are kept apart by ropes spanning to hooks in the stage floor beneath her raised platform. Her wrists and arms remain bound behind her back in a position that would be torturous if not for the extended stretching her father guided her through. Another length of rope suspends them from the rafters high above, holding them upward past the point of comfort. The quiet pain is familiar too, a reassurance.

Still, Isabelle remembers vividly a particular incident when she was fourteen. A similar bind once left her thumb and wrist twinging, rendering her unable to play piano for a month. She ripples her fingers along the rope extending upward, rocks her hands this way and that, and when Alec steps close and slides one finger into the grasp of first one hand and then the other she knows what he wants her to do. She squeezes as tight as she can, just like she did as a toddling child walking with him in the manor gardens.

“Look at you, darling. You’re ready for your debut.” The approval saturating her father’s voice warms Isabelle like the garden sunlight, golden and melting, and the corners of her lips twitch upward briefly around her gag. Alec crosses the stage, making for the system of ropes at stage left. The further he gets the more Isabelle wants to struggle against her binds, to crawl across the floorboards and reach for him, but she is good. She doesn’t move. “You’ll charm them, my little star.”

Pulleys creak, and the heavy velour in front of Isabelle begins to stir, rising upward, stealing her breath away as it goes. Before her is the house, row after decrepit row of seats waiting for patrons. Judging from the dust, they’ve been waiting for quite some time, unlike the table full of sex toys Isabelle can half-see before the stage. Near the stage at the center of the aisle is a chair so large as to be thronelike, and in the corner by the entrance a man stands who Isabelle has never seen before, dressed in a simple dark suit. The rising curtain is the only signal he needs to open the door.

Isabelle has seen her father’s usual party guests dozens of times back in England, where the faces are familiar even on the occasions—like tonight—that they wear masks. Here in Monte Carlo, there’s no one she recognizes. Their simple black masks and tuxedos render them uniform in a way that sends a chill down her spine. They seem less like people and more like a horde of carrion beetles, here for the dead.

Five guests, nine guests, twelve, sixteen—they pour through the door in an indistinguishable stream, and Isabelle realizes with mounting dread that Alec’s idea of a chosen few is very different from hers. A sparse handful of them bring women in evening gowns or cocktail dresses, colorful reprieves from the sameness of the men. One woman who appears to be alone comes wearing a tuxedo of her own, and a lanky boy is led in wearing nothing but a leash and a g-string. By the time the door shuts once more, there must be thirty guests assembled in the theater. They murmur to each other in French as they crowd nearer to the stage.

“<And here’s our hostess.>”

“<God, she’s tiny.>”

“<Not where it counts. Look at those fucking tits.>”

“<What I wouldn’t do to those. Do you think he’s got needles on that table of toys?>”

Isabelle swallows hard, closing her eyes. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt more naked in her life. The petulant, childish idea that she doesn’t want this rises up in her, and she quells it under the even rhythm of her breathing and another round of rope tests. Her hands will go numb eventually in this position, but for now she can still feel every ridge in the binding around her wrists. She's midway through counting them when the pulley stops and a movement to her left jars her eyes open again.

Alec lopes down easily from the stage, making for the chair in the aisle. He takes off his jacket and hangs it over the chair’s corner before stepping up onto the seat, lifting his arms like the performer he is. The spotlight makes a halo of his hair and instantly all eyes are on him as his voice reverberates easily through the auditorium. 

“<Ladies and gentlemen,>” he begins in French, “<welcome to our little show. Gather around, please—thank you, thank you.>” There’s something soothing about watching him command them, the way they listen to him. Some of the fear inside her, at least, ebbs away. He’s her father. He won’t let anything happen to her that shouldn’t. 

“<Before we begin,>” he goes on, “<I'll take a moment to thank each of you. Without an audience, what is the show? And what a fine audience we have. Each of you has been selected for discretion...and for taste. Like a fine wine, I know you will all appreciate the delicacy I present to you onstage tonight: my incomparable fiancéé, my little Belle. And, like wine, I know you will all treat her with care. She is here to satisfy your thirst, but after all, how can you serve from a bottle left in pieces?>”

A laugh ripples through the audience. From some it seems sincere enough, but others look as though they can’t wait for Alec to be through speaking. Isabelle represses the urge to shudder as the words en mille morceaux ring through her head. He’s not going anywhere. He promised he would watch from beginning to end. He isn’t leaving her.

Alec holds three fingers in the air. “<Three simple rules to follow. One: none of you men are permitted to put your cocks in her cunt or her ass. Selfish, I know, but some pleasures I must reserve for myself, and you are welcome to fill her with anything else you like.

“<Two: no breaking of bones. No lasting damage. You can sate your appetites in whatever other ways you can imagine with the tools provided, but I’m afraid you must reserve the worst of your natures for some other hapless victims. Belle is to be treated as her status deserves.

“<Three…>” His expression softens as he half-turns on the chair, looking back at Isabelle. She manages to force her quivering lips into a smile around the gag. “<Belle’s greatest joy in life is music, and the magic she weaves at the piano is dear to me. Her hands are to remain unharmed by any who wish the same for their own.>” A pause. The laughter has dried up. Alec continues as easily as if he implied nothing at all. “<All other acts are permitted, all vices accepted. Please use her as you see fit. 

“<And now….>” His gaze sweeps the audience once more just before he bows. “<Our stage set, our overture concluded, we are ready. Let us begin.>”

Isabelle watches as he drops gracefully into his seat, unfastening his fly almost sooner than he’s settled into place, but she isn’t looking at his cock. She looks into her father’s face across the distance between them and finds it unreadable, even as his eyes meet hers.

Eighteen years as his and his alone. Since the day she was born she’s belonged to him: her father, her everything, he who owns her as surely as if he paid a blood price for her. He’s only made it more clear with every passing season that he’s not willing to share her. Isabelle knows this—or thought she did—beyond the shadow of a doubt. She can hear the exhale of a dying man beneath her own breathing as she stares into the blackness of her father’s eyes, feel blood splattering on her skin, hear the sickening squelch of Alec twisting the knife. All this for the crime of touching what her father laid claim to.

She finds herself wondering again why, after everything he’s done to keep her, he would serve her with a silver fork to the maws of others. 

There isn’t time to mull it over. There’s scarcely time to shake the memory of death from her shoulders, to plunge herself once more into the present. The guests’ hesitation is quickly overcome by curiosity and burgeoning arousal, and Isabelle resists the urge to shrink back as those closest crowd closer still. All she can see of their faces are lips wetted, jaws working, brief glimpses of eyes through the mesh holes in their masks. An odd pang of gratitude for her gag strikes her; she might otherwise be tempted to say something, anything, to greet them or to plead for them to be gentle with her. If her father wanted gentleness, he would have instructed it. 

The first man up onto the stage helps up another, and another, and another. Isabelle counts seven. Seven masks, seven pairs of dark trousers crowding around her, seven pairs of hands alighting on her skin. Her stomach lurches and goosebumps rise under their touch wandering from her hips to her thighs to her ass, up her sides, down to paw at her breasts. One man slaps the left one lightly, leaving it swaying, and he laughs. “<Good little cow.>” A flick to the other nipple makes her wince, her breasts colliding with a soft clap. “<Look how hard they are. You enjoy this, hm? Being a party favor for a pack of strangers?>”

Before Isabelle can think to answer—not that there would be any point—the man behind her cups her waist, squeezing, splaying his fingers to explore the lash scars that span her back. Her breath catches in her throat. “<Whore for pain,>” he says, barely audible over the roaring that fills her ears. Her heartbeat hammers just beneath, chasing the peeling, scraping, self-flaying desire to leave her body before it can be pulled apart by that network of seams he carelessly gropes. “<She must love this. Did you see the tools her fiancé laid out? How many of them do you think he’s used on her?>”

“<By the end of the night she’ll have tasted them all,>” replies the first man. His tone is conversational as he takes a breast in each hand, treating her roughly as if he wants to wring milk free from her nipples. Another elbows close to get a good look as a man behind Isabelle grabs her ass and spreads it open. His thumb grazes her anus and she flinches hard, feeling her head’s urge to topple from her shoulders with the motion. 

Mercifully, mercilessly, her body holds and her mind isn’t going anywhere. Her head stays put no matter how much it swims, and one man’s fist in her hair is enough to keep it from lolling forward as she tries to quell her nausea. Father said they’re not to fuck her there, so she doesn’t need to be afraid. She doesn’t. 

But the man keeps touching it, stroking her until the muscle contracts, and it’s barely a relief when his touch moves lower and he grabs a handful of her sex. What little relief there was evaporates as soon as he starts fondling her, running his fingertips back and forth over her clitoris. “<You’ll be dripping by the end of the evening, won’t you, slut?>” A sharp flick to the pearl makes Isabelle shriek, biting down hard on her gag. “<This is what you love. I bet you’re only wearing a gag so you can’t disgrace your future husband by begging for it.>”

“<Come on, why is this taking so long? Look at her!>” An exuberant voice rings out, and as the ring of men around Isabelle parts, she sees the boy in the collar climbing onto the stage. He’s off his leash now, and as he gets closer, Isabelle realizes he can’t be any older than her—most likely even a few years younger. He’s yet to fill out in most regards, but Isabelle’s eyes are immediately drawn to the bulge straining against the scrap of cloth that serves as his only modesty. Instinctively she tries and fails to press her thighs together, her eyes widening with every step the Boy takes.

“<You’re so pretty,>” he breathes as he comes to a stop a foot in front of her. “<I can’t believe your Master said we can use you. Mine only whores me out when I’ve been bad. Were you very bad?>” His words hit Isabelle like a cricket bat to the stomach. She scarcely notices that he’s working his g-string down until his massive cock swings free and the tip slaps against her cheek, smearing it with precum. 

“<It doesn’t matter. I’m finally going to get to put my cock in something. Here—>” He reaches beneath her curls to unfasten the gag and soon it drops to the stage floor. Isabelle stares up at him in open-mouthed horror. “<That’s better. Open wider. If I feel your teeth,>” he says gleefully, proudly, as if delivering rehearsed lines, “<I’ll beat you bloody.>”

Without thinking, Isabelle obeys. There’s no room for willing thought, not with the words <Were you very bad?> still burning behind her eyes, an ember she can neither grasp nor look away from. She doesn't even look up when another man shouts and pulls her sharply away from the Boy’s waiting cock. “<Why should you get the first go?>” he demands, gripping Isabelle’s jaw and turning her toward another hard prick inches from her face. “<I was here first. Come on, slut. Tongue out.>”

“<You weren’t quick enough!>” the Boy whines as he grabs Isabelle by the hair and pulls her back to himself. Ropes bite into her flesh from the strain. “<I haven’t been allowed to come in months, and I want to do it down her throat. Move!>”

Dimly Isabelle realizes that men around them have already started to masturbate, crowding closer to her with their fists working their shafts in the periphery of her vision. The sound of flesh on flesh rises from more than one source; somewhere, a woman is moaning. The Boy and his competitor shove at each other, yanking Isabelle into the ebb and flow of their fight. She lacks the presence to do more than wince as fingers dig into her skin harshly, carelessly, until finally the Boy grabs Isabelle’s head in both hands and jams his cock into her mouth. The sound he lets out is something between a triumphant crow and a moan. “<Oh, God, that’s good….>”

Isabelle gags. His cock is too big, even bigger than Father's, and her jaw aches from it. The tang of his precum floods the back of her throat as he starts to rut like a dog in heat clinging to the first thing it finds. Tears spill past her eyelashes with every strike to the back of her throat. The runner-up takes a fistful of Isabelle’s hair and wraps it around his length, beginning to stroke himself with it as the Boy’s grunting fills the air, mingling with the heated breathing of the men watching. 

She wishes he would fuck her mouth harder. She wishes he would jam his cock up through the roof of it, into her cranium, and let the brain matter drain out around his length. She sucks him as if she can entice him into it. It's the surest means of begging she knows.

<Were you very bad?>

She wasn't. Was she? She can't remember doing anything wrong, nothing worse than the crime of existing. But why else would Father want this? What could it be but punishment?

Her tears course more freely at the thought. Sobs break around the Boy’s prick, jarring from the corners of her mouth every time he pulls back. Each one robs her of precious oxygen. She can’t breathe, she can’t think, she can’t wrack the corners of her static-filled mind to find something she might have done to bring this on. All she can do is try to suck and breathe at the same time, fighting the urge to vomit as the Boy does his best to cram himself into her throat.

No sooner has he succeeded than he’s coming, spilling rope after rope of seed down her throat with all the shuddering eagerness of one who’s held back for too long. Isabelle barely even needs to swallow. Her eyes roll back, her cunt spasming as she feels him pulsing against her tongue, feels the weight of him doubled over her head and gripping her hips tightly. “<God,>” he exhales. “<Sorry, sorry, it’s just been so long….>” 

His cock, still hard, twitches in her esophagus. Drool rises around it, dripping down Isabelle’s chin as he holds her there with seemingly no intention of pulling out. The longer he takes to catch his breath, the more Isabelle is denied her own. Her head begins to pound with the lack and she squirms against the ropes, tugging, trying to signal for him to let her go. If he notices, he gives no sign.

“<Such a shame.>” A woman’s voice rings out from the left, coarse and flat, the French accented in a way Isabelle can’t quite place. “<I’ve always said pricks are wasted on men. Coming already, and you spend down her throat?>”

The Boy’s grip loosens and Isabelle can at least pull back enough to breathe through her nostrils, the relief flooding her as air ekes back into her lungs. She lifts her gaze as best she can and finds the woman in the tuxedo, one hand jammed into her pocket. Her features are sharp and unpainted, her hair cropped close. Around her hips she wears a leather harness over her trousers, although the ring at the center is empty. Somewhere through the noise growing louder in Isabelle’s head she hears her mother’s sneer. There’s a word for women like this one.

The Dyke draws nearer, shooting a grimace at the panting man stroking himself ever more rapidly with Isabelle’s hair. “<This,>” she says, running her hand around the curve of Isabelle’s ass to plunge a finger into her cunt, “<is what it’s all about in the end. This is the hole that gives your life meaning, isn’t it, whore?>”

As Isabelle tries her best to nod—what other choice does she have but to agree?—the Boy moans above her and starts shallowly thrusting again. The Dyke laughs, warm and approving, and starts pumping her finger in and out of the channel Isabelle has hated for so long. Shame seeps through her as she realizes just how wet she is, how wet being throatfucked has made her. “<Glad to see you already know it,>” the Dyke coos. “<Your cunt knows it too. It gives in to me so easily.>”

Isabelle gets one rough, ragged inhale as the Boy is pulled sharply away from her before another cock is nudging at her mouth. A tall man beside the one fucking her hair turns Isabelle's head towards him, pushing his prick against her lips. “<My turn,>” he mutters, and the Boy grudgingly makes room, crouching slightly to grab Isabelle’s tits and shove his length between them. 

The Boy, the man fucking her hair, the third panting softly as Isabelle licks his cock in the faint hope that he won’t want to use her freshly-fucked mouth—it’s too much even before the Dyke slips another finger in and there’s still an endless mob waiting, the unseen toys, and somewhere beyond the trousered legs there is her father to appease. What did she do? Or, if it’s nothing she did, what is she that he forces her to face this after so many years of protecting her?

It’s no use in the end. The man slides his prick past her lips and all she can think is thank God it’s smaller as tears flow down her cheeks and pressure builds low in her abdomen. The Dyke works her cunt easily, deft and dextrous, and shame mounts in Isabelle with every movement of her fingers as she realizes she’s going to come like this. Nothing could stop it. Not even being abused by strangers in front of her father is enough to curb her body’s demands. She gasps for air, her legs spasming in their restraints as she surges toward the inevitable, the stage lights flickering behind her eyes. “Nngh—”

“<Oh, you little tart.>” The Dyke sounds nothing short of delighted as she pumps her fingers inside Isabelle, stroking her clit faster. Isabelle’s cunt throbs an unrelenting drumbeat that matches the pounding in her skull. Somewhere through it all she’s aware of someone’s body lowering onto her bare foot, his erection nestling against her instep. Someone else’s tip meets her underarm and Isabelle can barely even register bewilderment as he begins to stroke himself against it. Her head is still swimming, the Dyke’s ministrations slowly coming to a halt. 

“<You didn’t even ask to come,>” she chides. There doesn’t seem to be any excuse, even with the man before Isabelle rutting against the roof of her mouth. “<I don’t know what else I could expect from such a whore. You live and die by your cunt, don’t you?>” A slap to what’s still sensitive makes Isabelle cry out, coming within a hair of biting down. It’s only years of training that prevents her. Instead she sucks more fervently, like she can somehow mollify the whole crowd at once through a single prick. “<No wonder you’re being offered up like this. If all you’re good for is being fucked, you ought to be fucked well, don’t you think?>”

The Boy laughs. The sound seems to go on forever, ringing in the hollow left by the Dyke’s words. Which would be worse: to be punished, or simply to be treated as her nature deserves? And they don’t even know the half. The history between her and her supposed fiancé, the nights spent sweat-slicked and writhing against her own flesh and blood. At fourteen she gave him everything. Was there ever any other choice? The rot inside her, inside her godforsaken cunt, corrodes everything it touches. And she can never get away from it.

Another slap. Harder. At first it’s almost a relief, this punishment of the part of herself Isabelle hates the most, but then the Dyke takes Isabelle’s clit between two knuckles and wrenches it downward just as Isabelle’s wracked with an aftershock of orgasm. Pleasure-pain eclipses higher thought. Animal panic scrabbles up in her as something hard and rubbery touches her clit, first one side, then the other—and then the clamp bites down hard, making her throw her head back and howl as unwelcome sensation shoots through her like a lightning strike deep in her core. Her belly trembles, her thighs twitching with the idiotic urge to clamp shut.

 The Dyke releases and a weight hangs from the clamp, pulling Isabelle’s clit harshly with every swing. As she whimpers and sobs, the man in front of her doesn’t bother trying to put his cock in her mouth again, instead giving himself a last few furious strokes before shooting ropes of seed onto Isabelle’s face. The first hits her eye and leaves it stinging, lashes glued to her cheek; the others lie sour on her mouth. 

He’s still dazed and wiping off on her curls when another man pulls him out of the way to take his place. Every thrust the Boy slams home between Isabelle’s tits makes the pendulum hanging from her clit bounce, and more semen splatters against her cheek and hair as the man fucking the latter comes all over the side of her head. Her cries make a ready opportunity for the next man to shove his cock past her lips.

“<Good girl,>” the Dyke purrs, slapping Isabelle’s cunt once more. Her hand lingers, shaking the pendulum. Isabelle only half hears herself crying out around the intrusion. The mob edges closer as they work themselves toward orgasm, and she can feel their cum falling on her—over her hair, her ass, her scarred back—only distantly. The man fucking her waxed armpit ejaculates over it and withdraws while the one humping her foot only works with greater frenzy, but he finishes within moments, semen streaming over her heel. The worse the assault to her senses, the more she tries to slip away from them, to be anywhere but within her own body. She will be a good girl. She will take this. And, if she's lucky, she won't feel a thing.

As the crowd shifts around her, for just a moment she catches a glimpse of her father amidst the sea of bodies with a young woman on his lap, a man’s mouth around his cock, and another’s prick in his hand. The shadows of the stage lights make him seem so far away.

She wants to go home.

Before she can send herself there, before she can truly sever body from mind and let the latter float up to the rafters like a wayward balloon, pain cuts through the fog. She howls with it. Her body buckles and pulls at the ropes, thighs throbbing and old fractures twinging as she twists to try and get away from the Dyke before she delivers another kick to Isabelle’s slit. It's no use. The Dyke's boot collides with slick, sensitive tissue and makes the weight lurch away from the clamp, swinging violently and drawing another strangled scream from Isabelle. She wants to wrench free from the man fucking her mouth. Maybe she could beg, plead for her to stop, offer to lick the Dyke’s cunt and make her see stars….

But she doesn’t. After all, she knows better. She was trained better, and that same training flows through her with every kick the Dyke delivers. Pain stokes pleasure stokes pain, a vicious cycle that has her drenching the tip of the Dyke’s boot, and moment by moment any arguments she could make against those vicious words die. Made to be fucked. Made to be hurt. There is ecstasy in fulfilling her purpose, bitter as blood and just as impossible to live without.

Isabelle muffles her shrieks in the man’s cock as she comes again. The Dyke’s laughter rings distant and semen streams over her stomach and breasts as the Boy, gasping, withdraws. Isabelle’s pearl throbs in the clamp’s grip, her juices dripping down the cord to the pendulum. Firecrackers burst inside her head, down her spine, popping and illuminating the deepest parts of her.

“<Coming again already? I knew the pain would do it,>” the Dyke says wryly. Isabelle braces herself for another kick, but it never arrives. The Boy staggers back breathless into the crowd, and Isabelle can tell from the grunting and the rhythm of the man thrusting his cockhead against the back of her throat that he’s close. She closes her eyes to try and grant herself some form of reprieve. She’s not being hurt, she’s only being used, and even as some twisted part of her misses the sensation she knows she should be grateful. Maybe the Dyke is finally through with her. Maybe they’ll all spend themselves soon, exhaust themselves, and leave her be. And then her father will hold her and tell her how well she did, what a good girl she’s been.

That is, if she can even dare to hope that this is anything other than punishment.

The man comes down her throat, groaning and spasming against her tongue before he finally pulls back and wipes his cock off on what little of her face is still left clean. He ruffles her hair the way one gives a dog a friendly pat before leaving, and for the first time since they began using her Isabelle can twist to try and see what’s going on behind her. Her vision is still blurred, one eye stuck shut with cum, and it’s difficult to see past the men that crowd around her and masturbate onto her scars, but beyond them she can make out the Dyke stooped down and fidgeting with her harness. Dread blooms in the pit of her stomach. No, no, Father said they couldn’t, he wouldn’t let her—

But really, the only ones he forbade were the men. The Dyke turns back to Isabelle, running her fingers along the polished glass cock fastened between her hips, its curvature gleaming in the light. “<You look so terrified,>” she laughs, stepping up on the platform to stand behind Isabelle and between her legs. Isabelle can feel the cool, hard tip of the toy pressing against her, sliding against the slickness of her cunt as she jostles with the crowd’s renewed attentions. They grope at her, spreading her open for the Dyke as they grab handfuls of flesh. “<Surely your fiancé gives you worse than this, eh? You ought to be grateful. I know how to treat a woman.>”

She hilts in Isabelle’s cunt not on the first thrust, but the second. The remnants of pain stoke from embers to a blaze Isabelle can’t ignore as the pendulum swings and the Dyke slams into abused flesh, making her scream. The glass head rams into her cervix and for the first time she knows what it’s like to be fucked by someone other than her father. There’s no time to breathe, no time to take it in. The Dyke sets a savage pace and Isabelle’s fingers—barely shy of numb—wrap around the ropes binding her for something, anything to hold onto. Her tits slap against each other and her cunt squelches obscenely as the Dyke’s pelvis collides with her ass again and again. Each thrust seems to knock a little more sanity loose.

“Please,” Isabelle gasps. “<Please, please,> God, please—” But she can’t even say what she wants. She can’t beg to be let out of this. All she can do is take it, and from the panting of the crowd and the Dyke’s pleased grunts behind her she knows she’s taking it well. More semen splatters over her, running in rivulets down her sides, down her cheeks, her feet, her underarm, clotting in her hair. She can feel nothing but the ropes digging into her flesh and the agony of the glass cock ramming into her depths as the weight vacillates ruthlessly, can smell and taste nothing but cum.

“<What a good whore,>” the Dyke groans, shoving herself hard into Isabelle and grinding there. “<I can feel you gripping me. You want this more than anything. Greedy little cunt.>” Another sharp thrust makes Isabelle cry out and she seems to take it as assent, picking up speed and force, her own sounds of pleasure and effort mingling with Isabelle’s shameful moans. She reaches forward to grab Isabelle by the face, hooking two fingers in her cheek and pulling harshly, twisting her mouth into a humiliating smile. “<And you have an audience for your greed. You’ll be thanking your fiancé for this on your hands and knees, won’t you?>”

Isabelle weeps, barely able to breathe past the agony in her chest. There’s someone else fucking her, someone else driving into her, someone else showing her what it feels like to be theirs. This is wrong, all of this must be wrong—but how can it be, when it’s what her father wants? He began this, does nothing to stop it, and when she strains to see him through the crowd his eyes are not on any of the half-dressed guests tending to him but on her. He sees this. He wants this, and so she has to want it too.

Her next orgasm rattles through her as though she’s being throttled. Isabelle shrieks around the Dyke’s fingers, thrashing in her restraints even as the strength drains from her body. Behind her the Dyke only pumps faster until Isabelle feels like she'll break beneath the onslaught, until the pendulum is bouncing so furiously that she fears it will fly off, sending pain lancing through her with every swing—and then, with an animalistic gasp and three more deep thrusts, the Dyke spasms sharply before slowing to a halt. A droplet of sweat lands on Isabelle’s back. Tears stream down her face as she and the Dyke are left panting together, and all she can think is that she’d rather tear into her own cunt from the outside and rip that toy free than feel it inside her for another moment.

The Dyke slowly pulls out and steps down from the platform, leaving Isabelle dizzy with the humiliation of her own juices leaking down her thighs. With the Dyke relinquishing her prey, the crowd edges closer again, leering down at Isabelle and reaching out to grope her and pull at her hair, forcing her head back. Two men rub their cocks against her cheeks, stroking themselves. She doesn’t have it in her to feel any more disgust, only clamping her mouth shut in the hopes that she won’t encourage them. Cum bubbles beneath her nostril as she tries to catch her breath.

“<Is that all you’ve got? Look at her, she’s begging for more,>” one man says, reaching out to catch the Dyke by the sleeve as she makes to step down from the stage. “<And here we were all enjoying the show.>”

The Dyke pauses, then reaches down to her harness. With a few quick snaps she’s freed the dripping glass cock from its ring, and some part of Isabelle that still believes in mercy takes far too long to realize what she’s about to do with it. All she registers is something hard and wet against the cleft of her ass, sliding upward toward her hole.

Father, please, no more, I’m sorry—

It doesn’t enter her easily. Life isn’t that kind to her. Instead the Dyke has to pry her open, stretch her anus by degrees, twist and wriggle the toy and break her way further and further into Isabelle until with one final push she shoves it in up to the base. Isabelle screams in more than pain, the sound drowning out the laughter of the crowd in her own ears as the Dyke gives a brief bow. Distantly Isabelle can hear her saying something before she departs, but the words have no meaning. Everything surrounding her rings and reverberates, incorporeal and threatening to slip through her fingers whether she tries to hold on or not.

I made myself clear, Isabelle. If this is more than you can bear, why didn’t you simply do as you were told?

Sobs wrench desperate and ugly from her chest, tears seeping onto the cocks pressed to her face. She can’t crumble. She has to remember where she is, what’s really happening to her and at whose hands. None of these bastards deserve to take her father’s role in her mind. Still the world around her dims, careening toward a darkness that could all too easily become home. The basement. Chains. Punishment without room for uncertainty, brutal and bloody, dripping down her ass and thighs until forgiveness is bought and paid for. 

I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good—

Then without warning the sweet, spicy burn of cognac floods her mouth as a manicured hand grips her face and forces a bottle past her lips. It shatters the darkness, searing her tongue and the space behind her eyelids as she chokes and spills rivulets down her chin. Above her she hears a man’s sigh of disappointment, a woman’s chiding words: “<Come now, dear, don’t tell us you’ve forgotten how to swallow.>”

Isabelle looks up past the blear of cum painting her lashes and sees a familiar, greying beard adorning the face beneath a mask. The other strangers have parted to make room for this man who, at least, she knows. He’s the one Father spoke to about arranging all this, the Gendarme who knows Monte Carlo and its underbelly far better than they do. Beside him is a beautiful woman in a clinging crimson evening gown slit up to her hip to expose one long leg. “<What a waste of good cognac,>” the Gendarme says, and the Woman beside him gives him a smirk before bending down and running her tongue up Isabelle’s chin, over her mouth, up her cheek, gathering cognac and semen alike before stepping back and wiping her mouth on her wrist. Her lipstick is left unmarred. 

Behind Isabelle a guest takes hold of the base of the toy left inside her. She can feel each rocking motion, each slow manual thrust, sawing at the tendons that hold her fragmented world together. Like this, sobriety is too much to stomach. “Please,” she manages, quaking under every round of the assault. “<More, please. I…I need it.>”

The Woman and the Gendarme look at each other as another stream of semen falls on the side of Isabelle’s face. None of the three acknowledge it; the man who just came is replaced with another just as quickly. “<If you can be good,>” the Gendarme says, reaching into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket and offering his companion first a cigarette and then a light, “<we’ll take care of you. You know what being good means, don’t you?>”

A soft laugh ripples from the Woman just before she takes a long drag of her cigarette. She bends down and blows a plume of smoke into Isabelle’s face, making her cough, her whole body tensing and anus squeezing around the intrusion. “<I’ll just bet you do,>” she murmurs. “<I’ve heard so much about you, Isabelle. Open wide, there’s a good girl.>”

Isabelle opens her mouth, half grateful for the command. It gives her something to focus on other than how it feels to be fucked in the ass and the sickening lurch in her stomach that comes of hearing her own name in a place like this. The Woman brings her cigarette to Isabelle’s lips ash-first and flicks it, sending a shower of burning flecks scattering onto her tongue. Isabelle jolts, winces, but keeps herself from pulling away or shutting her mouth. She needs that cognac. She needs anything to help get her away from here, a controlled descent into a haze where she can no longer feel this. So instead, she sticks out her tongue.

“<Oh, very good.>” The Woman seems more than pleased, and shows it by gripping Isabelle’s tongue between two long fingernails and pulling it out further. She gestures for the Gendarme to watch, grinning, and Isabelle can only watch in kind as she takes one more deep drag before stubbing the cigarette out on Isabelle’s tongue. Pain floods her tastebuds, sinks into the sinews connecting them to her mouth, spreads through her jaw. Screaming only means breathing in more smoke, and she’s left coughing and wracking. Swallowing, breathing, everything hurts, a burn that howls louder than that of the assault taking place a few feet behind. But she’s been good. She can tell as she lifts her eyes to them once more and sees the way they both smile at her. To be good is almost as intoxicating as cognac. After all, it’s the only way out of this.

“<It’s a start, anyway,>” the Gendarme says, grabbing the bottle from the Woman and tilting it against Isabelle’s lips before giving it back. Liquor sears the fresh burn, making Isabelle weep softly even as she’s eager to gulp down everything he gives her before he finally pulls it away and takes a swig for himself. The taste of ash and tobacco dissolves beneath the heady alcohol. Isabelle tries to catch her breath, holding herself back from begging for more. The more she wants it, the higher they’ll raise the price. Already the Gendarme is making for the table of toys as Isabelle tries to breathe through the pain in her tongue and the torment battering her from behind.

“<One more for the road,>” the Woman says. “<Believe me, little girl, you’ll need it.>” She takes a drink for herself before raising it high and pouring cognac over Isabelle’s face. Her reflexes deadened, Isabelle barely closes her eyes in time to prevent more of a sting as liquor courses over their lids, down her cheeks and into her open mouth. She can’t breathe for fear it will get in her nose, but she doesn’t need to. All she needs to do is drink. 

The Gendarme circles to stand behind Isabelle slowly, each deliberate footfall ringing on the stage even over the moaning and grunting of the crowd. At least his presence seems to make the man toy-fucking her stop, although he leaves the glass prick inside her ass and the Gendarme seems content to do the same. The Woman watches, carding her fingers through the clots in Isabelle’s hair and wiping her hands clean on her cognac-washed cheeks as the Gendarme trails the tip of a riding crop over first one thigh and then the other. 

It’s more relief than anything. A beating is something she knows how to take, something that can feel nice if she’s a very good girl, and the liquor is beginning to soak into her senses. It warms her and dulls the ache left in her legs, her hips, her ass and arms—what she can still feel of her arms, anyway. Reflexively Isabelle tries to move her fingers to test the ropes once more, but she can’t quite tell if she succeeds.

The first blow falls lightly, experimentally. They nearly always do. A few more brushing swings, gentle, lining up, and then he’ll really hurt her. She’ll take it. Shamefully, Isabelle can feel her body yearning for it the more he takes his time, and some of it must show on her face because the Woman laughs and jerks her head back by a handful of her curls. “<Little slut,>” she says affectionately. “<Do you want so badly for my husband to beat you? Go on, then. Beg for it.>”

“<Please,>” Isabelle drools, “<please beat me, sir, give me everything I deserve, please punish me, hurt me…>” The words flow without thought, desire to please the only impetus needed. It’s remarkable how much Isabelle can do without any kind of cognition behind it, splitting herself open on the altar as if driven by the same instinct that makes spiders spin their webs and parasites bury their eggs in the unwilling. It’s what comes naturally by now. She finds herself hoping, in the moment before the leather connects with her flesh, that beating her will come the same way to the Gendarme.

She must be losing her mind.

“Fuck!” Pain and pleasure. Pain and hope. Already with the second lash her mouth is open to receive more liquor, just as her audience bays for more, fucking their own fists, their handkerchiefs, their women to the sight of the Gendarme bringing the crop down again on her ass. The weight hanging from her clitoris dances with the impact, sending shocks of another flavor of hurt through her pelvis. The Woman cups her cheeks so, so gently. Isabelle looks up, leaning into the touch and staring with something like love—just as bestial—into ice-blue eyes. “Fuck, yes…<More, sir, please. I can take it.>”

“<Oh dear.>” The Woman chuckles, caressing Isabelle’s temples with her fingertips as she looks over her body to where the Gendarme works, making another streak of red bloom across Isabelle’s skin. “<I think she’s finally broken in, darling. It’s a start, anyway.>”

“<I think we can do better than that. After all, we wouldn’t want to disappoint our host, would we? Not when he’s gone to all this trouble to put his little rose to the test.>”  The Gendarme laughs, and the next strike makes Isabelle scream, her body buckling forward into the Woman’s touch as the ropes strain to keep her upright. Bracing herself is all but impossible with her legs as weak as they are from kneeling so long, trembling intermittently. Even as the ache sinks into her flesh, his words bring a strange form of relief, if she can reach for it. A test? Is that all this is? If it is, she’s certain it’s one she can pass. Look at what she’s withstood so far.

She lets herself hang against the ropes, slipping sideways to look past the Woman’s hip and down into the crowd. The mass of bodies and the stage lights in her eyes obscure her father, but there he is: fingers knotted in a man’s hair and curling in a woman’s cunt, and yet he’s watching her. Is he proud of her? Every biting lash seems to ask the question, over and over, as relentless as Isabelle’s need to please him. Is he proud of her? Is he proud?

There’s no pride to be found here otherwise. The crop falls again; Isabelle cries out and feels her own slick running down her inner thigh, over her old cigarette burns. Her head feels on the verge of toppling off, and yet her body is heavy with sensation, throbbing with all she’s been given. The lashes blur together and paint the space behind her eyes with red and gold. As she shudders and spasms, she barely realizes it's in orgasm, the deluge of sweetness coming to her as just another wave of hurt. She’s been tested before. Bedtime kisses and hours alone, secrets to keep, blood to shed. She can do this.

Something bursts bright as a star beneath her skin. Pain torques through her like a second coming and Isabelle screams again, falling limp against the ropes and swaying there. More than sweat drips down her ass, every bit as hot as the gushing of her cunt. Did he…?

"<Fuck.>" The Gendarme steps back, and as Isabelle looks under her armpit she can see him running his hand down his beard, members of the audience glancing at each other uncertainly. The Gendarme raises his eyes to his Woman. "<Would you call that lasting damage?>"

The Woman glances to Alec before circling around Isabelle. She runs her fingertips down beneath what Isabelle is realizing, thanks to the particular sting, must be a wound. "<Nothing forbidden,>" she says finally. "<After all, he gave his little rose to us for a reason. He must have known we would want to break her.>" With a soft laugh, she leans down and cups Isabelle by the cheek to force her to meet her eyes once again. "<What do you think, Isabelle? Do you think your fiancé gave you to us simply careless of the fact that we might shatter you? Or do you think he hopes for it?>"

Isabelle isn't given the chance to answer. The Woman draws her into a deep kiss, long and slow and loving, red lipstick against pink as her tongue slides across the burn on Isabelle's. Isabelle moans softly, involuntarily. It's just as much a sound of helplessness as it is of pleasure. Shatter her? Is that why Father brought her here? Everyone who speaks to her seems to have some idea or another of why he's sanctioning this: because she was bad, because she has a cunt, because Father wants to test her, because he wants to break her. Would he let her break at hands other than his own?

In the cool air outside the theater, maybe Isabelle could answer no and really believe it. She could cling to her faith and let it carry her through this. Eighteen years as his daughter, four as his lover, the rest of her life ahead as anything he wants her to be—it should be a foundation more than solid enough to stand on, but she's too weak to stand, too worn down by all they've put her through. Maybe it's all true, everything she's been told tonight. She doesn't know. She won't know until she's made it through this hell, until he holds her again and tells her why, why, why, why—

Their mouths part. The Woman's lips are left shining, and she licks them with a self-satisfied smile as she straightens and steps over to stand in front of Isabelle. The Gendarme joins her and the crowd closes around Isabelle again, a drawstring pulled tight. Hands come to her back, thighs, and ass, fondling the welts between her scars, spreading her wound like the petals of a cunt. Someone delivers a sharp slap to it and Isabelle cries out, back arching. Sweat and semen sting in the gash.

"<You truly seem to be enjoying yourself,>" the Woman muses as her husband begins to unfasten his belt. Isabelle can see him in the periphery of her vision, watch him pull the length of leather from its place in swift motion, but her gaze is fixed on the features of the Woman standing over her. All she can think of, all she can ask herself, is if this is the face of the person who will break her. "<Positively ecstatic. It's time you gave back, don't you think?>"

Shifting to stand with her legs apart, the Woman parts her skirt at the slit and draws it aside to expose her cunt. The dark curls that thatch it and the feelings they stoke remind Isabelle of something she can't place, hazy as her head has become, but she knows it doesn't matter. Nothing happening within her matters anymore. Display it and it will be broken. Obedience, placation, is her only hope.

There's a coppery tang to the Woman's cunt that recalls blood. Dim, dull fantasies of biting down and wrenching that taste from inside her flicker through Isabelle's mind, but all she does is lick as if to polish the Woman's pearl clean again and again, slurping it into her mouth and sucking needily before letting it go with a slick pop. Indulgent moans slip easily from the Woman. Each one sounds distant, even more distant than Isabelle's father feels from her. Something slides against her skin, across her throat, wrapping around the column of her neck like a cautious embrace. It's comforting at first, smooth and warm, but then metal clinks just beside her ear and the Gendarme's belt pulls snug.

"<Don't stop,>" the Woman says softly, her fingers locking in Isabelle's curls before Isabelle can even think to pull away. Still, her tongue slows to stillness for just a moment before a warning tug on the belt starts her up again. "<There's a good girl. You don't need to breathe to satisfy me, do you?>"

Isabelle remembers doing this to herself when she was small, before she knew better—before Father told her better—with stockings and pillowcases. The belt's sweat-sticky warmth against her skin feels so much more dangerous. It's performance on a stage that will inevitably crumble beneath her feet; prayer with a revolver nestled at her nape. She licks, sucks, offers an echo of the Woman's earlier kiss to her folds, and all the while the belt tightens by degrees so slight as to be almost imperceptible—at first. But Isabelle's breath begins to rasp against the constraint, barely audible beneath the sounds of the crowd around her and the pressure building inside her head. Every breath is precious but none of them can take precedence over the Woman and her need, Isabelle's need to coax moan after moan from her on the tip of her tongue.

"<Oh, yes,>" the Woman breathes, her head falling back and her hips beginning to roll. She rides Isabelle's face in slow, gentle rhythm, nothing as harsh as the way she clutches onto her husband's arm. "<Harder. I can still feel the little bitch exhaling.>"

The belt jerks upward and Isabelle's breath half leaves her in a thin wheeze, the rest arrested as she fights to hold onto what air she can. Her instinct is to hold still, to conserve, but she knows better than to think she can simply hold out her tongue for the Woman and call that good enough. Good enough is fucking without breathing, living and dying in one. Instead she treats the cunt before her as if she can drink oxygen from within it, sealing her mouth to its folds and lapping eagerly.

Her throat aches. It doesn't matter. Her head pounds. It doesn't matter. Her lungs burn. It doesn't matter. The further Isabelle pushes herself, the more the fears planted by her assailants' words begin to fall away. She only needs to fear breaking if she has the unmitigated gall to crack in the first place; there is no test these bastards could give out that she couldn't pass; her cunt is sanctified by the love of her father; she may have been bad, but she will earn forgiveness.

With a cry of pleasure, the woman ruts forward until Isabelle's nose nestles in her pubic hair and grips her by the back of her head to keep her there. Whatever little trickles of air Isabelle had managed to get before are gone now. The belt digs mercilessly into her skin, vise-tight, and no matter how hard she inhales all she gets is flesh. There's no longer even room to sob no matter what the others are doing to her. In her asphyxiation, at least, her body is becoming as numb as her arms—the mind working in mysterious ways—and offering her some distance from the assault. In the blackness spreading through her vision, she finds escape from the onslaught, the endless hands and fingers and toys and cocks. Surely Father will understand if she faints. It would be so lovely to rest.

Her eyes are just fluttering shut indefinitely when the Woman comes all over her tongue, squirting hard and grinding into her mouth with a sharp gasp. Still, she doesn't let Isabelle pull away. She holds her fast until another stream spouts from between her folds, acrid, a familiar enough taste that Isabelle doesn't even flinch. She lets the Woman use her as a urinal until she's satisfied, until she pulls away and delivers a harsh slap to Isabelle's face.

"<You're depraved,>" she says as the belt goes slack, her voice alight with amusement. "<There's no coming back for a girl like you. What do you think, dear?>" She turns back to the Gendarme as he loosens the belt from around Isabelle's neck and folds it double in his hand. The light in his eyes gleams manic as he pulls his wife into a deep kiss, his free hand groping its way up her thigh and under her skirt. His tenting erection digs into her hip.

"<I want to fuck something,>" he rasps. "<I want you.>"

The Woman laughs, hooking her fingers in his bowtie to draw him into another, briefer kiss. "<If I had known torturing her would inflame you like this, I would have asked our friend if we could keep her for the weekend. Ah, but he's a selfish man. Come with me.>" A glance sweeps between Isabelle and, beyond the crowd, Alec. "<I won't deny you.>"

Together they step down from the stage, to the murmured admiration of the crowd that's all too eager to take their place. Isabelle's lungs throb with returning oxygen as she forces herself to raise her head and face the man standing before her, although she can feel how slack her own features are, the exhaustion showing on her face. Still her head aches. If she could, she would throw the symptoms of strangulation after the disappearing couple like a crumpled, sopping handkerchief, but they linger. Reprieve does not come, but she knows she's not broken, knows she's been good, knows she's more to her father than a hole—so she must be being tested. So she lets her mouth fall open, lets her burned tongue loll.

The newcomer's laugh is harsh, mirthless. "You think that's all it's gonna take?" American. She knows it from the first syllable, and some numbed part of her is glad he doesn't bother trying French. The American crouches down to meet her eyes, his own glinting like gemstones embedded in the earth. Isabelle doesn't bother wracking her mind to think what else he could want with her any more than a deer can muster up the will to move itself from the path of an oncoming train. "Sweetheart, by now half the men here have fucked your mouth. I'm not taking their leftovers."

He wants her to speak. He seems to expect it. So Isabelle swallows, past grimacing at the dregs of rancid cum that go down with it, wets her lips, and manages in a weak croak: "What do you want, then?"

"Let's see." The American rises to his feet, circling her like a vulture. Isabelle knows she must be an egregiously obscene sight, and a bit of the heat returns to her face when he chuckles lowly. "Fucking cumrag. Not even worth the trouble to clean you off, huh? Your fiancé might as well toss you out."

Isabelle closes her eyes, drawing a deep inhale through her nose. It's easy to tell herself that he doesn't know what he's talking about, easy to think the words over the quake deep inside her. She can bury that tremor, breathe through it. Her father loves her. He does.

"What? Nothing to say?" The American tsks, running his fingers up the curve of her cunt to the toy in her ass. He gives it a slap, jarring it inside her and making her cry out. "Let's start here. I think we can do better than this, don't you?" Movement behind her, footsteps, and something cold and slick is drizzled like syrup over her hole. Isabelle doesn't turn, doesn't look, just grits her teeth and tries to brace herself as the American grasps the glass cock by its base and starts to rock it in and out, twisting it inside of her. Every movement strikes nerves she would rather forget exist, sending tingles through her cunt and lights dancing behind her eyes, but she can take this.

It's the second toy, just as large and nudging at her rim, that rattles her certainty. Her eyes fly wide open in alarm. "What—"

He shoves it into her and knocks the breath from Isabelle's lungs before she has a chance to protest. It's only halfway, but he won't stop there, sawing it like the bow of a violin against her rim over and over until her muscles give and he can ram it in to the base. A broken, mangled sob falls from her lips as tears spill down her cheeks. She's never felt so full before, never taken two toys that size in one channel, and she finds herself wishing for the belt around her neck again just to wring the awareness from her mind. As it is, there's no escaping the sensation. Her abused hole twitches around them both, trying in vain to close, and far too soon he's pressing a thinner rod to the space between them.

"Think you can take it?" the American drawls. Around them the crowd is devouring the sight, working their cocks in their fists or bending their women over the edge of the stage. Grunts of pleasure and cries from other mouths mingle with Isabelle's own weeping. "How many toys do you think your whore ass can handle? If you won't take my cock you should try and make up for it." He slides the toy into the gap slowly, agonizingly, and Isabelle can feel her body trying to dissolve cell by cell but reality won't permit it. What she knows to be punishment will always be punishment. It's all wrong. No one should punish her but her father.

Where is he? It hurts. It hurts so much, and the lubrication isn't enough, and her sobs slur into each other as she lifts her head and searches the crowd for him. Past the masturbating men, past the women—do they want this? Are they punished too, or does her torment give them pleasure of their own?—and past the stage lights half-blinding, she sees him. His open mouth sealed to that of another woman. His fist knotted in another cascade of blonde locks. On his lap the Boy writhes with his ass split by Alec's cock.

The American follows the line of Isabelle's gaze and lets out a rich, delighted chuckle. "Hoping for your man to swoop in and save you?" he croons. "He's not paying any attention, doll. You don't exist to him right now. He threw you to the wolves just so he could have his own fun."

"No," Isabelle chokes. She tastes something metallic, like her nose is bleeding as she fights down pleasure and pain intertwined. It's a losing battle. It always has been. "No. It's not true. It's not."

"No? Let's test that." The American steps onto the platform and a weight comes down on Isabelle's back. The tread of a boot lines up with her scars, and the slightest pressure strains her torso forward against the numbness of her arms, still pinioned behind her back and held suspended upwards by her father's ropework. "Brace yourself. We'll see if your precious fiancé comes running when you scream."

The kick comes without reservation or mercy. Pain, bright and brilliant and all-sundering, lances through both of Isabelle's shoulders like driven railway spikes as bones slip free from sockets with an audible grinding pop, the only thing Isabelle can hear over the agony. She knows she must be screaming because she can't breathe, because her ravaged throat aches and aches and aches with it, because it extends through her body like a soprano's aria—

She screams, and her father, her lover, her god, does nothing.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

"Look at that." Satisfaction drips from the American's voice as he steps down and leans close to Isabelle's ear, close enough his lips brush the shell of it. She doesn't feel his breath. "He doesn't care, sweetheart. He threw you away. Face it—" and every word is a bullet, deathless. "He doesn't want you anymore."

Isabelle can't see for the hurting. Blinded, unbreathing, worthless, she may as well be dead where she hangs.

"And if he doesn't, then…." The American mounts the platform again, kneeling behind her, and a quick flick of his wrist frees his cock. Its head nestles against Isabelle's cunt, nudging slick heat. He inhales in anticipation. "What's to stop me from taking what I want?"

Selfish, I know, but some pleasures—

"Father!" The word she was forbidden to say here, the secret kept by nine hundred miles between them and home, by a crowd of strangers with no knowledge of the ties that bind. Her lifeline. It's all that's left to her. "Father, help me!"

The crowd parts raggedly, a wound torn open. Through the white light that fills her vision she manages to catch a glimpse of the Boy toppled on the floorboards, the blonde plaything shoved aside, and Father—Father is tearing past anyone in the way to reach her and that murderous look in his eyes is love itself. She is loved. She always knew she was loved.

His fist collides with the American's jaw and sends him sprawling to the stage. Some laugh, some gasp, frozen mid-fuck, and though Isabelle half-expects Alec to offer some words of placation, it appears he's beyond caring. He doesn't touch her. Good. She couldn't bear to be touched. Instead he makes short work of the ropes binding Isabelle's wrists upwards and, holding them still tied together, lowers them as gently as he can to her back. Each degree of movement echoes the dislocation and she bites back a cry.

"Isabelle, Isabelle, my sweet girl," he murmurs urgently, untying the knots holding wrist to wrist. "This is going to hurt. Be brave for me."

Isabelle manages to nod, even though her head is filled with nothing but black slurry for bones to swim in. There is no relief from pain without pain itself. She finds her teeth and grits them together as Alec takes hold of her left wrist and bicep, firmly, almost to the point of inflicting further hurt. She understands why. He has to be steady, steadier than she could be on her own with the fear that sets her to quaking. He begins moving her arm up and down, gradually working it out from her body—like a waltz that carries the dancers across the room, small motions that draw her arm back into place. Each one sends tears coursing down her cheeks.

With another grinding, wet pop the joint shifts back where it belongs. Isabelle screams through clenched teeth, but when Alec repeats the process on the other side and sends a flare through her right shoulder, she only sobs. "Shh, shh," Alec coos, running his hands up both arms, digging in his fingertips gently. "Can you feel this? Yes? Good girl. Flex your fingers for me, curl them—show me a few chords—oh, very good." He presses his fingers against her palms just as he did with the rope tests. Isabelle squeezes them, a signal: she survived this intact, or as close as can be.

And then he's drawing her into his arms, discarding his condom and wrapping her in his suit jacket, cradling her as close as he ever did when she was new and clean and good. He doesn't seem to care about the filth that coats her from head to toe, about the way she's been used—he kisses her heedless of everything that came before, and Isabelle can't bring herself to protest. She's dimly aware of murmurs around them, moans and cries resuming as the party finds its footing once again, but each and every guest could burst into flames and she wouldn't care. He's holding her. It's over.

When his tongue slides into her mouth, meeting the burn that lingers on hers, Isabelle feels no reluctance. It's a relief, that absence. She doesn't have to fight down any guilt, any fear, any part of herself that might not want this. She can let him lay her down on the platform like a lamb on an altar and remove the toys and clamp from her, one by one. She can let him part her legs, half numb, and she can wrap them around him and hold him close as he lines himself up—and then he fills her cunt with a single thrust that takes her breath away. There's no shame here, not tonight. He saved her. He has the right to lay claim once more to what's his.

Everything she has left, she tries to offer him. She lifts her hips against his, toying with his tongue, moaning softly into the kiss as she tightens her weary cunt in rhythm. Father, Father, Father—he needs to know that every part of her is his. Miraculously Isabelle can still glean some pleasure from the treatment Alec gives her battered body, even with her arms too weak to hold him and her skin streaked with the remnants of everyone else who's used her. He forgives everything. He absolves her, and there's no way she'll ever be able to thank him enough.

Tears stream down her temples and pool in her disheveled locks as she cries out for him and finally comes. She doesn't want to—it's exhausting, and hurts, and she's had more than enough forced on her—but she is praised for it anyway. "My good girl," he breathes, shifting back to straddle the platform and pull her into his lap. Every rut upwards jars her against him, rocking her against his chest, and she weeps into his shoulder as he fills her again and again. "My brave, perfect girl. I didn't miss a moment of it. You took it all so well for me, but it's over now. You're safe. My little rose."

Isabelle bites down hard on her inner cheek, but it's not enough to stifle her sounds, louder now thanks to the change in angle. She doesn't want to come again, she doesn't, she doesn't—but his length rubs against her swollen clit with every thrust and she's crying out his name in another climax when he fills her with his seed. He grunts softly, his features twisting as he presses his forehead to hers and twitches deep inside her. What he leaves there leaks out to join everything else staining her thighs.

She doesn't know why he allowed it. Whether it was because she was bad, or because of the body she was born into, because he wanted to test her or because he wanted to break her—but she's certain of one thing. He has no desire to throw her away. She may never know why this happened to her, but it's over now, and the American was wrong.

"Father?"

It's a hoarse whisper, barely audible under the sounds of the orgy around them, but all the same it makes Alec open his eyes in the midst of his afterglow. He's still panting, softening inside her. "Yes, little rose?"

Isabelle's gaze travels to the spot on the stage floor where the American lay before he managed to recover. He must be long gone by now, likely having left the party entirely. "Him. The man who…who tried to break the rules. Can you find him?"

Alec is silent as he slowly pulls out of her, drawing a shuddering gasp from her when his cockhead slips free. He wraps his suit jacket more securely around Isabelle and stands with her in his arms, carrying her backstage. She knows him well enough to know that, regardless of the mess they made of her, a shower or bath is coming next. Cleansing. All water he touches is holy; all fire he lights is righteous. "I believe I can," he says finally. "Why?"

"I want to see him suffer."