Nora’s eyes widen. “Julian?” Her voice is breathless with remnants of her panic.

“Turn over.” The words come out rough, betraying the violent need raging inside me. “Now.”

She hesitates for a moment, then rolls over onto her stomach.

“On your knees.”

She gets on all fours and turns her head to look at me, awaiting further instructions.

Such a well-trained pet. Her obedience heightens my lust, my desperate hunger to possess her. The position showcases her ass and exposes her pussy, causing my dick to swell up even more. I want to swallow her whole, lay claim to every inch of her. My muscles tense, and almost without thinking, I swing the flogger, letting the leather threads bite into the smooth skin of her buttocks.

She cries out, her eyes closing as her body stiffens, and the darkness inside me takes over, obliterating all remnants of rational thought. I watch, almost as if from a distance, as the flogger kisses her skin again and again, leaving pink marks and reddening streaks on her back, ass, and thighs. She flinches at the first few strokes, crying out in pain, but as I find a rhythm, her body begins to relax into the strokes, anticipating rather than resisting the sting. Her cries soften, and her pussy folds begin to glisten with moisture.

She’s responding to the flogging as if to a sensual caress.

My balls tighten as I drop the flogger and crawl up behind her, looping my right forearm under her hips to drag her toward me. My cock presses against her entrance, and I groan as I feel her slick heat rubbing against the tip, coating it with creamy moisture. She moans, arching her back, and I push into her, forcing her flesh to engulf me, to take me in.

Her pussy is unbelievably tight, her inner muscles squeezing me like a fist. It doesn’t matter how often I fuck her; each time, it’s new in some way, the sensations sharper and richer than in my memory. I could stay inside her forever, feeling her softness, her moist heat. Except I can’t—the primitive urge to move, to thrust into her, is too strong to be denied. My heartbeat drums loudly in my ears, my body pulsing with savage need.

I hold still for as long as I can, and then I begin to move, each thrust causing my groin to press against her pink, freshly flogged ass. She moans with every stroke, her body tightening around my invading cock, and the sensations build upon each other, intensifying to an unbearable degree. My skin prickles from my impending orgasm, and I begin to drive into her faster, harder, until I feel her contractions begin, her pussy rippling around me as she screams out my name.

It’s the last straw. The orgasm I’ve been holding off overtakes me with explosive force, and I erupt deep inside her with a hoarse groan, stunning pleasure rocketing through my body. It’s a bliss unlike any other—an ecstasy that goes far beyond physical satisfaction. It’s something I’ve experienced only with Nora.

Will ever experience only with Nora.

Breathing heavily, I withdraw from her body, letting her collapse on the bed. Then I lower myself onto my right side and gather her against me, knowing she needs tenderness after brutality.

And in a way, I need it too. I need to comfort her, to soothe her. To bind her to me when she’s at her most vulnerable, so I can ensure her love.

It might be cold-blooded, but I don’t leave important things like that to chance.

She turns around to face me and buries her face in the crook of my neck, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. “Hold me, Julian,” she whispers, and I do.

I will always hold her, no matter what.

Part II: The Healing

Chapter 4

Nora

“Julian, do you have a minute?”

Entering my husband’s office, I walk over to his desk. He looks up to greet me, and I marvel yet again at the tremendous progress he’s made in his recovery over the past six weeks.

His arm cast is gone now, as are all the bandages. Julian tackled healing the same way as he approaches any goal: with single-minded ruthlessness and determination. As soon as Dr. Goldberg approved removal of the cast, Julian dove headfirst into physical therapy, spending hours each day on exercises designed to restore mobility and function to the left side of his body. With his scars beginning to fade, there are days when I almost forget that he was so badly injured—that he had gone through hell and emerged relatively unscathed.

Even his eye implant doesn’t seem jarring to me anymore. Our stay at the clinic in Switzerland and all the procedures cost Julian millions—I saw the bill in his inbox—but the doctors did a phenomenal job with his face. The implant matches Julian’s real eye so perfectly that when he looks at me straight on, it’s almost impossible to tell that it’s fake. I have no idea how they managed to make it that exact shade of blue, but they did, right down to every striation and natural color variation. The fake pupil even shrinks in bright light and dilates when Julian is excited or aroused, thanks to a biofeedback device Julian wears as a watch. The watch measures his pulse and skin conductance and sends the information to the implant, allowing for the most natural-looking responses. The only thing the implant doesn’t do is replicate normal eye motion . . . or allow Julian to see from it.

“That part—the connection to the brain—will take a few more years,” Julian told me a couple of weeks ago. “They’re working on it now in a lab in Israel.”

So yeah, the implant is remarkably lifelike. And Julian is learning to minimize the weirdness of only one eye moving by turning his entire head to look at something straight on—like the way he’s looking at me now.