The Affair: Week 1 Read Online Free PDF

seemed to grow stronger.
    The flogger continued to fall, as if in retaliation for Astrid’s lack of control.
    Emma couldn’t take this anymore. She drew her arm across her midsection and replaced one hand with the other, relieving the tension in the aching muscles. She pulled the door shut and buried her hot cheeks against her upper arm, praying for it to be over, when she was free from this wretched moment . . . this excruciating tension. Her sex had grown achy and hot. She longed to touch herself to alleviate the pressure, but the knowledge that she was aroused in these circumstances was horrifying enough without adding to her transgressions. It wasn’t just shameful arousal that she experienced, however, but a wild desire to flee, to escape this untenable situation.
    She’d never felt so helpless in her life.
    The sound of the flogger ceased every once in a while, and Astrid’s wild moans of arousal grew louder and more desperate, piercing Emma’s unarmored consciousness relentlessly. She no longer needed to see them to be inflicted by their actions. He was touching her during those moments, building her pleasure.
    She hated them. She hated
him
for forcing her to endure this, although she knew in some distant part of her brain that it was no one’s fault but her own.
    Worst of all, she wanted to see more. She longed to see
him.
    “Please, please . . . fuck me,” Astrid pleaded wildly.
    Emma lifted her head cautiously when the lashing ceased, rugged cotton fabric brushing her cheek, afraid to breathe in the taut silence that followed. She heard a sound like a piece of metal being moved . . . a clamp released.
    “Oh
yes
. Yes,” Astrid moaned wildly a moment later.
    “This isn’t for you,” he growled. He sounded annoyed. Intimidating, but also . . .
resigned
?
    Why
?
    Emma felt like she’d burst from boiling emotion she couldn’t quite name. Her mouth had gone dry. Her throat hurt, perhaps from holding in a silent scream of frustration and excitement for so long now.
    Astrid moaned loudly, but it was his rough, more restrained groan that made her head jerk up like someone had called out to her—Emma—specifically. The garments rustled at her abrupt motion. There was a slight jingle as metal hangers shifted on the rack, but Emma was too anxious—too focused— to be alarmed.
    What was happening? What was he doing? It was growing so hot in the cupboard. Her throat felt parched and achy.
    A strange sound began to enter her ears . . . a sound like . . .
what
? Moving, gliding metal? She heard Astrid’s familiar moans, louder now. She immediately recognized the other sound: skin slapping against skin in a taut, primitive rhythm. Heat rushed through her, the product of the strange marriage of humiliation and arousal she experienced. She didn’t give herself permission to move. Suddenly the door was cracked again and she was peering through the opening.
    She stared for several seconds, bewildered as to what she was seeing. Astrid’s bound, naked body jerked back and forth on the metal track in a hard, pistonlike rhythm, the action completely out of her control. The lewd slapping sound Emma had recognized rung in the air, impossible to ignore . . .
    . . . the sound of hard, ruthless fucking.
    When understanding finally dawned, Emma bit her lip until she felt pain.
    The deliberateness of what was happening, the precision, the sheer lewdness was shocking. Astrid still was on the metal rack in a position that was almost on all fours. Her knees perched on a padded bench, her wrists restrained to an elevated T-handled, padded bar. His large, open hands gripped her hips. His skin was darker than hers—a golden brown. She could see his thick, long thumb sinking into the pinkened flesh of a buttock. He flung her back and forth onto his cock with fluid, mechanical ease.
    Emma recalled what he’d said about the glider. The mechanism must have been locked into immobility while he’d flogged her,