Chapter 21: The Branding
She picks up the candle. The white ceramic was warm from the flame. She held it in her hand, considering, her gaze flicking from the flame to my chest, to my face. Her expression was unreadable, a quiet fascination bordering on cruelty.
Tilting it slightly, a hot drop fell on my chest.
It hit just below my collarbone. A sudden, sharp, pinpoint sting—so much hotter than the bathwater. My eyes shot open and they saw her, the candle in her hand. A gasp tore from my throat, more shock than pain. My body jolted against hers. "Fuck PRITHA!"
The wax cooled almost instantly into a hard, white teardrop clinging to my skin. "Fuck," I breathed, the word shuddering out.
"Shh," she whispered, her lips now against my ear. Her hand settled on my shoulder, nails pressing in just enough to hold me still against her. "Just a little warmth for my good boy."
My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I could feel the possessive delight rolling off her in the way she breathed, in the tight curl of her fingers.
She tilted the candle again.
This time the drop fell lower, striking the taut plane of my stomach just above the waterline. The sizzle was audible, a tiny, vicious hiss. My abdomen clenched hard, a rippling flinch I couldn't suppress.
"Look at that," she murmured, her voice full of awe. She watched the red bloom on my skin for a second before the wax paled, sealing it. "My mark."
Her nails trailed down from my shoulder, through the water, over the new, tender spot. The mix of sharp scratch and dull ache made my cock jump, brushing against her thigh underwater.
"You like that," she stated, feeling the thick twitch against her. "You're so hard it's stupid."
"I don't—" I started, but another drip cut me off.
It landed on my inner thigh, dangerously close. The pain was brighter, sharper there. A choked groan got stuck in my throat. My head fell back harder against her collarbone, my eyes squeezing shut.
"Eyes open, Hardik." Her command was soft but absolute. "Watch me mark you."
I forced my eyelids up. She wasn't looking at my face; she was staring, utterly focused, at the path her wax was making. Her tongue touched her bottom lip, a quick, pink flash.
"This one," she said, her voice dropping to a husky whisper, "is for staying under the water until you almost passed out. My crazy, beautiful bastard."
The next drop was a deliberate, slow pour. She trailed the candle sideways, letting a thin, hot line of wax paint itself from my hipbone down towards my groin. It was a burning ribbon, a claiming.
I shook, a full-body tremble that made the water quake around us. A whine, high and helpless, escaped me. My hands, which had been limp at my sides, now gripped the edges of the tub, my knuckles bleaching white.
"Pritha..." It was a plea, but for what, I didn't know. More? Stop?
"Shaking," she observed, her breath hot and damp in my ear. "You're shaking for me. Is it too much?"
I couldn't form a sentence. I shook my head, a desperate, jerky motion.
"You say no, but lookie here..
"Someone else seems to be saying yes."
Her words slithered through the steam, a verdict. My head was still tipped back against her, my throat exposed, every muscle in my body drawn wire-tight. The bathwater, once a deep, covering warmth, was now just a shallow, lukewarm pool around our hips. Most of it had sloshed out during her climax, during my desperate resurfacing. The waterline was very low.
The cool air of the bathroom kissed the skin of my chest and shoulders, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with temperature. My dick was completely erect now, a rigid, aching line breaking the surface of the depleted water, visibly throbbing with each beat of my heart. The candle wax on my skin had hardened into pale, delicate ridges, a strange and beautiful wreckage.
Her other hand snaked to it.
Her fingers didn’t wrap around me, not yet. They approached with a slow, deliberate curiosity that was infinitely more maddening than a grab. Her fingertips, oh god, her fingertips just brushed up the length of my underside, from root to tip, a feather-light drag that made my entire pelvis jerk.
“So sensitive,” she breathed, fascinated. She did it again, this time with her nails just barely grazing. The sensation was electric, a sharp, bright line of pure need that erased the lingering sting of the wax.
I moaned, the sound long and broken. My hands were still white-knuckled on the tub’s rim.
“You’re a mess,” she whispered, her lips moving against the shell of my ear. “All marked up and trembling. Just for me.” Her fingers finally closed, a loose, hot ring at my base. She didn’t move her hand. She just held me, a possession. “My mess.”
“Yours,” I gritted out, the word raw and true. “Always yours.”
That admission seemed to unlock something in her. The playful cruelty melted, replaced by a hunger so vast it tilted the room. She released her grip only to trail her hand lower, cupping my balls, her touch reverent and claiming all at once. The candle, forgotten, tilted dangerously in her other hand.
A large drip of wax splattered directly onto my inner thigh, an inch from her fingers.
I shouted, a short, sharp bark of sound. My hips bucked uncontrollably, pushing myself deeper into her hand. The pain was a bright, white star that instantly dissolved into a throbbing, heated echo that fed the fire in my groin.
The sound I made was pure animal, a sharp, strangled cry that scraped my throat raw. Her eyes flashed above me, wide and dark and utterly captivated by the sound, by the way my body arched. She wasn't just seeing it; she was drinking it in, savoring every twitch and gasp like a rare wine.
"Oops," she murmured, not sorry at all.
Her gaze was fixed on the new wax bead, white and perfect on the flushed skin of my inner thigh. She watched it cool, her breath held. Then her eyes lifted, traveled slowly up the tense landscape of my body, over the wax-streaked plains of my stomach and chest. They settled on my left nipple, drawn tight and pebbled from the steam and the pain.
A slow, wicked smile spread across her face. Her eyes were wild.
She was enjoying her power, reveling in it, a quiet madness in the curve of her lips. I was writhing, a helpless, pleading thing beneath the slow fall of each wax tear, her clever fingers tracing the borders of the burns, torturing me with feather touches that promised relief but never delivered enough.
“This one,” she announced, her voice a low hum of pure possession. The candle tilted. “This one is because I can.”
The wax fell not as a drop, but as a small, deliberate spill. It landed directly on my nipple.
A scream tore from me, high and broken. The pain was immediate and astonishing, a concentrated, white-hot brand on the most sensitive point. My whole chest seized, my back bowing off of her, my hands slipping from the tub’s edge to slap uselessly at the water.
“FUCK! Pritha, fuck, oh god—”
She shushed me, a long, soothing sound, but her other hand moved. Her palm flattened over the wax, pressing the hot liquid seal firmly into my skin, molding it to the shape of me. The pressure amplified the burn into a deep, throbbing ache that sank straight to my core.
I sobbed, once. The pain crested, hovered, and then… transformed. It melted, bleeding into a perverse, radiant heat that pooled in my groin. My cock, ignored and weeping against my stomach, gave a furious, dripping jerk.
She lifted her palm, peeling away. The wax came with it, pulling at the skin with a brief, exquisite sting before releasing. She examined the perfect, pink disc it left behind, her thumb stroking the inflamed periphery.
“Mine,” she whispered, awestruck. “You’re all marked up. All mine.”
I could only pant, tears of pain and overwhelmed sensation blurring my vision. She blew gently on the tender spot, a cool whisper that was somehow more intimate than the burn.
She blew gently on the tender spot, a cool whisper that was somehow more intimate than the burn. Her breath hitched, a soft, amused sound that vibrated through my back. “Look at you,” she murmured, her lips brushing my ear. “All decorated and twitching.”
The candle in her hand lifted, the flame weaving a hypnotic pattern in the steamy air. I watched its reflection dance in her glasses, a tiny, dangerous sun. Her free hand slid down my stomach, fingers skating over the rough patches of wax, each touch a lightning bolt of sensation.
She stopped just above my hipbone, her palm resting hot and heavy. “I’ve marked your chest,” she whispered, her voice all false innocence. “Your stomach, your thighs.” Her fingers walked lower, through the coarse hair, until her knuckles brushed the throbbing base of my cock. “But this…”
She let the word hang, thick and deliberate. My entire body went rigid, a silent, pleading statue. The water around us was utterly still.
The candle tilted. The molten wax at its lip shimmered, a golden bead swelling, growing heavy. She moved her hand with agonizing slowness, guiding the candle’s heat through the cool air until it was positioned directly over the head of my dick. The warmth from the flame alone was a promise, a threat, a searing brand that hadn’t even touched me yet.
“What if,” she breathed, her eyes locking onto mine with possessive intensity, “I let a little drop fall right here? On this pretty, desperate cock of yours?” A slow smile spread across her face. “Just one. To see what sound you make.”
The golden bead trembled, a miniature sun poised to fall. My breath vanished. Every muscle in my body locked, a silent scream held in my chest. The flame’s heat radiated down onto the most sensitive skin I possessed, a phantom burn before the burn.
“Pritha,” I choked out. It was just her name, but it held everything: a plea, a surrender, a warning.
Her eyes flicked from the wax to my face, reading the panic there. She loved it. A slow, dark smile softened her features. “Tell me you want it.”
I couldn’t. My mouth opened, but no sound came. I managed a frantic shake of my head, my hair scraping against her collarbone.
“Liar.” The word was a sweet sigh. She lowered the candle a fraction. The radiant heat intensified, a concentrated halo of almost-pain. I flinched, a full-body spasm that sent water slapping against porcelain.
She watched the reaction with clinical delight. “Your whole body jumped. Just from the idea of it.”
“Please,” I finally gasped. “Don’t. Not there. It’ll— I can’t—”
“You can,” she whispered, her voice suddenly tender, almost motherly. “You can take anything for me. You already have.” Her free hand smoothed over the wax teardrops on my chest, a possessive cataloging of her work. “My strong boy.”
The tenderness was worse than the threat. It unspooled me. A helpless, wounded sound leaked from my throat.
The wax fell.
It wasn’t on the head. At the last possible millisecond, her wrist tilted just so. The molten drop struck the crease where my thigh met my hip, a brutal, searing kiss an inch from its target.
The pain was immediate and spectacular. A sharp, liquid bolt that sizzled into my nervous system. I screamed. It was a raw, unfiltered sound that echoed off the tiles. My hips jackknifed, trying to escape the sensation, but her body behind me was a wall. My cock, untouched, throbbed violently, a separate, sympathetic agony.
“Oh, fuck, oh fuck oh fuck,” I chanted, my vision swimming with tears I couldn’t blink back. The new burn pulsed, a bright, throbbing star.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s over, it’s over,” she cooed, but it was a lie. The pain was still very much present. She set the candle on the ledge with a soft click. Both her hands were on me now, one spreading cool water over the new mark, the other stroking my heaving stomach.
“See? You took it. You’re so good. So perfect for me.” Her praises washed over me, a balmy contrast to the fire in my skin. She kissed my shoulder, my neck, my jaw. “That was the last one. I promise. No more marks.”
I was trembling, a fine, constant vibration. The adrenaline crashed, leaving me weak and pliant against her. The ache from the wax marks harmonized with the deep, unsatisfied ache in my groin. I was a constellation of pain and need, and she owned every point of light.
Her hand slid down, through the water, and finally, finally wrapped around me. It wasn’t the loose possession from before. It was a firm, knowing grip.
I cried out again, but this time it was pure relief.
“You’re so hard it hurts, doesn’t it?” she murmured, her lips against my ear. She began to move her hand, a slow, upward twist. “All this pretty pain, and this just gets worse. My poor thing.”
Her grip was a universe of sensation, the slow, upward twist scattering my thoughts like drops from the rim of the tub. The pain from the wax marks hummed beneath my skin, a low, resonant chord that her strokes seemed to pluck directly. Each pass of her hand was a question, and my body shook with the answer.
“Pritha, I’m… I can’t last, not with—” The words tumbled out, ragged and wet.
“Not with what?” she interrupted, her voice a low purr against the shell of my ear. Her hand didn’t stop its rhythm, a relentless, perfect friction. “Not with my hand on you after I painted you? Not with my marks all over your skin?” She bit my earlobe, not hard, but enough to make me jolt. “You can. You will. Until I say.”
Her command was a wire pulled taut inside me. I could feel the pressure coiling, a spring wound to its breaking point in the base of my spine. The water lapped at my waist, now lukewarm and littered with scarlet petals that stuck to my arms, her thighs. My free hand flailed, finding her knee and clutching it, an anchor in the rising storm.
“I’m close, fuck, I’m so close, please—”
The plea was a broken thing. I needed her permission, her affirmation, the sound of her voice giving me over to it. It was the final surrender.
I started to beg, but her hand came and covered my mouth. Her grip was tight, muffling me instantly. Her palm was damp from the bath, smelling of lavender and her skin, and it pressed my lips shut, stealing the words. My eyes flew open, wide and desperate over the curve of her hand.
She looked down at me, her glasses slightly askew, her curls a wild dark frame for a face of serene, absolute control. “I can’t hear anything,” she said, her voice conversational, as if commenting on the weather. “I guess you don’t want it.”
The muffled sound that escaped me was pure animal panic. My hips stuttered against her grip, a frantic, mechanical pulse. The orgasm wasn't approaching anymore; it was a freight train in the tunnel of my spine, lights blinding, horn screaming. Her hand on my mouth was a cork in a volcano. I couldn't breathe, couldn't plead, could only feel the seismic pressure detonating.
I bit her.
My teeth sank into the fleshy part of her palm, not a play-nip but a desperate, involuntary clamp of sheer overload.
The taste of her skin—salt, lavender soap, her—flooded my mouth.
She yelped, a sharp, startled sound that broke her control. Her hand ripped away from my mouth, breaking the seal.
"Oh you wanna be a bitch? Fine. I'll show you bitch."
Her hand didn’t return to my mouth. It shot downward, a pale blur in the candlelight, and her fingers wrapped around me with a violence that stole my breath. This wasn’t the teasing possession from before. This was a furious, claiming grip, her nails digging into the tender skin beneath the head. I shouted, the sound echoing off the tiles, a mix of pain and desperate gratitude.
“You want to bite me?” Her voice was a low, shaking growl against my ear. Her strokes were relentless, a punishing, perfect rhythm that matched the frantic hammer of my heart. “You want to come? Then come. Come right now.”
Her command was the final trigger. The coil in my spine, wound tight from the wax and the waiting, snapped. White heat flooded my nerves, a tidal wave cresting from my balls up through my shaft. My mouth fell open in a silent scream. My hips pistoned upward, seeking release, driving into the tight tunnel of her fist. Every muscle locked. The world narrowed to the point of contact, to the inevitable, shuddering peak.
Just as the first electric pulse gathered at the base, just as my vision whited out at the edges, her hand vanished.
The friction disappeared. The pressure evaporated. My hips pumped upwards into empty, cooling air. Nothing. A strangled, confused noise choked out of me. The orgasm that had been a certainty, a physical law, reversed itself. The pleasure didn’t crest; it collapsed inwards, a sickening, hollow recoil that left me spasming against nothing.
A full-body shudder racked me, violent and useless. My cock, wet and aching, twitched in the air, untouched. The release was there, trapped, writhing under my skin with nowhere to go. It was a physical agony, a cruel joke played on my nervous system. I gasped, drowning on dry land.
Behind me, she laughed.
It wasn’t her cute, giggling laugh. It was a high, wild, maniacal sound that bounced off the bathroom walls, sharp and unhinged. It was the sound of pure, delighted power.
“Ha! Oh, look at you!” she crowed, her voice breathless with glee. “Pumping at nothing! Like a pathetic little fish!”
Tears of frustration burned my eyes. I was shaking, a wreck of aborted sensation. I could still feel the ghost of her hand, the promise she had ripped away. “Why?” I croaked, the word scraping my throat raw.
Her arms wrapped around my chest from behind, a mockery of an embrace. She hugged me tight, her cheek pressed against mine. Her laughter subsided into giggling hiccups. “Because you bit me, you brute. And because,” she whispered, her voice dripping with sweet malice, “I wanted to see the look on your face. And it’s perfect.”
Her words hung in the steam, a verdict. Then she moved. The water erupted in a chaotic slosh, petals swarming like disturbed insects.
Her weight vanished from behind me, leaving my back cold and exposed to the bathroom air. I heard the water slosh violently to my left. I turned my head, my body still trembling from the denied release, my mind fogged with frustration.
She was standing in the tub, water sheeting down her pale curves, her curls plastered dark to her neck and shoulders. Petals stuck to her thighs, her belly, one clinging to the underside of her breast like a beauty mark. She looked down at me, her chest rising and falling, her glasses slightly fogged.
“You look so lost,” she said, her voice still breathy from her laugh. “So empty.” She took a step, the water rippling around her calves. “Let me fix that.”
Before I could process the words, she was moving. She swung one leg over my hips, her knee bumping against the porcelain. The water, already low, sloshed over the rim in a heavy, splashing gout that hit the floor tiles with a slap. Cold air hit my wet legs. Then her weight settled onto me, not gently, but with a deliberate, sinking finality.
She guided me inside her.
The sensation was a blunt, slow, overwhelming fill. The water made everything slick and strange, reducing friction to a warm, tight slide. She took me, inch by agonizing inch, her head tilting back, her mouth forming a silent ‘O’. A high, thin whine escaped her throat.
“There,” she breathed, her hands landing on my shoulders for balance. “Full.”
Then she began to move.
It wasn’t a rhythm. It was a claiming. She rose, water dripping from her body, then sank back down with a soft, wet splash. Each descent sent petals swirling, sticking to my chest, her thighs, the join of our bodies. The sound was obscene: a rhythmic, liquid schlick, schlick, schlick that mixed with the slosh of displaced water and her sharp, staccato breaths.
“Hardik,” she gasped, her nails biting into my shoulders. “Oh, fuck, you feel—you fill me up—”
I could only watch, my hands gripping the slick sides of the tub. Her breasts moved with her, petals trembling on her skin. The candlelight caught the sweat and water on her collarbone. I was a instrument, played by her relentless, bouncing hunger.
She found an angle, a deep, grinding circle of her hips that made her eyes roll back. “Right there, right there, don’t you dare move—”
I was pinned, utterly at her mercy, consumed by the sight of her using me. Her curls bounced. Her glasses slid down her nose. A film of soap bubbles from earlier swirled in the vortex around our waists, clinging in iridescent clusters to her hip bones.
Her pace became frantic, jerky, a desperate chase. Her moans climbed, losing words, becoming a raw, continuous stream of sound. Her internal muscles fluttered around me, a frantic, pulsing rhythm. She was close. I could feel the tension coiling in her thighs where I held her.
“I’m gonna—I’m gonna—” Her warning was a shattered whisper.
She slammed down once, twice more, then went rigid. A guttural cry ripped from her throat, harsh and unpretty. Her body convulsed, and a hot, sudden gush of liquid, distinct from the bathwater, flooded against me. She squirted, a pulsing release that made the water around us seethe.
The extra slickness was too much. With her rhythmic clenching and the sudden flood, I slipped out of her.
The loss of connection drew a devastated whimper from her. She looked down, dazed, her body still shuddering with aftershocks. She saw me, slick and aching and abandoned between them. A wicked, spent smile touched her lips.
“Oops,” she mumbled, her voice hoarse.
She didn’t try to take me back inside. Instead, she scooted forward, water sloshing, until she was straddling my torso. Her soaked, trembling core was right over my stomach. She reached down between her own legs, her fingers wrapping around me, slick with her and the bath.
She began to jerk me off, her grip firm and knowing, as she lowered her body.
She lay back against me, her head nestling under my chin, her back to my chest, her ass pressing against my throbbing cock in her hand. The position was impossibly intimate. I could feel every shuddering breath she took. Petals were stuck everywhere—on her shoulders, in her hair, on my arms wrapped around her.
“Look at you,” she whispered, tilting her head up to kiss my jaw. Her hand worked me, a perfect, twisting rhythm. “All worked up from watching me come. My turn.”
Her kisses trailed down my neck to my collarbone, right over the wax marks. Her touch was fire. The combined sensations—her lips on the burns, her hand on my cock, the slide of her wet skin against mine—unraveled me completely.
“Pritha, I’m gonna—”
“I know,” she whispered against my skin. “Show me. Paint me.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the final command. My control shattered. The orgasm tore through me, a raw, pulsing convulsion that had nothing to do with finesse. A thick, hot rope shot up, streaking across her sternum, white against her pale skin.
She gasped, her hand never stopping.
Another pulse. This one splashed across her collarbone and neck. Another. A fourth landed on her chin and the line of her jaw. I was sobbing with it, my hips bucking helplessly into her relentless grip as she milked every last drop from me. The final, weaker spurts dotted her shoulder and the arm she was using to hold herself up.
She finally stilled her hand, but kept it wrapped around me, a possessive cage. We both panted, our breath mingling in the steam. The evidence of my release was everywhere on her front, thick and pearlescent, already beginning to drip into the water.
The clear bathwater around our wails clouded, turning a milky, opaque white where it mixed with my spend. Petals floated in the new, cloudy sea.
I went limp, utterly spent, my head lolling back against the tub. She shifted above me, turning her head to look at the mess on her chest with a sort of reverent curiosity. She dipped a finger in a pool on her collarbone and brought it to her lips.
“Mine,” she said softly, tasting it.
Then, because she could, for fun, she squeezed me again.
A bolt of raw, oversensitive agony shot through my spent cock. I yelped, my whole body flinching. “Stop, stop, please, too much—”
She giggled, that cute, evil sound, and gave one more gentle, torturous stroke before releasing me. “So sensitive. It’s adorable.”
She settled back against me, heedless of the mess between us, making herself comfortable in the cloudy water. She traced the wax marks on my chest with a fingertip. “My good boy,” she murmured, her voice full of a drowsy, sated pride. “My canvas.”