Shattered by Alexia Foxx

despair.
    He was so consumed by it he lost track of himself, and Robin, and the whole of the room, until her hand came down up on his shoulder.  She guided him to the floor beside the chair and he slumped there, his head propped up against the seat.
    Robin returned with food and water and Nathan took his meal from her hand again.  She stroked his sweat matted hair away from his face as he leaned against her leg and chewed slowly.  Again he could smell how deeply aroused she was, but if not for the scent and his proximity to it he would never have known.  She was all patience and control as she fed him those few precious morsels.
    When he was done she stood and placed on e hand upon his shoulder, pushing down until he was flat on the ground.  He curled up on his side and she took the loops of rope around his wrists, laid them together and slipped them under the leg of the chair.  It was completely symbolic.  Just as easily as she had done it he could have undone it, in theory.  But his mind had stopped fighting his body, and right now his body wanted nothing more than to simply lay here.
    “Ta ke a deep breath and exhale,” Robin said, and as he complied she pulled the plug from his ass.  The relief was bliss and he shut his eyes at last.
    Robin left the room and Nat han knew exactly where she went.  He was glad when two sets of footsteps re-entered.  He was glad she’d find relief tonight too.

***
     
    Nathan awoke to muffled voices.  He hurt everywhere still, but his despair was gone.  He had expelled it all yesterday and it hadn’t returned.  He was content here, on the floor.  He was at peace with this.
    Sometime in the night Robin had draped a blanket over him and he was wrapped up in it so tight now that he was reluctant to move.  Why rush to start a day that would only hurt.  He’d stay right here, curled up against the leg of the chair like it was something to be cuddled with until Robin told him otherwise.
    His restfulness was making him bold th ough.  He peeked up from the floor to the source of those voices and found Robin there with another.  The person seated was writing something and after a few minutes Nathan realized she was dictating a letter.  That surprised him.  Peasants and gypsies, as a general rule, were illiterate, but somehow he didn’t imagine she was too.
    Nathan averted his attention back to the ground after that.  He knew he had seen something he shouldn’t have.  It cracked the calm he’d been feeling since waking.  The thought that Robin was illiterate bothered him more than it ought.  And the more he thought on it the more it weighed on him.
    Robin and her scribe left the room together.  Nathan was aware of his relative freedom right now, that he could so easily lift the chair and stand, but he found no incentive t o do so.  The welts her cane had left along his backside made even the thought of moving unpleasant.  Actual movement would be so much worse.
    But he was forced to when she finally returned.  She carried with her food and drink, and that she wanted him to rise was all the motivation he needed.  Pain or not his subconscious demanded survival.  Nathan very carefully, very slowly, lifted himself to his knees when she sat down.  His wrists were still looped to the chair leg and a low rung prevented him from doing any more than letting his hands rest against his thighs.  Not that he needed to do more.  Robin brought the cup to his lips and fed him scraps of meat leftover from whatever meal she had enjoyed.
    And it was all done in silence.  What Nathan had witnessed earlier still burned in his mind and she was offering him no other distraction.  She wasn’t taunting him or hurting him; he had no other outlet to expend his energy and the need to say something boiled up in him until he couldn’t contain it.
    “ I could teach you how to read and write.”
    Robin stared down at him for just a second as the comment registered.  Then she stood and