She’s always cute after a whipping. Too exhausted and overwhelmed with pain to spit fury at him, and too afraid to disobey. Riven trails the braided leather across her latest stripes, smearing the blood and drawing a weak, miserable whimper from her throat.Â
“Cute,” he comments aloud. “You look like you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Yes sir,” she answers, a little urgent – but not outright wailing and pleading. “I’ve learned, I’m sorry I disobeyed, I’m sorry.”
There’s a lot of room to make her more desperate. Riven drags the whip gently over her back again, mulling it over.
“I’m sorry,” Ariadne repeats, a little sob breaking her voice. “Please, sir, I’ve had enough, please…”
Riven coils the whip loosely and strolls across the room to drop it into the sink. He hears her exhale and is instantly tempted to pick it back up. But not this time.
She doesn’t move as he walks round in front of her, not even to inch her fingers away from his boots. Her head stays down, so he leans down to catch her chin. There’s no resistance as he turns her face up.Â
The harsh light of the interrogation room is not kind, glistening off the tears and exaggerating the blotches in her cheeks, the dark hollows under her eyes. The bruise on her cheekbone is almost faded, but he can still just about make out the fading smudge of colour. He runs a thumb none too gently across it, and grabs her jaw to halt her weak attempt to pull away.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Almost a whisper this time, hopeless and broken.
Riven smiles. “So polite,” he mocks softly. “This really is the only way to get manners into you, isn’t it?”
“I’ll do better, sir,” she promises, even though they both know she’ll be snapping at him again as soon as she dares.
“I doubt it,” Riven smirks, and watches her flinch.Â
Her head drops again as soon as he lets it go.
“Am I dismissed, sir?” she asks tremulously. “Please?”
“Can you get up?” Riven challenges.
She tries, on shaking legs. The weak little “anh!” as her bruised knees hit the ground again is just gorgeous.
“Let me help you,” Riven hums.
“I can do it sir,” she protests, but he takes her arms anyway and she doesn’t fight him. There’s raw fear in the way she searches his face. He holds her steady until she has her balance, then turns away to collect her discarded clothes for her.Â
The shirt and undershirt behave as one garment. He holds it out for her to put her arms in, suppressing a chuckle at her obvious apprehension. She cooperates, and he dresses her like a child, careful to hold the fabric away from her back as he pulls it down her body.
“Thank you, sir,” she mumbles, and earns herself another grin.
“Lean on me,” he instructs. She does. She knows that if she fights it he’ll put an arm round her back. She keeps her eyes on the floor as he leads her through the security room, unwilling to look at her coworkers at the computers. They don’t look at her either, and they don’t challenge Riven. He notes a little smugly that Sam has moved a browser window over the top of the feed from the room he was just using.
“Sir?” Ariadne queries plaintively when he steers right at the end of the hall. “Where are we going?”
“I won’t make you work this afternoon,” he tells her. “But since you can’t be trusted, I think I’ll keep an eye on you for the rest of the day.”
Distrust and dislike ghost across her features, but she’s too cowed to argue.
Max waves a greeting as they enter the office. He smirks as he takes in Ariadne’s obvious distress and Riven smiles right back at him. He takes Ariadne to his desk, then pauses to make a little show of deciding where to put her.
“Right here,” he decides, pointing at the floor beside his chair.
Ariadne balks, then tries to disguise her reluctance as confusion. “Sir?”
“On your knees,” he commands with relish, “right here.”
He could drag her into position and push her down, but he waits for her to sink to her knees on her own. Red blooms in her cheeks and creeps outwards to her hairline. Riven pulls up his chair and settles comfortably. He leans back and rests a hand on the top of her head and it feels fucking fantastic.
Nothing says power quite like having some hapless broken wreck of a person kneeling by your feet.
The warm glow lasts as he settles in to tackle his emails. If he’s totally honest, it’s a distraction. Bloome would be completely right to write him up for a lack of professionalism. Which is why he wouldn’t be doing this if Bloome was in the office. Everyone here has already seen Ariadne’s stripes.
He has to wonder whether she knows that too, or if she’s waiting on tenterhooks for the humiliation of being caught on her knees.Â
If she is, she doesn’t show it. She’s gone distant now, drained and exhausted in the aftermath of the adrenaline. She sits shivering and silent with her head down and her hands folded neatly in her lap.
She flinches when Riven reaches out to muss her hair. It’s very charming.
Everything about this is charming. He can’t believe he’s never thought of it before. She’s perfect like this, his perfect little toy. Right here where he wants her.
