by Gemma James
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
He let out a cruel, bitter laugh. “You claim you love me but—”
“I do love you.”
“Then why? Make me understand how you could almost fuck my brother after I gave you what you wanted on our anniversary? I gave you everything, Kayla. Everything!”
My mouth trembled as the truth stalled, frozen on my tongue. I didn’t want to say it, but not voicing Ian’s illness wouldn’t make it go away. “He has a brain tumor.”
He blinked. “A…what?” That hadn’t been the answer he was expecting.
“When I found out…” I hiccuped, holding back another sob. “I was blindsided. Simone called me, otherwise, I wouldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have gone to see him.”
He shook his head, disbelieving, and I rushed to explain.
“He’s refusing treatment.” My limbs quaked in defeat, and only my willpower to obey him kept me on my knees instead of sprawled on the floor. “He’s got a few weeks left.”
His jaw worked in a frightful way, and his eyes brightened with the threat of tears. No matter the decrepit bridge between him and his brother, this news affected him.
But my betrayal was the real clincher.
I slumped, and as I dragged the memory of what I’d done to the forefront of my mind, my ashamed gaze fell to the floor. I didn’t understand how I’d ended up on that couch with Ian, my hand in his pants, my lips pressed to his.
“Get into position and look at me.” His tone left no room for argument.
Letting the bullwhip slip from my grasp, I forced my body to fucking work. I dredged the last of my strength and straightened my spine. Hands behind my back, breasts thrust out. Eyes on him.
“How far did it go?” he asked…no, demanded.
“Please don’t make me tell you.” My cheeks flamed under his scrutiny.
“How far, Kayla?”
“We kissed.”
“What else? You’re going to tell me every detail.”
He was going to make me drown in my guilt. “I took my shirt off, and I…I…”
“You what?”
“I touched him. I made him—” The word hitched in my throat. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t describe Ian coming. And no matter how long I analyzed my behavior, I couldn’t explain what had been going through my mind while I’d had my cheating hand around his brother’s cock.
“Spell it out for me, and address me properly when you do.”
“I jerked him off, Master.”
“Look at me.”
I lifted my gaze, realizing after the fact that I’d been staring at his shoes. “I’m sorry, Master.”
“Do not lower your eyes again.” He took a step closer. “Did his cock fill your hand the way mine does? Did you want to take him in your mouth?”
His caustic tone made me nauseous—so fucking sick to my stomach that I couldn’t speak.
“Answer me!”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what I was thinking.” I held my chest, as if to keep my heart from spilling to the ground. “Whip me, Master. I’m begging you.”
He kicked the bullwhip out of reach. “I’m not taking this away for you. You did it, now you get to deal with the consequences.”
I bent at the waist, nearly falling sideways. I’d never regretted something so much in my life. If I could take it back…
But would I? Knowing that I might never see Ian again? Never touch him or hear his voice?
He was dying.
But the reasons didn’t matter to Gage. There were no ands, ifs, or buts with him. Only obedience and my unconditional loyalty.
“Please, Gage. I need you so much right now.” I was a selfish bitch for needing him to comfort me in my time of grief when I’d broken his heart.
“Don’t move,” he said through clenched teeth. “When I get back, your knees better be redder than your damn cheeks.”
“Where are you going?” I crawled after him, reaching with desperate fingers, hysteria rising and careening through me, pushing me to the edge of deranged.
“I said don’t move!” His contempt rained down on me as I kneeled at his feet.
“Yes, Master,” I choked out, closing my eyes and letting my tears burn my face.
I listened to his unsteady breathing, his fight to hold it together. “I love you so damn much, Kayla.” A pause…a beat of irreparable damage passing us by. “But right now I need to clear my fucking head.”
My eyes flew open, and through my misery, I watched him climb the stairs. His feet raged war with each stomp. He wrenched the door open, and an instant later the light went out. A ricocheting bang signaled his exit. My stomach heaved and erupted, and I spewed my fear all over the floor.
The interesting thing about darkness was how it amplified everything—silence, the pungent smell of puke, even the unfaithful heart beating a furious tempo behind my breastbone. I pushed to my knees and clasped my hands at my back.
And I waited.
18. How To Save a Life
Gage returned some time later. The light switched on before his heavy feet brought him down the stairs. He stopped in front of me, where I’d kneeled like a statue for the past…three hours, maybe? The only thing I knew for certain was how badly my knees ached. How my whole body ached.
“Can I please stand, Master?”
He grasped me by the shoulders and helped me hobble to the bed. My legs were numb, full of tingles, and I could hardly walk without his support. I sat at the end and waited for him to speak. The way the corners of his mouth twitched told me he had much to say.
He sat next to me and entwined his hands as if to keep them busy, so he didn’t lose control and use them on me. “I went to see Ian,” he said.
I held my breath, my heart pounding too loudly in my ears.
He lowered his head. “He’s my fucking brother, Kayla, but all I could think about as I looked at him was you.” Pushing to his feet, he paced the area in front of me. “You touching him, kissing him, fucking jerking him off.”
“Gage, I’m sorr—”
“Let me finish.” He pushed a hand through his hair in agitation. “I’m rotten to the soul because all I could think about was how his death would affect you. Call me a selfish bastard, but I don’t want you grieving him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
I held my breath, deliberating between anticipation and dread.
“So I convinced him to check into a special treatment center out of state.” He held up a hand, silencing anything I might say. “I love you enough to give you the world, and that includes doing everything in my power to save his life.”
To say I was shocked was an understatement. “Master—”
“Can you shut up and listen?”
I nodded, clamping my lips.
“But that doesn’t mean my motives are selfless. He’s leaving in two days, and you won’t ever see him again.” He paused, and the hard line of his mouth put me on alert. “It doesn’t matter if he lives or dies, Kayla because he agreed not to come back. I made it clear that if he comes near Oregon, or contacts you in any way, I will punish you for it.”
Gage knew how to play people to perfection. Ian loved me enough to stay away. I hoped to God he loved me enough to live.
“I own you.” Gage bent and twisted his fingers in my hair, jerking my head back. “With the exception of Eve, there is no one else in your world but me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” I said, my words drifting across his lips in a breathless whisper.
“You had better, because I’m demanding every last molecule of your heart.”
“I understand, Master. I never meant for any of this to happen. If I could take it back, I would.”
“Well, when you fuck around with temptation, you get burned.” He let me go, rose to his full height, and crossed his arms.
“I hate myself for ruining your trust in me.”
“You think I forbade you
to see him because I didn’t trust you? Fuck, trust has nothing to do with it. It’s just cold, harsh reality. You’re weak when it comes to your greedy cunt, and even weaker when it comes to your heart. I exploited that, baby.” He paused long enough to let out a cruel laugh. “I can’t even blame you for it because I knew you loved him. Hell, Kayla, I wrecked any fucking chance you had with him from the moment I forced your legs apart.”
Matching action to words, he bent and slipped a hand between my thighs. “Spread them, now.”
“Yes, Master.” I opened wide for him, and he feathered his fingers so lightly over my pussy that I wasn’t sure if he meant to touch me at all.
“I stole you from him,” he said, voice ragged. “And I’d do it again. I have no remorse or shame in making you mine. My only regret is allowing you to stumble.”
“I did that on my own.”
“No, you didn’t. I own you, which means I own your mistakes. And you can be sure this one won’t happen again. That taste of freedom you got? Savor it. This is the last time I leave you to your own devices.”
Unable to speak, I simply nodded. My heart beat in a frenzied tune of fear. I’d backtracked us by months…years possibly.
“I confiscated your cell and the key to your car. It’ll be a frozen day in hell before you get them back.” He gave my inner thigh a sound slap. “Thank me for disciplining you.”
“Thank you, Master.”
His fingers pinched my thigh. “Beg me to punish you.”
“Punish me, Master. Please.” I gazed at him through my tears, meaning every word, despite the terror of the unknown rising in the form of vomit. “I deserve whatever you decide.”
He palmed my cheek. “This decision wasn’t easy for me. I want you to know that. But I feel this is the only way to ensure you never stumble again.”
I swallowed hard, barely getting past the huge lump of terror in my throat. “What are you planning to do to me?”
He dipped a finger between my legs, crooking it in just the right way. “No orgasms for the duration of your punishment. That’s a start.” He stood and gestured to the bed on which I sat. “You’ll sleep here tonight.”
I blinked a tear down my cheek. God, this hurt. The distance growing between us, the way he couldn’t quite look me in the eye. I already missed him.
But he’d gotten Ian help. If anything good came from this, it was the chance Ian now had at living.
19. Property of Gage Channing
He made me sleep in the basement for a week. I did my best to act normally when Eve was home, which was the only time he let me out, but it was harder than I thought. I missed my daughter. I missed my freedom.
I missed him.
One mistake had destroyed our happiness, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get that back. But I had to try. No matter what he had in store for me, I had to do everything in my power to earn his forgiveness.
On the eighth morning, the door creaked open, just like it had during the previous week. Like clockwork, he brought my meals down to the basement. As he descended the stairs, I wiped my cheeks, certain I had tear stains on them from crying so much.
Every night as I fell asleep, first thing in the morning, and every time he left me alone in his dungeon. The separation was killing me. I wished he would punish me and get it over with, even if it meant taking strikes from every implement of pain he owned.
His heavy feet landed on the bottom step, and I realized something was different about today. He wasn’t dressed for work, and he wasn’t carrying a plate of food.
“Strip,” he ordered.
I peeled the long T-shirt I’d been sleeping in from my body.
“Put on a pair of heels.” He gestured toward the collection of stilettos against the wall, right under his paddles and floggers.
I crossed the room, selected a red pair because I knew he liked the color, then slid my feet into them, one by one. As I bent over, I missed the way my hair used to curtain my face, trailing toward the ground. Straightening my spine, I faced him. And I waited.
He held out a hand.
“Come here.”
I went to the hand beckoning me, as eager as a well-trained dog. Knowing this didn’t change a thing. I gladly slipped my palm into his.
“Today you begin the first day of your punishment.”
Something ominous tingled down my spine. We climbed the stairs in silence—the kind of quiet that was the polar opposite of comfortable. As he led me through the house, I wanted to ask questions.
What are you going to do to me?
Will it hurt?
Will you ever forgive me?
He pulled a keyring from his pocket and unlocked his office. This was a new development, as he’d never felt the need to lock his office before now, and that made me question what waited on the other side of that door.
Fitting his hand to the small of my back, he ushered me inside, and that’s when I spied the cage standing upright in a corner, barely big enough to fit one person.
I gulped.
“For every day that Ian is in treatment, you will spend your time in that cage while Eve is in school. I’ve arranged to work from home for a few weeks.”
Paying attention to the intricate details, I inspected the cage and guessed he planned to put me in there facing the corner. There was an open area about the right height for my ass.
I cast a pleading glance his way. “Please don’t do this, Master.”
“I didn’t do this. You did.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry.”
“Kayla, I’m not angry. I’m fucking destroyed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, falling to my knees and kissing his bare feet. I was that desperate.
“I know you are, and that’s why I know you’ll take your sentence with gratitude. I expect you to thank me every goddam day for it.” He grasped my hair with his unyielding fingers. “Get up.”
I was certain my heart was about to claw its way out of my chest and die a slow, torturous death on the floor. I hadn’t been this scared in a long time. That cage seemed larger than life with its door wide open and waiting for me to cross the threshold.
I cast a nervous glance at Gage. “I’ll do anything else. Anything.”
“Begging won’t save you from this.”
My voice rose to an unnatural level. “Please—”
“What I did for him,” he interrupted, “I did for you.” He gestured to the small prison. “Now you’re going to do this for me.”
He was punishing me for wanting Ian to live, and in a way, he was also punishing his brother. The longer Ian fought the cancer, the longer Gage would imprison me. He was possibly the most sadistic man on the planet.
“When it’s over, will you forgive me, Master?”
For the first time in days, he touched me. Raising his palms, he framed my cheeks. “Pay your penance, baby, then we’ll talk forgiveness.” He swept away my tears with his thumbs, and it was those sparks of gentleness, of compassion, that kept me forever under his spell.
But with that spark of empathy also burned an ember of a wound that wouldn’t heal anytime soon. My week spent in the basement hadn’t softened him a bit. I deserved the consequences, but knowing what I was in for and getting it were two different things. I eyed the cage with its cold bars, various hooks and stockades, and shivered.
“Don’t move.” He crossed to his desk and pulled a ball gag out of a drawer, along with a set of nipple clamps and leather cuffs. I stood like an inanimate object—save for the shivers of my naked body—as he revealed the biggest, most gag-worthy contraption of rubber he owned.
“Gage—”
“I’m your Master right now. Not your lover, not your husband. I’m your fucking Master, and you will obey me.” He held the rubber ball in front of my trembling lips. “Open your mouth.”
“Can we talk about this?” I asked in a rush. “I know what I did hurt—”
“Kayla, open your mouth now.”
> Seconds passed—silent, agonizing seconds that weighed heavily on us. I realized that nothing I said would help my case or absolve me of my sin. My temporary moment of insanity didn’t matter because, on the most fundamental level, I’d betrayed him.
My terror of enduring that cage didn’t matter. He would impose his will on me until I relented, and he’d do it because that’s what he needed to get past what I’d done.
I swallowed hard, utter dread coiling around my neck like a boa constrictor. The collar I wore, the ring on my finger—both bound me to the spot with the inescapable strength of chains. Parting my lips, I let him inch the ball in, allowing the contraption to spread my mouth unbearably wide…wider still until the gag filled every crevice. He fastened the strap around my head, and I drew in slow breaths through my nose to calm my raging pulse.
To quiet the panic that flared inside me.
Saliva collected on my tongue and threatened to leak past my lips. The gag would have me drooling like a fool in no time. That was the thing I hated most about being gagged. The humiliation and the accompanying saliva that would drip down my chin before landing on my breasts.
“Give me your hands.”
I met his eyes and pleaded for mercy. Mostly, I hated not having a voice, despised not being heard. Another tear fell as he buckled leather cuffs around my wrists.
“You lied to me when you promised to stay away from him,” he said, moving on to my ankles. “Which is why you’re going to endure that gag.” He stood and gripped my chin. “Blink if you understand.”
I blinked, and blinked some more. One, two, three times with deliberate meaning.
Forgive me, Master.
“Stop it.” He took my nipples between two fingers and pinched. “Did he touch your nipples?” He tilted his head and studied me, almost as if my forced silence would answer. “He did, didn’t he?” He gave them a hard twist. “Did he make them hurt like this? Or maybe he sucked on them. I know how much you like your nipples played with.” He let go and lowered a hand between my legs. “Did he touch you here? Did he fuck you with his fingers? Maybe he even dipped his tongue into my cunt. Did you let him taste what’s mine, Kayla?”
