by Linnea May
His voice is so loud and filled with pain that I can feel it rumbling in my own heavy chest.
“Please-”
I’m interrupted by him punching the wall next to the dresser. The sheer brutality of his fist ramming into the wall makes me jump to my feet and hurry away from him, clutching the towel around my body.
He’s hyperventilating, his fist flying into the wall again and again, with so much force that plaster is falling down around him. But the biggest damage is what he’s inflicting on himself. His knuckles are leaving bloody prints on the white wall as he keeps punching it in a furious rampage. He’s growling with every punch, but it’s not the pain of the impact that tortures him.
His agony runs deeper than that.
“Stop it!” I yell at him from afar. “Jose-”
I stop and correct myself. “Master! Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!”
He keeps going, his bloody fist slamming into the wall again and again. Each impact feels like a dagger to my heart. Seeing him hurt himself over something I did to him is too much to bear. I’m choking, my heart racing in panic, as I watch helplessly.
I can’t let this happen. I need to stop him.
“Master!” I yell again, this time running toward him. His destructive frenzy scares the hell out of me, but my worry for him overpowers any sense of fear I might have for my own safety.
“Master,” I say again, trying to calm my voice to a soothing tone, as I let go of the towel and wrap my arms around him from behind, evading his vicious fist. My embrace is fueled with trust and empathy running stronger than fright. My only concern is for him, his safety, his sanity.
His body is hard and tense when I first force my touch on him, but I can feel him relax instantly. The towel falls to the floor, leaving me naked and exposed as I press myself against his strong and rough body.
His fist comes to a halt, pressed against the wall while his breathing settles to a calmer rhythm.
“Master,” I whisper. “Please, don’t do this to yourself. You’re hurting me more than you hurt yourself.”
He’s shaking, slowly moving his fist away from the wall, while his other hand finds mine, grasping it in a tight grip. I flinch in surprise when he turns around in a sudden motion, pulling me toward him in a close embrace. I know he doesn’t want me to see it, but I notice the threat of tears shimmering in his eyes before he pulls me in for a kiss, taking my face between both his hands while our tongues entwine in desperate need for each other.
I can smell the blood on his knuckles as it gets smeared across my cheek, mixing with the tears that are running down my face.
He breaks our kiss, staring into my teary eyes with a gaze of dark significance.
“You have to leave,” he whispers.
I gasp in shock.
“No,” I object. “I don’t want to leave.”
But he shakes his head.
“You have to leave, now,” he insists. “I’ll pay you whatever you ask for, but you cannot stay here. Not after what has happened.”
“What?” I breathe. “You can’t be serious.”
I place my hands on his, wincing as I touch the blood on his right knuckles.
“Master, I don’t want to leave,” I say, my lips trembling as I suppress the urge to cry. “I want to stay here. I lo-”
“No,” he interrupts, shaking me. “You betrayed me. You made me a criminal. You knew, and you didn’t tell me. This was supposed to be my game, my rules, under my control. You took all of that away from me and made the game yours.”
I try to shake my head at his accusations, but I can’t because he still holds me in a tight grip.
He pauses, adding a hysteric laugh between his ranting.
“I gave you a fucking collar,” he adds. “A fucking collar.”
I choke up under another rush of tears that takes away my ability to speak.
“You may not be a whore, but you can’t be trusted,” he hisses. “You bewitched me like a fucking succubus. You made me lose myself, and play fucking boyfriend and girlfriend with you. I fell for your fucking tricks. You made me believe things that weren’t there.”
“That’s not true!” I disagree. “I never tricked you. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I never played you. Everything has been honest and real. Everything we did was true-”
“No!” he barks. “It was all based on a lie, an imbalance of knowledge that put you in power. You fucking witch!”
I’m sobbing in his hold, simultaneously glaring up at him with determination. He’s angry, but I can tell that he’s not really angry at me. He’s angry at himself.
“The only person who fell for anything was me,” I say through compressed lips. “I fell for you. I may not be the woman you ordered, but I want to be yours.”
I halt for a moment, trying to regain my composure.
“I’m proud to wear your collar,” I say in a suppressed whisper. “I don’t do it because you pay me to.”
Despite the ferocity of a hurt beast still apparent in his gaze, I can see him softening to my words. He has every reason to feel betrayed, and he’s told me enough about himself and his past to enable me to make sense of this outburst.
He’s all about control, a safe setting, an agreed upon arrangement, set in a safe and consensual setting. His mistake and my knowledge about it turned all of this upside down.
He needs to know that he’s not to blame, and that I had to intention of playing him.
“You might have made a mistake,” I breathe, fixating on his tormented gaze. “You didn’t take the woman you ordered, but you did take the right woman.”
His eyes flicker with confusion.
“This was meant to happen,” I add. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
Chapter 44
Joseph
She’s still doing it. Her spell is still working on me.
Her words, her touch, all of it embraces me with a soothing warmth that terrifies me to the bone. This shouldn’t be happening. None of this.
I haven’t lost control like this in years, and it’s all because of her.
“You betrayed me,” I accuse her again. It takes all my strength not to let her tears get to me. Who knows if they’re real? Who knows if anything she says or makes me feel is real? She’s a liar.
She touches my hands, seemingly unfazed by the blood that’s running down one of them.
“I didn’t want to betray you,” she says. “I wanted to be with you. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I was scared you’d make me leave.”
She pauses, biting her lower lip, as she seeks my eyes with a pained face.
“And now you are,” she utters. “Now you want me to leave.”
I let go of her. She’s robbing me of my sanity. I need room to breathe, room to process the extent of what has happened with her.
I kidnapped a woman. I took her away from her life. There might even be a police report on her.
“People are searching for you,” I tell her. “You need to go home. You need to get away from me.”
“No!” she protests, wrapping her arms around her naked body. “I want to stay-”
“You can’t!” I yell at her. “We can’t act as if this was okay, as if it was right for me to bring you here, to make you my slave, to fuck you, to…”
I stop myself before I say something truly stupid. But she finishes the sentence for me.
“To love me,” she whispers, her eyes glistening with tears as she casts me a hurt look. “Isn’t that what you were going to say?”
I look at her, swallowing the emotions her appearance evokes within me. She has blood running down one side of her face, my blood, mixing with her salty tears. Her hair is still damp from the shower, sticking to her slim shoulders in stray strands, her smooth body exposed to me as she steps closer to me.
She’s insane. She must be, if she still wants to be with me after what I’ve done to her. There’s no other explanation. And her next words only prove me right.
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“Lock me up,” she says. “In the attic. Punish me.”
“What?” I bark at her. “Are you fucking ins-”
“I don’t care how long it takes for you to forgive me,” she stops me. “But I know I deserve to be punished.”
She pauses, taking another step forward, pressing her naked body against me.
“Let me prove to you that I want to be yours,” she breathes. “Punish me. Lock me up in the attic until I’m forgiven.”
“You have lost your mind if you think that I’d actually do that,” I hiss at her. “You have lost your fucking mind.”
I put distance between us, walking backwards as if she was posing a threat to me. Her eyes follow me, dazed with sorrow and fear, and terrifyingly clear at the same time.
I can’t deal with this. I shouldn’t. She’s already taken too much from me. She needs to get out of here.
“Get cleaned up and dressed,” I tell her. “I will drive you home.”
Her face migrates to an expression of utter shock. She darts toward me, but this time I won’t let her catch me. I raise my hand, pointing my finger at her as a warning.
“Pet!” I yell at her, causing her to stop mid-motion. “Get cleaned up and dressed now.”
I can see her struggling to obey. She’s been trained well enough to feel an instant urge to comply with what I say when I address her that way. It’s become part of her nature, a natural instinct that tells her to follow her Master’s wish and receive pleasure in return.
There’s no pleasure attached to my current command, but the need to serve is still there.
“You’ll get dressed now,” I repeat my words, still pointing my finger at her. “Do you understand?”
She glares at me through narrowed and saddened eyes, processing my words with furious determination. I don’t even know what to wish for. To hear the words from her lips? Yes, Master. It would mean that she’s following my order, but it would also mean that she agrees to leave.
I look at her, standing there, completely naked, hugging herself because no one else does, blood and tears running down her precious cheeks, in desperate need of her Master’s touch. And I’m denying it to her.
It breaks me to see her like this. I need to leave the room before things go horribly awry. I can hear her sobbing behind me when I pull my eyes away and head for the door to leave.
As soon as I turn the knob and open the door, I can hear her steps on the carpet, closing in on me with hectic speed. Just as I turn around, wanting to beckon her to stop, she darts right past me, slipping through by ducking underneath my stretched out arm and running down the corridor.
My eyes follow her, my body turning still as I watch her run toward the attic door.
Chapter 45
Liana
I don’t even know what I’m trying to do. It’s like a switch has been turned on inside my head, leaving all control to my legs as they carry me to the room I’ve been so desperate to get out of. For all I know, it won’t even be accessible. Every door around me has been locked for the past three weeks.
But this one is not. I’m relieved and surprised when the door actually swings open when I throw myself against it with a little too much force. I stumble into the room, taking a moment to regain my balance, before I manage to close the door behind me.
It can’t be locked or unlocked from the inside, I remember that much from my very first night here. I let the door shut and immediately fling myself against the shabby wood, using my own body weight to keep him from entering.
My heart is racing as wild thoughts bounce back and forth inside my skull.
What the hell am I doing? I’m completely naked, my hair is still wet from the shower, blood and tears are drying on my cheeks, and all I wish for is to be locked away in this hellhole?
The room is just as empty and cold as it was three weeks ago. It’s unwelcoming to begin with, but an even more terrible place to be in, in my state.
My skin is covered in goosebumps within seconds, and my bare feet hurt against the rough wooden floor. Outside, I can hear his hurried steps approaching.
I yelp when he bangs against the door from the outside, shaking my entire body with his savagery.
“Get out!” he screams from the other side of the door.
“No!” I yell back at him. “You’re breaking the rules. I deserve to be punished.”
I was hoping that he’d jump on board if I retreated to the contract he apparently laid out with the woman who was supposed to be here in my place.
But it appears he’s no longer interested in playing that game.
“You get out of there right now,” he repeats. “Or I’ll drag you out myself. You know I can.”
He bangs against the door again, causing it to open for just a moment before I manage to push it back. My feet slip across the cold wood, and a splinter gets jammed into one of my soles causing agonizing pain.
Another bang against the door almost causes me to fall, and this time it’s my back that slides along the harsh wood of the door.
“You’re going to hurt me if you break in the door,” I warn him. “I thought you promised never to hurt me!”
“Step away!” he yells, sounding beside himself. “You’re acting crazy.”
Maybe I am. But it’s the only thing I know to do. I’ll spend the entire day and night like this, if it means he doesn’t send me away.
He lets go of the door, and I can hear him taking a step back.
“What do you want from me?” he asks, sounding defeated. “How much do I have to pay for you to let this go and be reasonable?”
I growl in anger.
“I’m not a prostitute!” I remind him. “You won’t pay me anything, no matter to what end. I don’t want your money.”
“What then?” he asks.
I hesitate, biting my lower lip as I stare down at my feet. My toes are beginning to hurt because of the damp cold in this room. I take a deep breath, collecting my strength to go through with this.
I can do this. I can.
My gaze wanders around the small room, the room I wanted to so desperately escape when he first locked me up in here. All of that seems so far away. I can’t believe it’s only been three weeks since then. It feels like another life, another person who did this to me, another person who all of this happened to. Both of us have changed, and it’s thanks to being with each other, to finding one another.
“You know I’ve fantasized about something like this for the longest time,” I say, raising my volume just loud enough for him to hear me on the other side of the door. “In the darkest corner of my mind, I’ve fantasized about being kidnapped, locked away, tied up and forced to please a handsome man like you.”
I close my eyes. Even when there’s no one looking at me, it still fills me with shame to admit all these things, to give voice to my darkest fantasies. The same fantasies that caused Luke to be disgusted with me. The memory pains me, but I may need to face it aloud so he’ll listen to me.
“You know, my ex-boyfriend, he always said that I was broken because of the way my father treated me and my mother,” I say. “He insinuated that I like to be punished because I was hit as a child. But I don’t want to believe that, and I don’t think it’s true.”
I pause, listening for him outside the door, to see if he’ll interrupt and silence me again. But all I hear is the steady sound of his breath as he waits for me to continue.
“My father was an asshole,” I go one. “I’d never want a man to treat me the way he treated my mother and me. No. I want this. I want you. I want what you’re able to give me.”
I hesitate again, trying to hold back the tears as they threaten to choke me up again.
“If you send me away now, I feel like I will lose you forever,” I proceed. “And I’d rather rot in here for days than to never see you again.”
I can’t help but to start sobbing again, another rush of tears running down my face.
Outside, I can hear him moving
, but he’s not banging against the door this time. He’s not hammering against the wood or yelling for me to come out and leave.
“Let me in,” he says instead, his voice soft and defeated.
Chapter 46
Joseph
She lets a few moments pass before she moves away from the door. I turn the knob and push it open carefully, in case she’s still standing close to it.
I find her standing in the middle of the room, naked and distraught, with new tears mixing with the dried-up bloody mess on her cheeks.
A violent cry escapes from her chest when I hurry toward her, wrapping my arms around her small body, as I pull her in for a heartfelt embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper in her ear, while she cries in my arms.
“You said you’d never hurt me,” she whimpers. “You promised.”
I close my eyes, my chest heavy with pain as I’m confronted with her agony.
“You have no idea how sorry I am,” I repeat. “For everything.”
She buries her face in my chest, shaken by brutal sobs as I lift her up and carry her out of the room. Her crying intensifies when she realizes that I’m removing her from the attic, the place she thinks she deserves to be right now.
“You’ve been punished enough,” I tell her as I carry her down the hallway. “My pet.”
Her gaze wanders up to me, searching for clarification.
“You’re not sending me away?” she asks, hope shining through every syllable of her question.
I shake my head.
“You’re insane, crazy, twisted,” I tell her. “But you’re my crazy pet.”
I set her down to open the door to her bathroom. “Let’s clean you up.”
She sniffs and nods, looking so insanely vulnerable and exhausted that I’m overwhelmed with the urge to protect her. No one, especially me, should ever be allowed to make her feel like this. It angers me to know how she’s been treated by other men before, her father, her ex-boyfriend. They don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her.
