Her Master's Reckoning

by Lily White

  Such a wicked grin. Such a cunning man. “Is that what you want?”

  Pure honesty. “Yes. I think we’re both done with this life.”

  His mask fell into place at the simple suggestion. “Too bad. You asked to be free. I’m giving you that. Just as you asked.”

  Say something, Aiden.

  Anything.

  Demand I stop giving up on us.

  The man didn’t so much as blink an eye. “Now would you like to learn, or what?”

  All I felt was disbelief.

  No. That was a lie.

  I felt fierce determination as well.

  “Fine. Teach me how to have sex with a man I have absolutely no desire to fuck.”

  His eyes glimmered. “I already taught you that years ago, Pet, but I can’t be in front of you urging you on every time. Christopher might get jealous.”

  My glue. The man who could take all the fractured parts and put them back together.

  “Why can’t you?”

  His head canted to the side, his voice soft. “Ah, Pet, try not to be like that. It will only make it hurt us worse.”

  The distance between us lengthened, Aiden creating miles of empty road I had no hope of running on my own. “Pretend I’m the Courtesan. You have me at a point where I’m not going to fight you and I’m more than malleable to your will. Which, by the way, I don’t think Chris was ever planning on fighting you, so don’t believe a word that fucker says.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have my ways. But instead of letting him play you, recognize what he is and use him what he’s good for.”

  “Sex? I already told you, I don’t want-“

  “No, beautiful. Not sex. Use him to play the perfect Courtesan so that the Society won’t object when I declare you a Master and set you free.”

  Like a knife to the heart, but there was still time to make him understand that our lives are so intricately intertwined, he didn’t want to live without me.

  “Okay. You’re my Courtesan.” I said, taking advantage of a man who’d had too much to drink. “Get on your knees and beg.”

  Voice dark, “I’ve tried that before and look where it got me. With my dick in my hand, which, by the way, was manly enough to give me what you denied me. Thanks for the suggestion.”

  The reminder was like feet trampling my soul. I’d struck out with lies in the one moment he’d attempted to bring down his walls and make himself vulnerable.

  I’d done that. It was my fault alone. One I had to work to make up for.

  “Fine,” I said, attempting another approach. “Crawl to your Master.”

  His laughter boomed through the room. “I think we both know that’s not going to happen.”

  Rolling my eyes, I threw up my hands. “Okay, can you just walk over here, then, so I can tell you what to do?”

  Aiden shook his head. “It’s not about telling me, Pet. It’s about enticing me. Make it painful for me to keep my distance from you. Make it so that, in a room full of women stripped down to their skin, their asses presented in the air like a sexual buffet, I still see only you. That’s how you make a person eat from your hands.”

  Something in the way he’d said that made me think he wasn’t speaking words that were purely hypothetical.

  Confusion wrinkled my brow. “That’s not what you did to me. I wouldn’t have cared about other men in the room at first. I didn’t want to sleep with any of them.”

  “You’re not training you, Rebecca. Every Courtesan is different. Look at the man you’re training and tailor your plan to suit him.”

  “But I don’t know that I can ever make Greyson see me that way.”

  “Why the hell not?” he argued, the sincerity in his forceful voice staggering. “You didn’t even try and yet you somehow managed to do it to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AIDEN

  First, I wasn’t letting her go. Let’s just get that one fact straight. Not entirely at least. I was simply determined to make her beg for me to let her stay.

  Second, who in the hell was Greyson?

  I don’t think she even knew she used the wrong name, she was too baffled by the confession I’d made. I rolled the new information over on my tongue, tasted it, almost asked about it and then stopped myself.

  It would be better to discover the truth of the asshole she was training if nobody knew I’d caught him in his game.

  Filing away that piece of information, I stared at a woman whose jaw had dropped just enough to let me see her shock.

  “Don’t act like you didn’t know it already, Pet. I gave you a collar. I gave you everything you didn’t know you wanted. You’re asking for your freedom and I’m giving you that. What haven’t I done for you when you’ve come out and asked?”

  I still had no intentions of letting her go. But she didn’t need to know that. Sure, the choice would be there, at least as far as she believed. I wouldn’t have to say no in the end because it was already a forgone conclusion that I would change her mind.

  Rebecca existed for me.

  Was born for me.

  Would be by my side until the day she died.

  She was mine in every sense of the word.

  Nothing - not the Society, not her title, not this fucking Greyson who I needed to look further into - would change that.

  Making her beg to stay would be the fun part.

  She sat motionless, eyes assessing, mind disbelieving. We would be there all night if I didn’t prod her forward. “So how will you entice me across the room?”

  “Aiden...”

  “No,” I snapped, “This isn’t Aiden and Rebecca.” It couldn’t be Aiden and Rebecca because if I allowed that, she would never learn just how irresistible she truly was. She would fail as that asshole’s Master and I would never forgive myself for letting that happen. “This is Rebecca and her Courtesan. How the fuck are you going to get me across the room?”

  All she had to do was look at me with rebellious green eyes begging for attention and I was hers.

  What I would allow anyone else was her seduction. But they could never have her defiance. That was mine alone. Mine to covet. Mine to punish before making her scream and moan.

  That sacred place inside her that could never be broken was too precious to trust in another man’s hands.

  And never was I drinking this much around her again because this woman was driving me mad.

  “Get me across, Rebecca.”

  She straightened her posture, pulled on her mask, and finally, fucking finally, played the role.

  Her emerald gaze turned to me with intent, lids slightly narrowed, mouth tight but not so thin it lost its shape. Canting her head to the right, she braced her hands on the edges of the desk on either side of her legs, manicured fingers gripping over it. My eyes tracked up toned arms, following the line of her body until my attention was caught on her breasts. The position she was in pushed them together, a hollow forming down the center I wanted to chase with my tongue.

  How many times had I come on those beautiful tits for it to flow down that very same center?

  She was impeccable. Even when filthy dirty, this woman was a star outshining the sun. A siren urging me to explore the depths around her without worry of crashing against jagged rocks.

  Crossing one shapely leg over the other, she let go of the desk to rub a hand down her right leg, a wrinkle forming between her eyes that mimicked pain.

  I stepped forward. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I hurt myself, I think.”

  I almost believed her.

  Another step. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  A flicker of a glance, her mouth rounding now as if the pain were just on the threshold of something she couldn’t bear. Rebecca needed to be pushed to accept pain at times. I knew that face well. Knew when she was swallowing down the ache so her body could digest it as something else. I stepped again, almost forgetting that the game we played wasn’t real.
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  “No. You’ve done enough,” she answered, feigned censure in her tone. Still, she rubbed at a spot on her calf drawing my eye to skin against skin, dark red fingernails dragging along just hard enough to leave the faintest of pink lines.

  I was halfway across the room now, my cock becoming full, not yet hard, but close. Although I hadn’t caused the pain she had, it still fascinated me to see her body respond to it.

  “Just a spasm in the muscle, I think.” The tips of her fingers rubbed at the spot, my heated stare tracing the line of her leg, the curve of her hip, higher to find her shirt had fallen open more with the way she bent over. My hands clenched into weak fists.

  “I should look at it.”

  Another glance, disgust now, as if I were an insect she wanted nowhere near her. “No. I don’t want you to touch me.” Her brows pulled together, the line between her eyes deepening. “But it does hurt. I don’t know why.”

  Another step. Another. “Let me look.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Please.” I actually meant the word.

  Looking up, she uncrossed her legs, a second’s opportunity to peek up her skirt, black lace panties that matched her bra. I wanted to pull them off her body with my teeth. Breathe her in. Taste.

  “You’ll only make it worse. I’m not sure you can do anything right.”

  Good girl, make me prove it.

  Another step and I was within reach of her, my hands reaching forward until she backed me away, her foot planted against my chest, the heel digging in the top ridge of my abdomen. “I said no.”

  Had I been a weaker man, I would have dropped to my knees just then. But I wouldn’t give that to her again. Couldn’t. Not when she didn’t understand what I’d given her the last time.

  “Tell me what I can do.” The Courtesan I played would wait for her invitation, the Master in me wanted to plow forward and conquer. The restraint was almost painful.

  A roll of her eyes as if humoring me, as if my mere existence made her suffer. “Fine. You can rub my foot. But don’t touch above the ankle.”

  I wanted to grip my fingers over that ankle while rubbing my other hand of the back of calf and thigh, but I wouldn’t. If I reached too close to her ass, I wasn’t sure I could resist leaving my handprint on it.

  Her condescending tone of voice would have cowed other men. To me, it was simply a challenge. I’m going to fuck you, I thought, slow, fast, soft, hard, make you scream, make you beg, make you want it.

  Make it so you can’t breathe without it.

  I stepped back into reach. She put her heeled shoe in my hand, turning her head as if the favor I would do for her was an annoyance. As if allowing me to touch this small part of her was the favor.

  Fingers dipping beneath the strap of her shoe, I peeled the leather from her foot, dropped it to the floor and ran my thumb up the center of the sole with just enough pressure to make her eyes close, her lips to fall apart. She quickly disguised the pleasure, but not fast enough to hide it from me.

  A jerk of her foot, the threat of pulling it from my grasp. “Not like that,” she admonished, kicking out to push me away. “You’re terrible at everything you do, aren’t you? Don’t touch me.”

  A grin tugged at the corner of my lips. “Let me try again. Let me touch you again.”

  Her mouth puckered then stretched, a wicked grin tilting the sides. “Maybe if you beg.”

  A shiver coursed down my spine, the need to dominate. This role was becoming far too difficult to play.

  Bright eyes staring at me, the expectation of compliance. “I mean it, Pet, on your knees.”

  “Let’s just pretend I did what you asked.” My voice was so dark, so deep, my sight trained on her with the singular focus of a man who would devour a woman.

  Another curl to her lips. A shrug of her shoulder. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

  Her ass would be the one to pay for that particular slight. I would not forget the attempt. Rebecca offered her foot, slender and delicate. “Don’t fuck up again.”

  My thumb massaged the tight muscles, “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Like what?”

  “Touch your leg?

  She made a point to appear as if considering it. “You can suck on my toe.”

  My lips curled. The bitch. She was a natural for the role. “I think you know exactly what you’re doing as Master, Rebecca. I think you’ve been playing me all along.”

  A sparkle in her eye confirmed the supposition.

  My tongue licked beneath her toe, sucking the digit between my lips with the promise that she’d be sucking on a part of my body before too long. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for me.

  Pulling my mouth away, I traced my hand higher than her ankle. She attempted to pull away, but I trapped it in my grip, my patience at playing the inferior running thin.

  “Let me go.”

  “Make me,” I crooned.

  Her eyes met mine. “You’re supposed to be the Courtesan.”

  “I’m afraid that moment has passed,” I warned, sensual violence surging in me with this woman as the target.

  Her voice was husky, lust softening her expression. “How am I supposed to learn?”

  I grinned. “Last lesson: Everything I’m about to do to you, don’t let your Courtesan do. The end.”

  “Aiden,” a breathless whisper.

  “I don’t know that name, Pet. Not anymore.”

  Her body shook, lips falling apart once again. She didn’t know that name anymore either. One tug on her leg, and her bottom slid to the edge of the desk, her skirt riding up her thighs until what I wanted was almost in view. Bracing her hands on the surface of the desk just behind her, she offered herself to me without hesitation, was caught in a web of sensual defeat, had surrendered with the ease of a conditioned response.

  I taught you that.

  Me.

  No other man.

  I owned that.

  How silly she was to think I’d give it up.

  Running my hand to her knee, I forced her legs apart, the seam of her skirt ripping. I would replace it. I always did. I provided everything for this mesmerizing beauty that didn’t understand how easily she’d entranced a beast like me.

  Palm sliding higher, fingers dipping beneath the hem of her skirt, panties so wet and inviting that my teeth clenched together with the need to rip them off.

  “This reaction better be for me and no one else.”

  Rebecca nodded, her head falling back as her tits pushed forward. I’d make quick work of the shirt and bra when I was ready. “Only you,” she promised, as if I needed the confirmation.

  Slipping a finger beneath soaked lace, I traced the slit of her pussy. Another shiver wracked her body, my eyes focused on the soft spot between her neck and shoulder. The bruise was fading. I’d let it heal completely before replacing it with my mark alone.

  I dipped just the tip of my finger inside her, the muscles clenching greedily, her hips bucked toward me, begging. “No moving,” I demanded, removing the contact only to pinch her clit that was already swollen and ultra-sensitive. She cried out, perspiration misting between her heavy breasts. My pet had a favor to requite, item one on the list of many in my mind.

  “Lie down, push your body higher until your head falls back over the side of the desk.”

  No hesitation, not even a moment of thought to object. Rebecca stretched over my desk, her hair tumbling like water over the side.

  So hard, my cock was painful against the barrier of my pants and she would relieve at least some of my suffering.

  Some.

  Not all.

  I planned to stretch this moment out as long as Rebecca could endure it.

  She may want her freedom.

  I would take her by the hand and lead her back inside her gilded cage.

  Rounding the desk at a snail’s pace, my shoes barely making a sound against wood floors in a room bathed in anxious silence, I watched Reb
ecca’s chest move with each inhalation of breath, watched with fascination at how still she’d learned to keep her body as she waited. Like a statue, or sleeping goddess, perfectly suited to a man who demanded patience.

  Reaching her, I wrapped my fingers in her hair, toying with the thick strands just beneath her skull, my fingertips smoothing over her scalp to feel the rounded bone shell beneath. “Unbuckle my pants.”

  My demand was stated as simply as you would ask a person to pass something across the dinner table, without the dark violence I felt inside. She reached with slender arms to obey instantly, her nails tapping against the metal buckle as she worked the thick leather free. The leather creaked to bend, finally slipping away from the buckle.

  “Keep pulling the belt from my pants. Drop it to the floor when done.”

  She knew. If those eyes were any indication, she knew why I wouldn’t let her stop at simply freeing the buckle. Closing quickly, fluttering open again.

  The belt had become my favorite toy with her. We’d used everything: whips, canes, crops, feathers, straps, it didn’t matter. But the belt I kept with me, the belt I wore like a badge or a reminder, having worked the leather smooth on her ass, her thighs, her back. Rebecca would look at the belt and know what a simple stretch of leather could do.

  A heavy thud of metal against wood, the sound jarring. “Pants next,” I instructed as my fingers continued to curl through her hair, a gentle tugging that was nothing close to the force I used to punish.

  My cock was free moments later, hard, throbbing, the head smooth over a veined shaft. Using her hair to guide her head, I pulled down until her neck arched gracefully back over the edge of my desk.

  “Open your mouth.”

  She obeyed, lips parting, the gloss of her lipstick catching the light above our heads. Behind me the night was velvet darkness, the boughs of the willow tree swaying, the surface of the lake so serene I imagined it was a mirror that would reflect your face back at you. But inside this office, a storm was brewing full of wanton need.

  Shaft in hand, I traced the shape of her lips with the head of my cock. A tease. A taste. Testing the warmth of a mouth that could tantalize a man into committing murder. The tip of her tongue flicked out impatiently and I smiled to see she wanted more.