Enslaved

by Shoshanna Evers

  “You disregarded me when I told you that you weren’t ready to gallop. If you agreed to let me teach you how to ride, you should have been smart enough to take my instruction.”

  She looked up at him from the grass, that twinkle still in her eye. Or was that moonlight? “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No you’re not. But you will be.”

  Elisabeth stood slowly, her gaze dropping to the riding crop he held in his hand, hitting his own thigh rhythmically with it to get the feel of it. Good. She’d noticed.

  “Do you want to punish me, sir?” she asked. “Shall I strip?”

  “Take off your top and lace your hands on your head.”

  “Yes, sir.” She rushed to obey, but the smile that kept playing across her face made him realize she was playing him for a fool.

  “Turn around.” The moment she did, he struck her back with the riding crop, hitting her shoulder hard. She made a noise, but it didn’t sound like pain.

  Another strike. Another little whimper that sounded more like a whimper of pleasure than pain.

  Damn Elisabeth. “You wanted this all along. You purposely disobeyed me, during what could have been a wonderful evening together, just to get hit with my riding crop?” Smack.

  “It wasn’t premeditated, sir,” she gasped as he struck her again. “I just have a tendency to be naughty to get punishments. I’m sorry.”

  Smack.

  “I like them too much, I know.” She turned her head to look at him, unshed tears glistening in her eyes, and he threw the riding crop to the ground.

  “You could have just asked me,” he whispered. “If you told me that you thought the crop was hot and you wanted to know what it felt like, then you can be sure it would appear the next time we made love. But I need a woman who will obey me, especially when it comes to her own safety.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” She lowered her hands and smoothed her hair, looking beautiful as always but not like she truly understood how important this was to him.

  “If you were really sorry, you’d stop bratting for punishments like you used to do with Gregory, and be open with me about your needs instead. Communication, right?”

  “Right, sir.”

  “This sort of thing, Elisabeth.” He gestured at the horses, at her. “It’s a deal breaker for me. I’ve already been in a relationship where no one told the other what we needed to be happy. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. And I’m sure as hell not going to do it again.”

  “And I’ve given everything I had to offer to the one person in the world who was meant to love me back—my mother. Only to have my heart broken. And as you so delicately put it,” she said, pulling her top back on, “I’m sure as hell not going to do it again, not with anyone.”

  Later that night Elisabeth left the Pink Room and padded down the hallway to Trevor’s room. She knocked softly, not wanting to wake him. No answer.

  The door creaked when she opened it, but it didn’t wake Trevor, who lay in bed half-naked, his muscular torso tangled in his sheet.

  What would happen if she climbed in bed with him? The thought was enticing. Being wrapped in his strong arms would do a lot to make her feel better about what happened earlier. She’d been stupid to ignore him when he was looking out for her best interests.

  And he was stupid for thinking that the threat of a riding crop on her skin was a threat at all. He’d rewarded her for her misbehavior.

  Men. They had it all backward—just as backward as this relationship.

  Gregory opened the door to his apartment and greeted Andrew with a kiss on the cheek. As soon as he came inside, Gregory closed the door and Andrew dropped to his knees, bowing to kiss the toe of his boot.

  So. Fucking. Cute.

  “How was it at the club, today?”

  “Good, sir,” Andrew replied, shifting into a sitting position right there on the floor. “Haven’t seen your girl and the BAD Boys around lately, though.”

  That was probably a good thing. But Gregory would have to check up on Elisabeth soon anyway to make sure everything was all right.

  “Come. Let’s go sit in the living room, where we can make ourselves comfortable,” Gregory said, snapping his fingers like he used to do for Elisabeth. “Sorry, old habits die hard.”

  “I like it.” Andrew stood and followed him down the hall. To the left was the living room, to the right, the bedroom.

  “I knew there was a reason I picked you.”

  “Picked me for what?”

  Gregory stopped him with a hand on Andrew’s lean chest and dipped his head down, his lips barely brushing Andrew’s. The boy tasted like ChapStick, which tasted so good right then Gregory felt like going out and buying stock in the company. Or maybe just buying a tube of it so he could taste Andrew all the time.

  “Where are you, color-wise, cutie?” Gregory asked. He wanted to play, but playing his way involved very express consent up front.

  “Green, sir.” As if to prove his point, Andrew stood on his tiptoes and kissed Gregory back, opening his mouth to receive his tongue.

  “I’d like to tie you up and fuck you in the ass. Still good to go, or do you want to downgrade to yellow? It’s okay if you do.”

  “I am green. So green I look like a fucking leprechaun, sir,” Andrew grinned, and with that he bounced slightly, as if he wanted to bolt into the bedroom but knew he should wait for Gregory’s command.

  How did he get so lucky? This kid was a born sub.

  “To the right. Take off your clothes and kneel on the bed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Andrew rushed to obey.

  Elisabeth would have gone slowly, or whined until he threatened her with a beating before the fucking. But Andrew seemed to want to actually just . . . have sex. Incredible. Of course, BDSM was Gregory’s kink and always would be, which was why he didn’t want to start their sexual relationship off with vanilla sex.

  Well, vanilla gay sex.

  Tonight, he’d go slowly on Andrew when it came to the bondage, since he was a relative newcomer to the scene. But the ass-fucking? Oh that was going to happen exactly the way it had been happening in his masturbatory fantasies every night since he met the kid.

  Hard and fast, until at least one of them was screaming.

  Evening dinners became one of Elisabeth’s favorite times at Trevor’s estate. It was the only time she had his undivided, nonsexual attention, and they both used it to full advantage. She learned more about the man in the weeks she’d been with Trevor than she’d learned about Gregory in three years.

  When they dined at his home, Trevor always sat at the head of the huge formal dining room table, and she sat at his right side. Conversation flowed easily, as if they’d known each other in a past life or something. She’d never had such easy repartee with Gregory, perhaps because Gregory rarely stepped out of his role as her Dom.

  She imagined Trevor before she moved in, dining alone at the head of such a big table, in such a big house. Did he feel lonely? Is that why her companionship was important to him?

  Or perhaps he never dined alone. Perhaps he went through a series of submissives, or girlfriends, or lovers, until he tired of them and found someone else. She didn’t dare ask, because she didn’t really want to know the answer. She preferred to imagine that she had been the first to grab his attention away from work, the first woman to be fit for his home.

  Because slowly but surely, she was letting herself get used to being in Trevor’s mansion. Living his lifestyle. Wearing the clothes her personal stylist picked out for, the ones that Trevor bought her.

  Her days were kept busy by Adele, with a packed schedule filled with swimming lessons, tennis lessons, golf lessons, dance lessons, and even scheduled “free time” for her to do whatever, which lately had been sitting in the library, ignoring the dusty books around her and instead relaxing in the large easy chair
by the window overlooking the courtyard, reading smut on her e-reader.

  The other day she’d been practicing her serve with her tennis instructor—a woman who reminded her of every gym coach she ever hated in high school—when her cell phone rang. She dropped the racket to answer it. Her instructor had learned early on that everything got dropped when a blue cell phone rang on the Trevor Brooks estate, so she didn’t roll her eyes like she used to.

  Rule number two: Always answer the cell phone. Elisabeth wouldn’t forget that one anytime soon.

  “This is Elisabeth,” she said.

  “Are you busy?”

  “Never too busy for you, sir. Just having a tennis lesson.” At this, the instructor did roll her eyes, so Elisabeth turned around for a modicum of privacy.

  “Oh, perhaps you should finish your lesson. Adele set all that up for you, I wouldn’t want it to be for nothing.”

  “You have a beautiful tennis court, sir, but I’d just as soon show you how cute I look in my tennis skirt.”

  Elisabeth could practically feel Trevor’s mind change in that moment. “See you in my office in two minutes. Don’t change.”

  With an apologetic smile, Elisabeth set her racket down and waved good-bye to the instructor. “Duty calls!”

  From the woman’s muttering, Elisabeth gathered she had a pretty good idea of just what that meant.

  Without even bothering to wipe the perspiration from her brow, she ran up the stairs to Trevor’s office.

  Not even out of breath. Nice. All this exercise was actually helping. And to think, when she first moved in she couldn’t walk up the huge staircase without panting a bit by the top.

  She didn’t knock, just opened his office door and sat facing him on top of his gleaming desk. He continued to pace in front of his leather office chair, on the phone with someone talking business—but his eyes were on her.

  Slowly, keeping her gaze focused on his, she spread her legs wide and revealed the little white panties under her tennis skirt.

  “Sounds good, Marc,” he said into the phone. “Can you email that to me? Something important just landed on my desk that I need to attend to.” With that, he hung up.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “Hello, gorgeous.” Trevor stepped in between her legs and kissed her, his tongue dancing with hers.

  She broke away. “Wanna fuck?”

  “No need to ask. You’ll know when I want to fuck you.”

  “How?”

  “Because,” he said, sliding his finger between her wet pussy and the thin cotton material of her panties. “I’ll be fucking you.”

  With a quick jerk of his hand, he tore her panties from her body, and she gasped. “Please, sir, fuck me—”

  Before she could continue to beg he was inside of her, ramming his cock deep into her pussy. Her skin stung where he’d torn the panties off, which only made her hotter.

  “God, you are so incredibly sexy,” he said, thrusting harder. He pushed her back onto the desk and pulled her legs up to rest on his shoulders so he could go deeper, filling her completely and hitting her G-spot with unbeatable accuracy.

  “You’re not so bad yourself, sir.”

  He laughed and slapped her thigh in response, eliciting a moan of pleasure.

  “Play with yourself,” he ordered.

  Her hands were unrestrained, her clit fully accessible to herself in the position he had her in. But she didn’t feel right taking her own pleasure when she felt she should be focusing on his.

  “Make yourself come,” he said. “Play with your clit. I won’t stop fucking you until you do.”

  She reached her hand down tentatively, finding her own swollen bud, slippery with their juices.

  “Rub it,” he prompted.

  Halfheartedly, she played with her clit, but she didn’t want to. All she wanted was to be a vessel for his pleasure. Why didn’t he get that?

  Trevor came with a grunt, and she started to move away, but he held her in place, capturing her legs with one arm as he reached down and rubbed her clit hard and fast.

  “I told you I wanted to see you come. What is it with you and giving yourself pleasure?”

  She had no answer, only moans of ecstasy as he forced an orgasm from her, rubbing her clit so hard it was painful, which is what pushed her over the edge to climaxing with a cry.

  “I love your orgasm face,” he said, smiling. He took his hand off her pussy and licked his fingers as she watched with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal. “Thank me.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You better get back to your tennis lesson.”

  “Yes, sir. I just need to grab a new pair of panties from my room.”

  Trevor laughed and picked up the ruined cotton material he’d ripped off of her. “No, I think you should go without panties for now. I’ll need that image in my head while I’m stuck at this desk for the next couple hours.”

  No panties? That tennis instructor was definitely going to notice, considering how short her skirt was.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Elisabeth walked back down the stairs slowly, not wanting her skirt to flounce up and reveal her lady-bits to the staff. One thing she had to say for Trevor, he was different from her old Dom. And while it was going to take some getting used to, so far she liked it.

  So why was she holding her feelings so close to her vest?

  Loving and losing her mother didn’t mean she was going to love and lose Trevor. But things were unsteady between them, especially since he’d told her that her bratting was a deal breaker.

  She needed to learn to ask for what she wanted, what she needed. Trevor would give it to her, just as easily as he gave her two million dollars to invest in the charities she’d picked in New York City that needed more resources to help people like her mom.

  That wasn’t the only time Trevor called her in the middle of an activity so she could run to him when he had a free moment to play. It was almost like being at camp, if the camp counselor was a gorgeous billionaire Dom.

  But as much as Trevor seemed to enjoy having her the moment he wanted her, something was missing.

  It felt like there was some . . . something that was supposed to be there and wasn’t. And she didn’t realize what if was until he called her and she was so wrapped up in a book that she didn’t get to her phone in time, and she decided not to call him back.

  The realization came quickly and suddenly: she didn’t want to obey Trevor; didn’t want to submit or to fall in love. If she obeyed him, respected him, submitted to him the way he wanted her to, he’d fall in love with her and then she’d be done for.

  Because she wasn’t capable of loving him back.

  No, that’s not true. She just didn’t want to love him back. Loving someone ends in heartbreak, every time. Marriages failed. Mothers let the county take their daughters while they tried to get clean, twenty-eight days at a time. And it only hurt if you loved them. If you didn’t love them, it wouldn’t matter. If Elisabeth had learned anything at all in her life, it was that.

  But now she was risking everything by letting this charade continue. This mansion, this life . . . Trevor. It wasn’t meant for her.

  Elisabeth preferred pain she could feel, pain she could touch, and point to. Look, see this bruise, see this welt, this is my pain. Not the pain of loving someone who would only leave her alone in the end.

  But until she wanted to fall in love, she’d be unable to give him the level of submission and respect he desired.

  The phone sat, unanswered at her side in the library.

  Trevor set his phone down, his hand trembling. Why didn’t she answer? Was something wrong? He stood from his desk, locking his computer, and strode out of his office. He’d find her. No reason to panic over one missed call. She was not in the Pink Room. He called her phone again. No answer, a
gain.

  Sunday night they had the house to themselves, everyone went home to be with their families. He usually dined out on Sundays, but his chef left dinner in the fridge for him to reheat if he wanted to stay home.

  Knowing the house was empty made it harder to imagine what might have happened. What if she fell? She’d been taking that horse out on her own lately, what if she’d been hurt? Trevor started banging on each door as he went down the hallway.

  “Elisabeth! Where are you?”

  No answer. The house was big enough, at twelve thousand square feet, that it was legitimately possible that she was in another wing and couldn’t hear him, but he kept yelling for her.

  No answer.

  The pool. What if she went for a dip and drowned? Horrified at the thought and at the memory of a lifeguard telling him once that if someone was missing, to always check the pool first, because they could die in a pool but they’d be fine if they were just hiding in a closet somewhere.

  Of course, he’d been talking about children, Trevor’s nieces, but still. . . . He took the elevator down to the pool. Empty. The smell of the chlorine usually calmed him, but not this time.

  “Elisabeth . . . where the fuck are you?” he yelled.

  Running up the back stairwell, he stormed into the kitchen, then the library.

  “I’m right here,” she said mildly, her dark hair falling in loose pieces around her beautiful face.

  She was fine. Sitting in what he’d come to think of as her chair, reading from her device as usual. His immediate relief was followed almost as quickly by anger.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling you? On the phone, and yelling?”

  “Yes, I heard you.” She didn’t look up.

  “Look at me.”

  She continued reading.

  “Rule number one,” he said, his voice soft, dangerous. “You obey me in my house. When I want your submission you give it freely. And rule number two is you answer when I call your phone.”