Black Velvet (The Velvet Rooms Book 1)

by Linnea May

  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.

  “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 ne
ver 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.

  I draw her a bath, and as I reach over to start the water, she gasps in shock next to me.

  “Your hand!” she exclaims. “It looks terrible. You need to see a doctor!”

  I hadn’t even noticed the blood on my knuckles, it only caught my eye when I left traces of it on her beautiful face.

  She takes my hand, carefully pulling it closer to her so she can inspect the damage I’ve done to myself.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, trying to downplay the extent of the injury. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

  She furrows her eyebrows as she looks up at me.

  “Where’s your medical kit?” she wants to know.

  I sigh. “I will take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Please,” she begs. “It’s my fault this happened. If you deny me taking care of you, it’d feel like another punishment.”

  She pauses, her face turning to a focused expression as she contemplates her next move.

  “You’d hurt me,” she adds. “Not allowing me to take care of you would seriously hurt me.”

  She can’t hide a little smirk on her face when she’s speaking those words to me.

  “Little minx,” I say. “You know you can’t play that card every time you want something from me.”

  Her face changes to a disarming smile as she bats her eyes at me. “But could I today?”

  I’m defenseless against her charm and let her do as she wishes. She bandages my hand while we’re soaking in the bathtub together. Now that the adrenaline rush is over, I can feel the mundane but stinging pain on my knuckles as she doctors the wounds.

  I watch her as the water plays around the curves of her breasts. Just the picture of her, naked and focused as she tends to me, is enough for my cock to crave her. She smiles when she notices my hardness jutting against her thigh.

  “Even after all of this?” she asks, winking at me.

  “I can’t help it,” I say. “With such a beautiful pet right in front of me.”

  She fixates her attention on the bandage around my hand.

  “All done,” she says, moving my hand to the side of the tub. “Keep it out of the water.”

  I smile at her, struggling to believe that she’s still here. Only a few hours have passed since I learned that she was not the woman I had planned to kidnap.

  I really kidnapped her, I took her from her life, when she had absolutely no idea that this would happen to her.

  That’s why everything with her has felt so real from the get-go. Because it was real.

  She was a real victim to my twisted needs. And yet, she’s still here. She still wants to be here, just as I want her to be here.

  But that doesn’t change the facts we’ve tried to ignore until now.

  “People must be looking for you,” I say. “Your friends, your family. If we turn on the news, we might even see you there.”

  She curves her lips into a sad smile.

  “I don’t have many friends here,” she says. “Most of them were his friends, we always hung out together, and I never bothered to make my own friends since I moved here. But yeah, I guess work will miss me, and they probably informed my mother.”

  “You will have to let them know that you’re okay,” I tell her.

  She nods in agreement. “I know I have to.”

  “And you need to tell them something about where you were,” I add, feeling a heavy lump in my throat as I’m overcome with guilt.

  “I’ll come up with something,” she says, as her hands absentmindedly wander below the surface of the water until she finds my cock.

  I sigh when she wraps her hand around it, slowly massaging my length by applying and releasing pressure in turns.

  “My life had been pretty bleak in the days leading up to you,” she says in a low voice, without stopping what she’s doing. “I can always blame it on that. Say things got too much for me and I needed a break from everything, a little retreat, a hiatus from life.”

  Her eyes find mine, locking onto my gaze as her lips part in an alluring motion.

  “Is that why you were at that bar that night?” I ask her. “To drown your sorrows?”

  She nods. “Yes, I guess you could say that.”

  “And what made you steal that coat?” I want to know.

  Her eyelashes flutter, while her mouth tips into a coy smile.

  “Maybe I knew it would lead me to you.”

  Chapter 47

  Liana

  Day thirty-nine. Today is the day when everything was supposed to end.

  He told me everything, and filled me in on every little detail about this arrangement I had involuntarily become a part of. He told me about the agency, about the agreement that there would be no communication between him and them once the girl was in his house, about the girl’s requirements, and the settings and rules they agreed to before consenting to become his slave.

  He also told me how much they’d be paid once the thirty-nine days were over. It was enough for them to never have to work again, which most likely served as the biggest incentive for most of them.

  “And you never fell in love with any of them?” I asked him at one point.

  Joseph shook his head.

  “I was done with them as soon as the contract was over,” he said. “They usually bored me at that point anyway.”

  I also asked him if any of them ever fell in love with him. The
thought that he has done this with quite a few women before me left a sting in my heart, and I’d be surprised if all of them had been as untouched by the entire thing as he claims they were.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It never concerned me.”

  His words were cold, but earnest. It’s still hard for me to believe that I, of all women, should be the one to crack his hard shell, but once I did, I found a core so gentle, wise and loving that I never stood a chance.

  The last eighteen days were like an early honeymoon, a retreat for two broken souls who selfishly took the time to grow with each other.

  I never left his house until this day. I begged him to allow us to complete the deal as arranged, since there was no urgent reason for me to show up anywhere.

  I no longer have a job to return to, and another secretary was hired to deal with the aftermath of Professor Miller’s death. There was nothing left for me to do, as most other issues could only be dealt with by the academic staff.

  Calling my mother was the hardest part. She had a major freak-out when she heard my voice on the phone, and after her initial shock was over, she soon migrated to fury over my “infantile behavior”. It was the first time that I told her about the break-up with Luke and losing my job. That’s how disconnected we are.

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be called by the police in the middle of the night? Telling you that your daughter has been missing for days, and then giving you those reproachful hints when you have no idea where she might be?” she asked, her annoyance palpable. She didn’t know about any of the trouble that had befallen my life, but once I told her, she sighed with understanding.

  “I’m just glad you’re alive,” she concluded after I gave her that half-assed explanation, in a tone that insinuated that she was mostly glad to no longer have to worry about me because it disrupted her own life.

  It’s all well and done.

  I woke up next to Joseph every single day, our nervous hearts intertwining more and more with every moment we spent together. This was the most intense way to start a relationship, but it works for us.