Endless - Manhattan Knights Series Book Three

by Sienna Parks

  She quietens down, and I know I have to ask the question again. “Why did you go to Liam?”

  Her voice is barely a whisper as she speaks. “Because he knows what happened, and I knew he would give me what I asked for. I couldn’t come to you. You didn’t want to punish me hard, Master.”

  I can’t even look at her. I am seething with rage. “You never gave me the chance to understand, and to give you what you needed. You didn’t trust that maybe, just maybe, I know what you need and that’s why I didn’t punish you to the extent you wanted. I’m the one that decides, me and only me. If you disagree with my decisions, then you speak to me. Under NO circumstances do you EVER go to another Dominant and ask them to touch you. Your body is mine and mine alone. It is for me to touch and taste and punish as I see fit. Seeing you like that… knowing that he restrained you.”

  I need a moment to calm down; my anger threatening to overwhelm me.

  “I’m so sorry, Master. I told him I wouldn’t do anything sexual with him. Only the punishments.”

  “DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK UNTIL I TELL YOU TO! You haven’t earned that right. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Master Fitzgerald.”

  “How dare you try and justify your actions. Every aspect of our lifestyle is sacred to me. Letting him touch you, even in punishment, is as bad as letting him fuck you. Confiding in him instead of me, and going behind my back, is as bad as fucking him. YOU RIPPED MY FUCKING HEART OUT, VITTORIA!”

  Her hands shoot up to cover her mouth and hold in the sobs that are wrestling to break free.

  “Get your hands behind your back, now.” My tone is cold, devoid of any emotion, because if I let myself feel - I’m going to explode.

  I stand from the chair, and walk around her, pacing the room as I decide what’s next. Her eyes follow my every move, but I can’t stand it.

  “Don’t look at me. I can’t stand the sight of you, and I don’t want your eyes on me. I don’t want to see your shame.” She sobs quietly as I continue to pace, trying to work off some of my pent-up aggression and frustration.

  “Answer me this. If you walked into my playroom and found me whipping another submissive, would you be okay with it? Or would it feel like a betrayal? Think long and hard before you answer me, Nyx, because you obviously didn’t think about me yesterday.”

  She answers immediately. “I would be devastated, Master. I would feel betrayed.” Her words don’t give me any comfort in my absolute despair.

  “Devastated doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel. I’ve loved you every day since the moment we met, I fought against it for as long as I could, and when I finally gave in, when I decided that I had to have you, no matter the cost, I thought that you felt the same. I thought that we were in this together. You are the love of my life, and I can’t equate what happened, with me being the love of yours. If I was, you never would have done that.” The silence in the room is deafening as I struggle to put into words, what I’m thinking and feeling. “I’ve lain awake more nights than I can count, asking myself if I’m worthy of you, if I’m man enough to be the Master that you want; that you need. Even before you… before Budapest. And every night since then, I’ve been questioning where I went wrong. What I could have done to help you, what I could have done to love you more; to show you; to make you understand that a world without you in it, wouldn’t be any kind of world for me. All this time, I knew you were holding back, but I never thought for a moment, that you would hide something of this magnitude, something so fundamental to the way I would have handled you as my submissive. I know you said you didn’t want me to look at you differently, but that just shows your lack of faith in me, in us. If you don’t know by now that I will love you, no matter what, until I take my last breath, then I haven’t done a very good job of loving you, and I have most definitely failed you as your Master, in so many ways.”

  I scrub my hands over my face, my eyes tired and blurry from lack of sleep. I can barely see straight, and my limbs suddenly feel like lead as I walk across the room. I drop back down into the seat in front of Vittoria, defeated and exhausted, both emotionally and physically. I let myself sit for a few minutes, garnering whatever strength I can muster, to finish our conversation.

  “I won’t walk away from you. I promised you that I wouldn’t, and I stand by that, but it’s going to be a hard road back to having any form of trust in you. It’s going to take a while for me to be able to look at you and not see you shackled by him. We have so much to work through, so much we need to talk about, and if you can’t do that, if you can’t put your faith in me and let me work out a way to help you, and to help us, then you need to walk away. You need to stand up right now, get dressed, and leave. It’s your decision. I love you. I always have, and I always will, but I can’t fight for us on my own. You need to fight with me, and if you can’t do that, if you can’t promise me that you will never try to find solace in another man’s arms again, then we’re done. There’s no hope left. It’s fight or flight, Nyx. Which will it be?”

  “Fight. I want to fight for us, Master Fitzgerald. I love you, and I promise I will never let another man touch me. My body, my mind, my heart and soul, belong to you and only you. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you if you’ll let me.”

  “Very well. I guess I’ll have to take you at your word. Now, here are some new rules for you. If and when we return to the playroom, you will continue to present yourself as you did before, in your bra and panties. You are my gift to unwrap, and that is for my pleasure, not yours. If I ask you to assume your position anywhere outside of the playroom, then this is how you will present yourself to me. Naked. Not for my sexual pleasure, although, I will never be able to look at your body without appreciating its beauty; you will be naked so that you remember that there can be nothing that you hide from me. You must be completely open and honest with me. Your nakedness will be an outward symbol of this. You will learn to be comfortable baring yourself to me in every way. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master Fitzgerald.”

  “Also, you will not touch yourself unless I expressly tell you to. All of your pleasure is mine. I’ve been lenient up until now, my judgement clouded by my love and desire for you, but I see now, that it wasn’t good for you. You need to learn your place, and until you prove to me that I can trust you; until I feel that you’ve earned your orgasm, I will not touch you, and you will not touch yourself. Understood?”

  “Yes, Master Fitzgerald.”

  I couldn’t touch her, even if I wanted to. The mere idea of it stirring up so much resentment inside of me. I want so badly to erase his touch from her skin, to stake my claim on every inch of her body, but I am repulsed at the thought of how freely she gave away what was mine and mine alone. I have to choke past the lump in my throat to get through the rest of our conversation.

  “Do you have anything else you want to say at this point? Anything else I need to know?”

  She reaches out to touch me, with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I was being selfish, and I’m so, so sorry.”

  I push her hands off my legs. “Don’t touch me. Don’t move your hands without permission, and always address me as Master Fitzgerald until you earn the right to call me anything else.” I hate that her touch makes me angry. It’s always been a soothing balm to my inner turmoil, but the moment her skin makes contact with mine, I see her with him. “You will remain naked until I tell you otherwise. You will remain here until I return. Maybe it will give you some time to really think about what I’ve said, and about the decision you made yesterday. I love you, but I can’t be in the same room as you right now, because the disappointment is crushing me.” I stand and leave her, naked, crying, and alone in the silence of the living room.

  To an outsider looking in, I’m a total bastard for the way I’ve just treated her; the woman I love. But, what they don’t understand, is that Vittoria needs to be treated like this. She needs to feel punished, because it l
ets her know that I care. It gives her structure, and rules, and boundaries. I thought that being lenient after rehab was the right thing to do, but I was wrong. That’s when she needed me to step up and be her Master in every aspect of her life. This is all on me, and I hate myself for it. I hate that I let her down, I hate that I can’t stand to look at her, and I hate that I can’t pull her into my arms and make love to her, and tell her how sorry I am that I didn’t know her when she was young, and couldn’t be there to protect her from him. I hate that I have to be cold with her, but it’s for her own good, and mine.

  I’m so full of anger and rage and the deepest disappointment. I need to work through that and find my way back to her, and hope that I can help her find her way back to me in the process.

  One Month Later

  The first few days after my discussion with Vittoria, she seemed more like herself again. She was the perfect submissive, doing everything I asked of her without question, speaking only when spoken to, and always referring to me as her Master. The problem hasn’t been her willingness to obey me, but rather my own reluctance to let her in.

  It’s been over a month since we last made love. I’ve continued to act as her Master, punishing her when necessary, but never excessively. I give her pleasure, because I can’t deny her, but it’s infrequent, and I still can’t bring myself to have sex with her. If I don’t find a way to move past this soon, we may never find our way back to each other. Ever since that night at Andromeda, I haven’t been able to connect with her in any sort of meaningful way. I know she needs that intense bond between Dom and sub, but I don’t know how to recapture it. Every time I look at her, I see her restrained in Liam’s playroom. I see how broken she was, and how badly I failed her. How broken I feel, and I can’t fix it.

  Slowly, I can see her closing herself off from me again, becoming more and more introverted; protecting herself; her emotions all but switched off completely.

  She’s completely lost without ballet. She won’t even listen to music anymore. She’s withdrawn from everything she’s ever loved, including me. She refuses to leave the house, she won’t let her parents or her brother come to visit. She’s becoming a shadow of the woman I fell in love with, and slipping further from my grasp with every day that passes. She’s not my Vittoria. She’s lost inside the shell of a beautiful woman, whose smile used to light up my soul.

  Without ballet to help her cope, she needs the Master/sub dynamic now more than ever, to help her deal with her emotions. She needs the intimacy that comes from entrusting her pleasure to me, and I want that, too, but I feel helpless, because I just can’t give it to her right now.

  Vittoria is a walking oxymoron – a dominant submissive. Being a submissive is a power play for her. She has absolute control over what a man can and can’t do to her – what I can and can’t do to her. She sees BDSM for what it really is, or at least she used to. The Dominant may only exercise complete control over his submissive, within her parameters. She creates a framework which allows her to give herself over to me in safety. She will do whatever I ask of her, but only after setting the boundaries.

  This is the way it should be for all submissives, and I have always tried to teach the women I’ve trained, that submission to another human being, is the ultimate act of strength.

  There was a time that Vittoria understood that in its entirety, but she’s lost her way, and I’m to blame for that. She’s my responsibility, and in the time that she’s been mine, she’s become an addict, lost her career, tried to commit suicide, and then turned to another Master for help.

  If it was anyone else, I would walk away and let her find a Dominant that could help her find herself again, but I know, that if I abandon her now, despite my failure, it could push her over the edge. I need to help her reconnect with her life, I owe her that. I want that for her, and at my core, I’m a selfish man. I can’t give her up. I need her so much it hurts, even though I can’t seem to get over what she did, and it’s tearing me apart.

  I am being crushed from the inside out by the guilt of how badly I’ve handled all of this. I should have seen it. I should have been with her. I’m supposed to know her better than anyone, but now, I feel like I don’t know her at all, and yet I still crave her. She still calls to something deep inside of me.

  I go in search of her, because I just need to be near her, and as I walk down the hallway and into our bedroom, I can hear crying coming from the bathroom. I run to the door and turn the knob, but it’s locked.

  “Baby, open the door.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice goes stone cold. “Go away, Logan. You can’t help me.” A chill runs through me. She doesn’t sound like herself, and it terrifies me.

  “If you don’t open the door, I’m going to break it down.”

  Silence.

  “Please, Nyx.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not a goddess of any kind. I’m broken. I can’t be fixed.” I can tell from her voice, that she’s at the other end of the bathroom, so I take a step back and kick the door in. I can’t take this distance between us anymore.

  I stop dead in my tracks; the door broken and smashed, just like my heart.

  I find her sitting on the floor with a pair of sharp, metal tweezers, scratching a line into her thigh. Her flawless skin now marred by three perfectly parallel deep red lines, each one around four inches long. She’s staring at the floor as she carries out the repetitive motion, scratching her skin, over and over again until it bleeds.

  I drop to the floor in front of her. Grabbing the tweezers out of her hand and scooping her up into my lap.

  “What are you doing to yourself? Baby, this isn’t the answer. Hurting yourself isn’t the answer.”

  Her body is rigid in my arms.

  “I’m bad, Logan. Bad things happen to bad people. I’m… he knew. He knew I was bad. I can’t dance anymore, its God’s punishment. You don’t want me anymore because you know, you know I’m right. I’m damaged, and bad, and you hate me now, just like I hate myself. That’s why you can’t look at me.”

  Her tone is so cold and yet her speech is frantic. I’m losing her. I stand up, still cradling her, and walk out into our bedroom. I lay her down on the bed, and hold her face in my hands, forcing her to make eye contact with me, but she shuts them tight.

  “Open your eyes, Nyx. Now.” I know she’ll respond to her submissive name; she craves my control. “You are not bad. There isn’t a bad bone in your body.” She tries to pull away. “Nyx. Look. At. Me.” She obeys, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “You… are the most amazing woman I have ever met. I knew the moment I saw you, that you were special. That you were too good for me.” Her tears spill over and down her cheeks. “I have loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and the moment that I first tasted you, I knew that I would never recover, that I had tasted heaven. You need to hear me when I say this – God is not punishing you. Something terrible happened to you. Something that no little girl should ever have to deal with. You got through it, and grew up into this strong, confident woman. You became the most gifted dancer I’ve ever seen, and because it meant everything to you, you pushed through the pain. I can understand that. It’s awful and so wrong that you had to give up what you love, but you have to keep living. You can’t give up on yourself. You have so much to give. You are so much more to me than just a dancer. I don’t love you any less because you’re not a ballerina anymore. I know you’re going to find another passion. Something that you love, and that brings joy back into your life.”

  Her sobs become uncontrollable, and I question if this is helping her, but I persevere. I finally tell her about my dream of becoming a musician, the deal, my mom, the anger I felt for such a long time. I explain to her how I found a way to still be a part of the industry I love, and how I’ve made peace with it. I know it’s horrible that her career has been cut short, but she got the chance to live her dream for years, touring the world and performing with the best ballet company there is. Not everyo
ne gets that opportunity.

  “You can’t keep shutting it all out, Tori. You need to feel. You need to feel all of the hurt, pain and loss, and to grieve. Then, you find a way to let it go and move on with your life. You don’t need to do it alone. I’m here for you every step of the way. Don’t say that you’re bad or that you’re being punished, ever again. You are mine. You are worthy of love, and success. After everything that you’ve overcome and achieved in the face of adversity, you deserve the best that life has to offer, and if you’ll let me in, I want to be the person to share all of that with you. I love you. You will always be mine. I’m sorry I haven’t shown you that lately, but that’s my issue, not yours. Please, Nyx. Please, don’t hurt yourself.”

  I lie down on the bed beside her and pull her into my chest. Her tiny body shaking as she cries, strangled, anguished pleas for the pain to go away. It’s heartbreaking to witness, but there is nowhere else I could ever be.

  There are so many unanswered questions going round in my head, and I have to ask the most important one and I cradle her in my arms. “How long have you been hurting yourself, Tori?”

  Her words are a whispered confession. “Since the night you found me in Liam’s playroom. Never hard enough to draw blood before.”

  I pull her tighter. “Fuck. This is my fault. If I had been paying closer attention to you, I would have seen it, but instead I was pushing you away.”

  She lifts her head, her eyes finding mine. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Why, Tori? Why would you hurt yourself? I don’t understand.”