Break Me (Enslaved #2)

11 EMMA

My days fall into a new routine, a little less lonely than the former, but full of humiliations nonetheless.

Dax brings me breakfast every morning when the lights come on. He makes me eat from the dog bowl at his feet, petting me and calling me a good girl. Then he puts the collar on my throat, takes me for a walk down the halls, and trains me to keep my attention on him—off the screaming or sometimes eerily silent girls that guards drag by. My hands and knees are always sore and red after having crawled on the rough stone ground, and Dax starts bringing a lotion that he applies when we’re back in the cell. Despite everything, I feel oddly cared for as he makes me lie down on the mattress and rubs the lotion into my skin.

He also tends to the tattoo while he’s at it, washing it carefully with a warm cloth and applying antibiotic ointment. There’s no stagnant routine or cold proficiency to the way he goes about it. Rather, he treats the mark with care and respect every time, like it’s a sacred symbol. I try to keep my focus elsewhere, not wanting to see the tattoo, but it’s hard to keep my eyes away as he runs his hands across my skin, watching the mark with admiration. So I repeatedly glance toward it—his hands and eyes—with a strange and unwelcome curiosity.

One time, I even catch myself staring at it like it’s a fascinating painting. The moment I realize what I’m doing, I scoot under the blankets and keep my arm there. But the image lingers in my mind, flickering across my inner eye, stirring emotions I don’t want.

After tending to my scuffed skin and the tattoo, Dax attaches the pump to the collar and makes me kneel in front of him and say the words he has made into my mantra: I am a precious little submissive who is making my trainer very proud. Then he inflates the small balloon at my windpipe until the words and breathing through the constriction are all I can focus on.

Clouds fill my mind—a fluffy white layer rolling over a clear blue sky.

“You don’t belong to yourself,” he says, stroking my cheek affectionately. “You don’t even get to decide when you breathe anymore.” He presses the pump again, and a soft moan slips past my lips as I sink deeper into the thoughtless world where only his command exists.

With each time Dax makes me say the mantra, the words sink a bit deeper into my brain. I try to deny them, but it’s getting harder with each day. Because I do want to please Dax. When he’s not here, I think I don’t, but the moment he stands above me, watching me with those commanding eyes and speaking to me in that confident voice, my resistance crumbles.

After Dax leaves, the floaty fluffiness usually dissipates, and a strange restlessness takes its place. But it’s not the same restlessness that had me in a vise the first week here. Now, it doesn’t seem brought on by fear or hopelessness. It’s more like a restless longing for something—or someone.

The rest of the day, I’m alone in my cell most of the time. The other guards only come in here to bring me food or to take me to get hosed down or let me exercise in a fitness room for half an hour a day.

Besides dragging me down the halls, tying me up in the washing room, or holding me down when panic thrusts me into insanity at night, the guards don’t touch me or order me around. I think it’s because I’m Dax’s special project. I overhear a couple of guards mentioning it, and I remember Dax and Mikhail talking about a chip—which must be what they injected into my shoulder on the first night—and making sure I was off-limits.

It gives me a sense of security even though Dax is twice as intimidating as most of the men here, his deep scowl twice as scary. The only man who can compete is the gigantic bald brute with the long scar at the side of his mouth, but he rarely comes in here, to my great relief.

Whenever Dax comes in, my tense shoulders drop as a strange kind of relief settles over me. I shouldn’t be glad to see him, but I can’t help it. After all the petting and the good girls, he has become a friendly face compared to the rough guards, who drag me down the halls with cruel force and press me into the mattress with cold indifference at night until I stop screaming. They make the loneliness cut particularly deep when they won’t speak to me with anything but clipped orders and aggressive commands.

Dax, on the other hand, usually answers most of my questions, although brief and brusque. But then again, I don’t ask many, afraid of what I’ll find out.

When he takes me from my cell without the collar one day, I do want to know where we’re going, though.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask as he leads me down the hall, letting me walk upright.

“To my office,” he replies without looking at me.

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer, and the sting of disappointment is worse than it should be. I don’t know what I was expecting. I must have been so starved for affection—any attention at all—that my head blew up what little he has given me to big proportions.

“Get in the chair,” he says as we get inside his office. He’s this strange combination of impassive, like on the first day in here, and speaking with a note of authority that has me rushing to comply.

I don’t realize what I’m doing until I’m on the seat, about to lean back. Stopping myself, I stiffen and scoot back onto the edge of the chair. I might not want to obey, but I’m afraid to do the opposite, so I aim for some middle ground.

Dax shakes his head like I’m a foolish child as he presses me into the seat with a hand on my chest. “I’m not even gonna bother. Comply if you want; resist if you want. I don’t need your submission for what I’m doing today.”

Without looking at me, he pulls a long strap over my ribs, just below my breasts, and pulls it tight. Then he does the same across my stomach and proceeds to restrain my hands.

“Last chance,” he says as he stops by the stirrups and holds his palm up. “Are you gonna submit or not?”

Fuck. My eyes dart back and forth between his hand, the stirrups, and the rest of the room as if I can find my answer somewhere there. But there’s nothing to help. Not even any paraphernalia laid out to hint at what’s to come. And I don’t think that would even matter. The choice is up to me. Can I live with myself if I give in? Can I stand the disappointment in his eyes if I don’t?

I don’t know why disappointing him seems so terrible. I don’t owe him anything. But somehow, it matters. More than I care to admit.

When it takes me too long to decide, he grabs my leg.

“No, no,” I blurt, pulling my leg from his hand. “Please, just…”

He levels me with an impatient look, and before he can grab my leg again, I quickly lift it and place it in his hand of my own accord.

“I’ll submit,” I say, and the next words fall over my lips quite automatically. “I’m sorry.”

His expression remains flat as he studies me. I hold my breath. Now it’s me waiting for him to decide. Forgive or not.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat in a whisper, casting my eyes down. “I’ll submit.”

He lifts my leg into the stirrup, and the cold metal has me shuddering. I close my eyes, trying to draw in on myself and shut out the humiliation.

Dax steps back. “Uh-uh, this is not how it works. If you want to submit, you’ll have to stay with me. Look me in the eye.”

I glance up, then down. He’s terribly intimidating with his bulging arms crossed over his chest, brows lowered in a grim expression, and jaw tight.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I say, feeling torn and lost.

He rounds the table and grabs my jaw. “You looked me in the eye when you renounced your autonomy and declared yourself submissive.”

I shake my head. “That was only because you made me do it.”

“No, you felt it.” He leans closer. “You went into subspace. Just by saying those words to me.”

“I-I—” My words break off. I don’t know how to explain. So I close my eyes and divulge the most pressing feeling inside me. “I don’t want to be a submissive.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I can’t lie to him. I heard it myself. There’s not much certainty in my voice. I don’t even feel sure. I don’t feel sure about anything anymore. In a matter of days, Dax has knocked my world upside down, broken me into pieces, and made me want something I have shunned my whole life.

Opening my eyes, I stare into his stark blue ones and admit the most self-shattering thing I’ve ever told another person. “No. I’m not sure.”

His features soften, and something like a smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “Say the words: I am a precious little submissive who is making my trainer very proud.”

I breathe a long inhale and release the words on my exhale. “I am a precious little submissive who is making my trainer very proud.”

The words break something inside me. Something that can never be recovered. My self-image is torn to shreds and so is my will to fight this urge I’ve always denied. I do want to please. I don’t know how much and in what way—surely not like this—but it’s there, the urge to obey and serve a man. Always has been.

“Yes, you are.” He brushes his knuckles across my cheek and moves back to the stirrups. “Now look at me while I spread your legs apart, so I can access your pussy.”

Everything coils tight inside me. I knew he was going to touch me down there, but hearing the words makes it so much more real. I fist and open my hands as I fight the onset of panic. I want to draw in on myself—away from the man who is going to violate me—but I just can’t. I keep watching him as he fastens my legs in the stirrups, immobilizing my pelvis as he proceeds to draw straps across each side of my groin.

“Are you going to”—I swallow hard—“fuck me?”

His eyes light up as he fastens the last strap and straightens, watching his handiwork. “Nope. I’m gonna make sure no man will touch your pussy until I hand you over to your master.”