18 DAX
I wake up in my sub’s cell, spooning a girl for the first time in years—since I left the States. She’s curled up against me, breathing calmly through her nose, deep in sleep. Lifting my arm from her waist, I rub my eyes and look around.
I’ve been sleeping on a foam mattress. In a fucking cell.
Gently, I slip my arm out from under her and do my best to sneak out quietly.
“Keep an eye on the girl in cell twelve, and remove the muzzle when she wakes,” I tell a guard I pass in the hall on my way to my office and hand him the key to the small padlock. I don’t want to wake her now by removing the muzzle, but I also don’t want her to panic when she wakes. And I’m not going to spend a moment longer in that cell.
The rest of the day, I stay busy, preparing a few girls for auction, fulfilling a few orders of piercings, and tending to a broken arm after one of the newer guards, Jan, went too rough on a girl, pulling her arm too tight in an armlock.
I bring Jan into my office to give him a lecture while I make a cast for her arm.
“You can’t do this shit,” I tell him. “Her value drops the moment she breaks something, and it takes double the amount of time to get her ready to sell. We can’t put a broken girl up on auction.”
The idiot only stares at me with a hard expression. He’s arrogant, and he’s not listening.
“If you keep doing things like this, Mikhail will cut it from your—” The guy is still not listening. It will take more than a few monetary threats to make him listen, and I don’t have the goddamn patience today.
Fuck this shit. I push up from my stool and close the distance with four long steps. The idiot stays put, but I can tell from his flaring nostrils that he’s fighting the urge to back up. Grabbing his collar, I hold him in place as I deliver a punch to his gut. The guy bends over, groaning like a little bitch.
Leaning down, I speak very clearly into his ear. “If you fuck up a girl like this again, your stomach won’t be the only thing I’m punching.” I grab his balls in a tight hold that has him panting hard. “Are we clear?”
“Yes,” he squeals in a pathetic voice, suddenly not so strong anymore.
Raising my voice to a volume that booms against the walls, I repeat, “Are we clear?”
“Yes, yes,” the guy says in a flustered voice, forcing his back straight to watch me head-on. “I understand.”
“Now, get the hell out of here.” I shove him toward the door, and he stumbles out, but there’s still a twinge of anger in his eyes that tells me this guy is trouble as he casts a final look over his shoulder.
I finish the cast in peace and quiet. With the girl sedated, it’s like working on a bike, and I find myself missing the old days when I spent hours in my shop, rebuilding engines, cleaning carburetors, or giving a bike a new paint job.
But as I glance at the sleeping girl and remember my little sub standing at the end of my table, I realize that I miss having her here even more.
It’s long past dinner time when the cast is done and I put the girl back in her cell. I’m tired, hungry, and cranky. Passing Dorin in the hall, I say, “Can you keep an eye on Jan? He fucked up a girl’s arm today, and I’m not sure he won’t do it again.”
“Busy,” he simply says, passing me without even slowing his tempo. Frowning, I turn to look after him. Usually, he’d easily agree. Asking Dorin to maintain discipline among the guards seems ironic since he has fucked up more girls than any other man down here, but he loves the power that comes with being in charge of both the women and men, and arrogant shitheads like Jan need a rough hand to be kept in line.
During my first two years here, the leeway Mikhail gave Dorin annoyed the shit out of me. If anyone else messed up Mikhail’s merchandise, there’d be hell to pay, but when Dorin did it, Mikhail didn’t bat an eye. He simply told me to go assess the merchandise—see if it could be salvaged, or if it needed to be sent to the incinerator.
At first, I didn’t get why Mikhail cut him so much slack, and I didn’t care for Dorin at all. But after a while, I realized the value in a guy like Dorin. The men down here are like a pack of wolves. Hungry and feral. They need an alpha or they’ll slip into chaos and make a shit show out of fighting each other for power. When Mikhail is not around, Dorin fills that role. He doesn’t do much active leading, but the threat of him is more than enough. No one dares to go against him. He’s too big and scary. So even though it costs Mikhail a few girls a year—even a man every now and then—it’s worth it to have an alpha that no one dares to challenge.
I’m the only man here who dares to go up against him. But I’m not interested in being a leader. I prefer to keep to myself, and since I rarely get in Dorin’s way, he doesn’t care. If anything, I think I’m the only one here, besides Mikhail, who he respects.
Today, Dorin’s dismissive attitude pisses me off more than it usually would, and I’m itching to haul a random girl from her cell and take my frustrations out on her as I head toward the door leading out of the dungeon. But I’m too tired to hear her screams. I need to sleep. And eat.
Having slept all morning in that cell doesn’t make up for all the nights I’ve been tossing and turning for hours. I fear that my insomnia is returning. It was bad when I first came here. Had been for years. I could go days barely getting any sleep, and what little I did get was riddled with nightmares that woke me up bathed in cold sweat. Vivid images that took me straight back to Iraq haunted me. But it didn’t take many months of freedom and power—taking out my violent images on the girls here—to chase the dreams away. The inability to sleep took a while longer to fix, though. But eventually, that too got better, and for several years, I’ve slept soundly most nights. Until Nikolai’s girl. She stirred something in me that made the restless nights more frequent. And now, it’s getting worse. Last night, I barely slept two hours. I haven’t had a night like that for a very long time.
I spend the rest of the day pondering what the hell is going on with me without reaching any good conclusion. Restlessness jitters under my skin like crawling bugs, and I’m cranky and irritable. It’s not until I return to my sub’s cell in the evening and tie her hands behind her back and watch her eat dinner from a bowl that my mood levels out somewhat.
“Good girl,” I tell her once she finishes and moves to sit up straight. Leaning down, I wipe her mouth with a wet cloth, then untie her hands. “Now, kiss my boots.” I step closer, placing a foot on each side of the empty bowl.
A tiny whimper escapes her, but I think the sound comes more out of anticipation than fear. Placing her hands flat on the floor, she leans down and presses her lips to my left boot. Her breathing deepens as she stays there, lips pressed to the leather for a long moment—much longer than I require. Her movements are slow and graceful as she does the same to the other, and when she sits back up, her gaze is glazed. It’s a beautiful sight, her submission. One I think I’ll never tire of.
I consider for a moment as she sits there. Usually, I only keep her in my office when I don’t have girls there, which is only a few hours a day. But with the muzzle, I can have her there without her interrupting me. I can explore the effect she has on the other girls—and explore her reaction to helping me like that. And most of all, I can have her at my side most of the day.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll come back here,” I tell her, stroking her head. “You’ll eat your breakfast on the floor and kiss my boots, and then I want you to ask me to put the muzzle on you.” I pause to gauge her reaction. Her eyes widen, and her fingers tighten against her thighs, but she’s a good girl, keeping her eyes down—keeping quiet. “As a reward, you’ll get to spend the whole day with me.”
Her eyes flit up, and I sense a surprised really hovering on her tongue just before she stops herself and lowers her gaze back down.
“Would you like that?” I ask. She’s getting it either way, but I find that I want to hear her opinion. I want her to confirm what I think I’m seeing.
Her brows furrow as her eyes flicker to the muzzle that remains on the floor, where the guard who took it off her must have put it. So I make the question easier for her. “Would you like to spend the whole day with me?”
She looks up and bites her lips as she nods eagerly.
“Speak up,” I demand.
“Yes. Yes, I would,” she gushes between eager breaths.
I crouch before her and wrap my hand around her chin. The answer to my last question isn’t enough. I want it all: her eagerness to please me and her dark desires that she’s hiding from me. She finds the muzzle humiliating, but I know part of her wants it. I felt it in her earlier today. So I ask, “Would you like to wear the muzzle while you’re with me tomorrow?”
Her eyes dart down, but I tighten my fingers, forcing her head to remain in the cup of my hand.
“Look at me and tell me the truth. Would you like to wear the muzzle?”
Her throat bobs as she gulps, and an upheaval of conflicting emotion seems to rage in her eyes as she lifts them again. She breathes hard as she struggles with herself, lips opening and closing as she tries to form an answer. But as I keep holding her gaze, the unease in her settles. She seems to resign herself to the answer she’s about to give me. When she finally speaks, her answer is brief but clear. “Yes.”
My lips draw out in a wide, proud smile. I can’t help it. It’s the best thing I’ve seen all day—her rosy cheeks and wide eyes as she admits to something she finds utterly wrong and humiliating.
“Good girl. Then you shall.” I lean in to reward her with a swift kiss on the lips before I pick up the muzzle and leave to hurry upstairs and take care of my raging hard-on.