26 DAX
Anger, frustration, and a maelstrom of other emotions I can’t name churn inside me as I leave her cell.
I’ve been down here all night—on edge and checking on her every hour—and haven’t slept a single minute. Instead, I’ve been in my office, brooding, or in her cell, watching her sleep, all the while my head has kept up a constant debate on whether to just take her upstairs and wire a generous sum of money as compensation to Mikhail.
During the night, I decided to put the idea to a careful test. So I gave her my comforter and my pillow. To get a sense of how I’d feel about having her in my bed. It felt amazing wrapping her in them. As I watched her sleeping peacefully in my sheets, all I could think was that I wanted to lie down behind her.
But I refrained. I went back to my office to think it over. My mind was too clouded by the residual shock and fear and sleep deprivation to see clearly, but deep down, I knew what the right decision was. It was just a matter of time. I knew right until the moment she asked me to sell her.
She fucking asked me to sell her.
My hand itches to snap someone’s neck at the thought. Or beat someone to death.
It makes me so fucking mad that all I see is red. Keeping a grip on myself when she said that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And now, I need someone to take it out on.
As I’m about to pass the hall with the padded cells, I come to a halt. The blonde who sliced my sub is down there, all alone. Mikhail told me last night that Dorin had up and left when the auction was about to start. He didn’t say why, but we both knew it was because he couldn’t bear to be here when he lost her. Which means the girl is alone and unprotected. Just waiting for me to finish the job I was supposed to do last night and send her off with her buyer.
Opening and closing my fist, I head down the long hallway and stop in front of cell one. I just stand there, fuming for several minutes. And then I hear it. The soft sound of a voice singing. Stepping up to the door, I listen closely, and suddenly, I understand why my sub would run off despite blatantly disregarding my order.
Her voice is angelic. Listening to it is like having a small peek through the gates of heaven. Like a walk in the mountains on a misty morning when the sun is rising, glittering on the dewy leaves. She sings her heart out like it’s the most important thing to her in the world. She almost sounds peaceful even as she’s locked up in a cell, about to be sold to a beast.
The idea that she has found even a tiny sliver of peace grates on my nerves. She shouldn’t know any peace after cutting my sub.
Clenching and unclenching my fist again, I decide how to get my revenge. She hurt something precious to me, so I’ll hurt something precious to her.
I open the cell door, and the blue-eyed woman immediately goes quiet, surprise widening her eyes as she sees me. She’s sitting on the mattress, and I huff a laugh as I scan my eyes up and down her. She’s in a straitjacket, feet bound together in leather ankle cuffs, ready for me to take. Easy prey.
“Are you here to take me to him? To Zoltan?” she asks in a fearful voice.
“Not yet,” I say, approaching her with slow steps.
“Then why are you here?” she asks, scooting into the corner as she watches me approach. Her breaths go more staggered with each approaching step I take. The nature of my intentions must be screeching in the very air around me.
“To get my revenge.” Grabbing her by the hair, I yank her up.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean t—”
I cut off her words with a hand over her mouth, wrapping the other around her waist to lift her. Small as she is, she puts up a hell of a struggle, making it a bit of a hassle to carry her like that even despite her bound state. But no more than a nuisance. And annoying as it may be, I’m not about to risk her screaming and drawing attention. Mikhail won’t like what I’m about to do. But I don’t care. I’ll gladly pay every cent in my bank account to compensate for his monetary loss if it means I’ll get a release for this lingering fear and anger that has kept me up all night.
So I take her to my office, where I lock the door from the inside and strap her down in my chair.
***
After returning the blonde girl to her cell, I go back upstairs and collapse on my bed. Four hours of sleep is all I get, but it’s the first good sleep I get in days, so I feel almost well-rested as I go back down to the dungeon late in the morning. With the angry haze having settled and the sleep having cleared my mind a bit, I feel more rational. But it’s no relief, really, because with the rationality comes the realization that what I did this morning puts my sub in harm’s way. If Dorin comes back before the girl is out of here and finds out what I did to her, he’ll want to do the same—and much worse—to my sub.
So I start by resetting the lock on her door to only accept my fingerprint. I probably should change the whole locking mechanism, but Dorin is shit with technology, and the master key is safe with Mikhail. Dorin would have to kill him to get it, and even mad as he is, he won’t go that far. He needs this place too much. Just like I do. And Mikhail is the only one who can keep it running.
Next, I go to my office, retrieve the gun I keep in the safe there, just in case, and call Mikhail.
“You need to get Dorin’s girl out of here now.”
“I’m in the middle of negotiations with the buyer. He wants me to lower the price because of the episode yesterday.”
I scoff. “Are you shitting me? If he didn’t insist on holding a knife to her throat, that mess wouldn’t have happened. That bitch wouldn’t have cut my sub.”
“How is she?” Mikhail asks.
Ignoring him, I say, “Just get the girl out of here before Dorin returns, or you’ll have a real fucking hell to deal with.”
His voice darkens as he sees straight through me. “What did you do, Dax?”
“Just get rid of her,” I all but bark. Then I hang up and just sit there, staring at the wall as I consider what I agreed to last night. The things my sub said.
Please sell me.
Those three words repeat over and over in my head like a record stuck in a never-ending loop, each cruel repetition scratching at my insides.
I had just decided to keep her, but the idea of taking her upstairs now seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Nothing good will come of it. She’s messing with my head, my ability to work, and even my ability to sleep. I’ve been a mess since I started training her, and it’s only getting worse. What I did this morning, blinded by rage, just might be the stupidest, most reckless thing I’ve ever done. If Dorin finds out, I might have put both my own and my sub’s life at risk. And it pisses me off that I did something so stupid for a fucking girl.
I clench and unclench my fist on the desk as I stare at my closed laptop, which holds a list of potential buyers I have had for weeks. I started looking for a buyer a few days after I started training her, knowing it might not be easy to find someone who’d build on the work I’d done and not just destroy it. It took me some time, searching outside our usual clientele, but I found three potential buyers, who all seem promising. Rich men, who don’t have the patience to train a sub themselves or the time to look for a good one. Men who aren’t beyond making an illicit transaction and paying a fortune to get the real deal. I’ve promised each of them that a real deal is what they’re getting from me. Submission doesn’t come any purer than from my sub.
My sub.
“Fuck!” I slam my fist into the desk, making the laptop and everything else on the table rattle. Clenching my jaw, I grab the laptop and open it. Then I call the first man on my list: a French businessman with more money in his pockets than anyone can count.
This man has been my favorite buyer from the start. I’ve even met with him, and I’m sure he’ll do my training justice and probably even make my sub—his sub to-be—happy. He’s far from our usual buyers, who are sadistic bastards—like myself—who get a kick out of making a girl scream. This guy doesn’t care about pain or even humiliation. He just wants the dominance. Hell, even to an almost legal degree. He might even be satisfied with a sub he found at a regular BDSM club if it wasn’t for all his money and never knowing who wants him for who he is and not just for his bank account. He just wants to know that the submission is real, and I can promise him that it will be when he gets a sub I’ve trained.
Apparently, I’ve sold her so well that he doesn’t care to go through any bargaining or get further reassurances. He’s dropping everything to come here tomorrow afternoon, and if he’s satisfied with what he sees, he’ll pay the full price and take her home to France straight away.
But neither the easy sale nor the prospect of getting her far away from Dorin grants me any relief. Anger is still ripping through my gut and pounding in my blood as I hang up. Seeing three unanswered calls from Mikhail doesn’t help. It sends a surge of searing fear into the maelstrom, stirring up the already crazed speed that threatens to make me act on ridiculous, stupid impulse again.
The most likely reason for him calling is that he’s pissed, having lost a lot of money over the thing I did this morning, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to it as I bring the phone to my ear. My heart slams against my chest, and it feels like the first beep before he picks up lasts for minutes and not a second.
“Dorin is back,” Mikhail says as he picks up. And that’s all I hear. The rest of his words fade into the inconsequential distance as the door flies open and I look up to meet Dorin’s murderous gaze.
“What the fuck did you do?” he demands, his whole stance teeming with a violent energy that has me reaching down to rest a hand on the gun in my waistband.
“What she had coming,” I say calmly even though I’m gnashing my teeth and am preparing to pull my gun out or block an attack. Or maybe initiate an attack myself just to get a release from this constant pounding fury.
“You’ve fucking destroyed her. MY girl!” he growls in a deep voice that reverberates through the room with a force like a small earthquake.
“She cut what belongs to me, so I cut something of hers. Eye for an eye and all that. You grew up catholic, right? So you’ll understand.”
He slams his fist into the cabinet beside the door, making a huge dent in the metal drawer. “You won’t see it coming, Dax,” he says with a potent threat hanging thickly in his words. “You won’t see it, but I promise you’ll regret it.” Then he leaves, slamming the door so hard the cabinet rattles.
My heart pounds as I sit there, reeling from the altercation. I’m good in a crisis. I’m good face-to-face with danger—even war and death. But what I’ve learned during the last twenty-four hours is that I’m not good with someone threatening my sub. He didn’t do it directly, but I know what he meant. Eye for an eye, just like I said. Only, he doesn’t see what I did this morning as an act that leveled the field. He sees it as the one that instigated the war.
Fear rages inside me as I consider what he might do—or have done. I don’t know if he’s even been back long enough to retaliate, and I have no idea how he would have gotten into my sub’s cell, but no amount of rationalization will chase away the gnawing anxiety that keeps clenching around my chest. I try to quench the fear by breathing deeply, just like I’ve so often told my sub to do. But the fear keeps ramping up until adrenaline is pumping through my veins and I’m thrumming my feet against the floor.
Bursting up from my chair, I dart out of the room. I don’t care how much her plea last night hurt; I need to see her. See that she’s okay.
Relief is like a cork popping free from my tight throat, allowing me a free breath, as I barge into her cell and find her on the mattress, staring into the air and looking despondent, but alive and breathing, nonetheless, all her limbs in place.
“Are you okay? Say something,” I demand, needing to hear her speak.
She casts her eyes up at me, and they’re full of a soul-shattering sorrow that goes straight to my heart and cuts deep into it. I wonder if she has regretted her choice. I need to ask her—find out if she still wants to be mine. I need to know. No matter if I can keep her or not. But first, I need to know that Dorin hasn’t harmed her.
“Say something. Can you speak? Does your voice work?” There’s no cut in her throat or anything to indicate it wouldn’t, but this fear that keeps slamming my heart against my chest knows no logic.
A frown etches between her brows. “Of course,” she mutters in a low voice. “Why wouldn’t it work?”
I heave a loud sigh and sink to my haunches, burying my head in my hands.
“Is everything okay?” she asks tentatively, pushing up to sit.
Usually, I wouldn’t tell her what’s going on. I wouldn’t show her that I’m afraid. Or relieved. I’d hide all those emotions far behind my well-practiced facade. But as I sit there, reeling from all the anger, hurt, and fear of the last two days—about to lose her—I find that I don’t want to hide from her.
“Dorin might come after you.” I drop my arms to my thighs. “He’s furious with me. And rightly so. But I’ve found a buyer for you. He’ll come get you tomorrow. I just have to keep you away from Dorin for the next twenty-four hours or so and you’ll be safe.” Away from me, but safe.
“Why is he mad?”
I scoff. “Not mad. Murderously livid.”
“Why?”
I move to sit beside her on the mattress and carefully slide my hand onto the bandaged wound on her stomach. “I made that girl pay for cutting you.”
She freezes beside me, and her throat bobs with a gulp as she turns her head to face me with wide eyes. “What did you do to her?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” I say, lifting my hand to caress her cheek.
She pulls away from my touch, eyes filling with horror. “Did you kill her?”
“No.” I try to pull her into me, badly needing to feel her, but she pushes out of my grip.
“What did you do to her?”
“Calm down, the girl is alive. I just clipped her vocal cords.” I’ve had quite a few orders for that lately, so it’s a perfectly safe procedure for me to perform—at least, so it has become through trial and error.
She freezes, staring at me like I just killed her puppy. Or more like I sliced it up and gutted it in cold blood right in front of her.
“No, no, no,” she finally says. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“She hurt what’s most precious to me, so I hurt what’s most precious to her.”
She keeps moving farther away, onto the stone floor, as she shakes her head.
“She... You took her voice.” Accusation fills her voice and morphs into something that looks a great deal like hatred. An emotion that’s entirely misplaced in her vulnerable, innocent face as it twists her features. “She can’t sing anymore?”
“No, she can’t,” I reply with irritation, reaching for her.
She slaps my hand away—she fucking slaps my hand. Rage crackles inside me, but I shove it down, knowing it will only make everything worse. She’s in shock, and my anger will only aggravate it.
I grab her by the waist and haul her into my lap, wrapping my arms tight around her as I trap her arms between us.
“Let me go!” She writhes against me, chafing her heels on the rough ground as she kicks her feet to get free.
“Calm down, you’re in shock. Just let me hold you and help you take a few deep breaths and you’ll feel better.”
“Fuck you and your deep breaths.” She digs her nails into me so hard I think my skin breaks beneath my T-shirt. “I don’t want you to hold me. You’re a monster. I don’t know how I could ever be so weak and let you get under my skin. You fucking disgust me!” She spits the words into my face with a vehemence I haven’t seen for years.
I lean back in shock, staring at the furious beast of a woman who watches me like I’m the devil himself. No, even worse. Like I’m scum. Disgusting and vile. Like she truly means those words.
“You don’t mean that,” I say, though it’s very fucking hard to believe with the way she’s glaring knives and daggers at me.
“Yes, I do. You’re a worthless human being. The only way you can get someone to care about you is to fuck up their mind and make them dependent on you. But I see it all very clearly now. And I can’t wait until you sell me.”
Her words are like a cut deep in my chest, the pain worse than any bullet or knife I’ve taken. It sets fire to the anger that had drowned in the fear, and it roars back to life with a vengeance.
“You think I’m so fucking disgusting?” I throw her onto her stomach on the mattress and climb on top of her. “All the things that have happened, it was all just one big mind-fuck? Me fucking up your brain and making you into a puppet on a string?” I grab her by the nape and lean down to sneer into her ear. “All the times you knelt at my feet and kissed my boots… you didn’t feel anything at all? Just a fucking mindless robot doing what I wanted you to do?”
She goes still beneath me, and I take the moment to snap the manacles around her wrists.
“And all the times I rocked you in my arms, you just accepted it because you were so broken you couldn’t do anything else?”
She heaves a shuddery breath like she’s about to cry. “Dax, I—”
“No, shut up.” Grabbing her by the hair, I yank her head back and reach for the harness. “You don’t get to say another fucking word.”
“Dax, I didn’t mean—”
I slap the mouthpiece onto her face, muffling her now pleading words. I don’t want any of her fucking begging after the shit she just said—after she begged me to sell her.
“The fuck you did.” I strap her head in tight, forcing her jaw shut. Then I go to the foot of the mattress, where I straighten her folded legs out, snap the manacles onto her ankles, and adjust the chain to stretch her legs out, immobilizing her.
She’s crying by the time I move to sit between her legs and spread her ass cheeks apart with one hand as I retrieve the big butt plug from my pocket—the one I’ve been planning on using on her since I fucked her ass. But then shit happened, and I never got around to it. It was meant as a reward, but now it will be her punishment. And the last fucking thing she ever gets from me.
I spit onto her asshole, use the tip of the plug to smear it around her opening, then press the plug against her narrow hole.
“Relax,” I demand with a tone that rumbles through the tiny space as she clenches her muscles, fighting the plug.
A whimper escapes her as she obeys—always fucking instinctively obeying my command. She goes slack on the mattress, and with just a little more pressure, the plug pops into place. I’m about to praise her on instinct, but I shove the words down. She doesn’t deserve them.
I press a button on the small remote, and she jerks as the plug comes alive with buzzing vibrations.
I drag my fingers over her closed-up pussy and find her dripping through her folds. “Fucking whore,” I say, drying my wet finger on her back. “And you say I’m disgusting?”
A sob breaks from her throat, and the mask muffles the pathetic sound. Good. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want her to rouse my sympathy. Because apparently, I’m as broken as she is. I’ve been conducting as much of a mind-fuck on myself as I have on her.
She cranes her head to catch my attention as I get up, but I don’t grant her the eye contact she searches for, knowing all too well that I’ll waver in every fucking decision I’ve made during the last twenty-four hours if I meet her pleading gaze.
“Mm, mm,” she begs urgently in between sobs.
I cast a final look her way as I open the door. She’s flailing her right arm against the chains. Or rather, holding up the underside, trying to draw my attention to the tattoo. My mark.
Anger twists into something like hurt inside me. “Yeah, I’ll have someone remove that so you won’t have to bear my disgusting mark forever.”
A raw wail dies in the leather of the mask, and I ignore the sharp sting in my heart as I leave her cell and slam the door so hard the echoing clank follows me down the hall as I leave.