Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ashleigh
M y answer? He wants my answer? What answer can I possibly give him when my whole brain threatens to combust at the sound of his voice?
Off to the side, Doctor Andrew stares me down. Somehow, his expression never changes. It’s that same quizzical lift of his brow as was in his office. For some reason, I get the feeling that I’m a bug to him. A squirmy bug under a glass for him to toy with and dissect.
When I first met him for the appointment, I didn’t think much of it. I merely thought he was an odd guy, like anyone else in his profession. Now that I know this aspect. Now that I know what runs under those still waters, my gut churns with unease.
“I haven’t got all day, Ashleigh,” my dean murmurs as he lowers his fingers to my pussy lips. “I’m desperate to fuck you. But I’m more anxious to know you understand the full ramifications of what’s about to happen here. We are not nice men. We are not the good guys. We’re not your fucking white knights about to deliver you from the dragon. I am the mother fucking dragon.”
Again, that soft moan slips through my lips as my knees threaten to buckle. It’s not fair. No matter what he does, I crave it as desperately as a bitch in heat. The only thing keeping me even close to grounded right now is that lethal blade of metal against my throat.
“I’ll submit.”
I hear the words as they ring out around my ears. I feel the air as it slips past my lips. I can almost touch them with every soft vibration of the syllables vibrating against my skull and breastbone. But it doesn’t feel real. It’s almost as if someone else says them and I’m merely a conduit.
“Subspace already?” Doctor Andrew murmurs. “I must say, I’m intrigued.”
With a soft turn of my head, I blink at him, doing my best to comprehend his words. They’re fuzzy, as if he’s rubbing a bit of rabbit fur over my brain and lulling me into this odd liminal space where time has absolutely no meaning.
“She’s perfection.”
This time, it’s Dean Anderson speaking into my ear as he continues to caress me, touching me so intimately, yet somehow keeping just detached enough that it leaves me begging, screaming for more.
“Please.” Did I actually say the words? Or did I merely think them in my head?
“Please what, my little troublemaker?”
I must have said it out loud then. “Please,” I moan a bit louder, arching my hips into his maddening touch in a pathetic attempt to increase the pressure.
But he dances away, leaving me bereft. “You think you deserve an orgasm? You think I should let you come?”
“Please?” I whimper, lying back against the cross in the best show of submission I can muster.
“Cry and beg all you want,” he whispers against my cheek, his breath hot and heavy against my skin. “Your tears will not sway me.”
Tears?
Only then do I feel the firm, wet texture of his tongue as it slides up to the edge of my eye. His groans are downright filthy, unholy even as he tastes my desperation. Who is this man?
“Dean?” The question quavers into the air between us.
“Not dean anymore. Not to you, at least. It’s Master. Say it. I want to hear you call me Master, my little snoop.”
His fingers toy with the edge of my thong, just barely brushing my entrance. The feral need to have him inside, to have him drive this yearning from me, nearly tears me apart. At this point, I’ll probably do anything, say anything. Master isn’t even that bad. It fits him.
“M-“ As the first syllable slips from my lips, his finger inches into me. One thick digit that fills me with such an aching slowness, I moan out the rest of his title.
Somewhere in my periphery, I’m vaguely aware of the bite of the knife digging in even deeper in my throat. It should terrify me, and yet, all it does is make me cry out all the harder. It’s this cacophony of fear and lust that keeps me poised on the edge of arousal, making it burn all the hotter the longer it continues.
“That’s my good fucking girl,” he growls, dragging his finger out, only to impale me once more. “I think she’s ready.”
“Agreed.”
Fucking Doctor Andrew. His voice grates against my nerves, dispelling the weaving thrall threatening to pull me back under. I want Dean Anderson... Master... all to myself. Can’t he just leave? The instant his knife pulls away, however, I pitch forward as relief unlocks my limbs, rendering me a loose, unstable mess.
“I got you, sweetheart,” my dean murmurs against my skin.
“I would really like to get back to Chastity now. Can we hurry this along?”
“Fine,” he snaps out, easing me back onto the cross.
Despite the rough texture, it’s actually quite comfortable. The chill of the implacable stone as it rests against the exposed parts of my skin sends shivers of longing back through me, ramping up the craving I have for the dean’s unfailing heat. Under my back and head, however, it’s as if a pillow was carved out of the stone, making it the softest thing I’ve rested against in as long as I can remember.
Or maybe it’s the company making me feel like this. Either way, I soak in the gentle ministrations from the dean as he lifts my hand to rest it against a cuff. Once that’s secure, he goes to the other until both hands rise aloft. An odd smile crosses my lips as I look up at them.
If I were more of a sentimental type, I’d probably say it was dreamy. Even now, as the haze threatens to envelop me again, all rational thoughts flee until it’s just primal need. The touch of his hands, the whisper of his breath against me, the heat of his flesh as it grazes mine... Nothing is at all as I pictured it.
Soon, his hands drift lower, giving me hope that he’ll actually touch me again where I most desperately need it. Unfortunately, as he’s proven time and again, I’m not in control. I’ll never be in control with him again.
If I was, I’d force his hands to touch my pussy, to get me off, to give me the orgasm I so desperately crave. But I can’t. This must be part of the lesson he strives to drive home. Instead of making me wish to learn and understand better, it simply binds my insides in knots until I can’t breathe.
He skims past the needy part of me and goes to my ankles to wrench them apart, exposing me a bit as my thong shifts, rubbing against my inflamed skin until I cry out for his touch.
“Such a needy thing,” Doctor Andrew murmurs as he leans in to look deep into my eyes. Again, he studies me in a cold, calculated way that has my skin crawling and bile rising to the back of my throat. “However do you think you’ll manage her?”
“She’s no concern of yours, Andrew. You have your own slave to worry about.”
“Indeed, I do. Yet mine would never be so bold as to do what yours has done.”
“That’s because yours has the temerity of a titmouse. Fine for you, I suppose. But not for me.” He pauses long enough to run his fingers down the side of my cheek and cradle my face in his tender palm. “I crave her spirit, her bite, her eventual giving in to my dominating hand. I cannot wait to see the moment she breaks, only to know I’ll be able to do it all over again.”
There seems to be a note of pride in his voice, an admiration obviously missing from Doctor Andrew. Not that I care what he thinks of me. He can kick rocks for all I care. But hearing the dean speak about me like this, it unlocks something deep in my core, a part of me I kept hidden away.
It’s an ugly mass of raw emotions, a child’s craving for love, acceptance, and understanding. A girl’s need to be seen for who and what she is. A woman’s longing for a seat at the table, to know she does matter even though she has a vagina between her legs and not a penis.
Granted, I’m not stupid enough to think Dean Anderson is not that far off from my father. It’s obvious from the way they speak of punishment and my place as his slave that I’m not going to be all that much more in his eyes than I am in my father’s. But there’s something else here that’s been missing. Something fundamental.
I actually want to submit to this man. I’ve never cared what my father thought, and that’s probably because he made it very clear from the beginning where he thought my place was. With Dean Anderson, it’s always been different. I’m the one who brought us here. Not him.
I’m the one who made these consequences, and now I have to deal with them. Pretty sure the only way my gender factored in is because Dean Anderson so very obviously wants to fuck me where I’ve never seen evidence that he’d also indulge in a guy.
But that’s the fundamental shift right there. I’m not here because I’m a woman. I’m here because I’m his woman. My world spins about my head as they converse in front of me, as if I’m not even here. But now, it doesn’t bother me.
Slave.
Submissive.
Freedom.
Choice.
Only, now that my actions have tipped their hand, I don’t have all that much choice. Thankfully, being his is what I would have wanted from the start, anyway.
“She’s a liability,” Doctor Andrew’s voice seeps into my brain like a maggot burrowing its way in.
“Yes,” my dean responds. “But she’s my liability. Now then, if you’d be so kind as to bind her, you can go back to your slave. I know she panics when you’re not there.”
I watch the two square up for a moment. It’s as if fire and ice collide in front of me, but in a way that’s so quiet, so silent, I almost can’t tell if I’m imagining it or not. Doctor Andrew’s eyes narrow as he glares at Dean Anderson, but the man is always so pissy looking that it could just be indigestion.
Dean Anderson’s lips, however, quirk up into a smug grin, as if my lack of fear and nervousness makes me somehow better than Chastity. If I had enough wits about me, I’d deny that, telling them both that I wish I had more sense than spine. I wouldn’t be here if I were meek like her.
I wouldn’t be hoisted up on my own petard in the most literal sense I could have ever imagined if I owned even an ounce of rational fear. In some ways, I almost envy her. However, the throbbing in my pussy and core do not. It’s getting me exactly what I want and then some.
“You know what you’re doing?” the doctor finally asks, breaking the silence.
“I may not be able to sadistically truss up a girl like you do, Andrew, but I’m not some inept newbie. I know what to look for. I know how to get her out of this if I need to. If you would be so kind as to proceed, you can get back home. But first, allow me to prepare her for you.”
Fuck. He’s still going to let the wackadoo quack do whatever it is he has planned. Somehow, in all that tenderness, I thought he’d forgotten. Or, at the very least, decided he wanted me all to himself from then on. Is this going to be my new normal? Is he going to share me now?
I think I can bear almost anything other than that.