20. Ana
20
ANA
I couldn’t hold in my moan as I bit into the sandwich. I was so fucking hungry.
“Water,” I gasped, as the bread congealed in my throat.
Valentin cocked his head at me in that way of his, as if he were analyzing not only my words but delving into my soul to discern my meaning.
“Water what, slut?” he asked as tears ran down my face and I choked.
“Water, ma?tre , fucking please!”
He chuckled and grabbed a bottle, opening it, then tilting it against my lips. “Drink.”
Gratefully, I guzzled the water, sweeter than any dessert, ignoring the drips that ran down my throat and chest, ignoring the way Valentin’s gaze followed the path of the water, and how my nipples hardened as he watched me.
“Good girl,” he murmured, and I hated how much I liked that tiny bit of praise, how it relaxed the tension at the base of my spine, as if I’d been worried about displeasing him.
When I finished the bottle, he pulled it away, frowning briefly before setting it on the bedside table. “Now eat.”
I opened wide and took another big bite of the sandwich in his hands. It was delicious, and I was so goddamned hungry. I should have been embarrassed at my lack of manners, that I didn’t care that crumbs were tumbling down my chest. Instead, I devoured the sandwich like a ravenous animal, then licked my lips with satisfaction.
Reality washed over me in a wave. I awkwardly brushed at the crumbs that had fallen over my chest, flushing with embarrassment now that I wasn’t starving.
Valentin watched me, his eyes amused, as if he were enjoying my humiliation. When I didn’t speak, he cleared his throat.
Oh.
“Thank you,” I whispered, flushing at my confusion, not sure whether I wanted to be grateful or rude.
He waited.
“Thank you, ma?tre .”
How easily I was tamed. How easily I gave in to the urge to please these assholes who took what little freedom I had away from me. Because that’s what I was good at. Serving men, giving them pleasure, being a pretty ornament trotted out when they needed one, then stashed away to rot.
Luca had been full of sweet words that filled up the cracks in my soul. But I’d walked away from that and had nobody to blame but myself if he never looked at me again.
“Now, on your hands and knees,” Valentin said as he unbound me. He frowned at the pink marks on my wrists but didn’t say anything. “ En même temps! ” Right now.
Fear slid through me, settling in my gut alongside a sparkling anticipation I didn’t understand.
“Why?” Oops. “Why, ma?tre? ”
“Did I ask you to speak?” he asked, his voice silky and dark as he stood back from the bed. I couldn’t rip my eyes from the play of muscles over his chest.
“No, ma?tre ,” I whispered back. Why was he doing this? Why would he feed and water me and then?—?
I rolled onto my belly then moved to my hands and knees, the position somehow more humiliating than simply sitting on my bed, even though I’d been naked the entire time. A cool breeze blew over my ass, and I shuddered, sensitive and fearful.
Each moment of silence ratcheted up the tension as I waited to see what he’d do next.
The crack against the skin of my ass shouldn’t have surprised me. It wasn’t a hand—the razor thin agony that whipped across me was too controlled, too precise.
“Eyes forward,” Valentin snapped when I looked over my shoulder. Impacts peppered my ass half a dozen more times. “Knees further apart.”
No, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t?—
My pussy screamed as he smacked my core, agony spreading like fire through my center before melting into desperate need.
“Please, no,” I begged. “ Ma?tr e, please!”
Valentin ignored me. He hit my pussy again, and then a third time, before stopping to run his callused palms over my skin. A finger slid through my humiliating wetness, evidence that my body didn’t hate what he did to me nearly as much as my mind did.
Then he tapped my hip twice. “Time to shower and get dressed.”
What? No, I absolutely was not disappointed that he wasn’t going to get me off, that he wasn’t going to continue his fingers’ languorous strokes through my folds, that he was going to leave me hanging like this.
“And slut? Don’t forget who your orgasms belong to.”
Fuck him.
I stood from the bed, wincing at the crumbs that surrounded me and the water that had dripped down onto the sheets.
My orgasms belonged to me, and the moment I was alone in the shower, I was going to indulge in one.
“ Tu vas le payer cher ,” Valentin murmured as I brushed past him, reading my mind. You’ll regret it.
I wouldn’t.
I turned on the shower, testing the temperature, my reluctance to be nude in front of Valentin long since gone. While it warmed, I carefully removed the bandages they’d applied, wincing at the scar I’d have on my cheek, the scrapes on my arms, and the bruises on my legs. When I raised my fingers to my face, my eye was sore and bruised.
“Don’t worry, princess. You’ll still be beautiful enough to convince fools to part from their money,” Valentin said from where he leaned on the door, arms crossed over his bare chest, emphasizing the strength of his biceps and the hard lines of his shoulders.
His words cut deep, as if that were the only reason to care about my looks, as if that were all I was good for.
But wasn’t that the truth?
That’s all my father had ever used me for, making men feel good so he could close deals. All Angelo cared about was shipping me off to keep me out of trouble then looking for an alliance, now that the Tchérnovs no longer suited him. And now my captors wanted me for my body—for my pussy.
Silently, I stepped into the water, pulling the door shut, the frosted glass offering no real privacy.
Someone had stocked the shower with my favorite luxury products, and I moaned with pleasure as I washed my hair. After three weeks on the streets, double bunking in hostels, crashing on couches, not quite desperate and starving, but never sure where I’d sleep, I intended to enjoy every moment of comfort these unhinged men afforded me.
Since I wasn’t any good for anything else.
No, fuck that.
Valentin stood in the doorway, still watching me, his full lips tilted into a cruel smile.
I hated him.
He’d always been indifferent to me at best, cruel at worst. Angelo didn’t like me either. When he visited my father, or we flew to Italy to visit my grandfather, Angelo always left the room when I entered, leaving Valentin to drop cruel barbs about my brains and my place in life.
But if there was anything my father raised me to do, it was capturing the attention of men, and I was good at that. Maybe the only thing I was good at.
Valentin might have hated me, but he wanted me too. And I could make him regret trying to turn me into his whore.
I slid my hands down my body, disassociating from my heartbreak, from the thought of a future as a submissive mafia wife, a slave to my husband’s whims, was the ultimate conclusion to the way my father had raised me. Instead, I focused on the increasing speed of my heart, the glide of my palms down my skin, the pinch of pain when I pressed too hard on a bruise, and how it felt so fucking good when I did it.
Hot water poured over me, each cut stinging in turn as I washed, my movements sensuous and deliberate. Did he see the movement of my hands down my stomach? Did his eyes track when I cupped a breast and flicked my nipple with my thumb until it beaded under the flow of the water?
My exhale turned ragged as I slid a hand between my legs, circling my clit with soapy fingers. It wouldn’t take much. He’d left me wet and wanting. I closed my eyes, shoving away reality and imagining Luca in the shower with me. Sweet, gentle Luca, who never asked more of me than I could give, his tongue exploring my folds with soft precision.
I moaned, maybe a little louder than my arousal warranted, but I wanted Valentin’s attention, watching me as I pinched a nipple, imagining Luca’s teeth scraping softly against my skin, never demanding too much, never pushing me further than I wanted.
The tile cooled my skin when I leaned back against, it, arching my back and thrusting my breasts out. I knew how to draw men’s eyes, and I wanted Valentin’s on me, even as I visualized Luca kneeling before me, one hand wrapped around my breast, kneading it, palming my nipples and scraping his callused hands against them while he nuzzled my pussy.
The fantasy morphed in my mind, with Valentin standing in front of me, slapping my breasts, agony ricocheting through me until it faded to a pleasant burn, as Luca slid a finger into me, fucking me with it.
I whined and slid a second finger into my pussy as I pinched a nipple and ground my clit against my palm. Pleasure wove through me as I imagined myself sandwiched between the two men, Luca’s tongue dancing with mine, their fingers plunging in and out of my pussy as Valentin spanked me.
Oh fuck.
Oh god.
Together.
I wanted them together. I shouldn’t. I couldn’t. Before I could shove the thought out of my head, I came, my entire body seizing as I bent forward with the force of my pleasure, curling around my hand as I rode it through the aftershocks, unable to wipe the picture of being shared from my mind.
I leaned back and let the wall fully support my weight as my chest heaved and I recovered from my orgasm, trembling and shocked, appalled at the fantasy I’d concocted.
My eyes flicked to the door of the bathroom, where Valentin still stood, partially concealed by the frosted glass, but no less present for it.
He’d watched, but he hadn’t reacted.
Painfully embarrassed at the show I’d put on for a man who didn’t want me, I quickly rinsed before poking my head out and looking for a towel.
Valentin watched me with eyes black as night, his expression unreadable.
“Is there a towel?” I asked, then immediately corrected myself. “May I please have a towel, ma?tre? ”
He spun on his heel and disappeared from the door before returning a moment later. I dried myself inside the shower, then wrapped it around me.
“No,” he said, his voice gravely as I stepped out. “Misbehaving sluts don’t get to cover up.”
His fingers drifted to the edge of the towel and tugged. When my own tightened, holding it up, he frowned. “You wanted my attention, and now you have it. Drop the towel.”
Panic rushed through me. What had I done?
He tugged once more, sharply, and the towel fell to the floor, revealing my curves.
Valentin turned on his heel before I could take in his expression, leaving me to stare at the interplay of his muscles beneath his fitted suit, terrified of what I’d find when I followed.
“Come,” he snapped. “Now.”
Shitshitshitshitshit.
When I didn’t move, he turned around, his face utterly blank. “Sluts who misbehave earn their punishment.”
“Is that part of my training?” I sneered before I could stop myself.
Valentin’s lips tilted into a cruel smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Keep breaking the rules, princess,” he said, his tongue darting out and drawing my eye. Need, uninhibited and unsatisfied, despite my earlier shenanigans, shot straight to my core.
Silently, determined not to give him further ammunition to use against me, I approached, my body suspended between terror and arousal, my nerves jangling wildly.
“Good girl,” he murmured when I joined him beside the bed, and my shoulders relaxed a hair. Maybe I’d survive this. I flushed at the memory of the spanking he’d given me in Monaco, and then again before I ate, and I knew that even if I did survive this, I wouldn’t do it fully whole.
“Bend over the bed,” he ordered, “feet shoulder width apart.”
I took a deep shuddering breath, then another, anticipation tangling with terror in my gut, then bent over the bed as instructed, placing my hands on the cover.
“All the way down, hands behind your back.”
Slowly, I followed Valentin’s instructions, until my cheek and chest rested on the bed and my hands nervously gripped each other at the small of my back.
“ Magnifique ,” he murmured, so quietly I was sure I wasn’t supposed to hear it.
Warm fingers traced over my skin, sending shivers through me.
“You don’t have to punish me,” I said. “I’ll behave.” When Valentin’s soft movements halted, I realized my mistake. “I’ll behave, ma?tre .” Shit, I spoke without being spoken to.
He hummed, ignoring the error, but I was sure he’d make me pay for it later on.
“I’m going to warm you up with twenty strokes. No need to count.”
The first impact shoved me deep into the mattress. I bit my tongue and endured it. I’d done this to myself. Stupid, selfish Ana, who’d wanted Valentin’s attention, and now I fucking had it.
In moments, I was whining in pain. I shoved my hands down to try and block him, only for him to grab my wrists and hold them to the small of my back.
When I kicked back at him, he swore, then lifted me up as I struggled, arranging me until I was draped over one of his powerful thighs, the other locked around my legs, holding me still. My fingers brushed against the floor as he held me over his lap.
“Enough,” he snapped, spanking me harder than he had before and getting my attention. “I told you not to touch yourself and you did.”
“Your rules are bullshit!”
He spanked me again and again, until I couldn’t hold my sob in. Why couldn’t I be a good fucking girl for once and do as I was told?
“Because you want the attention,” Valentin growled as I cried.
Had I said that aloud?
“I’m going to give you the attention you crave,” he said. “If you want it to stop, you’ll follow the fucking rules.”
But I’d never been able to do that, no matter how hard I tried.
He continued to spank me until I relaxed in his hold, a sobbing mess in his lap, unable to ignore the burning agony of his spanking, but no longer fighting it.
When he stopped, he gathered me up in his arms, and I continued to cry against his chest. I hated him. Hated his strength. Hated how my body lit up at his touch. Hated how much I craved his comfort even after he was the one who’d driven me to tears. When I looked up again, we were in another bedroom.
Angelo lay on the bed, scrolling through his phone, and raised an eyebrow when we entered.
Valentin set me on crisp white sheets. I winced when the flaming skin of my ass brushed against the fabric, but continued to cry, unable to stop my soft sobs.
“Aftercare,” Valentin snapped before turning on his heel.
Angelo’s smile took my breath away. “Come here, angel.”
What did he want? I was naked. He was naked. Oh my god, I was in a bed naked with my uncle. And I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to curl up in the safety of his arms and go to sleep. What did that say about me?
He set his phone down beside the bed, then arranged the sheets over us. I was too exhausted to protest when he gathered me in his arms, and when he slid a hand up my back to hold me close, my complaints died on my lips. No one would hurt me tonight. No one could hurt me. Angelo wouldn’t allow it. Relief swept through me like a tsunami, obliterating my resistance. My head dropped against his chest as he held me, and I cried and cried and fucking cried.
And when I woke up again, he was gone.