34. Ana
34
ANA
He locked me in the room again.
I got to my knees without being asked. I sucked his cock because I wanted to. And he fucking locked me in the room again.
Fuck him.
Fuck him for making me think he wanted me for more than sex.
Fuck his faded angel tattoo too. He might want some chimera of me, a sexy phantasm that didn’t have a thing to do with reality, but it wasn’t the real Ana Costa. He wanted me on my knees, and all I wanted?—
I sobbed. I couldn’t admit what I wanted, not even to myself.
So fucking pitiful. So useless. So fucking female , raised to be a perfect mafia wife, and now I couldn’t even deliver on that. No one would want me after I’d blown up Tchérnov’s yacht. Nobody would love me for anything other than my name, especially now that marrying me was the key to inheriting my father’s empire.
I huddled against the wall, my arms wrapped around my knees, sobbing my foolish, useless heart out.
The bright fluorescent lights blinked on, and the lock clicked. To my surprise, it was Valentin who stood in the doorway with a tray in his hands, not Angelo. His face was contemplative rather than harshly cruel. I looked at the scratch marks in the corner—a week, more or less. I couldn’t believe I’d ever complained about a comfortable room with a bathroom and books. Now I’d kill for a fucking toilet.
I scrambled to my knees, placing my hands behind my back. Pride burst out of my chest at the glow of warm approval in his eyes.
“Good girl,” he murmured. His eyes roved over my body, and I flushed at his attention, embarrassed to be displayed to him after a week of his absence.
I had to find a way to ask about my father’s businesses, the compound, what the fuck was going on in Yorkfield.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he murmured as he crouched in front of me. He set the tray on the ground in front of me. There were no utensils, just a plate of precut steak, vegetables, and small wheels of pasta. This was a child’s plate.
My gasp of outrage brought a smile to Valentin’s lips, cruel and beautiful.
“On your hands and knees, princess.”
Was this a test? What was he going to do to me? I hesitated, suspecting I knew exactly what he would ask me to do next.
When I didn’t move, he smiled and reached into his pocket, then revealed two clamps that looked like metal clothes pins. He crouched beside me, taking my left nipple between his fingers and rolling it gently. Pleasure rushed through me, straight to my clit, even as I tensed, preparing for the pain that would follow. When he pinched hard, I whimpered but didn’t move.
Like the good girl he wanted me to be.
A moment later, he clamped my nipple, tightening the screw until it hurt. I whined but held absolutely still until the pain dulled to a sharp, pulsing ache.
He reached across me to do the same to my other nipple, and when his sleeve brushed the clamp, pleasure and pain mingled together, making my core throb. I was soaked between my thighs, and the thought that I didn’t have to be embarrassed about it was strangely freeing.
I hated him for locking me up and for making me want him. For hurting me. And I hated him for how much I loved it when he hurt me.
I couldn’t do anything about it, only hurt more. So why was I fighting so hard? With that thought, I relaxed. I closed my eyes and focused on the dull ache of my nipples, and the corresponding throb between my legs.
When Valentin stood and said, “Hands and knees, toy,” for a second time, I obeyed, my breath coming out in sharp exhales as my breasts hung, the weight of the clamps agonizing. “Fucking perfect,” he murmured. “Now eat.”
A tear streaked down my face before I could stop it, before I could pull myself together.
“Please, no,” I whispered, unable to face the humiliation of eating on my hands and knees like a fucking animal. “I can’t.”
Quick as a fucking snake, Valentin pulled a whip out of his pocket and flicked it across my ass.
I wailed with surprise, and then with disappointment as need gathered between my thighs. I’d missed his brutal punishments that allowed me to forget myself and everything I’d lost.
And after days of being locked up by myself with Angelo as my only company when he came to feed me, stewing in my own filth, I was desperate for human contact, for anything besides the four walls that surrounded me.
I’d do anything to get out. I had to.
“Eat,” Valentin said, his voice gravelly.
My clamped nipples scraped against the tile floor, agony searing through me with every movement, but I lowered my lips to the plate in front of me and picked up a piece of pasta with my teeth, blood rushing to my cheeks when my nose scraped through a puddle of sauce.
I raised my chest and head back up to chew. Valentin leaned back against the door, one knee propped with his foot against the wall and his hands in his pockets, a casual god, with his supplicant on her knees before him.
“You’re gorgeous,” Valentin rasped, meeting my eyes, his pupils wide with desire. “A born submissive. You just needed a little push to understand how much you need it.”
A what? No. I’d read about BDSM on the internet, and this was not a safe, sane, and consensual scene with hard limits and a Dom who cared about his sub.
I shook my head.
“Eat, princess,” he said once again.
I lowered my face to the plate. When my tongue poked out to help grab a piece of steak, Valentin groaned.
“How do you not fucking realize it? You’re so goddamned smart and so goddamned blind at the same time. You need this as much as we do. You crave the pain. You crave the submission.”
I shook my head. No I didn’t. Giving in meant giving up everything. It meant giving up my dreams. It meant giving up?—
I blinked and sat up, staring blankly at Valentin.
It didn’t mean giving up anything. I didn’t have anything left to give up.
Why had it taken me so long to figure this out?
Valentin didn’t chastise me. Instead, he waited, calmly, quietly, for me to think.
If I gave in, what would I lose?
Fucking nothing.
I didn’t even have a roof over my head.
But Valentin and Angelo wanted to provide me with one. Angelo killed a man for what he did to me. So had Valentin. Both of them had killed for me, more than once. And neither one of them had ever lied to me.
My heart thudded in my chest, protesting. No. I didn’t want to be their toy and their slave for the rest of my life. Silently, I lowered my head to the plate again and ate, bite by bite, until my belly was full.
Since Angelo had shipped me off weeks ago, I’d been operating on instinct, rather than thinking my strategy through. That had to change. I needed information. I needed their trust. And when I had it, I’d use it to get the fuck out of here for good.