Chapter 19
He made me sleep in the basement for a week. I did my best to act normally when Eve was home, which was the only time he let me out, but it was harder than I thought. I missed my daughter. I missed my freedom.
I missed him.
One mistake had destroyed our happiness, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get that back. But I had to try. No matter what he had in store for me, I had to do everything in my power to earn his forgiveness.
On the eighth morning, the door creaked open, just like it had during the previous week. Like clockwork, he brought my meals down to the basement. As he descended the stairs, I wiped my cheeks, certain I had tear stains on them from crying so much.
Every night as I fell asleep, first thing in the morning, and every time he left me alone in his dungeon. The separation was killing me. I wished he would punish me and get it over with, even if it meant taking strikes from every implement of pain he owned.
His heavy feet landed on the bottom step, and I realized something was different about today. He wasn’t dressed for work, and he wasn’t carrying a plate of food.
“Strip,” he ordered.
I peeled the long T-shirt I’d been sleeping in from my body.
“Put on a pair of heels.” He gestured toward the collection of stilettos against the wall, right under his paddles and floggers.
I crossed the room, selected a red pair because I knew he liked the color, then slid my feet into them, one by one. As I bent over, I missed the way my hair used to curtain my face, trailing toward the ground. Straightening my spine, I faced him. And I waited.
He held out a hand.
“Come here.”
I went to the hand beckoning me, as eager as a well-trained dog. Knowing this didn’t change a thing. I gladly slipped my palm into his.
“Today you begin the first day of your punishment.”
Something ominous tingled down my spine. We climbed the stairs in silence—the kind of quiet that was the polar opposite of comfortable. As he led me through the house, I wanted to ask questions.
What are you going to do to me?
Will it hurt?
Will you ever forgive me?
He pulled a keyring from his pocket and unlocked his office. This was a new development, as he’d never felt the need to lock his office before now, and that made me question what waited on the other side of that door.
Fitting his hand to the small of my back, he ushered me inside, and that’s when I spied the cage standing upright in a corner, barely big enough to fit one person.
I gulped.
“For every day that Ian is in treatment, you will spend your time in that cage while Eve is in school. I’ve arranged to work from home for a few weeks.”
Paying attention to the intricate details, I inspected the cage and guessed he planned to put me in there facing the corner. There was an open area about the right height for my ass.
I cast a pleading glance his way. “Please don’t do this, Master.”
“I didn’t do this. You did.”
“I don’t blame you for being angry.”
“Kayla, I’m not angry. I’m fucking destroyed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, falling to my knees and kissing his bare feet. I was that desperate.
“I know you are, and that’s why I know you’ll take your sentence with gratitude. I expect you to thank me every goddam day for it.” He grasped my hair with his unyielding fingers. “Get up.”
I was certain my heart was about to claw its way out of my chest and die a slow, torturous death on the floor. I hadn’t been this scared in a long time. That cage seemed larger than life with its door wide open and waiting for me to cross the threshold.
I cast a nervous glance at Gage. “I’ll do anything else. Anything.”
“Begging won’t save you from this.”
My voice rose to an unnatural level. “Please—”
“What I did for him,” he interrupted, “I did for you.” He gestured to the small prison. “Now you’re going to do this for me.”
He was punishing me for wanting Ian to live, and in a way, he was also punishing his brother. The longer Ian fought the cancer, the longer Gage would imprison me. He was possibly the most sadistic man on the planet.
“When it’s over, will you forgive me, Master?”
For the first time in days, he touched me. Raising his palms, he framed my cheeks. “Pay your penance, baby, then we’ll talk forgiveness.” He swept away my tears with his thumbs, and it was those sparks of gentleness, of compassion, that kept me forever under his spell.
But with that spark of empathy also burned an ember of a wound that wouldn’t heal anytime soon.
My week spent in the basement hadn’t softened him a bit.
I deserved the consequences, but knowing what I was in for and getting it were two different things.
I eyed the cage with its cold bars, various hooks and stockades, and shivered.
“Don’t move.” He crossed to his desk and pulled a ball gag out of a drawer, along with a set of nipple clamps and leather cuffs. I stood like an inanimate object—save for the shivers of my naked body—as he revealed the biggest, most gag-worthy contraption of rubber he owned.
“Gage—”
“I’m your Master right now. Not your lover, not your husband. I’m your fucking Master, and you will obey me.” He held the rubber ball in front of my trembling lips. “Open your mouth.”
“Can we talk about this?” I asked in a rush. “I know what I did hurt—”
“Kayla, open your mouth now.”
Seconds passed—silent, agonizing seconds that weighed heavily on us. I realized that nothing I said would help my case or absolve me of my sin. My temporary moment of insanity didn’t matter because, on the most fundamental level, I’d betrayed him.
My terror of enduring that cage didn’t matter. He would impose his will on me until I relented, and he’d do it because that’s what he needed to get past what I’d done.
I swallowed hard, utter dread coiling around my neck like a boa constrictor.
The collar I wore, the ring on my finger—both bound me to the spot with the inescapable strength of chains.
Parting my lips, I let him inch the ball in, allowing the contraption to spread my mouth unbearably wide…
wider still until the gag filled every crevice.
He fastened the strap around my head, and I drew in slow breaths through my nose to calm my raging pulse.
To quiet the panic that flared inside me.
Saliva collected on my tongue and threatened to leak past my lips. The gag would have me drooling like a fool in no time. That was the thing I hated most about being gagged. The humiliation and the accompanying saliva that would drip down my chin before landing on my breasts.
“Give me your hands.”
I met his eyes and pleaded for mercy. Mostly, I hated not having a voice, despised not being heard. Another tear fell as he buckled leather cuffs around my wrists.
“You lied to me when you promised to stay away from him,” he said, moving on to my ankles. “Which is why you’re going to endure that gag.” He stood and gripped my chin. “Blink if you understand.”
I blinked, and blinked some more. One, two, three times with deliberate meaning.
Forgive me, Master.
“Stop it.” He took my nipples between two fingers and pinched.
“Did he touch your nipples?” He tilted his head and studied me, almost as if my forced silence would answer.
“He did, didn’t he?” He gave them a hard twist. “Did he make them hurt like this? Or maybe he sucked on them. I know how much you like your nipples played with.” He let go and lowered a hand between my legs.
“Did he touch you here? Did he fuck you with his fingers? Maybe he even dipped his tongue into my cunt. Did you let him taste what’s mine, Kayla? ”
My body reacted to his touch, to the images they produced in my poisoned head, and I spread my legs a little wider.
“Did you spread your legs for him?” He thrust angry, punishing fingers inside me, bringing me to my toes, wrenching a pleading moan from my gagged mouth.
Sick. I was so sick. He was about to discipline me for the ultimate sin, and I couldn’t stop from dripping onto his fingers, down his wrist.
Who knew self-loathing could be so toxic?
“I’m going to take your flushed cheeks as a yes.
” He stepped closer until we were nose to nose.
“But I’m the one who owns you. I’m the one who decides when you come.
The only one who decides if you ever come again.
” His claim to my pussy took on the tempo of a jackhammer, fingers plundering my slick heat.
“I’m the one who decides if you ever talk again.
If you ever exist outside of that cage again. ”
I wanted so badly to be strong, but my moans gurgled in my throat, barely held back, and my eyes begged him for more. I pushed my breasts out, hoping the tightness of my nipples would distract him. Tempt him.
But Gage was a man of his word. Stubborn, steadfast, and immovable. No amount of temptation would appeal to him because he was in his zone—that dangerous place where the only thing that tempted him was my pain and humiliation.
“We will get past this.” He positioned himself in front of me, feet shoulder-width apart on the floor, his fist clenching a set of nipple clamps. “Because I love you.”
I felt my eyes widen at the change in his tone. The hope it brought forth.
“I’ll find a way to forgive you for this, because you’ve forgiven me for so much shit, Kayla.” He clamped my nipples, and then I stood before him, his decorated slave. He gestured to the awaiting prison. “Inside, now.”
Oh God.
That space seemed so tight. On shaking limbs, I obeyed and tried not to squirm as I faced the corner, but it was futile. Gooseflesh licked my ass, a precursor to what I instinctively knew. He was going to whip me through the opening of the cage. Maybe not now. Maybe not even today.
But eventually, he would take the bullwhip to my ass.
“Good girl.” He spread my arms out, locking my wrists to the bars at my sides. Then he used a foot to nudge my feet apart so he could anchor them as well. After he finished securing me, I stood in four-inch heels, spread-eagled, and incapable of moving or even shifting my weight.
Panic took hold of me, increasing my heart rate, making me breathe heavily through my nose. How would I stand this, day in and day out?
I honestly didn’t know.