Chapter Four #2
I couldn’t help but notice the way Gaby paled at that. Wide eyes and trembling lips could be faked. The sudden drain of color from her face could not. “Well, Nurse Cala?” I prompted. “If that is your name.”
“This was just temporary to hold me over until I found a new nursing job, away from y— elsewhere.”
Her pulse quickened and her breaths became notably shorter and shallower. She was running from me. Interesting.
“Perhaps you’d like to save us the trouble and tell us what you’re doing here. Who are you working for and what exactly is your assignment?”
Her fear sharpened into panic, eyes darting toward the exits. Taking a breath and cooling her nerves, Gaby straightened herself and shuttered her expression. With admirable calm, she said, “Clearly, I’m fired, so I’ll just take my things and go.”
She turned back to the lockers, but Gio turned her right back around. “You’re not going anywhere, princess.”
Her eyes widened slightly at the last word, glinting not with outrage but with fear.
The reaction lasted less than a second. Often, that was all it took.
The smallest lapses in control revealed the biggest secrets.
It finally hit me that Gaby was no regular Italian woman.
I’d stake my life on her being a mafia princess, like Vittoria.
But if she was, what was she doing working a menial job, unless she was hiding or sent to spy on us?
“Being fired is the least of your worries, Gaby or Gigi, or whoever you are. Our family doesn’t take kindly to liars.” Gio’s eyes sparked daggers at Gaby.
Astonishingly, her gaze found mine, silently begging for help.
Even more astonishingly, I wanted to give it. Five days ago, I'd barely known her name. Yet standing there, pale and frightened, every instinct I possessed urged me to step between her and whatever had put that fear in her eyes.
“Gio. Let me handle this in your office.”
He was about to protest, and I knew what his argument would be, that interrogations weren’t my field of expertise, but my brother didn’t know the nature of our relationship.
I held Gaby’s gaze, witnessing the effect of my words on her. Swallowing, her eyes grew as big as saucers in her pale face. The rapid pulse at her throat and small panting breaths told me exactly how excited she was at the prospect of being alone with me.
Gio didn’t miss it either. “She’s all yours, brother,” he sighed, walking away. “Call if you need some reinforcement.”
Gripping her elbow, I all but dragged her into Gio’s ostentatious office. It was bold, cold, and featured entirely too much gold and marble for my taste, it would suit my purposes just fine.
Opposite his desk were two antique high-back chairs and off to one corner was a large, overstuffed couch accompanied by a hand-carved coffee table. So Gio and so very cliché.
At the opposite corner, a door that led to a large ensuite, and beyond that was a small, but very private antique torture chamber with a bed in the center of a variety of contraptions meant to bridge the gap between pleasure and pain.
Most were familiar. A few defied even my imagination.
My brother’s tastes ran to the exotic, and he probably had more sex than the remaining six of us put together.
I all but dragged Gaby into the torture chamber, closing and locking the door before she could try and get away. I crossed my arms and leaned back against the door. Gaby looked around wildly for a way out, but the only way she was going anywhere was through me.
“Now that we are alone, tell me who you are and why you’re here,” I commanded.
She didn’t answer. To be fair, she might not have heard me. Her eyes were too busy taking in the scenery, lingering longest on my brother’s motorized fuck-machine and the admittedly eye-catching accessory presently attached.
I closed the distance between us, gripping her hair tightly and wrenching her head back.
“I don’t think you understand what’s happening here, Miss Cala.
You know where I work, you know where I spend my leisure time, clearly you know who I am, which means you really ought to know that, as of now, your life is forfeit and only I can return it.
I suggest you think hard about the consequences of disobeying a direct order. ”
Tears glistened in her eyes. Genuine tears. Or the best performance I’d ever seen.
I hardened my heart and tightened my hold. “Speak! Who are you spying for?”
“I’m not spying, I swear! I thought you were sent to find me and after…you know. The, um, sex, in the office, I was sure you would tell my family where I was. Running away seemed like the only option.”
I didn’t release her, holding her in my cold gaze. “You jumped from the frying pan, and nose dived straight into hell. One that I control. What is your real name, Gaby?”
“Please, I can’t,” she begged.
The plea hit harder than it should have.
Fear I understood.
Lies I expected.
But desperation was different.
Desperation suggested consequences.
Consequences suggested she wasn't merely hiding something. She was hiding from something.
I was done. “You can, and you will. Remove your clothing now, or I will rip them off and then, when and if you get to leave, you will do so naked.”
Her eyes rounded, but she did as she was told and I placed her on the narrow spanking bench, cuffing her wrists to the pillory bar and her legs to the bench.
I loved this extension that had been created, the top half acting both as restraint and support, allowing her to rest her forehead on soft padded leather while trapping her arms at shoulder-height.
A thick padded belt cinched around her middle kept her torso firmly in place.
The best part of the commissioned piece of furniture was it was built with hydraulics, so I could raise and tilt the table at whatever angle and height I wanted. For now, however, this would work.
“I am not a man in the habit of giving second chances.” I walked out of her sightline, the sound of my footsteps hard and stark in the still air, and stopped behind her.
“And never a third. Tell me your name, right now, and I will let you out. We can still have a grown-up conversation. Or don’t, and see what happens when you disobey me. ”
I could see Gaby’s hands trembling. So could she; she drew them into firm fists and said nothing.
“Have it your way,” I set up the fuck machine she’d been eyeing when we first entered the room behind her. And tested the distance to ensure the tip would hit her slick opening without penetrating. I took my time hoping my actions would play on her imagination and she would open up.
I wanted her to suffer a little bit, so I used a few of the features to entice her without giving her satisfaction. Pressing the remote, the bench slowly shifted to a forty-five-degree angle. The support beam between her chest dropped away, leaving her heavy breasts to gently sway.
The dildo would touch her every few seconds, and if she strained to her limits, she could just pull herself almost out of reach.
For now, she was trying to stay there, but soon her aching muscles would give out and she would have to relax back into its stimulating pulse, activating her need for more.
When I found a heavy set of clamps, I approached Gaby and held them out for her to see.
“You are a naughty girl, aren’t you, Gaby?
By the time I’m done, you will be ready to tell me everything. ”
Her nipples were already hard. I pinched one between my fingers. Gaby moaned, then let out a small cry when I attached the clamp and tightened it. Her face scrunched with concentration, eyes screwed tightly shut, then repeated the action with her second nipple.
A sheen of sweat broke out on her brow when I flicked the weighted clamps.
“Talk to me, Gaby,” I warned. “It’s too late to get out of this unscathed, but it can and will get so much worse. What is your real name?”
She didn’t respond, but she would. I looked at the implements and chose a Lexan cane, a PVC flogger and a paddle, placing them within reach where she could see and anticipate the damage each one could inflict.
I lifted the cane and swooshed it through the air a few times. “Gaby, why are you being punished?”
“Because I dumped a drink on you?”
Finally, words, but not the ones I was expecting. I’d been so caught up in wondering who she worked for that the drink incident had been forgotten, but it was a start.
I swung the cane, connecting with the meatiest part of her cheeks. Gaby was not a tall woman, but unlike many smaller women, she was generously endowed with a fleshy heart-shaped ass and breasts a man could feast on for hours.
“Ouch!”
Ouch, indeed. Lexan packed a powerful immediate sting that created a ton of heat. Unlike other implements, the sting didn’t last long and was designed to create a great deal of discomfort, forcing the receiver to deal with an overload of sensation.
“Let’s talk about that, shall we? Why would you drop a drink on my lap when you could have scurried away before I ever knew you were there? If you were clever about it, you might have even finished your shift here with me none the wiser. Instead, you went out of your way to make sure I saw you.”
I brought the cane down again, making a perfect stripe under the first one.
“Yowch! That wasn’t planned!”
“I’m not convinced.”
Down came the cane.
“Ahh! I took the job at Mercy, you being there wasn’t even on my radar, I swear!”
“And yet you followed me here.”
Swwap!
“Ow! I did not! I told you. This is just temporary while I look for work at another hospital. I didn’t know you had a brother that owned this place.”
“Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why you assaulted me with a glass of whiskey.” I gave her a stroke with the cane and leaned in deliberately close, so that she could feel my breath on her back when I inquired, “Was my performance in the office really so disappointing?”
She shivered.