Chapter 5
DOMINIC
Eating her pussy didn’t involve penetration.
It wasn’t the same as fucking her. Not that I didn’t fuck the other girls.
I did. Some. Not all. Only if they were virgins in any way.
Well, that was mostly true. It would be better for them, easier, if I took that from them.
I’d never eaten one out, though. I’d never wanted to.
I’d played with them, I’d enjoyed fucking the ones I did, but it was just that, a fuck, a piece of ass.
This was different. Maybe it was like kissing. Too personal.
And I’d kissed her too. Or tried to. Hell, I should have thanked her for nearly breaking my nose.
I don’t even know what made me do it. Yes, my cock was already hard after our little struggle, but hell, that was the norm, and in the last couple of years, I’d gotten to know my fist pretty well. And when I wanted a woman, I paid for it. Anonymous sex, exactly how I liked it.
So why the fuck had I eaten her out?
And why couldn’t I stop thinking about how she tasted? How she sounded when she came? How she thrust her hips at me, wanting more, even as she resisted me?
I’d felt it again, that strange sense of familiarity, when I’d walked into the room and she’d been sitting on the bed, watching me like that.
It was those damned haunted eyes. Haunted?
Or haunting. They’d seen evil. They saw through me and into my evil.
She’d survived evil. But would she survive me?
Yet it wasn’t just that. I knew those eyes. As ridiculous as it was, they were connected to some distant memory, something brief, something…better than this.
Hell, this was all ridiculous. I just needed to focus here and do my job, and if it meant I fucked her while I was at it—virgin or not—then so be it.
Stupid fucking rule anyway, considering I trained them to become sex slaves.
What difference would it make for them if I did fuck them?
None, that’s what. And I needed to remember this was a job.
Any nostalgic feelings, any attraction to this girl—it would have to get gone.
She was a fucking job. Granted, a job with a restriction: no penetration.
But hell, if it happened, it happened. No one would give a fuck, not in the end.
I finished my coffee, closed the shutter letting the too-bright sunshine into the kitchen, and walked into her room.
She lay awake, but the moment our eyes met, she blinked and looked away.
I closed the door and locked it behind me, walked into the bathroom where I’d left the chair, and brought it into the bedroom. I set the blanket I’d carried in on it.
She eyed it.
“Chilly in here,” I said casually.
She searched my face, my eyes.
“I’m thinking you need to use the bathroom?”
She nodded, her gaze settling on a spot just beyond me.
I guessed she’d be embarrassed after last night’s impromptu session.
I hadn’t intended to do what I’d done. I’d just meant to fuck with her a little.
I’d been reading, and all her racket had been annoying, quite frankly.
She had to know I wouldn’t keep her somewhere she’d be found so easily, so why the screaming?
“Did you sleep well?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and tracing the edge of one of her ankle cuffs.
“How well do you expect me to sleep in this freezing room bound and naked and fucking humiliated?”
Well, no elephant in this room, then. She was straightforward.
I liked that. I brushed a strand of hair from her face, and she shook her head to rid herself of my touch.
I gripped her chin and forced her to look at me.
“Getting my cock sucked puts me out like a light. The way you came, I’d thought you’d have slept into next week. ”
Her face grew warm beneath my touch, and I had to smile at the blush creeping up her neck and cheeks.
“The least you can do is thank me.”
“I hate you. You’re the worst of them all.”
“Worse than the men who branded you?” I raised my eyebrows, although truly, I didn’t care. Fact was, she was right. I was the worst of them all.
“The worst,” she spat out.
“Then we have no misunderstandings between us.” I undid her ankles first. Then I unhooked her from the ring at the top of the bed but kept her wrists bound. “Go.”
“With my hands tied?”
“Call me when you’re done. I’ll wipe.”
I almost laughed when her face got so red I thought she’d explode.
Truth was, it was an act, this flat, uninterested tone.
Not that I cared, I just…that hint of conscience crept in through the cracks in the fucking walls of my chest. It seeped through the tiniest fissure, and it fucked with me. I didn’t like it.
She walked into the bathroom. I noticed the bruises on her ass. I hadn’t whipped her too hard, but hard enough they’d serve as a reminder to behave every time she sat down.
While she took care of what she needed to, I went to the chest, unlocked it, and took out what I needed: the collar and the crop. A few moments later she returned, wiping droplets of water from her face with her hands.
“I need a toothbrush.”
“Isn’t there one in there?”
She didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Funny, I could have sworn…”
Her gaze fell to the things I held, and I could see the effort it took for her to stay in place.
“Would you like to earn a blanket?” I asked. “Maybe get some more water and food?”
“What do I have to do?” The question came out slow and cautious as a crawl.
“Kneel.”
She studied me, distrust in her eyes, hesitation in the way she bit her lip. “What are you going to do?”
“Put this collar around your neck.” I didn’t feel like playing all of a sudden.
I could see her mind working, trying to figure out what to do, what was expected, perhaps what would earn her the least amount of pain. But slowly, she knelt. It surprised me.
I stood motionless, looking at her. She turned her gaze away, distancing herself perhaps.
I cleared my throat and walked to her, collar and crop in the same hand.
She remained as she was, but she looked at me again, her eyes turned watchful.
I circled her once, looking down at the top of her pretty head, at the smooth flesh of her toned if not too skinny body.
I’d have to feed her soon. For all I knew, that granola bar was all she’d eaten in days.
When I stopped behind her, she craned her neck to look back.
“Face forward unless you’re told otherwise.”
She gave me a wary look but did as I said. I smiled. Pain and pleasure, the threat of the former and the shame of the latter. Remarkable teachers, that pair.
I picked up the hairbrush I’d left on the nightstand, sat on the bed behind her, and set the crop and collar down so I could pick up her hair.
I brushed the length of it, taking care to work out the knots, appreciating the weight of it, the shine when brushed.
Once I finished, I braided it into one long, dark pleat down her back and secured it with an elastic wrapped around the handle of the brush.
I got off the bed, squatted behind her, and took her in, appreciating how she knelt so quietly, so obediently, waiting.
I wondered how hard her heart pounded, and when I swept the back of my hand over the curve of her neck, she shuddered.
I stilled.
I think we both held our breath.
I forced myself to continue and picked up the collar, raising it over her head to secure around her neck, locking the small lock at the back, one only I had the key to and the one she would wear until she was sold.
I stood, with my hand on the top of her head and the crop held in the other, and circled to stand where she could see me.
She lifted her pretty gaze to mine, the green of her eyes bright, the pupils dark, dilated. There was a stillness about her. Her nipples tightened, and a scent—her scent, as I’d come to know it last night—hung in the air between us.
She was aroused.
I turned my hand into a fist and gripped the hair at the back of her head. She flinched but remained as she was, keeping her hands together on her lap. I brought her cheek to me, to the hardness just behind the fabric of the jeans.
“Men will want you.” Why did the thought not please me?
“They will pay to have you.” In fact, the idea of it made the fist in her hair tighten.
I only noticed it when the first tear slid from the corner of her eye, but I didn’t loosen my hold because right now, all I wanted were her lips around my cock, her tongue licking its length, her sucking me off.
What I needed was to shoot down her throat, and when she choked, to come all over her, to mark her as mine, to destroy her.
Because that would decimate her, and that was what I needed to do.
Take her to the point of breaking, but keep her just on this side of that abyss.
Beauty knelt at my feet.
And I would be the beast who would break her.
The monster who would destroy her.
Better me than another.
She’d be mine then, in a sick, unnatural way. In a sick, unnatural mind.
“What happened to you that you’re like this?”
Her quiet voice broke into my thoughts, accused me.
“That you can do this?”
Our gazes locked. I felt the shift in my chest, a flashback of me as I’d once been. As Dominic Benedetti. A man with a place, a home, a reason to live. A man with the whole world at his feet.
And then the realization of how I’d lost it rushed in on the heels of that memory, dampening everything else, regret and loss smothering me.
“What?”
I wondered if in that millisecond, she’d seen a flash of emotion cross my face.
I felt hot, sweaty. I felt—
“I changed my mind. I want to know your name.”
I blinked to dislodge this hold, this strange, new thing she held over me, but it didn’t work.
“Tell me your name,” she said.
My fist in her hair went limp. “Why? Why does it matter?”
“I don’t want to call you Death.”
I must have looked as confused as I felt.