Chapter One
He walks into the room and I don’t know where to look, what to do with my hands, what to say. Of course, I’m not supposed to say anything, am I? But even if I could—even if I dared—he is simply too overwhelmingly beautiful.
I didn’t expect it—didn’t expect him. My bare feet shift on the soft Persian rug, the wood floor beneath creaking like a quiet sigh of pleasure. Taking in a quick, gasping breath, I inhale the scents of aged wood and plaster, the papery smell these old San Francisco Victorians have. Scent and sound were all I knew until a moment ago, when someone removed the blindfold from my eyes. I know the city I’m in, but not where, exactly. I am not supposed to know. And now I know what the man I have been sold to looks like. My new Master. The man I would have served with deep devotion simply because he owns me, because this servitude is what I want—what I need—but who now is making me dizzy with indescribable lust and expectation.
He must be six-foot-four, with broad shoulders under a dark blue button-down shirt. European tailoring—the shirt fits his shoulders and his narrow waist too perfectly to be anything else—which I recognize right away from my time in Italy, Spain and London with my previous owner. A small stabbing ache in my chest at that thought, but I focus on the shirt, on the man before me, and the pain drifts, fades away.
His sleeves are rolled up, revealing strong forearms. There is a tattoo of a Japanese-style dragon curling around his right arm—a symbol of power, which suddenly, inexplicably, seems funny to me, if only because this man’s power seeps from every pore and needs no sign of proof. I let out a small, stupid giggle. Unable to help it. Helpless. Perhaps that’s why the giggle.
Helpless. Yes.
Or perhaps because the giggle is more from relief, the knowledge that my desire for pain, for punishment, will soon be sated.
He raises one dark brow, his eyes gleaming like pure blue fire in the dim light of the room. His voice is a low threat. Upper class American accent. “You find me amusing, girl?”
Girl. Is that to be my name in this place? Not Aimée? Why does that frighten me so when this is everything I’ve asked for? To be rendered invisible in a way I choose.
A flash of my father, his back turned to me. How many times did that actually happen, and how much of it is purely symbolic, when in fact, I hardly ever saw him? But I don’t want to think of all that now. I am here to forget. To forget my past. To forget myself. To immerse myself in this powerlessness that is of my choosing.
Still, it occurs to me for one moment, sharp with the edge of panic, that maybe I should have read the contract more carefully before I signed it.
“Speak up,” he demands.
“No, Sir.”
“Nerves?” There’s a long pause—long enough to make me feel the truth of what he’s suggested down to my toes, in my belly, in those dark, dark recesses of my mind that brought me here to begin with.
“Of course you’re nervous,” he goes on. “If you weren’t I’d send you back. I don’t take foolish girls. I don’t take a lot of things, but you’ll find out about that soon enough.” He steps closer and even his earthy, spicy, elegant scent frightens me, partly because he smells so good I want to drop to my knees before him—need to—which scares me half to death. “What I will take…is you. Whenever I want. I will do whatever I want to you. And any time you doubt why you’re here I will find a way to remind you. I will remind you through pain. Through denial. Through darkness. I will remind you by giving you exactly what you asked for when you agreed to come to my house. The Training House never fails its…victims.”
I’m shaking now, my legs trembling so hard they’re about to go out from under me, and then I will be on my knees, like it or not. I will like it, which I already know. I am also drenched with desire, my pussy slick and pulsing, which should not be surprising, but it is. Every single detail about this moment is shocking to me.
He steps closer and I look up at his face, knowing this may be the last opportunity I’m allowed. And God, his eyes are so, so blue—midnight blue, eyes like I’ve never seen before. His hair is dark and the slightest bit unruly. His jaw and cheekbones are sharply cut, as if from stone, and his mouth is both lush and cruel. I want to touch it, with just my fingertip. I don’t dare even think of kissing him. Oh, but I am a liar; I do think of kissing him. I think of that mouth between my thighs.
Neither of those things is likely to happen in this place.
Torture.
Torture already, and I’ve just gotten here.
He strokes one fingertip along my jaw and I swear I could almost come. He slides that fingertip down, across my throat, which he grabs with his big hand and squeezes until I gasp as he takes me down to the floor. I am on my hands and knees, then elbows and knees as he slides his hand to the back of my neck, allowing me to breathe but pressing my face into the carpet. It smells like wool and despair. It smells like long-forgotten perfume and my fondest fantasies fulfilled. I don’t know what to think.
He will tell you what to think.
Yes. My body goes loose, giving itself over to him. To submission in the purest form I have ever experienced. All of the Dominants I’ve played with at the kink clubs, all of the lovers who have tied me up, spanked me, fucked me too hard, even my Master who decided to let me go, to offer me up to this place, disappear in the wake of this man who gets power play in a way I’ve never felt before.
Oh yes. This is where I need to be. At his feet. In his house. Under his hands. He has reminded me.
He kicks my thighs apart and I feel completely exposed. I know I am, that he can see everything—every small, pink curve and valley of swollen flesh. It makes me feel beautiful. It makes me afraid. But before I have even two breaths to think about it, he thrusts his fingers into me and I’m biting down hard on my lip not to writhe, not to cry out. He does something with his hand inside me—I can’t even begin to describe what it is—but desire is like a knife, cutting into my cunt… No. It’s inside me, everywhere at once. Pleasure and pleasure and some pain too, but I welcome it. Suddenly he adds another finger—a third or a fourth…I don’t know—and pumps me so hard it rocks my entire body, and I feel pressure building, building, then I scream as liquid gushes from me. Oh God, someone please tell me I didn’t just urinate all over the man who is to be my Master here!
He starts again, his fingers making that odd motion, that strange sort of snapping thing inside me, against my g-spot. This time I focus on the pressure as it builds. He fucks me hard and fast with his hand, hard and hurting, except that it’s so good…excruciating, and I am screaming again, and oh God…
“Again,” he demands.
Once more he strokes and snaps at my g-spot, and I really am hurting now, but I can’t stop as I gush again, even more this time, and it’s like coming, yet it’s different and I am already addicted.
He doesn’t say a word as he starts again. The breath absolutely leaves my body as I scream as hard as I come, or whatever it is that’s happening to me. I crumple, panting, onto the floor.
With hard hands he yanks me back up onto my knees, drags me across the rug until I am kneeling in front of him, between his knees as he sits in a chair. He grabs the back of my long, red hair in a tight fist, pulling my face toward his, and instead of yelling as I expect, he pauses, looking at me, and I am lost in the blue of his eyes, in trying to memorize his every feature. Then, to my utter surprise, he kisses my cheek, my jawline, then my cheek again. He pulls back, his gaze on mine, burning suddenly, then shadowed, and whatever was going on with him is gone, and he is closed and harsh again. He pulls my hair so hard I nearly scream from that alone. I love having my hair pulled, but this is brutal. I love it—and him, for doing this to me—even more. For the pulling. For the kisses. For whatever I saw in his eyes.
“Squirt for me again,” he demands, his voice low and dangerous as he impales me once more with his lovely, punishing fingers.
I whimper as he fucks me savagely, and it is mere seconds before I gush all over his shoes, the beautiful rug, my own thighs. He doesn’t even pause this time before doing it again once more. And God, it feels better than anything ever has in my life, and I don’t think I can take it anymore.
Tears pool in my eyes, pour down my cheeks as he makes me do it over and over again. Over and over until my screams turn to guttural groans and whimpers. Finally I slip onto the wet floor, crying in earnest, unable to move. He sits quietly, watching me, I think. Then he gets up and moves away from me. I hear sounds I can’t identify at first, but which I come to recognize as ice tinkling in a crystal glass. He is to have a nice drink while watching me cry on the floor. Oh yes, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
The crying has mostly stopped, but I’m still hiccupping. Exhausted. He moves closer, until he’s bent over me. I don’t know what to expect, which is clearly the idea, of course, and I have to order myself not to flinch as he reaches for me. When he touches a finger to my lips, I know to open for him. He thrusts into my mouth and I suck, wishing it were his cock, knowing I may never be fortunate enough to service him, this man I want so badly, want so much to serve it’s like an ache in my stomach.
He slides his finger in, then out, slowly, sensually, and I lose myself in sucking him, sucking exactly as I would if I had his cock in my mouth, tasting my tears that are apparently still falling.
Oh yes…
His finger slips out, leaving me empty as his hand goes to my hair again and he yanks me to my feet.
The door opens. Blinking, I try to clear my vision, but everything is a blur of tears and whatever it was he just did to me.
Two women stand in the doorway. Both are as naked as I am except for the shining steel collars around their necks. They are a matched pair of tall brunettes, both shaved clean and with pierced nipples. Both wear a small brand of a fleur-de-lis over their left breasts I recognize as the house crest, which makes me shiver, but whether with desire or fear I don’t know.
“Intake,” he tells the girls. “You know what to do.”
“Yes, Master,” they answer in unison, like pretty little robots. Pretty little robots that I want to become.
I am so filled with envy I can hardly stand it. And in fact, I can hardly stand. But the matched brunette slaves take one arm each and half drag, half carry me down a series of narrow hallways until we reach what I think is the back of the big Victorian house. We go through a door into a small room.
Even in my dazed state I see that it’s spare, with nothing but a lovely, old-fashioned porcelain tub in the middle of the room, a pallet done up in white sheets on the hardwood floor in one corner and a bucket—a bucket!—in another.
They lay me down on the pallet, and the tears have started again. One of them holds out a bottle of water.
“Drink this,” she says. “All of it.”
I prop myself up on an elbow and drink half the bottle down. The water is cool. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was, how sore my throat is from screaming.
“Finish it,” the same girl says.
I nod, wipe my mouth with the back of my arm, take a few more sips, wipe my mouth again, then my eyes.
“What’s your name?” I ask the one closest.
“Girl,” they both answer, the robots again.
I shake my head. “Girl?”
“Just drink your water. This one too.” She pushes another bottle toward me. “You’ll know what to do with the bucket. Otherwise, rest. You’re going to need it. Someone will bring some food to you eventually.”
My head is spinning as they leave, shutting the lights off before they go. I am in complete darkness other than the very dim light coming through the heavy damask curtains over the single window. But there is also an enormous amount of relief at her words. Instructions. This I can do—give myself over to this place where I don’t have to make decisions. Where someone else will tell me even when to drink, when to eat. When to come.
This is exactly what I asked for, to such a degree I may never have asked if I’d known this were even possible. To be rendered so completely invisible, even as I am seen, touched, hurt. To experience those extremes of sensation, both pleasure and pain, in a way that makes it safe for me to feel, because I’m no good at doing that on my own. I never have been. No, it’s the restrictions and rules and expectations in being a slave that allow me to. It’s the only safety I have ever truly had. I’m shaking again, but it’s need coursing through my body—need and the relief making me go weak all over.
I cannot believe I get to do this. I cannot believe I have to do this. There is nothing I can do to get out of this.
I breathe a sigh and repeat those lovely, luscious words, whispering them quietly in the dark.
“There is nothing I can do to get out of this.”
I slept. I only know this because suddenly I am awakened by rough hands on me, pulling me upright, then shoving me down onto the mattress and flipping me onto my stomach. A big hand on the small of my back holds me down hard.
I hear a voice—a male voice. Him! He says, “Hold her still.”
Smaller female hands on my body: on the back of my head shoving my face into my white pallet, on my ankles, pulling my legs wide. I want to scream but I swallow it down. I’m sure he’ll give me more reason to scream if I only wait. And I do. Helplessly. I can hear them breathing in the still air. Waiting.
The waiting goes on for such a long time I begin to wonder if this is all he will do to me. And the longer it continues the more I have to struggle to hold still, until I’m shaking with the effort.
Finally one finger strokes down my spine, slowly, gently.
“Do you want this, Girl?” he asks me.
My last Master would often ask me the same thing, and the answer was always yes, because it was never enough with him. He could never play me hard enough, even when his beatings drew blood, leaving me bruised for weeks. He could never be quite strict enough—not in the harsh way I yearned for. And the answer is still yes, even in this frightening place. But I don’t know if am to answer at all, so I stay quiet. Shaking. I can barely feel the other girl’s hands on me any longer.
“It doesn’t matter, you know,” he says quietly.
His fingers impale me so quickly my teeth rattle, and the pain spears through my body like a knife, I am so sore from before. But it doesn’t matter, none of it does. Only the pain and the desire and his hand fucking me hard and fast. Harder as he adds fingers, filling me up. I am so wet, needing to come, but there is no relief—only this rapid fucking, his evil fingers so deep in my pussy I think he may have gone in up to his wrist.
When he spreads the cheeks of my ass and presses a finger into my anus I exhale, a long breath that is perhaps more a sighing gasp. He doesn’t wait for me to try to relax, which is impossible in any case, before he pushes the finger in, ramming it deep.
I cry out, but it doesn’t matter. God, how often will I be reminded of that? It doesn’t matter that he is hurting me, except that I crave it. Love it. Love him already in the way I do anyone who takes my power from me as his wicked hands fuck me harder, as he adds another finger to my ass, opens both fingers wide in order to fill my ass as much as my cunt.
I am burning. Need and fear and surrender washing over me in intoxicating waves. When his hand deep in my pussy stills and he thrusts viciously into my ass, I come, a sobbing cry on my lips, my body twisting in ecstasy, the girls holding me tight. And I need it. I need them to hold me down. To keep me safe in their grip so I won’t lose myself. Or so that I will. I don’t know anymore.
His hands slip from me before I’m done coming, leaving me not quite sated. Bereft. The girls let me go and they all leave the room. I hear the door close, the snick of the lock. Not that they need to lock me in. I am a good girl, mostly. But knowing I’m locked up in here really does something to my head.
Rolling onto my back on my pallet on the floor, I pull in one sharp breath after another. I whisper into the dark, “This is really happening.”
I stare up toward the ceiling, and maybe my eyes have adjusted, because I think I can make out the light fixture up there. But there is nothing else to discover in this room, other than what I will discover about myself.
I lie there for some time, thinking sleep will take me at any moment, but it eludes me. Instead my mind is filled with reflection. Memory.
“The Training House is where you need to be, Aimée. It will be good for you. I can never hope to achieve what I want for you if I keep you with me.”
“Please, Graham, Sir. Don’t let me go.”
I bury my face in his lap, kneeling on the floor in front of him in his cold London flat, tears running down my face.
He lifts my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “You have been with me for a year, pet. You know I never expected to keep you. I never expected to want to. But I must let you go because I want you for myself. Too much. I will not be so selfish with you when I can’t give you what you need. This is simply beyond my scope. My resources. You need to be under harsher hands. You need a Master who excels in mind fuck perhaps more than you require anything else. This is the only way you will be able to truly let go.”
I continue to cry but my tears do no good. His hand on my chin grips a bit harder.
“You yourself have asked me to send you someplace where you would be worked very hard. Relentlessly.”
“That was months ago,” I argue.
“You never stopped needing it,” he says quietly. He lets my face go and gets to his feet. “It’s all arranged. There is paperwork in my study. Go upstairs. Read it. Sign it if you will. But even if you decide not to go, you can’t stay here with me any longer. I’ve taught you everything I can and your time with me must be done. You know this is the right thing for you, Aimée.”
My heart shatters as he walks toward the door. But even as it does, I know he speaks the truth. I do want more—my body, my very being, yearns for the stark, brutal training in a way that has made me feel fragile lately, as if my skin has stretched too much to accommodate the need. I have to go.
A small pain forms in my stomach when I think of Master Graham, like a tiny knot made of barbed wire. I did love him, in my own way. I always love—at least a little bit—those who dominate me and do it well, but I’ve never spent that kind of concentrated time with any of the others. And now there is him. The new Master. I know already I’ll fall hard for him, as hard as he will work me.
Oh yes.
This is part of what I crave—to love my Masters so heedlessly, so completely, that it frees me to give myself permission to do these perverted, forbidden things. Dangerous things, as my poor, hurting cunt and ass can attest to. And I know it’s only beginning, that today has been nothing but a small taste of what is to come. And I rather love that I have absolutely no idea of what might happen to me. I’ve signed myself over, body and soul, like a pact with the Devil himself.
The thought makes me smile as I turn onto my side, curling into a ball.
I am in the Devil’s house. I am exactly where I want to be.
I curl my fingers into the sheets beneath me, the only thing I have to hold onto. And happier than I’ve been in a long time—maybe ever—I close my eyes and drift into sleep once more.