Chapter Six
“I…” I stop, shake my head. “Master…?”
He runs a hand through his dark hair, tension in every line of his body. “I know it’s on the contract. I knew it when I paid for you, when I reviewed your medical records. But I want you to say it.”
“Is it…is it not Girl, Master?”
“Not right now. Tell me.”
Shaking my head once more, my hands clenching, I have to force the words out. “It’s Aimée.” It feels strange on my tongue. It feels as if I’ve done something terrible.
“Aimée,” he repeats, his shoulders dropping a little. He pats the sofa next to him. “Sit with me.”
I climb up slowly, warily, sitting very stiffly, my eyes on the floor. He unsnaps my leash, then my collar, and I want to cry. Is he so displeased with me? I turn frightened eyes to him.
“Don’t worry, I’m not releasing you.”
A tear escapes then, making him smile a little, just one corner of his lush mouth, and for the first time all day I feel as if I’ve done something right, even if it’s only crying for him. And this man’s smile is every bit as stunning as the rest of him.
“Aimée, I want you to talk to me. That’s why I took your collar off. You are still mine.” He pauses, watching me, his gaze searching my face, but I don’t know what he’s looking for. “Do you want to be?”
I hadn’t realized it was up to me. And perhaps it’s still not.
“Yes, Master! Please.” I am trembling all over.
“Then talk to me. I know this is…unprecedented under the circumstances. But this is my House, and I make my own rules. Understood?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good girl. Are you cold? Here.” He takes an angora blanket, woven in shades of maroon and gold, from the arm of the sofa and wraps its softness around me, his fingers pausing on the bare skin of my shoulder.
It occurs to me that he understands how difficult it is for me to talk with him while I am still a naked slave, after the terms of this place have been ingrained in me for the last week, or however long I’ve been here. Deeply ingrained, which is his clever intent, and my mind is having a terrible time wrapping itself around this sudden shift.
Suddenly he leans in, his face very close to mine. “I must tell you this—that I don’t know exactly why I brought you here, why I feel the need for you to talk to me as if you weren’t simply another one of my slaves. But you aren’t.” He sits back and drags tense fingers through his hair. “Goddamn it, you aren’t. And I’m as confounded by this as you appear to be.”
I’m really shaking now. I don’t know what to think, where to look, except at him. He is too handsome to be believed. So utterly masculine. Still exuding dominance like a pheromone. When he takes my hand I nearly yank it back. But I would never do such a thing.
“Aimée, don’t be afraid. I need to know you. Tell me something…”
“Tell you what, Master?”
“I don’t know. Anything. You were born in Paris, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Where in Paris?”
“Saint Germain-des-Prés.”
“Ah. A child of privilege. Your family is wealthy? That always makes for a very particular kind of slave. Maybe that explains your perfect posture, the grace of your movements.”
He runs a fingertip along my collarbone, up the side of my neck slowly, and I want to lean into him. I want to purr. Except that I’m still too shaken up by this turn of events.
“Or maybe that’s simply you,” he says. “Tell me how many Masters you’ve had, what your kink life has been like.”
“I have been owned twice before. Once, briefly, by a Mistress in Paris, once by Master Graham, who sent me to you.”
“And in the time between?”
“I’ve played at the clubs. I’ve bottomed for many people. But it never fulfilled me.”
“Why not?”
“I have a need to be owned, Master.”
“What else?” he demands, and I know I can’t be so brief with him. He truly wants to know.
I fold and unfold the edge of the blanket between my fingers, but when I see him noticing I stop. “I’m…not sure I’ve ever thought it all the way through. When I was with my Mistress in Paris, I was too young to appreciate it.”
“Sometimes when we’re very young, we need to get out and try different things, experience life. Experience submission on a variety of levels.”
“Yes, that was exactly how I felt.”
“You look surprised that I would understand. But I was once in the same position, you know.”
“You were a slave?” I cannot keep the shock from my voice.
He glances away, runs his hand over the high arm of the sofa, and I see the muscles in his forearm flex, making the dragon tattooed ripple over the bone and sinew. The black and gray detail and shading is exquisite. “Yes. A long time ago. In this very House.”
He remains quiet, pensive, and I don’t dare disturb him. I want to know this story too badly, and I’m afraid if I speak, if I move, it will break the mood, and he won’t tell me anything more.
Finally, his gaze still turned away from me, he says, “The Training House has been owned by several generations of Masters and Mistresses. It was run by Master Stephan when I came here. He was a remarkable man. Tall, with long, blond hair he wore slicked back. Very European. He was Austrian. And I was only nineteen years old, so I understand being too young for such confinement. I came and went a few times, and he allowed me back every time. By the time I was twenty-two we were lovers. I don’t know that I was ever a proper slave—not in the way the others were. I don’t know that I truly had it in me. Well.” He turns back to me, and I’m not certain why he’s trusting me with all of this, or with the rawness in his expression, the shadows in his eyes. “We were together for six years when he became ill. Cancer. For the next two years I took care of him, as well as the House. During that time I expanded my skill set and my knowledge of domination, although he’d had me Top other slaves for his entertainment many times over the years. He’d had me fuck them, Girls and Boys, in front of him for his pleasure. Sometimes we’d take another slave to bed, sometimes entire orgies. But I’m not interested in that any longer. I haven’t been for some time.”
His gaze is burning into me. And I find I’m holding my breath, trying desperately to take in this information while he is mere inches from me, distracting me, my body on fire, my emotions cycling through so fast I can’t grab on to any one thing and make sense of it: yearning, fear, sympathy, hope, despair.
“Aimée. I don’t know what it is I’m looking for, but I felt the moment you arrived in my House I’d found…something. And it’s driving me mad.”
He stands and the panic takes over once more as I watch him pace the floor, his hand buried in his curling black hair.
“The thing is, I don’t know that I ever really loved the man. How terrible is that? How unfortunate for us both. Surely he knew.” He comes to me, kneels down in front of me. “I couldn’t stand it if that were the case with you. If you were never to serve me because you loved me in some way and not simply because of a contract you’d signed. If serving me fulfilled only your need to submit, and not some true desire for….”
I can feel my jaw dropping. My heart tumbles in my chest and the only thing I can get out is a harsh whisper. “Master, I serve you because I need to. I came here because I needed to serve, but after that first day, I think only of you.”
And I have just lied to my Master. Because after today I am also thinking of Christopher. But at this moment, it is the Master in front of me, and I want…everything. I want him to touch me, to hold me, to hurt me. I want to do anything he asks of me, demands of me. I do have love in my heart for him. And I realize this connection was forged the moment our eyes met in his study downstairs, when I was simply a nameless Girl. Can I ever be that for him again?
He reaches for me and cups my cheek. Tears sting my eyes.
“Why do you cry, when I’m not punishing you?”
“Because I don’t know how to cope with this tenderness from you.”
He watches me, and murmurs, “Perhaps you’ll simply have to learn how, my Aimée.”
Oh! I do my best not to burst into tears, but it happens, anyway. And then more tears as he pulls me from the sofa onto the floor with him, into his lap, and the blanket slips away as he kisses me. And oh, his kisses are delicious, his lips tender, then his teeth biting hard enough to hurt. And I understand that I will be able to take the tenderness because with him, it will always be countered with pain. I stop struggling as my heart surrenders.
He draws both my wrists behind my back as he continues to kiss me: my lips, my neck, where he bites me harder, and it hurts enough to make me pant in pain and pleasure. Lovely. Excruciating. Then he’s using the pressure points just under my collarbones to hold me still, and he lets my wrists go while he runs the other hand over my body. And this is so completely different from any way he’s touched me before, from any way I would have ever expected him to after the rigid harshness of his command that I’ve known since the first moment I saw him.
Is this some dream? Am I alone on my white pallet, eyes closed against the moonlight, imagining the Master wants me? Me, not a nameless, faceless slave—the slave I came here to be, but which I don’t want to be at this moment.
His hand caresses my side, slips down to the curve of my hip, and it’s like being touched by a lover. There is still command there, but oh, his kisses are soft and sweet in between the hurting little nips of his sharp teeth.
He forces my thighs open a bit, his hand demanding, yet sensual. And it’s like some kind of mad mind fuck, being caught in this strange in-between state. Am I the slave girl? Am I myself? Maybe I don’t even know who that is anymore. Which was what I thought I wanted. But now…
Tentatively, I bring my hands up and lace them behind his neck, feel the heat of the tender skin there, burying my palms under the curling hairline. And my heart twists in my chest because he feels so utterly human. Vulnerable.
I can’t stand it. It is everything I never knew I wanted.
He presses his lips harder to mine, as if he silently understands exactly what I’m thinking. His tongue is hot and sweet, tasting the tiniest bit of mint beneath a flavor that is simply him—like leather and strength. Intoxicating. As intoxicating as his hands, which are really exploring me now, sliding over my flesh: my stomach, the small of my back, then up my spine, leaving chills in the wake of his touch. I am covered in goose bumps. Soaking wet. I want to spread my thighs wide for him, welcome him in. Beg him for it. But I am still mostly a good Girl, so I remain quiet, passively accepting his kisses, his touch, except for the little gasping breaths I can’t help.
Soon he’s pressing me down on my back on the soft rug, the weight of his body over mine, the buttons of his shirt pressing into the soft flesh of my breasts. We’re making out like teenagers, except that there is nothing innocent about it—about him as his panting breath fills my mouth, as I breathe it in. He uses his knees to kick my thighs apart and I want to scream at him to fuck me.
Please, please, please…
Shaking all over, my clit is pulsing with a desire that is stunningly sharp. A small sigh escapes me when he lowers his head and takes my aching nipple into his mouth, drawing it in, sucking hard, swirling his tongue over the sensitive tip. Then biting down hard enough to make me cry out.
“Ah!”
“Did that hurt you? You must know I meant it to,” he murmurs, his voice a low, rough rumble I can feel in his chest. “You know we both wanted it to. Needed it to. There are certain things we understand about each other, even with so much still to discover.”
He turns his face and rubs his soft hair over my breasts, and it feels unbelievable. So, so good I have to hold my breath in fear that he’ll stop. Finally I dare to take his face in my hands, running my fingers through that thick, lovely hair. But he immediately takes control from me, pinning my wrists over my head with one hand, kissing and sucking at my throat, using his lips and teeth to press, to constrict my breath, which always renders me helpless—it’s the hard surge of desire as much as it is surrendering to his control. It’s everything at once.
Everything.
Him. Me. This House. My surrender to someone not only as a slave, but as something—someone—more, and the two ideas seem to be completely antithetical, to crash together, making a little explosion inside my brain. And as if that isn’t enough, he suddenly raises his head, stormy blue gaze locked on mine, shadows passing like clouds across the sun. There is something tortured in there. But he gives a little shake of his head, and it clears—some of it, anyway. Then his brows draw together as he takes my jaw in one powerful hand. He bends to nip at my lip, his tongue darting out until I open for him.
Then, pulling back, he gives a sharp nod of his chin. “Open, Aimée.”
My lips part, my pussy slick and wet for him, open already.
He bends and catches my lower lip between his teeth, bites down until I begin to squirm and pant from the pain. Until I taste blood. He releases the tortured flesh and licks it. And as my mouth opens on a moan, he licks again, then again, then he kisses me, and for a few moments we’re making out once more. He slows things down, his tongue darting between my lips, then again, wetter this time, and I realize he is pushing his saliva into my mouth. And this is one of the hottest things that’s ever happened to me.
He pulls back just enough to look at me.
“Yes, Master. Please. More,” I dare to beg, if only because the rules have changed and I don’t know what they are anymore, and maybe he doesn’t either.
He leans closer, holds my jaw in his hand, squeezes, his fingers prying my lips open, holding my face with a firm grip. And I can feel as he lets his saliva drip into my mouth. I drink it in, swallow, as I would his come. Desire is like a flash of heat lightning in my body, and I am twisting beneath him, but I think we both understand I have no desire to get away.
He ends with another sharp nip, releases my jaw and sits up, straddling me. “Unbutton my shirt,” he orders.
My hands are shaking as I work the buttons, hardly able to believe I get to do this. Not that I never undressed Master Graham or Madame Cerrine. But everything is so much stricter in the Training House. He is so much stricter than anyone I have ever come across. Until right now, when the strictness is mixed with his own raw desire and emotions I have yet to understand.
As his shirt falls open, it reveals fair skin, a little dark hair on his chest and a narrow line of it below his navel. He slips the shirt off, and I can’t take my eyes from the muscles working in his shoulders and arms, from the tattoo which I can see now goes all the way up to his shoulder—more Japanese work, but I’m far too distracted to make it out, or even to care. All I know is that he’s unbuckling the slim belt at his waist, and I don’t even care if he’s going to beat me with it. Or, I do care—I want it, yearn for it as much as I ever have—but what I want even more is for him to be naked with me, inside me. I have no idea what will happen. I am still powerless. Helpless.
Helpless. You can’t do anything about it.
For the first time in many years, this thought is of no comfort to me at all.
No, suddenly everything is terrifying. The unknown, because even though each day, each moment since coming here has been unexpected, and keeping me in a state of continuous surprise is part of the plan of such places, even that has been something I can count on. But now, it is the inability to fall into that state of utter powerlessness that scares me, because it’s been my comfort zone for a long, long time. And I realize in a blinding flash that I truly have nothing and nowhere to escape to.
The Master stops, belt in hand, and wipes a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “What is it?”
“I just…had an epiphany, I guess, Master.”
“Master Damon. Tell me,” he demands, and I wouldn’t even think of disobeying.
“I just…I didn’t realize until this moment that kink has been my escape.”
“Explain.”
“I knew it was my retreat. That I loved sinking into submission, that it makes the world fall away. I thought, because I’m a masochist, that what I needed was to feel more acutely. But I was wrong. What I needed was to be rendered numb in the face of overwhelming sensation. To go numb in being faceless. And it’s…a shock.”
He continues to stroke my cheek, his tone low while the weight of his body as he straddles me reassures me as much as his voice. “We all need something, Aimée. That’s why we do this. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as there is no intent to damage anyone. Fetish is a coping mechanism as much as it is sexual. It’s the fulfillment of needs. Are anyone else’s needs any worse? Any better? These are things I had to come to terms with when the sadist in my soul was crying to get out. Roaring. Screeching. For me the world becomes both more and less real when I am here in the House, when I am disciplining my slaves. Are you afraid this makes you wrong, somehow? Sick?”
“Oh, I accepted that about myself a long time ago.”
He smiles a little. “So did I. Why the tears, then? If you can accept that you’re a masochist, your desire to serve, to be enslaved, then how has anything really changed?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, exactly. I only know it has.”
“Because I’m here with you like this?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I will ask you again. Do you want this, Aimée?”
“Yes. I do. I want anything and everything you are willing to give me, to make me do, to be for you, Master.”
“Master Damon,” he says again, so quietly I can barely hear him.
“Master Damon,” I repeat, not certain if this makes things better or worse.
“Tell me again,” he commands.
“I want it. I want you. I want you to do everything to me, Master Damon, Sir. Please.”
He reaches down and swipes my soaking pussy lips with his hand, smiles. His teeth are perfect rows of white. “Your lovely cunt speaks the same truth. And I want to eat it, to shove my tongue inside you and drink you up. To suck so hard on your tender little clit that you scream in pain and delight. But I can’t.”
“I…what? I mean, pardon me, Sir.” My heart is beating so fast I think it might explode.
“Because, my perfect Aimée, if I don’t fuck you right this moment, I feel like I might die.”
“Oh…”
Somehow he kicks his way out of his big boots and his fine Italian slacks and he is beautifully naked, kneeling over me. His thighs are so strong, with the same fine, dark hair. His cock is magnificent. Tall and proud, as commanding as he is. The head is swollen. Succulent. Pierced.
God.
My pussy clenches.
Need him. Need to feel him inside me.
I open my thighs wider, and he pulls my ankles up, resting them on his broad shoulders. Then he presses with his body until he’s resting his weight on top of me, my knees folded against my breasts. He presses harder, until the pressure hurts my crushed breasts. But I want it. Need it.
“Anything,” I whisper. “Everything.”
He uses his fingers to spread my labia, then his steel-tipped cock rests at the entrance to my wet cunt, and I have to make myself hold perfectly still.
He waits, the head of his cock thundering in a pulse beat like a killing hunger against my slick flesh. He waits, and my cunt drips with liquid desire that pours from me as if I’ve already come. He waits, and my mouth strains with the need to suck his beautiful cock, drink in his sweat, kiss his mouth.
How very vanilla of me.
But this thought has barely entered my brain when he rams his lovely, long cock into me, deep and hard and hurting in a way that makes me swoon. He gasps as he pulls back, as he rises up to stare into my face, and there is something like wonder, like awe, on his. And his expression sort of crumbles above me as he begins to move, in and out, yet there is nothing mundane about this lovely, sinuous motion that is his body moving in mine. It is elemental. Transcendent. Connection.
“Connection,” I whisper. Or perhaps the word doesn’t even come out.
This is the one thing I have been missing my entire life. And the truth hits me like a brick to the chest. I feel for several long moments as if I might actually have a heart attack. As if my heart really could burst from my chest, splattering the walls with emotion. So, so strange, I don’t even know what to do with it.
Love. The real thing. I never knew.
I’m crying again—yet again!—but he does nothing more than dip his head and lick up one of my tears. And I focus then on the exquisite pleasure surging through me as desire builds, spirals, and I imagine it like a long, satin ribbon, twisting and looping through my pussy, wrapping around his balls, threading through the heavy steel barbell in the head of his cock, twisting tightly across my clit until I know I must come. Must. Come. Must…
“Ah, God!”
My body bucks, out of control, and the only thing holding me down is his fine, fine flesh, one strong hand on my wrists, the other digging into my hip. He is fucking me so hard I know I will be bruised, inside and out.
Yes.
He plunges into me, one rough, piercing jab after another, and the beauty of his face is a fierce thing to behold as he begins a low, threatening growl that turns into a howl that turns into voiceless panting, teeth bared as he looks into my eyes. And I’m coming again with him. I can’t help myself. His beautiful face is making me come, his harsh cries, his pleasure transferring into my system as if it were my own times a thousand.
I know I’m not making sense.
He falls onto me, and I inhale, taking in the scent of his come and my own. Our sweat mingled. The faint trace of shampoo in his dark hair. I have never felt happier in my life.
I have never felt happy in my life.
My stomach twists, but he is here—right here—holding me down. Keeping me safe.
Yes. It’s all right.
I want to twine my hands behind his neck once more, to feel the reassuring warmth of him letting me. But I can’t do it. Instead I raise my chin and hope for him to kiss me. And when he does it feels like a benediction. Permission to feel. Because he has made me feel this.
I don’t know what will happen to me now. But for this one moment, I can simply be.