“Keep your mouth shut and get back to your job,” he said, gripping the girl’s hair and pulling her upright. “If you know what the fuck’s good for you.”

Bastien Cole smiled up at me as the girl shot out of sight. The metal door clanged shut behind her and the sound echoed upwards. I stood my ground, outrage lending me the courage I didn’t usually have. I kept my eyes on him as he climbed up to me. “Is this the kind of man you are? You come here and buy women, threaten them. And have to force yourself on them as well?”

The slap caught the side of my face and whipped my head. I felt his hands on me as I struggled to stay conscious. He jerked my hands back behind my waist as he pushed me ahead of him. My eyes were streaming and my vision reduced to blotches of light and dark, swimming together. He held me by the wrists, forcing me up the stairs, jerking my arms up higher when I stumbled.

“I watched Kaine leave this morning,” he said in my ear. “Left his prize behind already, did he?”

I blinked hard and shook my head, fear turning my stomach over. Kaine was gone, and I had no idea where he was. Cole was shoving me down a hallway I hadn’t seen before. And there was no one around to see. La Laisse was famous for its privacy, its discretion. Shit, once he had me in his room, who the hell would know where to find me?

My vision was just starting to clear as the door shut behind us. The room around us was all done in dark shades of red. It was nothing like the Citadel. This was exactly the kind of room I’d been terrified of finding here.

On the walls were images of nude women, in every kind of position. All of them chained somehow. I looked away and shot a glance around the room. I had no idea how most of the… things… I saw could be used, but I knew one thing. None of them would be about pleasure. At least not for the woman involved… The one in the center looked the simplest, but somehow it seemed to strike the most fear in me. It was a double set of shackles, one higher, one lower. Cole twisted my arm behind me and forced me down to the floor next to it. He was staring into my eyes, unblinking. His were black and bottomless. I felt a sickening shudder run through me.

“I got bored with the other sluts, Grace. You’re the one I really wanted in the first place.”

He picked up a collar and leash from a nearby table that held an assortment of things I didn’t want to see. He buckled the collar in place around my neck and smiled. “And here you are, right when I was starting to think I’d lost my chance.”

He looped the leash through a ring in the upper set of shackles and jerked it hard. I gasped, choking as he tied it down, leaving me bent forward and unable to move anything but my arms and legs. “I’m going to get what I came for after all, Grace… satisfaction.”

“For what your mother did. For my sweet, dead Claire. But most of all, just for me.”

He had stripped me down to bra and panties, then he’d clamped my wrists and ankles into the shackles. I was bent forward, arms and legs spread wide, and completely unable to move. The shock of the slap he’d given me had worn off, too late to struggle, too late to fight him. I was helpless now and terrified of what he would do. He had all the power. I had none at all.

Cole sat down a few feet away in a red leather armchair and lit a cigar. The smoke drifted past me and made my throat tighten and my stomach churn. He watched me, enjoying my position. And his.

“You say you want justice for your wife,” I began, looking away to be able to get the words out. “My mother’s in jail and the case against her… She’s looking at thirty years with the witness set to testify. She’s almost fifty now. It’ll be the rest of her life.” I looked back into his cold, black eyes. “How is that not justice enough?” Cole picked up a small leather whip off the table beside him.

“What would Claire think of this? Of what you’re doing in this place? Of what you’re doing to me?” I was getting loud now. Anger and fear were working together. I knew I was grasping, to use his dead wife, but desperation will do that.

For a minute, I thought it might have worked. Cole sat frozen, his mouth open to speak, nothing coming out. I thought maybe he would come to his senses, that he’d see how wrong it was, to punish me for what my mother had done. “She’s gone,” I said softly. “This isn’t going to bring her back…”

He got up and circled me slowly, still not saying a word. From where I was chained, I couldn’t see his face when he was standing. He was too close. I felt the leather strips from the whip flicker across the backs of my thighs. That’s when I knew. That I’d gone too far. That what I’d said hadn’t worked at all. I heard the whistle of leather through the air before I felt it. Then the burning sting cut across my back and I heard myself cry out. He struck twice more and I bit into my lip.

“You think I want that cunt back?” he shot out. He came around and bent down to look into my eyes. “Is that what you think?” He stood up and unzipped his jeans, releasing his already hard cock all too close to my face. “That cold fucking bitch.” He took himself in hand and took a step closer. “What the fuck would I want that for, when I can have a sweet, hot little pussy like yours?”