He’s gone for several days before I see him again. At least this time, he left me real clothes. The maids wheel in several hanging rods of clothes and boxes and boxes of pretty dresses tucked in colorful tissue paper. Shoes are stacked high in baskets brought in by the servants.

Most exciting of all, a pair of plain white slippers and several pairs of riding jodhpurs in just my size. I change excitedly, almost in disbelief that I’m this happy to see stretchy pants.

I mark the days by playing with Cerberus, whose exuberance for life I find refreshing. Tiring, too, but mostly it’s a breath of fresh air.

Cerberus accompanies me down to the stables. The fact that I’m followed by no less than four bodyguards is disappointing, but not entirely surprising to me. I choose to ignore that.

Instead, I spend time introducing Cerberus to the horses. He’s very wary of them at first and won’t even go near their stalls. Used to going everywhere I go, he barks up a storm whenever he sees me getting close to Reina and Rey.

Petting the two beautiful black horses, I wonder if Monster realized that he was getting me a black puppy as well. Part of me wants to know if he even thought out Cerberus’s purchase at all, or whether Cerberus just happened to be around the house already.

I end up having to use a little bribery to get Cerberus close to the horses. Pocketing both apples for the horses and some puppy treats, I lure him closer and closer with treats.

It takes a few days to get him used to Rey and Reina. Soon enough though, I’m feeding the horses with one hand and slipping him treats with the other.

My biggest accomplishment is on the fourth day. I manage to get Reina to nibble on an apple slice that I’m holding in my lap, while simultaneously feeding Cerberus a dog treat. They are eyeing each other, unsure of the whole thing, but they’re still lured in by the food.

That’s fine, I’ll take what I can get where the animals are concerned.

After that, I spend a good, long time brushing Reina and Rey. I’m lost in my thoughts, wondering about whether Monster will be able to tell that I was in his room.

I assume not. He doesn’t know that it was me that broke the fine thread that he kept tucked in the bedside table. It could’ve been any of the maids, sent in to clean his room.

And it’s not like I wear strong perfume that would linger in the air for days… No pheromones could do the same, either.

Right? I sigh to myself and pull out a sawhorse, putting the saddle that I rode Reina with on top. Breaking out some leather conditioner I find in the barn near the tack, I start polishing it, really working the conditioner into the leather.

It’s hard work, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I work up a sweat in my loose man’s work shirt and my stretchy pants. I am pretty sure that speaks more to my confined space and limited activities than anything else, but I’m happy just to be getting some exercise.

For some reason, Adele’s cover of The Cure’s Lovesong is stuck in my head. Humming a few notes to myself, I get totally lost in the work.

When Cerberus barks, I don’t really notice. But when he growls?

That’s enough to make me turn around and pay attention. I turn just as Monster storms into the room, looking furious. He’s wearing a white dress shirt and black trousers, his chest heaving.

“You.” He points to me, clearly a level beyond aggravated. “You’ve been in my room. MY ROOM.”

He shouts the last part and I wince, putting the rag that’s in my hands down. Lying probably will only make him angrier, but he can’t prove that I invaded his space.

Unless… unless he can…

“I… uh…” I mumble, unsure how to respond. His eyes narrow on my face.

“Don’t lie to me,” he hisses, stalking forward until he’s only a couple of feet away. “Don’t think that this will go unpunished.”

“Monster—” I start.

He grabs me by my shoulders, giving me a shake. “I said don’t lie!”

“I didn’t! You didn’t let me say—”

He whirls me around and pushes me over to the sawhorse, face down into the leather saddle. I get leather conditioner in my mouth.

“No more lies,” he promises, his voice low and quiet. “It’s time you learned what happens to bad little girls.”

He presses my face into the saddle hard, grabbing my hands one at a time and places them beside my head. “Don’t move until I tell you to fucking move. Otherwise, you’ll get to spend the night in the box under your bed.”

A cold sweat breaks out over my whole entire body at the very mention of The Box. I nod fervently, squeezing my eyes closed.

Please. Please, not The Box. Anything but that.

He hooks his thumbs in the waist of my stretchy pants and pulls them down to my ankles in one smooth motion. I can barely breathe as he steps close behind me, nearly touching my exposed ass and legs.

“A crop,” he whispers, nearly reverently. “Where can I get a riding crop?”

My knees go weak from fear at the thought. A riding crop sounds like it would hurt.

Through numb lips, I tell him to look in the tack room, right behind us. He vanishes for a minute, taking all his body heat with him, leaving me naked and exposed for all the world to see. My face burns with shame and I tear up a little, just standing here.

Was a tiny bit of soap worth all this?

But then, if I hadn’t gone into Monster’s room, I wouldn’t know his name. And I wouldn’t have discovered his secret, which is apparently that he likes to jack off to a pair of my panties.

That’s not that weird, in the scheme of things. I want to tell him that, but Monster has me stripped and exposed. And faced with the reality of The Box, I won’t move so much as an inch.

Monster returns. I can hear his heavy tread on the floor, hear the thwack, thwack of him testing the riding crop in his palm. He suddenly lashes out with it, the flat loop of leather landing a hair’s breadth away from my right hand.

A low whimper escapes from my throat. I’m very afraid of him at this moment in time and starting to tremble all over.

He uses the crop to nudge my legs apart. “I love you when you’re like this, Fiore. Naked, spread out, and shaking. You do know what I’m about to do to you, don’t you?”

My heart begins to race. My mouth is suddenly bone dry. All I can do is shake my head.

“I’m going to whip you. And then I’m going to fuck you. Make no mistake, you’re going to be sore for days after this.” He sounds pleased at the prospect, which makes me blanch.

Monster teases my inner thighs and the firm skin of my ass with the end of the riding crop. I whimper again.

“Ahh, I like that sound. Will you moan for me, Fiore?” he asks.

He follows up his question with a stinging lash across my left ass cheek. I cry out, surprised.

“No, not quite the sound I was looking for…” he taunts. Another lash, this one across the right. “Do I need to hit you harder?”

I bite my lip, my tears welling up again, and shake my head. When I speak, my voice is barely a whisper. “No.”

Another lash comes arcing down. Another hot flash of pain follows. “No what? How do you address your master?”

“Sir?” I ask breathlessly, going up on tiptoe. As if somehow switching positions would make the hurt go away.

Instead, he awards another blow. “Put it together. That’s not too complex for you, is it?”

“I—”

He hits me again, more forcefully. Crying out, I have no recourse from the pain.

“N— no! No sir!” I say, my tears starting to take over my voice.

“Hmmm,” he says as if I’ve still managed to displease him. “I want you to stay there. I’ve never fucking anyone in the stables before. I want to see how the ride feels.”

I try to look back at him without moving too much. Monster is unbuckling his pants and unleashing his cock. My ass cheeks are stinging, and he only makes the stinging worse by rubbing one of them.

“Your ass is so perfectly pink,” he marvels, fisting his cock in his free hand. “Jesus, this might be my favorite color on you.”

Monster trails his touch down further, slipping his fingertips into my pussy. He rubs my clit as he slides his fingers in and out of my pussy. Though I’m ashamed to admit it, it turns me on right away.

“You must’ve missed me,” he teases, withdrawing his hand and popping his fingers into his mouth. “Mmm. You always taste so sweet, princess. You want a taste?”

I bite my lip, uncertain what he’s even asking of me. He pays me no mind, sliding his fingers down between my ass cheeks again, into my pussy. He strokes my clit and fingers me lazily, then pulls his fingers out.

He brings his hand up to my lips, right under my nose. The scent is really metallic and earthy at the same time. “Taste yourself.”

Glancing nervously at him, I open my mouth and taste his fingers. Just as I thought, it’s sort of sweet, sort of earthy, and it definitely tastes a little bit like fresh rain.

“You like that?” he asks. “Don’t answer that. I just like thinking of you licking yourself off my fingers. That makes me so fucking hard, you have no idea.”

Monster positions himself behind me. I can feel his cock nudging my entrance. And god, help me, I want it. Want him. Want to feel stretched out and used by him.

I crave that feeling I get right after I come where I can’t walk for a second, can’t even think or move at all.

As he thrusts inside my pussy, my thoughts slide away. All I know is that he fills me like no one else. Even his strange way of coming on to me, of starting off angrily and then turning that into hate sex, that’s starting to make so much more sense.

“Fuck!” he says as he fills me. “Goddamn. Why do I ever fucking leave?”

That’s a good question, but I’m not really capable of answering it. Squeezing my eyes tightly, gripping the saddle, I am just now finding out that maybe… if he hits just the right angle…

“Oh, god…” I murmur. Then, “Oh, fuck!”

I start angling my body just so, because when his cock hits the inside of my pussy in a certain way… it makes my toes curl. It makes me speechless. I just need…

“More,” I pant. “Faster! Harder!”

“Fuck, yes. I’ve been waiting for so long for you to say that, princess.” He grips my hips, slamming into me like a damned machine.

I’m as tightly wound as a spring, ready to explode. Sliding my hand off the sawhorse, I pinch my nipple hard, providing that extra note of pain. It’s a molten river of pleasure, from my nipple to my throbbing clit to my overfull pussy.

Suddenly, I come in a burst of vibrant colors, clenching and seeing, my body overwhelmed by sensation. Monster is only seconds behind me, bellowing wordlessly as he spills his seed deep inside me.

Afterward, he bends over me and leans on my back, struggling to catch his breath. My legs are nothing but Jell-O. I try to hold myself up as I try to breathe.

He straightens first, zipping himself back into his pants. “Stay the fuck out of my bedroom, by the way.”

Wobbly, I push myself up. “I didn’t mean—”

He glares at me. “Don’t ruin this.”

Then he leaves the stables. I pull my pants up, his semen starting to spill down my thighs.

What did he mean by that?