I was falling. Succumbing to him. He had me wrapped around his little finger so tightly I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to unwind myself. With every thrust of his powerful hips, I became more and more addicted to our magnetic connection. We were two of a kind, two puzzle pieces sticking together despite all odds, and as he fucked me, I knew he felt the same thing in every move he made, in every twitch of his cock and every throbbing vein that ran the length of his cock.

“Master,” I breathed, but his feverish, panting mouth shut me up.

He latched on to me as if I were his lifeline, trying to suck my soul out through my mouth. I kissed him with the same desperation, feeling as if I’d been possessed. This had been going on for months; so many months that I realized I’d been in the Mansion for over a year.

My nineteenth birthday had come and gone, celebrated with Amber during the day and between the sheets with my master at night. I’d grown so much since the first day I was thrown on the floor by Ellis. I was a different woman, a new character, and through the weeks that had passed, I’d managed to find peace in my new situation.

I didn’t know whether it was possible for me to ever be truly happy, yet in Thorn’s kind ownership, I found my soul again and lived to please him as much as I lived to dance.

He still let me dance for him. Only for him. Nobody else was allowed to be in the room when I did it.

The only exception he made was for my training.

Thorn had flown in an expert from France to train Amber and me. At first, I couldn’t believe it. The man, Ivan Marchante, was a legend. He’d taught so many dancers I aspired to be like.

He made me cry in the first few hours of our training, and Thorn threatened to kill him if he hurt me again. Amber watched with wide-eyed horror as he attacked the dancer, and I had to call for a guard’s help to get Thorn off his back. After that, Marchante was kinder, but I always thought he preferred Amber over me, even though he often told her to copy my movements to better herself.

I was surprised Thorn had gone to those lengths just to ensure I would be happy.

At first, our relationship was incredibly rocky. I couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done in front of me, but he claimed he only had me in mind. However, I didn’t want to be responsible for someone’s death, even if it was someone as despicable as Ellis. I couldn’t carry the blame.

The first weeks after I’d danced on those roses for him were the hardest. I closed up, not wanting nor even willing to understand what was happening to me. I spent my days in the bay window, where the beautiful raven-girl had sat before me, and felt like I’d taken on her role. I wasn’t naked, but I rarely spoke, keeping my eyes on the beach that I still wasn’t allowed to visit.

Amber had been the one to pull me from going under yet again. My time spent with her was when I could truly be myself, and she slowly came to understand that the Mansion wasn’t what she’d thought it to be. In many ways, we became like sisters, and we spoke to one another about anything and everything. I’d been the one to hold her when she broke down in tears, realizing she might not get out of there anytime soon, and she was there for me, too, every single time tears sprung to my eyes. She consoled me, talked a mile a minute and made me forget all about our captivity. Together, we were stronger.

I didn’t talk about Thorn all that often. I kept the times he came into my bedroom late at night a secret, the times when he buried himself inside me and fucked and took and gave all in equal measure, making me lose my mind time and time again as he filled me with his seed. At first, it was shameful, like an affair. I didn’t want anyone to know I was letting him fuck me. We didn’t speak, and I kept my eyes pressed tightly together when he was inside me. But as much as I tried to pretend he was someone else, my mind begged to open my eyes and be reminded of the man inside me, because no matter what I told him or myself, I was addicted to Thorn and Thorn alone. He was the only one I wanted.

The first time I looked at him, my blood pumped through my veins with adrenaline. He was looking at me, angrily pumping his hips against me and filling me up.

“Mine,” he growled the first time. “You’re mine.”

Since then, it had been his mantra, his chorus. Every time I closed my eyes, I could feel the weight of his words reverberating through my body. His. I was his. I never wanted to belong to anyone else.

He left me to my own devices for months, left me to practice with Amber and fucked me in the middle of the night like I was his dirty little secret.

Tonight seemed different for some reason.

I’d kept my eyes open the entire time he was inside me, and he’d growled his words of ownership at me too many times to count. I could feel his cock inside me, his veins throbbing with the need to empty. My hands touched his chest, dragging my claw-like long nails - he liked them, so of course, I had them done weekly - all over his skin. He growled at the sensation, his body so painfully rigid I wanted to break him for once.

“Let go,” I told him huskily. “Just let the fuck go.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he growled at me. “Shut the fuck up, Rose.”

At the end of the day, we were strangers. Strangers who had dirty as fuck sex and only spoke to one another in hushed, angry tones when we were fucking. Other than that, he kept his distance, and I pretended to be grateful for it when I was actually stewing in anger.

I didn’t want Thorn to leave me alone.

I wanted him to dig deeper, to find out what made me tick, to be desperate to know every little one of my secrets.

He owed it to me, at the very least, after what he’d done to me. Yet he didn’t seem to be in a rush to find out more, and I desperately wanted to hate him for it.

“Let go,” I insisted. “You’re so fucking… rigid. You’re holding back. I know you are!”

He grunted and followed each of his words with a thrust of his hips.

“You. Don’t. Know. Shit!”

He was getting closer, closer to breaking me like I wanted to be broken, closer to hurting me like I needed to be hurt. And I couldn’t wait for him to reach the point of no return.

“Let go!” I screamed at him, my nails digging into his skin. “Let go! I want it all. I want everything you have to give.”

He wrapped his fist around my hair, yanking me up, his cock sliding out of me and leaving me so empty I wanted to sob. He forced me to my feet and walked me over to the wall, and I seethed at the thought of him finishing anywhere but on or inside me.

“Please,” I whispered. “I’m just trying to…”

“I don’t fucking care,” he growled in response, kicking my knees apart and making me face the wall.

Automatically, I crossed my hands at the wrists behind my back, and I wondered why I was hoping he would break me when it was so painfully obvious he already had in more ways than I could count. But I needed… craved… so much more. I wanted him forcing me to my knees, hurting me, showing me what real pain felt like so he could make it better later on. I wanted all of him, just like he had all of me, but my wish would never come true unless he stopped holding back.

“See what a good girl you are?” he asked me, his voice a low whisper against my skin.

“Please,” I uttered, but he paid it no mind, instead, focusing on lowering his lips against my hot skin, kissing a gentle line down from where my hair met my neck to my shoulder blades.

“You need to learn how to be a good girl,” he said softly. “Only then will I allow you to have small mercies… you understand that, don’t you, Rose?”

My skin prickled when he called me that. I loved it as much as I hated it, the way he’d stripped me of my own name, feeling too easy as if he’d meant to do it all along. Pia had been right the first time she came to visit me. I was no longer Harlow; now I was Rose, finally transitioning fully into my role of Thorn’s plaything. I would let him mold and shape me into the toy he wanted me to be, and I would do my best to quell my own complaints as he did it. I craved him. His touch, his gentle caresses, his crude words and his roughness - I lived for it all.

He wrapped my hair around his fist again and tugged on it hard. I let out a soft little gasp that made him chuckle.

“Don’t pretend you don’t live for this,” he said darkly. “We both know these moments are your favorite.”

My knees shook as he slid his fingers down my spine, gently touching spots that ignited when his fingertips brushed against them.

“I’ve been easy on you,” he went on. “But it won’t always be like this. I’ve been lenient… Perhaps too lenient…”

He slipped his hand between my legs, and I mewled when he outlined the shape of my pussy lips with his fingers. I was embarrassingly wet for him, ready for more.

“One of these days I’ll stop giving you what you want,” he muttered. “I’ll stop fucking you like a fucking toy and start using you like a woman should be used. I’ll make you into my pretty little slave… You’ll have colorful pillows all throughout the house, and I won’t let you stand when I’m around. Would you like that, little Rose?”

I whimpered, my mind racing. He was speaking of a life I couldn’t even imagine, a life of submission that ran so deep I would belong to him utterly and completely, which would mean giving him the control I still kept hidden from him in a dark little corner. But he wanted it all. Pretty or ugly, small or big. He wanted to control it all.

His fingers kept working me, twisting between my legs and filling my pussy, making me gasp at the feeling when he pushed three fingers inside as if it was nothing, as if it wasn’t the sweetest kind of torture he could provide to my poor, shaking body.

“You’ll wait for me on all fours,” he went on calmly. “Your mouth open for more of your favorite treat… You’ll follow me on all fours, always naked, always ready to humiliate yourself for a sliver of my attention, desperate for a taste of my dick…”

I cried out, feeling the orgasm closing in on me. I was so close, so painfully close, yet he was withholding the moment it would finally happen.

“I could make you into a mindless little fucktoy if I wanted to,” he said softly. “But I don’t… I want a fucking willing slave. A girl who’ll kneel and beg and obey not because she has to, but because she needs to. A girl who will do nothing without telling me first. I will control it all. This cunt… this ass… this pretty mouth. It’s all mine.”

I shook on the spot.

“Tell me,” he urged me. “Tell me I can have it all.”

I shook my head, and he pushed a fourth finger inside me, making me squirm.

“No?” he asked sweetly. “You won’t give it to me?”

I shook my head again, more desperately this time, and he chuckled in my ear.

“Well, then,” he said with a low sigh, pulling out of me.

The sensation was so overwhelming I collapsed to my knees, slow sobs escaping my lips.

“Don’t ask me to let go,” he growled at me. “When you’re the one holding back, you pretty little slut.”

He reached for my chin and left a bruising kiss on my lips, and then he was gone, leaving me in a useless little heap on the floor.