Chapter Six
The next morning, he’s late coming in the office, where I’m already waiting at my desk. I picked my own outfit this morning, a red-checked dress with black tights and shoes. It’s pretty, and I’ve tied my hair back with a velvet bow. When Silas comes in, I search his expression for some sign of appreciation, but he heads to his own desk and takes a seat without even acknowledging my presence. He seems tense today, and when I ask him if everything is okay, he tersely tells me that he is fine, and that I should open my book to Chapter Four.
I comply, trying to hide my disappointment. He goes over the lesson, but I’m having a hard time concentrating, and when he asks me a question about net worth, I bungle it.
“Pay attention,” he says. “This is important for your future.”
“And you’re concerned about that, right?” I suddenly feel as if I’m going to cry, and don’t even know why.
“Don’t change the subject,” he says scornfully. “I’m not going to make this easy for you, Lindsay. You’ve been spoiled all your life. I know it’s tempting to sabotage yourself so you don’t have to be responsible.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say hotly.
“Wrong. I know plenty about girls like you.”
The room falls silent. We stare at each other. I want to scream that I hate him. I want to run from the room. Instead I just return to the book, trying to see the words through the tears clouding my vision. I wait for Silas to apologize, but he doesn’t. He returns to his desk and after an hour tells me that I won’t be tested today, that he needs to go to the office. I’m to wait for Mina, do my chores, and then do homework he’ll leave for me.
The petulant part of me wants to ignore the lesson, to blow him off in hopes that he’ll spank me. Being punished for something I did wrong is painful, but it hurts less than being ignored when I’m trying to do everything right.
In an odd way, I’m relieved when the lesson is over and Mina comes to fetch me. At least I’m not scrubbing toilets today. My mid-morning chores start with dusting. I’m given an old-fashioned feather duster and a rag and taken to the drawing room. I’ll dust here, I’m told, and then move on to the study and the formal sitting room. I am only to dust, she emphasizes.
I take a Zen approach to my work, swishing the duster back and forth across shelves, and taking extra care not to upset any of the figurines on the mantel. I ponder the delicate glass trinkets as I dust. Some are not what a man would choose. They are no doubt inherited, and I wonder at Silas’ past.
I’m falling in love with him. I’m falling in love with him, and it scares me because I don’t know anything about him. He reaches out, then withdraws. But I sense something there, something tender and kind. I sense that he wants something from me deeper than sex, deeper than the chance to make an impact on my life before sending me back out into the world.
But can I make him believe me? He’s rich. He’s beyond rich. “I know plenty about girls like you,” he said. And I know what he thinks: that I’m a gold-digger. But it’s not Silas Stanton’s money that is making me fall for him. It’s the duality of the man, the way he’s both stern and tender. I believe him when he says he wants to help me. How can I make him believe that I want more than his help, that I want to know him better? How can I show him if he won’t let me in? I feel like I’m running out of time. Nothing has really given me that indication. I just… feel it.
I continue to dust, running the feathers now along the picture frame of a very old oil painting before moving to his study.
My books still sit on my desk. Tonight, I’ll take them up to my room and work on my homework assignment. To my surprise, I’m actually learning a lot that I know will be useful, things I should have learned. Could Silas be right? Is my chronic irresponsibility a form of self-sabotage? I told myself it wasn’t daddy issues that brought me here, that this was just a way to make some quick cash. After all, I’m the last person who should have daddy issues. My father doted on me, but in retrospect, it has made life hard. I had the best of everything growing up. He’d go without to shower me with not just things I needed, but things I wanted.
When I left home, he was always there to bail me out until my mother died and my father’s health began to decline. When he was forced into early retirement from his accounting firm, I felt guilty going to him for money. But I’d gotten into the habit of playing fast and loose with my finances, and even after he was no longer able to bail me out, I just couldn’t regain control. That’s what Silas is teaching me: control. But he’s also exposed me to his. The idea of going back out, alone, without it?
I walk over to his desk and begin to dust. He’s so tidy. Everything is perfectly situation, from the closed laptop to the desk lamp to the clock to the organizer that holds several heavy Cross pens.
It occurs to me what’s missing, not just from his desk, but from the mantel and other shelves. There are no pictures of him with his family, no pictures of his childhood. It’s as if he exists only in the here and now. Who is he?
My hand moves to the handle of his desk drawer. I glance up at the door. I shouldn’t. I have no right. I give the drawer a tug. It’s locked, and I feel relieved. If it had been open… but then I notice something. A larger drawer on the bottom is slightly ajar. It’s definitely not locked. I kneel, knowing what I’m about to do is wrong. But I pull the drawer open anyway, spurred by my desire to find something—anything—that might give me some kind of insight about Silas.
There are ledgers, which strike me as old-fashioned. I open one from where I kneel behind the desk, out of sight. They are old, probably once his father’s. I put them aside and gasp when I see a photo album. Surely it won’t hurt to peek. I can’t help but wonder what Silas was like as a boy. But when I open the album, a chill runs through me. It’s not a family album. It’s an album full of young women. Each one takes up a page. Each one is captured in some candid moment, and I recognize the backdrop—this very house, this very estate. There’s a pretty redhead on the stairs, sitting and looking out the window. He’s captured her from the side. Her expression is pensive. There’s a raven-haired beauty in the atrium peeking up at an orchid. She’s smiling. She wears a blue dress with a big bow at her throat. There’s a pattern here. All the girls are women who look younger than they are. There’s a brunette throwing a handful of leaves up in the air. She wears a plaid skirt and a matching tam. She looks gloriously happy. Then there’s a blonde, plumper than the rest. She’s on the rowboat I saw by the pond. Silas must have taken her out there because she is facing the cameraman and the shore is in the distance. It’s springtime in this photo. On the other shore, the willow is in bloom, and ducks can be seen swimming in the distance. I turn their page and put my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out. It’s me. I’m on the carousel, one arm outstretched, a happy, oblivious smile on my face. I slam the book shut and put it back in the drawer along with the ledgers.
I stand and walk to the bookshelves, dusting mindlessly, furiously. Does my inclusion in the book—and Silas’ sudden coldness—mean that I’m about to be sent away?
Don’t, Daddy. Please. An inner voice cries out, jarring me. And then I’m jarred again by a voice behind me.
“Miss Clement?” I jump and turn. Mina is standing in the doorway.
“Yes?” I hastily wipe an eye.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say. “Just… dust in my eye.”
She cocks a brow. This is an obvious lie, and she knows it. My chore is perfunctory. There’s no dust anywhere in this house. Silas Stanton’s sense of order forbids it.
“Well,” she says. “When you’re finished, we’re having lunch in the kitchen.”
“Sure. I’ll be finished in here.” I turn back to my dusting.
“Miss Clement?”
“Yes?”
I turn back again. Mina is still in the doorway, regarding me. “You’re doing a very good job, dear.”
She walks away before I can reply. It’s hard to take much comfort in being praised for my housekeeping duties. What I really want is to please Silas.
Once I collect myself, I head to the kitchen. The gardeners are complaining about snow. It’s nasty out, they say, and they weren’t expecting the hard freeze and are worried because the heater in an outdoor greenhouse I haven’t seen is giving them trouble.
“There will be hell to pay if the boss loses any of his orchids,” one says as I sit down to a plate of fragrant lamb, glazed carrots, a salad of winter greens, and brown bread and butter.
The butler gives me his usual wink, and this time, irritated, I wink back and he literally blushes when I do. It’s the first amusing thing that’s happened all day, and I’m not the only one to note it. Across the table, Mina is glancing from me to the older man and it’s obvious that she’s trying to keep from laughing.
I return to my excellent meal. Despite my afternoon chores, the rich food—this lunch is followed by a slab of chocolate cake—is spoiling me. I’m filling out a little, not that this is a bad thing. I’ve always been on the thin side and could use a little more padding.
After lunch I finish the chores and go to my room, where I watch television and do my homework. It’s a nice routine. I feel like a teenager living under the watchful eye of a stern but generous father. I suppose this is Silas’ intent, although when he’s next to me I definitely feel like a sexual woman.
Mina comes in with a message when she brings me my dinner tray. Silas won’t be home until late. There will be no visit, no bedtime story. I’m to put myself to bed. He doesn’t know if he will be available tomorrow, either.
I have a hard time sleeping that night, and the next day is absolute torture. The hours drag by. I take breakfast in my room, alone, and although I’d normally be thrilled with the stack of Belgian waffles complete with hand-whipped cream and real maple syrup, the lump in my throat makes it hard to swallow them.
Should I leave? I’m still scared; Silas’ threat hangs over my head like an anvil. It makes me afraid to leave, but also gives me an excuse to stay.
I study my financial literacy books, but have a hard time concentrating. After lunch, I ask Mina if I can go to the top floor, to the balcony that overlooks the ground. She grants me permission, but tells me that all the rooms upstairs are locked, so any curiosity I may have will be for naught.
On the long hallway on the top floor, I jiggle door handles anyway, but unlike the desk drawer, nothing has been left open. Halfway down the hall is the entrance to the balcony on the rear of the house. A frigid breeze hits me as I open the double doors. Blowing snow has made little drifts between columns that support the stone railing. From here, I can see the garden, the path, the pond, the greenhouses I didn’t know were there, and the carousel. It looks suspended in time and oddly out of place in this snowy landscape.
Snow sits in a long mound on top of the railing. I scoop some up, make a ball, and throw it. It bursts when it hits the snow crust below. I scoop up some more, deciding to make one more ball before my hands freeze. That’s when I see it. Someone has carved something into the stone, etched it in block script. I use my sweater sleeve to wipe away the snow.
“Nothing Lasts,” the words read.
It’s a morose message. Did Silas write it? I trace the letters with my finger. It took strength to carve them, but the lettering is childish, unsophisticated. A blast of air hits me and I head back inside, puzzled by what I’ve seen.
The afternoon comes. I’m bored. I’m done with my lessons. I don’t want to watch television. Mina hasn’t mentioned chores, so I go ask her if there’s anything I can help her with. She smiles at me and asks me what I’d like to do. I tell her anything to make me feel useful. She sends me to the kitchen. Mrs. Kim asks if I know how to mop a floor, and I tell her I think I can handle it. So I mop as she tells me about how she and her family came here from China, how the Stantons were the first family to give them work. We have a nice conversation. She’s clever and witty and tells me that in her youth she was a competitive ice skater. She said when the pond freezes, she skates and can do everything the athletes do. I try to imagine this; tiny Mrs. Kim in her starched maid’s uniform affecting a perfect Lutz. I believe her.
Dark comes early. I go upstairs and force myself to watch a movie about a girl who raises a Canadian goose and fights to keep the authorities from taking it away. I get a bath, put myself to bed, thumbing through the book of fairy tales Silas read to me from. I look in the front for the kind of inscription parents write when they give books to their children. There’s nothing. I look for scribbles in the pages. They are pristine.
I turn to the frog prince, looking at a picture of the selfish princess who didn’t want to keep her promise to the frog that was so very eager to prove himself. The artist perfectly depicted her expression of petulant rage as she hurls the frog at the wall. On the next page, her hands are over her mouth in surprise as a tall, impeccably dressed prince stands before her, complete with crown. On the next page, they’re kissing. It still angers me. After the way the princess treated him, the prince should have thrown her in the pond.
I shut the book, lie down, and close my eyes. Sleep comes more easily tonight, likely because it took me so long to drift off the night before. I don’t know what time it is when I hear the door to my room creak open. Footsteps come to the bed. His footsteps. I long to open my eyes, but I pretend to stay asleep, wondering what he will do. Under the blankets, I cross my fingers, hoping he’ll climb in bed with me. I want to feel him against me. I long for the comfort of his arms around me, the feel of his breath as he whispers words into my hair.
Please, Daddy, I silently ask, and hold my breath. And the room remains silent. Even though my eyes are closed, I can feel him there, feel him watching me. Please, Daddy.
Then I hear the footsteps again, retreating this time, followed by the click of the closing door. I sit up in bed, catching his shadow as he leaves. I sit there, alone, aching for him. He wants me. I know he does. I could feel that, too.
I start to lie down, but then I sit up again. No. My picture is in the book. He’s going to send me away. My picture is in the book. What do I have to lose? I rise from the bed and run from the room. His is at the end of the hall. I do not stop. I do not knock. I burst in.
“Lindsay!” He’s undressing, his suit coat already hanging on the back of a valet chair. His shirt is open, exposing his perfect upper body. He’s undone his cufflinks. He’s obviously shocked to see me. “What are you doing in my room?”
“What were you doing in mine?”
He looks away from me as he drops his cufflinks into a silver tray on the dresser. “I was looking in on you. Go back to bed.”
“You weren’t just checking. You stood by my bed, Silas.”
It’s the first time I’ve used his name. This, too, seems to shock him, as if he’s not used to hearing it.
“This isn’t the time, young lady…”
“No. Don’t young lady me.” I walk over. “Why, Silas? Why did you stand by my bed in the dark? What do you want?”
“Nothing,” he says. “You were the one with a need.”
“Bullshit.” I’m angry now. “Don’t even try that. I’m not the only one who’s come here. You told me so yourself.” I bite back the urge to tell him I’ve seen the book. “This is as much about your needs as mine.”
“Lindsay…” His voice is heavy with warning. “This is not the time. We’ll talk in the morning.” He takes hold of my arm but I pull away, stepping back.
“No. We won’t talk in the morning. We’ll talk now. What do you want?”
When he doesn’t answer, I move toward him. “Are you afraid?” I ask. “You told me to call you Daddy, and you know what? It’s become easy for me. It’s become easy for me to open myself up to so much that’s new. But you hoard more than you give, Silas. I want to know you.”
He whirls around. “No,” he says. “You don’t. You don’t want to know me, Lindsay. Now get back to bed before…”
“Before what? Before you feel something, too?” I walk over to him, push him with my hands. “Is the only way you can feel is when you’re making me feel? Is that why you’re pulling back?”
I push him again.
“Stop that.”
“No.”
I reach to push him again, and this time he catches my wrists, pulls me to him.
“Punish me,” I say. “Punish me for what I just did.”
I hear a rip. It’s the fabric of my gown, and suddenly I am afraid. What the fuck have I done? But as soon as his fingers find my nipple, as soon as the twist sends a current of pain through my body, I know this is why I came.
He picks me up, throws me onto the bed. My punished nipple is throbbing as I watch him undress. And the way he’s looking at me? It’s making my pussy throb. I’m scared, but as aroused as I’ve ever been in my life.
Once he’s naked, he pulls me up toward him by my upper arms.
“I warned you,” he says, and flips me over, dragging my hips toward him. I brace myself, expecting him to smack my ass, but he doesn’t. I look back to see him taking something out of the drawer beside the table. It’s a small silicone object, diamond-shaped, with a flange.
I’m not so sheltered that I don’t know what it is. It’s a butt plug, but a small one. I’m relieved and intrigued. I recall his words when he touched my asshole the first night, and now as he puts a dollop of generous lube on the plug, my heart beats faster at the thought of having him put it inside me.
“Don’t move,” Silas says. I shoot him a baleful look as I keep my position. The lube on the tip of the plug is cold. He rotates the plug, teasing my bottom hole. I push back, inviting his fingers to touch my throbbing pussy, but he doesn’t. He just continues to twirl the plug, applying increasing pressure as he does. I feel a slight sting as the tip breaches the ring of muscles defying its entry. He presses steadily, and I whimper a little as the widest part finally slides in, the flange stopping it from going any further.
“You wanted to be punished, little girl?” he asks. He climbs on the bed, moving my hair to the side as he nips my neck.
“Please, Daddy,” I say.
“Please, Daddy…” He repeats the words softly and moves back to the table. He’s rummaging around again and this time returns with two small clamps that puzzle me until I realize what they are.
He pulls me up against his so that my back is against his chest.
I whimper and squirm as he affixes the first clamp to my left nipple, then the other to my right. “No,” he says. “You don’t get to wiggle away. Tonight’s lesson is that little girls should be careful what they ask for.”
My nipples are sensitive. I’ve never had them clamped before. They ache intensely, the throb corresponding with the throb of my pussy. I’m aware of the pressure in my bottom. Then Silas pushes me forward and touches me, his finger sliding through the seam of my pussy, moving back and forth across the slick inner folds. My hips follow the motion of his hand. I feel his other hand move to the plug. He’s touching it. And then…
“Owww!” There’s a sudden, unexpected stretch inside me and I whip my head around. And then I see it. Silas has attached a tube to the flange, and is squeezing a bulb at the end. Holy hell. The plug is inflatable. I wriggle my hips in protest, and when I do, he smacks my ass hard and tells me to stay still. I drop my upper body to the mattress. My nipples are screaming. My ass is stinging. And now he’s rubbing something wet onto my clit and there’s an instant prickling sting.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” I’m bombarded by sensations, unable to focus on the pleasure his fingers are giving me or the stinging, the prickling, the throbbing from different parts of my body. I’m crying through moans of pleasure. My body is confused, not knowing whether to panic or come, or both. Silas squeezes the bulb again and I scream into the mattress. He shoves two fingers inside of me, the plug making his fingers a tight fit as they fuck me.
Silas grabs my hair, jerks me back up to him. “Tell me, my bad girl, is it worth it? Are you ready to beg for mercy?”
I slide my arm around his neck. “No,” I say through gritted teeth. “Show me more.”
An hour ago I was wondering who he was. Now I’m wondering who I am. Who is this wanton little-girl-pain-slut who’s coming on his fingers even as her nerve endings are screaming for the mercy she won’t ask for? His cock replaces his fingers, and the entry is slow. He has to work to get in, but the feeling of his cock stretching the walls of my pussy as the plug stretches my ass is indescribable. I feel owned, used, thoroughly dominated. I can’t speak; I’m mumbling gibberish words in a low, sexy tone. I move up and down on him, encouraging him to fuck me hard. He does, pushing me forward and slapping my ass as he rams into me again and again and again. I don’t ask his permission to come. I couldn’t stop myself if I tried. I come once, twice, riding the waves of pleasure and pain.
When Silas comes, he pulls me to him, holding me as he did the night he gave me the bath, like a possession, like he doesn’t want to let go. And I don’t want him to. He does, though, eventually, laying me down on the bed. I’m emotionally and physically exhausted. My nipples are still aching deeply, my ass still stinging. I wriggle to alleviate the prickling feeling suffusing my clit. I look up and see him in his bathroom. His room is large and masculine. The bed I’m on is a heavy four-poster with deep red velvet drapes.
He comes back to the bed with several washcloths and a little vial. He positions me on my back.
“Deep breath,” he says, and I obey. He releases the first clamp and I exhale the breath with a cry as the blood rushes back into the nipple. Silas shushes me and presses the cool rag down onto it and holds it there before doing the same to the next breast.
Next comes the plug. He’s deflated it, and it comes out easily, even though I wince at the sting. He rubs my bottom hole clean with a second cloth, then my pussy with the third once I’ve turned over again. He tips some liquid from the vial onto his finger and touches it to my clit. The sting fades away.
I lie there looking at him.
“You’re a brave girl, Lindsay,” he says.
“I’m not afraid of you, Silas,” I say. I pause. “I trust you.”
I want to hear him say he trusts me, too.
“Would you like something warm to drink?” he asks. “Just stay here.”
I don’t want him to leave, but he does, donning a robe before exiting the room. When he comes back fifteen minutes later, he’s carrying a cup. It’s cocoa. I know before I see it, because I can smell it. He hands it to me, and sits down on the edge of the bed.
“Thanks,” I say. The smell is irresistible. I lean against him and drink, enjoying his nearness. I take my time, fearing that he’ll banish me from the room. But when I’m finished, he pulls aside the covers and lies beside me. I snuggle into him, feeling happy, feeling the lingering evidence of sensation he’s left on my body.
“I love you,” I say drowsily.
His lips are in my hair.
“Sweet girl,” he replies.
It’s all I remember until I awake the next morning, back in my own bed.