Chapter Twenty

 

Joshua

Toy behaves perfectly for me.

I chain her to the foot of my bed every night. She submits, instantly, to every command. I make her answer to the name Toy and acknowledge me as her master, many times a day. I exercise her on the treadmill, and several times she falls off into my arms, nearly fainting, rather than ask to stop. She watches me fearfully, desperate to please me.

When I say cruel things to her, she cries and cries and begs me to forgive her.

She is completely passive except when I fuck her. Then she writhes underneath me and cries out in pleasure, and I feel her pussy spasming on my cock, and it makes me come so hard I think I’ve died and gone to Heaven. Not that I’ll ever know what Heaven feels like, if there is such a place.

And yet something’s lacking.

I find myself being harder and harder on her. When I take her to the playroom, I whip the shit out of her. I put clamps on her nipples and pussy and make her crawl across the floor to me, and she wails in pain the whole way and then kneels at my feet, quivering, waiting for me to release her from the cruel clamps but not daring to ask. I make her wait a very long time. Often I sit there and read a book, propping my feet up on her back while her tears drip on the floor.

She’s a perfect little Toy. She’d suffer agonies rather than disappoint me. And I make sure she does.

After a couple of weeks, to reward her for her good behavior, I order a dozen couture gowns in her size. It takes a week for them to arrive from Paris. I have them delivered to a town two hours away and send Elizabeth to pick them up, because I don’t want to leave the house if I don’t have to. Elizabeth has severe agoraphobia, but she suffers through it to go out and pick up our supplies a couple of times a month. Food, clothing, household goods. It’s necessary. I don’t like to be seen anywhere in this area, to preserve my anonymity.

I hang the dresses on a rack and slide it into the center of my bedroom and bring Toy in to look at them.

“These are for you,” I tell her, waiting for the gush of gratitude and excitement that should accompany such a generous gift.

She barely glances up at them.

“Thank you, Master,” she whispers, standing with her hands hanging at her sides, gaze trained on the floor.

Shock and anger blast through me. These are beautiful hand-stitched creations. Models wear them on the cover of Vogue. Twenty grand or more each. She’s dismissing a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of dresses with a flick of her eyes.

“You don’t like them?” My voice is harsh.

Instantly, her eyes are like saucers, and she flinches in abject terror. I feel that burn of arousal that reminds me, yet again, that I am a truly sick and terrible individual. My cock stirs in my pants.

“Yes, Master, I’m sorry, Master,” she whimpers. “I love them, Master. Thank you, Master.”

“Which one do you like best, Toy?” I snarl.

She hurries over to the rack, her eyes wide with fright. She begins carefully looking through them.

She picks one out, her hands shaking. “This one, Master. Thank you, Master. It’s beautiful, Master.” It’s black with a lacy fringe on it.

“Why, Toy?” I ask, with a nasty bite to my tone. “Why do you like that one best?”

“They’re all beautiful, Master.” She’s sobbing now, terrified of what I might do to her. “But this one looks like a flapper dress from the 1920s. I’ve always loved the style from that era.”

“You’ll wear it for dinner tonight.”

“Yes, Master! Thank you, Master.” She’s staring at the ground, gulping, trying not to make too much noise when she cries.

The sight makes my cock harden. I tell her to get on her knees.

She sinks down quickly, eagerly.

I unbutton my slacks and ram my cock down her throat so hard that she chokes and flails in panic. I hold her head still while she struggles to breathe, and make her suck me, then pull out when she’s only halfway done.

“You give lousy blow jobs,” I snarl at her, and the look on her face…it’s like I just murdered a puppy in front of her.

It’s not true. She gives amazing, world-class blow jobs. Her mouth is a national treasure.

I’m just angry that she wasn’t excited about the dresses I gave her. Since when do I care about anyone else’s feelings? What the fuck is wrong with me these days?

She starts crying.

She’s still crying when I make her turn around and get on her hands and knees right there on the floor. I quickly roll on a condom and shove my cock inside her without bothering to lube her up, and she cries out in pain as I tear her sensitive inner tissue. I fuck her hard and rough, ramming into her, and she’s wet within a minute, but still cringing and weeping. Her muscles are tense and clenched. I reach around and stroke her clit as I’m fucking her, until I feel that trembling in her core that tells me she’s close. Her clit swells with my attention as I force pleasure on her for my own sake rather than hers, and finally, her sheath convulses on my cock and she comes explosively. And she’s still crying.

For some reason—this has never happened to me before—I can’t come. I pull out of her and stalk out of the room without looking back. The sound of her sobs follows me down the hallway. I go to the parlor, where I fling myself into my chair and try to figure out why the hell I even care what my idiot brainless slave thinks about anything.

Yeah, I could punish her for not reacting to the dresses like I wanted her to, but what did I want her to do instead? Do I want her to lie to me and pretend she loves the dresses? Because she’s a lousy liar.

Her behavior confuses me. Just when I think that I’ve got the basics of human behavior figured out, someone throws me a curveball that leaves me annoyed and frustrated.

Take the dresses. They are perfect for her, I know that.

Why didn’t they make her happy? Women like gifts. Women especially like gifts that are personalized. Gifts that show that you know what they like.

She should have been excited and grateful I bought her those dresses. Instead, she barely looked at them. She couldn’t care less that I bought them. And I think…well, I was certainly offended. If I had feelings, I would say she’d hurt them.

Does that mean I have feelings now? And how would I be able to tell? It would be like a blind man regaining his sight and trying to identify the colors of the rainbow.

I settle back in my chair, wearily running through my daily security checks. Review the Blackthorne video feed. Read over the intel that my private investigator has gathered on the police who are investigating the disappearance of Toy and the security guard. I could take care of Sergeant. Ruiz pretty easily; wife died of cancer, daughter ODed, nobody to miss him, and it wouldn’t be hard to stage a suicide. He seems to be the driving force behind the investigation. The detective who’s assisting him on the investigation has a gambling problem; I could use it to either blackmail him or discredit him.

Heather is still missing, vanished without a trace. Something is definitely up there. My private investigator found out that when she quit the bagel shop, she didn’t do it in person; she called it in. Did she vanish voluntarily?

Toy’s face swims in front of me again, pushing aside all other thoughts. I picture her quick, indifferent glance at those gowns I worked so hard to select, and I pick up a small statuette from my desk and hurl it across the room in an entirely uncharacteristic fit of anger. That isn’t me. I am cold and calculating and controlled.

What the fuck is happening to me? What is happening to her?