CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SERAPHINA
“Neither of you are my fucking Master.”
Grinding out the response between clenched teeth, I stared up at what had once been a dream, but had dissolved into a nightmare with each cutting word that fell from his lips. I hated them both, hated that they believed they had the power to control me.
Anthony’s fist tightened into my hair as Aiden’s fingers played through the skin between my legs, his arrogant expression staring down at me as my hips bucked and writhed. Disgust filtered through my veins as heady and vicious as the worst of poisons.
Leaning over me so that his mouth brushed against my ear, Anthony whispered, “Wrong choice.”
I heard the threat of his voice, understood that whatever game they were playing against me left me without the ability to win.
A sigh rolled off his lips, the heat of his breath brushing over my skin, chasing goosebumps where it caressed and taunted me. Struggling was futile. It would only make them enjoy this more.
With easy grace few men could claim, Anthony stood to his full height, his face a mask of disappointment touched by the barest hint of concern. I didn't like that concern, couldn't fathom what would scare a man such as him into worry. But then the laughter began, a deep, slow beat that grew with each breath I struggled to pull. My eyes darted to the casual sound, my heart beating its fetid pulse to see the naked victory written across Aiden's normally placid expression.
"That's too bad, Anthony. I would have sworn the girl was smart enough to understand the offer you made." Aiden sighed, his features morphing back into the blank mask he wore so well, his eyes locking to mine in promise.
"I'd be a liar to say I won't enjoy this, Sera." He breathed out, the air a slithering coil escaping his broad chest and long throat. "I have missed the battle only you have ever dared wage against me. You thought you could escape, didn’t you? But fate brought you back because there is no escape, Sera. Not from me."
Confusion caressed me, whispering toxic insults and mocking lies. The room stumbled into silence, the darkness creeping through the miasma of my deepest fears. Before I could utter a sound, Anthony stepped further within shadow, his expression cloaked by the desolate, cold nothingness that came with lack of light.
"I'm sorry. I truly am. But, you see, you've left me with no way to fight. Per the rules of the Society, you belong to the Master that trained you. He was willing to release you into my care, but you were too busy rebelling to understand you had a choice."
"She made her choice, Anthony." Seductive, cultured, astute, Aiden's voice was a skein of silk stretched taut across my senses, a honed blade tucked beneath the soft cadence of his tone. "You can leave. I'll remind our wayward kitten of what it means to be a courtesan."
The chains tethering my wrists snapped taut. My teeth clacked together so tight my jaw ticked with the painful pressure of pure rage. Electric currents raced across my nerves, my muscles clenched, my eyes open wide.
Darkness seeped in to swim within my vision, dissipating at an awkward, scattered beat until all I could see was Aiden's glum face, the knowledge that he'd won some game I hadn't known I was playing. A perfect, practiced mask of patience beamed from his polished smile.
A woman doesn't know loss until that expression is looking down at her, doesn't understand degradation until his acts of sensual violence are committed against her, pulling pleasure from pain, and sin from even the purest of the good little girls they once had been.
"Anthony," Aiden spoke into the room, a soft reminder that only two were necessary for the nightmare that was about to begin.
A sigh sounded to my left, the beat of the soles of Anthony's expensive shoes counting down the seconds until I was returned to the beginning of my descent into the hellish truth of my life, a truth that had existed since Aiden found me years ago.
The door closed softly behind Anthony's back. The darkness thickened. And a soft, subtle laugh filtered through the misery, grief and fear that filled the room, trapped by the walls built on screams, pleading, and mournful, seductive chaos.
"I'm sure you know what happens from here, Sera. I'd be wasting my breath and both our time to explain." His steps punctuated his words, the slap, click and shuffle of the soles of his shoes a drumbeat that led a woman to the execution of her soul, her heart, her identity before she'd had the misfortune of falling into his greedy grasp.
His fingertips traced up the side of my thigh, a gentle touch that was as deceptive as his smooth voice, his masculine beauty. Virility ran like static electricity across his skin, slicing across my weakened senses, drowning me in the memories of heartache and loss that had come on the day he'd sold me off to the monsters.
Gritting my teeth, I refused to answer the words he'd spoken. Remaining silent was my only defense, my refusal to acknowledge him, the only weapon I had left. I didn't fool myself into believing my silence would stop him.
I knew what Aiden could do to a woman. And I knew that even through his most decadent cruelty, how easily he could make me beg. Aiden wasn't just a man holding power over me, he was poison personified, sinful agony cast in the form of the most handsome picture of a man.
There was amusement in his tone when he spoke again, amusement and the keen knowledge that I was a pawn in whatever twisted game he decided to play.
"Cat got your tongue?"
A startled cry tore from my throat as my lips and teeth were forced apart, as the tips of his fingers clamped down onto the sensitive tissue of my tongue. Soft laughter shook the air, his voice soothing the sharp pain he caused me. "No, I guess not, it seems I'm the one who has it."
I would have bit down if he'd given me the chance, but he was too experienced for that - too professional and skilled. Fighting would be a useless waste of energy, my physical body would give out and my soul would follow right behind. Letting him matter would be the greatest of mistakes. Letting him win would be the most painful of defeats.
Bending low so that his face was hovering over mine, he grinned. A cat with the mouse trapped beneath its paw, a snake having transfixed whatever prey it cornered. "What's wrong, Sera? Where's the woman I remember who would lash out so easily? Just moments ago you were screaming at two Masters you thought you had the right to face down. But now?"
Releasing my tongue and mouth, he straightened his posture. "Now, you're just a pathetic lump on a dirty mattress. You're a whore that's not worth the time I took to train."
His fingers trailed down my chest, over the thin fabric of my t-shirt and between my breasts. Careful not to touch more than just the inner swells, he continued his slow pace down my body, his eyes locked on the rise and fall of my breath. "Did your new Owners do this to you? Were they the ones who took what I could never fully create and transform it into something so pathetic, no man in his right mind would want you?"
"Fuck you," I growled, unable to contain the seething rage that helped squelch the vitriol of fear that burst inside me. My hands balled into fists as the tips of his fingers glided softly down my abdomen, my hips jerked up when those fingers found the naked skin between my legs.
I couldn't fully see his reaction to my words, but his response was clear as day. "I have every intention of doing just that." The humor in his tone was disgusting, the seductive, silky croon of his voice was unfair.
My body still reacted to the sound despite my refusal. My heart still hurt at the memory of his rejection when I'd finally learned what little use it was to fight against him. Aiden hadn't been the one to crush my soul beneath his nimble fingers, but he'd been the one to sell me off to those who could, to those who would have buried me long ago if I hadn't been so amusing in the way I fought against them.
The slap of chains against the bedframe and my skin split the silence in the room, my body being turned with such speed that I never had the chance to fight what Aiden was doing. He'd ensnared me in my own fit of anger so that he could take control. My chest slammed down on the thin mattress, my face was buried in the pillow that was flattened by the tears of all the women who'd laid on this bed before me.
His hand pressed down against the back of my skull until I had no choice but to include my own sweat with those tears. I couldn't breathe for several seconds before he released just enough pressure for me to gasp in the cold, fetid air.
"You're wet already."
His voice was a hum across my skin, his words a grating pain across my thoughts. Yes, my body was damp, it was swollen and ready, but not for him. Anthony had been the Master to prepare me for this degradation. It had been his hand that forced pleasure through my body until I was helpless in my desire to fight against him. What Aiden felt now was what remained of the act of another skilled hand.
"I want another Master," I breathed out, my voice muffled by the pillow, my eyes clenched shut against the feel of Aiden's fingers slipping inside me. He didn't respond immediately, and when I opened my mouth to make the demand louder, his fingers clenched into my hair, my body bending backwards as he used his fist to pull my face up from the mattress.
"Say that again, Sera. Perhaps add a little strength to your voice if you want to make it believable." Toying with me, Aiden couldn't hide the insidious laughter in his voice.
My gut churned at the idea of asking for anything from this man, but if there was the slightest chance I could escape the hell I knew he intended for me, I could pretend I was complicit. "I made a mistake. I didn't understand I had a choice." Forcing my teeth apart, I spoke a word I'd sworn I'd never use again. "Please. I'm begging you to give me to Master Anthony."
It wasn't that I believed Anthony would treat me any better than Aiden intended to do. I knew he would take my body. There was no doubt he would shape me into whatever image he had for me. But at least with him, I stood the chance of escaping with enough of my soul intact that I could find the strength to end my very existence in this cruel, uncaring world.
Neither Anthony nor Aiden would kill me, of that I was sure. But if I knew Aiden at all, I knew that he would sell me directly back into the clutches of the men I'd just escaped, he'd use me, and then he'd return me to my version of Hell.
I had to believe there was a chance Anthony would at least save me that nightmare, that something inside him would be blind to the fact that all I wanted was to die on my own terms.
"Please," I said again, forcing tears from my eyes and a tremble to my voice. "I didn't know I had a choice. I'll submit to him. I swear."
One by one, strands of hair snapped from my scalp as Aiden's fist tightened within the knotted mess. Silence consumed me, an answer he wouldn't give lingering like some mysterious stranger that would either destroy me or deliver me to salvation.
Although my thoughts screamed out that he would never acquiesce to my request, my heart held firm to the hope that I knew enough about him to play my game well.
Slamming down again when he released my hair, I waited for his response with bated breath, fearing that even the sound of the air escaping my lips would give him some small hint to my intent to deceive him.
His cultured voice rolled across my skin, without even the barest hint of emotion. "Have you allowed yourself to believe that I give a fuck what you want?" A pause, the silence suffocating before he spoke again, this time with his mouth closer to my ear, his words as soft as a whisper. "Do you really believe that anything you have to say will affect my decisions?" He sighed, his breath washing over my face, warm against my chilled skin. "You know me better than that."
Straightening his posture, he ran his fingertips down my spine, mimicking the same trail he'd made when I'd been lying on my back. Slowly, methodically, he kept his pace, my skin prickling with terror as my teeth bit down on my lip to stifle the cry of misery forcing its way up my throat. Violence, I could handle. Rage, I knew well. But the slow gentle touch he delivered to me now, it was foreign to me, caustic and sinister.
"You," he stressed the word, "did not have a choice because of some silly compassion on my part. I gave my colleague - my friend - the opportunity to take you off my hands. Anthony could have simply taken you. He could have forced you on a plane and flown you to the paradise he's made of his home on a private island."
His fingers reached my lower back, his laughter soft as it rolled over his sculpted lips. "But he wanted you to make that choice. Anthony isn't like me, Sera. His training is precise, but not something I have either the desire or the patience to practice."
Stopping his path down my back, the tips of his fingers traced a deep scar I'd received at the tip of a barbed whip. Raised and red, the mottled skin was a jagged line just above my ass. "I prefer an approach that leaves a deeper impact on the psyche. While Anthony uses a scalpel, I use a hatchet. And that, my unfortunate girl, is precisely the surgeon that you chose."
More warning than casual conversation, his words chased fear across my body. "Please, M-" I could barely choke out the title. "Master."
It had been years since I referred to any man by that word, years since I chose to submit over the pain that accompanied rebellion.
"Who gave you these marks?" Aiden's hand traveled further, his fingers brushing lighter scars that traced over the cheeks of my behind. "They're distracting, but in a beautiful sort of way."
"They're ugly," I bit out.
"Yes, you're right to assume I lied. They are ugly, but I'm still hard." Leaning over, he pressed his lips to the rim of my ear. "Did the man who bought you from me give you these? I guess that means I gave you these scars, doesn’t it?"
His finger traced the crease of my ass, stopping in a place that made me squirm. The gentle hush of his breathing caught my attention, and his finger slipped inside my body. "So wet, Sera. So wet and used. You always were such an easy whore."
In moments when you stop caring, the truth is set free to escape your lips. "I'm not wet for you, asshole. You can thank your friend for that."
Legs forced apart, I gripped my fists into the thin pillow by my face and closed my eyes. The thick silence that fell was broken apart by bits of sound that told a familiar story: the susurration of skin against skin, a belt being unclasped, a zipper pulled down, the springs of an old mattress crying out beneath the weight of a violent man. Aiden's heat touched my chilled skin, the air whispering into private places before pressure explored the boundaries of my body.
It was unfortunate for Aiden there wasn't a place left on me that hadn't been violated already - there wasn't a place that could terrorize me in ways I hadn't already experienced before.
The head of his cock dragged up, the cheeks of my ass were split apart, and he allowed soft laughter to fill the desolate space between us. "Then allow me to go where my friend hasn't yet prepared you. Scream for me, Sera. I feed off the sound of a woman's fears."
He forced himself inside inch by agonizing inch. And although I bit down to keep from screaming, I couldn't help but obey him.