Without a word she followed him up the sloping hills back to the side entrance, then through the enormous house and up to the second floor to his room at the end of the long, silent hallway. When they were behind the door, he pushed the button on the wall to turn the water on for the plants.
She collapsed into the bed, exhausted, and closed her eyes. His arm came around her, and she drifted to sleep while the rain came down.
Vivian woke to the sounds of arguing. Gabe and Lindsay. She looked back and forth between the two as if she were watching a ping pong tournament. Gabe was angry she hadn’t been in her room. Cursing and heated words were exchanged, and then he grabbed an unresisting Vivian out of bed.
Lindsay slammed the bathroom door without a word or glance back. That was her goodbye to him. Then Gabe got her into the shower back in her room. His hands slid over her body, all cold business. She wanted to lash out at him, yell something about the fact that he’d wanted to have her in the shower, and now he wasn’t taking advantage of their last moments together.
But she didn’t. They’d trained her too well, and even now, she couldn’t bring herself to rebel enough to make one of them disappointed in her during her last hours in the house. Gabe didn’t try to have sex with her or even get a blow job out of the deal. He didn’t allow her to wash him. He just cleaned and dried her off.
He went to the dresser drawer and tossed a corset, panties, and garter belt at her, along with some fuck-me pumps. “You’re leaving with your master in this, today,” he growled.
Then he, too, was gone.
Vivian stood, stunned. She was scared enough about what was about to happen and neither Gabe nor Lindsay could be bothered to get out of their heads and their own issues. An hour later Annette brought her breakfast and asked if she was okay.
It seemed to be a rhetorical question because when Vivian tried to get into a conversation with the other woman, she looked like a doe caught in headlights and made an excuse to leave.
Soon after, when her nerves were completely frazzled, her mouth was dry, and she thought she might faint or cry or scream or all three, Anton walked into the room. He looked like he didn’t want to let her go either.
“Please, Sir . . . let me stay.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not an option, flower. You’ll understand in time.” Then he said the words that made her blood run cold and her entire world pause.
“He’s waiting for you in the showroom.”
The showroom. Annette had told her about this. When they sold a slave, they presented her in a lovely room and paraded her around, making a grand show and ritual of changing ownership from the house to the buyer. Vivian guessed the buyer earned that much with the amount of money they forked over.
She crawled across the floor to Anton, pressed her lips against his boots, dripping tears onto them. “Please don’t do this.”
He bent and attached a collar around her neck. It wasn’t leather like the one Annette wore; it was platinum with aquamarine stones set inside the band. It was the most gorgeous piece of jewelry Vivian had ever laid eyes on. It didn’t even look like bondage-wear, at least not until a ring was attached around it, and then a leash. Anton unlocked the cuff from her wrist that kept her on the property.#p#分页标题#e#
She was looking down at her bare wrist and didn’t see the blindfold until it covered her eyes. Annette had said this was the way things went, and yet she still wasn’t prepared for how off-balance it made her, to not be able to steal a glance into the eyes of the man who bought her, to see if there was something human in him she could trust.
Anton jerked on her leash a little, and she knew she’d never see his face again. The trip down the hallway seemed to take forever. He let her walk until they got to the showroom because it was down one level.
When they arrived, Anton said, “down,” and she dropped to her hands and knees. He led her across the plushly carpeted floor and stopped.
“May I present your slave, Vivian.”
She groped in the darkness and bent to kiss the shoes of the stranger. “Master, this slut is yours,” she said, sure she’d pass out and thankful that was all she had to say.
“If you have any trouble, you may bring her back for further training. We’ll check in with you in a couple of weeks to make sure you’re happy with your purchase.”
Anton’s footsteps receded softly over the carpet.
There was silence for a long time. She heard a glass being filled and muffled whispers. She knew the man who’d bought her was being served a drink, perhaps something to eat.
The truth of the latter was confirmed when his hand pressed a bit of food to her mouth. A strawberry. She opened and ate it while he ran a hand over her. After several minutes, he stood and tugged on her leash.
This was really happening. If the blindfold hadn’t been over her eyes, she would have felt the edges of the room go dark anyway. Such was the level of her panic. When they got to the entryway of the mansion and the hard, marble floor, he gripped her gently by the elbows and brought her to stand. Then he led her the rest of the way outside.
The man helped her into the back of a car and joined her, then he tapped on the glass, and the driver started the engine. She felt the car lurch away, taking her to god knew where. He slipped off her panties, then his fingers were inside her.
In spite of the circumstances and her anxiety, her body fired up like the well-trained machine it was. Vivian was immediately wet and flushed, knowing she was dripping down his hand, that he would know what a horny little slut she was, even without yet seeing his face. He could look like a scruffy cave dweller, and it probably wouldn’t matter.
His thumb flicked against her clit while his fingers pumped inside her, and she began to climb toward her orgasm in earnest. “Master, please,” she gasped out. She’d had to fight to remember not to call him Sir, that this wasn’t one of her trainers, though that was what she’d been fantasizing. The fantasy had been easy to engage in with the blindfold still shutting out the world and her new reality.
“Yes, come for me, Vivi.”
She froze.
Michael. She reached to remove the scrap of black fabric from her eyes, her emotions so torn she didn’t know what to think or do. The urge was strong to start yelling at him, screeching as the banshee rose from the dead to take her indignant revenge for this betrayal. Because it must have been planned. If he’d come to rescue her, he wouldn’t have started fingering her like that in the car when she was still scared, not knowing who he was.
His free hand gripped her wrist hard before she could take off the blindfold. “I don’t believe I gave you permission to do that. Come like I asked, or there will be consequences.”
His hand was still grinding against her heat, harder, punishing the swollen nub he’d been expertly manipulating. Had he taken a class or had she really been that shut down before? Her stomach tightened in response to his words and the way he handled her. Then despite all her jumbled emotions, despite the relief of being back with him, loving him, hating him, wanting him, being repulsed by him, she came, dripping in the back seat of the limo.
Michael kissed her, and she opened to him. She melted against his body in post-orgasmic bliss, her mind still whirring over what he’d done. The audacity of it. The fucked-up evil of it. The fact that she was wetter than she remembered ever because of it. He ripped the blindfold off her face and they just stared at each other for a long moment.
They were on the main road now, the tinted windows blocking out the sunlight and protecting the world from their debauchery. The look he gave her was so heated, so savage, she had to look away.
Tears filled her eyes. “Michael, why . . . ”
A hand cracked hard against her thigh. “Not Michael. Never Michael again. Master. And that’s exactly why. Even with everything I’ve set in motion, you still can’t believe it. You want to see me as your tame little husband. No more.”#p#分页标题#e#
He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. She had a feeling if she pushed him, he’d put a gag in her mouth so he could say what he had to say. She was desperate for answers, and a little scared. What was this man capable of, and how had she never seen it? Had he just snapped one day? Even with his business tactics she never would have believed he’d take anything this far.
“We weren’t happy, Vivi. We were dying in that sanitized little world we created. I wanted more. I wanted this.”
He pulled her panties up, then pushed her onto her knees in front of him while he petted her hair. The display of power imbalance was not lost on her.
“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why bring others into it?”
“Because it wouldn’t be real. And even if it was, you wouldn’t accept it. You wouldn’t believe in it. Do you know what I’d have to do to you to make you truly understand your new place with me? I’d have to punish you so severely you’d always fear me. We’ve been so normal and vanilla our whole marriage that springing this on you now . . . you never would have accepted it.”
“You could have tried. You could have given me a choice.”
“You had a choice. You kept going back to Anton. You wanted the things he did to you. I saw the way your eyes lit up the few times I got angry with you and didn’t let you push me around, but it didn’t matter. You would have fought me. Anton, Gabe, and Lindsay are friends of mine. They offered to train you so I wouldn’t have to break you myself.”