Page 61 of Slave

All was quiet again for several minutes. Usually his hand would gently rub up and down my arm, but tonight both were still. Finally, I felt him shift beneath me and say, “We need to talk about today.” I nodded.

Minutes passed again before he continued, “Before we start, do you remember the number system I gave you earlier?”

I nodded again, but that wasn’t good enough as he commanded me to answer him verbally. “Yes, Master.”

“Repeat back to me what I told you.”

“Whenever you ask, I am to give you the number between one and ten that tells you how uncomfortable I am at that time.”

“Very good,” he nodded. “And what are you to say should you reach the number eight?”

“Yellow,” I answered obediently.

“And the number ten?” he questioned.

“Red.”

He nodded again, and this time he rubbed his hand up and down my arm, letting me know he was pleased with my answers. “I want you to use this system even when I don’t ask you, Brianna.”

There was silence again, and I realized he was waiting for me to speak. The problem was I didn’t understand what he meant.

“I don’t understand,” I said honestly. The last thing I wanted was to mess up because I didn’t know what was required of me.

Master sighed. “It means that I want you to constantly keep that number system in your head and if . . . when you get to an eight, I want you to say the word yellow.” Then he pulled my chin up so that I was looking directly into his eyes. “Even if I don’t ask you.”

He waited, as if letting this information sink in before asking, “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Repeat it.”

I took a deep breath and repeated almost word for word everything he’d said. At the end, he seemed pleased.

“That goes for red as well. If you reach a ten at any time . . .” He paused and gave me a look that left me no doubt as to how seriously he took his next words. “You are to say red immediately.”

I nodded. “I understand, Master.”

“Okay then, let’s get started.”

I tensed up instantly. There was no doubt in my mind that he felt it, too, but Master didn’t comment. Instead, he asked me where I wanted to start. All the questions from before began swirling in my head, but I wanted to think about them more before I brought them up to him. They weren’t what he was asking me about anyway.

In the end, I decided to ask what had been the most pressing question on my mind prior to Lily and Logan’s arrival. “Are you going to take my books away?”

But instead of answering me, he asked, “Do you feel you should have your books taken away?”

“I . . . I guess,” I said, defeated.

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t paying attention,” I whispered.

“Hmm,” he said, as if considering what I had just said. “To me it looked like you were having a panic attack, Brianna. Am I wrong?”

A panic attack? I had never thought of it like that. Was that what it was?

Obviously I was silent for too long. “Tell me what happened after you went back to the dressing room,” he said, softly stroking my hair.

“I took off the clothes,” I said softly. If I weren’t sitting with my face inches from his, he would not have been able to hear me. “Then I heard voices,” I said even lower. “And then . . .” I stopped because after that I really wasn’t sure what happened. One second I’d been in the dressing room changing clothes and then the next minute I’d been kneeling in front of Ian.

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