Page 9 of Cruel Master

With the door closed, I was left alone—finally—with the woman I’d spent the last five years searching for. It was a heady feeling. All that I’d been seeking was right here before me, splayed out on the bed I’d prepared for her. I smoothed a finger over her cheek as she breathed deeply.

My hand descended, pushing the blanket out of the way as I uncovered her body. Her breasts were barely a handful, but her greedy little nipple was hard against my palm as I gripped her tit and squeezed.

Soon, I’d deliver the punishment she deserved for her actions. Soon, I’d have all the answers that had since escaped me. Even if it meant I had to break her to get them.

5

ANGEL

Icame awake slowly, the darkness fading and reality encroaching.What the hell…?My body locked up when I realized something as my lashes lifted and I finally opened my eyes. I was naked. Not just naked, but tied down and bared to the cool air of the room I was in.

The flare of fear hit me a split second before my memories did. How I’d passed out. How I’d come to be here. The only thing I didn’t recall was where exactlyherewas.

Looking down to where each of my hands were tied with some sort of jute rope—soft, but strong—it was hard not to feel thethingthat was pressing between my thighs. I frowned, trying to make sense of it. I was seated in a chair of some kind. My wrists were restrained to the arm of each side and my ankles and calves were tied to the legs. I felt twinges all over. The upper part of my left arm. My stomach. My head. It all faded, though, as I realized that my thighs were spread wide and tied open. I looked down and between my legs was the rounded head of a Hitachi wand.

What the fuck?I looked up, scanning the room. Dark, masculine tones. Hardwood and burgundy curtains. It was sparsely decorated in anything that could have hinted at its owner. No pictures, no trinkets, nothing that could detect that an actual person resided in it.

“You’re as beautiful as ever, darling,” a voice suddenly said. And although the voice was familiar, the suddenness of it made me shriek in shock. My whole body jerked. I tried, immediately, to close my legs, only to realize that it was virtually impossible to keep the wand that was sticking straight up through some sort of hole in the seat of the chair off of me if I did so. It wasn’t on, but I still didn’t want to touch it. It rested against me lightly with my legs spread, but even trying to close them brought it right up against my clit—pressing hard and insistent.

I cursed and squeezed my legs together anyway around the top of it, my knees not touching despite my straining efforts as I jerked my head up and met the sinister gaze of a man I thought I’d never see again.

“Gaven.” I said his name as he lifted a cigar to his lips and put it between his teeth. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a lighter.

Shock ricocheted through me, though it shouldn’t have. He looked just as he had in my memory. Tall. Dark. Wickedly handsome. A vile glint in his eyes that spoke of danger. My breathing grew ragged. He’d captured me. Old memories resurfaced. Could I handle what he had planned? Could I escape a third time?

Cobwebs clung to my thoughts, fogging over everything in my mind. Gaven, though, kept pulling me back in. His hair was lighter at the sides, just above his ears—gray just starting to pepper the strands. It made him look even more formidable than I recalled. There were new lines around his eyes and lips. Not laugh lines but ones likely induced by stress. My chest seized. I drifted down to his chest, the massive expanse covered by what looked to be an expensive suit sans tie. Just the jacket, pants, and button-down—all dark, of course.

“That won’t be what you call me,” he said casually as he lit the end and put the lighter back in his pocket. I blinked and looked up at his face once more.

Though he was the only man who’d ever truly seen me naked, who’d been inside of me, I still felt self-conscious. Sure, at this point in my life, I could masquerade as the confident, sexy vixen. I could pretend that I was experienced, but deep down, I wasn’t. I never was. Because he was the one man I’d ever had … and I’d never intended to have another after I’d left.

His words hit me. “What?” I demanded.

Gaven was seated across from me in what appeared to be a far more comfortable and less filthy-minded piece of furniture. It was a wide settee, covered in a velvety-looking green fabric. Unlike the seat I was currently strapped to, no one had altered it or fitted it with any vibrating sex toys like the one currently pressing between my legs.

“You will refer to me as ‘Master’ from now on,” he stated. “And you will not refer to anyone else who comes or goes inside of this apartment as anything because you won’t be allowed to converse with them. You’ve lost that privilege.”

Despite my discomfort, I forced a laugh.He didn’t actually think I would just bow to him even though he’d managed to capture me, did he?Nothing had changed, or rather … too much had. I shook my head. “I’m not calling you that.”

“You will,” he said without heat, as if it didn’t matter what I said, what I claimed or wanted.

It probably didn’t. Not anymore. It’d been five years since I’d seen Gaven Belmonte and in that time, I’d tried to convince myself that my attraction to him had all been in my head—it’d been nothing but a young girl wanting desperately to turn the beast she was being forced to marry into someone she could live with for the rest of her life. Now, as I sat across from him—bare save for the rope that kept me secured, I had to face the God-awful truth. I was wet, and it was because of him.

Gaven was no less handsome than he had been the day I’d met him and then, not long after, the day I’d married him. His strong jaw, his ice blue eyes. Cold and dangerous. Something inside of me that I thought I’d long ago buried flared back to life. All those nights alone in whatever city I’d managed to hide away in came rushing back to me. Every time I’d masturbated, pressed my fingers down below and curled them into my pussy, or stroked my clit, I’d thought of him. Every time I’d seen a couple—didn’t matter where they were in their life, newlyweds, with children, arguing, or even the old ones—I’d thought of him.

“There are things about me,sweet Angel,” Gaven said, “that you don’t know. Things I would have gladly shared had we been given the appropriate amount of time to get to know each other. Now, unfortunately, five years have passed andmy wifehas only just now come home.” The way he said ‘my wife’ made it sound like both a prayer and a curse, as if he hated it and desired it at the same time. Guilt ate away at my heart.

No!I told myself.You have to be strong. It doesn’t matter what he wants with you. It doesn’t matter what he does to you. You need to find a way to escape and disappear again so that he can never find you.

“I was prepared to wait and ease you into my lifestyle,” Gaven continued, his tone casual as he reclined further on his settee. “I see now that it was wrong to do such a thing. Perhaps had I corrected your behavior before, something like this would never have—”

I try to stop him. “Gaven, I—”

“Silence.” He didn’t yell or bark. He didn’t stand or tower over me, threatening me with his size and strength. He didn’t have to. That one word, spoken with a deep, masculine vibrato made me stop. It made my lips shut and my eyes settled on him. There was a rage inside of him—something I had created—and when he turned those stone-cold eyes on me, I had to swallow roughly to keep from shrinking back and lowering my own. It was hard to maintain eye contact. Finally, I couldn’t anymore and my head tilted down to my lap and my gaze settled on the edges of my knees.

“You’ve had your time to speak,” he said slowly. “Five years of it. You could have come back during that time. Explained yourself. Requested my help—the help of your husband—but you didn’t. You ran. You hid. I want nothing from you now save for your obedience.”

I shook my head and bit my lip. I couldn’t fucking explain myself. If I told him the truth then he would be in danger and as much as I’d tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter, I’d agreed, in the end, to marry him. To have and to hold. In sickness and in health. I didn’t want his death on my conscience, not when I knew keeping him in the dark could prevent it. It was a small sacrifice. One he didn’t seem all that keen to let me fucking make.

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