Page 26 of Her Cruel Empire
I reach for the security tablet without thinking, my fingers finding the castle’s internal cameras with muscle memory. She’s not in the Great Hall anymore—ah. There she is. Creeping through the corridors, returning to her room at last, a dazed look in her eyes as she smiles to herself.
My fingers move almost without my own permission, scrubbing back through the footage. To an hour ago. To the moment she came apart for me.
I watch it over and over again. The way those large, soft tits spilled to each side. The loud cry wrenched from her lips. The flutter of almost-pain as pleasure crashed over her. I slow the footage down, studying every micro-expression, every involuntary tremor.
I’m looking for artifice. For pretense. For any sign that she was performing for me.
I find nothing.
No practiced angle of her head to catch the light. No theatrical gasps designed to stroke my ego. Just raw, honest pleasure. The kind of response that can’t be faked, not with that level of detail. Not with the way her pupils dilated, the flush that spread down her throat, the genuine shock in her expression when she realized what I’d done to her.
I replay it yet again, my own breath growing short. I’ve never done this—never found my own hand slipping into my underwear like I have no control over it. Never touched myself over footage of a woman I’ve contracted before.
Usually, when I want something, I take it. I could go to her room. Enjoy her again.
But I also want to let Robin rest.
And most of all, I want to come, despite the fact that my initiations—my first-night show of power and skill—are designed in part to show myownself-control. I always make them come first, make them melt completely for me, and show my iron will by not allowing them to touch me.
Notneedingthem to touch me.
I suppose I’ll have to touch myself instead.
I slide my fingers into slick heat, my clit already aching and swollen. I match the rhythm of her body on the screen. Let her guide me. Every breath, every moan, every tremble, I chase them all. Replay them again and again. Her pleasure is mine. Her cries are forme.
My hips lift, chasing the edge, tension coiling tighter and tighter until the world narrows to her lips, her thighs, her voice as she cries out.
I come with a ragged gasp, my orgasm ripping through me. And then, panting, one hand still buried in my cunt, I reach with the other for the tablet and delete the footage.
Robin Rivers will have no privacy while she’s in my house. Every hallway, every suite, every inch of this castle is under my control, and cameras are everywhere. But the mere idea of this interlude existing digitally—the notion that someone else might ever have the slightest chance to see her so vulnerable… No. I won’t allow it.
I did think, even as we flew home, that she might have been an extremely sophisticated spy. As soon as I bought myself this new toy, of course, Leon ran a background check. He gave me the nod before we ever boarded the plane. I still had my suspicions even then. But our time tonight in the Great Hall convinced me.
She’s real. Genuine. Authentic in a way that I haven’t seen for many, many years.
And I want to take her apart so thoroughly that she forgets any life existed before me.
I set the tablet down too hard, the crack of metal on hardwood echoing sharply. Thirty days. That’s how long I have her. Thirty days, and then she’s free to go.
And after watching her shatter so perfectly for me, thirty days feels like a countdown to losing something I’ve barely begun to claim.
This is aproblem. I don’t like problems I can’t quantify. And right now, my entire body is still humming. If someone else had bought her—if one of the Gattos had won that bid instead of me—or one of their even worse friends?—
I stand up too fast, my chair spinning away from me.
They would have destroyed her. They destroy everything they touch. Girls like Robin don’t survive that kind of violence. They get carved up and sold for parts, for fun, for message-sending.
My hands are clenched into fists, my teeth grinding. The rage that floods through me is hot and possessive andcompletelyirrational. Robin is mine, after all. No one will touch her but me.
As for the Gattos, I was right. Theyarebeneath me. But what I saw in Vegas—what I chose to walk away from in disgust—it still won’t leave my mind.
Now that Robin’s here, sleeping like a lamb in the lion’s den, I find I can’t stop thinking about all the other lambs.
I glance at the clock, make a few mental calculations. Yes, it’s around midday in Vegas. I reach for the phone.
The line rings only twice before Brie Colombo answers. Her voice is cool and low, amused. “Eva. To what do I owe the shock of a lifetime?”
“I’ve been rethinking our last discussion,” I say smoothly. “You wanted a discount. I’ll give it to you.”
