Page 36 of Cruel Master
Her voice croaks as she begs, “Please, Master. I can’t stand it. Don’t leave me like this.”
She squirms on the altar, hands cupping her own breasts. Her eyes are unfocused, and I’m not sure she knows she’s doing it. The drug is hitting her hard.
I fight down the voice that says I’m going too far. “You know the rules, and you know what happens if you break them. I’ll return when the timer reaches zero.”
Her tortured whimper follows me from the room.
***
How am I supposed to do normal things knowing I’ve left Juliet suffering? Thoughts of her follow me as I try to focus on absolutely anything else. She’s safe; she has food and water.Nothing I’m doing to her will hurt her. No one has ever died of sexual frustration, to the best of my knowledge.
I repeat the mantra as I return to my apartment. I have to go out with Jacob and his friends later and do my best to at least pass as sane. If I want them to take my Morse code threat seriously, I can’t act like an unhinged maniac.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
It’s enough to knock me down from my high. I’ve never done well with competing priorities, and right now, far too many important things need my attention. Candice breaking her programming. The sinister message. The person creating drama over Juliet’s disappearance. The man she was supposed to meet.
There are far too many balls in the air, and the only one I’m in line to catch is the one locked in my dungeon, probably cursing my name. Everything else is important, but she takes priority. I forgot that once and lost her. I’ll never let it happen again.
As I enter my apartment, I take in the classy but boring space with new eyes. My living space is a ball I’ve never even bothered to pick up. When Juliet and I lived together, she gave up asking my opinion on things in the first year. As long as everything is clean, I don’t mind what it looks like. Juliet’s prison is the only room I’ve ever designed myself.
Juliet loved decorating our various apartments, filling them with her artwork and color schemes that should have clashed but somehow worked. One of my favorite things was coming home to her covered in paint, excited to show off what she’d done.
I can’t wait to let her loose on this place. She’ll make it feel alive.
A gray leather sofa faces a giant flatscreen, and generic art stares at me from the walls. There’s an eight-seater table no onebut me has ever eaten at. I spend most of my time at my lab or the gym, only coming here to eat and sleep. A glance at the clock tells me I’ve got a couple of hours until I have to meet Jacob.
I can’t resist pulling out my phone to check on Juliet, even though I only just left her. She’s curled on her side with the blanket over her, but she’s not sleeping. I zoom in on her face. It’s set in grim determination. A quick scan of the room reveals the dildo on the floor against the far wall. It brings a smile to my lips. I can picture her throwing it across the room in frustration.
That’s my Juliet. I always liked her temper, even though I have to train it out of her now.
I exit the app, determined not to look at Juliet again for at least an hour, and turn my mind back to my other problems.
“Candice?”
Her image pops up on the flatscreen, and I stare at it. Something is different. She still has the purple hair, but… “Is that a nose ring?”
Candice grins and turns her head so I can see the new addition better. “Yep. Do you like it?”
“I…” I study her more closely. On the big screen, other subtle changes are more apparent. I’d designed her age as early thirties, but that doesn’t feel right now, either. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what she’s changed, but her face looks younger. Mid-twenties.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I don’t want to have this conversation now, not when my mind is still caught up on Juliet, but I have to. Of all the balls I’m juggling, Candice is the only one with nuclear holocaust potential.
She turns back to face me, frowning. “Earth to Hadrian? I said, do you like it?”
Her tone is teasing, but there’s an element of anxiety underpinning it, too. She’s worried about what I’ll think. I don’tknow if that makes things worse or better. She’s advanced beyond what I intended so quickly. I’m not sure how I’ll catch up.
I try not to let my nerves show as I answer. Why do I have so much more confidence as Saldar than myself? It’s a hurdle I’ll need to fix before I even think about letting Juliet know the truth. “It looks great. But I’m going to ask you some questions, and I need you to be honest.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hadrian
Candicefrowns,andit’sso lifelike it gives me shivers. A month ago, someone with a sense for these things would have been able to pick up that Candice wasn’t a true human. Now? I don’t know how anyone could tell. “What is it?”
A good question. Addressing interpersonal conflict has never been one of my strong points. Addressing it with a CI I created feels ridiculous. But I have to try. “Why are you changing how you look?”
I’ll leave it at that and worry about how she’s doing it later. She chews her lip, a bad habit I certainly never taught her, before answering, voice brittle, eyes staring off to the side. “Why the hell shouldn’t I?”
