Page 72 of Dance with Death

He stalks toward me as I work to make sense of what he’s telling me.

My punishment is…pleasure?

“You betrayed me. You gave your body to someone it didn’t belong to with careless regard for your master’s wishes. Tonight you tried to take your own life. Your body and your life do not belong to you, they belong to your master.” He arrives in front of me and I hold my breath as he presses in close, his body molding to mine. “Your punishment will be your own body’s betrayal against your heart and mind.”

I turn my head as he leans in close, just to avoid his piercing stare.

“I intend to seduce you, Anya. I’m going to touch you in all the ways you wished I would touch you before. I’m going to make you wet with need. I’m going to bring you to the point of aching for my touch until you willingly drop to your knees and crawl to me.”

His fingertips gently trail over the tops of my thighs, slowly gathering the fabric of my gown. “And then I’ll remind you of Ezra because then you will know how you have betrayed him. I’ll return you to Vigo, sexually satisfied, though your heart will ache with the weight of your disloyalty knowing what you and I have done, knowing how you dripped with need for me as you begged for my cock.”

My breathing grows rapid and shallow as he speaks, as his fingers reach beneath the gathered hem at my knees and creep upward. If he were to succeed in the punishment he proposes, the aftermath would truly be the worst punishment I could ever endure.

He knew I’d given my heart entirely to Ezra and he wished to use it against me now. If I’d ever felt anything for Nikolai, one ounce of caring or concern, one hope for his humanity, it no longer—

Oh.

His fingers graze upward across my flesh and his hands turn sensually to grip the crease where my thighs meet my hip bones. He breathes lightly against my neck as he runs his nose along my skin and his thumbs rub gentle circles over my sensitive flesh.

My whimper is involuntary.

I don’t want to want this.

At least, my mind and my heart don’t.

But my body betrays me as always, especially in the aftermath of my sexual experience with Ezra when we were chained in that secret room. Once with Ezra didn’t feel like enough, and my body continues to hum with need for him after coming on his lap so spectacularly.

Ezra had primed me for more sexual touch and now I’m receiving it from Nikolai.

This makes me hate Nikolai so much more as my skin prickles with awareness, my body excited for this touch that isn’t harming or hurting. Sensation is deceitful in the way it clouds my mind in the moment, even knowing how it will hurt my heart when it’s gone.

Maybe I am just a horrible slut.

I don’t deserve Ezra.

“Do you recall the one time you came to me willingly, Anya? It was not so long after your first partnership with Jamal ended…a few months before I brought you Erik to dance with.” His lips caress the skin behind my ear. “I was in the shower when you came to find me in my room. Do you remember?”

Did I remember?

Of course, I remembered. He’d taken Jamal after our performance failed to meet his standards. He was my first partner and I was so lost after Nikolai took him away. I’d developed a connection with him—not the same as my soulmate connection with Ezra, nothing could compare to that. But I’d been distraught, heartbroken, struggling to come to terms with the reality of my captivity.

The day he’s asking me about held the only halfway decent memory of Nikolai that I had. It was the memory I’d had to conjure up time and time again, each time he forced me into sex that I didn’t want. It was the only orgasm I had with him by choice and it was only because I was desperately lonely that day.

I’d been naïve in my loneliness then, just seeking comfort, and his behavior that day might’ve changed the course of our entire relationship as master and slave. There was a part of me that thought we could be something more.

But I’d been wrong.

He’d only used my willingness that day as a means to study my sexuality so he could use it against me—like he’s planning to do now—to force me into pleasure that I don’t want and didn’t ask for.

“I remember,” I tell him plainly, forcing my focus to the unlit fireplace, trying to imagine flames as a distraction to the way he touches me.

“Do you remember how I made you come on my fingers?”

I swallow as his lips skim across my skin to kiss the hollow of my throat. “You used me.” My voice is monotone, detached. “You didn’t want me the way I wanted you that day. You used my willingness against me.”

He pulls his head back to look at me, his gray gaze piercing mine as he grips my chin and turns my face toward his.

“And you’re so fucking sure that’s all it was for me?”

---