“Do what I fucking tell you, Maksym,” I grate out. If he questions me again, I’m not above kicking his ass from here to the capital to make sure he knows his place. Friends, brothers, it doesn’t matter when the stakes are as high as they are with us. I have no patience for anyone questioning an order.
“Got it,” he says, then he disconnects. I turn to Calina.
“What do you eat for breakfast?” I ask her.
“Muesli or porridge,” she says, looking at me warily as if she’s wondering if I’ll poison her food. It’s good to keep her on her toes, but that’s not my endgame. I nod, then place a call to order food.
“Go sit in your bedroom,” I tell her. “I want no one to see you naked but me.”
She obeys. I cast one more glance outside before I join her. The sun has begun to rise, and I finally realize what’s wrong. The street lights that surround us have already been extinguished, and they typically do not go off until the sun has risen fully. It isn’t just that, though, but my intuition that tells me something isn’t right. I’ve learned under Dimitri’s tutelage to always trust my instinct. When I feel something is about to happen, it’s typically true.
When a knock sounds on the door, I take a moment to glance through the peephole in the door to be sure it’s someone I recognize. It is. I take our food in silence, and arrange it on the table in the main room before I go to the bedroom where she waits for me. “Come with me.” I motion for her to walk ahead of me.
Walking in front of me, stark naked, she looks fucking beautiful. I can still see the faint pink trail marks of the cane on her thighs and ass where I marked her with the cane.
Fuck. I want to stripe her again and again, and show her how punishment can yield both pain and pleasure.
I slide the silver tray on the table, and her stomach growls audibly. I smirk. It’s kind of cute, the way she blushes and looks down almost shyly.
“Sit.” My stomach tightens when she winces as she sits, a possessive hunger taking hold.
“Hungry?” I ask her.
“Starving.” She tosses her head and meets my eyes. “You know, if I wasn’t sitting here naked, still feeling the punishment you gave me the night before, and I didn’t spend the night in a room that’s essentially a prison, I would almost feel as if this is nice. Room service and all.”
I ignore her chatter and uncover the tray revealing a silver bowl of our best muesli, a small pitcher of milk, a bowl of porridge, a plate of eggs and fresh fruit. I don’t offer it to her, but allow her to eye it. She swallows and lifts her eyes to mine, but doesn’t touch the food.
She knows she’s not allowed to touch it without my permission, and the small gesture of obedience warms me.
Good girl, I think.
I think I may enjoy the training of Calina.
“Room service and all,” I agree. “You’ll find that if you cooperate, things will go better for you.”
“I gathered that,” she says, and her eyes flash at me a split second before she looks away and shields her gaze.
We’ll see how compliant she is after I feed her.
“Do you want food, Calina?”
“Of course I do,” she snaps.
I don’t like her tone of voice. I take my own tray of eggs and fruit, and begin to eat. Watching me eat, she begins to tremble.
“Show me.”
“Show you?” she asks, a twinge of annoyance in her tone. “Show you how?”
“Beg me.”
My dick tightens. There are many ways to control another human being. I tend to favor the deprivation of the most basic necessities.
Shelter. Food. Comfort.
“Beg you?” she repeats, spitting the words out as if they’re distasteful. I take a deliberately large bite of my eggs, chew and swallow, then nod.
“That’s what I said.”
Will she defy me? I hope she does. In my closet hang belts and straps. An after-breakfast whipping sounds like a decent workout.
Or will she do as she’s told?
Long minutes pass as she looks at the food then brings her eyes back to me. She doesn’t move. I finish my eggs and move on to my fruit bowl, and still, she stays where she is.
“You have hundreds of hours of work to pay me off,” I tell her. “Consider this your first one.”
I watch her inhale then exhale, her eyes narrowing on me, before she pushes herself away angrily from the chair and kneels in front of me. Jaw clenched, eyes like little pyres.
“Please may I have food,” she says through clenched teeth.
“Sir,” I amend, taking another bite of food she doesn’t miss. Her eyes rove over my plate as she watches me eat.