“I know it won’t,” I began to babble. “But I don’t want it. Not from you.”
He closed the short distance between us. I didn’t budge from the position he’d dictated, even though I wanted to shrink away.
He studied me with renewed curiosity, his gaze sharpening on my features. “Not from me? Someone else has collared you before? Maybe you’re not so innocent.”
“No. He hasn’t. I just wanted… I don’t want this from you,” I finally managed to curtail the words that threatened to spill out of me. Andrés didn’t need to know about my heartbreak and secret longings for my best friend. No doubt, he’d find some way to use it against me.
His black eyes narrowed. “You lost the right to make demands when you tried to kill me,” he told me. “I can’t trust you not to attack as soon as my back is turned. So, I’m going to chain you to my bed, where you’ll wait for me like a good girl while I attend to my business.”
“I don’t want this,” I begged, still not daring to make a move against him.
“And I don’t want to have to punish you more severely than I already have. Not so soon. This is for your own good, Samantha.”
With that ominous declaration, he brought the collar up to my throat. I shuddered as the cool leather encircled my neck, but I remained in position, trapped by the looming threat of further punishment.
The collar tightened slightly as he slid the small padlock through the hasp at my nape, and the soft click as he secured it in place made my stomach clench. A single tear rolled down my cheek. This was all wrong. I’d fantasized about accepting a collar for years, and now one was being forced on me. I wasn’t willingly ceding my trust and promising my obedience; I was being conquered, rebuked.
He tenderly brushed the wetness from my face with his calloused thumb. “It’s not so bad, cosita,” he cooed, tracing the line of the collar with his free hand. “It’s very pretty on you.”
I closed my eyes, no longer able to look at him. This violation went somehow deeper than the sting of his hand on my sex. He was taking my most closely-guarded fantasies and twisting them into something dark and abhorrent.
I heard him sigh, and his touch left my face. The chain clanked, and a light weight tugged at my neck. Behind my closed lids, I could envision him locking the chain to the metal ring at the front of the collar. I didn’t have to see what he was doing to know what was happening to me.
His heat finally receded, but I could still feel his presence bearing down on me.
“Look at me,” he commanded softly.
My wet lashes fluttered open.
“This is what’s best for you,” he told me with that same calm assurance that so unsettled me. “While you’re with me, you’re my responsibility. I will take care of you, even if that means protecting you from yourself.”
“You’re not protecting me,” I hissed. “You’ve violated me. You’ve stripped me. You’ve spanked me.”
His lips thinned, and his scar deepened. “And if you knew what my brother had planned for you instead, you’d be worshipping at my feet right now and begging to be mine. But we’ll get to that later. For now, know that I’m the merciful alternative.”
“Rape isn’t merciful,” I flung at him.
He stared at me, his black eyes glinting with fury. Despite the ire in his gaze, he didn’t move to strike me or even raise his voice. Instead, it came out low and rough with a strange mix of emotions I couldn’t quite identify. “I haven’t raped you. I won’t rape you. You won’t be rewarded with my cock until you beg me to fuck you.”
“That will never happen,” I asserted, my eyes clashing with his. I’d already told him he was insane, but I didn’t bother saying it again. He was clearly too far out of his mind to care if I thought he was crazy.
His head canted to the side, considering. “Your pretty little pussy has already wept for me. Your body craves to be touched. To be marked and owned. I think you are innocent, Samantha. You don’t know what I’m capable of. What I can make you feel. Has any man ever made you come?”
My cheeks flamed, and my eyes dropped to the carpet. His words were shameful, and they shook me to my core. Because my body had reacted to him. The sensations might have been foreign to me, but I had to acknowledge that they’d been… intense. And not all unpleasant.
What is wrong with me?
“I see,” he said, reading the truth in my shamed silence. “Your first real orgasm will belong to me.”
I shivered, the air suddenly far too cool against my heated skin.
“Later,” he said, and I got the sense he was speaking to himself more than to me. His fingers trailed through my hair, but I cringed away, completely overwhelmed and at a loss for words. He withdrew his touch, and I heard his footsteps whispering across the carpet as he moved away. When I heard the bathroom door shut behind him, I gasped in a sharp breath and finally looked up from the floor.
Just as I’d suspected, he’d locked the length of chain to the front of my collar and affixed the other end to a ringbolt set into the bedpost. I again wondered what kind of man had such tools of depravity in his bedroom, waiting to restrain and punish an unwilling woman.
A dangerous man, I reasoned. A sadistic man.
Andrés didn’t strike me as sadistic, though. He’d spanked me and humiliated me, but he hadn’t truly hurt me. Remembering Cristian’s knife slicing into my skin, I glanced down at my injured collarbone. The cut had been cleaned and sealed with a clear, shiny substance. I realized Andrés must have glued the shallow wound closed after he’d drugged me. To spare me further pain.