He doesn’t stand immediately. He just watches me with a strange look on his face, as if he can’t decide whether to be proud of me or to do something to put me in my place. I find myself holding my breath, waiting to see which side of the line he falls on.
This whole thing.
Everything. My life now. The room behind me, filled with people in various stages of pain and pleasure. The man sitting before me.
I thought I was prepared. I spent years reading everything I could get my hands on. The romance novels, yes, but also tomes of nonfiction on everything from current politics to gardening to law and contracts. I always planned to escape. The timing never felt right. No, that’s not correct. It had nothing to do with timing and everything to do with my courage failing me before I could take that first step. Tonight reinforces that lack of courage. I can fake it with the best of them, but the truth is that I’m terrified. If I walked into this place without Jafar’s hand on my back, I would have turn and fled. The sheer number of people is sensory overload enough.
It’s not until he stands and pulls me against his chest that I realize I’m shaking. Weak. So incredibly weak when all I want is to be strong. I close my eyes and let my forehead rest against his shoulder for a beat, two. On the third, I raise my head and try to push away.
“Not yet.” His hand is at the back of my neck again, his favorite spot. He easily holds me to him.
To be honest, I don’t fight that hard.
“I want this.” This. The sex. The life outside my father’s walls. The freedom I can’t quite seem to wrap my mind around. “Why am I struggling?”
“Learn to crawl before you start sprinting.”
He said something to that nature before, but I barely paid attention to it. I’m paying attention now. I fight against the despair threatening to steal my breath. I am strong. I am. It doesn’t matter that I don’t feel strong in this moment, that if he wasn’t here to hold me up, I might fall to my knees and never get up. I close my eyes, ashamed of the way they burn. “I don’t know how to do that.” I don’t know how to do any of it, and that knowledge stings just as much as the tears I refuse to allow to fall.
“I’ll show you.” He takes my hand and tugs me toward the back of the room.
I dig in my heels out of instinct, but as often as Jafar and I are at each other’s throats, he hasn’t done anything tonight except keep me on my feet. Yes, I know being here serves his ultimate purpose and that he’s showing me off like a prize for a conquering king, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s been startlingly careful with me.
I can trust him this far, can’t I?
I keep my gaze pinned to the middle of his back as he navigates the room. It’s full of significantly more people than when we first arrived. I get flashes of men and women of every age, shape, and color engaged in various sexual and painful displays. Some of them seem to just be here for the conversation, though impossible to miss the way most have someone kneeling at their side. Eyes downcast. Silent.
Jafar’s not the only one who extends those rules, apparently.
He stops in front of yet another door, though this one doesn’t have anyone guarding it. As soon as we step through, quiet descends and I breathe out a sigh of relief, some of the tension bleeding out of my body. I can do this. Whatever this is.
Doors line the hallway, and it takes me several steps before I realize what’s strange about the walls. “They’re mirrors?”
“No.” He pulls me toward a section of the hallway bathed in light and I finally understand. The wall isn’t a mirror.
It’s a window.
There are two women in the room. One is an icy blonde so beautiful that it almost hurts to look at her. The other is dark haired, but I can’t see her face because it’s buried between the blonde’s spread legs. “Oh.” I take in the cuffs holding the brunette’s arms captive behind her back. Her bare back is red and I realize why as the blonde brings a flogger down across her skin. The blonde lifts her gaze and meets mine, the sheer strength behind it driving me back a step.
“Oh.” I press my hand to my lips. “Do they …”
“Yes, they like being watched, and yes, they like knowing they’re being watched.” He doesn’t give me more opportunity to watch before pulling me several doors down. I catch sight of a discrete green light above the handle and then Jafar opens the door and tugs me into the room.