“I don’t understand?”
“Your hands are free, Pet. It’s up to you what you do with them.”
I exhale a shaking breath. What does that mean?
He smooths his hands over the tops of my arms, across my flat stomach, and between my legs again. This time he rubs me slowly, tenderly, the way a lover would. I close my eyes and lean back against him. I don’t push him away, even though my hands are free to do so. And now I finally understand what he meant, and what’s more, I understand what I need to do to survive him. I need to play the game, and I need to win. I have to make this man fall in love with me. It might be my only chance to escape.
I lift my hips and slide my hand behind me, grabbing his erection and stroking gently.
He groans in my ear. “Harder, Pet.”
I do as he orders, and all the while his hands rub at my tender flesh. I keep pace with him, but I come undone before he does, my quiet moans drowned out by the lapping of water against the tub that echoes off the walls. His teeth sink into the flesh of my shoulder as wave after wave of pleasure rolls over me. It’s not a gentle bite, and yet it heightens the sensation. His teeth are in my flesh, and his fingers pull the last of my pleasure from me. They demand it.
My head pounds when it’s over, throbbing so hard I cry out.
“What’s wrong?”
“My head. It hurts.”
He chuckles. “‘I have a headache’ was not what I was expecting you to say, Pet.”
I turn and stare at him. “What did you expect?”
“I expected that you would cry, or yell at me, or call me names.”
“I can still do those things.”
“Try it and you will earn another spanking, which will not make your headache any better.”
I don’t know what to do now. Taking him in my hands again seems wrong, like I was just caught up in the moment, but to take him now would be encouragement. I don’t want to encourage this man. Do I? Why did I touch him in the first place?
In the real world, Ares wouldn’t have a hard time finding a woman to sleep with. But this isn’t the real world. I’m the only woman here, and despite how I loathe him, how I shudder at the things he’s done to me so far, I also can’t lie. He terrifies me, and excites me, too. He’s beautiful, and deadly. Capable of such violence and tenderness, perhaps even adoration. He spanked me like I was a disobedient dog, but cared for me as if I really were a treasured pet.Hispet.
I rest my head on my knees because now that I’ve come, all my senses are upside down. I don’t know what I want. What I’m supposed to feel.
“Come, Pet. Lie back,” he whispers.
“I need . . . I . . .”
“I know what you need.”
He pulls me against his chest and wraps his arms around my waist. One trails the flesh of my hip. The other cups my breast, gently stroking. He doesn’t further the movements, nor does he pinch or tease. He just holds me, strokes me. I don’t know which to be more confused by: his brutality or his tenderness.
“How? How do you know what I need when I don’t even know my own mind?” Do I like rough sex? Did I like being beaten and having my hair pulled in my past life? Who was I? Who am I now? Am I different from the me before? Would past me be disgusted with the fact that I willingly just touched my captor and came on his hands?
“It’s my job as your Master to know what you need at all times.”
“Master?” I roll the word over my tongue, testing it. I hate it, I decide, but a part of me understands it too. It’s so easy to hand over control to him, because I don’t know what I want. I don’t know my own mind at all, and therefore it can’t be trusted.I can’t be trusted.
Before my captivity, did I submit to someone on the outside so easily? Is this what I’ve always been? A puppet? A pet? Does it even matter who I used to be? In this bathroom, and in the cell downstairs, I am submissive. I’m the girl who will do anything to get away, and that means letting him touch me, letting him beat me, letting him trust me, and one day, finally being free.
I don’t know how long we stay like this, me caught up in my head, and him laying soft kisses alternated with sharp little bites to my flesh. But when the water turns cold, he tells me to sit up as he pulls the stopper from the drain and empties the tub. He turns on the showerhead and washes us both. The spray from the warm water stings my sensitive nipples. He rinses my hair, the water sluicing through my long, dark strands. Ares hands me the showerhead and I continue to hose us both down, playing with the water as he pulls a bottle of luxurious shampoo from the side of the tub and pours some into his hand. He lathers the soap in my hair, causing bubbles to froth and foam around us and to trail over my body. I lean back into the sensation of having someone—this man—care for me when he’s capable of such cruelty. He takes the showerhead from me, tsking when he sees that I’ve been focusing the head a little too long between my legs.
“Careful, Pet. You don’t want to earn another spanking already.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, my cheeks turning hot with embarrassment.
“Sorry, what?”