“Please, Sir,” I beg.
“Are you fucking deaf, little whore?”
I shake my head. I know he can’t see it in the dark, but I don’t have the words. Adrenalin spikes through my veins, causing my heart to beat erratically against my ribcage.
“Did I or did I not just ask you a fucking question?”
I sob, unable to hide my emptiness. He rolls on top of me, grabs my cheeks hard, and squeezes. “Answer me, Pet.” He doesn’t yell this time, but there’s far more menace in his carefully controlled quiet tones than there are in his raised voice.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And what did I tell you about touching yourself?”
“That I wasn’t allowed to. That you own my pleasure, and only you decide if I’ve earned it or not.”
“Exactly. So why the fuck was your hand buried in your cunt?”
“I’m sorry, Sir.” My voice tremors. “Please, I need to come, please?”
“No. Not a fucking chance. In fact, I’m going to punish you in the morning, but right now I’m exhausted, so you decide: chair, or ceiling?”
I freeze as icy dread crawls through my veins. “What?”
“Chair, or ceiling? Pick one.” Ares turns on the bedside lamp, throwing the room into bright, unnatural light. It burns my eyes.
“Ch-chair, Sir. The chair.”
“Ceiling it is.”
“No! I said chair. Chair. Please? Anything but the ceiling.”
He leans over me, his hot breath brushing my face. “And I said don’t touch your fucking cunt, because it belongs to me. Turns out we’re both not great at listening. Unfortunately for you, it’s a much bigger problem.”
“No. Please, please don’t string me up from the ceiling.”
“Too late, little one.” He drags me out of bed and points to the floor. I don’t have to be told to kneel.
Ares walks to the mahogany armoire on the other side of the room. He opens several of the drawers before finding what he needs, and returns with a set of leather cuffs that look a lot like the ones he used on me in the first few weeks of my captivity. With them, he holds a large chain. Ares points again at the ground by his feet and I scurry to his side. Though I have no desire to spend the night in chains, I do as he commands so that I won’t earn a larger beating than the one he already has planned. “Hands, Pet.”
With my limbs trembling, I offer my hands up to him. He cuffs my wrists, and chills run along the length of my spine. It’s indelicate, immoral, but there’s a part of me now that craves his dominance, that craves the things he does to me. It’s the reason I touched myself when I knew he’d be mad. It’s the reason I tempt his demons. I don’t know who I used to be, but I know this: I’m a different person than I was before he took me. I’ll never be the same again.
I close my eyes as his strong hands pull me to my feet, and he loops the chains through each of the rings on my cuffs.
“Please, Sir, please,” I beg.
“Oh, Pet. If only you’d kept your hands off your greedy little whore cunt, you could be cuddled in bed at my side, but you couldn’t, could you?”
“No, Sir.”
“Perhaps I should wake Israel, bring him in here to sleep beside me and show you how a good slave behaves. Would you like that? Would you like to see me fuck his mouth while I think of you, look down at you?” He says this last with barely contained rage, as if it’s my fault he shoved his penis down another man’s throat—no, not a man, a slave. As if I were to blame for that whole scenario.
“No. Please. I’ll behave.”
He leans in and whispers, “I don’t believe you.”
“I swear, Sir, I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Of course you will. You’re chained to the ceiling; you have no choice. Lucky for you I’m too goddamn tired to fuck Israel, or to punish you properly. I’ll save that for the morning.”