I bite down hard on my tongue. I need the pain to distract me from wanting to tear this bitch in half with my bare hands.
She raises her leg and kicks my knees. She’s a tiny thing—has to be to cut through the air like a gazelle—but ballerinas have strong legs, and it hurts like a motherfucker. Pet lashes out again, and I grunt and clench my teeth, holding my ground. I will not let her get me on the floor of this stinking, fucking filthy cell. Instead, I tower over her, lean in close, and slide my hand around her throat, gripping hard. “Get the fuck up now, or I strangle the goddamn life out of you.”
Her fingernails claw at my hands. Her eyes bulge. I pull her to her feet, lifting her tiny frame off the ground. She scrabbles for purchase, gasping for breath.
“Are you going to be a good girl? I do hope so, Pet, because I will not tolerate any bratty behavior.”
She cannot move her head. She doesn’t have the air to speak.
I know this, and yet I mock her anyway. “I can’t hear you.”
Her delicate throat works against my hand. It would be nothing to squeeze the life out of her, but then we’d be down one prime piece of ballerina ass, and Hermes would kill me. Or . . . he’d try.
She gasps for air again. I sigh and roll my eyes, releasing her. She crumples to the floor, coughing and spluttering.Are ballerinas always this dramatic?
Pet doesn’t waste her air begging or screaming, but instead asks, “Why?”
Whywhat?Why did I take her, why pick her, why choke her? Why yell? Why throw her to the floor like a discarded toy? I have answers to all of these questions, of course, but I don’t answer any of them because it isn’t my job to answer questions. It’s my job to give orders, and to make sure they’re obeyed.
“Get. Up,” I hiss through my teeth.
“Why?” She sobs. “Why me?”
I crouch down to her level, seize her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “Why not you, little one?”
Her sobbing becomes louder.
“I won’t ask you to get on your feet again. The next time you make me say it, there will be more than just a little bit of breath play as punishment.” I let her go and smile with satisfaction as she rises as gracefully as a hollowed-boned bird and stands before me. Her head is bowed; she doesn’t look me in the eye.Good. It might be easier to train her than I first thought.
“Good girl,” I growl low in her ear, because I can’t help it. My dick is hard as stone. I do love it when they behave. Almost as much as I love it when they misbehave. “Now, you and I are moving to another room. If you try to run, I’ll kill you.”
I pull the blindfold from my pocket and cover her eyes. She doesn’t flinch like I expect her too. Her body trembles, though. I tie the fabric behind her head and adjust it in front of her face, then I trail my finger over her cheek—her nipples form two tight peaks. I want to bite them, bruise the rosy flesh, and make her beg for mercy, but I need to bide my time. She’ll be arching into my punishing touches soon enough.
I spin her body toward the door. “Walk.”
Her legs shake violently as she stumbles forward, disorientated, before righting herself and walking slowly and carefully toward the door.
I laugh. “Don’t you trust me, Pet?”
I yank a fistful of her hair and pull her back to me.
She screams, her hands flying to my wrists to ease the sting she’s likely feeling in her scalp.
“You need to learn to trust me, and if you can’t do that, trust this . . . I own you now. I own your pain. If and when you come it will be from my hands. If you feel pain, that too will come from me, because you’re mine. I’m hardly going to watch you walk into a door because it amuses me. I need that face pretty, little one, and I need your trust in order to gain your full submission.”
“You’ll never get it,” she hisses. “You kidnapped me. I could never trust you.”
“You will trust me, and you will submit, or you will die.”
She whimpers.
“That’s right, little one. You’ll be mine or you’ll be worm food in the ground.”
God, she’s so sheltered. It’s going to feel like all my Christmases have come at once when she finally submits to me.
I don’t remove my hand from her hair, but I do loosen my hold and use it to steer her forward through the doorway of her narrow cell and into the hall. I direct her when it comes to the stairs, never once allowing her to miss and trip. She listens to my direction. She’s forced to, or she’ll risk falling—and even this is an exercise in trust.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t hurt me,” she mumbles as we reach the landing and I walk her through another doorway and into the house. I slide my hand into the keypad, and the door opens with a high-pitched beep.