CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pet
By the following Thursday, I’m settling into my routine with Violet and Atticus, and also into life without Ares. Violet’s burlesque show inspired me, and I met with the New York City Ballet’s director to discuss my future with the company. I didn’t get the outcome I’d hoped for, but it is the best I could have expected. I will train with the internship students at a starting level, and hopefully, if my body can keep up, I can join the roster as a dancer in the corps de ballet, but I have to get my fitness back before that is even remotely a possibility.
In the meantime, I am getting as much practice in as I can, and the company have been kind enough to allow me to use the theatre after the matinee, only because the owner and my father are apparently old golfing buddies.
I finish stretching and come off the stage, wandering through the empty halls, trying to spark a memory, something familiar, but nothing comes. I’m not ever getting back to dance on that stage, not as a principle. I’ve forgotten too much, and the more I push my body, the more frustrated I become. Dimitri has been good at helping me train, but if the company found out he was overexerting himself, he’d be in a lot of trouble. Besides, this is something I have to do on my own.
Penny—the pianist who played for me as I rehearsed—exits the restroom. “I have to go. Just got an emergency call from my husband.”
“Oh no, is everything okay?”
“Yeah, Dwayne just got home and apparently he doesn’t know how to use the convention oven. Men.” She rolls her eyes and wraps her scarf around her neck. “Are you sure you’re okay to get back to your apartment?”
“Yeah, I got that security detail, remember?” I don’t. Since Maximus beat the crap out of my father’s hired goon, Christian, my father fired him and his partner. Stahl has been unusually quiet, and Max? Well, I haven’t returned any of his calls since I left his apartment the morning after our train-wreck sex. I miss him as a friend, but he can’t give me what I need. It’s better this way. I don’t want to give him hope for a future with me when there is none.
I no longer have a security detail, but I don’t need it. Ares doesn’t want me. He’s made that very clear. It’s been a month since he let me go, and I am just as lost now as I was when I first ran down those stairs. I visit the apartment he kept me in several times a week. I don’t go inside, of course. It’s now property of the state, and I don’t know why I keep getting drawn back there, but every walk I take around the busy streets of Manhattan ends the same—with me in that place, staring up at the cell I was set free from, and one I long to be let back into.
I pull up my leg warmers and head to the dressing rooms. I’m going to be late. Atticus and Violet don’t like it when I’m late. I get punished when I’m late. Which is why I aim to never show up on time.
Atticus will be pissed. He’ll beat me, fuck me, make me beg, make me come, and I’ll curl up with my head in his lap while he tends to my aftercare. Often, he’ll let Violet beat me, spank me, and do the fucking while he plays with her pussy. Then I’m forced to eat her out until she comes all over my face. I love the way she lets go, as if I have the power to drive her wild.
I take my time heading to the dressing room. I check my makeup in the mirror, add a coat of dark ruby red lipstick, just the way Violet likes, and glance up.
I meet pitch-black eyes in the mirror, and his lips quirk up in a smile I’d know anywhere.
“Hello, Pet.”
He’s here. He came back for me.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, rising from my seat. I turn to stare at him. Am I crazy? Did I finally get pushed too far over the edge, and my fractured mind is conjuring him up out of thin air now? Sir.My Sir.
“Just Sir will be acceptable.”
I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and hugging him tight as great sobs wrack my body. “Sir.”
I love you, Sir.
Why did you let me go, Sir?
I breathe him in, relishing the strong peppery smell of his aftershave.
“Have you been a good girl, Pet?”
I nod. “Yes, Sir.”
“Liar. You’ll pay for that later, but first, let me look at you.” He steps back, and his gaze rolls over me from head to toe and back again. “Still just as fuckable as ever.”
“I was so lost without you.”
“I know.”
“What are you doing here? Why did you come?”