“You let me go.” I sob.
“Careful, Pet. I could always send you away again.”
“No.” I attempt to sit, but he holds me firmly in place with the hand at my back. “Sir, Please? I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I know,” he says, stroking my razed flesh. “My sweet, sweet, Pet. You don’t know how hard it was living without you. How angry you made me when you slept with that piece-of-shit excuse for a Dom. The cop I could forgive. Your father had you locked away in a tower like a vestal virgin. It’s understandable you were lonely, and Maximus was there, ready to protect. Ready to fuckmysweet cunt in my absence. Did that bumbling idiot know where to find your little button, Pet? Or did you have to show him? Did you play with yourself? Did you touchmypussy?”
I sniff through my tears and raise my head, though I can’t see him. “Every night, Sir.”
Laughter follows. “Of course you did, you greedy little whore.”
He rakes his blunt fingernails across my ass. It burns. Goosebumps break out over my body. I shiver and writhe on his lap, deliberately bumping against his erection. If I have to suffer through this, then so will he.
His hand comes down on my cheek. “Stop fucking squirming, little one. I know what you’re doing.”
“Sorry, Sir.”
“You want my cock inside you, is that it? You want me to fuck that precious needy cunt until it squirts all over this bed and your new dress is sticky and covered in my cum?”
“Yes Sir.”
“You’re not getting my dick, Pet. That’s your punishment for giving my pussy to other men.”
“Sir?”
“I meant it when I said you were mine. I let you go, but that didn’t mean you could fuck other people.”
I scramble off his lap and turn to face him. “So, I was just supposed to wait forever for you?”
“Exactly,” he says through clenched teeth. “That’s the point of you being mine.”
“You threw me away!” Silence settles between us. Ares’ eyes are dark and livid. “I wasn’t yours anymore.”
“Don’t you ever fucking say that again.” He lunges for me and slides his hand into my hair, yanking me forward. My hands fly to his wrists. My nails dig into his flesh and he grunts, but his face is mere inches from mine. “You are mine. You will always be mine. Until your heart stops beating and even thereafter, you belong to me, Pet.”
Then he surprises me by kissing my lips. His tongue plunges deep into my mouth until I can’t get enough air, only Ares. He’s all I breathe. He has been since the day he took me. Since the first time he touched me.
He pulls away, his chest rising and falling as rapidly as my own. “I belong to you too, Pet.”
I search his gaze, those dark eyes so full of anger, fear, and yet so full of truth.
“I belong to you, and it scares the fucking shit out of me.” His hands tremble against my face. My tears swell and spill over his fingers, and he presses his lips to my forehead and draws me in against his chest.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, our bodies so close, without the live wire of sexuality, of Dom and submissive, connecting us. Right now, in this moment, we’re equals, and it frightens us both.
***
When we finally land, I’m emotionally spent, and I pray Ares will let me rest when we make it to our destination. I’d forgotten how tiring subbing on a permanent basis can be, how emotionally fraught it makes you. I’ve had playdates with Atticus and Violet, but afterward, I’ve returned home alone, where I was the one in charge of my life, my body, and my apartment. I’m out of practice, something I know my Sir won’t be happy with, but if he hadn’t let me go in the first place, I wouldn’t need conditioning again.
I begin to worry when the plane taxis toward a small hanger.
“You have a passport for me, right?” I assume he wasn’t fool enough to bring my own, because Agent Stahl will be all over us in seconds if what Ares said was true and they are still following me.
“It’s taken care of.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you need to learn to trust your Sir.”