I turn to face her. “Something you’d like to say?”
“No, Sir.” Her tone is sullen. My sulky little pet.
“Then I suggest you adjust your attitude before I giveyouan attitude adjustment.”
She bites her lip, but her eyes shoot daggers at me. I let it slide because I have time to exact her punishment later. We have all the time in the world now.
“Who’s Athena? Did you fuck her on this chair? Strap her to it and eat her out until she came?”
“You are seriously out of fucking line, Pet.”
“I think I deserve to know, since I was about to be sold for a woman I’ve never met.”
“You don’t think. That’s your fucking job as my submissive, my Pet. You’re to suck my cock, ride it, take your punishments like a good girl, and bend at the waist when I tell you to.”
“Who is she?” Tears well in her eyes, and her voice is so broken, so filled with bitterness and sadness that I’d do anything to take it away. She’s not even aware of her dominion over me. She has no idea she holds all the power here. I might be holding the flogger, but my Pet has her claws embedded firmly in my heart, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do to free myself. She’s ruination.Myruination. And if she ever figures it out, it will be me kneeling at her feet.
“She’s my fucking sister.” I sigh, and scrub my hand over my face. “Our adopted sister.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Because I never told you.”
She frowns, looks down at the floor in front of her. “I don’t understand. How was selling me to Vladik going to get her back?”
“He has her.”
“So you were going to trade me for her?”
“No.” He laughs without humor. “We were going to sell you and then track your location.”
“Track my . . .” Pet frowns, and I see the second she understands, but she asks anyway. “How?”
I lean forward. Pet flinches, but I grasp the nape of her neck and run my fingertip over the tiny node buried beneath her skin that tells me exactly where to find her.
She pulls out of my grasp, but she’s strapped to my chair, and she’s not going fucking anywhere. “You put a tracking device in me?”
“You’re surprised?”
“You put a fucking tracker on me!” she spits, her eyes as livid as I’ve ever seen them. It reminds me of those first sweet days of her captivity, watching her turn from a meek little mouse to a mountain lion. “Who does that to a human being?”
“Someone who doesn’t want their property to get lost.”
“But I wasn’t your property; you were going to sell me to him.”
“Careful, Pet. You’re dangerously close to pushing my fucking limits.”
“I can’t believe I thought . . . I can’t believe you.”
“You can’t believe me?” I ask with as much authority as I can muster, but right now, I feel anything but authoritative. I’m slipping, losing my edge, and I can’t let her see. “I stole you, beat you, starved you of all your creature comforts. I abused and used you. I fucked you and tortured you until you broke, andthisyou have a problem with?”
“I’m not cattle, Ares.”
“No, you’re not cattle, but you are mine.”
“Yours until you could get to your sister.”
“Mine always.” I cradle her face, pinching her cheeks and forcing her lips to pucker. Her eyes are wide. She’s stunned by the sudden violence. Good. Maybe then she won’t see what a fucking fraud I am. “Did you think I’d just leave you there after we got Athena back?”