Boy (The Training House #2) (6 page)

“Or in the Primal Arena. But I had to get to you. I wasn’t about to let anyone stop me.”

She shakes her head, her pale brows drawing together. “Why?”

“I just had to.” I shrug, but it’s all an act, and a transparent one at that. I’m so full of shit. “Fuck it. I
had
to. I’m still trying to figure it out. To be honest, I don’t understand what the hell is driving me so damn hard—so hard I can’t resist it. Not that I’m good at resisting my urges. But are any of us, really? Any of us pervs?”

She smiles again. “I suppose not, or we wouldn’t be here. As good a slave as I try to be, I get myself into trouble. And even when I’m being my best behaved, I’m wallowing in my urges, aren’t I? So really, how good a slave does that make me?”

“Why do you doubt yourself?”

“Because I never feel quite good enough.” She pauses, bites down on her lip. “Oh.”

She glances away, but I tell her, “Aimée. Look at me.”

She looks up, right into my eyes, with such nakedness I feel it like a shock.

“Because I never really have been,” she says tremulously. “Not for my father, certainly. Not for myself.”

“Fuck your father,” I growl. “Whoever, whatever he was. It doesn’t matter anymore. You’re here. How does all that shit matter when we’re so immersed in the kink landscape? Isn’t that at least part of why we feel this need to lose ourselves so completely? Isn’t this the ultimate in escapism? Why else would we be here? And I don’t mean doing kink—I mean under a slave contract, for fuck’s sake. Because this is some pretty extreme, twisted shit, and any decent psychologist could tell us why. And on some level, you know it. We all do.”

She nods. “Yes. You’re right. But when am I going to get over it?”

“Maybe we never do. Maybe all we can do is learn to cope with it. Maybe being a slave or being a Master or being beaten or made to come until we feel everything and nothing at all is the best we can do.”

“Sometimes I think it is. And other times, I feel as though I’m missing some important point. What do you think that is?”

“I think I’m probably the wrong person to ask. I’m pretty damn sure I’m more fucked up than most.”

“You take a certain pride in that, don’t you?” she asks quietly.

“Ha! I take a certain pride in everything. So, tell me what they did with you while I was locked up in the horse barn, serving out my punishment.”

“They ran me in a ring on a lunge line every day. And the handlers worked me over a little, but nothing like I’ve had before—with my Master or my Mistress, or even in the kitchen in the Training House. I was sort of surprised. I think I expected more. But maybe they know what they’re doing here, because I had enough time to sit and think, to imagine what might happen. And the end result was that my head was overflowing by the time they put me in the arena today. It was a total mind-fuck. As if I were over-prepared coming into this place, then they lulled me into a calm that was a total illusion, ultimately.”

“Did anyone fuck you? Get you off?”

“No. I was in a stall by myself at night. No one touched me. I half expected someone to visit me in the night, the way the Master did at the Training House, but it never happened.”

“Good,” I grunt. Then I notice the goosebumps on her skin, a small twitch in her shoulders. “Hey, you’re shivering.”

“I’m a little cold. Or maybe shocking out a bit. I don’t know.”

“Hang on, I’m going to get next to you.”

“But we’re both chained.”

I look around, trying to remember which stall we’re in. “Reach up to the cross board above your head. No, don’t ask, just do it. Good. Now slide your hand along until you feel a metal hinge, and see if you can get the edge of your fingers in there…yeah, that’s it. Pull the board out—it’s like a small door. You’ll find a key behind it.”

Her eyes go wide. “I…what is this? How did you know it was there?”

“Because I put it there myself. I have keys hidden all over this place, all over the Training House. I make sure I visit every kink facility I go to as a slave when I’m in Top mode. When I decide I’m done, I’m
done
. I prefer to be prepared.”

“You’re done now? No, I can see that you are, if you’re even thinking of using this key. Are you going away?”

I can hear a small sob breaking her voice, and it kills me a little even as it makes me hard, makes my heart lurch.

“I’m not going anywhere but over there, pretty. Give me the key.”

She does, and I unlock my leg shackle and crawl over to her, the predator in me wanting to rise up and cuddle-rape her. But mostly I want to curl around her and talk to her. It’s so stupidly unlike me, I can’t even bother to ask what the fuck is wrong with me. I just do it.

Taking her trembling body in my arms feels like fucking heaven, and for I don’t know how many minutes, I simply hold her until she relaxes against me. Her skin is so damn soft I can barely feel it beneath my fingertips as I stroke her arms, her face, and finally she leans her silky head on my chest, making my gut twist in some unfamiliar, delicious way.

I don’t know what to think about this. I can’t even begin to comprehend what is happening here, because it’s all new territory. And for the first time since I was a kid, I have to admit I feel…afraid. Totally alien to me because I’m not afraid of anything—not pain, certainly. Not death, even. I don’t fucking like it. But nothing is going to make me leave this girl—this girl who, for the first time in my sorry life, is making me really feel something. Something I can’t escape—and don’t want to.

“You want to tell me about this asshole father of yours?” I ask her.

“Not really. I don’t like to talk about him, but I’ll tell you a little because…because I want you to know, for some reason.”

“Okay.”

She takes a long, sighing breath. “I’ll give you the short version. To begin with, you’re right—he is an asshole. He’s rich. Powerful. That’s how he gets off—power—and he abuses it in almost any way you can think of. After my
maman
passed when I was a little girl, he found ways to dispose of me. Perhaps I reminded him of her, or maybe that’s simply me romanticizing things. All I know is that I was raised by nannies, then sent to boarding school. I don’t think he cared, as long as I was out of his sight, which doesn’t exactly make for good self-esteem for a kid, you know? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately—that kink is what’s made me feel good about myself, so even when I say I’m not certain I’m a good enough slave, it’s still better than what I thought of myself growing up. Kink has made me feel…useful. Valued. Even cherished, sometimes. Maybe it’s gone to my head a few times, and I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I’ve left perfectly good Mistresses and Masters, because I thought I deserved more.”

“Maybe you left because you did deserve more.”

“I don’t know. But I do know that being with the Master—with Master Damon—is the first time I’ve felt I had everything I needed. Everything I wanted. Well, almost.”

“Almost?”

“Except for you,” she says so quietly I can barely make the words out.

I’m afraid to squeeze her, which is what I want to do. But I allow myself a smile.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She snuggles in a little closer, her breast pushing against my side. I reach down and stroke the curve of it. I want to do a lot more than that. I want to push her down on her back in the hay and bite her again, and spank her and pinch her and claw her and fuck her. And I will. But we’re not done. Maybe a bit of self-control on my part, after all? How novel of me.

“You love him,” I say.

“Yes.”

“So do I, in my own limited way. In the only way I’ve ever loved anyone.”

“Can you tell me why you think it’s limited?” she asks.

“I don’t ‘think’ it is. I know it is.”

“But where does that come from? Because the way in which we limit ourselves always come from somewhere, some incident, some person. Our parents. Do you have an asshole father, too?”

“I couldn’t tell you—I never knew him. All I know is he went back to the U.K. before I was born, and his is the only white blood I have, as far as I know.”

“What about your mother?”

“Half Japanese, half Cherokee. Beautiful and fucking sad as shit.”

She trails one finger along my skin—over the curve of my left pec, then fluttering around my nipple piercing. Butterfly kisses on the steel bar there, making my nipple rise to her touch. Making me ache for her touch all over, inside and out, whether it’s sex or kink or just…this. Selfish bastard that I am, I want it all.

“But did you know your mother?” she asks.

I draw in a breath, smelling the scents of clean girl and fresh hay. “Yeah…I knew my mother. I knew too damn much about her. She was a junkie as far back as I can remember.”

“I’m sorry,” Aimée says, raw emotion in her voice.

This shocks me. I don’t get why this amazing girl would feel so much for me—
me
, of all people. Maybe I don’t get why anyone would. But I can’t
not
talk to her about this—this thing I talk to no one about. I’ve given even Master Damon only the barest outline.

“So was I,” I answer finally, “but not too sorry to leave home at fourteen. It felt like survival at the time, and I still think it was the best choice. There were some good things about it—I don’t know if you can understand. No, I take that back. Given your own background, maybe you can.”

“Tell me,” she says, but it’s more a request than a demand. She is ever-sweet.

I take a minute, stroking her skin with my thumb, trying to regain some sense of balance, torn as I am between this strange need to talk with her and my cock’s raging demands to bury myself to the hilt in her soft body.

“I was this weird kid, living on the streets in San Francisco, hanging out on Haight Street with the other urchins, except that I was reading Shakespeare in between hustling in the Castro for food money. There was this guy who used to come find me every Wednesday afternoon around three—no idea why that day, that time—and he’d take me to his house on Russian Hill. He’d fuck me good and hard, just the way I like it. Then he’d let me stay with him for a while. We’d sit at the table in his marble kitchen and he’d talk to me. Really talk to me. Ask me what I wanted out of life, stuff like that. But smart-mouthed little bitch that I am, I always told him I only wanted his dick in my young, sweet ass. But he never got angry. He’d make omelets for me, feed me with a fork from his own hand. And he was the one who gave me Shakespeare to read. And Dickens and Moby Dick. He wanted to set me up in an apartment, to keep me for himself. And honestly, something about that appealed to me—the bird in a gilded cage shit. Except I’ve always thought of myself more as the wolf. I knew if I did it, I’d rip into him sooner or later. And anyway, a part of me loved life on the street. A part of me still craves it. The dirt and the danger. I guess that’s what I’m doing here.”

“But here everything is so civilized, despite how extreme it all is.”

“Is it? Wasn’t I the wolf today?”

“Mmm, yes,” she purrs.

She curls hard against my side, and my dick is hard again—or maybe still—and I have to really concentrate not to reach over and grab her by the throat and plow into her. But there’s also something buzzing in my body that has to do with that strange eagerness to tell her every damn thing about me. When the fuck have I ever done that with anyone? No one knows everything about me. I like being the enigma too much.

“I get what you’re saying, though,” I tell her, taking a lock of her hair and rubbing it between my fingers. “It’s insane how civilized they make it, which is for our benefit as much as it is to indulge their need for luxury. Not that I should talk. Because when I’m on the outside, I’m one of them.”

“Will you tell me more about that?”

“I don’t know how much I want to talk about it right now, because I
feel
it—fucking Dominant rising, like some bird of prey, and it needs to hunt.” I let her hair go, needing to put even some minute bit of distance between us, because as I say the words, it’s a physical sensation I have to grit my teeth to swallow down. “It wants to come out, take over. And to be honest, I’m having to fight it damn hard just to stay here with you.” My chest goes tight as I admit this out loud—how badly I need to be with her, no matter how it’s costing me to stay in the slave role when I’m so damn done with it. For now, at least. But I go on. “I
want
to. But you have to understand certain things about me. When I’m between slave contracts, or when I walk out on one, which happens most of the time—okay, whatever, every time—I live out there like they do. I go to the clubs, to the private training facilities. I work the slaves, and I’m an evil Master. But I never have my own slaves. I don’t want that. My own need to be enslaved is too much at odds with agreeing to oversee someone else’s care. It would never work. Except being a slave obviously never quite works, either. I’m a walking contradiction.” I stop, running my free hand over my short Mohawk. “I don’t fucking make sense, even to myself.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Why do I feel like that’s something you’re very practiced at telling yourself?”

I turn and look down at her, and her sweet little face is turned up to look back at me.
Watching
me. There’s a flash of fear in her pretty green eyes, but she was brave enough to put the question out there, and I realize that, other than those brief moments, she’s not afraid of me. Which is unusual in itself. Most people are, which I enjoy. But I also love that she can face me down. I don’t know. That’s not the right way to describe what she makes me feel.

Fuck it. I don’t have the right words for this. I stroke my thumb over her jawline, and she closes her eyes, a shiver going through her, and my whole body surges with need. “Aimée. I have to fuck you now.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

Shit. This girl is gonna kill me.

“It has to be rough. I don’t know any other way, and you make me want to pull your hair and choke you out and fucking bite you until you bleed.”