Girl (13 page)

“Hands behind your neck,” he orders.

I bring my hands up and over my head, then behind my neck, and clasp them there.

He goes to work right away with his hand, fucking my cunt, still sore from his attention last night.

“Don’t you dare come, Aimée. You squirt for me, but don’t come.”

And I do. I soak his hand, his arm, my thighs.

“Ah, look what you’ve done to my rug. You must be punished.”

“Yes, Master Damon,” I say, filled with agonizing need and shimmering joy.

This was what I was made for. For
him
.

He moves around behind me and shoves me toward the bed, and I catch myself on the side of it with the front of one shoulder. My hands are still clasped behind my neck. Then he’s behind me, and I can feel his bare thighs against mine. He parts my ass cheeks and plows into me, which hurts like hell without the benefit of lube. But he does this often, and I’ve learned to take it. To take great pride in it.

“Beautiful, tight little ass,” he says from between clenched teeth. “But you insult me, Aimée. Your marks are too faded.”

“My apologies, Master,” I manage to gasp as pleasure moves through me.

“As you should be,” he says before he hits the side of my thigh with a sharp blow—sharp because the wooden paddle he’s using is covered in razor-edged metal spikes.

The pain is exquisite, even more so when he starts to fuck my ass once more, the strikes of the spiked paddle keeping time, until I feel the blood trickle down my leg. But I will gladly bleed for this man. My Master. My love. I am so, so grateful for all that he gives me.

He pumps hard into me, his hot come filling me up, his hand dragging the metal spikes up my thigh as he convulses in pleasure.

“Ah!”

“Ah!”

We cry out together. Pleasure and pain. Love and wonder. Perfection.

Everything goes a little dark for me after that, until he lays me on his big bed and cleans my bloodied thigh with his own hands. My bindings are gone, and I am naked other than my collar. Letting my gaze explore his beautifully muscled body, I sink into the softness of the mattress and the fine sheets. Into his oddly gentle touch as he tends to my wounds.

He looks down at me. “My good girl, Aimée,” he says, stroking my hair from my cheek, that mysterious smile on his beautiful lips. “I am so pleased with you.”

There is nothing I want to hear from him more than these words. Except…

“I love you, Master,” I tell him, the words issuing from my lips before I can stop them.

But he only smiles, moving onto the bed, pulling me with him until my head rests on his chest.

We lie quietly for a long time, and I begin to wonder if he’s fallen asleep when he says very quietly, “I lied before.”

“About what, Sir?”

“About my Master—Master Stephan. I did love him.” A long pause, and then, “I did. I hate that I told you I didn’t. I feel as if I’ve dishonored his memory. But even after all these years…this is the first time I’ve said either of those things out loud—that I didn’t love him, that I did. And since I’m being so honest with you, I have to tell you, it left me unable to ever love again. Watching him die for two years…I was so young. It was a terrible, terrible thing. At some point I made a conscious vow never to love anyone the way I loved him.”

“Never?”

“Not until you, Aimée.”

I pull in a sharp, gasping breath. “Surely not me,” I say.

“What do you mean? Why not you? You are imminently loveable. If I can see it, the rest of the world must see you the same way.”

“No, Sir,” I have to whisper. I don’t want to think of my cold, cold father. Not now, when I am in the arms of a man I have come to love. “And Sir, I haven’t been here very long.”

“And yet you say you love me.”

“I do.”

“Then how is it impossible for me to feel the same?”

I chew on my sore lip for several moments. “Forgive me, Sir, but I am not sure you do.”

He strokes a hand over my hair. “You’re probably right. Everyone feels these things differently. You may love me only as a slave loves her Master, which is only right. And I may love you only as a Master loves his lovely, obedient slave, who strives so very hard to please me, and I do. But it’s more a starting point than I’ve experienced in years. That in itself means something to me. I want it to come to mean much more. Do you, Aimée? Do you want to stay with me, learn to love me as I learn to love you? Do you understand what I’m saying? Asking of you?”

“I think I do, Master. You make sense. I’ve always loved those who commanded me a little bit, but it’s different with you. I love you, Sir. Enough to make my heart ache with it. But I know I’m only dancing around the edges of what might be. So yes, I understand you, Master Damon. Yes, I want what you’re asking of me.”

He turns and lifts my chin with his fingers, looking into my eyes. “I
am
asking. I never ask anything of anyone, I simply tell. I’ve been doing that for a very long time. But this I have to ask. Because love can only be given freely.”

He leans in to kiss me, and it is so sweet, this strange, utterly unexpected moment. I drink him in, wondering how I can want this along with the harshness. But I do. I want it all from him.

Everything. Anything.

He pulls back, and I feel him retreating, but I understand that too. This will take us both some time to get used to. I don’t want to think about the fact that we may never be able to, freaks that we are. But why can’t freaks love? Why not?

It hits me that the Master may love Christopher too, and the idea makes my heart leap and fall in the same breath. Is that why he has a name in the same way I do now? I haven’t dared to ask, to utter his name. I’m too afraid it will reveal how drawn to him I am. And suddenly I’m afraid I may be some passing fancy for the Master, and my chest aches with the thought.

Don’t lose your love for me, Master.

Don’t lose your love for Christopher.

I can’t bear to think of the bad, beautiful Christopher going unloved, he seems to need it so badly.

Don’t think of him.

Finally, we sleep, and I dream I am in a boat on turbulent waves—they crash around me, tearing the boat to pieces, until I’m floating in the cold water, hanging on to one piece of wood. Alone.

I wake with a start to find my Master standing naked at the window, his back to me. Realizing I’ve been left unchained, I think perhaps the dream is nothing more than a result of sleeping unbound.

I have become very good at lying to myself.

When he returns to the bed I pretend I’m asleep, and after a few minutes of lying stiffly beside me, he curls into me, taking me into his arms, burying his face in my hair. And I cry myself silently back to sleep, careful not to shed too many tears, while he holds me in a way he never has before. Desperately. So tightly I can barely breathe, his legs wound around mine.

I don’t know how much later it is when I’m startled awake. Something is slipped over my head and it’s pitch dark in a way the room never has been before. Rough hands binding my ankles together with rope, then I’m dragged from the bed and thrown on the floor, rolled onto my stomach and my wrists are bound in the same manner.

These are not the Master’s hands on me, and I’m panicking. The panic turns to full-blown terror when I’m lifted by two sets of hands and carried from the room.

Down the stairs and outside—I can feel the cold air on my skin, smell the salt of San Francisco even through the bag covering my head and fastened around my neck.

Where am I going and who is taking me? Taking me away from the Master’s House! But I’m too scared to even cry. I am afraid someone has broken into the House and kidnapped the Master’s slaves. That it has been raided by the police, which can happen at these places where kink is practiced to such an extreme. Or—even worse—that the Master is sending me away.

No!

A small sob catches in my throat as I’m thrown down onto what feels like carpet over metal, and I know I’m in some sort of vehicle. A van? The door is slammed shut and I’m left alone.

I want my Master, my beloved Master, to rescue me from this. To come and take me back into the House, into his rooms, to tell me it’s all a mistake. But I know already it’s not. Except maybe
my
mistake, for telling him I love him.

Master!

The tears pour down my cheeks unheeded. This is a form of torture I really cannot endure.

The door opens with a creak and I cringe, wondering what they will do to me. But no one touches me. Instead there’s a grunt, a loud thud, then a voice.

“Are you people fucking kidding me?”

I know that voice. It’s him.
Him
! The bad, beautiful slave.

Christopher.

The engine starts with a rumble as my heart turns over in my chest, and we drive off into the night.

Keep reading for an Excerpt from The Training House, Book Two: Boy

Eden Bradley

Out this fall!

Chapter One

“Are you fucking kidding me, people?”

I kick hard and connect with a body—Gilby’s chest, I think. I know it’s him from how hard he’s breathing, the rasp more from the excitement of abducting me than from carrying me down the stairs with one of his henchman to help.

They’re taking me away again, to the Pet Ranch in Carmel Valley. I've been there before. It’s not that I don't like it there. I do. I’m just fucking pissed that the Master is sending me away again. I love and hate the way they do it—grabbing me in the middle of the night, bag over my head, throwing me into the van. And now I know what’s coming even before I feel their hands grab me roughly and close the metal shackles around my ankles. I kick again, chains rattling, but all I hit is air. The air whistles as he strikes my thigh with a leather strap. I barely feel it, but I kick again and he hits me again—it’s our same old dance. We both enjoy it.

“Fuck you, Gilby! You and whoever else is with you!”

“Oh, you'll be fucked all right,” he says with a low chuckle. “Unless you can catch ’em and fuck ’em first, but I hear they have some new stock down there. Wish I was going to be there to see it—you being taken down by some slave boy and pegged good and hard up the ass.”

“You wish, Gilby,” I mutter.

“Yeah, I do. I’d fuck you myself if the Master would allow it. I’d fuck that mouthiness right out of you. Enjoy the ride Christopher.”

He hits me one more time across the chest before I hear the door to the van slam shut. And as soon as he does I become aware that someone else is in the back of the van with me. This is new. I inhale, and the minute I do I know it’s her.
Her
. The beautiful new slave girl I saw a few weeks ago in the school room. The girl with the long red hair and the innocent face, and the lush, pink mouth that makes me think of nothing but sex. I think about it a lot—those lips wrapped around my hard cock, green eyes looking up at me. I’ve been a little obsessed with her since the moment I saw her, that mouth making a perfect “o”—perfect to suck my cock with—when the Master was punishing me. And I know her scent because as Gilby and Patrick were dragging me out of the room after my beating, I pulled in a long breath as we passed her seat. She smells like clean, female skin and female desire. Even her skin smells like innocence. My pheromones went fucking crazy. They’re doing it again now.

I wish I’d been the one to slip the black bag over her head and throw her over my shoulder. My cock is doing a mad, twitching dance just thinking about it.

I inhale again and this time I smell fear. My cock stiffens even more.

I wait for the van to start before saying anything, enjoying my little mental scenario and the smell of her flesh and her fear.

“Hey,” I say quietly. No answer. I try again. “You can talk to me, you know. They won’t hear you.”

“I… You’re sure it’s okay?”

“You’re her, aren’t you? The Master’s new favorite?”

There’s a long pause. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“No need to be. Not with me. I’m a favorite, too. Or, I was. Apparently I’m out of favor since he’s sending me off again.”

Sometimes I love the Master. And sometimes I hate him. And sometimes it sucks to be me. But maybe this isn’t one of those moments.

Erotic romance authors Eden Bradley, R.G. Alexander and Robin L. Rotham can be found regularly at their group blog,
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Check out The Finn Factor series from R.G. Alexander!