Her Submission (24 page)

The weariness she’d been struggling to overcome faded with every breath she took. Beyond all reason, there was something magical about these moments. She should try to figure out why that was but just living in them was enough. She lifted her hands and cupped her breasts. Touching them re-awakened the fluttering sensation in her pussy.

“
Maybe because everything that’s happened to me has been so intense.”

“
More or less than your old man trying to hump you?”

What would her sperm donor think if he could see her now? Would anyone recognize what she’d become? Did she? “They’re nothing alike.”

“
Aren’t they?” He waited a beat. “Two men have forced you against your will. Taken control of your life.”

There was nothing casual about his comment. Maybe he intended to make her pay for saying the wrong thing, but she didn’t think so.

Hoped not.

“
I was a child then. Now I’m an adult.”

“
A naked and chained one who calls the man who did these things to her Master.”

Her head pulsed so she could hardly think. She was on the brink of exhaustion with no way of knowing how her future would play out. She staggered over to the closest wall and leaned against it. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask why she continued to cradle her breasts but why would he? He already knew.

He studied for a long time starting with her feet and slowly moving up her nude body. Something in his expression made her wonder if he was trying to decide to tell her something.

“
You’ve never brought a captive here?” she ventured.

“
No.”

“
Why did you with me?”

She expected him to point out that he’d been staying here since his accident and expediency had made the decision, but the longer he remained quiet, the less sure she became. His gaze was unsettling but far from how she’d felt when her drunken father had stared at her. Back then she’d felt dirty. Now she had worth.

“
What about the men in your life?” he asked unexpectedly. “When you were with one, were those relationships influenced by what you had with your father?”

She looked past him to the darkening wilderness. Before long night would further isolate her—and him—from the rest of the world.

“
I just wanted to get away from my old man. When Mickey—“

“
Oh yes, Mickey. The man who took your virginity.”

Maybe someday she’d tell Master that his hard statements played a large role in what had broken her down. Now, however, she had all she could do to battle the sexual hunger warring with her weary body.

“
What was the first time like?”

Instead of wanting to avoid the question, she pulled the memory around her. Eyes unfocused, she mentally returned to the afternoon Mickey had picked her up after school and driven her out to an abandoned barn he knew about. She hadn’t wanted to go home because her parents had been drinking and fighting for days. Mickey was twenty. In retrospect she knew he was too old for her, but back then he represented excitement, maturity, and security. They’d been doing some pretty heavy petting over the past few weeks, and the other night he’d taken off her bra and sucked on her breasts. Made her squirm.

She told Master that and more, even how Mickey had driven with his hand inside her pants. Once at the leaking wreck of a structure, he’d shown her the sleeping bag he’d spread out over some hay he’d raked together. She’d shook as he undressed her and averted her eyes while he stretched a condom over his erection.

A voice she barely recognized told Master how she’d still been asking herself if this was what she wanted to do when Mickey laid her out on the sleeping bag and crawled on top of her.

“
It hurt, but it was over so fast I barely knew what was happening.”

“
Hair trigger. It goes with being young.” Master patted the broad chair arm. “Come here.”

Trembling much as she’d done that first day with Mickey, she walked over to where Master was sitting and perched on the chair. He pulled her around toward him, lifted her legs onto his lap, and rested his hand on her thigh. She couldn’t relax. Maybe she didn’t want to.

“
What about the next time?”

Chapter fifteen

Master was touching her. Connecting with her. How could she be anything expect honest? As the shadows deepened, she painted a picture of the weeks and months following their first time. Mickey was insatiable when it came to sex. The longer they were together, the more she wanted the same thing. Mickey knew what triggers to touch and what to say to make her feel like a woman. She could barely concentrate on her classes because at the end of the day her
boyfriend
would be waiting for her. She’d climb into his car, spread her legs, and throw back her head. Beg to be fucked.

Mickey started calling her his whore. Far from being embarrassed, she took the word as a badge of honor. Proof that someone loved her.

“
He knew how awful things were for me at home. One day I couldn’t talk for crying. I don’t remember what had happened, probably more of the same. Anyway Mickey said we should live together.”

“
Were you still fifteen?”

“
Yes. I know what you’re going to say, that I was too young.”

“
You were.”

Until now every time Master touched her it had been to hurt or sexually stimulate her. His large hand on her thigh served both as a reminder of what he was capable of and something deeper. Something she needed.

A mechanic, Mickey lived in an apartment over a closed-up furniture store. That part of town was in sad shape, but she didn’t tell Mickey how much it spooked her to be there alone. Anything was better than being around her parents. Used to living hand to mouth, she hadn’t asked Mickey for anything.

Looking back, she realized the school knew how little money the family had because she got free lunches in exchange for helping to clean the cafeteria afterward. Once she moved in with Mickey, she started bringing home leftovers. Mickey kept saying their money problems were temporary because his boss intended to make him a partner once he’d learned more about the business.

But that never happened and some weeks Mickey barely made enough to pay the rent. Sex continued to be incredible—once she had her first climax she couldn’t get enough. Maybe, she told Master, that’s why Mickey and she stayed together. That and her ability to supply them with almost everything they ate. Also come summer Mickey hoped to earn what he called a shitload of money fighting forest fires. Shortly before school let out, she went everywhere she could think of looking for work. She hadn’t told Mickey what she was doing in part because she wasn’t sure she was going about it the right way, in part because what if she failed? It wasn’t as if she had a lot of self-confidence.

A place selling Chinese food at the mall food court hired her to work fifteen hours a week, most of them evenings and weekends. She was proud of her accomplishment, but Mickey complained he hardly ever saw her.

“
You two started to fight?” Master asked.

He’d been quiet for so long that his question caught her off guard. The wood under her buttocks was hard, and her shoulders were getting cold. His hand still rested on her thigh, keeping it warm.

“
I didn’t say anything when he raged on me because I didn’t want to be like Mom screaming all the time.”

“
He should have given you credit for bringing in some money.”

Why Master had taken her side didn’t matter as much as realizing how much she was revealing. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. By the middle of August Mickey had only been called out to fight one fire. No matter that the worst fires usually occurred in late summer and early fall when the forests were dry, he was getting more and more uptight. Then one day soon after she’d gotten her driver’s license, he suggested they go for a ride in the mountains. She was so glad to see him in an update mood that she hurried to pack a picnic lunch.

“
He let me drive. He’d taught me how to drive but this was the first time I’d been off paved roads. I was nervous because I didn’t want to cause any damage to his car. He, ah, he started talking about wouldn’t it be something if someone started a fire out here. That way he’d get a lot of work at great pay.”

“
He was that someone?”

She wanted to jump to her feet and hide, but it was too late so she nodded and wrapped her hands around her arms. Today was surreal. Everything that had happened to her lately seemed more dream than reality.

“
I didn’t know it but he’d put a gas can in the trunk. After we’d gone about twenty miles on this old logging road, he told me to stop.”

“
You could have grabbed the can once you realized what he was up to.”

“
I should have, but I didn’t. He was five years older than me, and I was hesitant because things hadn’t been good between us lately. Also…”

“
Also what?”

“
We needed the money,” she whispered then went on to describe how Mickey had poured gas over the dried grasses and bushes. The moment he touched a lighter to them, everything exploded. She jumped back in the car and started turning around while Mickey threw the gas can into the fire. They argued all the way back with her telling him the fire would kill animals and birds and him saying she should have stopped him when she’d had the chance.

By the next morning Mickey had been called to fight the fast-moving fire, leaving her to listen to the news stories about how arson was suspected. A day later the police knocked on the door. Unknown to them, a fire lookout had spotted their vehicle. Her fingerprints were on the steering wheel so she couldn’t deny she’d been driving.

“
Mickey got a friend to testify he’d been with him when I set the fire. Mickey kept saying he had no idea I was so worried about finances that I’d do something so crazy.”

“
They believed him?”

“
They couldn’t prove otherwise,” she managed. Time had blunted a lot of the pain she’d felt when she realized the man she loved had turned on her but telling Master brought so much back.

“
Did you tell them the truth?”

Fighting the need for his arms around her, she shook her head. “I couldn’t speak. I just sat there while detectives accused me of doing millions of dollars’ worth of damage. Because I was a minor my name didn’t make the news, but the cops told my parents. When they came to see me, I knew they believed I was guilty. They blamed—they blamed me for getting hooked up with a loser, said I got what I deserved.”

Irrational as it was, she kept hoping Master would say something in her defense, but all he did was start to stand up. She jumped to her feet. His features contorted as he put his weight on his bad leg.

“
Master? Is there something I can—“

He grabbed her arm and turned her so she faced the door to the bedroom. “You’ve already done enough. We’re going inside.”

#

Some of the tightness in his leg had eased by the time Reno and his slave-in-training were back in the bedroom. It was his own damn fault for sitting so long. He’d probably given her the impression he held her responsible but the truth was listening to her had taken him out of himself. He was tempted to thank her for giving him a break from self-absorption, not that he would, would he? He needed to focus on getting her to tell him the rest of what had happened when she was accused of starting a forest fire.

Looking at her as she stood with her manacled hands against her naked belly, he couldn’t connect what she was today with the teenager she’d once been. His guess was that girl had crawled into an emotional shell after her boyfriend and parents deserted her. In contrast, this woman—yes, woman—was now comfortable in her own skin. The training he’d imposed on her hadn’t broken her. She was stronger—and at peace with the submissiveness she maybe hadn’t realized lived within her.

For the first time since he’d learned what it meant for one human to own another, he cared about what went on inside a slave’s head and heart.

He didn’t question what he was doing when he unlocked her cuffs and placed them and the rope still tied to them on the bed. Slave training had accustomed him to living with a nearly perpetual hard-on, but this felt different, more personal. He wanted to fuck her, but it should be her idea as much as his.

Surprised by the thought, he continued to study her. Except for the collar, she wore nothing. The whip marks had faded so he could barely see them in the dim lighting but no doubt their impact remained in his slave’s psyche. Thinking of a slave as his was so new he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it. One thing he did know—he was horny.

And vulnerable.

Hell no!

Determined to separate himself from the unwanted thought, he pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off the slippers he’d taken to wearing after the accident. He reached for his jeans’ fastening.

She sank to her knees. “Master, please let me.”

Interesting. Not long ago she’d talked almost as if they were equals but she’d slipped back into her new role without
encouragement
.

“
Go on,” he said. “And while you’re doing it, tell me about your trial and its outcome.”

She licked her lips but didn’t speak until she was pulling down on his zipper. “It wasn’t a regular trial because of my age. I was assigned a lawyer who told me to plead guilty. I didn’t care.”

It had been so damn easy for her to kneel that he had to work at not resenting her for it.

“
You didn’t get decent representation,” he said, hoping to distract himself from her presence.” You should have implicated Mickey, made him pay for what he did.”

She started guiding his jeans down his hips. “I know that, now, but it’0s over. I can’t relive the past.”