Mafia Captive (23 page)

But she still felt for him, and watching him take other women would only kill her by degrees. When he’d pulled her into his arms, he was the safest person in the world. She’d almost forgotten he was the cause of her angst.

When he opened that metal door, she thought her legs would buckle, but Leo prodded her down the winding stairway into hell.

He didn’t speak at first, instead going to the wall where all the whips and crops and paddles hung. Her legs stopped supporting her and she crumpled into a ball on the floor, her knees tucked under her body as if she were practicing for a school tornado drill. Her instincts screamed that she needed to protect as much of herself as she could from him.

“Faith, come here.”

His voice had taken on that change, that edge she’d always heard while eavesdropping. Was the nicer version of him there anymore? It was as if the upstairs Leo had receded to allow the beast in the shadows full reign while down below.

She crawled to him, not sure she could force herself to stand. When she reached him, he bent and pulled her to stand beside him.

“Now,” his voice curled around her and squeezed, “which of these things is scariest to you? I want you to rate them from least to most scary.”

She searched his face. What game was he playing? Sure, tell the sadist which items would upset you the most so he doesn’t have to do any work to figure it out.

He sighed. “Faith, what happened to the trust we built?”

Her gaze went back to the lined-up canes.

She gripped the tray to stay upright while he went to get the black leather book. He opened it to a fresh page and uncapped a pen.

“Well? We don’t have all night.”

Faith ran her fingertips over the smooth canes. “This one is the worst,” she said, touching the metal cane. “Followed by this one and the rest like it.” She pointed to the rattan.

The pen scratched against the paper in a quick scrawl that probably only he could read.

She took a breath and looked up at the wall. “I-I don’t know what these are.”

“Those are clamps. Those are called butterfly clamps and the others are alligator.” he said.

“What are they for?” She thought she knew, but she hoped she was wrong.

“Nipples. But I have other kinds for labia.”

Not wrong.

“Do they hurt?”

He raised a brow at her. Stupid question.

“Of course they hurt, but the alligator aren’t bad. They hurt more when they are being removed than when they go on.”

“Why?”

“Blood rushing back to where it was denied. You go numb so it doesn’t hurt as much, but when the clamps come off, sensation rushes back all at once.”

“Why do you like this?” She couldn’t blend the Leo who was into causing pain with the Leo who had protected her more than once from Angelo. Or the Leo who’d shown her mercy and given her a private room, or who had chosen to create a sham engagement and marry her so she wouldn’t have to be kept tied up in the dungeon during the holidays. All of those things were so extremely kind, and this was so extremely evil. His contradiction was more frightening than if he could keep to one persona consistently.

He shrugged. “I’ve experienced every object in this dungeon. When I first decided to explore this lifestyle, I hired a dominatrix to teach me. I asked her to use everything on me because it was my responsibility to be intimately familiar with each item. She taught me how to moderate my strength and how to deliver the amount of sensation I wanted to deliver and nothing more or less. There is nothing here you will endure that I haven’t been through myself.”

Leo raised his sweater and turned around. Faith couldn’t help running her fingers over the thin, faint scars that criss-crossed his back. They were old and almost faded now.

“Are you going to mark me like this?” she asked, working to keep her voice steady.

“I haven’t decided.”

“I’m not as strong as you. I can’t take what you can take. Please…”

He pulled the sweater down and turned to face her, his hand resting on her cheek. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, when it happens you will be able to take it, whatever it is. I’m not going to throw you down and scar you. I’m not an animal.”

She looked back at the tray of canes. “What made your scars?”

“A bull whip.”

“W-which one is that?”

Leo pointed to a large, single-tailed whip on the wall.

“I want to change my list. Make that one the worst one, and then the canes underneath it.”

He chuckled but scribbled in his book. “Noted.”

“What kind of whip is this?” she asked, pointing to a smaller whip that had several strips of leather instead of one. Amazingly, talking about the things in the dungeon took the edge off her fear, though she knew that wouldn’t be the case when she was tied down somewhere and he had one of these things in his hand.

“That’s not a whip. It’s called a flogger.”

“How bad is it?”

“I usually start a sub off with that. Floggers can be very pleasurable, even on someone who doesn’t consider themselves much of a masochist.”

Faith wrinkled her nose. “How can it be pleasurable?”

“It’s hard to explain, but I’ll show you. It can be made to hurt, of course. Any implement with enough force behind it can hurt. I could hit you with a vibrator and it would hurt. Though I wouldn’t do that. Pleasure toys are for pleasure.”

His expression was sexually hungry, and Faith was sure she hadn’t imagined a double
entendre
when he’d used the phrase
pleasure toy
. No doubt that was how he saw her, now that she’d signed the last shred of her life over to him.

He could have taken anything from her at any moment, but her verbal agreement had removed any remnant of guilt that may have otherwise held him back.

Faith stared at the flogger for a good thirty seconds and said, “Make that the least bad one.” She caught the ghost of a smile on his face as he wrote it down.

“What’s this?” She pointed to a leather strap that was split down the middle about halfway so that one end formed a fork.

“That’s a tawse. They were used in Scotland for corporal punishment in schools. Only, they rapped a student’s palm with it. I can’t promise I would limit it to that. They sting quite a bit.”

Faith filed that away and looked back over the wall. There were several whips with one tail that were smaller than the bull whip. And there were a few floggers and paddles, and the tawse, and a belt. She quickly rated everything ending up with bullwhip as worst, followed by canes, the belt, clamps, then the smaller whips, then the tawse, paddle, and the flogger.

He seemed surprised by the belt ranking so high on her list. She held her breath, waiting for him to demand an explanation on why a belt should be so terrifying, but he simply noted it in the leather journal.

The flogger, she was going to try to trust Leo on. If he was lying, she would never make the mistake of trusting him again. Not that trusting or not trusting him mattered, but it was one thing she could still control. The clamps made it pretty high on the list because of the uncertainty. She’d had a difficult time deciding whether the smaller whips or the clamps would be worse, but the clamps were so foreign that it made little sense to put them low on the list.

In the event that he intended to slowly work her up going by her list, she wanted to move the clamps further into the future. Given that, should she have listed the belt as the worst?

***

Leo observed as Faith went through each item on the wall and in the tray. They’d yet to catalog everything in the toy box. There were still many things in the large box she might find fearful—things she may not have gotten a good look at on their previous tour. He was sure she thought the violet wand was another vibrator and that the concept of playing with electricity would send her over the edge. It would be months before he could introduce it.

And then there was simply the matter of how certain things—even meant for pleasure—might humiliate or scare her because of how much they would expose her to him. He’d seen her naked once in those fleeting moments the first night she’d been in his home—in his room, and briefly in his bed. He’d gorged himself on the look of her, the lush, soft curves. The unmarred flesh. He’d held the memory in his mind for weeks as he’d jerked off in the shower.

He’d been new to her then, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think her shyness was all about newness or the circumstances of them being thrown together. It was something innate that he wanted to exploit.

Leo could practically hear her heart trying to escape out of her chest as he peeled his sweater off and laid it over a spanking horse. He crossed to the far end of the dungeon to stand in front of a large, leaner mirror, typically a tool used for humiliation, and it would be again—most likely in a few moments. But for now, he looked at the scars on his back. It was true he’d hired a dominatrix to come to his dungeon when he’d first created it. But the marks were about so much more than that.

Since puberty, he’d had the fantasies: tying women up, hurting them, fucking them, sometimes kidnapping and forcing them. The latter fantasies disturbed him the most. He’d tried to be good. He couldn’t understand what evil had possessed him or what he’d done to deserve these thoughts and feelings that wouldn’t leave him no matter how often he went to church or how much he prayed or tried to be good.

For a long time, it had only been thoughts and masturbation. He’d avoided the fairer sex, fearing he’d hurt someone. But once he’d made his money and everything became possible, he’d started collecting. The estate had been built from the beginning with what he’d originally said was going to be a large and extensive wine cellar. And true, he did keep wine down here, but not nearly the collection so vast a space demanded.

Over months he collected the toys in the box and the implements on the wall and in the sliding tray, as well as all the furniture—both kinky and standard. As he’d put the room together, he’d told himself comforting lies. It was a simple extension of a fantasy. He’d never bring a woman down here. He would never hurt anybody for real.

Even if it was consensual, women like that… they must be as fucked up as him, maybe more. Surely they had some history of abuse or trauma that he was merely capitalizing on. He wouldn’t cross that line.

But then he did cross it. Instead of bringing a masochist or submissive to his pristine and untouched dungeon, he’d brought a dominatrix. He’d wanted to know what it was that he fantasized about doing to someone else. He didn’t want to sugarcoat it. He needed to use the pain to jolt himself back to reality and convince himself to stay away from this fascination.

But the sessions with the dominatrix only made his desires stronger, awakening the beast inside him, making it hungrier and determined to surface—angry that someone else got to play but he didn’t.

Later sessions—the ones that had created the scars on his back—had been about something else. Punishment. He wanted to punish himself for what he was and couldn’t erase and for what he knew he would act on soon. He was never sure if Esmeralda—pretty sure that wasn’t her real name—suspected that the increased intensity wasn’t about learning or about a secret masochistic tendency he must feed. It was pure penance. Though he was sure the Church wouldn’t approve of this makeshift form he’d created for himself.

Leo turned from the mirror to look at Faith. Far too young and innocent. Not someone into this. He’d fallen this far, but even so, he knew a hundred harsh visits from the dominatrix could never stop what he was going to do to the terrified red-haired beauty in front of him.

She was his type in every way but one, and it was time to change that one incompatibility.

He went to the wine cellar and brought back a bottle of pinot noir. He collected wine glasses from a cabinet in the kitchenette and placed them on the counter.

“Faith?”

She detached herself from the wall by the whips and sat on one of the bar stools he indicated while he poured them each a glass of wine. He should have chosen white. Something fruity and light like a Riesling or sauvignon blanc. The red was too strong and dark and made him think of blood and pain. It made him more eager, so that the gesture of trying to relax her would only come at a price to her later.

He watched while she sipped more slowly than necessary, postponing what was coming. He indulged her until he’d finished his own glass, then he took the wine from her and set it on the counter beside the sink.

“I think that’s enough, don’t you agree?” There was no amount that would be enough for her right now. And he knew it.

“Yes, Master.” She stared at the counter. Her lovely red hair fell in front of her shoulders and covered part of her face, making her look more demure and sweet. That sweetness was going to be the death of him. Or her.

Leo helped her off the stool and led her to the large mirror, then crossed to the chest of drawers beside the bed and pulled out a black T-shirt. He slipped it on because, while he enjoyed her discomfort at his state of partial undress, he enjoyed the power imbalance of himself clothed and his slave nude even more.

As comfortable as he was with his own nudity, there was vulnerability in it, and minimizing his vulnerability while maximizing hers was the goal of the evening. While one side of him wanted to make this about trust and bonding and some long-forgotten romantic ideal which society had hammered into him long enough that it should have taken, another part of him burned to take and use that which he’d acquired.

“Last chance to back out, Faith.” His better nature insisted he give her one more exit door.

If she took it and walked up those stairs, he might chase her down and take all her choices away. He wanted her to soothe his guilt by not saying no.

“And then what happens? We go back to how things were? You barely speaking to me? Those women coming over here? I told you, it hurts too much.”

He had to give her points for bravery and determination. They were qualities that had been mostly lacking in the other women he’d brought to his lair. After all, how much bravery was required to face what you got off on?