Uncharted Territory (The Compass Series Book 3) (13 page)

“Do you think you’re the only girl he’s ever hurt? Or would ever hurt?”

If some innocent classroom debate provoked him to grab me like that? “Probably not, sir.”

“And does every girl have a master who will protect her like I do you?”

I have a love/hate relationship with the M-word. Hunter doesn’t use it often because that’s not technically the arrangement I’ve signed on for, though it’s essentially what we’ve got. He only slips when he’s feeling particularly strongly. Or maybe it’s not a slip so much as a nudge.
Here, here, you want to go here.
Today, I want to wallow in it. He’ll never leave me, he’ll always be thinking of me because I belong to him. I’m his responsibility. And though I’m tempted to give him the satisfaction of saying the word back to him—“
No, master
”—I can’t. Not yet anyway. I don’t fail to see the minuscule disappointment on his face when I respond, “No, sir.”

“Then I don’t think you need to feel badly about James Edward Nolan IV getting kicked out of school. I’m sure his parents will have him enrolled in some second-tier university by Monday where hopefully he’ll think twice about using his hands instead of his words.”

Hunter takes the cold pack off my wrist and lays his lips in its wake. His mouth is warm—hot almost—where the skin’s been cooled, and he lays gentle kisses on the blue-tinged skin before pressing our palms together, studying my hand against his.

“As long as you’re mine, no one will hurt you.”

A tiny part of me wants to revolt. Would I not be worth protecting if I weren’t his? Is my value to be found solely in belonging to him and not in my inherent worth as a human being? But I’m so thrilled by his gallant pledge that I stuff the argument down so I can enjoy this feeling. He’s going to protect me. He’s going to keep me safe. What does it matter if he’s doing it because he doesn’t care for when another kid in the sandbox scratches his favorite toy?

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He threads his fingers through mine and clasps my hand, bringing the backs of my knuckles to his lips as I lay my head on his shoulder.

‡

Year Three

S
ick. Oh, god,
I feel sick. I’d thought about staying home, calling and telling Hunter that I didn’t feel well. Which would be true. I’m going to barf. But chances are he’d send Ben to tend to me or instruct me to come anyway so he could make sure I was looked after. Then I’d get in trouble for lying, too. And avoiding punishment. It’s already going to be bad; I don’t need to make it worse.

I wave away Ben when he tries to take my book bag. The source of my shame is heavy inside it, and I should get this over with. Ben’s told me Hunter’s in his office on a call, so I follow my protocol. Outside Hunter’s office there’s a note penned in his small, rigid print:

Remove your clothes and put on your collar. Crawl to my desk, kneel at my feet, and wait for further instructions.

I do as he’s asked, leaving my book bag in the hall. When I’m settled on my knees beside him, he looks down at me and a rare smile lights his face. I thought my stomach couldn’t sink any lower, but it’s headed to the core of the earth because he’s going to be so disappointed. Maybe it would be worth it to put off telling him for just one more day. He’s in a good mood and maybe I’m in for a treat. But if he found out—and he would, he always does… No.

He finishes up his call and pats his lap, but the guilt and the ickiness are so heavy in my stomach, I can’t even give myself that pleasure. But he wants me to and uncertainty rustles in my head. Which would be worse?

“Sir?”

Hunter’s hawk-eyes zero in on my face. The easy smile is gone, his expression familiarly hard. He looks older now, his features going from still-boyish to severe middle-aged man, bypassing the thirty-five he actually is. “Yes?”

Oh, not even an endearment.

“I…” I can barely swallow through the guilt thickening my throat. “I got my Social Justice and the Law paper back today.”

“And?”

“I—”

“No, don’t tell me. I’d like to see it. Do you have it with you or should I send Ben to fetch it?”

“It’s just outside, sir.”

“Go on, then. Bring it here.”

I feel his eyes on me as I crawl back to the door. I try to keep my posture neat, but I know I don’t look pretty right now. I creep back with the paper held carefully between my teeth and release it when he reaches for it.

His face darkens instantaneously. I know what he’s looking at and my eyes water. My professor had smiled at me when she’d given this back. “Nicely done, India. Highest grade in the class. Your argument about Justice Harlan’s dissent in
Plessy v. Ferguson
was the most sophisticated understanding I’ve read on the topic.”

I preened under her praise until I saw the bright red circled letter at the top right of the first page: B+.

Hunter’s not going to give a shit that it was the highest grade in the class. He’s not going to care that my argument was excellent. He’s going to care about that flaming, crimson letter that shouts that I’m not good enough. That’s what I care about, too.

“A B+?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought we’d discussed this.”

“We have, sir.”

“And yet here I have in my hands evidence that you don’t respect me enough to follow my rules.”

“I tried, sir.”

“Trying’s not good enough and you know it.”

Yes, I do. “Yes, sir.”

“Go get my cane. You know the one I mean.”

I am well-familiar with which one he’s talking about. “Yes, sir.”

I crawl back out of the room, the misery swamping me as I make my way to the playroom to retrieve what Hunter wants. I don’t say a word to Ben or Joan as I pass, but my face flames. They must realize I’m in trouble.

By the time I get back, Hunter is even colder than when I left. I’m guessing he’s read through the rest of the comments Professor Maxwell left. Most of them were good, really good, but it doesn’t matter. He takes the cane from between my teeth and orders me over the side of his desk, placing the offending document in front of my face.

“Nose to the page, bad girl.”

I set my hands to either side of the paper and lower my face, my body a confused mess. Queasy over what I’ve done, but this position and his admonishment, knowing he’s going to absolve me in his own way—that makes me undeniably turned on and wet.

The first thwack of the cane meets my flesh and I gasp. Holy shit, that hurt.

“You’re being punished because you failed to meet my requirements.”

Thwack.

“Yes, sir.” My voice is already teary because he’s going hard on me.

“You’re an intelligent creature, and the only reason for you to not receive the highest marks is if you’re not working hard enough.”

Thwack.

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought I had done enough to ensure that you had enough time and resources to be capable of living up to your potential. Did I fail?”

Thwack.

“No, sir.” This isn’t Hunter’s failure. It’s mine.

“You understand that your behavior and your performance in all spheres are a reflection on me, do you not?”

Thwack
.

“Yes, sir.” I know. And I do my very best to make him proud of me. I do.

“And is this good enough? Do you really believe this performance is worthy of your master?”

Thwack.

“No, sir.”

Tears that had been leaking between my lashes are now falling full-force, the drops falling to the page and blurring the ink.

“When you fail, it reflects poorly on me. When you fail, it can only lead to the conclusion that I have failed. Have I failed you, India?’

Thwack.

“No, sir.” By now I’m outright sobbing. He doesn’t usually say my name. In fact, the last time he said it was months ago and that had been in a moment of tenderness. To hear it now as part of a dressing-down drives a chisel into my heart, cleaves it in two.

“Then I won’t see anything like this ever again, will I?”

Thwack.

“No, sir.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to say to me?”

Thwack.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I’m so, so very sorry.”

Each of my apologies is met with another strike of the cane. They spill out of my mouth until my words become incoherent, lost in the crying, and my knees give out. It hurts. Everything hurts. I hurt so badly.

Hunter grabs a hank of my hair in his fist and orders me to the floor. I sink down, putting my forehead, hands, and knees onto the plush carpet and leaving my ass in the air. He releases me and the unmistakable sound of his trousers unzipping fills the unbearably still air. And then he’s pressing into me, his way eased by my copious wetness.

“Don’t you dare come. If you do, I assure you the consequences will be beyond your imagination.”

“Yes, sir,” I say into the carpet as he fucks me, harder than he’s ever fucked me. I have to control myself, though. I can’t fail him again. He pounds into me for so long I think he must be leaving bruises on top of bruises. When he comes, he sinks his teeth into my shoulder so viciously I cry out.
Yes, please. More. Let me make this up to you.

When he’s spent himself inside of me, he stands to clean up and then sits in his desk chair. I know he can see me from there, my beaten ass on display. “You’ll stay there until I tell you otherwise. And if you think your punishment is over, you’re mistaken.”

“Yes, sir.”

He leaves me there for twenty minutes, and when he tells me to get up, it’s only to go as far as the coffee table in front of the luxe leather sofa he keeps in here. He positions me on my knees and tells me he’ll be right back. When he returns, it’s to lay three of his knobbier canes across my ankles and calves so that when he orders me to sit on my heels, they dig into the injuries he’s made.

In front of me he puts a stack of lined paper and several black pens. “You’re going to write lines. ‘I will endeavor to be worthy of my master in everything I do.’”

He hasn’t said that I can clean my face, so I sit there, occasionally sniffling, with the tears drying in tracks down my cheeks. I write and write and write, my hand cramping and my behind on fire, but I don’t stop. At the very least, I won’t disappoint him in this. But after a while, the beating I got and the stress of the day take its toll. I start to nod off, but shake myself awake to continue. It happens over and over, my tidy lines devolving into drunken smudges until the next thing I know, I’m being laid on the floor, my pages and pages of sincere groveling crinkling underneath my back.

Hunter spreads my legs roughly. “Close your eyes. Don’t come.”

I do, and I don’t. He doesn’t finish inside me, but orders me onto my stomach with my knees tucked up underneath me. I’m not surprised when he lubes up my ass and works his way in, not gently.

“Say it.”

I repeat it, over and over again while he fucks my ass, my voice cracking and my misery breaking the words into barely coherent sobs. “I will endeavor to be worthy of my master in everything I do.”

Over and over I say it, until he comes inside me and orders me to stop.

I try to be still, quiet, to please him, but my body is wracked with sobs. I hold it in as much as I can, but I can’t hide the shaking.

When he takes me in his lap on the couch, I want to fight him, tell him I’m not worthy, but he pets and soothes me. Lets me cry on him as he rocks me. And strangely, when he assures me that it’s okay, that I’ve paid for my mistake and it’s all over now, I believe him. Because he knew I needed the penance to him to carry on feeling whole.

“That’s not going to happen again, is it, baby?”

“No, sir.”

“I believe you. Don’t make a fool out of me.”

“No, sir.”

‡

Year Three

I
t’s my birthday
next week. It happens to coincide with the weekend Hunter was going to have his party anyway, or at least that’s what he tells me. I’d like to think it’s for me, that he just doesn’t want to tell me so. I’m mostly grateful because the mortification of so much attention and effort might do me in.