“I told you I wasn’t going to force you to be my slave. But I still paid half a million dollars...”
“You said that was ransom. You said I wasn’t your property.”
Gabe pushed off the chair and took a few steps back as if he needed to put some distance between them. “Fuck it. I lied. You are mine. Yes, I wired up your room for surveillance. Half to keep an eye on you in case you needed something, and yes, half because I wanted to look at what is mine.”
Tears began to roll down Julie’s cheeks. She’d expected another lie at least. He couldn’t have the decency of shame about it?
“Don’t do that. You threw a fucking dildo at me. Don’t do the pathetic crying routine.”
“So everything’s a lie. You’re going to take what you want from me and prostitute me and who cares because I’m just a whore anyway, right?”
“Oh, for God’s sake. No! I didn’t lie to you. I lied to myself. I thought I could separate things out fully, that I could think of the money as a ransom and see myself as some big hero rescuing you. But that’s not realistic. I do want you. You are mine. And yes, I know how creepy it is that I wired your room up. And if you want me to say I plan to unhook it and stop watching you… well, I won’t. But I’m not going to force myself on you. And if you think I would share you with anybody else in this house or elsewhere, then you don’t know the first thing about me.”
“But you said you weren’t monogamous.”
“I didn’t mean I would pass you around.”
“So you want to play around with others, but won’t let me do the same?”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “Really? You want to play around, Julie?”
She looked down at the floor. “No.”
“That’s what I thought. And I was clear that if we were in a relationship, it wouldn’t be equal.”
She decided to move right past all that. She didn’t want to be in a relationship with Gabe Griffin. Or she shouldn’t want to be in one. And she didn’t think she could handle it anyway. “Are there cameras in the bathroom?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you going to put them in the bathroom?”
“No.”
“Fine. I’ll change clothes in there, then.”
“Fine.” He moved back to her and held out a hand. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to the dungeon to punish you.”
Julie drew back—not that there was anywhere she could go with him looming over her that way, but she made a solid attempt. “I-I thought you said...”
“You want to know the full truth?”
“No.” She absolutely did not. She was ninety percent sure the less she knew about his plans and intentions the better.
A small smile crept across his face and then disappeared again, yet the amusement lingered in his eyes. “Tough. I’m telling you anyway. There is nothing I want more than to put a collar around your throat, force you to call me master, and start training you in the finer points of pleasing me. But I do care about you. Deeply. I have for months. And my feelings did not alter even a little bit when I saw you at Dmitri’s. The way I want things to be between us is not because of some shame you’re carrying around over what happened to you. I wanted these things on our first date. But I don’t want an unwilling victim. I want you to come to me on your own.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not like that. I don’t want the same things you want. If you want me in your chains you’ll have to take it because I will never...”
“Give it some time. You might change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“Be that as it may, you threw a dildo at my head. I may not be planning to enslave you against your will, but I sure as shit am going to punish you for what you did. You want to stay safe from my whip? Then don’t assault me.”
“I’m sorry. I promise, I won’t do it again.”
The smile on his face this time was grim. “I know you won’t. But you’re still not getting away with it this time.”
“But I thought you cared...”
“Julie, if you don’t get up out of that chair and come with me peacefully now, I will throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry you down. And then your punishment will be worse. Let’s go.”
She stood up and his fingers threaded through hers, then they walked quietly from the room, down the hall, through the foyer, and to another more narrow and darker hallway. Annette and a few others watched from the foyer. Julie couldn’t quite decipher the looks on their faces, but she was pretty sure that Pam girl had told everybody upstairs what she’d done. And now they had to all know what was about to happen to her. Julie’s face flamed.
After a few moments they were moving down the darker narrow hallway and out of the eavesdropping range of the other girls. “You don’t have to do this,” Julie whispered.
Gabe chuckled. “Oh, if you knew me at all, you would know that is not true. I’m known as the nice one around here, but that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover. Be glad I’m not Brian. I can’t imagine what he would do to someone who did what you just did.”
The hallway ended with a set of stairs. Gabe led her down them. The floor and walls down below were stone with several doors on either side with windows and bars on the windows. It definitely looked like what she imagined dungeons would look like. At the end of the hallway was a larger wooden door with no window. The door opened and Mina stepped out wearing jeans and a dark purple tank top, her feet bare. She looked much less like a spy now.
Mina looked from Gabe to Julie and then back to Gabe. “What could she have possibly done in this short a time?”
“You don’t want to know,” Gabe said.
“Oh, but I do,” Mina replied. “Given what you told me, what could she have possibly done to warrant… I mean… you know how I was when I came here… even Brian would never...”
“You didn’t throw a dildo at Brian’s head. You were too terrified to remotely defy him. That’s the difference.”
Mina muffled a laugh and slipped past them and up the stairs. From the top she said, “You can use cell A. It’s unlocked.”
“Thanks.”
“And Gabe?” she called down.
“Yeah?”
“Go easy on her. Different people react in different ways to trauma. You might not like the behavior, but do you really want to kill that fire?”
Julie didn’t exactly love the two of them discussing her like she wasn’t there, but at the moment she preferred Gabe forget she was there. And she’d take anything that might help smooth over the situation she’d gotten herself into.
“Mina, stay out of it. She will get the punishment that is warranted, and if she’s smart she won’t ever do it again.”
“Hey, I don’t care what you do. I just don’t want you to fuck this up. For your sake.” Then she was gone.
Gabe led Julie through the door marked A and locked it behind them. Inside the room were a couple of large boxes with mystery contents—but Julie had at least some idea by now. There was bondage furniture all throughout the room as well as a few large poles that went from ceiling to floor and had some sort of metal attachments on them.