Gabe knelt on the floor in front of her and took her hands in his. “I won’t share you with anyone else. I won’t punish or humiliate you in public. I won’t damage you. I won’t break your skin. I will not be easy. I will not compromise, and I’m a demanding bastard, but I take care of what’s mine. I won’t play a game with you. I won’t pretend to be your master even to protect you from Brian. And I won’t be managed by you, but if you give it a chance, I will awaken something inside you that you never dreamed was possible. I will make your body and soul sing for me. I will wrap you up in the kind of warmth and security you thought only happened in fairy tales. So, Julie, are you mine?”
Her breath caught in her throat. The tears seemed to have stopped mid-descent down her cheeks. She so desperately wanted to believe him. She didn’t know if she was the kind of girl who could ever truly like the brand of sex and dominance he offered her, but she’d watched Annette, and even inexplicably Mina. She’d seen the deep peace that settled over their features whenever their masters were near. And she wanted that. So badly. She wanted to be happy instead of just existing. She wanted to feel like she belonged here. She wanted to feel like she belonged to Gabe.
She’d screamed that she wasn’t his house cat, but being in the house without a relationship with him had made her feel more like an ignored pet. If he wasn’t letting her go, wouldn’t it be better to be with him than alone surrounded by people? And even if he let her go… she would never feel safe again because now she’d seen the ugly underbelly of the world. She knew what was out there. And if it wasn’t Dmitri and his gang, it might be someone else.
Finally, she said, “Yes, Master.”
“Good girl.” But the expression of happiness on his face went light years beyond those words.
“If I hadn’t called you master... if I hadn’t begged you, would you have left me with Brian?”
Gabe didn’t say anything for a long time. She thought he wasn’t going to answer her at all when finally he said, “I don’t know. I want to say no. I want to believe I’m not that big of a bastard. But I’m not the storybook hero I thought I was. I’m human like everybody else, maybe not as good as I thought. I’d lost all patience waiting for you to come to me.”
“But… how could you reasonably think…?”
“I know. I know. I shouldn’t expect you to fall at my feet in gratitude. While I’m absolutely certain you’re wired like me, you haven’t had a chance to explore it in a safe environment. And I know it’s selfish as hell to want it given all you’ve suffered. But that’s me. I want what I want. I want who I want. And one way or another, I always get it. It’s late, you should get some rest.”
Gabe got up off the floor and Julie stood and started for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I-I’m going to my room.”
Gabe shook his head sharply. “No. From now on you sleep in my bed with me.”
She couldn’t stop the fine tremble that moved through her, or the tears that slowly rolled down her cheeks again as she undressed and got into his bed, old monsters haunting her again, niggling fears nipping at her heels like small dogs.
Gabe undressed as well and got in on his side. He pulled her close, and she stiffened. She’d actually wanted him. And as much as she should hate him for the past weeks of cold distant anger, she didn’t. It was pretty impossible to hate him after he’d gotten her out of Brian’s dungeon. Thinking of how much worse things could be, not just in Brian’s dungeon, but if Gabe had never shown up at Dmitri’s house did engender a sense of gratitude.
Why couldn’t she give him this? She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to have sex like a normal person because she had no awareness of what it was supposed to be like. And she feared that every nerve ending in her body had been wired to expect some sort of assault when a man touched her. What if she couldn’t experience anything intimate without reliving the things that had happened? It was one thing to be totally free from the expectation and to go through her life without cringing and cowering all the time, but would it be possible to have a sexual relationship? Even if it were what Gabe called vanilla? She was afraid this would only open up a gaping wound that she’d tried so hard to ignore—hoping it would miraculously heal itself and go away in time. Maybe she should have talked to the therapist after all.
Gabe pressed closer against her. She could feel his heartbeat and the warmth of his skin against her back. His heart pounded through her, causing her blood to awaken and stir. She, still wanted him. She just wasn’t sure if she could let herself...
“Relax,” He whispered in her ear. “We’re just sleeping tonight. And I will go very slowly with you. I want you to trust me and feel safe with me and want everything that happens between us. I’m not Dmitri.”
“I know.”
“Maybe your mind knows. Your body doesn’t yet. But it will.” He ran his fingertips lightly back and forth along the curve of her hip for several long minutes until she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke the next morning, it took a while to remember what had happened.
“Julie.” Gabe sat in a chair near the bed, dressed for the day in his standard jeans and white T-shirt, watching her.
“Y-yes, Master?” She wouldn’t be stupid with him. She knew what he wanted her to call him. If she’d called him Gabe, or sir like the other girls, she was sure she wouldn’t like his response. She wanted to at least try to make this work. If she couldn’t clamp down her stupid, irrational attraction to him, she could at least… try.
“Sit up,” he said.
She scooted up in the bed and he rose from the chair and joined her. He pulled a fabric tape measure from his pocket and wrapped it around her throat. He wrote the measurement down on piece of paper and slipped it into his pocket. “I’m going to order your collar today. After breakfast, your training starts.”
The tears were warm and wet against her cheeks. She was so tired of crying. She’d gone weeks without crying like this. Now that she’d given herself to him, the low-level constant anxiety that she’d mostly gotten away from had returned.
“Enough,” he said. “I’m not hurting you. You have no idea what will or won’t happen between us. I have wanted you since the moment I saw you at the bar. I’ve thought about you from that moment to this one with no interruptions. You’ve wanted me. At least until you were taken.”
“I-I still wanted you after that.”
“What?”
The shock on his face and in his tone was enough to give her the courage to tell him the rest.
“When I was with Dmitri, every night I would imagine that you would come for me and take me out of there. It was the only way I could sleep at night, playing that rescue story over and over in my head.” She couldn’t decipher the expression on Gabe’s face now. It had morphed into something like wonder.
“Then why did you try to run that night? Why didn’t you trust me when I said I could help you?”
“Because it was a fantasy. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe in those by that point. And you were definitely working with those guys. All the girls there knew it. Dmitri made a really big deal about your arrival with big threats if one of us displeased you. And I was afraid of you. I’m still afraid of you.”