I don’t know the exact purpose of all the different floggers and paddles and restraints on display. My knowledge on this subject originates from the few bits and pieces I read in a Cosmo magazine. After Lavinia read the article, she whined for a whole month about how she would never let a man do those things to her. And that’s when I realized for the first time just how messed up I was.
It wasn’t that I wanted these things, exactly, but there were parts of the dynamic between a powerful man and a submissive woman that made me recognize something depraved in myself. I was no stranger to pain. Narcissa had been doling it out my entire life. So, when I examine Thorsen’s tools of torture, I can only wonder what it would feel like when he uses them on me.
He’s already spanked me. He’s already fucked my mouth. And soon, he will destroy the only innocence I have left. True to his word, he delivered the first receipt with proof of his donation to Hilliard, along with a new pack of birth control patches and instructions on how to use them. I put the first patch on yesterday, which means in six more days, it will be effective, and he’ll come for me again. When he does, I can’t help wondering what will be left of me.
Will he be rough? Will he be gentle, at least for the first time? I swallow as I recall the size of his cock. It’s at that moment, the door to my suite opens, and the man himself appears.
Our eyes clash, and it feels like a lightning storm in my veins. Fire crackles in the air between us, and for a split second, I can tell he feels it too. There’s something different about him this evening. I can sense it when he locks the door behind him and stalks toward me. Maybe it’s the rigid set of his shoulders or the tightness in his jaw. The hurricane in his eyes seems more turbulent than this morning, and on instinct, I back up, bumping into the apothecary cabinet.
“Did I tell you to put on a bathrobe?” he asks, his voice low and menacing.
My fingers curl around the soft material, holding onto it as if he could make it implode merely by looking at it.
“It was in the bathroom.”
“I want you naked,” he growls. “I want you ready. Don’t make me say it again, Ella.”
I wasn’t wrong about his mood. He looms over me, his features a mask of anguish that runs so deep, I can almost picture the divide in his soul. I want to ask him about it. I want to unearth his most intimate secrets and expose the man hiding within the beast, but that’s a dangerous want to have.
My eyes move over his face, and the energy between us shifts again. An electric current. A drop in temperature. Storm Thorsen is coming, and I realize I’m not at all prepared for it.
His fingers curl around mine, prying them away from my robe. Deftly, he unties the knot at my waist and peels the material off my shoulders. The robe pools on the floor, and a shiver moves through me as his eyes rake over me with an intensity that feels like a physical caress.
“Do you want to play, gudinne?” He cups my face in his large hand, and unconsciously, I lean into his warmth. For that one second, he is so gentle I could almost believe everything is going to be okay. And then he grabs me by the hair and wrenches my head back so I can’t look away from him.
“Tell me how much you hate me.”
I’m silent. Tense. Confused. I don’t know what he wants from me. It feels like a trick until his eyes betray him. He wants me to provoke him. He wants me to make him angry so he can use that emotion to do whatever he wants.
“Does it matter how I feel about you?” I ask softly. “I’m here so you can do what you like with me. This is what we agreed on.”
“Say it,” he commands, the vein in his neck throbbing. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“My emotions are mine.” I level my eyes at him. “You can have my body, but not my thoughts.”
“I’ll have what I want.” He wraps his fingers around my throat, squeezing in warning. “Your only purpose is to please me. Now get on your knees.”
When I fail to comply, he cages me in against the cabinet and uses his grip on my throat to arch me back until my legs give out, and I crumple before him. When his hand falls away, I drag in a deep breath, massaging the sting he left behind. There’s something so depraved in me to enjoy this. I don’t want to analyze it too closely, but his brutality is hardwired to produce a chemical reaction in me. I want more of this violence. This push and pull between us. I want him to exert his sovereign power over me every chance he gets.
“You’re learning.” He pets my hair with a tenderness I didn’t think he was capable of only a moment ago.
When he hauls my face toward his trousers, my cheek rubs against his erection. It’s harder than steel, pulsing against my skin, even through the material.
“Kiss it,” he murmurs.
My hands fall onto his leather Oxfords, clinging to his feet as I peek up at him. Is it the magnetic pull between us or our agreement that urges me to bring my lips to the caged beast throbbing in his trousers? I can’t be sure of anything right now, only that when I follow his command and kiss his royal endowment, he rumbles his approval, and that sound ricochets through me like a bullet.
Slowly, he unzips his trousers, his eyes searching for something inside me. Revulsion. Deceit. Mistrust. Whatever it is, he doesn’t find it. The muscles in his forearm flex, and he glares down at me with obvious disappointment.
“You aren’t fooling anyone.”
“I’m not trying to,” I whisper.
His eyes cloud over, and for a long moment, he just watches me as if he’s trying to figure me out. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think I’m fighting a losing battle with Thorsen. Against my better judgment, I’m here. I’m giving him two months of my life to torment me, control me, own me. But still, he is doubtful.
When he reaches down and tugs the tie from the bathrobe out of the loops, a nervous tension blooms in my gut. He grabs my chin and wraps the fabric belt around my head several times, obscuring my eyes. And I have to wonder why. Why doesn’t he want me to see him?
The warmth of his fingers slips away once he’s finished, and I’m entombed in darkness. But I can still hear him moving around the room. Opening a drawer in the cabinet, and then another. When he returns, he fists a handful of my hair and tugs me upright again, walking me in a different direction until my knees bump against the bed, and I collapse forward. My face falls against the comforter as he pulls my hips back, spreading my legs apart. His hands feel huge on me, and I don’t doubt that he could easily break me. He’s the most powerful man I’ve ever seen, and I don’t know how my body will sustain him.
He grabs my wrists and secures them behind my back, binding them with what feels like another rope. And then his fingers trace over the scars on my arms, eliciting a trail of goose bumps down my spine.
“It’s a shame to see such beautiful skin destroyed,” he mutters.
My body tenses beneath him, but he doesn’t acknowledge my discomfort. His warmth disappears for a second, and then I hear a bottle opening. When he touches me again, he glides his palm over the curve of my ass, prying my cheeks apart and forcing me to open for him.
“I can smell how much you want me,” he hums. “You filthy little liar. Does your hate for me get you off?”
My lips seal shut. That question feels like too much of a minefield to navigate, and I don’t want to go there. Regardless, Thorsen doesn’t wait for a response. The next thing I feel is something cold and metallic sliding through my arousal before it settles somewhere forbidden.