Maybe he didn’t want her anymore. He’d seen what he could have with a woman who could handle him and now he wasn’t interested in a woman little more than a child. Faith angrily scrubbed away an escaping tear. Why should she care one way or the other? None of this had been her choice. It wasn’t as if she’d pursued him. He’d brought her home in the same way he’d brought the kitten home. Like some pet, some animal who didn’t get a choice in where they were going to live, or the conditions they would live in, or the kindness or meanness of their master.
The images on the screen flickered past her, a series of flashing lights with no content her mind could grab onto. Likewise the spoken words were mere noise. She turned off the TV and went after Leo.
She found him in his office, a room she’d been forbidden to enter. He sat at his desk, writing in that damned black book again. He didn’t look up.
“Yes, Faith?”
“Y-you said I could tell you my answer after everybody left.”
He closed the book and spun in his chair to face her, one leg propped on top of the other in a relaxed posture. If this meeting created any emotions, he didn’t give them away.
“Well?” he prodded, after a few moments.
The answer is no. I’m sorry. I’m going to go back to my room in the east wing if that’s okay. “Yes. I want to be with you.”
“Don’t you want to see the dungeon before you make that decision?” Her eyes went to the floor, unable to stand the way he looked at her.
Through her. “Okay.”
She waited for him to give her some kind of instruction, tell her what to do with the rest of her life or just this moment. What to call him? Would she have to call him Master like he’d insisted that first night? The idea was still weird to her, but at least it wasn’t terrifying. Not like the other worse things he would insist upon.
The chair creaked when he got up. “Follow me.”
He took her down several hallways she hadn’t been down because they were forbidden. They were smaller and more ominous, warning visitors away with their lack of light. At the end of one of the hallways was a large metal door. Leo took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed a switch on the wall.
A string of LED lights along the ceiling came on, lighting the path of the carpeted spiral stairs that went on and on into an endless abyss, maybe even into hell. And here was the devil standing beside her with a smooth smile and his hand extended like a gentleman toward the waiting doom.
“After you,” he said.
If she went down these steps, would he ever let her back up them again? She chided herself for being so dramatic. They were getting married in June. Of course she’d come out again. Caprice had survived whatever they’d done together and kept coming back for more. Leo had killed the man who’d abused his sister. Whatever these feelings were, they couldn’t be her worst fears. It didn’t line up with the facts.
She was surprised the dungeon was posh. Like a cave one might escape to in order to read a book if there had been strong enough light.
“Look around. Nothing is off limits. I want you fully informed. No excuses.”
Hesitantly, Faith explored the vast underground room. How it could be so big, so ominous, and so cozy all at once, she didn’t know. There was standard living room furniture and a bed and a small kitchen and a bathroom. Then there were several pieces of black- and red-leather furniture that looked like high-fashion torture equipment. The actual dungeon part had concrete floors, while the apartment area was carpeted, though it was all one, unbroken space save for the bathroom.
Along one wall were several hooks that held mysterious metal objects, riding crops, whips, and paddles. Underneath this section was a tray of sorts that slid out from a slot in the wall and held long pieces of metal and wood. She trembled as she ran her fingers along the top of one of the metal rods.
She didn’t know what these rods were called, but she knew Leo hit people with them.
“Those are canes. Why don’t you give one a nice slice through the air? You don’t begin to truly understand it until you hear it.”
Her hand shook as she picked up one of the implements. The sound it made when it ripped through the air would have made her drop it and run if not for Leo’s words interrupting her panic.
“With my medical knowledge, there are so many things I could do to you and bring you back from.”
He was trying to scare her away. There was no other reason to say something so crazy when she was so close to giving him what he wanted.
Faith took a deep breath and placed the metal cane on the tray, but it slipped out of her hand and clattered on the concrete, bouncing several times, the tin sound ringing in her ears. She snatched it up and put it back, sliding the metal tray into the wall slot and taking a shaky breath to steady her nerves. Leo made no move to comfort her.
“Go ahead and check out the toy box. Everything I keep in there is made of materials I can clean. It’s all been sterilized, so it’s safe. Except the rope, but all the rope is new.”
The giant black leather container was Pandora’s box with all the evil of the world inside. Vibrators, dildos, handcuffs, ropes, anal plugs, containers of lubricant, and a few things she didn’t recognize.
While the box was open, Faith imagined she heard screaming inside her head. Noise and warnings and anxiety swirled around her like invisible smoke. When she shut the box, they stopped. She turned to find Leo sitting on the red leather couch against the wall, his arms spread along the back, and she wondered for a second exactly how long she’d been staring into that box like some brainless zombie.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
Making one foot move in front of the other felt like breaking out of a block of solid ice.
“No. Come on your knees.”
She might have hesitated, except that crawling was so much less taxing than walking at the moment. She felt lightheaded. It required less force of will to travel across the floor on her hands and knees, no matter how demeaning it might be.
Maybe she could still get out of this. Would he allow her to make the choice to stop everything? If she stopped it, though, she might remain celibate the rest of her life, cloistered away in the glassed-in room with all the sunlight but no real warmth. How would she live, never being touched by this man? But how would she live down here letting him use all those things on her?
When she reached him, he stroked her hair and she leaned against his leg, trying not to cry. The last time she’d been this upset had been the night he’d brought her home. The difference now was that she knew what he would do, and it wouldn’t be a one-time thing. This was something he needed.
“Why do you want this, Faith?” He continued to stroke her hair while he spoke in a soothing, low tone as if he were hypnotizing her. If only he had that power, everything would be easier.
“I-I want you, I-I want it to be real. I can’t live a lie every year for your family, indefinitely. It would break me.” There was a sad kind of pity on his face. When he caught her studying him, she looked back down. She couldn’t look him in the eyes and still force herself to say the rest. “And you said you couldn’t be vanilla. Y-you said you had to have the whole package.”
“You watched me send Caprice away. Are you sure this isn’t about your fears? I told you that she and I were never going to be an item. She’s not what I want in my life.”
“If not Caprice, it will be someone else. What then?”
“I would never put your life at risk.”
“Can’t you trust me and let me go? Don’t you know me well enough to know I’ll never say anything?”
“I may believe that, but Angelo won’t.”
She knew she might be digging a hole, but she had to say it. “I don’t believe that’s the reason you’re keeping me.”
He laughed. “What other reason could there be?”
Faith went quiet. There was no way she could put it into words, and if she succeeded she would only feel foolish when he laughed at her. Again. Maybe it was about Angelo and not being able to let an innocent bystander die. But he had to know that keeping her in a cage wasn’t much better than a quick death.
“Go move your things back to your room, Faith. We aren’t doing this.” “I-I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“You haven’t offended me, but we both know you don’t want this.”
“I want you.” Even as she begged to be his, part of her hoped he would send her away and spare her.
“But not enough for this. I can see it written in your body language.
This isn’t for you. Go before I change my mind.” She hesitated.
“Go!”
Faith fled out of the dungeon. She didn’t stop until she reached Leo’s room. Whatever his reasoning, he didn’t want her. She’d practically thrown herself at him, and he’d pushed her away. What the fuck kind of magic powers did Caprice have that made it possible for her to seduce Leo when Faith couldn’t manage it? The other woman wasn’t even that pretty.
***
Leo cursed at the empty room. She said yes, you dumbass, said the demon on one shoulder, who looked more like Angelo than Leo in his smooth Armani and scar-free face. She’s too scared for this, you did the right thing, said Father Leo on the other shoulder.
In reality, he knew she wouldn’t talk. She wasn’t the type who wanted to be a hero or get involved with the police. Given all the time he’d spent with her, and the time Angelo had spent with her, he was certain he could convince his brother that she was safe to release into the wild.
But she was his. Even if he could never bring himself to break down and use her in the way he wanted, he’d grown used to thinking of her as his to protect and own. Even if he never whipped her or tied her up or fucked her, he owned her more than any woman who had ever been in this dungeon, and he couldn’t bring himself to let that go. She was all promise and possibility-the only thing standing in his way was himself. And some day that barrier would crumble and he’d be free to have her.
Faith was his only chance to feed the urge that lived underneath every other urge. To own a human being was the driving need that underscored everything else. He couldn’t bring himself to give that up, no matter how many weak rationalizations he had to make. He could never let her go.
It was like owning an exotic bird. The idea wasn’t enough, a picture wasn’t enough, visiting one at the zoo wasn’t enough. It had to be there, in his home, in his possession.
Leo turned out the lights and locked up the dungeon, then he went back upstairs to his office and opened the black leather journal. He’d made lists of alternatives. There were kink clubs he could go to, people he could meet for casual flings. Ways he could do this that didn’t involve Faith losing parts of herself she could never retrieve or him traveling further down a path of no return-sins that even a priest couldn’t absolve him of.
A relationship with someone else was out of the question. No matter how obedient any potential sub was, letting her find out about Faith would be an extra complication he didn’t need. What if Faith got fed up and tried to get help? He could trust Demetri and the rest of the staff. They’d been with the family for over a decade. He couldn’t trust any random, kinky woman.
And subs were perceptive. Sometimes too perceptive. They spent all their time studying their dominant, learning to be receptive and available to his every need almost before he knew it himself. That kind of observation didn’t create a fertile environment for lies. Whoever he brought into his home as more than a casual spank and fuck would figure out there was more to the Faith situation and his complicated tangle of feelings than whatever he would say. Then there would be jealousy and drama.
Whatever he did had to stay contained and emotionally distant with all the parameters laid out clearly in the beginning. It couldn’t be another Caprice. He tried to push down the voice in his head that said he couldn’t be happy with a woman who couldn’t give him everything. And everything included her heart.
***