The Prince's Slave Page 24

  She shifted uncomfortably and felt his hand on her flank, resting there for a brief moment, almost the way one might use touch to comfort a skittish animal. She at once hated the touch and hated that she did feel comforted. She tried to remind herself that he wasn’t trying to hurt her, even though he was. That whatever he was planning on doing surely couldn’t be worse than what he’d already done.

  He tested her bonds, making sure they weren’t too tight. She waited, more curious than tense. She’d had too much to drink to be tense. The feeling of wanting to be tense came and went, just out of reach, an ephemeral thing she couldn’t quite grasp.

  “I should get you drunk more often,” he observed. “You’re quite delightful like this.”

  “When I forget to be scared.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. A shadow flickered across his face, and was gone. The bland, vaguely sardonic look was back. “Darling,” he said, “I have something to tell you.” He used an endearment, addressing her, that he’d never used before. He’d never, to the best of her knowledge, used any endearment.

  “You’ve been a delightful companion these past few weeks. I’ve enjoyed using you for my own pleasure, as well as awakening yours. And, shall we say, broadening your horizons. But, not to put too vulgar an emphasis on the matter, you’re still a virgin in one very important aspect.”

  As she processed his words, her eyes widened. He’d forced her into his bed the second night she’d been there. And since then he’d used her, to borrow his phrase, in just about every way possible. Their couplings had been at times deliberate and at times hot, sweaty and spontaneous. He’d introduced her to all the sensations that came with each different position, although in every case he’d been the one in control. She didn’t think she was ready for anything else, as that would involve admitting things she didn’t want to admit. Especially to herself. That however much she might hate him, she genuinely did enjoy sex.

  So long as he was forcing her, she could pretend that it wasn’t her decision.

  But she definitely wasn’t ready for this.

  “So again, not to be vulgar but I’ve enjoyed the pleasures of your mouth and, ah, your….” He trailed his hand down over her flank again as he stood up.

  Referring back to the first incident, Belle had already vowed that if the moment ever arose she’d bite it off. And had fully intended to, right up until the moment actually occurred. Part of her, quite simply, couldn’t bring herself to harm another human being. Even one as revolting as Ash. And part of her had found his vulnerability, even as he grabbed her head and forced her back against the wall, oddly alluring.

  He began doing something, just out of her line of sight. She’d learned that he liked this, teasing her with the unknown. “As unappetizing as you find this proposition,” he began, “anal sex is intensely pleasurable if performed correctly. I have every intention that you’ll become addicted to the sensation, craving it. And thus becoming, more and more, my willing slave.” He stopped, thinking. Then, she heard him moving around the room.

  She couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not.

  Her head had begun to clear, but only slightly.

  He continued.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Her education was, at the very least, an unconventional one.

  “Anal sex requires more foreplay and patience. Much more, in fact, which in and of itself increases the odds of orgasm. Privately, I’ve always believed that the reason so many women submit to various acts of bondage is that the focus for once is on them. On their pleasure, however crudely or cruelly obtained. Whereas, with so-called vanilla sex, the focus is always on the man. A considerate lover is one who heroically delays his own gratification in the vague ambition that the woman involved might somehow be able to achieve her own.

  “Nevertheless, she’s still responsible—if only for coaching him in what to do. In most cases, save perhaps with a lover she knows exceptionally well, she can never truly relax.”

  Belle had heard Charlotte complain enough to know that this was probably true.

  Charlotte had always made sex sound awful. Whether she enjoyed herself or not was pretty much a craps shoot. Most men had small penises and the average sex session lasted less than five minutes. A statistic that apparently included foreplay.

  “Nature makes it easier to have…vanilla sex,” he said, a slight trace of humor to his tone, “when the man is hasty and self-absorbed.” She felt his hand on her again. She started; she hadn’t realized that he was behind her. His voice was almost hypnotizing. “The more the partners trust each other, the more likely they both are to have a satisfying experience.

  “And trust…is earned.”

  He ran his hand back and forth over her once, twice, and then stopped. She felt his fingers exploring her—there. And something cold and wet. She yelped. He was probing her, opening her. The sensation was half unpleasant but mostly bizarre.

  And then there was something pressing on her, into her, widening her.

  She moaned at what was almost pain, but not quite.

  “This is a plug,” he explained, “a crude term for an erotic device that’s been used for centuries. To arouse, and to control.”

  The pressure was slow but inexorable. She felt herself widening and widening; it didn’t seem possible that she could be stretched this far and not explode. She couldn’t help but try to escape it, but of course she couldn’t. She could barely move at all. She was horribly aware, also, of how exposed she was. Pressure became pain and pain became a single moment of unbelievable agony and then…the strangest sensation she’d ever felt in her life.

  Fullness. Pressure. Alien but not entirely unwelcome.

  “Over time,” he said, straightening up, “your body will become more used to the experience and will yield much more easily. As with anything, the first time is always the hardest.”

  And then he was gone.

  Belle lay prone, her head turned toward the fireplace as she waited. And waited. She was close enough that she lay within the pocket of warm air that the fire created; the rest of the room was chill, as the entire castle was chill. Castles were notoriously difficult to heat, she thought darkly. An occasional gust from nowhere blew over her, raising gooseflesh and making her shiver. The insulation wasn’t exactly modern.

  With no other form of stimulation, she couldn’t help but focus on the object inside her. She felt herself spasm around it and then, slowly, gradually, she began to relax. As she did, she became aware of a growing heat in her loins. Of expectation. Desire. The constant awareness of her penetration was maddening.

  He returned, and sat down on the couch. She turned her head. He was wearing his robe and managed, equally maddeningly, to look quite glamorous. In sharp contrast to her own state. He lounged comfortably, the picture of relaxed elegance, a drink in one hand. He seemed to enjoy watching her, his eyes roving over her form with all the slow indulgence of a lover’s caress.

  “How does it feel?”

  “It feels…strange,” she said.

  But, she had to admit—if only to herself—good. A strange kind of good, tingling and warm and powerful. But good.

  He placed his glass on the floor and stood up. She felt his hands on her shoulders, her back, and then he was kissing her neck as she felt his weight on top of her. Neither of them needed to say anything. There were no canned speeches, like in the romance novels, where he asserted his dominance. He didn’t have to. His hands explored her, caressing, pinching, the fingers of one hand twisting and playing with her nipple as his other guided her mouth to his.

  And then there was a strange feeling of emptiness and then…him. Instinctively, she pushed back against him as she felt him enter her. He moved slowly, agonizingly slowly. Filling her. She whimpered. His hand trailed down, toying with her most sensitive places. The immediate rush of sensation was overwhelming.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, his lips against her ear.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Was she? Wasn’t she
? She didn’t know.

  She’d never felt so completely connected to, and owned by another human being. The intimacy was astonishing. She felt like her entire body had been penetrated, like she was no longer in control of even the slightest movement. She tensed, once, and then relaxed.

  When her climax came, it was mind-blowing. And everywhere, all at once. She couldn’t even tell if she was conscious, sucked down into a sea of sensation. She just lay there, limp, as he thrust himself inside her. He was inside of her, but not of inside her; the sensation was so strange. But then…without fingers, without anything, she came again.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Later on, curled up in bed next to him, clean from a bath she barely remembered taking and warm in his shirt and surrounded by covers, she thought. He’d talked about trust. Did she trust him? What was trust, really?

  “What are you thinking about?”

  He’d poured himself a glass of water and was sipping it as he read something on a tablet. He never stopped working for long. Was it possible that—that they’d developed a routine? As shocked as she was by the idea, she found herself considering his question. He’d asked it before; he seemed to want to know. He was, she’d come to realize, the only person she’d ever known who’d asked. And quite possibly the only person who’d ever listened to the answer.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m thinking about trust.”

  He put down his tablet. “What about trust?”

  “What it is, and isn’t.”

  Outside, the rain that had plagued them off and on for days had let up again. The wind was still strong, though. She wondered if this was what it had been like, a hundred years ago, lying in bed in this very room. Next to a strange man, listening to the wind and wondering what lurked out there in the night. It was no accident, she’d come to believe, that the Carpathian Mountains spawned legends of vampires.

  “Trust is both an emotional and a logical act,” he said. “But mostly logical; in business, as in life—real life, I mean, not the artificial constructs of capitalism. Trust is essentially a values exchange. A company exchanges working conditions, and pay, for the promise of productivity from its workers; said workers come to work, in return, on the assumption that such boons will be granted. Mutual trust.

  “Outside of that environment, we call it trust when we receive what we expect to receive: fidelity, honesty, affection given in exchange for affection.”

  Belle considered this response. How like Ash to frame things in completely non-emotional terms. She’d wondered, before, if he even had emotions. If he was capable of them.

  The term sociopath was overused these days, to describe everything from people who’d had psychotic breaks and gone on killing sprees to people who were simply jerks. Neither of whom, ironically, were sociopaths. Someone who’d suffered a break from reality was by definition not a sociopath and being a manipulative didn’t make someone a sociopath, either. Rather, a sociopath was someone who lacked any sense of empathy or, in turn, moral responsibility.

  A sociopath wasn’t immoral, he was amoral.

  Without conscience. Without regret.

  And Ash? What was he? Ash lived in reality, unlike the poor slob who suddenly went postal and shot up a McDonald’s, and he understood how other people worked. Often better than they did; with no emotions, himself, he had the advantage of being a disinterested observer. And, like a sociopath, he was excellent at aping so-called normal behavior. They knew how to appear to have emotions; Belle had learned that much from her reading.

  But, however genuine a sociopath’s performance, he was still an actor.

  That Ash was at least an antisocial personality seemed obvious. He had a long history, by his own admission, of manipulating, exploiting or otherwise violating the rights of others. He referred to himself, candidly, as having no soul. His behavior was often criminal. She was fairly certain that the simple fact of her being here, now, violated several laws.

  “The way I see it,” she said, “Disney has ruined it for everybody.”

  He passed her his water, and she took a sip.

  Then, since he appeared to be waiting for her to continue, she did. “Growing up, I watched them all. My mother was a Disney fanatic, hence the name.” She shrugged, half embarrassed. “She always told me that she wanted me to have adventures—except I realized early on that by adventures she meant never leaving Maine.” Belle chuckled mirthlessly. “Appropriate, given that she named me after a girl who has all of her adventures locked in a castle.

  “In Beauty and the Beast, and indeed in all Disney movies, the couple meet and fall in love—seemingly overnight, if it even takes that long—and after enduring some sort of completely unrealistic struggle ride off into the sunset. In Sleeping Beauty, the prince falls in love with Aurora after hearing her sing. And in The Little Mermaid, Prince Eric is so ‘in love’ that he doesn’t even know which girl is which!”

  “And they call me barbarian,” Ash said dryly.

  “Courtship leads to love, and love leads to intimacy, and intimacy leads to sex. Its all very pat.”

  Trust, little girls were led to believe, implicitly, came from love; therefore, trust existed once people had sex. Except, as her friend Sarah’s experience had proved, and all of Charlotte’s experiences certainly proved, sex existed quite well without love. And love—and certainly infatuation—existed quite well without trust.

  People hurt each other all the time, people they claimed to love. So why was it so surprising that trust, and even intimacy, could exist without love? Or even like?

  Ash was right, that their…exercises had built a certain degree of trust. And Belle, of necessity by this point, felt comfortable in his space. Most of the time. She’d come to know his habits, to anticipate that certain actions meant certain things. She’d begun to anticipate what he wasn’t going to do, and that was just as important. She knew, or knew as much as she could know, that he wasn’t going to fly off the handle simply because she disagreed with him. That he wasn’t a screamer, like her mother, or a brooder, like her father. But that, by the same token, he had ways of making his displeasure known.

  She knew—or thought she knew—that he wasn’t going to lock her in a cage, or brand her. Or beat her senseless. He’d hit her before, but not out of anger; he needed her to be in pain, or at least in some sort of discomfort, to become aroused. And while he’d spanked her enough to make her howl, he always stopped when he drew blood. And usually long before that. The first time she’d felt the fat, warm drop of blood trickle in between her thighs she’d felt a fresh spike of terror. But he’d stopped, and when he’d taken her he’d been gentle.

  She hadn’t minded.

  At least, not much.

  THIRTY-NINE

  She looked up from her book, surprised.

  And, she had to admit, nervous. Ash was standing there, watching her, his trim physique framed by the door. She didn’t know how long he had been watching her, either, and that made her nervous too. The appearance of her captor rarely signaled good things, particularly during daylight hours. It wasn’t yet noon; he should be working.

  Strong morning sun poured through her bedroom windows. Belle hadn’t been outside yet, but suspected that they’d experienced something of a reprieve from the previous week’s cold snap. Certainly the wind had stopped blowing; the trees were no longer whipping back and forth like frenzied dancers at a rave. She hoped that they were getting what, in her childhood, had been referred to as an Indian summer.

  She’d decided, earlier, that she’d imagine it so. Because she wasn’t going outdoors. What would be the point?

  There was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. She was a prisoner, although she had to admit that—for the most part—she wasn’t treated like one. Still, she hadn’t yet really tried to defy her captor. Not in any meaningful way. Her petty resistances were just that: petty. The defiant acts of a toddler avoiding bedtime.

  So she spent most of her time in this room, brooding. Her room, suppose
dly, although there was nothing of ownership in the title. It wasn’t as though she could lock Ash out, if she wanted to. Or prevent Luna from coming in to do whatever it was that Luna had been sent in to do. Wax her, pluck her, buff her raw with various scrubs. Or prevent Diana from sending in whichever sour-faced, silent person had been assigned to clean.

  Belle was, her father would have said, more useless than a bump on a log.

  A knowledge, which grated.

  She’d thought about going for a run, but found herself sitting here instead.

  Worrying.

  She wasn’t treated like a prisoner—now. But what if she really resisted? She’d never been a stupid girl, and she knew full well that she and Ash and everyone else in this accursed hole were maintaining a delicate balance. Like elements in an ecosystem. All it needed, for disaster to strike, was for one element to fail. And then everything else would, too, the little world they’d managed to create toppling down like a house of cards. She had only to tell Ash no for his true face to show: the man for whom words like no and stop held no meaning. What did it matter that he treated her with courtesy, when his courtesy was an act?

  This might be a gilded cage, but it was still a cage.

  She waited. He still hadn’t spoken. Seemed, indeed, content to watch her.

  She only saw him when he wanted something. Usually sex. Sex, which was presaged by some form of torment. Exhausting her with his verbal sparring matches, making her feel lost and confused and stupid. Spanking her with an open hand until she bled. Sometimes caning her. Whipping her, once. The lines of liquid fire that had run up and down her skin had been agony.

  He needed her pain. Her fear. He couldn’t get hard without it. And there was, in turn, a strange kind of intimacy in her forced acceptance. She was terrified of him, hated him sometimes, but she excited something in him. As he, to her shame, excited something in her. At least sometimes. A realization that made her hate him more. She didn’t want to feel anything when he touched her. Anything except loathing.