FrankenDom

  His lips quirked. “That’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  “God, I hope not, Sir,” I said with feeling. I looked around. “Am I supposed to use a leaf?”

  “I wouldn’t, unless you’re sure you know what poison oak and poison ivy look like. You’ll have to drip dry. Just give it a good shake. That’s what I do.”

  I sighed with penis envy.

  When I straightened, he stepped up and unhooked me from the line. Then he reached behind him and pulled a leather leash out of his back pocket, and I sighed again.

  “Really, Sir?”

  “Shh. No speaking unless spoken to now, slave, or I’ll make you crawl back.”

  Feeling as though I were on much firmer ground now, I let him lead me back into the house and returned to my spot by his feet to read the contract. When he told me he’d emailed me a copy of everything and I could go over the reading and website lists at my leisure, I sent him a narrow-eyed look. The devious Dom had set me up with that big bottle of water, extended wait, and long-ass reading assignment, hadn’t he?

  He grinned. “Get used to it, Rachel. I learned from the master of mind-fucks.”

  After I signed the contract, he gave me a tour of the house, still leading me by the leash. There were two lovely guest rooms on the second floor, each with its own bath, but he didn’t say anything about either being for me and I wasn’t taking anything for granted. There were two other doors at the end of the hallway that he said were his room and Julian’s, but we didn’t go in those. Instead, he took me back downstairs and showed me the laundry room. I cheered inwardly when he told me it was there if I needed it but they had a housekeeping service that came out twice a week to take care of laundry and other household chores.

  I held my breath when we went down to the basement. As expected, the stairs opened onto a torture chamber—one filled with strength training machines, a treadmill and a stationary bike. Yay.

  “I hope you’ve been keeping up with your workouts,” he said severely. When I grimaced, he shook his head. “You’ve been a very bad girl then, Rachel. We’ll have to do something about that.”

  At the other end of the room was a locked door to which Colin had they key. When he opened it and turned on the lights, I was unsurprised to see a dungeon, heavy on medical technology and light on BDSM furniture. The carpeted section of the room was a mini-dungeon with a single cross, a padded metal sawhorse, some kind of metal crossbar thing on the floor, and a tall, shallow cabinet that I assumed contained toys. At the back was a seating area with a leather couch and a few chairs.

  But it was the coldly tiled medical area that captured my attention and made my stomach flutter with excitement. If that wasn’t the exam table from Bangenschloss, it was an exact duplicate. And beside it was a dental chair of some sort, accompanied by a rolling cart with the same e-stim machine I’d seen my first night at the castle. The countertop along the wall held lots of equipment I hadn’t seen before and had no idea what it was for.

  Colin hummed with amusement. “I suspect somebody’s getting a little wet right about now.”

  I flashed him a coy look, glad for once that I couldn’t speak.

  “Go bend over the exam table, ass facing the cabinets,” he ordered.

  My tummy twisted with nerves but I obeyed, leaning over the side of the exam table and recoiling slightly when my breasts landed on the cool vinyl. I heard a door slam behind me, followed by the opening and closing of a drawer and the snap of a rubber glove. Then I jumped when Colin spread my butt cheeks with one hand.

  “Look at that wet cunt,” he tutted. “You’re such a slut, Rachel.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Being a slut for Colin was so much better than being lonely and miserable in Seattle.

  Cold gloved fingers slid into my butt and spent a few minutes twisting and tugging while my breath stuttered in my throat. God, I’d missed him and his anal fetish. I almost cried when he pulled out.

  “This one has to be big to stay in properly,” he warned a second before something cold and hard began pushing into me. After stiffening instinctively, I relaxed and tried to let it in. Just when it became painful, the stretching eased and the plug settled into place. He quickly swiped me up, forward and back, with what felt like a disposable wipe. I appreciated that very much after my adventure in the yard.

  Then something soft twitched back and forth across my thighs and Colin chuckled.

  “Very nice, little slut-puppy,” he murmured.

  Oh hellfire and damnation. He’d given me a tail.

  * * * * *

  Walking had never been so disconcerting and uncomfortable, and it was a relief when the tour finally ended at the first-floor home office. In the center of the huge room, two large desks faced each other, and behind each were built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with medical and science books. To my left was a bank of filing cabinets. And on the opposite wall, under the wide, sunny picture window, sat a long, low wrought-iron cage with a thin mattress in the bottom and a tasseled throw pillow at one end.

  I wasn’t surprised when Colin tugged me directly to it and opened the door at the end.

  Unhooking the leash, he said, “In you go.”

  Offering him a long-suffering look, I crawled in, wincing when the door clanged shut behind me.

  “Good girl,” he said, crouching beside the cage to smile at me while I found a comfortable position sitting gingerly on one cheek. He reached between the bars and touched my face with his fingertips. “You always look beautiful, slave, but you look exceptionally lovely as a puppy.”

  When I grimaced, his grin widened. “Accept the compliment gracefully or I’ll put the puppy hood and mitts on you. A lick or kiss of my hand will suffice, since you don’t have permission to speak.”

  I quickly kissed his long, sensitive fingers, and then licked them for good measure. When he didn’t withdraw, I kept licking, watching his face as he watched my tongue slide over his skin. He looked mesmerized. And hungry.

  “Very good girl,” he said roughly before pulling back and standing up. “All right, slave, I have to work for an hour or so and then if you’re nice and quiet, we’ll have lunch in the kitchen. Take a nap if you wish. You probably could use the sleep.”

  He sat at one of the desks and went right to work on his laptop, so I laid down on my side with my head on the pillow. For a long time, I just watched his beautiful face as he frowned in concentration and occasionally smiled or chuckled at something. Did he have any idea how thrilling it was to be able to do that after all the misery of the last six months?

  Sometime later, I woke to the feel of something tickling my foot and jerked my leg up, banging my knee on one of the bars. “Ow.”

  “Time for lunch, slave. Did you have a good nap?”

  “Yes, Sir.” Rubbing my knee, I sat up and realized he’d covered me with a soft throw while I slept.

  “You looked beautiful but a little chilly.” When I backed out of the cage and stood, he pointed at a ceiling vent. “That vent blows right on the cage, which I enjoy, but I run hotter than you do.”

  Startled, I cocked my head. “Does that mean—”

  “You don’t have permission to speak, slave,” he reminded me, clipping the leash back on me. “Do you have to go?”

  I shook my head quickly.

  “Good. This way then.”

  With visions of a naked, caged Colin dancing in my mind’s eye, I followed him to the kitchen. I was surprised to find the table already set—for one. On the floor beside the table were two large, shallow bowls, one filled with water and another filled with what looked like dog food.

  This was carrying things just a little too far. I crossed my arms and glared at him.

  Clearly fighting a grin, he raised a brow. “Something on your mind, slave?”

  I stomped over and pointed at the food.

  Colin snorted and plucked his own spoon off the table. Squatting beside the bowls, he scooped up a bite and at
e it. “Tastes fine to me. You don’t like beef stew?”

  Grrrr. Master of mind-fucks, indeed.

  “Don’t growl at me again, pup, or I’ll muzzle you until dinnertime,” he warned. “Now eat. I have work to do this afternoon.”

  Sighing, I knelt down in front of the bowls.

  “Here.” Colin pulled a thick, folded towel from the chair and slid it under my knees, and then tied my hair into a knot behind my neck.

  I batted my lashes at him and he smiled. “You’re welcome. Eat.”

  Heaving one more sigh, I leaned down on my hands and sniffed the stew. It smelled all right but didn’t look very hot. Which was probably to keep me from burning my face, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. Opening my mouth, I tried to neatly pick out a piece of beef but my chin and nose both dipped into the stew before my teeth even got close.

  I looked at Colin, who was still squatting beside me, and he grinned from ear to ear.

  “You’re the cutest damn puppy I ever saw, Rachel McBride,” he told me, rising to take his seat.

  Well, I was glad he was happy. Deciding there was no neat way to eat with my mouth, I went for broke. The stew was actually pretty good—the parts of it that didn’t go up my nose, that is. I ate until I was satisfied, not wanting to contaminate my water with stew until the last possible minute.

  “Rachel.”

  I looked up and Colin took my picture with his phone. I glared at him and he did it again, laughing heartily.

  That did it. I lurched up from the floor and dived for him, intending to kiss him until he looked just like me, but he managed to grab my wrists and hold them out far enough away from him to stay clean.

  “Bad puppy!” he scolded, standing up. “You made me drop my phone.”

  He dragged me over to the kitchen sink, then gripped the back of my collar and held my head over one side. When I heard the water turn on and the zzzzzzip of the sprayer nozzle being pulled out, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath just in time. Colin blasted my face with tepid water long after the stew was gone, waiting for me to take another breath. He wasn’t satisfied until I was coughing and sputtering and fighting to get away.

  “You’re lucky this is Texas,” he told me, wiping my face none too gently with a paper towel. “In Montaneva the tap water is twenty degrees colder.”

  Long past shyness now, I blew my nose in the general direction of the paper towel, trying to get rid of the last of the stew. Colin took the hint and held it close enough so I could blow harder.

  “You’re welcome,” he said again, dropping it into the trash can. Then he leaned down and picked up—

  I finally flushed painfully. How had I not noticed my tail popping out during the struggle?

  He hooked the leash back on me and pulled me down to the basement. “You were going to get to take another nice nap in my office while I finished my work, but now you can stay down here until Julian gets home, naughty puppy.”

  Opening the dungeon door, he pushed me in and then said, “Kneel.”

  My heart pounding, I knelt beside the crossbar thing and waited with trepidation while Colin dug under one of the medical cabinets.

  When he came back, he stood behind me and took off the collar. “Don’t move.”

  I froze. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t the leather hood that came down over my head, but I managed to hold completely still until he’d tugged it into place and I could see out the eye holes. I felt him tightening laces down the back until the mask conformed fully to my head, and then he buckled a strap around my neck and I heard the click of a padlock. Coming around in front of me, he snapped something onto the flap hanging off to the side of my mouth.

  “Open.”

  Trembling a little now, I opened my mouth. Colin pushed some kind of thick dildo inside as he pulled the flap over and zipped it. My face was now completely covered and I was gagged. The whole world smelled like leather.

  Next he took my hands one by one and covered them with mitts that forced them into fists. It was hard to tell from his bland expression if he was really angry with me again, but it didn’t matter. I already felt so punished I wanted to cry. And yet I was strangely aroused. God, was having a pretend-penis in my mouth all it took to turn me on? Or was it the dehumanizing experience of being masked and turned into a puppy that did it for me?

  When I was locked into the mitts, he made me get on all fours over the crossbar thing, and I finally noticed the cuffs attached to it.

  “Prison stockade,” he explained. “Less intimidating but more portable.”

  He pushed down between my shoulder blades until my breastbone rested on a low, narrow pad and locked my collar to something underneath so I couldn’t rise. Then he locked my wrists and ankles into the leather cuffs. The back crossbar was twice as wide as the front, leaving my legs wide open. I knew it was too much to hope that he was going to have sex with me, but that didn’t stop me from getting embarrassingly wet almost at once.

  Colin returned to the medical side and I heard water running in the sink. Then he went behind me and forced my tail back in with only the residual lube from the last placement. I squealed at the momentary sting.

  “Naughty little puppies don’t get more lube,” he informed me.

  There was a clank of metal on metal and other sounds I couldn’t quite make out, and then my tail was tossed up onto my low back and something thick was pushed deep into my vagina and locked there. I groaned loudly at being so completely impaled and utterly helpless.

  “Naughty little puppies don’t get fucked either, no matter how horny they are,” Colin said behind me. I heard the distinctive click of the camera mode on his phone and groaned. He was taking pictures of me. “You look very hot, horny little puppy, and very much in trouble.”

  Continuing around me in a circle, he took shots from every angle with his phone. “Be glad this wasn’t broken or you’d really be in trouble.”

  I ground my teeth against the dildo, wishing it were his cock. He should be glad I was wearing this hood or he’d really be in trouble.

  When he was done taking pictures, he pulled a chair from the back of the room and sat directly in front of me, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “I wasn’t going to do this today but now that I’ve got you all trussed up, I can’t wait any longer,” he said with an impenetrable look. “Julian ordered me not to speak to you that last morning in Montaneva or I’d have given you a big earful then. Part of me wishes I’d disobeyed but he was already on the edge and I didn’t want to be the one to drive him over. I knew you’d be fine and we’d get you back eventually.”

  I bit harder. God, he could be so arrogant sometimes!

  “Now I want you to listen to me carefully,” he continued. “I didn’t deceive you deliberately, Rachel. I didn’t find out Jordan hadn’t agreed to the surgery until the night before you arrived, when I caned Julian after his time at the prison, or I’d never have involved you. I would have protected you with my life. But I couldn’t tell you because you might have prevented the surgery and I couldn’t let Jordan die when I knew we could save him. I didn’t think it, Rachel, I knew it, and unlike Julian, I think we did the right thing. You’ve seen Jordan—do you think he would have been better off dead?”

  He watched me with his brows raised, clearly expecting an answer, and I hesitated. Right after the surgery, I’d thought he might be better off dead. If living in Augustine Pohlson’s body didn’t drive him mad, knowing his brother had betrayed him might. But after seeing him walking around, working out, being angry and aggressive and taking control of Julian? I had to admit, I thought he probably had an amazing future in store for him, if he didn’t let bitterness eat away at him for too long.

  I shook my head from side to side.

  “Good. I don’t either. I think eventually he’ll adjust to his new body, and it will become his rather than Pohlson’s.”

  God, I hoped that was true, for Julian’s sake as much as Jordan’s.

  �
�But I didn’t throw you under a bus for anyone, Rachel, and I never would. After he told me Jordan hadn’t consented, he took me to his office and gave me signed affidavits swearing that he was the only one who knew his brother had refused the surgery, that he had deliberately withheld that information from us in order to save his brother’s life. Jordan and all his nurses thought he’d come to the castle to spend his final days with Julian, and at the end, Julian dismissed the nurses most afternoons so that he could care for Jordan himself. He loves him, Rachel. He didn’t save him for the sake of his research—he raised him after their mother died, so he’s as much a father to him as a brother. No parent could just stand by and watch their own child die when they could do something about it.”

  By the time he finished, I was almost in tears. There was no longer any doubt in my mind Julian had done the right thing, and so had Colin. If we could do it all again, I’d operate on Jordan without thinking twice, even knowing he hadn’t consented. My career wasn’t worth his life.

  “You didn’t know all that, did you?” When I shook my head again, he sighed. “I figured. That’s why I sent you the article. I thought you were taking too damn long to come to your senses.”

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. I wanted so badly to thank him but batting my lashes was just too flirty and superficial under the circumstances, and I wasn’t sure he’d see them anyway.

  “All right then,” he said. Standing up, he walked behind me and I heard the door open. “I want you to stay here for a while, Rachel, and think about us. Think about you and me—everything we said, everything we did, everything we were. Everything we are. And I want you to think about what you did to me when you left Montaneva that day. Not Julian—me. I’ll be back in a little while, just in case you decide you have something to say to me.”

  I heard the door close, and then I was alone with his words ringing in my ears.

  Think about what you did to me. Not Julian—me.

  My stomach began to churn. What had I done to Colin when I left Bangenschloss? The right thing, I thought. Even if I’d known he hadn’t deliberately deceived me, that he hadn’t thrown me under a bus, I couldn’t have asked him to choose between me and Julian. Julian needed him. They’d been together for years, and they loved each other so much. Surely he could understand that.