“I thought Mr. Lemaitre kept a lot of slaves,” she said. “Why is everyone gawking at me?”
Jason pulled at his lip, then let out a soft breath that flared his nostrils. “Do you want to have lunch?”
Oh no. She’d come to recognize that tone all too well. “Actually, I was going to grab something quick and head over to the gym—” she began.
“I think we should have lunch.”
She followed him to the cafeteria, trying not to think too hard about the determined expression on his face. People stared as they walked down the corridors, and continued to stare as they filled their trays and sat down at a table.
She turned her back to everyone and took apart her turkey sandwich, eating the tomato slices first. She wished she could put tomato on some of her art. The red was so vibrant. The texture of the shredded lettuce clinging to the turkey caught her attention next. She poked at it as she bit into the tomato.
“So,” said Jason. “I’ve considered your request to add the series of flips to the finale.”
“And?” She looked up from the lettuce and knew he was going to tell her no. “I can do it,” she said. “I used to do flips on top of my three brothers in a stack. Boom, boom, boom.” She used her hands to illustrate the concept. “They never dropped me. Never.”
“Somehow I believe that.”
“So why?” She shoveled the lettuce into her mouth, then reassembled her sandwich and took a bite. “I like the challenge,” she said after she swallowed. “I want it to be hard every night.”
“I know you like things to be hard every night,” Jason said, with a bit less patience in his tone. “But you can’t incorporate skills into the act that can’t be replicated every show, day after day. Every skill in the act should have a one-hundred-percent likelihood of perfect execution.”
“I could do it perfectly one hundred percent of the time.”
“Valentina.”
“I could! It’s the speed. It’s easier to balance moving fast than moving slow—”
“Valentina, enough.” He brushed a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “Look, the answer is no. If I didn’t tell you no now, then Genevieve would tell you no when she saw the flips. And if she didn’t say no, then Lemaitre would.”
Just hearing his name made Valentina go tense. She took another bite of her sandwich, her throat suddenly tight and itchy. “I’m just trying to be myself,” she said. “I came to Cirque du Monde to be an artist, to express my—my—” She waved a hand. “Whatever it’s called. My vision.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it’s so.” She glanced up to find him staring at her with one eyebrow raised. “You know, when you look at me like that, I want to throw my plate at your face.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Your Master wouldn’t be happy.”
“He’s not here right now.”
“But you’re his slave, aren’t you? You’re supposed to behave in ways he finds pleasing, whether or not he’s here.”
She looked around the cafeteria, like he might be watching from a corner somewhere. Yes, she’d been learning—via some very painful lectures and punishments—that her Master’s will trumped everything where she was concerned. She pushed down uneasy feelings and forced a smile, giving Jason a flirtatious look. “You wouldn’t tell on me, would you?”
“I would tell on you in a heartbeat, especially if you threw a plate at my face. Maybe I’ll go tell on you right now for threatening me.”
“No!” She reached out and grabbed his hand before she realized he was joking. Oh shit. Now he looked perturbed.
“What’s he been doing to you?” Jason asked. “You’re not yourself today. Honestly, you haven’t been yourself in a while. Where’s the Valentina that showed up here last fall ready to conquer the world?”
“You won’t let me conquer the world. You won’t even let me put fun stuff in the act, because it can’t be replicated.” She said the last word in a sing-song mocking tone.
“Let’s forget about the fun stuff in your act because it’s not happening, and that’s not what I want to talk about.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “What’s going on with you and Lemaitre?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why the fuck are you putting yourself through this? I told you, you aren’t a good match. He’s not Lugo in the showers, Valentina. He’s not Adei. He’s not even me. He can be a brutal, unfeeling Master and he’s not one to fall in love with his slaves. If you think you’ll be different, that you’ll somehow get through to his heart, you’re in for a disappointment.”
She stared at the table. “I don’t want to get through to his heart.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been in love with him since the first week.” He took her hand hard, the way she’d taken his hand when she thought he was going to tell on her. “I love the way you fall in love with everyone and everything. I do. I love your recklessness and intensity. They’re wonderful qualities.”
“They’re terrible qualities,” she said, grabbing her hand away. “You complain about them all the time. Mr. Lemaitre is going to help me be a better person. More focused. More self-disciplined.”
“He’s going to help you be a better sex slave, okay? Period. That’s it.”
She shook her head. That wasn’t true. Mr. Lemaitre had told her he would change her, that he would make her better and stronger. “You don’t understand. You haven’t been there for our conversations.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re having lots of conversations,” said Jason, rolling his eyes. “I know the kind of conversations Lemaitre likes to have with his slaves. They involve lots of lubricant.”
Valentina put down her sandwich. “You don’t understand anything. You think you know everything about me and Mr. Lemaitre, but you don’t.”
“I know enough. I warned you off him weeks ago, Valentina. I’m worried about the two of you together because I don’t think your personalities mesh.”
She took small sips of water, refusing to look at him.
“Hm, no comment,” he said after a moment. “Listen, if the reality isn’t what you thought it would be—”
She covered her ears. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Valentina.”
She shook her head. “Why are you doing this? I’m a grown woman. I can do as I like.”
“Not for the next twenty-five days, you can’t.”
“I want this. I want to tough it out, okay? He won’t hurt me.”
“If I thought he would hurt you, really hurt you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He sighed and ate the last of his sandwich. “I’m just telling you that if you ever want out, you can get out. He won’t fire you. He won’t send you away. There are ways to keep the two of you separate, if that’s what you’re worried about. In the end, it’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, if it becomes too much for you, tell him. If you can’t tell him, tell me.”
She knew he meant to help but he had no idea about her feelings. This wasn’t a game to her, not in the slightest.
“I heard you were a hard Master too,” she said, purposely keeping her voice low. “I see how you control Sara.”
“There’s a big difference. I love Sara.”
Yes, and Mr. Lemaitre didn’t love her. Could he emphasize it again? Ten, twenty more times before she escaped this lunch from hell?
“I need to go to the gym,” she said. “I haven’t worked out in three days.”
“Go then. But don’t forget what I said.” He pointed a finger at her. “You’re destined for great things, Valentina Sancia. I don’t want to see any more ropes around your pretty little neck.”
Chapter Eleven: Control
By the end of the first week, they’d settled into a daily routine—of her Master’s making, of course. Day followed day, regimented and predictable. There were never any breaks.
Valentina awakened every morning to the sound of him unlocking her cage. Sometimes he’d get under the cover
s with her, and draw her face down to his cock. Other times he’d kneel over her and force himself down her throat, or order her out of bed and onto her knees to serve him. No matter what mood he arrived in, every morning was the same. A huge cock shoved between her lips.
It was easier to deal with once he stopped using condoms. She hated the taste of latex but she loved the taste of her Master, especially when she was sleepy and warm and just coming out of sexually charged dreams. When he came in her mouth she would swallow it, sinking into subspace as his container, his object. She felt utterly enslaved to his will.
After that he went to work and she had a small measure of freedom, since her practices didn’t start until ten. She was allowed whatever she liked for breakfast, as long as she ate something healthy and as long as she ate it naked—her Master continued to forbid the use of clothing inside the house. Galvin cooked delicious breakfasts for her most days, omelets or waffles or crepes, not even seeming to notice her nudity. He was gay after all, in a relationship with a lover who called and texted during the day, and doubtless welcomed him home at night.
Galvin left right after he cleaned up the kitchen from dinner. Sometimes she’d watch him go with the wild idea of running after him, running to freedom, running to her private apartment where she could do whatever she liked whenever she wanted, without anyone holding her down or hurting her, or invading her body in one hole after the other. Mr. Lemaitre would look over at her and she’d know he knew what she was thinking, because he’d get that little smile that wasn’t a smile.
You wanted this. You chose this, crazy girl.
After she ate breakfast every day, she showered and dressed in her practice clothes, and Galvin drove her to the huge headquarters building. By that time her Master was usually knee-deep in meetings or business, and she was forbidden to visit his office unless he summoned her. Which he often did. Sometimes an assistant came to get her and sometimes he’d show up himself, somber and formidable in his perfect suits and fancy Italian shoes.
He’d beckon her from across the gym or the practice facility, and she’d have to readjust herself from artist and performer to slave. And of course, everyone knew what he had come for. Everyone knew why he wanted her, and everyone would watch her cross to him and follow behind him to his office. Inside, she’d be shoved under his desk to perform a blow job, or thrown over the top, her legs pulled wide as he undid his fly and shoved inside her. If she wasn’t wet, that was her problem.
But by the time she got to his office, she was always wet. There was something about being used...and used...and used merely for someone else’s pleasure. When he craved her, he came and got her and fucked her. It was so simple, and so animalistically hot. Sometimes he’d start in her pussy and then decide halfway through that he wanted to fuck her ass. He used condoms for that. She didn’t think he could get in otherwise, without the slippery smooth latex to ease the way. Even then, it took extra lubricant which he kept in his desk drawer.
Her nose had grown all too familiar with the polished surface of his desk. She knew the temperature of it, the scent of the furniture wax. Smooth wood surfaces had come to trigger an automatic response in her. Everything clenched. It still hurt to take him in the ass, even after a couple weeks of training with butt plugs. She thought it would always hurt a little, which was probably why he liked it so much. The worst part was the beginning when he first nudged the head in. After that, the ache became more bearable but it still felt scary and risky. He never injured her, but there was always that sense that he could if he were not so careful.
Valentina was such a pervert that all these thoughts about care and risk turned her on. He could damage me—but he doesn’t. But he could... That was hot to her, especially paired with the dull, agonizing repetition of his thrusts. Sometimes, if he was in the mood for it, he would make her come, touching her in all the places that would make it happen: her pebbled nipples, her swollen clit. He’d slide his fingers between her pussy lips and find that exact spot and caress it in the same rhythm he banged her asshole, and she’d begin to quiver and shake, and in her climax, her pussy and ass would both contract and he’d feel even bigger and hurtier inside her, and oh... Sometimes she’d come again, just because the first orgasm felt so good.
But she’d always been that way. Very sensitive, very responsive. Her Master seemed to delight in it. Are you coming again? he’d ask, shaking his head. He only punished her for such excess when he was in a very, very bad mood. Most of the time he just punished her because he liked to hurt her. He was a sadist. That’s how sadists were.
Valentina tried to enjoy the punishments as he did, but they were more difficult to adjust to than the anal. Once her back healed, he started taking her to his playroom, a dark, hot space carved out of the attic. Many evenings he scened with her there, fastening her to various pieces of equipment and breaking her down. There was a wooden chair with phalluses rising out of it, ones he could interchange depending on his mood. Sometimes he used a big dildo in her pussy, sometimes a big dildo in her ass. Sometimes two dildos, so she had to sit there feeling stuffed and restrained by her own orifices.
The chair had a wide leather lap belt so she could neither get up, nor work herself up and down on the dildos the way she wanted to. Once he had her impaled and secured, he’d torture her breasts with clamps, or a crop, or both. He’d make her keep her mouth wide open, whether or not he put his cock inside. The point, she supposed, was to make her feel she was nothing but a collection of holes to be filled at his pleasure. Sometimes she enjoyed her times in that chair, but other times she felt overwhelmed and scared. She could never walk correctly by the time he let her up.
There was another contraption he used a lot, a bench with a high back. He’d make her kneel on the seat facing the wall, so her breasts reached just to the top of the wooden back. Cruel, alligator-grip clamps were fixed to the wood with an adjustable lever, and these were attached to her nipples as she whimpered and cried. Cuffs topped the posts at either side of the bench, and once her wrists were buckled into them, she would be powerless to get away from anything he did to her. She couldn’t move a centimeter without feeling excruciating pain.
Then, of course, he would pick up a strap or flogger or paddle or crop or any of the instruments that lined the walls, and beat her with it to the music of her screams. The pain of the beatings was bad enough, but the nipple-clamps-as-restraints added an entirely new level of hurt. Her hands would strain at the cuffs but he gave her no way to save herself. She was allowed to beg for mercy, but she couldn’t beg him to stop. If she did, it earned her a rough assfucking against the contract wall, nose pressed to the line where she’d signed herself over to him. Three or four assfuckings later, she’d learned to bite her tongue.
There were other pieces of furniture up there too. A spanking bench with straps and restraints all over it, a St. Andrews cross that he hadn’t used with her yet. She thought it would be easier to be tied to that than the high-backed bench with its horrid nipple pinchers, but knowing him, he’d find some way to make the St. Andrews cross horrible too.
The only good thing about his attic dungeon was that by the time he finished with her, he could do just about anything to her sexually and she didn’t care. She took his cock in her ass, she took his semen down her throat, she jammed her tongue up his asshole, whatever he demanded, and she did it with pure relief because at least he wasn’t beating on her. Well, except for the times he beat her and fucked her at the same time.
Sometimes she thought of Jason’s words. If you ever want out, you can get out. Sometimes she really, really wanted out, but then her Master would gather her in his arms and carry her to the white room, and gaze at her in a way that made Valentina’s heart tremble. He would shower with her and check her all over, talking to her about random things like her act, her practices, or a meeting he’d had that day. Sometimes before he locked her into her cage, he’d brush a hand over her hair so gently that her eyes glossed over with tears.
/> I love you, she would think. And after dreaming of him all night, she’d wake and pull out her sketch pad and try to capture all those brutal, affectionate qualities that comprised him, and again she’d fail. She’d close her pad and put it away and stare at the door in anticipation of his arrival, wondering if she was happy or miserable, or just very, very confused.
*** *** ***
Michel stared down at the tickets in his hand, then over at the silent woman on his arm. They stood in a crush of patrons at the Palais Garnier, waiting to be seated for a l’Orchestre de Paris concert. Just last week, he’d learned in the course of their dinner conversation that Valentina had never been to see a live orchestra. The revelation had horrified him. He could barely conceive that someone as bright and creative as Valentina might have lived twenty-six years and not yet enjoyed the aural mindgasm of a live orchestra program. He’d immediately stood, abandoning their dinner plates, and dragged her to his home office. He’d purchased third-row tickets while she knelt at his feet.
Why not? He enjoyed spoiling his slaves now and again, taking them out for dinners or shows. In Valentina’s case, he’d been so preoccupied with her luscious body that he’d done nothing but drill her holes for the past three weeks. Careless of him, to get so carried away.
He clasped her wrist tighter as an usher glanced at their tickets and gestured them toward the main floor. The congestion of people pushed them together. He smiled and steadied her when she stumbled against his front. She took a step back with a murmured apology and he slid a look down at her prim black-belted dress and mid-heeled pumps. Her hair flowed loose about her shoulders, a riot of color against her dark outfit. He studied that hair, thinking of her art back in her apartment, creative works so vivid and full of color. Why was he keeping her trapped in his bleak and colorless home?
Master's Flame (Cirque Masters) Page 13