by Lily White
Arrogance cocked his brow. “What would you like to know?”
“How to bend his will,” I answered honestly. Sure, I could get Greyson on my side, but Anthony was right to point out I hadn’t broken him enough to expect the same if he were sold to someone else. If anybody could teach me how to accomplish that, it was this man.
Genuine surprise lifted Aiden’s brow, his body turning to face me fully. “You’ll have to work for that knowledge, Pet. What are you willing to give me in return?”
A loaded question, cruel blue eyes tracking down my body and back up, pinning me in place as if to tell me it was my turn to move my piece across the game board.
“Well?” he prodded.
I only knew one thing Aiden would want, one thing that had always been his ultimate end. And although I still hadn’t moved past what he did to Greyson when I wasn’t awake to stop him, I was willing to do what it took to get what I wanted.
Play the game smart.
In that, Anthony had been right.
Without breaking Aiden’s patient stare, I kicked off my heels, the shoes thudding against the floor beside me. Aiden glanced at them, back up, his head canting to the side in wait.
Reaching behind me, I unbuttoned my skirt and slipped the zipper down, my hips moving with a seductive roll to peel the leather down and let it fall to my feet. Kicking it away, I reached for the buttons of my shirt next. He watched with rapt attention, his body perfectly still, a snake coiled and ready to strike. It wasn’t until I’d opened the last one, the shirt falling open to reveal a line of skin, that he moved across the room toward me.
Hands sliding over my waist beneath the sides of the shirt, Aiden directed me back against a wall, his hands moving again to grasp the sides, pull the shirt from my shoulders, using the cloth to trap my arms together between my body and the wall.
When I thought I’d see desire, I saw fury instead, the blue of his eyes like molten sapphire. Twisting the shirt in his hand, he tightened it over my arms until my chest arched forward just to relieve some of the pain.
I cried out, mostly in surprise, my knees weakening so much that he had to press his hips against me to hold me up. With his free hand, he caught my cheeks between finger and thumb, jerking my head up to his. “What the fuck was that?”
Voice shaking, “Y-you asked what I would give you and -“
Leaning down, he bit my bottom lip, his tongue sweeping over the sting before he lifted his head again. A firestorm raged behind his eyes, lust mixing with anger, desire stripped down to its darkest form. “A Master gives nothing. You’re still thinking like a fucking Courtesan And if you continue doing that, your fuckboy will walk all over you.”
His hand released my cheeks to travel down my neck, the hold brutal as he threatened to cut off my airway while pinning my head to the wall at my back. “What did I give you, Rebecca? In those first weeks you were mine, when did I ever strip my clothes off in offering? I remember the other way, in fact. Your body was the entree and I was the one enjoying the feast.”
He let me go all at once and I stumbled, barely managing to stay on my feet as he strode off to cross the room and then turned back to watch me struggle. After untangling my arms from the shirt, I attempted to close it back over my body, but Aiden demanded, “No. You’ve just given up that right. Take it off entirely.”
I stripped the shirt from my shoulders, tugging it from my arms to let it fall to the floor.
“Now you’re wide open to my eyes, Pet. Naked. Exposed. Meanwhile, I haven’t lost so much as my tie. How does that make you feel?”
“I-“
“How does it make you feel?” He shouted, his voice easily drowning mine.
“Vulnerable,” I shouted in return, my eyes narrowing on a man who wasn’t giving ground.
“Yes. Exactly. So now I’ve broken off a piece of you, removed your armor in a way. What should I do next if my intent is to rebuild you into the proper whore?”
My mind drew a blank, my heart beating so rapidly that I couldn’t calm down enough to think. He was across the room again, standing toe to toe with me, disbelief and censure written into every angle of his features. One hand wrapping into my hair before I could move to prevent it, Aiden forced me to the floor at his feet, holding me in place with an iron grip I knew I’d never escape.
“Fight me,” he ordered, his tone cold yet hard.
Pain erupted across my scalp like fire, my arms flailing to the sides in an attempt to push my body up. Every time I tried, he tightened his grip, forcing me lower until my arms were useless at my sides.
“Fight me,” he said again.
“I can’t!”
“Exactly. Not only have I taken your armor, I’ve also stripped you of your sword. I moved faster than you, thought faster than you, knew your next move before you knew and prevented it from happening. What’s next?”
Tears leaking down my cheeks, I tried to think, to gain some footing in my head so that this lesson wasn’t lost to the pain he was causing. “I can’t take him in a physical fight, Aiden. He’s stronger than me.”
“Then you remove his ability to fight before he has the chance. Find a way to do it, then attack when he’s weak. How do you think I got him in that position last night? It wasn’t like I went in there, removed his chains and then wrestled him to the fucking bed. I took advantage of his vulnerability.”
“I can’t keep him chained forever! What’s to stop him from fighting me when I finally let him go?”
Crouching down, Aiden ran his fingertips down my spine, a tender touch that forced goosebumps over my skin, that promised pleasure if he trailed them farther down between my legs.
On a voice as gentle as those fingers, he told me, “You respond to me sexually without need for more than a touch because I’ve conditioned you to do so. It takes time for that to occur, practice and patience, but you begin making a person believe their compliance leads to pleasure and it becomes a Pavlovian Response after a while. So, in answer to your question: you show them how you can make them feel, twist them up so much in the head that they forget to fight the next time you let them go. It’s not all about punishment, Pet. It’s also about reward.”
Remembering another issue I had with Greyson, I spoke past my tears. “And what do you do to punish a person who likes pain?”
His response was immediate. “What did I do to you?”
My body stilled, his grip releasing just enough that it no longer felt as if my scalp was tearing my skull.
“I had the same problem with you, Pet. No matter what I did to hurt you, it didn’t matter. Yes, you cried and begged at first, but I don’t think you even understood that after a few days, you were intentionally disobeying because you enjoyed the pain that came with it.” He paused to allow the truth of his words to sink in. “Once you made the connection in your head between pleasure and pain, you became a problem that required a new method to Master.”
His hand released me entirely and I pushed my body up to kneel in front of him. Even after having made a mess of me, Aiden clothes were impeccable. Not a damn wrinkle in sight.
I wanted to be like him when I grew up, wanted to appear collected even in the midst of chaos.
“I’ve stripped you of your armor and I’ve stripped you of your sword. You’re vulnerable, you’re unable to fight, what do I do with you now?”
Shaking my head, I didn’t know the answer, my confusion so thorough that all I could feel was the desire I had for the man crouching in front of me.
“What do I do, Pet?”
I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know.
Reaching out, he wrapped his hand over my throat, his thumb sweeping down to brush over the hollow. His fingers tightening over the muscles with the threat of making me choke. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes locked to his as his lips stretched apart on a chilling smile.
Tugging me to him, Aiden bit my lip again, his breath hot against my skin. My body shivered
to feel him, my pulse pounding in my throat, my body blooming with wanton heat when he pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered, “I make you like it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AIDEN
What was there not to understand?
Kneeling in front of me, her eyes wide and unseeing, her body bare and exposed, her lips slightly parted as lust and trepidation roared through her on a tempest storm, Rebecca struggled to comprehend. Why was it impossible for this woman, this rebellious spirit, to know what had been the simple truth all along?
Breaking a person is the most basic of formulas, one that doesn’t require violence unless you want it, one that is developed for the tastes of the person doing the breaking...
...one that is executed with such flawless finesse that a Master requires no tools at all except the ability to get inside a Courtesan’s head.
“It’s psychological, Rebecca, a trick of the mind. You don’t need to be stronger than your opponent, you need to be smarter. Cut them off at the feet to leave them unbalanced, bind their hands to remove their ability to climb from the hole you’ve dug, and while they’re struggling to make sense of what’s happened, while their exhausted minds fight to reconcile what has been done to them, you sweep in and make sense of it for them.”
I was being perfectly honest with her for the first time, peeling away all the delicate layers until every piece of the puzzle was laid on the table for her to inspect. All except one.
The one that made Christopher a poor choice.
The one that made Rebecca a tempting target despite what I’d learned about her after breaking her down into her essential parts.
Not everybody would make the perfect slave, regardless of how skillful the person was that molded them.
“Everybody in this world has something they need from it. We all have a shadow side, a kink in our personalities, a hunger that leaves us starving, whether we realize it or not.”
Grasping her chin with my fingers, I held her head so that she could look into my eyes, so that she could finally see the man who had been seeing her all along.
“We all have a need that we hide from the outside world because we consider it ugly, and it is the Master who discovers that special part of a person and gifts them with the freedom to indulge it.”
In truth, not every person should be broken and rebuilt. Some personalities were simply too strong. Some would rather die than bend to the will of another person. Some were far too weak to survive the breaking, their hollow husks so easily fractured like emptied eggshells.
It’s why we took our time to choose our victims. It’s why the choice of Christopher didn’t make sense. It’s why I ended up with a woman at my side for five long years when I’d never intended to ever fall in love.
Was it love I felt? I wasn’t sure, but for this woman, for her, I was breaking every conceivable rule in my playbook.
My knees hit the ground, one after the other, my posture changing as I spread my arms to the side and offered myself to her. “Pretend I’m your Courtesan, not yet fully broken, and not yet ready to be rebuilt. But my armor is gone. My sword stripped from my hands. What do you do with me now?”
“Aiden...”
A breathless whisper, wide green eyes searching mine with tears still glimmering at the rims. Utter disbelief and surprise kept her frozen in place, her lips slightly parted as if she found it difficult to breathe.
Despite how gently I answered her, I wove a warning into my tone. “I’ll only offer this once, Pet. Show me what you’ll do, or take your clothes from my office and go.”
As if slapped, she flinched, her eyes blinking as her head shook away confusion. I knew her better than to think she’d toss away the opportunity, but there was still that chance. In the last year, Rebecca had forgotten who she once was, had changed from a woman who had the unique ability to baffle me into one of the submissive brats I sold without thought of them again.
Would she ever see herself the way I saw her? Would she ever understand how truly rare she was?
Hundreds of photos I’d given her and she’d never looked past what was happening on those captured moments to see the woman who made such a moment possible.
I’d never been easy on her as a Master over a Courtesan, and I wouldn’t be easy now as the tutor of a worthy apprentice. I’d learned long ago that the only way to get Rebecca to challenge me was to first prod her into challenging herself.
“Show me,” I demanded, not the flimsy request she’d volleyed at me several minutes before, but a dark command that she allow her instinct to rise to the surface with the same dazzling clarity I’d witnessed during the first weeks I’d trained her.
One slow blink of those emerald green eyes, meek before closing, but filled with mesmerizing determination when her lids flew open for her stare to lock with mine.
There you are, Pet.
I’ve missed you...
She moved with a predatory grace as she pushed to her feet. Long and sleek, curved in all the right places, her body prowled while her eyes narrowed down on me with such pristine rage that I thought I could die right there with the knowledge that I’d created a woman no man in the world would ever control.
But I wasn’t dying. And I would control her. Taming this new creature would be a worthy venture for years to come.
I’d assumed she strike out at me immediately, readied myself for the feel of her palm across my cheek, the blaze of her righteous anger spilling out in violence for everything I’d done to her and still planned to do. But she surprised me, this wicked girl, by taking her time to walk to where she’d kicked off her shoes, grabbing them from the floor and leaning back against a wall to buckle them over her feet.
Heels, and nothing else. It was like she knew just how to reach inside me to clutch manicured fingers around my depraved and delighted soul.
A rhythmic click as she approached me, my body still kneeling on the floor with arms extended. So entranced, I hadn’t dared move for fear of destroying the moment.
“Stand up, Aiden.”
I laughed, admiring a woman who thought dominating me would be so easy. My lips slid into a sinful grin, my eyes taking in her body with unbidden appreciation. She only amused me with so simple a command.
“I said stand the fuck up.”
My gaze traveled slowly up shapely legs, over round hips and a taut stomach, pausing at breasts that were perfect for the size of my hand. When finally our eyes met, I blinked to see an emerald stare devoid of emotion or patience.
“Make me.”
She grinned, the expression startling in how cold it was, a reflection of myself in a hard gaze without compassion. I was having too much fun, my pants uncomfortably tight because if she knew how to do anything, it was turn me on.
Hand wrapping around my tie, I thought at first she intended to use it to drag me from the floor to my feet, but instead she held my stare while grasping the knot, tightening it against my neck until I felt the cords of tendons pressing out against my skin, my trachea crushed down making it impossible to breathe.
I reached to grip my hands over hers, my attention stolen by the face of an angel and the threat of her hands at my throat. I should have known she was only distracting me, the truth of her next move coming with such swiftness that I actually fell back when she slammed her shoe between my legs, pain exploding when she practically ground my cock up against my body.
“Fuck!” Teeth clenched, I was forced on my back, my throat still trapped by a too tight tie and Rebecca’s weight pressing down with the threat of more pain.
She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, her ferocity mind-blowing.
“When I give you an order, you listen.” She laughed, her foot pressing harder, the pain awakening in me the devil himself. “Stand up, Aiden, so I can show you just what I think of your gorgeous body.”
I had a secret as well:
Violence of any type, pain whether given or received, were the two quickest routes to the h
eart of a soulless bastard who always craved the rush of a good, throw down fight.
My hand locked around her ankle, one tug bringing her body tumbling down, her heels sliding without purchase across polished wood as I rolled her beneath me and pinned her shoulders to the floor. My knee fell between her parted thighs to rub as forceful as her foot had been between mine.
Still, she managed to wrap the tie around her hand, her bicep strained as she refused to release its tight hold. “Get off me.”
Fuck, I wanted to laugh, the reaction so intense that it took everything to swallow the sound, to keep her from seeing how she affected me.
“Why would I do that? The way I see it, you’re mine for the taking. A Master who hasn’t yet trained her Courtesan to heel.”
In all my years as a Master I’d never been reduced to wrestling a woman over the floor. Always taking the upper hand before they knew what had hit them, the fight was over long before it could reach this point.
In this, Rebecca was teaching me something, without even realizing what she’d done.
I’d tried telling her this morning, but as usual she didn’t hear me. Whether she knew it or not, Rebecca had Mastered me five long years ago, by making herself the only woman I wanted in my fucked up world.
Lowering my head, my voice gritty with the tie tight at my throat, I whispered against her cheek. “I’m going to fuck you, Pet, whether you like it or not, because there’s not a god damned thing you can do to stop me.”
She breathed out, her chest arching against mine as her hips rolled over the floor. With my cheek pressed to hers, I could feel the smile that stretched her lips, could feel the fight in her give out.
“You’re used to having every woman respond to you, aren’t you, Aiden? Whether through their fear or desire or submission? But what would happen if you lost the ability to draw anything from one of them? What would you do if every time you forced yourself between my legs, I laid their like a dead log, preferring another man’s cock instead?”
Lifting my head so I could stare down at her, I saw nothing in her eyes beyond the chilling cold of her contempt.