by Nina Mason
Heart racing, she plucked up her courage and followed, feeling more than a little like a too-stupid-to-live heroine in a horror movie. Was she really going voluntarily into the dungeon of a blood-drinking faery who was into BDSM? Yes, she was, although with strangulating trepidation.
Chapter 6
From the clack of her heels on the stones, Leith could tell Miss Darling—or rather, Miss Brown—was staying close as she followed him through the dark limestone maze. If he had any sense, he would show her the door instead of leading her into his playroom, but his attraction to her had stolen his reason.
She was the spitting image of Clara, who he still loved to the depths of his soul. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours. He wrote that heartfelt vow to her once in a letter. Had his pledge united their souls for eternity? Had hers come back to find him?
As much as he hoped Miss Darling was indeed his wife, he couldn’t see how her return would help his desperate situation. In fact, if his curse claimed Clara’s re-embodiment, he would only feel more wretched and remorseful than he already did. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to send her away, however great the risks or how heavy the toll. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, he supposed, but who could blame him, given how long he had done without the sweetness of genuine affection.
As they drew closer to the playroom, he sensed her growing discomfort. He wanted to put her at ease, but couldn’t think what he might say without breaking character. Deciding her security must take precedence, he said, “You have nothing to fear, Miss Darling. I’m as gentle as a pussycat.”
“Pussycats have claws, as I recall.”
He laughed at her astute observation. “Aye. They do at that.”
“And needlelike fangs,” she added nervously.
Her comment surprised him. Did she suspect what he was? Earlier, he felt certain she knew he was the cat, even though he couldn’t think how she might have uncovered his secret. Plus, if she knew what he was, she wouldn’t have come into the dungeon with him. Unless she was the biggest fool ever born, which didn’t strike him as the case. No, she was clever…and, to his mounting vexation, not nearly as brave as she pretended to be.
Plagued by sudden concern, he spun around, nearly colliding with her. Stopping in time, she looked up at him with those big hazel eyes of hers. He held the candle between them to better read her expression. “I gather you’ve never done this before.”
“You gather correctly.”
He regarded her harshly. “Then why have you agreed to come down here tonight?”
“I’m curious.” Her answer was as weak as her smile.
Dissatisfied, he tried to read her thoughts, again meeting that puzzling impediment. Licking his lips, he gave her an arch look. “Have you never heard that curiosity killed the cat?”
“I have.” She blinked, but kept hold of his gaze. “I also know the proverb’s second line.”
“Which is what?” He wasn’t aware the proverb had another line.
“Satisfaction brought her back.”
* * * *
Aquiver with nerves, Gwyn followed Sir Leith through the dark, stone-lined passageway. When he stopped before a standing candelabra, she hoped he might talk to her again. Even more than his words, she wanted his arms around her, holding her against the hard contours of his body while her cheek rested on the scratchy linen of his waistcoat. Sadly, he merely flamed the wicks with the candle he brought, giving her a momentary glimpse of his shadowed face.
The hairs on her arms stood on end. She stepped back suddenly, losing a slipper in the process.
He got down on one knee, picked up her shoe, and wrapped a hand around the ankle of her naked foot. Feeling a little like Cinderella, she set a hand on his head for balance as he guided her foot into the shoe. When finished, he ran his big, warm hand up the back of her leg and over her bare buttocks.
Rather than being repelled, she welcomed his touch. Encouraged by her response, she thought again about telling him about her foster father, but couldn’t quite bring herself to confess the truth.
Getting to his feet, he took her face between his hands and lifted her gaze to his. His eyes blazed with purple fire as his mouth hovered just inches from hers. For one breathless moment, she felt sure he would kiss her. Instead, he asked, “Are you sure about this, Miss Darling? It’s not too late to change your mind.”
Gwyn opened her mouth to say something, but didn’t know what. She wanted to do this, wanted to be brave, but she was also afraid. He was her Beast, her knight, her destiny. They were meant to be together, meant to help each other become whole again.
“I’m sure,” she said, even though she wasn’t. “I-I want…to…do this.”
The corridor seemed to grow darker. The only light was in his eyes, which shone like backlit purple geodes.
Drawn by the light like a moth, she leaned toward him. To her surprise and delight, he took her face between his hands. His fingers were electric. When his mouth touched hers, she felt a spark like static. Startled, she drew back, but only for an instant. Then she felt as though her entire body was being recharged. His fingers and lips seemed to transmit an electrical current she could feel enlivening every cell, nerve ending, and follicle. It was as if he was reanimating her formerly dead self the way Dr. Frankenstein had reanimated his stitched-together monster.
Too soon, Sir Leith let her go. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Before she could respond, he moved on down the corridor. She hurried after him, like a moth following a lantern. He stopped outside an arched door fashioned from old planks with iron strap hinges and a covered viewing window. She held her breath as he pulled a large skeleton key from his coat pocket and inserted the blade into the heavy lock.
The latch clicked and the door swung open with a spine-chilling groan.
He paused before entering. “Play your part as you see fit, Miss Darling, but do not break character without first invoking the safe word.”
Moths the size of sparrows fluttered in her stomach. She thought again about telling him about her abuse, but self-preservation seemed more important at this moment.
“Do you promise not to hurt me?” The question, and her voice, sounded cowardly to her ears.
“I promise not to hurt you more than you allow,” he said, doing little to assuage her fears.
When he stepped across the threshold, she started to follow. Rounding on her abruptly, he held up his hands. “Wait here while I set the stage.”
He shut the door on her. Alone in the spooky, pitch-black corridor, fear whispered in her ear: Run, Gwyn. Run away as fast as your legs will carry you and never look back.
She didn’t run. Because, scared as she was, she was tired of living in a tower, tired of letting fear rule her every move. Or, more accurately, to keep her from moving at all.
Taking a breath, she redirected her focus toward getting in character. Yes, she was anxious, but she could channel her angst into a deeper understanding of Miss Brown’s motivations.
Maybe the poor maid’s promiscuity was a misguided search for acceptance and affection. If so, she wouldn’t be the first female in history to mistake a man’s sexual desire for love.
The squeal of the opening door made Gwyn’s heart leap into her throat. When Sir Leith stepped into the softly-lit doorway, her jaw almost hit the floor. He had changed his clothes. Gone was the Regency riding outfit. In its place were yards of tartan pleated around his waist.
Her fear dissolved as she drank in every glorious detail. His torso was a monument to manliness. Muscular and rippled in all the right places with the perfect amount of dark hair sprinkled across his chest. There was a golden torque around his neck, a ring in his left nipple, and tattooed bands of Celtic knots encircling his muscular biceps.
Yowza. He looked like a Celtic warrior.
She saw him on a black horse with a long forelock and a white diamond on its forehead. He was dressed all in tartan, like the man in the portrait over the dining room fireplace.
Unlike in the portrait, however, he wore a hat—a blue-gray beret decorated with a white bow and a sprig of some sort of plant.
Somehow, she knew the beret was a Jacobite bonnet, but did not know where the image had come from. Was it something she’d conjured while reading his book or had she just experienced a past life memory?
Either way, she needed to stay in character. She swallowed to moisten her mouth, which suddenly felt as dry as Death Valley, and reined her thoughts back to the version of Sir Leith in front of her.
Her wronged employer; the dominant to her submissive.
“You wished to see me, Lord and Master?”
“Aye, Miss Brown, and I believe you know the reason.”
His tone matched the sternness of his expression, adding to her angst.
“I do.”
Biting her lip, she lowered her head in deference. His legs were long, strong, and peppered with the same soft, dark hair as his chest. Her insides heated and she started to perspire. She gave everything she had to stay in character. “Please, Lord and Master. I know I’ve displeased you, but my poor mother depends on my wages to feed my brothers and sisters.”
“You should have thought about that before you let the groom have his way with you,” he said, his expression still strict. “From where I stand, you’re naught but a hussy, Miss Brown. A Jezebel masquerading as an angel to lead honorable men into temptation and ruin. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cast you out on your ear.”
“I meant no harm.” Her gaze was fixed on his feet, as marvelously constructed as the rest of him. “I just get this terrible itch sometimes.”
Under the circumstances, nymphomania now seemed the more fitting backstory.
“What kind of an itch?”
“The kind only a man like you can scratch.”
She brought her gaze up to his. Her face warmed as their eyes met. He took a moment to examine her with a heated gaze that at once melted her fears and called the darkness out of her depths.
“Perhaps if you were to demonstrate the proper penitence,” he said, bending over her, “I might be persuaded to reconsider my decision to terminate your service.”
Heart pounding wildly, she fought the urge to throw her arms around him and kiss him senseless.
“Please, Lord and Master. I’ll do anything it takes to restore myself to your good graces.”
“I do hope you mean that, Miss Brown.” He pressed his warm, moist mouth to her cleavage, making the moths in her belly flutter more violently. “For both our sakes.”
Stepping back, he swept his arm toward the chamber’s interior in a gesture of invitation. A warm glow emanated from within. She moved past him and, heart hammering inside her imprisoning bodice, surveyed the chamber’s interior.
The longest wall held a low dresser and a rack of pegs stretching its length. From the pegs hung a daunting assortment of the tools of his perverse trade. Whips, floggers, handcuffs, and other things she couldn’t identify.
A lump formed in her throat as her gaze passed over a bridle. Scenes from the Sleeping Beauty books flashed through her mind. Sex slaves dressed as horses with butt-plug tails being forced to pull carriages and eat from troughs. In the stable, their hands were bound so they couldn’t masturbate. In Avalon, Queen Morgan did the same to her knights. Their seed belonged to her, she claimed, and was not to be misspent through frivolous self-pleasuring.
Gwyn couldn’t imagine being treated so abominably. Yes, her foster father had beaten and sexually abused her, but he never did anything as inhumane as tying her hands while she ate and slept. Without the physical release of self-pleasuring, she would have been driven mad by the feelings he awakened in her. Wicked feelings that almost made her believe she was to blame for the things he did to her.
Her mind might be revisiting the past, but her gaze was still riveted to the bridle in front of her. A fine sweat broke out across her skin as the urge to flee overwhelmed her. Balling her fists against the assault on her courage, she simply said, her mouth suddenly dry, “No pony play, either.”
“Is that a hard limit?”
“Yes.”
With Herculean effort, she forced her eyes to move on. Various tables and benches, some padded, some slatted, hugged the stone walls. She could guess what they were for. Images of herself strapped to them in various positions flashed through her mind.
She blinked to obliterate the images and swallowed to dislodge the lump in her throat. There was a large cage next to one and a cart of some sort parked beside another. What were those for? Did she really want to know?
Deciding she didn’t, she continued her sweeping inventory, her dread climbing with each new discovery. Through an arched stone doorway, another room lay in darkness. There was an armoire beside the archway, hiding in shadows.
Occupying the center of the room was a tufted velvet fainting couch with large eyebolts screwed into its prettily carved wooden frame.
She mustered every ounce of courage she could to keep from running for the door. Not that running would help her. In the darkness, she would never find her way back to the dining room.
The door slammed shut, jolting her heart. When the lock clicked, her stomach tightened. He came up behind her, brushed aside her hair, and kissed the back of her neck. Tingles, like pins and needles, infiltrated her numbness. Her knees turned to rubber, but somehow still supported her.
“Are you all right, Miss Darling?”
“I’m not sure.” Her voice, true to her mouse-like character, was a squeak.
The cat slipped his paws around her waist, pulled her against his agile frame, and held her there.
She trembled, half in heaven, half in hell. He was so big and strong and she was so small and weak. He could protect and defend her or, just as easily, he could overpower and misuse her.
“I said I wouldn’t hurt you and I meant it,” he promised, the way her foster father used to. “I will, however, push you as far outside your comfort zone as you’ll let me.”
“I have news for you.” Her voice sounded strangely high-pitched to her ears. “I’m already miles outside my comfort zone.”
He took her arm and guided her toward the chaise, where he sat her down and stood over her, waiting for her to look him in the eye. When at last she did, with considerable effort, he said, “If I do anything that makes you too uncomfortable, you need only invoke your safe word and I will stop at once.”
She forced herself to smile. “I know.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I’m just a little nervous, I guess.”
He sat beside her, put his arm around her, and pulled her against his side. “I’d like to tie your hands…and put a mask over your eyes. Do you think you could handle that?”
Her mind called up one of the few scenes she read in Fifty Shades of Grey. In the Red Room of Pain, Christian bound and blindfolded Anna before bringing her to climax with a riding crop.
Gwyn was almost sure she could deal with a similar scenario. Even the riding crop part, if he only used the tongue to titillate her. Not that she was ready to remove the hard limit pertaining to whips. Maybe after she gained more experience and trust, but not yet.
“I think so.”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Perhaps we should forget our roles for the time being and just take things nice and slow.”
“Nice and slow sounds good to me.” Her voice was weak and pathetic, and so was she.
He let her go, got to his feet, and crossed to the wall of toys. Ashamed of her cowardice, she averted her gaze. She came down here to break out of the cage she had cowered inside all her life only to be defeated in the first five minutes by nothing more threatening than a bridle.
She bit her lip and dug deep for her courage. She could do this. The book had said this could restore her power and control in sexual situations, re-build her trust in men, and help her vent some of her repressed rage over what that bastard did to her.
The dream from earlier flicke
red behind her eyes like broken film in a movie projector. Out of sight of his wife, he caught Gwyn and pinned her to a tree. She felt the bark grate her back through her shirt, the rough rasp of his beard against her cheek, and smelled the oily odor of his scalp mixed with the sickening reek of his cheap cologne. It was all so real, a memory implanted in a dream. A phantom that haunted her, week after week and year after year.
She wanted that ghost to be gone; wanted to finally break the locks of shame and fear that held her in solitary confinement. Until she did, she had no chance of having a relationship, vanilla or otherwise.
* * * *
Leith finger-plowed his scalp as he scanned his vast collection of props. What to use and what to do? Sadly, the things he most wanted to do were off the table, like kissing her sweet mouth, making passionate love to her, baring his soul to her, and holding her close through all the long and lonely nights to come.
Taking a breath to purge these dangerous desires, he selected a set of leather wrist cuffs lined in rabbit fur, a blindfold, and a leg spreader. Returning to the chaise, he set the items beside her, noting her anxious expression.
“Relax, Miss Darling. These won’t hurt.”
“Are you sure?”
Holding up the cuffs, he ran his fingers over the fur lining. “You see, they’re very soft. Nothing that could pinch or chafe.”
She looked them over, yanking the chain between the cuffs, stroking their leather exteriors, and caressing their inner fur.
Seemingly satisfied, she handed them back to him and looked into his eyes. The desire to kiss her welled inside him. Pushing it down, he said, “Lie back and put your arms over your head.”
While she did as instructed, he went around to her outstretched hands, clapped on the soft cuffs, and secured them to the eyebolt at the top of the chaise. Returning to her side, he put the blindfold in place before setting a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you all right, Miss Darling?”
“Yes, Lord and Master.”