What an imbecile.
“Stand up. Take off your panties and bra. I want to see what I own.” Preston thrived in the power it gave him to ask a woman to undress—to demean her into being the only naked person in the room.
Abigail did as she was told and stood in the middle of the room. She brought both hands to her shoulders and slipped the straps past her arms. Her bra was left discarded on the floor. She eased off her panties, revealing a line of curls that led to her clit.
Her skin was naturally tan as if she’d spent every summer in the Caribbean. She was voluptuous in her hour-glass figure with ample breasts and wide hips. There wasn’t a single imperfection on her body. She was beautiful and as perfect as he knew she would be. And all his.
He walked toward her.
“This—” he picked the panties from the floor, “—is not allowed. You’re a slave, not a queen. You will wear latex and leather, or nothing at all. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Master Trice.”
Something shone against the light on the side of Abigail’s inner thighs. At a closer glance, he noticed it was her arousal, spreading like butter on her slick body.
Holy shit, she was dripping.
He could easily get on his knees and taste her. He was sure she tasted as sweet as she smelled.
She wasn’t going to win. He would have her on his terms, not hers.
“You will get a full checkup and start on contraception pills. You will wax everything from the waist down. All of it. I better not find a hair in your asshole.”
His words painted a smile on Abigail’s face, though she tried to hide it. What was so funny about that statement? Preston couldn’t understand.
It sure as hell got him mad. He added that to the long list of reasons why he’d flog her when he saw her again.
“There will be a car waiting for you outside your home on Friday evening. You will bring only yourself.”
“Yes, Master Trice.”
“Excellent. Get dressed and go home.” She gathered her panties and made her way out the door. “Oh, and Abigail.” He waited for her to turn around. “You aren’t allowed to touch yourself. Your orgasms belong solely to me.”
“Yes, Master Trice.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abigail pushed the iron door with quivering hands. Goosebumps layered her skin, making her feel like a featherless chicken as she stepped into the chilly January night.
She pulled out her phone from the inside of her coat to call a cab but quickly changed her mind. A cab would take her home too soon and she wanted to prolong the events of the night she’d finally met her master.
At three in the morning, it wasn’t safe for a young woman to walk the streets of New York City on her own. So, Abigail walked the twenty blocks to her home with her hand tightly closed around the pepper spray her mother had suggested she get ever since she turned twelve and was allowed to walk to and from school on her own. She was into orgies, not rape.
Thinking of Master Trice lessened the night’s fright.
He’d come to her with the sole purpose to own her and by the end of the night, he’d achieved his goal. She was sure at any moment during the tour he’d take her in a room and have his way with her and she wouldn’t have objected. In fact, she’d wished for it.
His establishment was exquisite, depicting the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece.
It made her giddy to know they had something in common. Though she rarely paid attention in class, she could still remember most of the mythologies she’d had to memorize for her midterms and final exams.
She wondered what drew Master Trice to the Greek Gods. Was it their veins flowing with ichor that made them immortal? Or was it simply that he wanted to be worshipped?
All of a sudden, Abigail felt a need to know everything there was to know about Master Trice. His age. His favorite color, food, movie. What made him smile, though she doubted he ever did. Why her out of all the women she was sure threw themselves at him?
When he explained he had another submissive and was expected to have sex with her, something tightened in her stomach. She’d never been with a woman before and had never had the desire to do so. She didn’t know what to make of it but if it was one of Master Trice’s rules, she’d obey it faithfully.
Abigail couldn’t wait to be fucked in front of an audience. She couldn’t wait to be shared, spanked, cut, and suspended by her arms. She couldn’t wait to see her master naked. She was sure he had a muscular frame. His clothes were tight fitted, exposing the rigid muscles beneath as he’d tried to control his ire.
Walking on eggshells around him was going to be a challenge Abigail couldn’t wait to embark on. She was going to do everything in her power to please him, even if it was for two nights and two days out of the week.
When Abigail got home, she slipped off her shoes and went straight to the shower. She didn’t want to wash the night away but knew if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep with such an intoxicating smell on her body.
While she washed clean of the sins she’d witnessed, she made a mental to-do list for the upcoming week.
• finish editing chapter twenty of Katie Mahony’s book
• call Mike
• have lunch with Mom
• get a Brazilian wax
• talk to my gynecologist
• buy a new pair of underwear
She closed the shower’s handle and towel-dried before getting into bed.
Abigail shut her eyes and let out a tranquil sigh. It was much easier to fall asleep knowing her dreams would come true when she’d wake.
CHAPTER NINE
Lauren found herself at Master Trice’s feet. Her blonde tresses covered her nudity. Her sky-blue eyes were cast to the dark floors. Her breath was hoarse with anticipation but steady with zeal.
A purr escaped past her lips as her master looped a chain around the hoops on her nipples and clipped the last tweezer on her clit. With a facile tug from Master Trice’s expert fingers, her breasts doubled in size, feeling every pinch of the tweezer. Her clit began to swell with uncured desire.
Guided by her master, she wandered to the St. Andrew’s Cross that hung on the wall. He cuffed her wrists and ankles so that all the weight in her body rested solely on her toes. Master Trice pulled an overly familiar mask from his left pocket. His cautious fingers swiped her curls out from her neck as he zipped up the mask that concealed everything but her nose. Yet another rebellious gesture that went unheeded.
Lauren swallowed the forlorn sigh her body pleaded she release.
In the years they’d known each other, he never failed to treat her like the broken porcelain doll she’d sworn never to become again. He drowned in a glass of water when inflicting so much as a bruise on her body. He’d whip her no more than three times and demand she'd take a month’s rest. It was his inability to see her as more than a broken doll that brought her back to the horrid past he desperately wished she’d forget.
To Lauren, Preston was father and mother, brother, and sister. He was, in all intents of the word, her family. She miserably wished to one day mean the same to him. And because Lauren’s optimism was greater than her unrequited love, she received the little Preston allowed of himself without reproach.
Master Trice released a full breath, powerful enough to extinguish a forest fire. Now her face was covered, Master Trice could do what his mind needed without the fear of remorse.
“Tell me when to stop,” he whispered in her clad ear.
“Yes, Master Trice.” Lauren held her eyes tightly shut, fearing the sting of the crop. She pushed forward, rubbing the tweezers against the wall. It created a pleasurable sensation. She focused on it, rather than the bite of the crop. She bit her lip, holding back a whimper as the end of the crop slapped the area where her thigh met her buttocks. If she pretended to like it maybe he’d let himself go—maybe he’d love her as much as she loved him.
He slapped her again and again.
O
n her back.
Between her thighs.
Her shoulder blades.
There was not a spot on her back the crop hadn’t grazed. Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks, pooling at the hollow of her neck. She’d forgotten how many times he’d whipped her, enthralled by the need to be worthy.
Lauren had no intention of shouting her safeword. She wanted to meet Master Trice. She wanted him to hurt her. Hurt her deep and hard until he felt privileged to fuck her. Fuck her like the superb sub she’d been for the past five years. Fuck her like he would his new shiny virgin sub. Jealousy threatened to fuel her veins with vengeance but simmered at a convicting thought.
She’d seen many subs come and go.
None lasted more than a few months.
None but one.
CHAPTER TEN
The small taverna in the outskirts of the city was owned by an elderly couple who’d moved from Athens to New York in the late sixties.
It was favored by many Greek Americans as it was the only authentic Greek restaurant in the whole state. It was the closest one could get to Greece without flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
Damario had made sure his restaurant represented the best of Greece’s culinary tastes. His menu ranged from gyros to avgolemonos to moussakas and wine.
Irina, on the other hand, focused on the ambiance of the taverna, decorating the walls in whites and baby blues, and adding mustard pots with pink and red flowers to the outside. She’d knitted and designed the Greek key-pattern cloths that covered every table and painted the chairs the color of the Mediterranean Sea.
For all intents and purposes, this small restaurant was their olives and olive oil, supporting not just one, but three households.
The Mikos consisted of two daughters and the mother hen. Damario, the poor old man, was the only male in the family, carrying the weight of the three loud women who made his life a roller coaster.
The blonde woman stared ahead, watching as the evening rush brought ravenous customers to her front steps.
She took a minute to reminisce to when Ambrosia was an unknown eatery. The taverna had been so unpopular she thought herself lucky when a tourist came in to ask for directions.
At the time, the economy had been unwelcoming to the family to the point where their olives and olive oil sat on a pile of debt, sinking like quicksand. If it hadn’t been for her favorite customer, her family wouldn’t have been as well-off as they were today.
Irina could still remember the day a businessman walked into her small restaurant. She was stunned that such a prestigious man wandered into her taverna that she offered him a sample of everything on the menu.
After that day, the man became a regular, going several days a week to eat late lunches or early dinners. He’d sit at the same table every time and ordered the savory dish of moussaka. For his sweet tooth, he’d always ask for a box of loukoumades.
When the man heard they were going to close the family business, he offered to pay their debts and became a silent partner.
Now the business was booming, so much so, that customers reserved a table a month in advance. Who wouldn’t in a restaurant that housed only ten tables?
A customer who never had to call in advance was Mr. Preston Trice.
The bell above the door rang. Irina’s face lit up with a beaming smile. She stopped what she was doing and greeted Preston who was more like a son in her eyes.
“Damario! Damario!” she called out to her husband. “Our boy is here.”
At the time, Damario was making a yogurt gyro dip. When he heard Preston was in the room, he let go of the blender and rushed to the front desk to welcome him.
Never having had the blessing of a son of their own, the couple saw their regular customer and business partner as a member of the family.
“We were beginning to think you’d forgotten about us,” Irina joked in Greek.
Preston wasn’t a man of hugs or anything that resembled affection, but for the Mikos, he’d reserved a special place.
In Damario, Preston saw his late father Giorgio Dimitriou. Both men had the hands of a worker and the stamina needed to survive in the world.
“Never, Irina. You know how much I indulge in Damario’s food,” he answered her in a quick string of Greek.
He didn’t need the couple to take him to his usual table, but they followed nonetheless, asking why he took so long to visit and if he was alright.
As much as Preston liked the family, he couldn’t deny they overwhelmed him and were extremely clingy. Everything he hated in a person he found in the Mikos. The stereotypical loud and carefree Greeks.
Preston despised questions. It was something he loathed with a passion, especially when it came from his overbearing mother. But for some reason, it wasn’t as annoying when others asked. Whereas his mother inquired for her own benefit, Irina and Damario asked with genuine interest.
He tried not to think about the reason why his routine changed abruptly but the image of a young siren kept sliding through his mind. As Preston sat at one of the two tables on the outside space, he counted the hours until he had her naked in front of him again.
Two.
Finding it disrespectful to imagine a woman naked while talking to an elderly couple, Preston told the Mikos he was too busy with work, which wasn’t a lie. He needed to start sketching if he wanted to spend the weekend free of work.
He ordered his usual and was left just as he liked it, alone.
Sitting alfresco, he inhaled a breath of air and pulled out a sketchbook from the briefcase he sometimes carried. He sharpened a pencil and drew new designs for the house of a famous Italian mogul.
Francisco Esposito wanted his house on the island of Capri to look like a yacht floating over the sea. It was an easy task for Preston, yet it’d taken him several days to sketch a simple draft. This time would be different because he was sitting alfresco, listening to classic Greek music, and not in an office overlooking the bustle of New York City.
He brought pencil to paper and began making lines that soon turned to curves. He erased the arch and turned it back into a line. But his hand wanted to draw a different image his mind had been trying to chase away.
And so, he let his hand do what it knew best. The curves returned. The sterile pale was besmeared in golden hues. The house managed to grow hair that flew like it was part of the wind. A pouty mouth and big gray eyes, begging to be fucked stared back at him.
Fuck!
Preston jumbled the paper and threw it in the middle of the table. At this rate, he was going to be bald before he turned forty. He needed to get his shit together. It angered him how such a small girl had the power to seep into his mind and control his world.
It’d been a couple of days since his disastrous scene with Lauren. Wanting her to be Abigail, he’d hurt her so bad her injuries were going to take weeks for Elliott to heal.
With Lauren out of the picture this weekend, Abigail would have to care for her wounds on her own. Served her right for being a minx.
On the days that followed their meeting, Preston had used his mind to think of the many ways he could hurt her as much as she was hurting him. But where Abigail did it from far, Master Trice would do it inches away. He’d not only inflict physical pain but psychological too. And that hurt more than paddles and knives.
He knew what he’d do to hurt her. He knew she wasn’t going to get any pleasure out of their scenes because bad girls didn’t get rewarded. They got disciplined.
Finishing up his moussaka, he took a bite of his favorite dessert.
He wondered if Abigail tasted as sweet as loukoumades.
A sinister smile split his face. He didn’t have to wonder anymore. Pulling out his phone, he called his chauffeur.
“It’s time to get my new slave.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Outside the brownstone, warm air met a gust of cold wind, turning drops of rain into crystal flakes. Abigail watched as the naked trees danced in synchronized motion wit
h the wind.
A flurry settled on the rim of the window. If she’d move just an inch it’d look like the snowflake rested on the tip of her nose just as it had the first time she’d seen snow.
Thankful for the tinted shade, she checked herself for the umpteenth time on the reflection of the window.
She’d made sure her makeup didn’t make her look like she was trying too hard, opting for light foundation to cover some of her blemishes. Her lips glossed the rose pink of her cheeks and her hair resembled the serene waves of the ocean.
She looked good.
She felt good.
She smelled even better like that of a rose garden on a breezy day.
Abigail was confident her master would approve. More than anything, she wanted to please him as much as he’d already pleased her with his mere existence. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a man—mean without apology, callous, heartless.
Her thighs closed around the lips of her pussy. She couldn’t wait to taste him and have him inside her.
He intrigued her maybe just as much as she intrigued him.
She wondered how he could be ruthless and not think twice to apologize? How he walked his palace like a king wanting to be bowed to and worshipped? Was it he had a big dick and knew how to use it?
She hadn’t spent enough time with him to find out, though the dent on his pants had hinted at the possibilities. She was sure she’d find her answers in the two nights they’d spend together…with his other submissive. What was her name, again? Laurelin?
Abigail knew her name, she was just being a jealous broad. She hadn’t even met the woman, and she already disliked her. With a feminist as a mother, she knew all about women empowering other women, but she’d already broken the feminist code when she agreed to be owned by a man who promised nothing more but debasement.
Would it make her bisexual if she had sex with another woman? She really needed to talk to Mike about this.
Collared (Masters of Desires Book 1) Page 5