Mafia Captive (22 page)

“I know.”

She’d split from her master of six years over the holidays—a man she’d truly loved. Leo had heard about it through the grapevine when he’d been on the prowl for a play partner. This wasn’t their time. As a Catholic, he didn’t believe in reincarnation, but if Mei Lin was right, his agreement for another lifetime was sincere.

He released her and took a step back. “Turn around. I want to look at the marks I left one more time before you go.”

Mei Lin turned silently, her silken hair falling in a black cascade down her back. She bent to retrieve the shiny silver hair sticks she’d left on the couch on her arrival. He enjoyed the view until she righted herself and pulled her hair into a bun, securing the soft wisps into place.

Leo eased closer, running his fingers over the whip marks across her back and the welts on her ass. “Such lovely skin,” he murmured against her shoulder. “None of us deserve to mar it like this.”

She laughed. “You’re such a gallant gentleman when a woman is free. Those wouldn’t be your words if you were my Master.”

“No. They wouldn’t be.” Because in that case, she’d be his to do with as he wished. It was the same as how you might dog-ear the pages of your own books, but never a book that didn’t belong to you.

He trailed kisses along the marks he’d left and then stepped back to enjoy the vision in front of him one last time. “I’ll leave you to get dressed. You can show yourself out.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said. Her voice stopped him when he reached the stairs. “Leo?”

He turned. “Yes, Mei?”

“Be careful with her.”

He nodded and went upstairs to have another talk with the possession he’d finally fully acquired.

He knocked softly on the door when he reached Faith’s room.

“Come in.” Her voice sounded terrified from the other side of the wood, as if he would unleash some uncontrollable animal on her before the ink was dry on their agreement.

He pushed the door open to find her at the desk, a solemn expression on her face. It didn’t escape him that she’d moved as far from the bed as humanly possible, as if to dissuade him.

“We need to discuss some business,” he said.

“Business?”

“A few details. Meet me in my office in twenty minutes.” He wanted to give Mei time to clear out so the two women wouldn’t have an awkward meeting in one of the hallways.

She nodded like she understood the stakes, and Leo left and shut the door behind him, a small smile of triumph curving his lips.

***

As recently as the family’s departure, Faith had thought she just wanted to live and stay safe. But as the other women began to arrive, the pain and fear had crept up on her—the fear that he would turn that look of pleasure and approval on another woman, and Faith would become like lonely furniture forgotten in a corner of the room.

But now that she’d attained his undivided attention, the idea of being forgotten furniture felt so much safer.

She watched the clock above the fireplace as it moved far too fast to the moment she would see Leo again. She dreaded whatever
business
he had to discuss with her. But as long as he was talking, he wasn’t hitting.

When she couldn’t wait any longer without being late, she got up and made her way to the office. An imaginary, disembodied voice echoed off the walls: “Dead woman walking.”

She stood in the doorway to the office, her arms wrapped around her.

Leo glanced up from his desk and put his pen down, closing the black book she’d seen him writing in before. He motioned for her to come to him.

He rubbed her arms when she got closer. “You look white as a ghost. Are you cold? Do you need a sweater?”

“No.”

“No,
Master
,” he corrected.

“No, Master,” she whispered, her gaze cast down.

“We’re just going to talk.”

She nodded and sat in the offered chair on the other side of his desk. She clasped her hands in her lap, staring down at the ring on her finger. “A-are we really getting married?” It was still too impossible and bizarre to be true.

“Yes. I told you already, it’s either that or stay in the dungeon during Christmas every year. Is that what you want?”

“No, Master.”

“Then yes, we’re getting married.”

“But you don’t love me.” She couldn’t say she didn’t love him because she wasn’t sure anymore. If all this were real and normal and without all the layers of strangeness on top of it, she would have accepted a proposal from Leo without hesitation. But this wasn’t her fantasy, this was the real Leo, and she knew the engagement wasn’t real to him, even if the end result would be legal.

“Marrying for love is a new idea. For centuries men and women married for many reasons that had nothing to do with their feelings. Grammie and Papi had an arranged marriage, and they love each other now. Feelings grow over time. We are attracted, and that’s more than what most had. Do you think I would keep you here if I didn’t at least want you?”

She wondered if he would take a mistress, but she didn’t ask. It was inappropriate to badger him as a normal fiancée might. She had no right to demand anything, least of all fidelity. Faith wasn’t sure if he experienced love in a way she’d recognize, anyway.

“Are you on birth control?”

Her head snapped up. It was one of the last things she expected to hear and brought back the fears that he’d try to make her have babies to promote the sham marriage. After all, hadn’t she given him her consent… for anything?

“You know I’m not,” she said.

“I have no way of knowing that. The shot lasts three months. You could have taken that right before you met my brother. You could have a contraceptive implant, or an IUD, both of which can last several years.”

“No. I’m not on any form of birth control.” In all the anxiety about pain and scary kink, Faith had forgotten the normal things couples in sexual relationships obsessed about: diseases and pregnancy. With him being a medical professional, she was sure Leo had been careful with the former, but the latter remained a small risk. “A-are you going to make me have babies? Before you said that you wouldn’t.”

“Do you want babies?”

The truth might upset him, or he might use it against her. “There’s about a 90 percent chance I can’t have them. That’s what my doctor said. I’ve always had issues with my cycle, and I had an illness. The odds aren’t good for me.”

“If you could have them, would you want them?”

She shrugged. “A-are you angry?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“I could be infertile… and your mom…”

“I told you I wouldn’t force you to have children if you didn’t want them. Do you think my word is worthless?”

“No, Master,” she said quickly, grateful he wasn’t angry.

“Decide if you want them. You’d be surprised how often a 10 percent chance turns into a pregnancy. If you don’t want them, we’ll use birth control. I won’t force you to have my children.”

“What about your mother? She’ll hate me.” Gina had been so nice. Most of them had, in fact. Having family was still a new and novel concept. She hated the thought of dashing all their hopes and dreams for more children in the family and being resented for it.

“It’s not her business. We’ll say we can’t have them.”

“And then they’ll wish you’d married someone who could have babies.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think they would, but if it became an issue, I would tell them the doctor told us it was me. I won’t make you bear their contempt.”

It was another thing to add to the list of things that made Leo feel safe and honorable. None of it matched the change that came over him in the dungeon.

“You can return to your room now. That’s all I wanted to talk about.”

Faith got up to leave, confused that nothing scary had happened, and that he was keeping her in the east wing for now. He intercepted her at the door, wrapping her in his arms. His lips pressed against her forehead.

“You
will
survive me, I promise,” he whispered.

Chapter Fifteen

A week passed and Leo still hadn’t taken Faith to the dungeon, though he had resumed meals with her in the kitchen. One afternoon, he’d given her a few books on BDSM and asked her to read them so she would know more of what to expect. That night at dinner she’d been more pale than the night she’d offered herself to him in Mei Lin’s place.

When he asked if she had any questions about anything, she’d shaken her head and looked at her plate, her hand shaking as she brought the fork to her lips.

Leo had spent much of the week digging through old medical texts on psychology. He had little respect for the field—considering it a pseudoscience at best. And yet everything he did with women in his dungeon, and everything between himself and Faith… it was all psychology.

He’d skimmed past the parts about Stockholm Syndrome. He didn’t want to believe Faith’s feelings could be merely a survival mechanism. The look in her eyes when he’d kissed her, the way she responded to him… that had to be real.

Hadn’t the scientific community determined we were all just chemicals swimming around—that behavior was a mechanical reaction to stimuli and nothing more? Nothing mystical or magic, mere cause and effect. If they were right… would any love or feeling be real? Would Stockholm Syndrome be any
less
real, if that was what she had? Did a personal judgment on the value of one set of chemical reactions over another make one empirically better or more real than the rest? Leo believed humans were more than stimulus-response machines, but the men who’d written the psychology books in his den didn’t.

Leo shook the textbook thoughts from his head as he watched his timid slave. He could drag this on for another six weeks without touching her once, and she’d still have that terrified look on her face—maybe more intense.

He poured wine as they sat down for their Friday meal together. “I’m taking you to the dungeon after dinner.”

The tension that had been coiled in her for the past week pulled tight, jerking her head up like a puppet on a string. Her eyes widened as if she wanted to beg him to go back to Mei Lin or any other woman and leave her in peace.

“What did I tell you before I sent you off to bed last Friday?” He had no doubt she remembered everything he’d said or done since that moment. She’d watched and listened to him as if her life depended on memorizing every nuance of every interaction between them.

“Y-you said I’d survive you, Master.”

“And you will. I’ll take you into my world slowly. I’ll make you crave it.” Since she’d given her consent, Leo had been filled with anticipation over the idea of turning someone with no kink inclinations into his willing slave who learned to beg for each lash of the whip or strike of the cane. After a week of delving more deeply into Skinner and Breland’s work on conditioning, he was convinced he could create in Faith everything he needed. She already had the most important component—an inborn submissive tendency. With that one trait, he could work miracles.

In their early weeks together, he’d assumed her reactions to him were all fear-based, but as time went on and she’d begun to trust him, her behaviors hadn’t changed. Her shy deference, the way she couldn’t meet his eyes—not due to some duplicity as would have been the case with Caprice, but rather, something in him made her shrink back in recognition of his dominance.

He watched as she picked over her meal.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine, Master,” she whispered as she tried to get through the baked ziti.

He was toying with her. Leo wondered if his sadism had kicked up a notch. Was he now only satisfied if there was more fear and resistance? What separated him from a serial rapist or a serial killer if he was willing to let this line of consent blur? She’d said she would do these things, but she was clearly so terrified, she might pass out at any moment. Could any attraction or feeling she’d developed for him make this okay in her mind? Or his?

He went to the side pantry to get a roll of aluminum foil. He wrapped his dinner and put it in the fridge then took hers away as well. She was too nervous to eat; she was picking over it. It was better to move them forward now, to let her see that he could ease her into his world and there was nothing to fear.

“The human body is a funny thing. It can be programmed like a computer,” he said. “I can reprogram you so that you like the things I like. I don’t want to torture you.” He wasn’t one hundred percent sure on that last part. But if he said it out loud enough times, maybe it would become true.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

She took his hand and he pulled her into his arms and held her. It was the first time he’d touched her since the previous week when he’d kissed her in her bedroom and sent Mei Lin away. He’d been afraid if he started touching her again he wouldn’t stop. And his touch involved whips and belts and canes and clamps.

He held her for several minutes, rubbing her back as she trembled in his arms. He was moments from canceling everything, but that would solve nothing. The only solution that didn’t involve her tied up in his dungeon was setting her free, and no matter how much guilt he felt, or how much he believed she was no longer a threat to his family, he couldn’t let her go. He had to possess her.

When she’d settled in his arms, he picked up a cloth napkin from the table and pressed the soft fabric against her face to catch the tears.

“Please don’t cry, Faith. These aren’t the kind of tears I want from you.”

“I’m sorry, Master.”

“Shhh.”

***

Faith’s appetite had fled the moment he’d said he was taking her to the dungeon. She was glad he hadn’t forced her to eat dinner because she was sure she wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

For the past week she’d been on edge, her appetite shrinking each day. If Leo had noticed, he hadn’t said anything. Each day she woke wondering if today was the day. She wasn’t like those other women. She couldn’t do this.

The reality of what was coming should have made her hate him. It should have wiped away any residual attraction or fuzzy emotion. If it could have, she might have begged to be released from her promise. Even if it meant she’d never have love or companionship, it would protect her from the things downstairs.