own her fully because he was willing to make demands to get inside her thoughts, and she was too afraid not to give him everything he wanted to know. If he turned on her, it would be worse than it had been with Lucas.
She took a breath. “This sl . . .” She faltered under the sharp look he gave her. It was so hard to speak about herself in first person with him. He couldn’t begin to imagine how hard. Lainey was the only person with whom it had been easy. But with a man who had complete power over her, it felt foreign and odd. And uncomfortable. “––I mean I . . . I’m wrong. I’m not just broken. I’m wrong. Things that shouldn’t turn me on, turn me on. Even when Lucas punished her . . . me . . . sometimes, I got wet. And now . . . I don’t know you. And I’m . . . responding. It’s wrong.”
He pulled her down against his chest, stroking her hair. “Lucas used your needs against you. But you aren’t wrong. There is nothing wrong with you or how you’re wired. The only thing wrong is how Lucas used it to hurt you. I’m glad your body wants me. It’s okay to just give me your body and your obedience for now. The rest will come in time.”
He slid a hand between her legs to feel her wetness. “This, I can work with.”
She blushed when her hips pressed harder against his probing fingers.
Suddenly Asher wasn’t just theoretically attractive. Though she struggled with an uncountable number of conflicting thoughts and feelings, she couldn’t deny that she did find him appealing, and her body agreed. She was still sure everything would be ripped away and something bad would happen any minute. But for now, for just this one moment, she was so grateful to be feeling something pleasant, that she was willing to surrender to it and try not to think too hard about anything coming after.
Like the sex, what would happen when he was inside her? Was it going to feel like rape? Like Lucas? She squeezed her eyes shut, as if by doing so she could shut out the noise in her brain. At the same time, Asher started stroking the folds of her sex, dipping inside her and using her moisture to massage her already swollen clit.
Her breathing came heavier and faster as all those awful thoughts blanked out, and then a minute later, she came. He moved his hand out from between her legs and let her collapse on top of him.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. The yelling in her mind kept getting louder. Was she in trouble for that? He hadn’t given her permission. Lucas almost never let her come, except in circumstances where he felt making her come would be more awful and shameful than not letting her. Surely this wasn’t acceptable. She should have asked. But it had happened so fast, too fast to think.
“It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, Master.”
She didn’t beg this time. Already she was developing a new strategy where Asher was concerned. If he heard her beg every second of every day, he’d become so desensitized to it, that when she actually needed mercy, it wouldn’t penetrate. Maybe it wouldn’t anyway, but if she could hold back and not beg so much, she might have an ace to play later. At least she shouldn’t beg until the moment before he seemed about to do something horrible. Right now they were just laying there, his erection wedged between her legs, hard and large, with only the material of his pajamas barring his entry. And even after the orgasm, she wanted to rub against him.
He was wrong: there was nothing okay about the way she responded to things. Without that weakness, she never would have come to Eleu to begin with. She’d be safe and happy, living a normal life with a normal job in the normal world. Not laying here, helpless to protect herself, hoping her new master could really be decent, that it wasn’t some trick.
She was so exhausted. She was tired from getting such poor sleep and so little nutrition in the dungeon. She was tired from all the fear. She felt like she’d gone non-stop on adrenaline for so long until her ability to produce it had just stopped. She’d been running on fumes, just trying to survive for weeks––if