there will be no plea for mercy that will make me stop. When I said I was going to be inside you very soon, I meant it. I won’t have another slave that I don’t own on every level.”
Something that had been coiled tightly inside her, feeling like a bomb about to go off, began to loosen. The vise in her chest released, and she could breathe normally again. He wasn’t going to torture her with the growing dread, wondering if he would stop or if he wouldn’t. She had her answer on that, at least.
Grace knew she should take the offer. But then what? If she took her chance at freedom she’d die alone and miserable. She could see no other way it could play out. In all the times she’d thought about it outside of impossible daydreams, she’d imagined being scared to leave her house, jumping at every noise, fearing every man that got near her, bile rising in her throat if one actually touched her, no matter how innocent or accidental the touch, never being able to have a normal relationship with a man. And kink was definitely off the table.
But Asher was right. Her body responded to what it responded to. Inexplicably, all of Lucas’s cruel treatment couldn’t rewire her brain or make her skin stop humming when in the presence of a dominant male. No matter how scared she was.
If she went back home, she could pretend she wasn’t wrong, but she knew her hand would still drift between her legs, and she’d still have the same fucked-up fantasies. And each time she brought herself off, she would die just a little more. And not a single living soul would understand her, what she felt, what she needed but could never have, what her body still wanted in spite of all the evidence she’d acquired to prove it could never work. Not in real life. Not ever.
The alternative was still holding her, waiting. She wanted him to rescind the offer because she couldn’t handle this kind of responsibility again. His jaw clenched as if holding back the words that would say: Fuck it. You’re mine. You belong to me and I’ll take you until you stop crying and beg me to keep going.
God, why couldn’t it have been Asher instead of Lucas the first time? Why? She was being teased with something she should have had. And if she took it now, what did that say about her? Somehow him giving her a chance at freedom was worse than not giving it because once again she was faced with the choice . . . be free or be a slave. And once again she wanted to be the latter, wanted to trust that this could be something other than a waking nightmare.
But if she made the wrong choice again . . .
Him buying her had been the one shining beacon. Whatever he did to her, she hadn’t voluntarily walked into it. Those thoughts ran on a loop in her mind until finally he broke the tension, shoving past the barriers of a battle he’d been waging in his own mind. A battle she’d felt as his hands had tightened on her arms, no doubt leaving marks that would later turn to bruises.
She knew she’d stand in front of the mirror, running her fingers over the marks left by his hand, and that somehow, it wouldn’t be the same as the marks Lucas had forced her to endure. They would be marks she’d touch and look at every day, becoming sadder as they faded, leaving nothing but the memory of his hands on her.
He gripped her even tighter so that she had to bite her lip not to cry out. “No,” he said.
Grace was so still her breath seemed to move in and out of her more slowly and quietly, as if in stealth mode. No, what?
“I’m sorry. I thought I could give you the option of freedom. I know it’s the right thing to do. I’ve only had you a day. I shouldn’t be this attached. But I can’t do it. It’s worse that I even offered. You’re never leaving here. I will never free you.”
His voice was threaded with regret and pain, emotions she couldn’t convince herself were the same as Lucas’s Puppet Theater of Fake Feelings.
She said the only thing she could say, the only words that would move from her brain to reach her mouth. “Thank you, Master.”
Asher tensed. “For?”
“For giving me