Boy (The Training House #2) (9 page)

I’m growling and clenching my jaw, enraged spit spewing from the edges of the damn rope gag as he plows me good and hard. I hate that it feels so fucking good—that I love the pain, the tearing sensation. My ass can take a hell of a lot, so whatever he’s using on me must be huge. Of course it is. The Master does not fuck around.

I feel the heat of his legs on either side of mine, then a searing pain as he runs the blade down my back, making a crisscross pattern, slashing my skin open. And no matter how pissed off I am, I want him to fuck me, to jam his cock into my ass. To shove my face into the floor. To hurt me enough that I won’t ever forget him. Because I plan to leave this place, and never come back. Never see his stunning face again. It’ll be fucking impossible if I steal Aimée away.

Aimée.

What in fucking hell have they done with her?

I let out a roar, but it’s
him
, so all that happens is that he pulls whatever rigid object he’s been pegging me with from my ass and starts to beat me with it. The blows land on my ass, the backs of my thighs, the backs of my fucking knees, even the bottoms of my feet.

From under the damn rope gag I mutter, “Yeah, harder, you bastard.” He can’t possibly understand my garbled cussing, but he knows me, and he gets the gist.

Immediately, it all stops, and he steps back.

“God damn it, Christopher,” he says after several long, silent moments filled with nothing but his panting breath. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard real rage in his voice, no matter what I’ve done. “Why
her
?” He pauses, then murmurs, “But of course it’s her. It is for me. Why wouldn’t it be for you? We all fall in love with this Girl.”

I growl then, mad that he refuses to use her name.

Grabbing me by the sparse hair of my platinum Mohawk, he pulls my head up, making me rear up on my knees, and he comes around to look into my eyes. His are so startlingly blue—I always forget how blue they are. His dark brows are furrowed. And the expression on his face…I’ve never, ever seen him like this.

“You’re in love with her, too, aren’t you?” He gives me a rough shake. “God damn it, you love her. And she’ll love you back, if she doesn’t already. Everyone does. You and your exquisite beauty and your supreme brattiness, and your barely-caged anger that burns so very brightly in your eyes. Yes, everyone falls in love with you, dangerous boy. That’s something the two of you have in common.”

He throws me down on the rug and stalks off. I know better than to move right now, but I watch him from the corner of my eye. He’s pacing the floor, and I see now he’s dressed in one of his beautiful, crisp white Italian shirts, the cuffs rolled, exposing his beautiful forearms and the dragon tattoo curling around the right one. His slacks are black, as always, fitting his flawless ass in a way that makes me want to break free of my ropes and shove my unrelieved and swollen cock in there, to abuse his asshole the way he has mine. I don’t get how I can be so damn emotional and still want to fuck. Always. Yeah, the fucking primal animal. That’s just what I am.

He stops pacing and comes back to me.

“Christopher. Get up. We need to talk.”

He’s untied me, given me a glass of water and sat me down on one of the fragile-looking sofas. I don’t know what this means. Am I being dismissed now? It’ll be harder to get back to Aimée from outside the Ranch, and I don’t know when, if ever again, they’ll let me in as a Master, but I will fucking find a way to get to her. The idea that he’d separate us makes me sullen—not a far stretch for me. I’d refuse to look at him, pouty child that I am sometimes, except I’d rather stare at him, trying to unsettle him. He doesn’t unsettle easily, but he’s off tonight. I can see it in the tight set of his shoulders and mouth. In the way he keeps running a hand over his dark hair. If I weren’t in the slave role I’d
make
him talk to me, but even I can’t do that from this end of the spectrum. And naked and so recently abused by him, that’s where—and what—I am, despite my recent compelling surges of dominance.

A good ten minutes goes by before he finally he says, “This isn’t working, Christopher.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Oh?” I ask, coyly, perhaps.

He strides across the room toward me, menace in his posture, in his face, but when he gets to the little sofa, he stops, running his hand over his hair again, which tells me he’s distraught. Well, so am I.

“Come on, Christopher. Don’t pull this with me. Not with
me
. You owe me better than that.”

I roll my shoulders, sit up straighter. “All right. I’ll cut the shit. But tell me what, exactly, we’re talking about here. Me messing with Aimée? Fucking her? Talking to her? Topping her? What?”

“All of it. All of it, with you here as a
slave
. You undermine the system, damn it!”

“Don’t I always?” I can’t help the grin that quirks one corner of my mouth. “People expect it of me.”

“Stop with the performance. We know each other too well.”

I notice then how tired he looks. Is he really that in love with her? Am I? What are we negotiating here? Or does he just want me to spill before he bans me from this place long enough to cart her off somewhere, hide her from me? Would he really fucking do that?

I would, if I were him. Hell, I have plans to do exactly that.

He sits down next to me, taking a dainty throw pillow and tossing it at me. “Cover yourself. I can’t have a serious discussion with you when you’re naked.”

“Telling me I’m going to take your fat, hungry cock isn’t serious?” I ask him. But I cover my naked crotch with the pillow.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Yes, but you love that about me.”

He sighs. “I can’t argue with that. But not right now. Right now I need you to talk to me.” He stops, waiting. When I remain silent, he goes on. “Okay. I can see you’re not going to. I’ll talk to you, then. This Girl—no,
Aimée
—is special. But you already know that. And hell, I brought you here to ask you to leave her be. I saw you from the stands today, you know. I saw how you beat the other Boys to her, how you took her there in the arena. I saw the intensity of your intent, and I recognized it, because it’s the same as my own. But I am asking you now to back off.”

“No.”

He turns to me and grabs my shoulder, but I shake him off, and he doesn’t try it again. His eyes are as fevered as I imagine my own are right now.

“Christopher. Think about what will happen. You’ll be fascinated for a time, then you’ll leave her behind to go off and pursue the other parts of your life. Ishtar—”

“Ishtar? You know she doesn’t mean to me what Aimée does. Did it ever occur to you that I might want her in my life?”

“No,” he says quietly. “You never do. Not for any length of time. Don’t do that to her. I am telling you, don’t—”

“I won’t!” I say savagely. “You have no idea…”

“No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”

He’s calmed himself, all smooth talk again, acting the Master. But I’m too much the Master myself right now, and I’m not having this shit. I get to my feet.

“Do what you will, Damon,” I spit out. “You will, anyway. You have more money than I do, more power in this circle. You’ll do it even though you love me, too—or, you once claimed to.”

He looks down, folding his hands, then glances back up at me. He says, his voice soft, “You know I do.”

I stare at him, trying to ignore the raw emotion on his face, which is always difficult for me to handle. There were times when he begged me not to go, but I always did. I always do. I’m too fucking hardened to let a man love me—that’s the raw and simple truth of it. Damon is as close as I’ve ever come to it.

“I’m ready to go now. Wherever you’re sending me.”

To show him I mean it, I get down on my knees and clasp my hands behind my back. He stands, walks over to me and strokes my head. “So damn beautiful,” he murmurs before moving toward the door, opening it, and giving orders to whoever is waiting outside.

The goons come back into the room, and very quickly put a heavy leather posture collar on me, lace me into leather arm-binders, my arms tight behind my back. I’m blindfolded and a rubber snaffle bit is shoved between my teeth—the kind with two jointed pieces that are made of metal when they’re used on horses. It’s to be the ponies, then. And I will perform even more beautifully, more elegantly, because I know he’ll be watching—I can’t deny that, even to myself. In Master mode or not, even I, angry brat that I am, can’t resist being ponied. I fucking love it, whether it’s me or anyone else. Too fucking hot.

As they shuffle me out to the wagon, my mind is too full of the possibilities to even give Master Damon much thought. No, that’s bullshit. I think of almost nothing but him, because he is behind every single thing that will happen to me as long as I remain at the Ranch. Will I be ridden? Paired with another pony and made to pull a wagon? Whipped along one of the trails? Or hitched to the cart they use to carry away the horseshit and straw from the stock stables? It could be any of these things. And will I see Aimée again while I’m here? I have no idea how things will go.

I will be a pony for them. It’ll give me time to formulate a plan, and I’ll fucking enjoy it. But as soon as I figure things out, I’m gone.
Gone
. Maybe for good this time. And Aimée is coming with me, unless they send her away first.

Fuck.

No way to find out. Maybe…

I keep my eyes on the stars peering from between the clouds overhead as the wagon bumps over the path, taking me back to the slave barn rather than the stock barn, making me realize the Master is more afraid than I’d thought. Too afraid to punish me that harshly, with the solitary confinement he knows I truly hate. I smile, but it only lasts a moment. Even I have a conscience. I don’t want to break his heart. But I want to break my own even less—I’ve only recently discovered I really have one.

We come to a stop and the handlers pull me out of the cart. I don’t bother to fight them as they begin to walk me down the center aisle of the barn. I make a mental note of the stall door that holds—or held—my beautiful Aimée before they shuffle me into the stall right next to the handlers’ room. There, they remove my arm binders after they chain my ankles, then they chain my wrists, leaving me just enough give to get to the damn buckets—one for me to drink from, one for me to piss in. Whatever. The buckets are the least of my worries. My posture collar is replaced with a steel collar, and that, too, is attached to the heavy bolts in the wall of the barn by a length of chain. It’s too short for me to lie down, and I’ll have to sleep slumped against the wall. Again, whatever. It’s no worse than sleeping on the streets, like I did as a kid.

I’m offered a dish of a flavorless beef stew, held by a slave Boy they’ve brought in from somewhere, and although I’m tempted to knock the plate from his hands just because I’m fucking pissed off, I know I need the nourishment.

Finally they leave me the hell alone without a single word being spoken—alone with my thoughts, with my plotting, with the fantasies of being paraded as a pony tomorrow making my traitorous dick hard as my steel shackles.

At some point I sleep, which I know because when I open my eyes I can feel the world coming alive around me. I can hear the sounds of slaves waking and yawning, the birds chirping outside, and I can see the pale colors of the rising sun filter in through the open doors at each end of the big barn.

I get up and stretch a little, testing my muscles, then do some calf raises, going up on my toes, then lowering my weight again, followed by some push-ups against the barn wall. Next, I work my abs, grabbing a cross-beam to hold my weight while I lean my back into the wall, tighten my stomach and bring both knees up to my chest over and over. Then I do it again, with both legs extended straight out, until my abs are screaming. It won’t do for me to get soft now, and I haven’t been exercised enough lately—unless you count fucking as exercise.

After I finish and have had a few minutes to stretch again, two handlers and another slave Boy—there’s always an endless supply of them here—come to take me to the showers, where I’m bathed and dried and polished before they bring me back to my lonely stall and give me breakfast. I have to shit in the goddamn bucket in front of them, at which point I’m taken back to the showers for an enema and another thorough bath. But I’ve endured worse, and something in me always likes it, apparently, or I’d never keep coming back for more, would I?

Then it’s back to my stall again, where I find Victor waiting for me.

He’s grinning at me, the beautiful bastard. “Ah, all emptied out? Good boy, Christopher.”

“You know how they are. They love to collect our shit in a bucket, these scat-loving little slave Boys. They get off on it.”

“Yes, I imagine they do. But so do you—you get off on them doing it.”

I just shrug.

“I’m here to dress and harness you,” he says, ignoring my lack of response. “But you knew that, didn’t you? You’re hard already.”

In two strides he’s across the stall to where I’ve been left standing, and he slaps my dick with the flat of his big hand. I try not to flinch, but the truth is I could almost come. Son of a bitch knows how to keep me in slavespace, but I’m fighting it. I don’t want to be here. Except that I do, if only long enough to play pony for them one last time.

Last time? Is it really to be the last time? Will I even have any choice in the matter?

Shut the fuck up and enjoy it.

“Victor…”

“What is it, Christopher? Speak up while you have the chance—it won’t last long.” He glances at his watch, a big piece on a wide black leather band. “You have exactly two minutes.”

He’s watching me, waiting. But the words choke me, my throat closing up as completely as if his big, black cock was shoved down there. Except this doesn’t feel nearly as good. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with me, until suddenly, blindingly, I do.

I am fucking afraid. This is what fear feels like. Too damn unfamiliar. I haven’t let myself be afraid of anything since I left home at fourteen. That was when I decided I was done with that shit. But asking myself the question opened it up.
Is
this the last time? The last time I see Victor? The last time I can be a slave?