Master's Flame (17 page)

But by the time she got to his office, she was always wet. There was something about being used...and used...and used merely for someone else’s pleasure. When he craved her, he came and got her and fucked her. It was so simple, and so animalistically hot. Sometimes he’d start in her pussy and then decide halfway through that he wanted to fuck her ass. He used condoms for that. She didn’t think he could get in otherwise, without the slippery smooth latex to ease the way. Even then, it took extra lubricant which he kept in his desk drawer.

Her nose had grown all too familiar with the polished surface of his desk. She knew the temperature of it, the scent of the furniture wax. Smooth wood surfaces had come to trigger an automatic response in her. Everything
clenched
. It still hurt to take him in the ass, even after a couple weeks of training with butt plugs. She thought it would always hurt a little, which was probably why he liked it so much. The worst part was the beginning when he first nudged the head in. After that, the ache became more bearable but it still felt scary and risky. He never injured her, but there was always that sense that he could if he were not so careful.

Valentina was such a pervert that all these thoughts about care and risk turned her on.
He could damage me—but he doesn’t. But he could...
That was hot to her, especially paired with the dull, agonizing repetition of his thrusts. Sometimes, if he was in the mood for it, he would make her come, touching her in all the places that would make it happen: her pebbled nipples, her swollen clit. He’d slide his fingers between her pussy lips and find that exact spot and caress it in the same rhythm he banged her asshole, and she’d begin to quiver and shake, and in her climax, her pussy and ass would both contract and he’d feel even bigger and hurtier inside her, and oh... Sometimes she’d come again, just because the first orgasm felt so good.

But she’d always been that way. Very sensitive, very responsive. Her Master seemed to delight in it.
Are you coming again?
he’d ask, shaking his head. He only punished her for such excess when he was in a very, very bad mood. Most of the time he just punished her because he liked to hurt her. He was a sadist. That’s how sadists were.

Valentina tried to enjoy the punishments as he did, but they were more difficult to adjust to than the anal. Once her back healed, he started taking her to his playroom, a dark, hot space carved out of the attic. Many evenings he scened with her there, fastening her to various pieces of equipment and breaking her down. There was a wooden chair with phalluses rising out of it, ones he could interchange depending on his mood. Sometimes he used a big dildo in her pussy, sometimes a big dildo in her ass. Sometimes two dildos, so she had to sit there feeling stuffed and restrained by her own orifices.

The chair had a wide leather lap belt so she could neither get up, nor work herself up and down on the dildos the way she wanted to. Once he had her impaled and secured, he’d torture her breasts with clamps, or a crop, or both. He’d make her keep her mouth wide open, whether or not he put his cock inside. The point, she supposed, was to make her feel she was nothing but a collection of holes to be filled at his pleasure. Sometimes she enjoyed her times in that chair, but other times she felt overwhelmed and scared. She could never walk correctly by the time he let her up.

There was another contraption he used a lot, a bench with a high back. He’d make her kneel on the seat facing the wall, so her breasts reached just to the top of the wooden back. Cruel, alligator-grip clamps were fixed to the wood with an adjustable lever, and these were attached to her nipples as she whimpered and cried. Cuffs topped the posts at either side of the bench, and once her wrists were buckled into them, she would be powerless to get away from anything he did to her. She couldn’t move a centimeter without feeling excruciating pain.

Then, of course, he would pick up a strap or flogger or paddle or crop or any of the instruments that lined the walls, and beat her with it to the music of her screams. The pain of the beatings was bad enough, but the nipple-clamps-as-restraints added an entirely new level of hurt. Her hands would strain at the cuffs but he gave her no way to save herself. She was allowed to beg for mercy, but she couldn’t beg him to stop. If she did, it earned her a rough assfucking against the contract wall, nose pressed to the line where she’d signed herself over to him. Three or four assfuckings later, she’d learned to bite her tongue.

There were other pieces of furniture up there too. A spanking bench with straps and restraints all over it, a St. Andrews cross that he hadn’t used with her yet. She thought it would be easier to be tied to that than the high-backed bench with its horrid nipple pinchers, but knowing him, he’d find some way to make the St. Andrews cross horrible too.

The only good thing about his attic dungeon was that by the time he finished with her, he could do just about anything to her sexually and she didn’t care. She took his cock in her ass, she took his semen down her throat, she jammed her tongue up his asshole, whatever he demanded, and she did it with pure relief because at least he wasn’t beating on her. Well, except for the times he beat her and fucked her at the same time.

Sometimes she thought of Jason’s words.
If you ever want out, you can get out.
Sometimes she really, really wanted out, but then her Master would gather her in his arms and carry her to the white room, and gaze at her in a way that made Valentina’s heart tremble. He would shower with her and check her all over, talking to her about random things like her act, her practices, or a meeting he’d had that day. Sometimes before he locked her into her cage, he’d brush a hand over her hair so gently that her eyes glossed over with tears.

I love you
, she would think. And after dreaming of him all night, she’d wake and pull out her sketch pad and try to capture all those brutal, affectionate qualities that comprised him, and again she’d fail. She’d close her pad and put it away and stare at the door in anticipation of his arrival, wondering if she was happy or miserable, or just very, very confused.

*** *** ***

Michel stared down at the tickets in his hand, then over at the silent woman on his arm. They stood in a crush of patrons at the
Palais Garnier
, waiting to be seated for a
l’Orchestre de Paris
concert. Just last week, he’d learned in the course of their dinner conversation that Valentina had never been to see a live orchestra. The revelation had horrified him. He could barely conceive that someone as bright and creative as Valentina might have lived twenty-six years and not yet enjoyed the aural mindgasm of a live orchestra program. He’d immediately stood, abandoning their dinner plates, and dragged her to his home office. He’d purchased third-row tickets while she knelt at his feet.

Why not? He enjoyed spoiling his slaves now and again, taking them out for dinners or shows. In Valentina’s case, he’d been so preoccupied with her luscious body that he’d done nothing but drill her holes for the past three weeks. Careless of him, to get so carried away.

He clasped her wrist tighter as an usher glanced at their tickets and gestured them toward the main floor. The congestion of people pushed them together. He smiled and steadied her when she stumbled against his front. She took a step back with a murmured apology and he slid a look down at her prim black-belted dress and mid-heeled pumps. Her hair flowed loose about her shoulders, a riot of color against her dark outfit. He studied that hair, thinking of her art back in her apartment, creative works so vivid and full of color. Why was he keeping her trapped in his bleak and colorless home?

Because she’s sexy. Because she signed an agreement.

Because he led a bleak and colorless life, and he had wanted her to paint it rainbow-colored for a while.

She could get back to her artistic endeavors soon enough, and her other endeavors too, like sleeping with lots of men and throwing temper tantrums whenever life didn’t suit her. They only had one week left, seven days for him to wallow in his mastery and control. Had he changed her at all? He didn’t think so.

At last they made their way to their seats. More than a few heads turned. The Paris art community was large, but so was the Cirque, and people knew who he was. Their eyes passed from him to the pretty young thing beside him, and he knew their thoughts, not that he cared. Age was irrelevant when it came to attraction. He glanced over at Valentina, at her slim knees pressed together beneath the crepe skirt of her dress. Two hours ago he’d spread those knees and fucked her until he came, leaving her unsatisfied. He enjoyed, sometimes, making her smolder rather than bringing her to full flame. Without thought, he reached and slid a hand down between those knees. She let out a slow, small breath.

He could touch her wherever, whenever he wanted. He owned her, an intoxicating thought every time it presented itself. For now, he let her be; there were people all around them. When the lights went down, perhaps he’d caress her again, run a hand farther up her thigh, up to her hot, wet—

Orchestra, Michel. Not sex.

The musicians began to stream in from offstage, settling with their instruments into their carefully laid-out seats. They fussed with music binders and readjusted their stands, leaning to speak to one another in the casual, short check-ins of collaborative artists. Orchestra concerts weren’t so different from Cirque shows. In both cases, everyone had to work together and do their part. Michel was slated to review a few of the acts from
Cirque Élémental
in the morning, including Valentina’s revamped one. He believed he was perfectly capable of judging her without being influenced by their current relationship. He always put professionalism first...perhaps too much of the time.

Why did he feel like reaching over to hold her hand?

She leaned forward in her chair as the cacophony of tuning and warm-ups began. His spirits rose in anticipation, and she seemed affected too.
You’re so similar to me
, he thought.
Too similar sometimes.
The lights dimmed and she sat back again, her lips slightly parted. From the first chords of Mozart’s
Symphony No. 41 in C Major
, Valentina was gripped.

He had known she would be. Mozart’s music wasn’t only for the ears, but for the soul. As the music soared and complex melodies played against each other, Valentina’s eyes grew wider and wider. Her hand gripped the armrest, then she looked over at him with an expression of wonder that made every frustration worthwhile. Forty-five minutes later, as the symphony concluded with booming brass and a sweeping crescendo of notes, she still stared in wonder.

The audience broke into applause and so did she, effusive, noisy clapping that was so very Valentina-like. He stifled a smile. “There’s more, you know,” he said when she finally piped down. “It’s only intermission.” He took her hand and propelled her out of her chair, and dragged her down the row, over knees and shoes, not caring.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Wherever I want, yes?” he said, turning back to her with a raised brow.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered. Perhaps she worried he would make her leave. He could be ornery and cruel but he wasn’t that cruel.

“Come this way,” he said when they reached the lobby. He knew the Paris Opera House like he knew his own headquarters. He led her down a corridor and past an usher he silenced with a quelling stare. Another turn, and then he ducked with her into an unused dressing room. He took her over by the far wall. On the other side, one could hear the faint sounds of instrument tuning and casual chatting. She looked up at him, awed.

“It’s them.”

Them. The musicians she saw as amazing, superhuman, when she herself could do things none of them could ever hope to do. “You ought to have gone to a concert before now,” he said, taking her face between his palms. “They have them everywhere.”

“I don’t know why—” she began, but he cut off her words when he pressed his lips to hers. He tasted her, shoving a hand into the mass of her hair, then curling his fingers into her nape. She wasn’t the only one affected by fine music and talent. Her little gasps were new notes, her moans a lovely melody, if a simple one. She arched into him and her hands crept up his front, flattening against the lapels of his suit.

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer, and kissed her harder because he couldn’t fuck her, because he couldn’t do all the things he wanted to do to her before the end of intermission. But later...

He thrust a rough hand between her legs, pushing aside her panties to stroke her pussy. She moaned louder, shuddering in his arms. On the other side of the wall, one of the musicians murmured something and another replied. From farther away, a shout of laughter, then the voice of the stage manager giving the five-minute warning.

“
Arrête
,” he muttered, and he was talking to himself, because if anyone was out of control at the moment, it was him. He pulled her skirt back down and tore his lips from hers, and shoved his finger in her mouth instead. “You’re all over me now, damn you. Lick it off.”

She sucked his finger with abandon.
Dieu
, not helping. He pulled it away with an audible “pop” and took her by the elbow. “It’s time to return to our seats. You want to see the rest of the concert, don’t you?”

For a moment, she hesitated, her eyes hazy with lust. But then a long, sweet note sounded from the adjacent room and she remembered where she was.

“Yes, please, Master. I want to see the rest of the concert.”

He could drag her home right now. He could use her to his heart’s content. He was the Master, after all, and she was his slave, existing only to serve his needs. Instead he led her back out to the main floor and to their seats in the third row, feeling hot and confused, and inordinately proud of his self-control.

By the end of the concert, he had gone from feeling casually amorous to feeling crazed with desire. He steered her out to the pavement for the twenty minute stroll to his house. They walked along
Rue Cambon
and through the gardens of the
Champs-Élysées
, Valentina prattling the entire time about music and notes and how she was definitely going to learn the violin, or perhaps the drums, or perhaps the trumpet, or perhaps... She left off and leaned down to catch a stray leaf blowing by.