Master's Flame (22 page)

“You’ve changed me,” she gasped when he pulled away. “I see now. You truly changed me.”

“I know.”

He kissed her again, stealing her breath. His lips were hard and commanding against hers, as rich and warm in flavor as a fine wine. His fingers trailed over her body and then down to her pussy lips. He parted them and found her clit, stroking it with proficient skill. Her moan tore wide and became a begging cry into his mouth. His stroking felt so good. Her hips bucked back against his cock, and then forward against the teasing joy of his fingers.

“Oh, please, Master.
Please.
” She pleaded for him to let her come because she wouldn’t be able to come unless he helped her. Unless he let her. As good as it felt, she knew he might stop pleasuring her at any time, only to enjoy her sagging disappointment and distress. Or he might let her come. She didn’t know. He stoked her clit in rhythm with his strokes, not too hard or fast, but lazily, as if he had all the time in the world to play with his toy.

Her hands spread against the wall, pressing against the words he’d written and her own name. Her nails scraped over the silly hearts. He still held her head and kissed her, occasionally letting his lips meander over her cheek and across her jaw. Her frantic panting mounted as her orgasm curled and built, aching to break wide. Her Master stopped kissing her and pressed his cheek to hers. Her pussy was so wet now she could feel his fingers gliding through the moisture. The warmth of his body engulfed her. A strangled sound rose in her throat and he groaned against her ear.

“Now, then. Do it. Come for your Master.”

His rasping words took the rising winds of her climax and spun them into a cyclone. If he hadn’t held her, she would have fallen to the floor. The orgasm took all the strength from her body, concentrating it in her mad, contracting core. Hot satisfaction drowned her. He drove his fingers into her pussy and she clenched around them as he drilled her asshole, fucking her fast and hard until he went rigid behind her. His heart beat against her back, and he shuddered with a restrained kind of resonance, so different from her crazed gasps and cries.

He remained motionless and she did too, except when her ass contracted randomly and involuntarily around his cock. She felt so close to him, so protected and nurtured. Then her eyes opened and she stared at the words in front of her.
I belong to Le Maître
, and today’s date, February fourteenth.

She turned her head and saw him looking at the words too. He pulled out of her, leaving her bereft. He lifted her chin for one last, fleeting kiss.

“You’ve done it,
mignonne
. You survived.” His lips turned up in a faint smile. “And I did too.”

“What happens now?” Her voice sounded tight and a little sharp. She’d felt protected before, but now she felt scared.

“It’s time for you to get ready to go,” he said, stroking her shoulder. “It’s time for you to fly away to freedom. Clean up and I’ll take you home.”

He walked away. She felt rage, panic, anxiety, all of them attacking her when she was least able to withstand the assault. “That’s it?” she cried. “‘
Clean up and I’ll take you home
’?”

He turned back, his previous warmth and tenderness disappeared. “That’s it. Your term of service is over. I hope it was everything you dreamed.”

“Everything I dreamed?” She searched his eyes. There was nothing there now, only distance. Irritation.

“Why are you repeating everything I say? I am still your Master until I take you home. I’ve asked you to clean up and prepare to leave. Let’s not end this on an unfortunate note.”

She wanted to scream at him.
An unfortunate note, really?
But mimicking his cool words wasn’t going to change anything. She took one last look at the words on the wall and then closed her eyes and turned away. She couldn’t bear to see them anymore.

Valentina was not the first slave who’d shed tears at their parting. Surely, she wouldn’t be the last.

Michel tried not to be affected by her quiet sniffling and sobs as he drove her to the Cirque compound and her dormitory. Honestly, he’d feared worse, which is why he’d been so remote and cordial with her at the end.

He felt regrets, of course, but also a sense of relief. He’d survived a month with his tempestuous sex slave, and enjoyed it for the most part. He’d changed her. Perhaps. Whether he’d changed her for better or worse, he wasn’t sure. He’d been a little depressed when he’d leafed through her sketchbook full of scribbled-out drawings. Apparently his control had stymied her creativity—the very creative spirit that made her who she was.

Not good.

So, it was out of the question to try to extend any connection between them. Part of being a good Master was knowing when to let go because your control was damaging rather than improving a slave in your care. That, too, had happened before, and would certainly happen again. Not that he hadn’t selfishly held onto her until the end of her term. He was human, after all.

It was after eleven when they pulled up to the dormitory. He made her compose herself before they got out to unload her things. It wouldn’t do for everyone to see him moving his sobbing, weeping slave back into her place. Or perhaps it would enhance his reputation as a hardass. In the end, he just wanted her to stop crying, so he ordered her to, and she did.

She opened the door to her apartment, calmer now, and he resigned himself to stay awhile, until he was sure she was okay. Ending a single scene could create a wretched case of sub-drop; ending an entire relationship could trigger a much worse one, even if the sub in question had known all along this would be the end. He helped her put away her things and monitored her outward emotions. She seemed sad but not depressed. Being among her art and personal possessions surely helped ease the sting a bit.

Then he remembered and shoved his hand in his pocket. “Here. This is yours.”

It was the curled red leaf she’d picked up on the way home from the symphony. Valentina reached out and took it. “I had forgotten.”

“It’s just a leaf, I suppose. One can find them anywhere.”

“That’s not true. This one has memories.” She went over to the jury-rigged easel that held her self-portrait and considered where to place it. He noticed the piece of red cellophane on the table from before. She slathered both of the items with glue and placed the cellophane in a spot near the middle. She added the red leaf just above the figure’s shoulder. It looked perfect there.

“
C’est belle
,” he said. “Is it finished?”

She shook her head. “They’re never finished until someone takes them away.”

“People take them away?” Unreasonably, he wanted to take all of them away and keep them for himself, not that he had a place for them in his monochrome house. Valentina’s place vibrated with color. He felt trapped all of a sudden, and anxious to escape.

“Well,” he said.

She gripped her hands in front of her. He could see her eyes go glossy with tears. “Please wait, Mr. Lemaitre. I have to...to go wash my hands.”

She scurried to the kitchen to soak off the glue she’d slathered on her fingertips. Michel stared at her self-portrait. Candy. It had candy on it, round red bonbons that looked like frosted jewels.

“Will you still...” She called out to him over the patter of the water in the sink, then waited and shut it off. “Will you still see me? Ever?”

“I’ll see you all the time,” he answered as she shook off her fingers and dried them on a towel.

“I mean, will we ever play together again? Perhaps at the Citadel?”

The Citadel
, he thought. He’d never even taken her to his back room. It seemed a terrible omission. “I don’t think so. I don’t go much anymore. My daughter goes with Jason now and…you know.” But his daughter would be in California for a week. Perhaps then...
No
. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to play casually.”

“Why not? We obviously do well together. I mean, in that way. We turn each other on.”

He considered her, fighting questions in his own mind. He looked away and flicked at a piece of lint on his shirt. “You’re more of a full time project. And I won’t do full time with you again.” As he said it, he understood why. Because he would lose himself, and worse, she would lose her creative spirit, her spark.

Her lips trembled. The gathering tears fell. “Didn’t you like our time together?”

He gave a frustrated sigh. “You’re right back to being that silly, dramatic girl. Why ask such a question? Did I enjoy our time together? What do you think?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to think. How can you so easily release me? How can you just walk away after all we shared?”

“I told you, thirty days. It’s better for these things to have a finite life.”

“These
things
? What is this
thing
? You mean all the fucking and service, and all the things I did for you because I lo—”

He grabbed her and put a hand over her mouth, muffling the word he didn’t want to hear. “Stop. Don’t,” he growled. “This is not going to be. You don’t love me and I don’t love you. We are two very headstrong personalities who just spent a month in an emotionally heightened dance. Now the dance is over. You understand?”

Her hot tears wet his fingers, sliding between them. Her body shook, her fiery hair making a halo around her beautifully familiar features. “I am not for you, and you are not for me,” he said in a softer voice. “This is something we’ve both known from the start.”

“That’s not true,” she forced out past his fingers.

He let her go and turned away, and picked up her sketchbook from the table where she’d placed it. “Look,” he said, leafing through the pages. “This is who you are with me.” He gestured around at the explosion of art cluttering her apartment. “This is who you are without me.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should care. I do.”

She put her hand over her lips, right where his fingers had been, and sat on the edge of her couch. “Who will I be with now?”

“You don’t have to be with anyone.” His voice betrayed more jealous anger than he wished. “Why not be with yourself for a while? You don’t have to sleep with every single man in the world—”

“I don’t,” she yelled at him. “That was always your take on things, but I’m selective.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “I’m not certain you understand what the word ‘selective’ means.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, visibly fuming. By some miracle of control, perhaps the control he’d taught her, she managed to keep any further retorts inside. He could leave now. She had clearly unattached herself from his mastery, if she’d screech at him like this. She was back to her old self, voluptuous in emotion. She would obviously be okay...but he hated to leave things in a spat.

He sat beside her and took her hand, and put his other arm around her, holding her close. “It will be okay, you’ll see. You won’t miss me.”

“I will,” she bawled, turning her head into his chest. “I miss you so much already. I’ll never survive.”

“You will.”

“How? I’m falling apart and it’s only been an hour since you let me go.”

“The first hour is the hardest.”

She sobbed harder. “This isn’t funny. This isn’t a joke.”

“Of course it isn’t. None of this has been a joke to me.” He let go of her hand to wipe away her tears and brush her hair back off her face. “I’m so glad to see you this way, because it means I didn’t do any lasting damage. You’re the exact same Valentina you were thirty days ago.”

“That’s not a good thing.” She shook her head, burying her face in her hands. “I don’t like being this way.”

“But the world needs you this way.” He stood up and crossed to her portrait, with the candy and leaf-ribbon hair. “You see how beautiful you are.” He touched some swirls and dots around the border. “I wish I could have this to remember you by.”

They were fatal words. A fatal mistake, as much as he meant them. He did want her. He would not have her, but he wanted something of her.

In that moment, he wanted her portrait more than life itself.

“Can I have it?” he asked, turning back to her. “Then it can be finished, no? If I take it away?”

She stared at him and he thought, in that gold-hazel gaze, that she could see everything inside him. Everything that made him powerful and everything that made him weak. She was still angry with him, still in her mood. She lifted her chin and said, “You can have it, yes, but only if you sleep beside me all night. Not just sleep beside me. You have to hold me against you, in your arms, all night long.”

He narrowed his eyes. The little bitch had gone right for the center of his terror, poking at the tender, roiling spot that frightened him the most. “I sleep in my own bed. Alone.”

“Then you can’t have it.”

Now he was the one to cross his arms over his chest. “Why would you want that? It’s uncomfortable to sleep beside someone.”

“I want it. I want to know how it feels.”

“You’ll be asleep through most of it.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll stay up all night so I don’t miss a moment.”

“And I suppose you’ll talk at me all night, and keep me up, and expect all kinds of flirtation and affection and half-drowsy sex acts until we wake in the morning and find we’ve fallen in love?”

“No. I just want to sleep beside you for one night.”

His jaw worked. Damn her. He could walk away now. He could leave her portrait behind. Hell, he’d stared at it long enough that he could recreate his own approximation. Grab some leaves and cellophane and candy and some brightly colored paints and throw them at a canvas until they took on Valentina’s form.

“I snore,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. I told you, I’m not going to sleep.”

Damn her.
“Okay. One night.”

“In your arms.”

“In my arms. How charming. But I can touch you wherever I like and fuck you if I feel like it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course you can. Those rules will stand for as long as I live.”

He’d barely gotten over the fact that she rolled her eyes at him when he realized the message in her words. She was still his. She intended to remain his forever, willing and available for his needs. This detachment wasn’t working. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost control of her.