Unraveled by Him (25 page)

It’s almost over, and I want to die.

My entire body burns from the caning she has administered to me so cold-bloodedly and so efficiently.

Even worse than the pain and agony she has inflicted on my naked, defenseless body is my shame that she, of all people, didn’t merely make me flinch and twist and squirm and moan, but made me beg for her to stop. And laughed at me when I did.

Then she executes one last stroke of cruelty on my naked, helpless, and exposed body. She inserts a large, thick, ridged dildo into my sore and lacerated ass, then rotates it, in a whisper mocking me, taunting me that she has taken me down a peg, given me a lesson I will never forget: that I will never be a great lady, never be the mistress of Hartwell Castle, and never be Georgiana!

“That’s enough! End it now! And leave this minute!” I hear Robert’s booming voice. In my agony, my shame, I hadn’t even heard him enter the dungeon. Mrs. Hatch exits the room without another word. But the fact that Robert may have witnessed her cruel and humiliating assault on me is almost more than I can bear.

And—for the first time in my life—the tears flow.

Robert is beside me now.

He tenderly wipes away my tears, releases me from the stocks, and kisses me, kisses me, kisses me.

Then he stands back from me and makes an announcement in his deep and resonant voice, which reverberates through my mind, my body, my soul, and, most of all, the deepest recesses of my heart.

“That’s enough, my Miranda. I have tested you more than any other woman in the world could have endured,” he says.

“And you took it all, even the ultimate and most excruciating test I set for you. I would have gambled my last dime that during the fifth test, you would break and use the safe word and stop the whole thing. But you didn’t. You bore it all for me, because submission to the will of your Master is part of your innermost nature, your true vocation in life and the very heart of you.

“And I know now that everything the sender of the wreath insinuated about you was a pure and unadulterated lie. You are real, and a born submissive.”

I look into his eyes, and the love and tenderness I see there is so intense that I almost believe that it could last a lifetime.

I don’t want to ruin the moment, but I can’t see how I can go on unless I ask him the question still eating into me. So, my heart in my mouth, I ask him: “Why did you leave me alone with Mrs. Hatch, Robert? Why did you abandon me and leave me at her mercy—” My horror that he gave me to her is escalating.

He gently takes my face in his hands and looks deep into my eyes.

“But I didn’t, Miranda. I didn’t leave you alone with her. I just slammed the dungeon door and pretended to leave you there alone with her. I did that in order to test your mettle, your resolve, your ultimate submissiveness in the face of the most arduous challenge of which I could conceive. But I was there in the dungeon all the time, watching, making sure that she didn’t give you more than I wanted you to take, more than you were able to take,” he says.

“You mean you didn’t leave me alone with her?” I say, my voice quivering.

“No, my darling, not even for a single second. Not then, not ever,” he says.

And a blissful warmth spreads through me because I honestly and truly believe he means every single word he has just said and will stay true to it for now and for always.

He envelops me in his arms again, kisses my hair, my eyes, my lips, so passionately that for the first time in my life, I feel safe.

“And now, Miranda, you have truly earned the right to learn the terrible secret of how my life with Georgiana finally ended,” he says.

Chapter Fifteen

Robert takes my hand in his and gently leads me up the seemingly endless narrow spiral staircase to the top of the North Turret, Hartwell Castle’s highest turret, the turret that houses his own private suite.

I’ve been longing to gain admission to his suite ever since I got here, but tonight I’m not in any shape to drink in the atmosphere or the details. I am far too exhausted, yet keyed up.

Acutely aware of my fragile state, he runs a bubble bath for me and tells me to relax in it and try to recover from my ordeal. And when he comes into the bathroom and soaps me all over, as if I were a small child, then dries me, I am glad that I didn’t resist his suggestion.

Afterward, while he has a shower, although I long to go to him and wash his spectacular body from top to toe, and finger every part of him, I sense that he needs to be alone for a while.

So I lounge on the plush canopy bed, close my eyes, and dream of Robert and of our future together, here, at Hartwell Castle.

In my fantasy, for five days out of seven I am at his side, his wife, mistress of Hartwell Castle, and its queen. But during that time, Robert always has his big, black book close at hand. And every so often I see him making a note in it, and when I do I quake with trepidation and arousal.

As well I might, for on the sixth day he summons me to his office, produces his black book, reads all my infractions out to me, and allocates a punishment for each and every one of them.

And then I spend the next day in the dungeon, submitting to what he has decided should be inflicted on me.

A structure for our life together as dominant and submissive.

I know that one of the major pressures on a dominant is a submissive who is forever mooning around, wanting attention from him. And I never want to be like that. So in this, my fantasy—my plan for our life together—the parameters are set, and the day reserved for punishment and submission has been designated in advance.

Yet during the seconds, minutes, hours, and days leading up to the moment of reckoning, when I shall stand naked before Robert and he will pick up his black book and detail all my infractions, there will always be an undertone to our ostensibly vanilla life together. And I want it, need it, crave it, as much as I crave and need and want him.

Robert emerges from his shower, and I love how he looks in his black silk robe, so tall, so strong, so masterful.

Together we lounge on the bed, his powerful arms wrapped protectively around me, and I am in bliss. I almost don’t want him to speak and break the spell of my happiness.

But I know that there will be time for those emotions, that joy and sense of security, much later.

Instead, I wait expectantly for him to start telling me the end of the story and reveal the cause of his hatred of Georgiana.

But the suite bell chimes, and one of the waiters enters, bringing us the dinner Robert must have ordered earlier in the evening: beluga, lobster, followed by chocolate mousse, washed down by Cristal.

All to commemorate our very first meal together.

And together we eat until we are both satiated.

Through it all I want to say so much, to ask so much, but I sense that he is far away from me, inwardly rehearsing what he is about to tell me.

For a while we snuggle close to each other on the purple velvet sofa facing the window, through which the lights of Manhattan glimmer at us from a distance.

Then he lights a cigarette and begins.

“I slipped away from the wedding reception as soon as the last guests started leaving. Up to the West Turret, the Honeymoon Suite, where the canopy bed was covered in violets, nothing but violets.

“My desire mounting, I stood by the bed, waiting for Georgiana to make her entrance, hardly able to contain my raging excitement.

“As she requested, I had already affixed the shackles to the bedposts. A riding crop and a cane stood in the corner.

“Then Georgiana appeared on the threshold of the Honeymoon Suite, her willowy form lit so brightly by all the klieg lights she had ordered to be installed especially for our wedding night that it was if she were a movie star gliding into a Hollywood premiere.

“In her purple chiffon negligee, through which I could see the outline of her flawless body, she resembled a divine angel.

“Angel. All of a sudden I flashed back to Le Château, and how I met Georgiana. Then I pushed the memory out of my mind and concentrated instead on the goddess in front of me.

“She was standing very close to me, her body pressed to mine.

“ ‘Master,’ she said, ‘now that I belong to you heart and soul, now that I am yours completely in the eyes of the Lord and in the eyes of the law as well, on this, my wedding night with you, I have one request. A request that I beg you to consider, Master, please.’

“ ‘Anything your heart desires, Georgiana, anything, everything,’ I said.

“Then she haltingly told me her secret sexual fantasy, the fantasy she wanted me to enact on this, our wedding night.

“Mock strangulation.

“Violent and not in the least bit sexual, as far as I was concerned.

“And utterly alien to me.

“But much as—with every fiber of my being—I was repulsed by doing it, this was Georgiana’s wedding night. And as she wanted it so much, as I loved her so all-encompassingly, I did it.

“I put my hands around her neck, and pressed.

“Not hard. Not for long.

“But long enough.

“Much against my will, much as it disturbed me, I had bowed to Georgiana’s wishes. I had done exactly what she asked.

“Now the deed was done, I bent to kiss her passionately.

“As I did, she pulled away from under me.

“I stared at her, bewildered.

“Then she smiled a smile so self-satisfied that it brought to mind the image of a jungle cat that had just slurped a gigantic bowl of cream.

“ ‘Thank you, Robert, that’s exactly what I hoped for,’ she said, then got out of bed and stalked out of the suite.

“When I recovered from the shock, I went after her.

“She was already at the bottom of the staircase.

“She turned and smiled up at me.

“Then she laughed a strange and disquieting laugh.

“Like the sound of glass shattering.

“I stood there, rooted to the spot.

“For the next nine days, Georgiana was nowhere to be found.

“She had vanished from Hartwell Castle, from Long Island, from the face of the earth, and I was distraught.

“On the tenth day, a purple Rolls drew up outside Hartwell Castle, and a liveried chauffeur stepped out and delivered an invitation to me from Georgiana, an invitation to join her at four that very afternoon, in our movie theater, where we had spent so many happy hours together.

“When I entered it, the auditorium was pitch-black.

“I felt my way to a seat, hoping to find Georgiana there, waiting for me.

“But she wasn’t.

“I was alone.

“Then the deep purple velvet curtain over the screen swished open.

“In the background I heard the whirr of a projector.

“There, on the screen, a high-definition shot of the Honeymoon Suite, followed by a long, slow-motion, exquisitely filmed sequence of me seemingly attempting to strangle Georgiana.

“The film ran for exactly two minutes. Well lit by the klieg lights Georgiana had installed just for this purpose, the film was technically flawless and clearly shot by someone sequestered in the Honeymoon Suite’s secret passage.

“My performance was frighteningly realistic, Georgiana’s horror at my actions so palpable that I had no doubt that everyone who saw it would conclude that I was literally trying to strangle her. Either way, the movie made it frighteningly clear that she was my victim.

“I watched the movie, hypnotized and horrified, just as a dying man is hypnotized and horrified by the cobra that has just bitten him.

“As the reality hit me, the lights of the movie theater went up and there, on the stage, was Georgiana.

“But not the Georgiana I knew and loved, not my wife, not the girl of my dreams, not my perfect submissive.

“No, this was another Georgiana.

“This Georgiana was dressed from head to foot in black, not purple. This Georgiana stood tall, haughty, and imperious.

“And in her clear, cut-crystal tones, she said, ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is my only copy, Robert. The other is in the possession of Lybrand, Collier and Cooper, my attorneys in Geneva.

“ ‘And if you ever attempt to touch me again, or to live out your ridiculous dominant/submissive lifestyle with me, I shall have no hesitation about posting my movie on the Internet, where it will instantly go viral.’

“There was more, Miranda, much more. How the movie would reveal my brutality to the world, how I would be labeled a monster, a man who attempted to strangle his wife on their wedding night. My name would become mud, my life hell on earth.

“ ‘Think of your charities, Robert, think of your friends, think of your poor, fragile mother. Think how she will feel when she learns that her beloved son is a brutal man who tried to strangle his loving wife, the aristocratic, the innocent, the angelic, the pure Lady Georgiana Hartwell, on her wedding night,’ she declared triumphantly.

“I listened but said nothing, as she cataloged her demands: my entire fortune to be written over to her, my properties, my art collection, everything.

“We would remain married, of course, and maintain our high-society image. But in private we would be strangers. No longer husband and wife. No longer lovers. Certainly no longer friends. And definitely not dominant and submissive.

“Trapped and tormented, at that moment I believed that I had no choice. None whatsoever. So I bowed to Georgiana’s blackmail and accepted her criminal demands.”