Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Simon

I thought I'd done a damn good job of handling the surreal stress of the situation I'd landed myself in, but Victor telling me to go away was the last straw.

"Please, Master, no!" I cried, clasping my hands together in supplication. "Don't send me away. Don't get rid of me just because things are overwhelming."

Victor looked surprised and hurt, but he didn't make a move, either to push me away or to embrace me.

"I would have thought you wanted nothing to do with me after the things you've just found out," he said, his voice tight with emotion and exhaustion. "I'm not a good person, Simon."

"You are a man who is trying to turn your life around under extraordinary circumstances with a lot of things set against you," I said, scooting forward on my knees so I could be closer to him. "Change like that doesn't happen overnight."

"What if I can never change?" Victor asked, his emotions starting to get the better of him. "What if that's what my uncle is trying to teach me? He took me away from people who loved me once. What if all of this is just to show me that I can't ever leave him or deviate from the path he set out for me?"

He was right. Not about the being unable to break away part, but about his uncle's motivations. It all made sense like someone had thrown back the curtain to reveal the withered old man controlling the avatar of a great and powerful man. Controlling a city or a country through wealth and influence might not mean anything to a man like Vincent Woodbury if he couldn't control his own nephew. A nephew he'd probably thought of as his son.

This whole thing wasn't about Victor trying to steer Victory Holdings onto a more philanthropic track or trying to help people instead of hurting them. It was for Victor, but I suddenly had the feeling that all of this was entirely personal. It was about control. Vincent Woodbury was trying to master Victor like Victor had toyed with omegas who wanted to pretend to be slaves in the past.

But Victor was no slave. And now he had someone who truly cared about him to help.

I moved closer still to Victor, kneeling between his open knees as he sat on the couch, hanging his head.

"You can't enslave someone who doesn't want to submit," I said. "Well, I mean, you can, if you want to be evil about it and break their spirit entirely or have them hate you with the flames of a thousand suns, but I don't think that's what your uncle is going for right now."

"He might be," Victor said, raising his head and meeting my eyes. "Don't make the mistake of thinking my uncle has a heart. He didn't raise me as his own because he loved kids and wanted more of his own. He wanted the challenge of molding someone to be just like him."

I gave him a small nod in acknowledgement, but I still didn't think a man could be so completely devoid of feeling that he wouldn't want someone to love him.

But maybe that was just me.

"You are strong, Master," I said, adding the honorific on purpose as I lowered myself to rest my head on his thigh. The submissive pose was on purpose as well. "And you are good, no matter what you think."

"I'm not good," Victor insisted, though he rested a hand gently on my head as he did. "I'm not. I've done terrible things. Not just in playing with omegas, but at Victory Holdings, before I grew a conscience."

"That was before," I said, relaxing under his touch, even though the topic of our conversation was heavy. "You're becoming a different man now."

"Not that different," he insisted. "Because this feels so good. Having you, another man, another human being, kneeling at my feet and submitting to me like this. It fires my blood. It makes me feel alive and powerful."

"It makes me feel alive, too," I said, peeking up at him as best I could.

Victor huffed a humorless laugh. "Would you still feel that way if you knew I really want you naked and wearing my collar right now?"

I didn't answer with words. Instead, I straightened and shrugged out of his suit jacket, pulling the restraints out of the pockets as I did. Once the jacket was off, I removed the rest of my clothes while Victor watched, astonished. I pushed them all aside, then resumed my kneeling position for him, presenting the restraints with a silent plea for him to put them on me.

The whirlwind of emotion raging through Victor was painful to feel. At some point in the chaos at Victory Holdings' offices, the bond between us had opened even more, which meant I could feel Victor much more powerfully. He was humbled and agonizing over everything, but I also felt a powerful pulse of possessive alpha energy urging him to claim me. They were all still vague feelings, but they were definitely there.

"You don't know what you're asking me, Simon," he said, stroking the side of my face with his large, warm hand.

"Trust me, I do," I said breathlessly. "I'm asking you to be my master, not just in this fantasy. If there's something wrong with you, then there's definitely something wrong with me, because I want to belong to you."

"You—" Victor stopped himself from telling me I didn't want that. That was clearly what he'd been about to say, but the sheer fact that he'd stopped himself from telling me what to think was a sure sign that he was a far better man than he believed himself to be.

He heaved a heavy breath, then stroked the side of my face again before letting his hand drop to my shoulder and sweep down over my chest.

"I don't deserve you," he said, shaking his head a little. "Nothing you can say or do will ever convince me that I deserve this sort of submission and…and kindness."

I really wanted to tell him I loved him. It pulsed through every bit of me, and by the slight widening of his eyes and pupils, I knew he could feel it. With everything going on, it felt too soon. The best I could do in the moment was show him I was a good slave.

"Please, Master," I said, presenting the restraints again. "And the collar."

Victor drew in a breath, and instead of taking the restraints from my outstretched hands, he grasped my head with both hands and pulled me in for a kiss.

It was beautiful and reassuring. It was definitely a dominant kiss, which I took as a good thing. He thrust his tongue into my mouth, and I let him have me, all of me. My cock started to fill, as if getting hard was the greatest show of loyalty, and my hole started to slick up, ready for whatever he wanted.

"I don't know what I did to deserve you," he said in a gruff voice when he pulled back.

It was different from saying he didn't deserve me. We were making progress.

He took the restraints from me and fastened them to my wrists, then my ankles. I shook slightly as emotion overwhelmed me. The moment felt so important. It felt like we'd crossed a line we wouldn't be able to go back on.

When he took the collar from his pocket and settled it around my neck, I closed my eyes and gulped as my eyes stung with tears. It was so important, all of it. I didn't know what the future held, but it hit me with thudding realization that I wouldn't be able to go back to the life I'd lived up until that point. I couldn't go back to working for my parents' law firm. I might not be able to go back to living in their house ever again either.

Victor fastening his collar around my neck represented me stepping off a cliff. I just hoped he would catch me as I tumbled into a new, slightly terrifying life.

"There," Victor said, his words carrying the same weight of importance that I felt. He slipped his hand under my chin and tipped my face up to meet his. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

My lower lip wobbled, and I didn't think I'd be able to hold my tears in. They weren't tears of fear or sadness, though. They were the best kind of tears that existed.

Victor grabbed my jaw and moved in for another, quick kiss. Then he gripped the back of my head forcefully and pushed my head down to his crotch. I breathed in his powerful, musky, alpha scent as my face squashed against his growing erection. It was hard to breathe from there, but that was the point. Victor was my master, and he was showing me that he controlled the very air I breathed.

No doubt he would have held me there until I was struggling, then demanded I take his cock out to suck and swallow him until I brought him off, but a buzzing and pinging only inches away from my face, from the cell phone in his pocket, snapped our poignant moment short.

"It's my uncle," Victor said with a rough gasp, letting my head go so he could reach for his phone.

I straightened, a little wobbly, and caught my breath as, instead of putting the phone to his ear, Victor tapped its screen. I had enough of a view to see it was a video call.

"Uncle Vincent, what the hell is going on?" Victor demanded.

I smiled, proud of him for starting the confrontation on a strong note.

"Ah, Victor," Vincent Woodbury's smarmy, slick voice sounded from the other end of the call. "I see you're at home. We were all wondering where you'd gone."

Victor's face darkened. "I see you're in your saferoom."

Vincent chuckled in a way that had the hair standing up on the back of my neck. "It seems we've both retreated to the places we feel safest."

"I'm not playing games with you, Uncle Vincent," Victor said, still maintaining his strength, even though I could sense worry in him. "You've drained the discretionary account and locked me out of the company. Why? What do you want from me?"

"I would have thought that much would be obvious," Vincent said, sounding completely casual and in control. "You've disappointed me, Victor. I do not approve of the business decisions you've made in the last year, and I most certainly do not approve of the personal decisions you've made in the last few days either. Do you still have that pretty omega slave with you? The one whose brother was kidnapped by Colin Gregory?"

Victor tensed, rage pulsing through him, but also deep guilt.

Strangely, I was barely affected by the mention of Hayden, or the fact that Vincent Woodbury knew I was with Victor and that I was his slave. We already knew Vincent was aware I was with Victor, and I didn't care if he knew I was a slave, which came as a huge surprise to me.

"You're not the only one who doesn't approve of decisions that have been made of late," Victor fired back at his uncle, not taking the bait of his questions. "Victory Holdings is and should remain a legitimate company. I won't let you drag it into mafia business."

"Mafia business?" Vincent laughed. "My dear boy, you've been watching too many suspense films."

"Are you trying to tell me you're not funding mafia operations on the East Coast, that you're not trying to become some sort of kingpin yourself?" Victor asked, but with a clear message that Vincent couldn't fool him.

"Why bother with petty criminals when there are far greater things that can be achieved with money and power?" Vincent answered.

I squirmed a little, new ideas beginning to form in my mind. Vincent might be telling the truth. There were bigger things than the mafia when it came to controlling people and institutions. Politics, for example. Although everything that happened last spring out in the mountains had uncovered the fact that Mayor Keller himself had been involved with the mafia, so maybe it was a little of both.

"I don't care what you're trying to do," Victor said, "it needs to stop. I want nothing to do with whatever sneaky power-grab you're attempting. Money of the sort our family has should be used to make the world better, not to corrupt it. Those projects of mine that you disapprove of? They're designed to help people, to make the world better."

"There's no profit in helping people," Vincent scoffed. "People don't deserve help anyhow. They're all a bunch of filthy slaves, whether they know it or not. That pretty piece you have with you is a million times more deserving than the majority of the population. At least he knows his place and how to serve."

Victor looked ready to murder someone, but all he had was his uncle's image on a phone.

"You're wrong," he snapped. "Not only that, you're abhorrent."

Vincent laughed. "You have changed," he said, as if it were an insult. "I should have taken you from my pitiful brother and his wife earlier to stop this noble streak in you." He clearly didn't think much of his own family members either.

"What will it take to make you stop this miserable course you're on?" Victor asked, shifting back to business decisively.

"I'm not going to stop," Vincent said, incredulous. "I'm going to stop you, stop you from wasting my legacy."

"You can't," Victor said.

"Oh, I think you'll find I can."

"I won't?—"

"You will sell your shares in Victory Holdings to me before the end of the day," Vincent cut him off. "All of them. I want you completely out of the company in every way."

"First, I won't. It's my company, too," Victor said. "Second, if I sell, Victory Holdings as we know it will disintegrate. You'll lose me and you'll lose your prize."

"We can't let that happen," Vincent said teasingly. "So I guess you'll either have to comply with my wishes and resume business operations to my specifications, or other contingencies will need to be explored."

A rush of dread from Victor nearly bowled me over. I didn't need to ask what that was about, just as neither of us needed to ask what Victor meant.

We were in danger. Real, terrifying danger.

"This is madness," Victor said, scowling at his uncle on the phone. "After everything we've done together, you can't possibly be saying that you'd have me killed just like that."

"Just like that?" Vincent asked, a smile in his voice. "Oh, no, my boy, it most definitely wouldn't be just like that. It would be long and involved. Other people might get hurt in the process."

Victor's eyes snapped to meet mine, which might have been a mistake, considering his uncle was watching him. But then, it was fairly clear Vincent already knew I was important to Victor.

"I'm going to stop you," Victor said, completely convincing. "I won't let you get away with any of this. And I won't let you hurt anyone else, do you hear me?"

"Oh, I hear you," Vincent chuckled. "I just don't believe you. Best of luck with that."

"If you think?—"

The screen suddenly went dark as Vincent ended the call.

Victor blew out a frustrated breath, then flopped hard against the back of the sofa, throwing his phone aside.

"He's the one who's been watching too many thrillers," he growled, then rubbed a hand over his face, which was now rugged with stubble and exhaustion. "I will not let him win."

I tried to smile. I was so proud of Victor for continuing to fight, even though things were getting more intense by the second.

I was also deeply worried, though. I wasn't sure how serious Vincent was about killing Victor, or me, for that matter, or if he could cause problems in other ways. My desire to be rational and doubt that anything really bad would actually happen was at war with the surreal turn my life had just taken.

"It will be alright," I tried to reassure Victor as I settled back into my kneeling pose and rested my hands on his thighs. "You are strong and capable. Your uncle is old and desperate to regain what he thinks he's lost. He won't attack you, at least not to kill you. He wouldn't have bothered to call you and try to talk you around if he had murderous intentions, he'd just do it."

Victor let his hand drop from his face and actually managed a weak smile for me.

"I hope you're right," he said, breathing out, then reaching to stroke my arm where my hand rested on his thigh. "Uncle Vincent is corrupt, but I don't think he's evil. He's concerned about money and power, but he's not murderous."

"He would have to go through your cousin Vivien in order to fully wrestle control of the company," I added.

"Vivien." Victor straightened and reached for his phone.

He tapped it a few times, then held it to his ear. Nothing happened, though, and in moments, I could hear a voicemail intro.

"Vivien, it's Victor," Victor said. "Call me immediately. Everything is going to shit over here. I need your help."

He tapped the phone again, then set it on the cushion beside him. "It's the middle of the night in Europe right now anyhow," he said.

I hoped that was the reason Vivien hadn't answered his call. I still wasn't sure whose side she was on.

That wasn't something I needed to worry about, though. My primary concern in that moment was my master and making certain he was as soothed as he could be.

"Let me help you," I said, sliding my hands farther up his thighs to undo his belt. "I am your slave. It's my duty to ease you in times like this. Use me."

"Simon," he said, half endearment, half warning.

I ignored his uncertainty and continued to undo the fastenings of his trousers. My sole focus was on Victor and his needs. Right now, he needed release and comfort, so I gave it in the best way I could think of. I spread my legs farther, hoping my omega scent would be stronger, then I freed his cock and balls from his trousers before lowering my head to slide his hardening cock as deep into my throat as I could manage.