Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

C harlie

"Come, pet," he says. "We have a dinner at the Embassy tonight."

"A dinner?"

"Yes, even evil billionaires have to eat from time to time." He smirks charmingly at me. I feel a pulse of sickening guilt rush through me, and I wonder if I might have made a mistake by betraying him.

Last night, he punished me roughly. He fucked my pussy and my ass. He denied me orgasm. He made me sore. But I knew I deserved it.

Today, he has been quite pleasant, charming even. I am beginning to wonder if I mentally exaggerated all that happened last night. Maybe it wasn't as dark as I thought it was. Maybe it was just hot. I don't know. My mind is addled with sex and guilt, and I am not really sure which way is up anymore.

He hasn't let me out of his sight since the incident with Trent, and time is starting to tick away. I might have only sixty hours or so left in which to make an escape.

I wonder if I can make an excuse to leave. Perhaps I could tell him one of my friends is… no. He won't go for it. He knows I'm up to something, because he found the notebook some-fucking-how.

I'm half-thinking that he knows everything, but surely if he knew everything, he'd be doing a lot more than fucking me roughly and taking me to dinner.

"Is it an actual dinner, or is it some kind of weird kinky thing?"

"You'll be wearing a dress," he says. "One I've had specially made."

The dress is a gorgeous silver draped garment that sparkles and catches the light like a chandelier. It is low cut in both the front and the back. It reminds me of something you'd see on the red carpet—but with one significant change.

There's a tail.

And on the inside of the dress, there is a rubber plug.

This is a gown, but it is also a butt plug.

I look at the dress, and then at Marcus, and then at the dress again.

"Don't worry, pet," he purrs. "I will help you put it on."

He knows how to make me whimper, but I know I can't get out of this just by sounding a little pathetic. He likes it when I'm afraid. He adores it when I consider begging him for mercy. There is no part of Marcus that tends toward the merciful. If anything, the more distress I show, the more he likes it.

"Go and get ready," he says. "Remember, we will be very much out in public this evening. This is your one chance to control how you are perceived."

As if he will not be the one who decides how I am displayed and what people think of me. I know that if he is going to humiliate me, it won't matter how good my makeup looks.

I do as he tells me, because it gives me a moment to think.

How do you escape a billionaire with almost endless resources? I should have planned this better. I should have planned it at all, rather than making my move in a knee-jerk reaction to being punished for not listening to him. And possibly being party to fucking murder.

I still don't know what happened to Trent. I will probably never know. He's not the sort of guy who is going to get a lot of social media interest as a missing person. He's estranged from his family, much like I am, and I don't think he has any friends at all.

My mind keeps going back to how he looked in that chair, having had the hell beaten out of him by Marcus. He was furious, and so wound up he was ready to fight Marcus to the death. But that's what would have happened. There's not even a mark on Marcus Waterstone. If he did let Trent out of the bindings, he didn't get into much of a physical fight.

I shower, and I pull the dress on. Then I start doing my makeup, trying to ignore the way the internal plug presses awkwardly against my tailbone as I contour my cheekbones. I'm opting for more, not less today. Cosmetics can be a shield, and that's what I need them to be.

"You look beautiful," Marcus says, stepping into the room with me. I turn to face him. For a moment, I think about forcing a smile, but then I decide not to bother. He already knows too much, and my trepidation about this evening is growing by the moment. There's a gleam in his eye that I know better than to trust. He is enjoying himself. This is all a game to him, but he is the only one who is able to make any of the rules—or know them, for that matter.

"Thank you," I say, trying not to give away how very nervous I am. I am sure I am failing on that front.

He has dressed up too, a suit with a waistcoat and a pocket watch—it's not quite precisely the ensemble of an evil sheriff in a particularly dark Western, but it's also not, not that. Whatever the inspiration for his fit, it makes my stomach clench down low in that way that makes my brain stop working as well as it needs to.

He is hot. Sinfully hot.

He is a devil-walking-in-this-world kind of hot. I feel my face flushing, though he won't be able to see it through the foundation. I'm sure he knows anyway. There's a smirk on his lips that makes me feel as though those dark eyes can pierce my consciousness.

"We need to get the dress fitted properly though," he says. "Go and lie face down on the bed."

It's the last thing I'd usually do with a fresh face and my hair just done, but there's no disobeying him. I do as I am told, being careful to keep my upper body off the mattress and bedding as much as possible.

I feel him lifting the hem of the dress, which is helped by the presence of a slit that runs up my left leg almost all the way to my hip. This is not a modest garment. It is a filthy, stunning, gorgeous dress, and I bet it is worth more than any car I could afford.

"Reach back and hold your cheeks apart," he says.

"That won't work. I can't reach under my own dress."

"Then hold this one side open," he says, tapping my left cheek.

I do that, feeling exposed and vulnerable and of course, ashamed.

A quick series of warm, oily drops land at the center of my anus. That skin is just so damn sensitive, especially after the recent ravaging he has given me. Everything Marcus does seems to enhance my sensitivity, both physically and mentally.

I feel the fabric moving against my ass and upper thighs briefly before the end of the plug presses against my ass.

"Relax," he says. "I don't want this to hurt. There's plenty of time for you to get yourself into trouble tonight. This could be nice, if you let it be."

I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly. He's right. I don't need to make this any harder on myself. With Marcus, submission is always the answer.

I feel my butt start to stretch as he pushes it in slowly. The tight ring of muscle that usually keeps me closed opens under the gentle but firm onslaught.

"That's a good girl," he says, his tone deeply approving. "You can be such a good pet when you want to be."

I can be, but only in the most superficial of ways. There's nothing good about me underneath. I can feel myself getting excited, my nipples grazing against the lining of the dress. Marcus pushes the plug home, settling the flared base between my cheeks. I feel the material of the dress clinging to my ass as he slides his hand away and pats my bottom.

"Stand up," he says. "Look at yourself."

I look at the two of us in the mirror. I am so much shorter than he is. My head comes up to his shoulder at best. He stands broad and strong behind me, one possessive arm wrapped around my waist. He uses that hand to turn me, the curve of my rear quite defined in this dress. He is perfectly handsome and entirely possessive. We almost look as though we could be in love. Any red carpet could be graced by the pair of us and people would imagine that we were happy. Until they saw my secret.

The tail is silver, much like the dress, and moving with the clenching of my cheeks. God. How embarrassing. This is a garment made for display and humiliation.

"You look perfect," he says.

He's right. I do. But there is no amount of beauty that will cover this depravity. If anything, it highlights it. Every time my hips so much as move, the tail sways. I can feel it all the way up inside me.

"Do I really have to wear this?"

I don't know why I bothered to ask that question. Of course I do. What would be the point of a humiliation ritual if I were not properly humiliated?

"Yes, pet. You wear it well."

He pats my bottom again, takes me by the hand, and leads me out to the car. I sit beside him in the back, feeling a certain dissociated numbness. Things feel as though they are coming to a head in some intangible way.

Marcus says little on the drive. I don't bother to try and make conversation. I look out the window at the city sliding by, marveling at how it used to feel so real and so fair and now feels like it's nothing more than a facade most people live in. They think they're free, and that they have to follow the same rules as everybody else—at least, more or less.

But the truth is, there's no real law. There's just a code that people who are normal live by because they have to. Unless they do crime, of course. Doing crime has never seemed so noble to me before. If I somehow get out of this predicament, one day I am going to do so much fucking crime.

I smile inwardly as I plan what I'd do with my newfound knowledge that nothing really matters. For starters, I'd definitely steal from corporations. Anything that was a chain? That would be my playground of theft crime.

"What are you smiling about, pet?"

"Nothing," I say quickly. I didn't even realize I had been smiling.

I like the idea of life after Marcus. He can't keep me on a leash forever. Once the proverbial shit hits the fan, he's going to be so busy putting out fires, he's not going to have a chance in hell of finding me again. I'm going to go somewhere else in the world, to one of those cities that nobody really knows the name of. There are so many places in the world nobody really knows about. Even in the US, there are hundreds of cities Americans haven't heard of. I could go to one of those and not make a name for myself.

The car slides up outside the Embassy, and I am brought back to cool reality as Marcus opens his door. The air has a chill in it, too much for my scantily clad frame. I need a coat or a stole or something, but the only fur on my body is connected to a plug in my ass—and there's no chance of being able to wrap that around me in a way that will warm me up.

Marcus opens my door for me and offers his hand. He acts like such a gentleman. You could truly forget that he is a ruthless kidnapper and probably a murderer.

I smile up into his face out of reflex, not because I am pleased about any of this. The motion of getting out of the car makes the plug really move about inside me and gives me an unfortunate pulse of sensation. My ass is starting to get used to being filled, and that means that the feeling of the plug moving isn't entirely unpleasant. I don't want to get turned on right now. I need to be able to think.

He leads me into the main foyer of the Embassy, where the other rich and impossibly corrupt people he calls both friend and enemy are milling around. There are plenty of young women being degraded here. I see two of them bound together and being used as a tabletop. They are entirely nude and covered in sushi. Fish and rice and little pieces of seaweed cover strategic portions of their bodies, at least until the ravenous male members pick them off.

There is a look in the eyes of the kept women here. A sort of glaze. I wonder if they are content and happy, or if they are simply in some state of deep dissociation, doing what they have to do. It is hard to tell the public expression of submission from one of reluctant subjugation.

As Marcus and I enter, the patrons of the Embassy all turn to look at us. One after another, they swerve and rotate, and their gazes roam over us. I feel very exposed, very observed. The glittering eyes of these creatures are devouring me, and I am afraid there will be nothing left once they are done with me.

I press closer to Marcus, but he does not allow it. He moves away and nudges me just a little bit away from him. Just enough to put me thoroughly on display.

Something is happening. I can feel it in the air. There is anticipation where there should be nothing but mild interest at best. They have cleared a space in the middle of the floor, I notice. And Marcus is guiding me into that space.

"My little pet is a very smart girl," he announces. "And like all smart things, she is trouble."

My stomach starts to do flips. I look at him askance, wondering what the hell is going on. He looks back, and I see something in his gaze that wasn't there before. A coolness, perhaps even a bitterness. Or is it vengeance? Whatever it is, it makes my blood freeze in my veins.

"Charlie," he says, using my name in a way that makes me feel immediately exposed. I know all these people could probably find my name without too much trouble. They probably already know exactly who I am. But the fact that he just used my name as if they all have some access to it, that freaks me out. It's the little things, in every situation, I am discovering.

"Yeah?"

I hear a snort of amusement from somewhere in the crowd. Most of these people probably demand to be called Master or whatever, but I guess Marcus hasn't trained me that well. He's blindsiding me, and I am not going to play along. My gut is twisting with nerves. All I want to do is bolt for the door, but I am certain that would only precipitate an attack of some kind. I am prey, and I am cornered.

"Charlie tried to turn me into Libraryleaks yesterday," he says.

An absolute roar of laughter goes up around the room. My vision is a blur of open mouths and toothy grins flashing white between crimson red lips. The merriment goes on for such a long time that I have to imagine this is news to the assembled people—which means he got them all to come here for some secret drama. These people actively feed on the crises Marcus seems adept at generating in their midst.

There is silence finally, in which people seem to want to see how I am going to react. I haven't said or done anything yet. I suppose I'm frozen.

I look around, and then I look at Marcus. Fuck this guy. Fuck everything about him. He could have handled this privately. But he wants to make a spectacle out of me. If it's a show he wants, it's a show he's going to get.

"You deserve to be caught," I say. "You deserve everything that is coming to you. So do your Embassy friends."

I have nothing left but defiance, and I intend to lean into it hard. As I speak, fresh merriment breaks out in little spates across the crowd. Nobody here is concerned about the consequences of the revelations I have uncovered. There is a certain indulgent tone to their mockery, as if I am just a small, stupid thing who has done a small, stupid thing.

Marcus speaks to me in slow, patient, dangerous tones. "I have some very, very bad news for you, pet. The server you sent all that data you stole? That is owned by a friend of ours. A man who is in this very room."

"I don't doubt it," I say. "Libraryleaks is everywhere, and the consequences for people like you are real. Didn't you hear about what happened in the aftermath of the Pendleton Papers?"

Marcus shrugs. "A few middle-managers lost their jobs, and a few paid shills went to prison. But you're right, Libraryleaks certainly caused some problems back in the day. However, pet, they are no longer a threat."

"Independent journalism will always be a threat."

Marcus' expression, which had held a certain dark bitterness up until this moment, has now settled into a you sweet summer child sort of disbelief. I might as well be telling him about the unicorn I intend to buy just as soon as I get my pocket money. He leans down, putting his hands on his thighs as he speaks to me in slow, clear tones that would be patronizing if I had not just spent all that time demonstrating my own naivety.

"There are no independent publishers anymore. There is no such thing as an investigative journalist. There are just honeypots, where people like me, catch people like you— Carebear. "

The sense of horror I feel as he says those words and uses my Libraryleaks login handle feels like a yawning chasm opening up in the very pit of my stomach. My mind races, wondering how this could be possible. I hunted him down. I set all of this in motion. So how on Earth could he be turning this on me now?

If this is a trap—which it must be—then this must have been a trap from the very fucking beginning. Before I thought I got the idea to make contact with Marcus Waterstone, he had to know who I was already. There's no other way that this could all have worked.

"How?"

"How what, pet?"

"How did you pick me, before you knew me?"

He stands up, smirking, a brow lifted in a way that indicates he finds my near immediate deduction at least somewhat impressive.

"You made yourself known to us the same way you made yourself known to Trent. Don't forget, pet. We own the internet. We own social media platforms. We see and hear anything and everything you do. Social media programs are essentially smorgasbords for people like us. I wanted a new pet. I searched according to certain parameters around things like appearance, temperament, intellect, and you came up."

"You Googled me?"

"Oh no," he laughs. "There are much better search engines capable of acquiring much deeper data. They're essentially menus of citizens, and one can pick from among them according to desire and need."

"Sounds creepy," I say. It's an understatement. My skin is absolutely fucking crawling. Marcus and his ilk truly do think of other humans as little more than farm animals. We're out there to be selected and used.

"So you were toying with me. Making me think I was going to make a difference."

"Yes. Don't look so sad, pet. You're finally beginning to understand that you have been chosen."

I haven't been chosen. I've been selected, stalked, and abducted. Marcus let me think he was my prey, but there was never a moment in any of our interactions that he wasn't completely and totally in control.

"It all felt like a game up until this moment, didn't it?" He purrs the question, caressing my scalp with his fingertips, then sliding his hand down to cup my chin and force me to look into his eyes. "It's not a game, Charlie. You really belong to me, and you always will."

"But…"

"There's nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. There's no law to protect you. I can assure you, the list of crimes you have committed in the effort to betray me is more than enough to put you behind bars. Trent told me about so many of them. I was impressed, if I am to be honest. You were closer than I thought. You knew more than I realized. If I had not found you first, you might very well have one day brought me down."

Marcus

"You're insane."

She whispers the words, her lower lip quivering as her eyes fill with tears.

"Yes. But you already knew that."

She is mine. In every way. I quite literally own her at this point. And that means the intimacy between us is going to be as pure as it can be. This is tyranny, possession, ownership. This is what the world now considers to be wrong, but I know better.

"Everybody is here to witness this, not merely because your humiliation is so delicious, pet, but because this is the day you become truly owned."

She wanted to see me put behind bars. She wanted so badly to do the right thing that she was going against her own desires to do so. I know for a fact that she is very content in my possession. I see it in her eyes, I feel it in her body.

Charlie is a little idealist, but this world has no room for idealists. It is cruel to them, destroying them a little at a time until there is either nothing left, or a jaded skeptic. I am going to keep her pure by not pretending to be anything other than the monster she knows me to be. Her goodness will be heightened by my evil.

What we do tonight will be truly diabolical. I no longer need to wear any semblance of the mask. She has already begun to pry at the corners. She has glimpsed beneath. Now she will see it all.

"Why?"

"You really are a little journalist at heart, aren't you?" I chuckle. "Asking all the big questions. I don't think it would help for me to tell you the answers outright, Charlie. I think you'll enjoy the process of discovering them on your own a great deal more. You know, you didn't have to betray me. You could have put aside all those silly Libraryleaks notions and simply become my pet. That would have been my preference."

"I thought you murdered someone, and I thought I was doing the world a favor."

"Don't bother ever trying to do the world a favor," I say. "It won't appreciate it. The world is a whore who likes it when she is beaten."

"Christ," she breathes. "Who the hell hurt you?"

"What do you mean, pet?"

"You are so twisted. You wanted to be hurt so badly, you found someone who would betray you, then lured them into betraying you, just so you could feel betrayed. I've never even heard of that kink before, but it is extra sick."

It is my turn to be taken aback. Charlie is a smart girl and a quick thinker. She put the pieces of the puzzle together inordinately swiftly. I had assumed it would never occur to her that she had been selected precisely because she probably would turn against me. But here we are. It is hard to expose someone else without also exposing yourself.

"Is that why you were so into Adaline? Because you knew she'd turn on you? Are you so afraid of intimacy you have to reduce a woman to an animal and then prod her into doing something you will inevitably call betrayal?"

"Ouch," a voice from the crowd whispers.

She has me on the ropes, but of course it does not matter what she says. She will be punished.

"Yes, whip me, fuck me, turn me into an object of pity. None of this is about me, Marcus. It's all about you."

"You might want this, old boy," Jeremy says, walking by with a rubber gag in his hand.

"I believe I do. The young lady has more than enough to say."

"I don't care," she says.

Those are her last words before I slip the rubber between her teeth. It is a slim line gag, which will be relatively comfortable to wear, but will not allow her to keep talking.

Charlie

I'll do whatever you want, including betray you, if that's what you need.

He can't hear my words, but I think he can read the sentiment in my eyes. He is looking at me with an expression that is probably supposed to be inscrutable, but touches me in my core. I feel him. His dominance, and his agony. I feel the wound at the very center of him. He tries to hide it, but at the same time, he cannot staunch the bleeding.

He is so twisted. He found someone who would hurt him, so he could be the monster and play out some protection fantasy. He wants to play out make-believe in which whoever betrayed him originally suffers and is subjugated.

He is quite literally one of the most desirable men on the planet, and yet he has to orchestrate his own romantic downfalls over and over again because there's something inside him that not only cannot believe in love, it demands to be fed with pain.

"You've been a bad girl," he says, taking a cane from someone in the crowd. I can see how this is going to go. The perverse appetites of his ilk will be satisfied by seeing me, the sacrificial lamb from the streets, beaten and forced into submission, punished for the unspeakable and unforgivable crime of being born normal, and not worshipping at the altar of their wealth.

I give a little shrug. If he wants me to play the villain, I'll do it. I'll give him the performance of a lifetime. It's going to be a little harder given the gag between my teeth, but you can say a lot without words.

I lift my middle fingers and hold them aloft, turning slowly so that each and every person here gets to appreciate my little birdies.

Whip!

I hear the cane slicing through the air. It lands square across my cheeks, above the tail, finding the very center of my ass in a brutal stroke that makes a cold shock rush through me. It's not pain at first, but it's not first for long.

It quickly becomes second and third and fourth and oh my God . There are tears in my eyes. I drop my fingers, and my hands go back to cover my ass. That's a mistake. Touching the aftermath of the hard cane stroke makes it hurt even more.

"Goddamnit," I curse against the gag. It's an indecipherable sound, but everybody knows what I mean.

"On your knees," Marcus demands.

I drop to my knees, keeping my back and thighs straight so I don't have to bend at the place that hurts so badly. I know there's no real avoiding pain tonight, or shame. He's going to make sure I experience both as deeply as he is capable of making me feel them.

I am going to have my comeuppance, such as he sees it, inflicted upon me.

"You are my pet," he lectures me. "And there is nothing you can do to change that. You are starting to understand that now, I think, but you will understand it entirely by the time I am done with you. Hands and knees. Now."

I do as I am told again, even though I absolutely do not want to. Bending forward makes my skin feel as though it might very well tear along the cane-perforated line. I know I am being dramatic, but that damn implement is all too effective.

I don't want to cry properly. I don't want to break. I want to stay rebellious even if I have tears in my eyes. I want to put on a show that neither Marcus nor any of his Embassy mates will forget any time soon.

"Wag that tail, pet," he says, tapping my flank with the tip of the cane.

I sway my hips back and forward, making the tail move. He is forcing me to display myself, and giving me no merciful quarter. If I resist, I will get another one of those harsh strokes—and I do not want another one.

"That's a good girl," he says. The note of approval is not quite there in his voice. It's a perfunctory bit of praise, perhaps because he doesn't want to be praising me at all.

He wants to be punishing me.

"You took the bait," he says. "And the bait was to ruin my life, and yours, for some silly little notion of righteousness and freedom. Let me tell you, pet. Both of those things are illusions. Freedom doesn't exist. We're all in shackles on this planet. And righteousness? That's an even more dangerous set of assumptions."

This is a very philosophical lecture, but my body is responding even more than my brain. I don't really care what he is saying. I care about what he is making me feel.

Insane or not, broken or not, he is nevertheless Marcus fucking Waterstone, and I have crossed him. Part of me wants to whimper like a frightened pup, lower my body close to the ground, and offer my belly in some effort to appease him. Another part of me wants to bite him, defend myself against him. But in the end, I have no choice but to obey.

I feel him lift the hem of my dress, sweeping it away as far as he can under the circumstances—those circumstances being the plug in my ass still very much attached to the tail.

He doesn't need my ass though. He wants a different hole bared for his use—and he gets it.

I feel cooler air on my pussy, playing over my lips which are already wet. I wish I did not get aroused every time I am afraid and ashamed, but Marcus has trained me like a literal dog My desire is now a Pavlovian response to being punished.

"Look at this," he says, bending down to run his fingers across my slit. He lifts them, gleaming, to the audience. "She likes this. She likes being caught and displayed."

I gnaw on the gag, wishing he would show me something akin to mercy. But that's not the point of this. The point of this is to draw it all out and make me feel every drop of shame that he is capable of making me feel.

"Fuck her!" A voice calls out from the crowd. It is a solitary voice at first, but it is quickly joined by a chorus of other voices calling for the same thing. These people want to see me take his cock. They want me to be used for their pleasure.

Marcus is not one to disappoint his audience.

He goes to his knees behind me, and I hear the sound of his zipper going down—only briefly, because the moment they see that he intends to do what they want, a huge cheer goes up for him.

I feel him grip my neck with his teeth as he leans over me. The feeling of his bite on my skin makes a shiver of excitement run through me. This is incredibly primal, even though we're in this ostensibly refined place. No matter how rich these people are, or how powerful they are, there's no denying that they are filthy animals, too.

Marcus' cock presses against my pussy, and he pushes in slowly and deliberately. In spite of everything, I let out a moan through the gag. It will never not feel good for him to fuck me. My inner walls wrap around him tightly, gripping him, wanting him. He's right. I am absolutely soaked with arousal. I think the fear is making me flood with desire.

He fucks me on the floor in front of everybody, his thick cock sluicing mercilessly in and out of my soaking wet pussy. Much of the crowd has started to lose interest now, moving on with their own conversations, drinks, snacks, and kinky play.

For some reason I cannot understand, that makes this all that much hotter.

It's one thing to be put on sexual display, but it is something else to be ignored while I am half-naked, my dress off my shoulders, breasts exposed, tail still wagging against his belly as he pounds me. This should be impossible to look away from, but they are looking away. I am just another pet being put to good and proper use by her master.

"Come for me," he commands. "Show everybody how you like to be fucked."

His words alone would nearly be enough to put me over the edge, but matched with the sensation of being pounded on the floor like a literal animal, my pussy being used for my master's pleasure, my subjugation turned into display, it was getting to be overwhelming fast.

"Come," he insists again, reaching underneath me to rub my soaked clit. His fingers strum hard, demanding. I am not going to be allowed to avoid climaxing. He is going to force me to orgasm, and there is nothing I can do except exactly as he says.

My first orgasm is intense. With the rubbing of his fingers and the stroking of his cock, and the eyes of the crowd, and the way I have absolutely no choice whatsoever—I feel my knees go out from under me as I lose voluntary control of my muscles, turning into a squirming, writhing animal whose pussy is desperately trying to milk her mate.

Marcus

"What a good girl," I praise, using all of my willpower not to flood her with my come just yet. I follow her down to the ground where she is wriggling, her hips and ass high in an effort to keep my dick inside her.

She feels like heaven. She is molten hot, and her inner walls are gripping me with animal desperation. She might not like being on display like this, but all she really wants is to be filled with my come.

She has become everything I wanted her to be. She has become my possession. She has become my obsession. And she has become my cock hungry little pup.

I pop the tail out of her, rip the dress, and push the tip of my cock deep into her gaping ass. The plug did its job. It loosened her up.

"Lube!" I call the word out not unlike a surgeon demanding a scalpel.

Lube is passed to me, and I drop several dollops of the stuff around my cock so as I push deeper inside her, she gets the benefit of it. I want to be cruel, but I don't want to be insane. I don't want to damage her permanently. This tight little ass is going to be fucked often.

I hear the tenor of her moans changing as she takes my cock in a hole less designed for her immediate gratification and more intended for her degradation.

"That's right, pet," I murmur in her ear. "Every part of you is going to remain mine after this. Tomorrow you're going to wake up, knowing that all your hot little holes are at my disposal. The day after that, you'll wake up knowing the same thing. You are mine for the rest of your life, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it."

I feel her shudder with excitement as I thrust my cock deeper inside her, sliding home, balls deep inside her ass. Charlie groans incoherently, grinding her hips like the good girl she is. She wants to come, but she can't like this. There's not enough pressure on her clit. So she has to stay like this—wet, desperate, submissive, waiting for me to finish with her asshole, and maybe if she is lucky, turn my attention back to her desperate clitoris. I reach around to pull the gag from her mouth, letting it fall to the floor.

"Please," she moans.

She's begging for mercy. Or maybe she's begging for more.

She knew what I was from the beginning. She thought she wanted to see me brought to justice because she understood the kind of monster I was. But that good and proper impulse to turn me in has been perverted. She is my plaything. My pet. She walked into my life and cast herself into the role of my possession, and now I am giving her everything she dreaded and desired at once.

"Is your hot little ass sore?" I tease her as I pull out almost all the way, then slide back in. I drip more lubricant along the shaft of my cock, making it a little more comfortable for her. Of course, there's no real comfortable way to be fucked in a caned ass.

This is going to hurt, and she deserves it to hurt.

"I'm going to enjoy fucking you deep like this every day of your life," I tell her. "There's not going to be a single night you don't feel my cock inside some part of you. You're going to be a hot little sleeve for me. Your purpose, from now on, is to take my dick like the dirty pet you are. Do you understand?"

She makes some grunting sound, and I know she's trying to resist. I won't allow that. She has to submit to me.

"Say yes, or you won't come."

She resists, so I pin her down and I start pounding her harder, faster, showing her how ruthlessly her ass can be used, and how merciful I was being up until this moment.

Now she is wailing, writhing, begging, but she's still not promising to be my pretty, obedient little cock sleeve. I can feel her coming, little orgasmic peaks that are nothing compared to what I intend to eventually wring from her.

"Say it, pet."

"Yes! Okay, yes!"

"Not like that. Not as if it's an inconvenience," I purr. "Tell me you're going to be my personal set of holes for the rest of your life. Tell me how you are going to be used by me."

Charlie

He is so damn cruel. It's not enough that he's saying these terrible, filthy things to me. He also has to bring me down to his level. He won't give up until he has thoroughly crushed my rebellion.

I am aware of the eyes of the others upon us, witnessing his triumph and my downfall. But I could never have won in this little game. I was always going to lose. I think I knew that on the very first day we met.

From the moment I saw him, this series of events were inevitable.

If I believe him when he says he chose me to be his little victim in this game, then it was decided before I thought I had a choice. But I don't know if I do believe that. I'm not sure that who is predator and who is prey will ever be entirely clear between us.

But I do know that we are surrounded by both allies and enemies, many of whom wear the very same face because they are one and the same. This is a group of people so dangerous the air itself seems thick with their predatory instincts.

In their eyes, I am a gazelle being taken apart before the pride. I am a sacrifice to a cloister of cruel gods. I am the innocence they love, loathe, and must see defiled.

This won't be over until I capitulate.

"Pet," Marcus growls again, his cock stilling in my ass. I feel the throb of his thick meat inside me, stretching the tender walls of a part of my body never designed to be used in this way.

Though this is public, there is fragile privacy in the little whispers and moans between us. His lips are next to my ear, and he can hear the little gasps I make.

"Will you forgive me?" I whisper the question, knowing that the answer could break me.

It is all that matters in this moment. He took me in as his pet because he could not trust women and he wanted full control of one to punish.

I was never meant to mean anything to him.

But he has come to mean everything to me.

There is something in the unspoken between us, animal chemistry and broken internal wiring. We fit together, he and I. We match. We are mates.

I feel him so deeply inside me, not just his cock, but his essence, his very soul. We are wrapped around one another, playing out our pain between us, absolving one another, maybe even healing one another.

It shouldn't be this good to be this bad.

I hear him take in a breath, his pelvis pinning mine to the floor, his cock still throbbing inside my ass, his pulse keeping time in this brief eternity.

"Yes."

He rumbles the word, and I feel a flowering of joy inside me. A giggle very nearly escapes me. He forgives me. Which means I can forgive him.

Which means this is theater. All the world's a stage, and I am being fucked on it.

"Don't give the game away, pet," he purrs, giving me a brief kiss on the cheek, one of his hands sliding around and under me to grip me by the throat.

I know what my role is now. I know what he needs from me, what will salve the wounds that have been inflicted upon him and are bleeding between us.

Marcus Waterstone is one of the most powerful men on the planet, but right here, right now, he needs me to submit. He needs the gift of my submission. He can't take it. It has to be given.

"Please fuck my holes," I moan, lifting my voice so I can be heard. "Use me. Use my pussy and my ass and my mouth like you own me. Fill me up with come. Make me fucking drip with your semen. I want to ache every time I look at you because I know your cock is going to ravage another one of my holes."

I might be laying it on too thick, but the thrill that runs through the crowd tells me they are eating this up. The chemistry between Marcus and I has filled the room with a practically flammable atmosphere. One spark, and we all go up.

"Yes," he growls. "Every time I see you, you're going to take something inside you. Even if it's just a casual finger inside your pussy."

His crude promises drive me closer toward another climax. I have already come so many times, I don't know if my body is capable of coming again. He has turned me into an absolute mess, a squirming, writhing, orgasmically wrung out, desperate little fucktoy.

I am his, and there is no denying it, because I have no choice.

I am his lover.

I am his submissive.

I am his pet.

Marcus lifts me up from the floor. He is kneeling, and I am too, my legs bent back outside his thighs, my ass impaled on his cock, one of his big hands around my throat, the other arm around my waist to support my weight, and the hand of that arm between my legs, rubbing and spanking my clit hard.

I orgasm so publicly and powerfully, it's as though I can't contain myself. I don't feel like I'm in my body. My body is a writhing, vibrating, electric thing, and I am floating in and out of consciousness, feeling the pleasure and then being thrust away again by some unseen force.

The crowd of the rich and twisted seem like dark shades to me, encircling us, drawing closer as if they wish they could feel like I feel. There is hunger in their collective gaze. If they could drain me and drink me, they would.

But they cannot, because I am in Marcus' arms, and even as he fills my ass with his seed, he protects me. I am claimed so thoroughly, nobody on this planet will ever so much as imagine I belong to anybody else.

He stands up, his cock sliding from my aching ass. A stream of his seed traces down my thigh, clinging to the interior of the gorgeous gown.

He lifts me up into his arms, carrying me in the same way a husband carries his newlywed wife over the threshold of their home—but he is not delivering me to a life of wholesome domestic bliss.

He is delivering me both from and to the darkness we will forever share.