“I’ll enjoy watching you try,” I smirk in response. “But what I’ll enjoy even more, my darling angel, is stopping you. And then making sure you’re punished appropriately for trying to get away from me. You know you’re going to get punished, don’t you, Tallulah?”
She scowls at me before throwing the butter knife aside. Surely she’s realized it’s useless by now.
Her eyes lock on the open door behind me and she makes a mad dash to it, but I’m faster and stronger than her, catching her in the middle of the room and spinning her body around.
“Ready to pay?” I hiss in her ear. “It’s going to be a high price tonight.”
Chapter 4
TALLULAH
I’m so upset I want to scream. My fists hammer against Xavier’s chest, but he pays it no mind, just laughing at my feeble attempt at trying to hurt him.
“I told you, you’re going to have to pay,” he tells me. “You can’t expect to keep doing this shit and not getting any punishments.”
“I just want to see my parents and my sister,” I whisper, letting my fists fall down at my sides. “I don’t want to be stuck here forever.”
“You’re becoming brattier by the day, angel,” Xavier hisses at me. “Remember when you first got here? You were so eager to be with me, to be obedient for me.”
“I did,” I spit out. “Until you told me you don’t like me that way.”
I blanch at the sound of my own words, then flush. I can’t believe I just said that out loud. I didn’t want to reveal how I really felt about Xavier’s words a couple of weeks earlier.
“I never said that,” he reminds me. “You know you’re too young right now, Tallulah.”
“You made me feel worthless,” I mutter. “Unlovable. The way I’ve felt my whole life.”
I stare at him out of my peripheral vision, watching his jaw harden and tic. He looks like he’s about to console me, but then a hardness sets into his gaze and I see I haven’t fooled him.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he tells me sternly. “I can’t know for sure whether this is you trying to get out of a punishment and manipulate me. Which isn’t a wise idea, by the way, angel. But for now, let’s deal with the consequences of your actions. Then we’ll talk about your feelings.”
I don’t have time to reply, because he clamps his hand over my mouth the next moment, pressing down hard.
“I’m going to show you something now. Something I had built especially for you. It might scare you. But it’s going to be okay. I’m going to take care of you in there, just like I always do. Understand?”
My eyes grow wide, pupils dilating as I nod at him. He lets go of me, takes my hand, and silently walks me out of the room. The guards respectfully step aside as he leads me down the hallway into one of the many locked doors on my floor. Opening one of them with a card key, he motions for me to go inside.
I swallow thickly before venturing into the room. Inside, there’s mood lighting, dimmed and low to keep it sensual. Expensive leather and velvet furniture is littered in the room along with various implements I can only imagine causing pain. Chains and ropes hang from the ceiling.
“Come right here,” Xavier says, after locking us inside the room. He’s pointing to an X on the floor.
I saunter over with more confidence than I feel.
“Do you like pain, Tallulah?” Xavier asks me softly, smoothing a strand of hair off my face. “Do you like getting hurt?”
“I...” I try to look away, but something in his gaze makes me keep staring up at my godfather. “I don’t k-know.”
“Well, you’re about to find out, angel,” he smiles at me softly. “Take your clothes off. Everything off. Fold it on the chair over there.”
My eyes widen again, but I know he won’t back down from this. Flushing all over, I do as I’m told, placing the neatly folded bundle with my dress, bra and panties on the chair he pointed to.
“Now come back here.”
I join him on the X on the floor again. He pulls out some rope, cotton candy pink and soft.
“Are you going to tie me up?” I ask, and he just smiles as he places the rope on my body. With a few quick pulls, he suddenly traps my left breast in a vice-like grip. I yelp, so shocked about the pain I almost forget he’s seeing me fully naked for the first time.
“Like it?” he asks with a sly smirk. “Or is it too much for my little angel?”
I stare down in horror at my quickly flushing chest. “I... I don’t know, I...”
“Hard to finish sentences right now?” he asks from behind my back, where he’s now tied my hands at the wrists. Expertly, Xavier attaches the rope to a hook in the ceiling, hoisting me until I’m standing on tiptoes. I whimper, but he isn’t done yet.