Master's Flame (Cirque Masters 3)

She covered her ears. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

“Valentina.”

She shook her head. “Why are you doing this? I’m a grown woman. I can do as I like.”

“Not for the next twenty-five days, you can’t.”

“I want this. I want to tough it out, okay? He won’t hurt me.”

“If I thought he would hurt you, really hurt you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He sighed and ate the last of his sandwich. “I’m just telling you that if you ever want out, you can get out. He won’t fire you. He won’t send you away. There are ways to keep the two of you separate, if that’s what you’re worried about. In the end, it’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, if it becomes too much for you, tell him. If you can’t tell him, tell me.”

She knew he meant to help but he had no idea about her feelings. This wasn’t a game to her, not in the slightest.

“I heard you were a hard Master too,” she said, purposely keeping her voice low. “I see how you control Sara.”

“There’s a big difference. I love Sara.”

Yes, and Mr. Lemaitre didn’t love her. Could he emphasize it again? Ten, twenty more times before she escaped this lunch from hell?

“I need to go to the gym,” she said. “I haven’t worked out in three days.”

“Go then. But don’t forget what I said.” He pointed a finger at her. “You’re destined for great things, Valentina Sancia. I don’t want to see any more ropes around your pretty little neck.”

Chapter Eleven: Control

By the end of the first week, they’d settled into a daily routine—of her Master’s making, of course. Day followed day, regimented and predictable. There were never any breaks.

Valentina awakened every morning to the sound of him unlocking her cage. Sometimes he’d get under the cover

s with her, and draw her face down to his cock. Other times he’d kneel over her and force himself down her throat, or order her out of bed and onto her knees to serve him. No matter what mood he arrived in, every morning was the same. A huge cock shoved between her lips.

It was easier to deal with once he stopped using condoms. She hated the taste of latex but she loved the taste of her Master, especially when she was sleepy and warm and just coming out of sexually charged dreams. When he came in her mouth she would swallow it, sinking into subspace as his container, his object. She felt utterly enslaved to his will.

After that he went to work and she had a small measure of freedom, since her practices didn’t start until ten. She was allowed whatever she liked for breakfast, as long as she ate something healthy and as long as she ate it naked—her Master continued to forbid the use of clothing inside the house. Galvin cooked delicious breakfasts for her most days, omelets or waffles or crepes, not even seeming to notice her nudity. He was gay after all, in a relationship with a lover who called and texted during the day, and doubtless welcomed him home at night.

Galvin left right after he cleaned up the kitchen from dinner. Sometimes she’d watch him go with the wild idea of running after him, running to freedom, running to her private apartment where she could do whatever she liked whenever she wanted, without anyone holding her down or hurting her, or invading her body in one hole after the other. Mr. Lemaitre would look over at her and she’d know he knew what she was thinking, because he’d get that little smile that wasn’t a smile.

You wanted this. You chose this, crazy girl.

After she ate breakfast every day, she showered and dressed in her practice clothes, and Galvin drove her to the huge headquarters building. By that time her Master was usually knee-deep in meetings or business, and she was forbidden to visit his office unless he summoned her. Which he often did. Sometimes an assistant came to get her and sometimes he’d show up himself, somber and formidable in his perfect suits and fancy Italian shoes.

He’d beckon her from across the gym or the practice facility, and she’d have to readjust herself from artist and performer to slave. And of course, everyone knew what he had come for. Everyone knew why he wanted her, and everyone would watch her cross to him and follow behind him to his office. Inside, she’d be shoved under his desk to perform a blow job, or thrown over the top, her legs pulled wide as he undid his fly and shoved inside her. If she wasn’t wet, that was her problem.

But by the time she got to his office, she was always wet. There was something about being used...and used...and used merely for someone else’s pleasure. When he craved her, he came and got her and fucked her. It was so simple, and so animalistically hot. Sometimes he’d start in her pussy and then decide halfway through that he wanted to fuck her ass. He used condoms for that. She didn’t think he could get in otherwise, without the slippery smooth latex to ease the way. Even then, it took extra lubricant which he kept in his desk drawer.

Her nose had grown all too familiar with the polished surface of his desk. She knew the temperature of it, the scent of the furniture wax. Smooth wood surfaces had come to trigger an automatic response in her. Everything clenched. It still hurt to take him in the ass, even after a couple weeks of training with butt plugs. She thought it would always hurt a little, which was probably why he liked it so much. The worst part was the beginning when he first nudged the head in. After that, the ache became more bearable but it still felt scary and risky. He never injured her, but there was always that sense that he could if he were not so careful.

Valentina was such a pervert that all these thoughts about care and risk turned her on. He could damage me—but he doesn’t. But he could... That was hot to her, especially paired with the dull, agonizing repetition of his thrusts. Sometimes, if he was in the mood for it, he would make her come, touching her in all the places that would make it happen: her pebbled nipples, her swollen clit. He’d slide his fingers between her pussy lips and find that exact spot and caress it in the same rhythm he banged her asshole, and she’d begin to quiver and shake, and in her climax, her pussy and ass would both contract and he’d feel even bigger and hurtier inside her, and oh... Sometimes she’d come again, just because the first orgasm felt so good.

But she’d always been that way. Very sensitive, very responsive. Her Master seemed to delight in it. Are you coming again? he’d ask, shaking his head. He only punished her for such excess when he was in a very, very bad mood. Most of the time he just punished her because he liked to hurt her. He was a sadist. That’s how sadists were.

Valentina tried to enjoy the punishments as he did, but they were more difficult to adjust to than the anal. Once her back healed, he started taking her to his playroom, a dark, hot space carved out of the attic. Many evenings he scened with her there, fastening her to various pieces of equipment and breaking her down. There was a wooden chair with phalluses rising out of it, ones he could interchange depending on his mood. Sometimes he used a big dildo in her pussy, sometimes a big dildo in her ass. Sometimes two dildos, so she had to sit there feeling stuffed and restrained by her own orifices.

The chair had a wide leather lap belt so she could neither get up, nor work herself up and down on the dildos the way she wanted to. Once he had her impaled and secured, he’d torture her breasts with clamps, or a crop, or both. He’d make her keep her mouth wide open, whether or not he put his cock inside. The point, she supposed, was to make her feel she was nothing but a collection of holes to be filled at his pleasure. Sometimes she enjoyed her times in that chair, but other times she felt overwhelmed and scared. She could never walk correctly by the time he let her up.

There was another contraption he used a lot, a bench with a high back. He’d make her kneel on the seat facing the wall, so her breasts reached just to the top of the wooden back. Cruel, alligator-grip clamps were fixed to the wood with an adjustable lever, and these were attached to her nipples as she whimpered and cried. Cuffs topped the posts at either side of the bench, and once her wrists were buckled into them, she would be powerless to get away from anything he did to her. She couldn’t move a centimeter without feeling excruciating pain.

Then, of course, he would pick up a strap or flogger or paddle or crop or any of the instruments that lined the walls, and beat her with it to the music of her screams. The pain of the beatings was bad enough, but the nipple-clamps-as-restraints added an entirely new level of hurt. Her hands would strain at the cuffs but he gave her no way to save herself. She was allowed to beg for mercy, but she couldn’t beg him to stop. If she did, it earned her a rough assfucking against the contract wall, nose pressed to the line where she’d signed herself over to him. Three or four assfuckings later, she’d learned to bite her tongue.

There were other pieces of furniture up there too. A spanking bench with straps and restraints all over it, a St. Andrews cross that he hadn’t used with her yet. She thought it would be easier to be tied to that than the high-backed bench with its horrid nipple pinchers, but knowing him, he’d find some way to make the St. Andrews cross horrible too.

The only good thing about his attic dungeon was that by the time he finished with her, he could do just about anything to her sexually and she didn’t care. She took his cock in her ass, she took his semen down her throat, she jammed her tongue up his asshole, whatever he demanded, and she did it with pure relief because at least he wasn’t beating on her. Well, except for the times he beat her and fucked her at the same time.

Sometimes she thought of Jason’s words. If you ever want out, you can get out. Sometimes she really, really wanted out, but then her Master would gather her in his arms and carry her to the white room, and gaze at her in a way that made Valentina’s heart tremble. He would shower with her and check her all over, talking to her about random things like her act, her practices, or a meeting he’d had that day. Sometimes before he locked her into her cage, he’d brush a hand over her hair so gently that her eyes glossed over with tears.

/> I love you, she would think. And after dreaming of him all night, she’d wake and pull out her sketch pad and try to capture all those brutal, affectionate qualities that comprised him, and again she’d fail. She’d close her pad and put it away and stare at the door in anticipation of his arrival, wondering if she was happy or miserable, or just very, very confused.

*** *** ***

Michel stared down at the tickets in his hand, then over at the silent woman on his arm. They stood in a crush of patrons at the Palais Garnier, waiting to be seated for a l’Orchestre de Paris concert. Just last week, he’d learned in the course of their dinner conversation that Valentina had never been to see a live orchestra. The revelation had horrified him. He could barely conceive that someone as bright and creative as Valentina might have lived twenty-six years and not yet enjoyed the aural mindgasm of a live orchestra program. He’d immediately stood, abandoning their dinner plates, and dragged her to his home office. He’d purchased third-row tickets while she knelt at his feet.

Why not? He enjoyed spoiling his slaves now and again, taking them out for dinners or shows. In Valentina’s case, he’d been so preoccupied with her luscious body that he’d done nothing but drill her holes for the past three weeks. Careless of him, to get so carried away.

He clasped her wrist tighter as an usher glanced at their tickets and gestured them toward the main floor. The congestion of people pushed them together. He smiled and steadied her when she stumbled against his front. She took a step back with a murmured apology and he slid a look down at her prim black-belted dress and mid-heeled pumps. Her hair flowed loose about her shoulders, a riot of color against her dark outfit. He studied that hair, thinking of her art back in her apartment, creative works so vivid and full of color. Why was he keeping her trapped in his bleak and colorless home?