“I want out,” she cried, looking up at me. “This isn’t a game. I’m not playing anymore.”
“It was never a game,” I said tightly. “Is that what you thought? That we were just ‘playing?’ That you weren’t really my slave?”
“I don’t want to be your slave anymore.” She buried her face in her hands. Her hair was a tangled mess.
I crouched down beside the cage, just out of hitting and scratching reach. “You want Simon, is that it?”
“Yes!”
I sighed and prayed for calm, and somehow refrained from pointing out, again, that her fucking ex-boyfriend was fucking dead, and that she needed to get over it. I understood about mourning and regret, but they hadn’t been together in years now, and he represented everything ugly in her past existence.
“I don’t want this anymore,” she said. “I don’t want your control anymore.”
“Is that true? Or is that only how you feel in this moment, because I’m not letting you do what you want?”
She made a sound like she’d kill me if she had the chance. “I want you to give me some space, Price. This once, just this once, let me have my way.”
“No.”
“Oh God. I hate you,” she screamed, rattling the bars again. “I’m safewording.”
“You don’t have a safe word.”
“I want you to let me go. I want you to stop being my Master.” She said something else that was eclipsed by sobs. I tugged a lock of her hair through the bars.
“I’m not keeping you in this cage as your Master. I’m doing it as a friend. As someone who cares about you. Simon—”
“Stop talking about Simon. Don’t you dare fucking talk to me about Simon ever again. I trusted you. I returned to you and went through this fucking re-training bullshit. I sucked your dick four times yesterday. Let me out!”
God, the screaming. I thought she’d calm down after a while and listen to reason. I thought she’d remember that she belonged to me, and see the wisdom in staying with me instead of going to some shitshow funeral.
“Let me out of here, damn it! I’m not kidding. I’m finished, Price. I want out. I want out! Please, I’ll lose my mind if you don’t let me out.”
“Out of the cage, or out of our relationship?”
She kicked the bars again, brutal anger and frustration. “What do you fucking think?”
“I think you need to pull your fucking shit together. When this is over—”
“It’s never going to be over.” She rolled over and crouched on her knees, and glared out at me. “Don’t you see? You’re always going to be this way. A selfish, jealous, insecure, abusive prick. You’re holding me prisoner against my will.” With each word, she shook the bars. On the last three, she rattled them hard, snapping my nerves. “Against my will. Do you understand that? I don’t want to be here. This is not consensual.”
She’d taken her collar off a long time ago, before I gagged her, before she took the gag off too, in blatant disregard for the rules. The rules didn’t matter now, though. She was rejecting our relationship, rejecting everything about it. Rejecting me.
“Is he worth this?” I shouted at her. “Is he worth destroying everything between us? All our history, everything we’ve built?”
“You destroyed it,” she shouted back. “It was just a fucking funeral, the only chance I had to say goodbye. What’s wrong with you? Is your jealousy that wide and that deep? How fucking psychotic do you have to be—”
“Watch your fucking mouth!”
“I won’t watch my fucking mouth, Master.” She said Master in a mocking tone and banged the bars again. “How fucking psycho do you have to be to keep someone away from a fucking funeral?”
“From Simon Baldwin’s funeral,” I said, and now I was the one banging the bars. “From the funeral of a man who fucked you up, who took your money, who hit you, who punched you, who cheated on you. You hid from him. You barricaded yourself behind deadbolts. Remember that? I remember. Why don’t you remember? You were fucking there.”
I stood outside myself and watched as I shouted at a naked, raging woman in a cage. I could put the princess in the tower. Any rich fucking prince, or prick, could do that. It didn’t mean I could keep her. She accused me of jealousy and abuse because I wouldn’t let her attend her abuser’s funeral. Fuck my life. The abuse label, after all this time, after all the care I’d taken to avoid it.
She didn’t understand, she didn’t care, and she didn’t love me. I knew it would end up this way. I always fucking knew. I knew she’d turn on me, just like every other fucking woman in my past.
“If you don’t stop kicking the fucking cage—” I began.
“You’ll what? What will you do to me that you haven’t already done?”