“Leave,” he ordered whomever else remained in the room.
I let out a soft sight of relief.
No matter how much I wanted to provide relief for my family by keeping the Camorra at a safe distance and giving them Alexander’s extra allowance, I knew I didn’t have it in me to be ridiculed in front of a dining room filled with people.
When the soft click of a door closing heralded their removal from the room, Alexander removed my blindfold.
I blinked up into the constellation of bright crystal chandeliers casting light throughout the room and tried to regain my sense.
Surprisingly, he let me.
The dining room was long and narrow with high vaulted ceilings, domed archways over the oversized doors, and so much gilt detailing that the entire space seemed to glow with captured sunlight even though the sky outside the windows was pitch dark.
“Welcome to the hall,” Alexander murmured, reaching out to pinch my chin gently between his fingers and tilt it until my eyes met his. “This is where you will eat with me when I am in residence.”
He must have read the surprise in my eyes because his lips twitched with humour. “Did you expect to be kept forever in the darkness of my ballroom, eating only ham and stale bread? I told you, topolina, what I take from your body will be rewarded with privileges. A good slave eats with her Master. Last night, you proved with this beautiful mouth that you can be a very good slave indeed.”
My olive skin was too dusky to show the way my skin heated with a furious blush, and I’d never been so grateful for it. I was at once pleased and repulsed. The memory of taking him in my throat was one of invasion, a warrior’s remembering of war, yet I felt triumph despite the horror because it was a battle I had won.
“Yes,” Alexander said, answering my thoughts as if he owned those too. “You can hate me and still delight in pleasing me, my beauty.”
My lips twisted to the left, capping the emotions that bubbled in my gut. I was so conflicted that I felt sick with it.
“Do you know what buyers look for in a future slave?” Alexander asked me as he reached for his glass of red wine and swirled it in the bowl.
My eyes caught on the colour, the light through the red shining like blood, and I watched hypnotized as he swirled and swirled the contents in his big hand.
“It isn’t necessarily a docile nature. The best Masters enjoy a challenge. It’s the duality of a strong mind and a submissive spirit, a fierce heart. Only with all three can a slave be truly remarkable. The strong mind tests a Master’s nettle, the submissive spirit is his reward, but without the fierce heart, no slave would trust their Master enough to enjoy their play.”
He leaned down over the arm of his throne-like chair, the glass of wine dangling precariously between his fingers just above my lips.
“Open,” he commanded softly.
I parted my lips, my eyes on his even as I tipped my head back so that I could catch the full-bodied wine in my mouth.
His breathing was deeper, his face tight with arousal as he watched me drink from his glass.
“I want you to enjoy our play, topolina,” he told me as I licked my lips, and he straightened in his seat. “I want to give you joy in your servitude.”
“But you want to hurt me,” I said, my voice breathier than I wanted because I’d never seen such beautiful eyes in all my life.
A grey so deep and clear they shone like the polished pewter dining set on the table.
He sipped the wine, his strong throat working, his lips slicked with red liquor before he swiped it away with a sweep of his tongue.
I squirmed as my gut heated and arousal flooded between my legs.
Such a simple gesture, sharing wine from the same glass and then watching him lick his firm mouth, but it had such a profound effect on me.
I wondered if I was conditioned already, weaker than I’d previously thought…or if he was just that gorgeous, I was only woman enough to respond.
“It doesn’t matter if I wish to or not,” he finally admitted. “I will hurt you because I must just as you must endure it because you have no choice.”
“You don’t like it?” I asked, shocked enough to scoff.
His eye flashed at my attitude. “Would you like to see just how much I like it, my beauty?” Before I could protest, my hand was in his and he was pressing it to the steel length of his cock beneath his suit pants. “The thought of your body painted in my bruises and your pretty face lacquered with tears makes me unspeakably hard.”