around the gag, the noise a raw contraction of the muscles in my throat, drool spilling onto my chin.
I am helpless.
Thinking the words soothes me as much as it frightens me. It has always been like this.
Suddenly the spanking stops, although her hard, hurting fingers are still twisting my poor tortured labia. My breath comes in short, gasping pants as I try not to choke on my own salty tears.
I sense her moving nearer, then her breath is hot against my cheek. She says in a low tone, “You’d better learn to take it more quietly, Girl. The Master won’t like all this fussing. Didn’t your previous owner teach you any better? Or are you too hardheaded to learn?”
My heart drops into my stomach. I try so hard to be good. To please. To aim for perfection. But this place is too new and I haven’t been told all the rules.
And suddenly it comes to me that maybe they want me to fail. I’m hoping it’s only to have more reason to punish me and not because they simply don’t want me. That he doesn’t want me. I need so much to belong…somewhere. And if not here, where?
Memories flash through my head, spurred by my panic, a million thoughts rushing by like a film in fast-forward: My arrival at Millbrook Academy, the boarding school that was my father’s answer to having an invisible child who was still somehow in the way, when I was only eleven. How alien the place seemed at first—the long, vaulted hallways, the towering trees on the grounds, the headmistress, Mrs. Brerens, who frankly scared the hell out of me. But then there was my series of crushes—Mr. Curtis who taught math and looked like something out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. My dance teacher, Ms. Lordham, who was the perfect blonde English rose, and whom I once caught fucking Mr. Curtis in the stables like something out of a classic porn film. She was naked, her gorgeous, lithe body bent over a bale of hay while he took her from behind, and her shouting, “Fuck me harder!” Oh yes, even though I was only thirteen years old, that scenario fueled my fevered masturbatory fantasies until long after graduation from Millbrook.
And then there were the girls… It was a school for “young ladies,” after all, and we had to do something to keep our raging hormones busy. It was either that or sneak out after curfew and meet strange men in town, ask them to buy us beer in exchange for a quick hand job. If the wealthy and powerful parents of the Millbrook girls had had any idea what their daughters were up to, that place would have been shut down decades ago.
Boarding school was that terrifying and intoxicating combination of fear and yearning. Loneliness and wanting. And it was those things I still sought, always feeling as if satisfaction were just beyond my grasp.
But now I’m here. In the Training House.
Cook yanks me up until I’m sitting on the long table, my ass burning against the cool wood, and I realize I am truly afraid. Will he reject me? Is it possible, once my contract has been signed? But of course it is. I can’t bear it if I’m returned to Master Graham in shame.
Not good enough.
No.
I’m crying in earnest now, in long gulping sobs, the ball gag nearly choking me.
“Hey! Stop that now.”
Cook slaps my face, leaving my cheek burning. But the shock of it calms me down right away. I swallow the next sob and do my best to contain myself.
“Better,” she murmurs, not unkindly. “Here.” A soft, damp cloth on my cheeks as she wipes the tears and the snot and the drool away. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says with a small chuckle, “he likes his Girls to cry, but he prefers to be the one to make it happen.”
I sniff. I’d smile if I could, both because she’s being kind to me along with being cruel, and at the idea that he’s one of those who enjoy a woman’s tears, which is inexplicably hot for me.
Taking a deep breath, I try to breathe out around the ball gag, then inhale again—and swear I smell him before I hear