The Dancer and the Masks by Bea Paige

Chapter 14

CHRISTY

My eyelids flutter open, the vision lingering like a suffocating blanket. It feels burdensome, heavy. I’ve never had a vision of something that’s happened in the past. Never. Yet, I know that wasn’t a dream. I feel the truth of it in my bones. Jakub, Konrad and Leon became The Masks to survive. It’s a sobering thought, and I’m not certain how I feel about it.

“Hello,” I croak, my throat dry, my body stiff.

“So she awakens…”

I shift uncomfortably, peering into the semi-darkness. “Jakub?” I whisper, confused by the softness in his voice.

“I’m here,” he says.

Fear and a lingering sense of sorrow cascades down my spine as he steps out of the shadows and into the muted light. The flickering candles and dying embers of the fire lit in the hearth edging him in the ghosts of the past.

My breath catches in my throat, this is how I see him in my visions. Just like this.

“Your mouth is open,” he points out.

I slam it shut, drinking him in as he stands before me in a black roll-neck sweater and charcoal trousers, an air of sophistication rolling off of him. There’s power too, and a sense of rigid self-control beneath the grey mask he wears. It sits over his nose and cheeks, revealing his mouth and strong jaw.

“What time is it?” I ask, mentally checking myself for any lingering pain. Apart from the usual dull ache from the scars that never quite goes away, and a foggy head from the vision, I feel okay. I’m warm and am lying on the soft mattress of Jakub’s bed.

“It’s time to meet the Numbers,” he replies, stepping towards me.

“Right now?” I push up onto my elbows, shifting backwards on the bed. My head is still groggy, my body feels weak despite resting these past few days and being cared for by Nala. She’s been kind, thoughtful, bringing me everything I need to make me comfortable including a change of clothes, even if it is this awful white dress that is apparently my uniform aside from when The Masks dress me up like a doll to appease their whims. She even brought me some books to read and my own foundation so I can keep my mask in place.

“They’ve been wanting to meet you.”

“Dressed like this?” I repeat, groaning as I move, the after effects of the vision lingering. I still feel like a part of me is back there watching those boys take their first step towards the monstrous men they are today. It’s a little difficult to digest.

“Exactly like this, but first I want you to lie back down.”

“What? Why?” I ask, moving to sit up.

“I didn’t get long enough...”

“Long enough?” I whisper, disliking the way his eyes darken as he stares at me.

He cocks his head to the side. “To watch you sleep.”

“You’ve been watching me sleep?” I ask, feeling creeped out. Which seems ridiculous given everything I’ve been through. It’s just that when I’m deep in a vision I’m completely under, oblivious to the waking world around me. Vulnerable. My aunt has often said that it’s as though I’m in a coma. Nothing and no one can wake me.

“Yes, I wanted to know what you looked like sleeping in my bed. I wanted to know if it would turn me on…” he says without a hint of embarrassment.

“And does it?” I ask, shifting uncomfortably, steadying my voice even though my heart is thumping a million miles a minute. I don’t want him to be attracted to me. I don’t want to be some kind of experiment, and I definitely don’t want him to act on whatever perversion makes him hard, but I ask the question regardless. Better to know what your enemy is thinking so you can prepare yourself for the fight, and I will fight.

“No.”

There’s a bitterness to his response that fills me with both relief and a twisted kind of disappointment. I don’t want him to want me, but equally being unattractive when I’m completely bare is hard to swallow, let alone when I’ve covered up my birthmark to make myself fit the mold of beauty.

“Then what do you want from me?”

“Everything,” he replies.

I try to search for the boy he once was and come up empty. All I see is a man trapped beneath a mask with no wish to get back to the boy who refused to kill his beloved pet. “Everything?”

“I want everything,” he repeats cryptically.

“That’s an awful lot from someone you refer to as Nothing,” I say, shuffling sideways away from him. It’s only then that I become aware of something tied around my neck. My hands fly upwards, feeling the collar fixed in place. The leather is smooth, supple, worn, and I know without having to see it that it’s Star’s collar, the very same collar The Masks have been trying to make me wear ever since I arrived here.

“If you remove it, I’ll order Konrad to keep you in the dungeons for a week,” Jakub says, watching me closely. In his hand is the leather leash, his thumb rubbing up and down the soft leather. It’s attached to the collar at my neck.

“I lasted a day. I can last a week,” I bite back, my fingers pulling at the collar.

Jakub shakes his head, then yanks the leash, pulling me forward by the throat. I have to follow the movement, or choke. My hands fall away as I crawl across the bed, trying not to stumble as the long nightgown I’m wearing gets caught under my knees. “Not with what he has in mind.”

“The other Numbers… they survived, didn’t they? What makes you so certain that I won’t?”

“Because what he’ll do to you will be a thousand times more disturbing than what he did to them. He’ll fuck you up in here,” Jakub says, tapping his head.

I don’t rise to the bait, despite his words making fear pool in my stomach like a rusty nail. I’m no fool, I know I’ve managed to traverse the worst of their behaviour, that they’ve barely shown me what they’re capable of. It’s a strange position to be in, knowing who they are, what they’re capable of, but also knowing who they once were. I’ve been given a glimpse of the boys before they became The Masks. That has to mean something, surely? Fate, however cruel, is giving me a lifeline and I intend on grasping it with both hands.

“Why me?” I suddenly ask, shifting my body so that I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my bare feet pressed against the warm wooden floorboards. My dress lifts, revealing my ankles and shapely calves. I have the urge to pull the dress down. I don’t.

“You know why. Your sister ordered the death of my father. This is payback. She took something of ours, we took something of hers.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant.” I almost ask him why he cares about his father’s death given he was abused by him, but that would mean me explaining how I know about his father’s cruelty and there’s no guarantee he’d believe me. Even if he did, it wouldn’t make a difference.

“Regardless of what you meant, this is how it is. You are ours. That isn’t going to change, no matter how much you want it to.”

“You keep saying that I’m yours, and aside from the fact that I’m not something that can be owned—” He scoffs at my declaration, but I push on regardless. “Why do you want to own me when you already have the Numbers…?” I haven’t even met all of them, but if the rest of them are anything like Four and Eight, then The Masks will have no problems fulfilling their desires, right? Those women wanted Leon and Konrad. It’s not as though The Masks would have to fight for their attention, steal it. Then I realise, that’s precisely what they want. To hunt, to take something from an unwilling victim. My throat squeezes with anxiety.

“The Numbers aren’t ours. They never were. They never will be.”

I swallow hard, the tightness of the leather collar reminding me that I’m no more than an animal to them, a creature they can order around and abuse, and yet… This collar, this leash, belonged to a beloved pet, one that Jakub adored. Surely that’s significant somehow?

“Who do they belong to, if not you?”

“The Collector…”

“The Collector?”

“Our father.”

“But he’s dead. So that makes them yours now, doesn’t it?” I ask, trying to understand his logic, because of course they shouldn't belong to anyone but themselves.

“No. It doesn’t. The Numbers belong to The Menagerie, to the people who pay big money to come here to watch them, to my father’s legacy and what he built here. The Numbers do what they love, they’re gifted performers—”

“Performers? Is that why Four and Eight were dressed up like strippers? Is that the kind of performance you mean? They strip and then fuck whoever pays you the most?” I laugh almost hysterically. “They call you their Master but isn’t that just a more creative word for pimp?”

“You really are small-minded,” he remarks, a ghost of a smile playing about his lips. “But yes, they fuck our clients.”

Small-minded? This isn’t a conversation I’d ever thought I’d have with a man who has me collared and leashed like a dog, but I keep him talking if only to stave off whatever he has planned for me. “So enlighten me.”

“Konrad has ordered a formal banquet this evening. You’ll be enlightened soon enough.”

“You want me to perform in The Menagerie? Am I expected to fuck your clients too?” I ask, my voice shaking, my skin growing cold at the thought.

“Like I suggested to my brothers in the library, you won’t be for sale like the other Numbers, given you’re ours and we don’t share unless it’s with each other.”

“So I'm going to dance then?”

“No. Tonight there will be no guests in Ardelby Castle. Tonight it’s just us and the Numbers. Dinner and… well, you’ll see. It’s your welcome… of sorts.”

“Thank God,” I mutter, but my relief is short-lived when he lunges forward and wraps the leash around my neck, pulling it tight. My throat constricts as he tightens his grip and forces my chin up. He smiles down at me, his eyes empty.

“Don’t relax too much, Nothing. Everything you do from now on is for our benefit. If we want to see you dance, you will dance. If we want you collared and leashed, you will gladly follow us wherever we go. If we want you naked and spread open, then you’ll oblige. If we want you to scream and cry whilst we fuck you, then you will do exactly that.” He releases his grip on the leash allowing it to loosen, and I suck in a pained breath, gasping for air.

“I—”

“Pull up your dress,” he commands, cutting me off.

I feel the weight of his stare as he dares me to object. When I don’t act immediately, he tightens the noose once again. My throat constricts from the pressure and I know that if I don’t do what he says, he’ll strangle me here and now without a second thought. The truth of that knowledge is in his eyes as tears form in mine. Yet again, Fate has tricked me. The boy he was is no longer within him. Whatever she had planned, it’s too late.

“You need to learn your place,” he snarls, twisting the noose ever tighter.

It would be so easy to let him kill me. To end this here and now knowing that my future is going to be filled with more horrors such as this. But I don’t want to die. I need to adapt to survive. I need to bide my time so that I can kill this motherfucker and his psycho brothers. That rogue thought settles in my heart like a rock dropping to the bottom of the ocean. It grounds me. Gives me purpose. It makes me strong. I never thought I was a violent person… until now.

“Pull up your dress,” he repeats.

I nod, telling him that I will do as he asks. He loosens the noose allowing me to suck in several ragged breaths. Shifting slightly, I curl my fingers into the material of the long white dress and pull it upwards, revealing my bare legs inch by inch. I force myself to do what he wants knowing that I will obey his commands until the opportunity to end him and his brothers presents itself.

When the hem of the dress reaches the apex of my thighs, my hands still. Despite my determination to embrace my newly found courage, I can’t quite bring myself to reveal the most private part of me. Leon might have touched it, but no one has seen it.

“Did I tell you to stop?” he snaps, fixing his gaze on my creamy thighs. Tiny freckles are scattered across my skin. Their colour is the shade of my hair. As a child I never paid them any mind until one day a boy at school started making fun of me. He said I had the pox, that I was tainted, that my freckles like my face, were the mark of dark, evil things. From that day onwards, every child at school stayed away from me. Only giving me attention when they were throwing sly kicks and hateful words my way. Now these freckles are just another part of me that marks me as different.

“I want to see your cunt,” he demands, snapping his eyes up. “I need to see what has gotten Leon so twisted up. He’s seen a lot of pussy over the years, but yours seems to have turned his head more than I expected.”

“Leon didn’t see my cunt,” I retort, spitting out that ugly word and forcing anger into my voice. It stops me from being afraid, even though it prompts Jakub to tighten the noose momentarily.

“But he touched it.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“What about Konrad?”

“No.”

“And there I was thinking he’d broken our agreement too and taken a peek whilst he had you chained up in his dungeon. What did he do with you then?”

“Apart from cutting off a length of my hair… not a lot.” My fingers pull at the hem of the dress, yanking it back down.

“Stop!” Jakub suddenly shouts, covering my hand with his. “I want to see.”

“Don’t you have an agreement?” I ask, my pulse thrumming in my neck. When it comes to me, they do things together, apparently. At least they're supposed to.

“Fuck the agreement. Leon’s already broken it by touching you,” he growls, forcing my hands away whilst still keeping the noose tight around my neck. Gathering up the material in his hand, he lifts the skirt of the dress then stares straight at my pussy. If I’m not mistaken there’s a sharp intake of breath, but that could be my mind playing tricks on me given my own ears are filled with the rapid rushing and pulsing of blood from a mixture of embarrassment, shame, and fear. I reach for the hem of the dress, wanting to cover myself.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” he snaps. “Now spread your legs.”

“No!”

“DO IT!”

Gritting my teeth, I turn my head away and slide my legs open. Heat travels up my chest as fury boils my blood. Today is not the day to fight. I need a plan. I need to be sensible. I only just started to replenish my energy before the vision, now it’s depleted once again, but that doesn’t make this any easier.

“You’re bare,” he grinds out, his voice gravelly like stones crunching underfoot.

“What can I say, I prefer to keep my bush under control. Is that a problem?” I retort, my sarcasm helping me to regain a modicum of control and self-respect.

He doesn’t respond like I expect him to. Instead he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he licks his lips. The energy in the room shifts as he stares at me, his gaze lowering from my pussy to my thighs and legs, then back up again to my face and hair. He reaches for a strand, touching the softness between his thumb and finger before trailing his hot gaze back down to my pussy. His mouth parts, heat creeps up his neck, flushing his skin.

“What?” I bite out, not liking how my stomach tightens and my clit throbs under his perusal.

“You’re different…” he remarks, sounding confused.

“I’m sure you’ve seen a hairless pussy before.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

He doesn’t answer and there’s something about the way he holds himself that tells me he’s battling with his attraction. That he’s surprised by it, doesn’t want it. Well, that makes two of us.

“Lay back,” he commands.

“What?”

“Lay. Back!”

The noose tightens, reminding me who’s in control. I lay back.

Jakub nudges his way between my parted legs, forcing my thighs further open and my pussy lips to part. I’ve never felt more exposed, or more vulnerable in my life. This isn’t how I envisaged the first time a man would see this part of me.

It twists my guts up.

Churns my insides.

Raises my heartbeat to a thumping so loud I can barely hear anything else.

He stares, and stares and stares, feasting on me, hungry. I’ve never been looked at this way before, with interest, with lust.

Pity, yes.

Lust, never.

It tips this moment from something disturbing into something shamefully exhilarating.

For the briefest of moments I find myself luxuriating in it.

It’s wrong. Twisted. Yet, it’s happening.

“You've got a pretty cunt,” he says quietly, and there’s a hint of something in his voice that I can’t quite place. Not admiration, not that, just something. A torrid concoction of embarrassment, fear, and desire licks at my insides as he continues to stare. I force my eyes shut, my fingers curling into the bedspread as I hold on, waging a war with myself and this sudden rush of feelings that have no place here in this room with this man whom I hate. “I could take you now. It would be so damn easy.”

“I would rather die than let you rape me,” I seethe, meaning every last word despite the way my clit throbs and my veins thrum with tumultous heat. Just because my body is betraying me, twisting me up with hormones unleashed in a moment of sheer panic and fear, doesn’t mean that I’m willing. I’m not. “So you may as well use that leash to strangle me, because I refuse to let you take the one thing that only I should have the power to give. Believe me when I say, I will fight you until my last breath.”

“What makes you think I want what you have to offer, Nothing?” he asks, the tone of his voice different, less… cold. I can’t help but look at him. When I do, I catch a glimpse of something I don’t understand passing over his face. A host of emotions that confuse me, switching our roles, like I’m the one holding him captive.

The noose around my neck loosens completely as he drops it to the bed and kneels on the floor between my parted legs, still staring at my pussy. It’s oddly submissive, but equally he holds all the power. I have none.

“You said you want everything…” I choke out, forcing courage into my voice. “You have me lying on a bed with a collar around my neck and the most private part of me on display.”

“Your most private part? This is just your body…” he says, frowning.

“It is not just my body. This is me. This is mine,” I reiterate.

“Ours.”

“You’re looking at me like you don’t know whether you want to hurt me or...”

“Or…?”

“Or pleasure me,” I continue, pushing past the gravel in my throat. “I don’t know what to think. What do you want from me?”

If he’s affected by my words, he doesn’t show it. Instead he rests his hands on my knees, cupping them, firm but gentle. I can feel the calluses on his palms, and I briefly wonder what kind of work he could possibly do to make them so rough. My skin erupts in goosebumps that cascade across my skin like sin in a whore house.

“I’m not like my brothers. What I want from you is far more dangerous than what my brothers need,” he grinds out, his fingers tightening over my knees, causing me to whimper and squeeze my eyes shut on him, on this room, on my body and the way it flushes beneath his touch. “Look at me, Nothing!”

My eyes snap open as he presses a kiss against the inside of my knee, his tongue tasting my skin.

My traitorous core squeezes.

“Don’t,” I beg, my voice cracked and broken, desperate with longing and hating myself for it. Am I really that easy to manipulate? A look of hunger, a gentle but possessive touch, and I roll over just like a dog? This can’t be happening. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

“You taste just like I imagined,” he mumbles against my inner thigh, ignoring my outburst. His mouth moves higher, the soft whisper of his lips doing more damage than any firm grasp or threat to my life.

“And what do I taste like?” I find myself asking, wanting a distraction as he licks and bites, edging his way higher.

“Dangerous.”

My pulse runs riot, it gallops and bucks, making me lightheaded as he presses his thumbs against my inner thighs and spreads me wide. My chest, neck and cheeks flame with another surge of heat as he rips off his mask and presses his nose against my mound, breathing me in.

He. Breathes. Me. In.

My heart stutters, and my body shakes with a mixture of self-hatred, lust, and pure physical desire.

This is wrong. I should fight...

A moment ago I wanted to kill him, and now...

Now, I want him to taste me.

Taste me.

I lift my head, begging him with my eyes whilst cursing him with my mouth. “I hate you. I will kill you for this!”

“Then do it, nothing’s stopping you,” he taunts.

Fury turns my blood ice cold. He knows he can overpower me. I can’t win against him, but I can make him hurt. So I slap him. I push upwards, shove against his shoulders and slap him as hard as I can across his cheek. His head whips to the side, the force of my slap unbalancing him. Surprise lights in his eyes, but he reaches for my hips, holding me down as I try to stand.

“Yes,” he hisses, correcting himself as he grabs the leash and tightens it once more. “Fight and die, or keep still and live. Your choice.”

“Screw you,” I choke out, but I don’t fight him when he pushes me back onto the bed.

“Look at me whilst I fuck your cunt with my tongue,” he demands, loosening his hold on the leash so I can breathe again.

I meet his gaze as his eyes blacken with need, his pupils blown wide. Then he grins and tastes me, burning me up from the inside out with one firm stroke of his tongue up my tender flesh.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. My whole body goes rigid at the sudden exquisite sensation. Jakub licks and sucks, plundering my core with his tongue, drinking me up, feasting on my dripping pussy. He kisses and taunts with his lips, teeth and tongue, and it’s as though everything that’s happened over the past few days incinerates in that moment, swallowed up in fire and smoke, lust and passion. The tip of his tongue rims my entrance and sensation blinds me momentarily as my virginal pussy weeps for him. A hot tear slides down my temple as I try to comprehend what’s happening.

No, my mind protests.

Yes, my body retorts.

This is what you’ve been hungering for, my soul reminds me.

I have the sudden urge to pull him closer, to wrap my legs around his head and grind against his face, taking what he gives, wanting what he offers, hating myself all the while. How can I do this? How can I want this?

“Hmmm,” he hums as he licks me again, a long sweep from anus to clit and back again. If he’s the devil then his tongue’s an angel and I’m in purgatory caught between heaven and hell.

A heady moan releases from my parted lips. A cry of shame and overwhelming want. The noise that rumbles up his throat matches mine, ashamed, shocked, but filled with need.

Unequivocable need.

“Please,” I beg, unashamedly rocking my hips whilst tears stream down my face, wetting my hair.

I want to come.

I want to chase the high that Leon started back in the library. No, that Konrad started in the back of the van when he touched me without my permission or consent. I didn’t want his touch. I didn’t want Leon’s. I don’t want Jakub’s, and yet… I do. I do want it.

I want a moment where I don’t feel fear, only pleasure, only acceptance, only belonging.

They’ve already claimed me. I’m theirs, whether I want to be or not. So for one moment in time, I’ll concede.

He licks and sucks stoking the flames, making the passion billow and soar higher and higher and higher as his fingers dig into my hips. Jakub holds me steady, forcing me to wait, to succumb to the towering inferno of rage, hate, lust and the heady, desperate need to come.

“Why is this happening?” I moan, feeling my body ripen under his touch.

It evolves, changes. My core tightening then unfurling with sensation. My clit engorges. My pussy weeps. Every curse, every word of hate is obliterated by sensation, by the basic human need to chase pleasure. To feel something exquisite. My legs spread wider, my body concedes, welcoming him, giving him easy access. I open up instead of close down.

I. Let. Him. In.

He rears back, dousing the fire between us with ice. His fingers squeeze the tender flesh of my thighs once, then he lets me go, rocking back on his heels as he drops his head. “Fuck! Fuck!”

“Jakub…?” I question, feeling the shift. Regret, empathy, sadness. It pours from him into me as I push up onto my elbows. My arms shake. My body quivers. My core weeps for his mouth and the orgasm that is just out of reach. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

His head snaps up and the look he gives me has me gasping for breath. I scramble backwards on the bed, understanding in that brief locking of eyes that I’ve stepped over some invisible boundary. I’ve made a mistake. He means to hurt me.

“Don’t!” he roars.

Then he comes for me with steel in his eyes, a burning hatred stuttering across his face.

“Wait! I didn’t mean—”

But he doesn’t wait. He thrusts his hand out, grabbing my ankle and yanking me back towards him. Then splaying his fingers between my breasts, he shoves me back onto the bed. “Don’t!” he snaps. Reaching down he rips up my dress and buries his head back in my pussy and takes. He takes my pleasure and twists it up into a dark, devious thing.

The intense white ball that he’d conjured up with his lips and tongue just moments before evolves into a fiery demon, something with the capability of shredding me apart.

His lips scorch. His tongue invades. His mouth burns. His fingers bruise.

And I am putty in his hands.

I don’t fight, I gasp.

I don’t cry for help, I scream for more.

More. More. More.

Jakub growls, teeth scraping against tender flesh as he eats me out. Wild. Unhinged. Taking and giving, fucking and fighting. My hands fly back to grasp his head, to pull him closer, whilst pushing my hips upwards to meet the frantic way he ruins me with his tongue.

I’m out of my mind with passion, not thinking, just doing.

He doesn’t stop me from grabbing at him.

He doesn’t stop until I’m jerking in his hold, my back arching, my heels digging into his back as I come.

I come so hard that black spots blur my vision and white noise fills my ears.

A scream rips out of my throat. A wild animal stripped back to her rawest form.

Then he rears upwards and slaps my quivering flesh.

One, twice, three times.

I jerk with every hard slap against my tender, swollen pussy, crying out.

I’m crying now. Sobbing.

I’ve never experienced such wicked pleasure from such a tortured man.

He’s ruined me.

Pulling down the hem of my dress so that it covers me back up, he grabs his mask, hiding the fury of his expression. I’m left confused, exhausted from the rush, angry at giving myself over to him so easily. I can’t even say he stole my orgasm, because he didn’t.

I gave it up.

“Get up. We’re late for dinner.”

“What’s going on?” I ask brokenly, twisted by the lingering sensation of his tongue on me, of the confusing feelings. I still hate him. I still want to kill him. Yet he’s just given me the most intense orgasm of my life. I’m dripping for him.

“Do as I say! Get the fuck up!” he snaps, tugging on the leash so that I’m forced to stand and follow him or risk getting my neck snapped. I stumble, my muscles trembling, my heart pounding, my pulse soaring. I swipe at the tears, hoping to God my mask is still in place.

“Jakub…?” Even to my own ears my voice sounds weak.

“Don’t call me by my name. I am your Master, not your lover or your friend. From this moment on that is who I am to you. Nothing more, nothing less. You are still Nothing.”

He’s cruel. Cruel for wrapping his dead dog’s collar around my neck.

Cruel for refusing to call me by my name.

Cruel for giving me the biggest rush of my life.

Here I am collared and leashed and panting like a dog, like a bitch in heat.

My legs suddenly feel heavy, my heart plummets, I can barely put one foot in front of the other as I stumble forward, trying to keep up.

“If you can’t walk, crawl,” he says spitefully, a twisted smile pulling up his lips.

He planned this.

This is another trick, another manipulation. I’m a stupid, stupid fool.

I shake off the self-disgust and replace it with hate. It sprouts new shoots, it grows in size, tripling and quadrupling the longer he stares with that cold kind of emptiness instead of the heat he’d lied with before.

Arsehole.

“I will never crawl. Never!” I grind out, my spine snapping straight, my jaw gritting with new-found disgust.

“Good, because the moment you stop fighting is the moment this ends. Understand?”

“Completely.” This was a test and I failed. I gave in to a lie.

When we reach the bedroom door he hesitates, grabbing something resting on a chest-of-drawers. “Put this on.”

“Put what on?” I ask, fighting the sudden desire to claw at him, to fight just like he wants me to do. I’m wound up, bound, and raging now that I’ve blinked back the fog of his spell. Beast might refer to me as a witch because of my visions. I might have been chained to The Weeping Tree where witches were hung, but right now, at this moment, he’s the spellcaster. He’s the one who deserves to hang for what he’s done.

“This,” he says, offering me the item.

I take it from him, confused at first. It looks like a mawashi that sumo wrestlers wear, except this is made of soft leather rather than traditional silk or cotton and it has a wider section of leather making up the crotch area. It also has a lock... Oh, my God. “This is a—” I begin.

He smirks, eyeing me as I hold onto the offending item. “—chastity belt.”

“You bastard...” I hiss, my voice trailing off as I turn it over in my hands, the silver lock that fixes the crotch section to the belt, glints in the candlelight.

“If you want to protect yourself from any more intrusion then I suggest you wear it. My brothers might pretend they’re patient men, but I know otherwise.”

I scoff, he’s no more patient than they are given what he’s just done, he’s worse. “Pot, kettle, comes to mind.”

“What, you think because I’ve tasted you, I can’t control myself? Don’t flatter yourself, Nothing. I’ve had better, tasted better, fucked better. I’m doing this for Leon and Konrad. They’ve waited a long time for you. If they indulge in what they truly want from you too soon then they will lose their focus. We have a big function coming up soon, and I need their heads in the game, not focused on a bit of pussy, however pretty,” he says, spitting that word out like it offends him. “Put it on!”

Despite his harsh words, the ugliness of the item and what it represents, I can’t help but feel a tiny sense of relief. Wearing this will afford me some protection no matter how barbaric the idea of one is. It will buy me some more time. Time to gather myself, make a plan.

“Who has the key?”

“I do, of course,” Jakub replies as he pulls out a silver chain wrapped around his neck, a small key hanging from it. “If you want to remain unsullied, then I suggest you obey my every instruction from this moment on or unlocking this belt to piss and shit won’t be the only time I’ll be freeing your pretty little pussy.”

My heart sinks to the bottomless ocean of my soul. It settles next to the promise I made myself earlier. I will kill him.

I will kill them all.