“You’re my pet now, Aria,” I say. “I’m going to keep you in this little cage and use you however I want.”
“Okay,” she says, practically a whisper. I can feel excitement coursing through my body and as I look at her, I wonder if she feels the same thing.
Her face looks excited. I can see a slight flush in her cheeks and her breath comes quickly. But I don’t know if that’s because she wants me as much as I want her, or if it’s because she’s just good at what she does.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“It smells really good,” she says.
“I made it myself, actually.”
“Really?” She laughs lightly and takes the mug of coffee from the tray. “A rich man that cooks and looks good in the morning.”
I laugh and take the second mug, sipping the coffee. “I do what I can.”
“I could get used to it.”
“Good. That’s what I want.” I nod at the food. “Go ahead and eat.”
She reaches out and takes a piece of toast, biting down into it. She chews for a second and seems to realize that she’s actually hungry as she reaches out for a fork.
“I have to go to work soon,” I say. “You’ll be stuck in this room all day.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “It’s a big room.” She eats some eggs and smiles huge. “This is really good.”
“Butter,” I say. “And a little whole milk.”
She laughs. “You really are spoiling me.”
“Only way to make eggs.” I grin at her. “Like I said last night, you can have whatever you want. But you still have to get permission to leave this room from me directly. Understand?”
“Okay,” she says. “That’s fine.”
“Good.” I watch her eat for a moment, trying to see past her exterior. I can’t tell if she’s enjoying it or if she’s eating just to please me.
That’s going to be the problem. I’m going to have to be on my game when it comes to her if I want to really see past her acting. She’s meant to do everything she can to please me, which means she’s going to suppress her own desires to do what I want.
To an extent, I expect that. I expect her to obey my rules. But I don’t want her to simply do what she thinks I want her to do.
I need her to want this. That brings me more pleasure than she could possibly know.
I stand up and she watches me as I move across the room. “Have a good day, my pet,” I say to her. I watch her reaction to the little nickname, and smile with satisfaction.
She clearly doesn’t like it.
“Have a good day,” she says.
I cock my head at her, grinning, but decide not to say anything. I turn and head back out into the hallway, smiling to myself.
She’s already acting, but I can see through some of it. I’m going to figure her out and soon I’ll give her exactly what she wants. She won’t be able to resist showing herself to me.
Only when she’s completely stripped bare in front of me will I finally give her that she really needs. I grin to myself and can’t think about anything else on the entire trip into the office.
6
Aria
I lean back against the headboard as soon as Ethan leaves the room, ignoring the food beside me. It’s not that I don’t like breakfast, I just don’t normally eat much in the morning. I finish the toast and coffee at least before wheeling the cart back out into the hallway. I’m careful not to actually leave the room as I push it outside.
Once that’s done, I go into the bathroom and start the shower. It’s a gorgeous bathroom with a full vanity, whirlpool tub, and huge shower. Everything is tiled in beautiful mosaic patterns, and part of me feels like the toilet itself should be solid gold.
It’s not, of course, and I get into the shower to wash myself. I feel like I’m cleaning days’ worth of grime from my body even though I showered the night before, just as the auction was about to begin.
Showers can be hard for me sometimes. It feels good, but it’s strange. I can still remember waking up in a shower, half naked, my body bruised and battered and wondering where the hell I am. That was one of the lowest points in my life when I realized what I did just to score some drugs.
It was lying on the floor of that shower, half conscious of what had happened, that I realized I was at rock bottom. It was the lowest point of my life. And I can’t help but think about it every time I get in the shower.
I’m disgusted by the person I was. I’ve been clean for two years and have no plan to go back, but I still feel that stupid junky deep inside of me, begging to get out.
I made mistakes. I’ve been weak and frail and stupid before. But I pulled myself up off that shower floor, got the fuck out of that house, and checked myself into a rehab treatment facility.
Six months in there and I never looked back. I still owe them, which is actually just one small part of my debt, but it’s one debt that I won’t mind paying off. They saved me there, saved my life, showed me that a life without drugs is the life I want to lead.
I shut off the shower and get out, toweling myself off. I stare at myself in the mirror and wonder how I got from the bottom of that shower to this place. I run my fingers over the marble countertop and although I know that I’m just this man’s plaything, I can’t help but imagine that I’m something more.
I can’t let myself indulge in that, though. Ethan doesn’t care about me. He just wants to play a game. He wants me to be his pet and to stay in this room. Sure, he’s spoiling me, but it’s still his game that I have to play. He doesn’t want Aria, he doesn’t want the real me. He would turn and run the second he found out about me.
But maybe I can pretend, at least for a little while. I’ll have to pretend harder than I have been so far. I need this to go well.
Once I’m dry enough, I wrap a towel around me and head back out into the main room. I look around for my bags, but I don’t find them anywhere.
Instead, the drawers have clothes already in them, but they’re not my clothes. There are bras, panties, and some tops and bottoms. In the closet, several dresses hang, and it all looks to be in my size. For a second I panic, afraid that he took away my phone and my things. If I don’t have my phone, I can’t contact The Syndicate, and that would be bad.
But tucked in the back corner of the closet are my bags. I breathe a sigh of relief as I fish out my phone and shoot a text to the number they gave me, just letting them know that I’m fine and taken care of.
When that’s done, I go back into the main room and get dressed. I put on a matching bra and panty set, looking at myself in the mirror. I want to be pleasing to him, so I pick out a cute, revealing top and short little jean shorts.
Once dressed, I stand there and look at the room. The clock next to the bed says that it’s eight in the morning, and I realize that I have all day to kill.
I get my laptop from my bag, but there’s no open WiFi. Nervously, I grab the phone and hit zero before listening to it ring.
“Yes?” It’s Jenkins’s voice from the night before.
“Uh, hi, it’s Aria,” I say.