“You're scaring me,” I whisper when the doors close, and the elevator begins its steady lurch upward.
He grips me tighter in his arms. “I know.”
All I can think is that he likes keeping me on edge. He likes my fear. He likes forcing me into situations where I have no choice but to trust and rely on him. And now that I've seen his face, he's finding new ways to raise the stakes. Why? How far will he raise them, and will I come out of this alive?
My crying is louder, and I swear he doesn't seem to care. What happened to the man I was starting to trust even though I couldn't see him? The way he held me on stage, his shhh you're safe.
I realize suddenly that for the first time since we started this, tonight when he told me to put the blindfold on, I didn't have the normal excited reaction. Too much hung in the air. I had too many questions.
And now both my body and mind are finally in accord. They both see this man as a threat. Does he now see me the same way?
“Are you angry with me? Did I do something wrong? Master, please...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”
But that's all he says. Why is he doing this?
The elevator stops. The doors open. He carries me down a hallway, unlocks a door, and then takes me inside... wherever we are.
He sits me down in a hard chair and begins untying the ropes around my wrists and hands, still silent.
Finally, I can't help it. I have to know. “Are you going to kill me?”
He actually laughs at this. “Of course not. Why would I kill you?”
“You're being weird. I know who you are. You're scaring me. I don't understand...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Do not speak. I still own you. You have lost all but the barest hint of etiquette between us. I want you back the way you were. I want you perfectly obedient. Just the way I like.”
This makes some small measure of sense, that he's trying to get us back to this state we were in before I saw his face.
He wipes tears off my cheeks, and my breathing starts to return to normal. I want to know where we are, why he took me somewhere else. Is this his place? But I'm afraid if I ask these questions, he'll be disappointed. I want to earn his shhh, you're safe. I need it.
He takes my hands in his, helps me to stand, and guides me through the room. I suddenly have that eerie feeling again, like I'm being watched. That feeling I got that day in the theater when he made me believe for the smallest moment that someone else was there with us, watching the things he did to me on that stage.
Music starts from a sound system across the room. A piano concerto. Sebastian stands behind me, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Take your clothes off for our guest.”
“Bastian, for fuck's sake. She's terrified.”
I freeze. I know that voice. It's Morgan.
“You said you wanted to see her cry, that you like her when she's a little afraid,” Sebastian says. “I aim to please.” He removes my blindfold, and Morgan is giving me that assessing stare, the same one from the day we met, the same one I've caught him giving me in rehearsals.
And now I know Sebastian wasn't just fucking with me that day when he said I had an audience. Morgan has been watching from the darkness of the theater. He's been watching everything. My brain is still struggling to catch up with this new revelation.
That look... it wasn't assessing. It was knowing. All this time I've thought Sebastian and I shared a secret, but there was a larger secret I wasn't in on.
“You wanted to go with him when he asked you out for lunch, didn't you?” Sebastian asks.
“N-no,” I protest, even though it might be a lie. I'm not sure. I was caught off guard. Morgan is quite good-looking. But Conall's jealousy is a hard thing to forget, and it feels too risky to give Sebastian honesty right now. I'm still so afraid he'll hurt me. I'm afraid he's the same kind of monster I already killed.
“No, what?” Sebastian says, his finger hooking into the platinum band of my collar to remind me that he is not Sebastian to me. He isn't even Sir anymore.
“I...” I look to Morgan as if he can save me.
“Say it,” Morgan says, a greedy voyeurism in his eyes. “I want to hear you say it.”
I turn back to Sebastian, unable to look at Morgan when I say the word, even though I know he's heard me when I thought Sebastian and I were alone. “No, Master,” I whisper.
