I waited patiently. He would either do it or not, then we’d go to the next step.
“You didn’t say I’d have to d-do that,” he argued as a particularly violent shiver ran through him.
“That’s one of your lessons,” I told him, even though I just hadn’t thought to be that specific. “I’m not going to spell everything out for you. You have to take a little initiative.”
I held up the blanket, letting him see it.
“Blanket first,” he said.
His misery looked beautiful on him.
“Shirt first,” I countered. “I’m your master. You don’t get to negotiate, pet.”
That lesson was going to take some time to learn. I could tell that much already. He’d still try, thinking he could somehow get the upper hand. He might’ve been less defiant than before, having spent his curses uselessly on the cameras, but he was far from broken.
Good. I didn’t want him broken. I just wanted to… reshape him.
He hesitated another moment.
Even though guilt ran through me as he shivered from the cold, I held onto the blanket.
Finally, he tossed the shirt at the side of the cell, and I took my time going to get it. I wasn’t going to play tug of war with him.
Not yet. Not with a shirt.
I grabbed it through the cell’s bars, throwing it somewhere behind me into the basement. He let out a choked sound of protest, but I tossed the blanket toward him. It fell on top of him, and he quickly shook it out, wrapping it around himself.
“Now your pants,” I told him.
He stared at me. He had no idea what was going on, and it made him slow.
Then again… neither did I.
But if he knew that, he would pounce on the weakness like he was the predator and I was the prey. I couldn’t let him figure out how uncertain I really was. I couldn’t afford to. I’d already committed to this, and I reminded myself that there was no going back.
“Pants,” I repeated, more firmly that time.
“Why the fuck would I take off my pants?” he asked, burrowing deeper into the soft blanket. “It’s fucking cold down here.”
“Because I told you to.” I probably should’ve made him strip entirely before giving him the blanket, but there was something about the idea of breaking him down painstakingly slowly that appealed to me. He had to realize he was mine.
Until he accepted that this was going to happen, he would keep fighting me… and as long as he kept fighting me, he was going to regret it. I didn’t have to beat him or rape him to get him to obey me. It might be quicker, but that wasn’t how I wanted to teach him.
I wanted him to surrender, not to break.
He laughed, low and ugly, then he mimicked the sound of a buzzer going off. “Nope! Wrong answer, asshole.”
I shrugged. “You must really like begging,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed. “And why’s that?”
“You don’t seem to understand the way this works,” I said, my voice hardening. “I give you an order. You obey. If you don’t, I take something away… or in this case, I don’t give you something at all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I was doing the villain thing. I was being vague and telling him my plans when I needed to keep this simple. He had to listen to me, and if I justified my words at every turn,he wasn’t going to learn to do that — or at least, it would become arduous.
“I’m not giving you water until the pants come off.” An ugly smile curved onto my lips. “You’ll have to bark to tell me you’re ready to obey, too… and I might not be around to hear you. You might have to bark all night like a little yappy dog.”
