I didn’t know.
“There’s nowhere to run,” he went on, continuing my line of thought from the night before. “This is your home now. Think of how good things have been. You’ve been listening, and everything’s been… good. Hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Yes, what?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” I replied without thought.
“So we won’t have a repeat of last night?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“But it wasn’t all bad, was it?” There was something pleading in his voice, begging me to say it hadn’t been. He wanted me to excuse what he’d done.
I didn’t know if I could argue. I’d been the one to come. Even if I’d said no, my body had said yes, and that had been that.
I shook my head again.
Relief spilled across his face as I gave him absolution, and I felt… not better, really, but strange. It was a relief to me, too, to know he wasn’t angry at me anymore.
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself. “Yeah,” I said roughly. “It’ll be just fine.”
He drew in a deep breath, held it, then released it. Nodding, he grabbed the key to the padlock holding me inside the kennel and unlocked it, though he paused instead of opening it. “No more problems. Right?”
“All you have is my word,” I whispered, feeling a bittersweet sadness wash over me at the idea that I’d broken my word the night before — and stupidly at that. There hadn’t been a chance in hell of getting free.
“But you know now that you aren’t going to escape from me. You know there can be good things here,” he said, more confidence in his voice than earlier.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good.” He took in another shaky breath then opened the kennel door. “Good boy.”
There was a flood of relief as he called me that instead ofbad dog, instead of raging at me like the man I had thought he was from the moment I’d seen him.
The beast I’d expected to see beneath his scars instead of the man who was there.
I crawled out of the kennel as he held it open for me, stretching out slowly to relieve some of the pressure on my cramped limbs.
He waited patiently, even reaching down and tousling my hair affectionately as he waited for me to finish.
I wondered how long he’d wait, but I didn’t want to see the anger again. I didn’t want to piss him off again and see what was raging beneath the surface, just waiting to be awakened by the wrong words.
I gave him a slight nod, and he attached the leash to the collar.
That was new, and I didn’t like it. Except for the night before, he’d fastened it to the harness instead of putting pressure on my throat. Obviously he hadn’t completely forgiven me, no matter what he said.
I swallowed hard, ducking my head and slumping a little before I started to follow him into the kitchen. He tied the handle of the leash around one of the chairs to anchor me in place — more of a precursory thing than anything else, given that I could probably drag it.
I wouldn’t.
He started working on breakfast — not normal breakfast, which was usually dry cereal and maybe a little fruit with a few chewable vitamins thrown in there.
