She closes her mouth again, and looks over at me. I return her glance with a steady gaze that I hope makes it obvious that I, too, believe him.
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “Learn to act with some respect, or your time here is only going to get more painful. I don’t feel bad for you the way Luke does, and I don’t feel responsible for you the way Aiden does. When it comes to me, you’re capital F fucked, little girl.”
She hides her smile behind a glass of orange juice, and I am absolutely certain she has gotten what she wants: the energyof being dominated without the pain of being punished. She is playing a very dangerous game, one she will soon lose.
Fortunately for Ella, fate is once again on her side.
“Hey, princess,” Luke says, striding into the kitchen. He is wearing a black singlet. His muscles are bulging and he smells like the gym. This doesn’t bother Ella at all, because she is head over heels for him.
She blushes as he kisses her cheek, then goes into the refrigerator to retrieve a vast amount of eggs and bacon that could probably feed a small army if we had one. He starts cooking and chatting with her, and the tension of the moment dissipates as Leo slides out of the kitchen in that smooth way he has.
I know that Leo is going to go out and oversee the final mopping up stage of BP’s organization. We got the man himself days ago. The way he died was very unpleasant, relatively slow, and highly satisfying. I am certain there are fresh stains on my soul as a result, but I bear them gladly for Teddy.
I go to my office, and a few minutes later, she follows me in. She has a nervous energy that makes me think she is brimming with excitement. I enjoyed the phase in which we dominated her ruthlessly, but I am enjoying this too. It is more psychological, but also a great deal more delicious.
“They’re confirming BP’s death online,” she says. “I think you really got him.”
“Yes,” I say. “We did get him. Quite a while ago, actually. It takes time to identify bodies though, when they are in particular… states.”
She nods slowly. “Good,” she says. “I think that’s good. I’m glad it’s over. It should have been over a long time ago. He was a very bad man.”
He was rude, too. All the way to the end, when he wanted us to spare him in return for money. He offered us his entire world, but we are going to take that anyway. We will spend months rooting out all the corrupt little corners of his empire, taking it apart piece by piece and liberating anyone who still suffers in it.
But for this particular moment, I have only Ella to deal with, my sweet little dark pet princess who would be so much happier if my collar was around her throat and she was melting on her knees before me.
Ah, well, some lessons take longer to learn than others.
She is still hovering as I work. I do not acknowledge her immediately. I let her stand there, nervously. I let her find her own way to the request I have always known she would make.
“I want you to do things to me,” she finally says.
I know what she means. If I was kind, I might start asking her about the specifics of the activities she wants. But I am not. And she will not get what she thinks she wants.
I look up at her.
“What if what we did was to forgive you?”
She stares at me and I do not see relief. I see dismay.
“What? Forgive me? After… How?”
“The man who caused this is dead. As are most of the people he knows, and all of the ones he loves.”
She blanches at that simple sentence. It is not as dark as it sounds, because he really never loved anybody other than himself.
“Um. Okay. Well there was something else I wanted to ask,” she says, changing the subject because she is too ashamed to state outright that, as I predicted, she wants to be painfully dominated again.
“What is that?”
“He had a dog,” she says.
“Ah, yes, the vicious elderly Chihuahua. It was encountered.”
“What did you do to it?”
“She’s unharmed.”
Ella looks relieved. “I need to see her. I mean, I need her. She was sort of mine, in a way. She wasn’t mine, mine. I didn’t own her, but she was…”
