Chapter 19

Rosella....

I am well aware of my present situation, my sparsely dressed body and the half smile on the face of the devil.

I had felt his fingers tracing my skin when he was cutting down my dress. I was so scared that I couldn't even breath when he had touched me to roll me to the side and clear out the remaining scraps of lace from underneath my body. I thought he would leave me alone after freeing me from all the lace. But he didn't.

And he's still here, sitting beside me on the bed where I am lying and staring down at me with those electric blue eyes that sparkle like a current flowing through a live wire.

I'm completely paralysed. I don't have any idea what to do, except for willing him silently to get lost and leave me alone. I'm almost naked, for Heaven's sake!

“Why did you run away from me?” He asks me, his voice tinted with a hint of annoyance as he leans forward to rest his elbows on his bent knees.

I slide up the bed and lean my back against the headboard. Licking my dry lips, I open my mouth to respond but instead start coughing loudly.

God, it feels like someone has rubbed sandpaper down my throat.

“Here.” I open my eyes, clutching my sore neck and find a glass of water in front of my face. “This will help.”

I take the glass with shaking hands and take a tentative sip, even though I want to gulp it down in one shot. But I know I'll only end up choking on it.

I take a few more sips then look around for someplace to set it down. He catches up with my intentions and slips the glass out of my hold and places it on a nightstand beside the bed.

“Thank you.” I mumble in a low voice and my eyes fall down to look at my half naked body. I gasp and wrap my arms around myself.

“There's nothing to hide from now, slave. I've already seen everything.”

When I lift my eyes to check his expressions, his lightning eyes stun me with their dazzling colour and I forget about him calling me slave again, momentarily. But when his lips turn up in a half smile, they break me out of my awe and I frown at him.

“Call me Rose. That's my name, not slave.”

He frowns back.

“I'll call you whatever I want. You're mine and that is up to me to decide. Keep your opinions to yourself.” He bites out, coldly. His eyes turn dark as he glowers at me.

My lips press into a thin line and I avert my eyes from his closed off face to stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows. If he's going to keep up the slave thing then he should forget about me ever responding to him.

“I had warned you back in the palace only, how much I hate it when you look away from me. And yet, you've done it twice now.”

I freeze and my breathing stops at his chilling words. And before I can even turn to face him, he pounces at me. A scared scream tears out of my throat when he grabs my upper arm and drags forward till I'm out of the bed and kneeling down on the floor beside him.

I stare up at him with petrified eyes but he doesn't even notice and grabs me by my hair. I whimper, my eyes fall close and clutch his forearm when he tilts my head back by pulling my hair and brings his face closer to me. “Open your damned eyes and fucking look at me, slave.”

He deliberately emphasises on his last word then tightens his fingers tangled in my hair. I bite back my sobs and open my wet eyes to meet his scorching gaze. The pleasure shining in the depths of his bold eyes reminds me about the fact that he's a sadist and he loves inflicting pain.

“I'm sorry. I won't do it again. I swear.” I plead with him, my eyes begging him for mercy.

But his expressions only harden, his eyes turning a shade darker. “You have to know what happens when you defy me, either unknowingly or deliberately. Or you won't ever be able to stop yourself from repeating your actions.”

With that, he pulls me by my hair and drags me across his thighs so that I'm lying face down on his lap.

“Please….” A single tear plops down on the floor as fear coils around my spine, forcing my muscles to tighten around my skeleton.

“Hush. Take your punishment like a good girl or I know the remedies to straighten up a bad girl too. .” He whispers, deeply and seductively, and presses down on my back when I try to pull myself up from his lap. “I'll double your punishment if you won't behave now.”

I stiffen under his big warm hand on my back. My breathing turns shallow and I start gasping for air when I feel his fingers slide down to the base of my spine to tease the waistline of my panties.

And without any warning his other hand lands on my thigh with a smack and sends me jolting forward. My eyes widen and I start wiggling. He slides his hand up my thigh and cups my sex from behind, making me whimper out loud.

“Stop! Please stop, I'm begging you.”

He presses his fingers a little deeper in my sex. “I said hush.”

“Please don't do this. I'll never look away. Please —”

His hand disappear from my sex, abruptly and within the second he spanks my behind, hard, cutting me off and making me yelp both in shock and surprise. “Open your mouth again and I'll slide down your panties and won't stop spanking your fucking ass till its bright pink all over.”

Oh god….! I am living a nightmare. Tears continue plopping down on the floor as I bow my head in defeat and stab my bottom lip with my teeth to stop myself from crying out loud.

“If you'll do as I say and keep quiet like a good slave then I'll make you enjoy your punishment. Though mixing pain with pleasure is against my rules, I am ready to take the risk with you if you can be a good fucking slave for once.” His filthy words fill my head with rage and my defeated soul roars up with ferocity.

“Stop calling me slave!” I shout and instantly his hand snaps up and spanks my poor behind so hard that the pain resonates all over my body.

“You won't obey me like this. I think I should show you just how worse I can get if you're not good with me. I'm your fucking master and I will call you slave if I want to. All the fucking time!” He grits out through his teeth then rips my panty apart to expose my ass.

“No! Let me go you bastard!” I push back against his hand that's holding me down and thrash around on his lap. Caught off guard, his hand slips off my back and I roll down his thighs to end up on the floor, a few feet away from me.

“Fuck!” He curses before launching out of the bed to capture me again but I climb up to my feet before him and bolt for the door.

I make it out of the room and down a winding staircase to reach a wide open hall. I swing my wild eyes around myself and spot a glass door through which I can see a set of double doors at the end of the corridor.

That must be the exit!

I dash for the glass door but Adrian reaches the door before me. We both stare at each other, neither saying anything but we both know what's coming now. I'm breathing hard and frantically whereas he's hardly broken out a drop of sweat.

“You shouldn't have run away from me, again.” His voice is dangerously calm.

I start shaking my head and backing away till my back bumps into the dead end. I'm pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows now which make up an entire wall of the hall, looking out over a sparsely populated area.

Adrian waits near the glass door, completely immersed in the darkness of the cave-like entrance of the hall. I feel like I'm witnessing his true self for the first time since the day I saw him. This is the real him, just a dark shadow lurking in the haunted corners of my life to make my nightmares come true.

“Are you going to kill me now?” I ask him, my voice shockingly calm and composed.

“That's too easy, Pearl.” He states in a dark voice but this time, he calls me 'Pearl' instead of slave and that gets to me.

In a few long strides, he comes to stand right in my face. “Just too DAMNED easy.”

His electric blue eyes pierce right through me and in this moment, I see who he truly is. He's a man, filled with ravishing hunger for such dark and forbidden things that I can't even think of. I can see it clearly in his blazing eyes that he wants to tear me apart but he won't.

First, he'll break me, pick me apart piece by piece, just like he has promised. And by defying him and running away from him, I have only given him more reasons to shed his cool composer and turn into the actual animal that he is.

I don't have anymore energy to fight him. I don't want to fight him anymore. Because the more I resist, the more excited he gets. I drop my hands which were covering my naked body and square my shoulders and tilt my head back to stare up at him with a daring look in my eyes.

His muscles tighten all over as he stands in front of me like a rigid body. I can feel the power and strength inside his solid facade forcing harder against his control to snap him into action and take me right here and right now.

The signs of self-restraint are visible all over his face, the beads of sweat, the hard line of his lips, the flaring of his nose….

He's right on the edge…. He just needs a little push.

I stand up on my toes and bring my mouth near his ear to push him over the edge. “I dare you, make me scream your name…. Voluntarily.”

He snaps.

And like a wrecking force, he slams me against the glass wall brutally, knocking the ever loving breath out of me and brings his mouth crashing down on me…. But his lips never make it to my lips.

I slap him across the left cheek, hard, before he can start something which will end with the death of, either me or him.

His face snaps to the side, the shock spreads out on his face soon after the impact as he processes what I have just done and Why I have done it.