Chapter One
Amy
Horror. Shame. Embarrassment.
My face burned, stomach churning with the realization of what I was staring at. That sonofabitch Alistair and his underhanded, devious fucking ways.
“I can explain,” I repeated. “This isn’t how it looks.”
“It’s exactly how it looks!” Robert’s voice was more strained than I’d come to know.
“I am here to train you, to coach you, to help you submit to another man in a way befitting of a natural, comfortable and skilled submissive woman. I’m not here to deliver the woman on those photographs. I won’t deliver that. I cannot deliver that .”
“I don’t want you to.” My voice was nothing but a whisper. “That isn’t me. Not anymore.”
“But that’s what they will be expecting!” he snapped. “That’s the product they’ve paid good money for! Jesus, Amy, what did you do to yourself? Why the hell would you let a sack of shit like Alistair take pictures of you like that?” He paced back and forth, staring into the distance as he calmed his breathing. “This changes everything. The goalposts aren’t even close to what we’ve been aiming for.”
The pictures didn’t lie. I flicked through them in all of their enlarged, high-gloss glory, disgusted at the alcohol-blurred memories rising in my mind. I looked like a slut, a pain slut, a wanton, seedy whore greedy for cock and brutality. I looked like a woman who’d take a roomful of men and beg for more, who’d get on her knees and offer herself to anyone who wanted a piece. Maybe I had been that woman.
Yes. I’d been that woman; naive and stupid, without a single iota of concern for my own safety. And now here I was, sold as a performing circus animal, a slave, a whore.
I felt my cheeks burn at the knowledge of Robert seeing me like that; grinning as I stretched my ass wide open for the camera, eyes wide as Alistair snapped away, capturing the vicious welts on my back, on my thighs… over the tender flesh of my breasts. So much pain, and I’d begged him for more. And there were other images… dirty images… Alistair’s chubby fist working its way inside me, the creamy smear of his excitement glossy across my hungry lips. My eager tongue lapping at his asshole. Me, laughing as I pissed on the floor. I dropped the collection on the table in disgust.
“That isn’t me,” I said again. “I don’t want to be that woman. Not for them.”
“Not for them ?”
I shrugged. “I don’t even know myself anymore, Robert. I don’t know who I am or what I want. I just know I don’t want to be like that, submissive or not.”
“Unfortunately, that’s the woman they’ve paid money for,” he sighed. I watched him rake his hands through his hair, shoulders tense. “We’re fucked.”
“No,” I hissed. “ I’m fucked! That’s me on those pictures, my body. It’s me they want to beat, and rape, and make a filthy slave out of. You’re just here because your dad is a sadistic asshole who’s threatening your cash reserves. You’re going to walk away free when this is over and never look back. Job done.”
His eyes were like fire. “That’s not fair! I’m not just going to waltz out of here with a smile on my face, Amy. If you think that’s the kind of man I am, then I’m better off just walking out of here right now.”
I’d hurt him, his face said it all. His shoulders were heavy, jaw gritted as he retreated to the far end of the room to pace some more. I felt strangely ashamed of my outburst, and it piled up so high with the rest of the self-disgust that tears pricked at my eyes. I took a seat on the sofa with a long sigh, blinking the tears away. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that. I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get out of this.”
“That makes two of us,” he said.
Silence reigned heavily in the air as we disappeared into our own thoughts. Demons chased me through mine, reaching out to drag my broken spirit into the darkness. It
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