Go? She assumed this was a business call. Would he take her with him? Hope bubbled up. She needed to get a lay of the land. And cool off her damn libido.
In the bedroom, he dragged on black suit pants, tucking his erection to the side as he zipped up. No underwear.
She bit her lip. What was she supposed to wear? She dried off and looked around.
A wall of windows led to another balcony. A king-sized bed sat in the corner of the room, draped in white fabrics. Couches and chairs formed a horseshoe in front of a fireplace. And a large column stood in the center of the room, rising up to the apex of the vaulted ceiling. Everything painted in white.
“Kneel beside the post.” His voice crept over her shoulder, shockingly close.
She turned to face him. He wore a black button-up tucked into the narrow waist of his pants.
In his hand dangled a length of chain. Her stomach collapsed, and she spun back to the post. There, screwed into the wood near the floor, was a metal ring.
“If I told you I wanted to leave,” she said, mouth dry, “that I wanted to go home, would you let me?”
“Never.” He walked past her, locked the chain to the metal ring, and held on to the leather collar at the other end. “You want to be owned.”
“Said no slave ever.” She stood her ground. “But I won’t try to escape. You don’t need to chain me.”
He widened his stance, hands clasped at his back with the short chain hanging behind him. But it was the cutting look in his eyes that made her shake from head to toe. It conjured dark enclosed places, ear-piercing screams, and bruising thrusts against the back of her throat.
Her heartbeat went ballistic, banging in her ears. He wasn’t Van, but he wasn’t Matias, either. The man standing before her made a living off of human pain, and his interest in her was personal.
She lowered her head, her feet moved, and the sour taste of dread flooded her mouth.
Lifting the towel from her grip, he folded it on the floor in front of his shiny shoes. Then he straightened and touched his lips to her forehead.
She cringed, eyes glued to the square of terrycloth, knowing what he wanted and inwardly fighting it.
You won’t win this battle. Focus on the end goal.
Methodically, one muscle at a time, she knelt for him. Back straight, weight evenly balanced between her hips, palms facing outward on her thighs, eyes on his belt. Then she adjusted, spreading her legs shoulder width apart to allow full view of her pussy, her skin prickling with self-loathing.
“Your orgasms belong to me.” He glanced at the ceiling and the camera tucked in the corner. “I’ll know if you touch yourself.”
She gritted her teeth. As if!
“Any man can chain you to a post.” He buckled the leather collar around her neck, securing it with a four-digit padlock.
The leather sat snugly against her skin, the gravity of it choking her air.
“Any man can rip off your clothes.” He tested the chain between her neck and the wooden column. “Fuck your throat, call you a whore, and you might even like it. That’s rough, gritty sex. But it isn’t dominance.”
Her heart stuttered. He’d described her experience with Van so accurately.
He glided a finger across the line of her jaw, tilting her face upward. “Dominance is when I kiss your brow and you obediently lower to the floor. Willingly. No hesitation.” His eyes flashed. “It’s when you kneel for me, give me the power to break you inside and out, and trust that I won’t. You will surrender your vulnerability without shame, because that’s what I want, and what I want, you crave.”
“You’re delusional.” She struggled to swallow. “I’m not—”
“You’re not there yet. So in the meantime, I’ll settle for rough, gritty sex.”
With that, he left her trembling on her knees.
CHAPTER 12
Instinct guided Camila through the next few hours. Naked and shivering with raw nerves, she’d attempted dozens of combinations on the lock she couldn’t see at her throat. She’d tried to unscrew the metal ring on the post until her fingers turned red. Then she’d walked the radius, measuring the span of the chain.
With arms out, she could stretch about six feet in every direction, but the bed sat twice that far. The bathroom, couches, and built-in wall cabinets were even farther. The doors to the hall and balcony closed off the exit points. Another door, also shut, must’ve led to a closet. There was nothing within reach except the towel and an expanse of gleaming white marble floors.
Not that she intended to break out of this fortress, but dammit, she needed to snoop through drawers and closets to find out what Matias was hiding, anything that might explain why he was so obscure.
She glanced up at the camera in the ceiling. Was he watching her now, waiting for another reason to hurt her?
There was also a building pressure in her bladder. Probably shouldn’t have drunk so much water, but come on! Van would’ve at least given her a bucket to piss in.
Restless and wary, she paced circles around the pole like a tetherball, switching directions, and pacing again. She replayed her conversations with Matias, searching every interaction for hidden meanings in his words, clues that would indicate there wasn’t a monster behind those mercurial eyes.
But she recalled nothing helpful. Everything he’d said and done implied he was one-hundred-percent invested in the cartel. And owning her.
When she’d asked him where she’d be staying, he’d said her life was with him, diminishing any hope of disentangling her past from the present. This was no longer just a battle against slave traders. She would be fighting to protect the heart of the girl he’d abandoned in the citrus grove.
She gripped the chain and yanked. Fuck! How long would he keep her locked up?
God, she’d thought she was
