The Maestro's Butterfly (18 page)

“I just want you to know that you can and will be punished if you behave foolishly. That’s all.”

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It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying as he filled and stretched her with his cock, grinding into her sensitive folds. She shivered at his talk of punishing her. Sex talk like that would have sent her over the edge to orgasm, but knowing it wasn’t make-believe filled her with fear. And fear kept her on edge, prolonged the ache and made her raise her hips to meet his, hoping he would be pleased, humiliated by that hope.

Fear brought the tingling between her legs to her entire body. She whimpered and cringed and tried to look into his eyes, but found herself continually looking away, focusing on a chip of paint near the ceiling the size of a maple leaf that was hanging loose, ready to fall any moment.

“Good,” he moaned. “Good girl.”

At this moment, she wanted to belong to him, and that terrified her. Wondering how he could have that effect on her just like that, she stretched to see the discarded belt as he pumped her, caressing her with his breath. “Jack?” she whispered.

He grunted into her harder at the sound of his name.

“Jack?” she repeated. “Please, hurt me.” It sounded as though someone else were begging on her behalf, but she felt the voice pass through her own throat. She had never asked a man to do that before today.

“Hurt you,” he said absently. “Fuck you harder?” He raised up on locked elbows and began to drive into her roughly. She couldn’t breathe.
He’s raping me,
she told herself, to move closer to orgasm. She cried out as the heat and heaviness gathered in her belly and pushed its tendrils down her legs and into her groin. The orgasm was a violent one. It left her exhausted and made her not care what happened next.

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Jack untied Miranda’s hands and took her to the bathroom so she could relieve herself, then brought her back and lay down on the bed with her nude back pressed against him. He remained fully clothed. Before long, Katie stripped off to her nighttime tee and panties and curled up on the other side of him.

“This isn’t your bedroom, is it?” Miranda asked him in the dark.

“No,” he said.

“Does Katie sleep with you?”

“She has her own room. No, this isn’t it. This is the guest room. In case, you’re wondering, you’ll share a room with her, which is right next to mine. Now go to sleep.”

She was tired enough to do just that, at least for a little while, but then woke with a start sometime after, with no idea whether she’d slept for minutes or hours.

There was still no sign of dawn peeking around the curtains, so she reasoned she hadn’t been sleeping long.

Jack snored quietly behind her.

Her heart hammered with the thought that she might just be able to escape, although she wasn’t really sure what she would do before dawn in New Orleans. She had no money, and this was a dangerous city, but she would just have to figure out how to handle things as they came up.

She crept out of bed and felt around the floor for her jeans, freezing when the metal button hit the hardwood floor. She didn’t hear anything more after that. Even Jack’s snoring quieted. Carefully, she poked one foot into the jeans leg and pulled them up.

Jack’s voice was almost inaudible. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Miranda’s blood went cold. Her scalp prickled. She thought frantically. “I, uh, I was cold.”

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It was too dark to see him, but she heard him get out of bed. He turned on the light across the room and turned to her. His chiseled features looked dangerous. “I don’t think so,” he said evenly. “Were you trying to leave?”

Instinctively, she shook her head. “No, Jack, I wasn’t.”

He approached slowly and without smiling. She moved back just a step. It was all she could manage, as she had only one leg in her jeans and had to hold them up with her hand.

He raised his hand slowly enough so that she could see it coming, then backhanded her hard enough to knock her on to the mattress. Katie woke up with a start and pulled her bare legs tightly against her. “Jack?” she called, looking frantically between the two before settling on Miranda. It was the first time she had met Miranda’s eyes, and she didn’t seem able to look away. There was something endearing and childlike about the way the spot between her eyes wrinkled.

“Miranda has been disobedient,” Jack said. The tone of his voice chilled her.

She looked over her shoulder. He had the discarded belt looped in his hand, and was rolling up his sleeves..

She swallowed. This was it. Now she would know what real punishment at the hands of an attractive, frightening man would feel like. She hadn’t considered the sheer onslaught of emotions that would surface, the sadness at being so far away from her home, the fear that she may not be able to get back, the longing for—

Claudio.

Jack brought the belt down hard on her bare backside. She gasped and tried to crawl across the mattress, holding Claudio’s name firmly in her mind.
This should be
him,
she thought as tears pricked her eyes. She wanted it to be him.

“Jack!” Katie called.

“She’s got to learn her lesson,” he said, and brought the belt down again, and again. Pores opened all over Miranda’s body. Her strength left her, and she could only take the blanket in her fists and cry out.

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“Please—” she said. “No more, please, I won’t—”

Jack stopped. She dared to look over her shoulder. He stood with his body partially turned, the belt loose at his side, staring at her. She gave her head little, hopeful shakes.

Finally, he put on the belt and pulled her to a sitting position, then dragged her to the spot where the rope still dangled from the headboard and tied her wrists. “Go get one of your bandanas,” he told Katie.

She nodded and hurried out, wiping at her eyes as she went.

“You will learn,” Jack said. “If we have to do this every day, you will learn.”

Miranda rested her head on her arm and sighed. “I want to go back to Claudio,”

she said. “Please, take me back.”

“You should have thought of that before you left him,” he answered. “You’re mine now.”

When Katie brought the bandana, Jack twisted it and held it in front of Miranda’s face. She shook her head. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Open,” he said. “Or you’ll get the belt again.”

Miranda’s bottom still hurt enough for that to be a viable threat. She accepted the bandana in her mouth and held still as he tied it tight against her tongue. She gagged and shook her head like a wild animal, panicking.

“Be quiet for a few hours and I’ll take it out. The longer you fight it, the longer it stays in. Come on, Katie.”

The girl held her eyes for a moment, moved her mouth as though she wanted to smile, and hurried after her master. Miranda heard the old wooden door close behind her. The house creaked with their retreating footsteps as they left her, tied, gagged and naked.

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It was noon before Jack returned to take the gag out of Miranda’s mouth. She had dozed periodically, and awakened in a panic.

Jack set a glass of water on the nightstand and lowered the soggy cloth so that it hung around her neck like a kerchief. “Hold still,” he said, and loosened her wrists.

When she sat up, he handed her the water. She pulled the blanket up over her body and glared at him as she drank. She didn’t stop until she had drained the glass. Then she held it up on the mattress and looked at it.

“Katie is making some lunch for the two of you,” Jack said.

She looked up at him, letting all the anger she had show through her eyes. “I don’t want to be here,” she said. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“You’ll get used to it. Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

“I’m dehydrated,” she said.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” he repeated “Don’t make me ask you again.”

“No.”

He had Katie bring her a T-shirt, a black Hello Kitty which now said Hell Kitty because the “o” had been marked out with black ink, and let her put on her jeans to come to the table and have vegetable soup with Katie. Jack went to the kitchen and popped open a single-serving bottle of cabernet, poured it in a black-stemmed glass, and joined them at the head of the table.

He leaned forward on his elbows with his glass in the air, sniffing it absently, watching Miranda. She stared into the soup. It tasted homemade. “Did you make this, Katie?” she asked quietly.

Katie looked at her, nodded, and went back to eating.

“It’s good,” Miranda said.

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“My girl here is quite a cook. Or so I’m told. It’s amazing what kind of talent you find. That’s what my brother always said. He was right.”

He reached over and ran a fingertip over Miranda’s bare arm. “I think you’ll make a wonderful addition to our little family. There will be travel and performing. It will be an interesting life. Hard in some ways, but interesting.”

She pulled away, but not because she didn’t want him to stroke her. His touch was causing her to tingle again and she didn’t want to feel turned on at the moment, not when she had to think about escaping the very man she most wanted to be fucked by.

She thought about what Adam had said, about her body latching on desperately to the nearest vampire, and thought that was probably what was happening now.

He withdrew his hand and put his nose in the glass, watching her over the rim.

“You were made to belong to a vampire. People like you don’t wind up with people like me, or like my brother, by accident. You were made to be fed from, and told what to do by someone like me.”

She looked at him, startled that he didn’t even have to touch her to make her insides squirm with desire.

“That’s right. Someone like me. You were made to accept a belt on your ass when you’re disobedient, like you were this morning.”

She couldn’t help but lower her eyes at the mention of the punishment he had given her, both out of embarrassment that he had such control over her, and out of fear of looking him in the eye. She wished he would stop talking about it.

“Excuse me,” she said and started to stand. “I don’t think I’m hungry.”

“Sit,” Jack said. “You’re not finished until I tell you.”

Miranda froze. Katie stopped eating and looked up, chewing slowly as she looked from one to the other.

“But I’m not—” Miranda started, looking into her bowl as though she might find an answer there she could show him. Again, her cheeks burned. She thought she should be able to challenge him, but she knew she would probably get the belt again if 138

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she tried, and that scared her more than she wanted it to. It also made Jack du Fresne a very attractive man, which scared her even more.

The phone rang, making her jump. It was a cordless house model atop a telephone book in a wall nook. Jack kept his eyes on Miranda as he stood and answered it. “Sit,” he mouthed at her before answering it. She sat.

“Hello? Yes, this is Jack. No, it’s pronounced du Fresne, rhymes with train. It’s French. No, I don’t want any. Thanks.”

He hung up and sat down again.

Twelve hours later Claudio and Seth were on his front porch.

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The doorbell rang sometime after midnight. Jack was reclining shirtless on his bed while Katie licked and pleasured his cock and Miranda sat beside him, nude. She knew Jack was having Katie get him ready to fuck her, that he was going to fuck them both that night. At least it wasn’t time for him to feed again.

When the doorbell rang, Miranda jumped. Her eyes immediately went to him.

He tensed and waited. Katie didn’t alter what she was doing, going up and down on his shaft with her eyes closed, using her hand to jerk him at the base. The doorbell rang again.

“What is going on?” he muttered, pulling away from Katie and leaping out of bed for the window. He pulled the curtain back just a little as he zipped his pants.

“Shit,” he said, then returned to Miranda, quickly, on all fours, taking her hair tightly in his fist and snarling in her ear. “If I hear a peep out of you, you will get the worst beating you have ever had in your life. Do you understand me?”

Miranda looked at him, horrified.

Jack shook her head painfully and growled between clenched teeth. “Do you understand me?”

She nodded, but that hurt too. “Yes—yes sir,” she squealed.

“Good,” he said, and let go. To Katie, he said, “Keep this door closed and keep her quiet, or you’ll get one too.”

Katie nodded and moved toward Miranda, giving her a pleading look. Jack pulled on a shirt and went to the living room, which was the next room over. The thin white fabric flowed around him as he moved. Miranda thought he was beautiful in spite of the violent pounding of her heart.

She listened to the front door squeak open. Then Jack’s voice came to her, pleasant and friendly. “Claudio, what a surprise. What are you doing?”

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There was a thud, and Jack cried out, “Christ, ow! What did you do that for?”

“I’ll look for her.” It was Seth. His footsteps pounded toward the dining room.

“Where is she?” Claudio bellowed.

Miranda sat up straight.

“Please,” Katie whispered to Miranda. “Please don’t. He’ll punish me.

Please—”

Miranda broke away from her and stumbled toward the noise. “Claudio!” she screamed.

He threw open the door and went to her as she launched herself at him.

“My butterfly,” he said, kissing her head. “I was afraid—”

“You lost the bet,
brother,”
Jack said from the bedroom door. He was holding a bloody kerchief to his nose.

“Thirty days,” Claudio spat. “You did not wait thirty days.” He looked down at Miranda, speaking with an admonishing tone. “And neither did you.”

She nodded against his chest, not caring about anything for the moment except the fact that he had come to take her back.

“Are those yours?” Claudio nodded to the T-shirt and shorts on the floor.