Unraveled by Him (16 page)

After the auction, we have supper together at Daniel’s. Robert is charming and funny and has me spellbound with stories of his early life as a journalist writing for the first small newspaper he owned, and I start to almost believe that Geneva and the evil wreath never happened.

And that the five tests in the dungeons won’t either.

Though, if they didn’t, I know that deep down I’d be disappointed.

It’s not just that I love a challenge—which I do—but also because I long to see Robert’s dominance fully unleashed.

And to be at its mercy.

“You’ve never had a vanilla love affair, have you, Miranda?” he suddenly says, switching subjects in the midst of educating me about the work of the late artist Lucian Freud.

“You mean a relationship without BDSM, Robert?” I say, slightly shocked at the sudden turn of the conversation.

He nods.

“Have you?” I say, trying to head him off at the pass.

“For a few months,” he says.

And I hear a warning in his voice not to ask him anything else about it.

“So do you think that it’s possible to have both?” I ask.

“Not continually,” he says, “but now and again, it can be romantic to have a vanilla interlude.”

I ponder what he has just said, but just then, the waiter arrives and serves me my dessert of Guanaja chocolate pudding filled with liquid caramel.

“Great symbolism. And perfect timing,” Robert says, and asks for the bill.

“Mustn’t be late for your next appointment, must you, Miranda?” he says.

And I blush scarlet, because with all his charm, all his elegance, his overwhelming masculinity, all his generosity to me, I have completely forgotten my fate and the fact that in a few hours’ time I shall be in his dungeon, at his feet and at his mercy.

Chapter Eight

When I arrive back in the suite, I find a newer and more beautiful version of
Unraveled
’s white mink coat with a fox fur collar draped across my bed, and I gasp in delight. I look inside the gray lining, expecting to see the initials
GH
embroidered there. But they are not.

Next to the bed, burgundy leather boots in my size.

And a large cream envelope, covered in Robert’s writing. Inside, a letter.

Miranda,

You will approach the dungeon via the secret passage in your suite, which you will access by pressing a button behind the Picasso above the fireplace. The door to the secret passage will then open.

When you are in the dungeon, you will observe the following protocol: you will not speak without being spoken to, nor will you ever look at me without permission.

And you will obey the following signals without question: one snap of my fingers, you will kneel. You will stay in that position without moving a muscle until I snap my fingers twice, then you may stand again. Three snaps of my fingers, and you are permitted to look at me. Four, and you are not.

Robert.

With the note, two keys.

The first is marked “Basement.”

So far, so good, and nothing sinister.

The second key has a large gold disc hanging from it, engraved with the characters
D1
.

Dungeon 1?

So does that mean that there is a Dungeon 2? Dungeon 3? Or even Dungeon 4 and 5?

I start trembling from head to toe at the prospect of what is ahead of me, so much so that the day, the auction, our supper all seem like a dream to me.

Feeling like the goddess Persephone descending to the underworld as the consort of Hades, I press the button behind the Picasso. The secret door in the wall springs open, and from then on, rather like an explorer searching for the New World, or Dorothy making her way along the yellow brick road, I follow the secret passage wherever it leads

And find myself deep underground, far below the castle, facing a steel door. My hand shaking uncontrollably, I finally manage to open the door with the big key marked “Basement.”

In front of me stretches a long, dark corridor dimly lit with electric lanterns hanging from the walls on either side.

And five doors: D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5.

Five dungeons.

Five tests.

I brace myself and unlock the door to Dungeon 1. Immediately I am enveloped by the scent of iris, musk, vanilla, and birchwood embers coming from the candles placed around the room.

Transfixed, I manage to unzip my boots, throw off my coat, kneel, and wait for Robert.

What I see around me both excites and petrifies me.

A massive brown leather vaulting horse, the kind of contraption I’ve seen before in gyms, only this one has a long strap across it, and shorter ones attached to each leg, all of which have large iron eyelets drilled into them.

On the wall there’s a large wooden
X
, with shackles hanging from all four ends of the
X
, and in one corner, a suspension unit that reminds me of a hangman’s gibbet, and is clearly intended to hoist a woman off the floor.

I have a sudden image of myself swinging from the hoist, naked and defenseless. I feel hot and my entire being ripples with fear and excitement.

In another corner of the room is a leather bench with three holes in it, and straps all across it. For a dizzying moment, I can imagine myself strapped to the bench, facedown, with each of my breasts rammed through a hole, and my head through the third. Leaving my back, legs and thighs, breasts, and face at Robert’s mercy.

I reassure myself that I won’t be subjected to such a dramatic fate this early on in my testing, because Robert is clearly intending to reenact the first chapter of
Unraveled.
So at least I have a vague idea of what is ahead of me, and I feel relatively safe.

Suddenly, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony echoes through the dungeon.

Remembering what I wrote in the book that got me here, to Hartwell Castle, in the first place, I assume that my playlist is next. When the music transitions to the opening bars of “Slave to Love,” I know I’m right.

I’ve got at least twenty minutes before the music stops, Robert will be here, and my first test will begin. I feel part relieved, part excited, part petrified.

But instead of Bryan Ferry singing the first lines of “Slave to Love,” I hear the dungeon door slam, and I am no longer alone.

Tall and resplendent in tight black trousers and a black billowing silk shirt that makes him look like a pirate king, Robert is with me, and the first test of my submission is about to begin.

Just as he has commanded, I keep my eyes down.

His voice snaps me to attention.

“Your safe word, Miranda?” he says.

“Red,” I tell him, and as I hear myself do so, I realize that my choice of safe word is dull and banal.

I’ll bet Lady Georgiana had a much more imaginative and cultured safe word, like “Rachmaninoff” or “Renaissance” or something.

Robert fastens leather restraints around my ankles and wrists.

Then he buckles a black leather, diamond-studded collar around my neck.

Diamonds! Are they real? And did the collar belong to Lady Georgiana?

Or does the fact that he has collared me—in S&M, a collar to a submissive is as significant as a wedding ring is in the vanilla world—mean that he intends for all this to be for keeps? Only if I pass all the tests ahead of me, I guess.

Too soon to tell, so I brace myself for what I know from
Unraveled
will come next.

But instead of pinching my nipples the way the Master did at this point in the Carlyle, Robert cups my breasts in his hands and gently, ever so gently, licks first the left, then the right.

Then he sucks my nipples with such tenderness that I feel as if I am going to die of joy.

All my nerve endings are alive and singing with pleasure.

And I hear myself moan, “Oh, Robert, oh, Robert,” in ecstasy.

The slap to my face comes so fast, so unexpectedly, that I reel in shock—not in pain, as he didn’t hit me hard, but because I just wasn’t expecting it.

“Not Robert! Master!” he says, and I bow my head, conscious of my own mistake, my own presumptuousness.

Then he kisses me with such passion that I feel as if I am going to pass out in bliss.

Just like on the plane.

And then, without a word, he stops and snaps his fingers. As the sound reverberates around the dungeon, I flinch. Then drop to my knees.

He fastens a leash to my diamond-studded collar.

On the floor, in the far corner of the suite, a silver tray, with two silver bowls on it. One is filled with pink champagne, the other with chocolate-chip ice cream. Robert drags me by the leash to the tray. The collar around my neck is tight enough to make me feel constricted and afraid without choking me. He handcuffs my hands behind my back, and I hate how my breasts jut out, their size exaggerated obscenely.

“Champagne first,” he orders, and forces me to stick my tongue into the bowl with the champagne in it.

I lap away, trying desperately not to let my hair and face get wet.

As I do, the sound of my lapping becomes louder and louder.

“Can’t you make less noise when you drink, Miranda?” he says in an amused voice, and I blush scarlet with humiliation.

Then he leads me closer to the silver tray, orders me to my knees, and proceeds to feed the chocolate-chip ice cream to me off a solid silver spoon.

While all the time I look up at him, my eyes big, feeling exactly as if I were five years old again and, in a strange way, liking it.

Then he helps me to my feet.

He is so tall, so strong, for a moment I am genuinely afraid of him.

But then I am flooded by warmth at his tenderness as, with a white linen napkin, he wipes the ice cream from my mouth and my chin, as if I were a little girl.

A good little girl? Or a bad one?

I get my answer soon enough when he orders me to get down again and drags me over to the middle of the dungeon.

In the wall, a big, black button.

Which he presses.

And a large red steel frame is lowered down from the ceiling.

It’s now clear to me that he was deliberately giving me the impression that he was about to reenact my night with the Master, simply to lull me into a false sense of security. What he has planned for me will obviously encompass far more, and be much heavier.

He takes a step toward the forbidding frame and beckons me to stand on my toes in the middle of it.

Then he attaches my arms and legs to the frame, so that my legs are splayed apart, and my arms are pinioned high above my head.

My entire body is taut like an arrow, firmly held in place.

He has taken his shirt off now, and I can see the sweat glistening on his bulging muscles.

Strange, when he hasn’t really exerted himself yet.

I may not be Lady Georgiana, but I guess I am having an effect on him after all. And as I drink in the sight of his bare chest, his big arms, his towering body, his burning eyes, he is having one on me, too.

An effect so strong that the evidence is even now trickling down my thighs and onto the dungeon floor.

“Excited at the prospect of pain, Miranda?” he says suddenly, running his fingers between my legs, then smearing the moisture over my stomach and thighs.

I shake my head, humiliated.

The truth is, I am, and he’s right.

But I am too proud to admit it to him.

I may be submissive, but I’m not and never have been a doormat.

Then he moves behind me, ties a blindfold around my eyes, and I am suddenly plunged into darkness.

In his cruelty, and for his pleasure, he has deprived me of sight, when all I yearn for is to look into his hypnotic eyes, at his handsome face, and to admire his spectacular body. But he has prevented me from enjoying that privilege.

I toy with protesting, just this once.

But if I do, he will ignore me. Or punish me even more, even harder.

Besides, I don’t want to fail his first test.

So I say nothing, and wait.

I picture myself as I must look to him at this moment.