Unraveled by Him (24 page)

“Watching Georgiana during the months before our wedding, I knew that I was doing the right thing; I was marrying a great lady, a star. And when we nuzzled close together in our movie theater (which Georgiana had redecorated in her beloved violet) and watched the old movies that we loved, starring Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, all I had to do was glance across at Georgiana to recognize that she surpassed all those screen sirens in sheer elegance, style, and beauty.

“Strangely enough—I know you will be surprised by this, Miranda—in the months before our wedding, the happiest times I spent with Georgiana were in our movie theater, and not in our bed.”

He’s right. I am surprised—and thrilled to hear it, although I try valiantly to hide my reaction from him.

“Let me explain, Miranda. Since I found Georgiana again, I was hesitant about asking her to submit to me sexually once more. I had fought so hard to find her again that, now that she was mine, I was determined not to do the slightest thing that might remind her of Le Château, of William Masters, of anything that might cause me to lose her again.

“Because I knew that if I ever lost her, I would not be able to endure it for even one hour.

“So at first I made gentle, tender, vanilla love to Georgiana. And she responded to me with passion and contentment.

“As much as I fantasized about doing so, I didn’t once attempt to tie her up, to spank her, to position her on all fours and penetrate her from behind, to punish and control her. I didn’t even raise the subject of dominance and submission to her, for fear of alienating her.

“Then one afternoon, a few days after our engagement party, we sat in the shadow of the Blue Grotto, here, at Hartwell Castle, and Georgiana took my hand and told me that more than anything else in the world, she craved for me to take her across my knee and spank her like I did before.

“And more, so much more.

“And at the end, when I was hot and hard and it took all my willpower for me not to take her upstairs to the bedroom, tie her to the bed, and punish her as we both so passionately desired, she repeated what she’d said before, so as to drive it home to me.

“ ‘Robert, darling Robert, you can’t know, you can’t imagine, you can’t conceive of how much I long for you to control me, command me, punish me, hurt me, and make me yours. You can’t know how much, you can’t,’ she said, her eyes wild, the violet of them now a dark purple.

“Transfixed, I was temporarily at a loss for words.

“ ‘On our wedding night, Robert, only then,’ Georgiana said.

“And although her reluctance to submit to me before we were married deprived me of the pleasure of fulfilling my desires, I understood. Before we could begin our lives together as dominant and submissive in earnest, she needed time and distance from Le Château and all that represented.

“So I respected her wishes and waited eagerly for the day when she became my wife, the day when our life together would begin and she could be my queen in public but my submissive in secret.

“We were engaged now, and as much as we were in love, it seemed as if the whole world was in love with us as well.

“The aristocratic beauty Lady Georgiana Lacely, and the billionaire tycoon Robert Hartwell.

“The paparazzi dogged our every move.

“From Buenos Aires to Barbados, from Monte Carlo to Santa Barbara, from Manhattan to Martinique, from my plane to my yacht, the
Lady Georgiana
, the press documented everything.

“Or so they thought . . . Thankfully, no media was snooping around when the secret work of building the dungeons in my mansions and castles began.

“I willingly paid the crew of handpicked craftsmen ten times their usual salary. So they each signed cast-iron nondisclosure agreements, and the dungeons were built in each of my homes, including the ones here, in Hartwell Castle, the biggest and the best equipped.”

“Did Georgiana . . . ?” I ask.

“She refused to set foot in any of the dungeons until we were married,” he says, then goes on: “Of course, when I made love to her, I often held her down, but that was the full extent of my domination of her.

“I may have been suffering untold sexual frustration in not being able to dominate Georgiana sexually, not being able to control or punish her as I wished, but her reasons for restricting our relationship to vanilla made perfect sense to me. She wanted to erase our memory of how and where I met her. She wanted to wipe the slate clean, to begin again. Then and only then would she truly submit to me. When we were husband and wife, and not before.

“And I could hardly wait.”

I don’t know if I can sit here and listen to all the romantic, erotic details of Robert’s wedding night with Georgiana without losing it completely. But I know I must, so I grit my teeth and say, “So how was it, Robert? How was your wedding night with Georgiana?”

“Tomorrow, after you’ve completed the final test—if you’ve passed it, that is—I’ll finish the rest of the story,” Robert says.

“Are you sure it won’t upset you, Robert?” I say, doing my best to be empathetic regarding how much he loved Georgiana, and how deep the anguish of losing her must still cut.

“Upset me? Why?”

“Because you loved Georgiana so much.”

“Loved her? I despised her!” he says.

I see the expression on his face. I look deeply into his eyes, staggered by what he’s said. It
is
true! He didn’t love Georgiana! I want to shout it from the roof, write it in the sky, broadcast it on national television: Robert Hartwell never loved Lady Georgiana!

One look at the tortured expression in his eyes and I feel guilty for having exulted over his revelation.

“Despised Georgiana? Why? How?” I say.

“You’ll only understand when I tell you the story of my wedding night. But not now. Not until after you have completed the fifth test, and not a second before,” he says.

Chapter Fourteen

I spend most of the day trying to distract myself from my fears of the ordeal ahead of me. For the first time since I got to the castle, I feel a sudden urge to escape.

Robert is out at meetings for most of the day, so I order a cab, spend a fun few hours at the mall, and almost feel as if I’m living my regular everyday life again.

But when I get back to the castle and find a note from Robert, I am forcibly reminded that I’m not.

Dinner at 7. We have guests. And Dungeon 5 at 10. Be prepared for both. R.

I decide to wear the beautiful navy Armani Robert bought me in Geneva. As I do, the image of myself and of all the punishment my body has taken in the past few days flashes through my mind, and I go to the long mirror in the corner of the suite to check that I have no marks on my cleavage.

I don’t. Robert is far too experienced at chastisement to place visible marks on my body.

My ass, however, is another story, as all over it there is ample evidence of Robert’s harsh treatment.

And I love it.

At the top of the staircase I bump straight into Mrs. Hatch, who looks me up and down as if she were a horse trader evaluating a Thoroughbred mare.

Then she sniffs, and I know that I’ve been found wanting.

“I hope you’ve had a good day, Mrs. Hatch,” I say to cover my feelings of inadequacy.

She throws me a look of scorn from those coal-black eyes and goes on her way, and I’m glad.

But why does Robert keep her around?

Before I can answer my own question, I realize that I’m outside the Mayfair Dining Room, about to come face-to-face with Robert’s guests.

What if they’re movie stars?

Or royalty?

What if they knew Lady Georgiana?

Of course they did!

What in hell will they think of me?

I want to run.

At that moment Robert comes up behind me and puts his arm around my waist.

“Let’s go in to dinner, now, shall we, darling?” he says.

Darling! Robert called me darling!
And for a moment, it almost seems as if I
am
his darling, his love, and at that moment, my insecurities are eclipsed by my elation.

To my relief, instead of royalty, movie stars, politicians, or billionaires like him, Mary Ellen and her handsome husband, Rory, are the only other two people at dinner.

So the four of us have dinner together.

Almost like regular folk.

Except that dinner is served by waiters in white tie and tails, the food is Michelin three-star quality, and in the background a six-piece jazz band plays American standards.

A typical evening at Hartwell Castle, the evening of my fifth test of submission in Robert Hartwell’s dungeon.

After dinner I go back to the suite, change, and put on the emerald-green velvet corset, emerald-green fishnet stockings, and emerald-green lace high heels that Robert sent to my room this morning.

Then, to my surprise, he arrives at my suite to escort me to the dungeon. Resplendent in head-to-toe black leather, he glitters with dominance. My heart beats faster as I think of the upcoming night with a combination of trepidation and excitement.

I follow him in silence, my eyes fixed on his broad back and long, athletic legs.

The door to Dungeon 5 leads straight into a large, high-ceilinged office.

I stand in front of the ebony desk, and Robert takes his place behind it and announces, in a voice as formal as if he were a Supreme Court judge issuing a verdict, “This fifth test is about you, Miranda, and only you. About your deep capacity for submission, about your sincerity, about your integrity, about the truth. And nothing, or no one else,” he says.

Meaning
not
about Georgiana!

“Now, Miranda, let me explain a little of what is ahead of you in the next test.”

I nod but am starting to feel afraid, because when it comes down to it, I still don’t know the full extent of what he’s really capable of doing to me.

“Miranda, this test will either make you or break you, and will tell me everything I need to know about your submissiveness, about the woman you are to the very core of your womanhood, the woman who is either the real thing or is not,” he says in a grim voice.

My mouth is suddenly dry and the taste on my tongue is bitter. But petrified as I am, I know that if he offered to let me out of the test, I’d refuse outright, and take it anyway.

“Follow me, Miranda,” he says.

Then he strides toward a large door leading from the office to an inner chamber. This one looks more like a typical dungeon, and I can see that he has upped the stakes considerably.

Amid all the racks, the equipment, the dungeon furniture, one thing stands out: a device that sends sheer terror shooting down my body from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

Large wooden stocks, straight out of a medieval torture chamber.

Or from days of old when a suspected witch was dragged to the village green, stripped naked, then imprisoned in the stocks, whereupon all the villagers pelted her with rotten produce, taunted her, and punished her as hard and as much as they wanted.

Imprisoned in the stocks, a naked woman was on permanent show, her body presented for untold humiliations and tortures inflicted on her by anyone who had a twisted yen to do so.

Thank God that it’s just him and me here in the dungeon and not another living soul!

His face expressionless, he beckons me to approach the stocks.

At the thought of being imprisoned in that monstrous contraption, not able to look around, or move even an inch, my breath quickens, my heart starts pounding, and I panic more than I’ve ever panicked during any of Robert’s tests.

In fact, for the first time ever, I feel like using my safe word and running.

But if I do, I run the risk that he will forever banish me from his life, his world, and I shall never see him again.

In the coldly unforgiving voice of an executioner, he orders me to place each foot in the board in front of the stocks. Then he snaps it shut. My legs are now locked open, exposing my most private parts, and I can do nothing to protect them from any assault, be it penetrative or punishing.

Then he lifts the top half of the wooden board at the top of the stocks and orders me to rest my head and arms in the holes on the bottom board.

Shaking uncontrollably, I nevertheless obey.

Then, gently but with purpose, he lowers the top half of the wooden board over my neck and wrists.

I can’t move, I can’t turn around. All I can do is stay still, a naked object, a target.

I feel like a condemned witch, a hapless miscreant, my buttocks presented and offered up for punishment, secured as I am like a butterfly by a pin, immobilized there by my cruel and relentless Master.

He has imprisoned me in the stocks, and I hate it more than I could ever imagine hating anything to which he has chosen to subject me. More than at any other time in my life, I am powerless, out of control, helpless, and afraid beyond belief.

He knows that, of course, which is why he is putting me in stocks to test, punish, and humiliate me in the cruelest way imaginable.

In my mind’s eye, I see my hair tied back. My swollen mouth.

My breasts hanging down, unprotected. My ass jutting out, exposed.

I am naked, helpless, offered up to him for punishment, just as he wishes.

I say a silent prayer that I’ll be able to withstand what lies ahead.

To my horror, I hear the heavy tread of a second person entering the dungeon and banging the door shut. A stranger. And that stranger is now confronted by the sight of me imprisoned in the stocks: my protruding ass, my spread-open thighs, my back, my hanging breasts, but not my face.

Robert has reduced me to a fleshy inanimate object, just ass, back, thighs, legs, and breasts, all offered up for the pleasure of this nameless, faceless stranger standing just a few feet away behind me, surveying every exposed and vulnerable inch of my naked body.

I hear Robert stride over to the rack of implements.

“Use this on her this first,” he commands.

I can’t see which implement he selected.

I tense, petrified.

“No clenching,” Robert snaps at me, “or you’ll get double.”

I will myself to relax.

Then the air around me is torn apart and the crop slashes into me.

I scream a bloodcurdling scream.

For the riding crop did not hit my proffered ass, back, or thighs but up between my legs and into the heart of me.

“Very good,” Robert says. “Give her more of that. And then the cane. At full strength.”

Then I hear him stride in the direction of the dungeon door.

He is leaving me at the mercy of a stranger. A stranger whose face I can’t see, and who hasn’t seen mine!

And there is nothing that I can do to defend my naked, exposed, and vulnerable body.

Nothing.

I hear Robert unlock the dungeon door and I am filled with panic.

But I have no choice but to take whatever punishment the stranger chooses to mete out to me. No choice at all, if I want to pass Robert’s final test and prove the full extent of my submission to him.

So I remain silent, my entire body straining in fear and anticipation of whatever the stranger is about to inflict on me at Robert’s behest, with his full approval, with his blessing.

Before Robert slams the dungeon door behind him, he issues one last and final instruction:

“She’s all yours, Mrs. Hatch,” he says.