FrankenDom (29 page)

Startled, I cocked my head. “Does that mean—”

“You don’t have permission to speak, slave,” he reminded me, clipping the leash back
on me. “Do you have to go?”

I shook my head quickly.

“Good. This way then.”

With visions of a naked, caged Colin dancing in my mind’s eye, I followed him to the
kitchen. I was surprised to find the table already set—for one. On the floor beside
the table were two large, shallow bowls, one filled with water and another filled
with what looked like dog food.

This was carrying things just a little too far. I crossed my arms and glared at him.

Clearly fighting a grin, he raised a brow. “Something on your mind, slave?”

I stomped over and pointed at the food.

Colin snorted and plucked his own spoon off the table. Squatting beside the bowls,
he scooped up a bite and ate it. “Tastes fine to me. You don’t like beef stew?”

Grrrr.
Master of mind-fucks, indeed.

“Don’t growl at me again, pup, or I’ll muzzle you until dinnertime,” he warned. “Now
eat. I have work to do this afternoon.”

Sighing, I knelt down in front of the bowls.

“Here.” Colin pulled a thick, folded towel from the chair and slid it under my knees,
and then tied my hair into a knot behind my neck.

I batted my lashes at him and he smiled. “You’re welcome. Eat.”

Heaving one more sigh, I leaned down on my hands and sniffed the stew. It smelled
all right but didn’t look very hot. Which was probably to keep me from burning my
face, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. Opening my mouth, I tried to neatly
pick out a piece of beef but my chin and nose both dipped into the stew before my
teeth even got close.

I looked at Colin, who was still squatting beside me, and he grinned from ear to ear.

“You’re the cutest damn puppy I ever saw, Rachel McBride,” he told me, rising to take
his seat.

Well, I was glad he was happy. Deciding there was no neat way to eat with my mouth,
I went for broke. The stew was actually pretty good—the parts of it that didn’t go
up my nose, that is. I ate until I was satisfied, not wanting to contaminate my water
with stew until the last possible minute.

“Rachel.”

I looked up and Colin took my picture with his phone. I glared at him and he did it
again, laughing heartily.

That did it. I lurched up from the floor and dived for him, intending to kiss him
until he looked just like me, but he managed to grab my wrists and hold them out far
enough away from him to stay clean.

“Bad puppy!” he scolded, standing up. “You made me drop my phone.”

He dragged me over to the kitchen sink, then gripped the back of my collar and held
my head over one side. When I heard the water turn on and the
zzzzzzip
of the sprayer nozzle being pulled out, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath just
in time. Colin blasted my face with tepid water long after the stew was gone, waiting
for me to take another breath. He wasn’t satisfied until I was coughing and sputtering
and fighting to get away.

“You’re lucky this is Texas,” he told me, wiping my face none too gently with a paper
towel. “In Montaneva the tap water is twenty degrees colder.”

Long past shyness now, I blew my nose in the general direction of the paper towel,
trying to get rid of the last of the stew. Colin took the hint and held it close enough
so I could blow harder.

“You’re welcome,” he said again, dropping it into the trash can. Then he leaned down
and picked up—

I finally flushed painfully. How had I not noticed my tail popping out during the
struggle?

He hooked the leash back on me and pulled me down to the basement. “You were going
to get to take another nice nap in my office while I finished my work, but now you
can stay down here until Julian gets home, naughty puppy.”

Opening the dungeon door, he pushed me in and then said, “Kneel.”

My heart pounding, I knelt beside the crossbar thing and waited with trepidation while
Colin dug under one of the medical cabinets.

When he came back, he stood behind me and took off the collar. “Don’t move.”

I froze. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t the leather hood that came down over
my head, but I managed to hold completely still until he’d tugged it into place and
I could see out the eye holes. I felt him tightening laces down the back until the
mask conformed fully to my head, and then he buckled a strap around my neck and I
heard the click of a padlock. Coming around in front of me, he snapped something onto
the flap hanging off to the side of my mouth.

“Open.”

Trembling a little now, I opened my mouth. Colin pushed some kind of thick dildo inside
as he pulled the flap over and zipped it. My face was now completely covered and I
was gagged. The whole world smelled like leather.

Next he took my hands one by one and covered them with mitts that forced them into
fists. It was hard to tell from his bland expression if he was really angry with me
again, but it didn’t matter. I already felt so punished I wanted to cry. And yet I
was strangely aroused. God, was having a pretend-penis in my mouth all it took to
turn me on? Or was it the dehumanizing experience of being masked and turned into
a puppy that did it for me?

When I was locked into the mitts, he made me get on all fours over the crossbar thing,
and I finally noticed the cuffs attached to it.

“Prison stockade,” he explained. “Less intimidating but more portable.”

He pushed down between my shoulder blades until my breastbone rested on a low, narrow
pad and locked my collar to something underneath so I couldn’t rise. Then he locked
my wrists and ankles into the leather cuffs. The back crossbar was twice as wide as
the front, leaving my legs wide open. I knew it was too much to hope that he was going
to have sex with me, but that didn’t stop me from getting embarrassingly wet almost
at once.

Colin returned to the medical side and I heard water running in the sink. Then he
went behind me and forced my tail back in with only the residual lube from the last
placement. I squealed at the momentary sting.

“Naughty little puppies don’t get more lube,” he informed me.

There was a clank of metal on metal and other sounds I couldn’t quite make out, and
then my tail was tossed up onto my low back and something thick was pushed deep into
my vagina and locked there. I groaned loudly at being so completely impaled and utterly
helpless.

“Naughty little puppies don’t get fucked either, no matter how horny they are,” Colin
said behind me. I heard the distinctive click of the camera mode on his phone and
groaned. He was taking pictures of me. “You look very hot, horny little puppy, and
very much in trouble.”

Continuing around me in a circle, he took shots from every angle with his phone. “Be
glad this wasn’t broken or you’d really be in trouble.”

I ground my teeth against the dildo, wishing it were his cock. He should be glad I
was wearing this hood or
he’d
really be in trouble.

When he was done taking pictures, he pulled a chair from the back of the room and
sat directly in front of me, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I wasn’t going to do this today but now that I’ve got you all trussed up, I can’t
wait any longer,” he said with an impenetrable look. “Julian ordered me not to speak
to you that last morning in Montaneva or I’d have given you a big earful then. Part
of me wishes I’d disobeyed but he was already on the edge and I didn’t want to be
the one to drive him over. I knew you’d be fine and we’d get you back eventually.”

I bit harder. God, he could be so arrogant sometimes!

“Now I want you to listen to me carefully,” he continued. “I didn’t deceive you deliberately,
Rachel. I didn’t find out Jordan hadn’t agreed to the surgery until the night before
you arrived, when I caned Julian after his time at the prison, or I’d never have involved
you. I would have protected you with my
life
. But I couldn’t tell you because you might have prevented the surgery and I couldn’t
let Jordan die when I knew we could save him. I didn’t
think
it, Rachel, I
knew
it, and unlike Julian, I think we did the right thing. You’ve seen Jordan—do you
think he would have been better off dead?”

He watched me with his brows raised, clearly expecting an answer, and I hesitated.
Right after the surgery, I’d thought he might be better off dead. If living in Augustine
Pohlson’s body didn’t drive him mad, knowing his brother had betrayed him might. But
after seeing him walking around, working out, being angry and aggressive and taking
control of Julian? I had to admit, I thought he probably had an amazing future in
store for him, if he didn’t let bitterness eat away at him for too long.

I shook my head from side to side.

“Good. I don’t either. I think eventually he’ll adjust to his new body, and it will
become his rather than Pohlson’s.”

God, I hoped that was true, for Julian’s sake as much as Jordan’s.

“But I didn’t throw you under a bus for anyone, Rachel, and I never would. After he
told me Jordan hadn’t consented, he took me to his office and gave me signed affidavits
swearing that he was the only one who knew his brother had refused the surgery, that
he had deliberately withheld that information from us in order to save his brother’s
life. Jordan and all his nurses thought he’d come to the castle to spend his final
days with Julian, and at the end, Julian dismissed the nurses most afternoons so that
he could care for Jordan himself. He
loves
him, Rachel. He didn’t save him for the sake of his research—he raised him after
their mother died, so he’s as much a father to him as a brother. No parent could just
stand by and watch their own child die when they could do something about it.”

By the time he finished, I was almost in tears. There was no longer any doubt in my
mind Julian had done the right thing, and so had Colin. If we could do it all again,
I’d operate on Jordan without thinking twice, even knowing he hadn’t consented. My
career wasn’t worth his life.

“You didn’t know all that, did you?” When I shook my head again, he sighed. “I figured.
That’s why I sent you the article. I thought you were taking too damn long to come
to your senses.”

Swallowing hard, I nodded. I wanted so badly to thank him but batting my lashes was
just too flirty and superficial under the circumstances, and I wasn’t sure he’d see
them anyway.

“All right then,” he said. Standing up, he walked behind me and I heard the door open.
“I want you to stay here for a while, Rachel, and think about us. Think about you
and me—everything we said, everything we did, everything we were. Everything we
are
. And I want you to think about what you did to
me
when you left Montaneva that day. Not Julian—me. I’ll be back in a little while,
just in case you decide you have something to say to me.”

I heard the door close, and then I was alone with his words ringing in my ears.

Think about what you did to me. Not Julian—me.

My stomach began to churn. What
had
I done to Colin when I left Bangenschloss? The right thing, I thought. Even if I’d
known he hadn’t deliberately deceived me, that he hadn’t thrown me under a bus, I
couldn’t have asked him to choose between me and Julian. Julian needed him. They’d
been together for years, and they loved each other so much. Surely he could understand
that.

Jesus, I’ve missed you so much. I love you, Rachel.

The words came back to me as if he were radioing them directly into my brain, and
I whimpered. At Bangenschloss, Colin had been my lover, my companion, and I’d been
devastatingly lonely without him. Was that how he’d felt about me? Somehow I’d thought
that still having Julian would be an acceptable consolation—or more than I had, anyway.
I had neither of them. I’d made the sacrifice so that they’d still have each other.
What right did Colin have to be angry?

I’ve missed you so much.

Oh God, had he really missed
me
that much? I’d sort of assumed he mostly just missed using his cock on someone else.

You went all subbie and hot the very first time you saw him. I know because I was
standing right there watching your face. I wasn’t even a blip on your radar. You didn’t
even notice I was alive.

My stomach went painfully hollow. Why had he been watching my face? It hadn’t even
occurred to me to wonder when he said it. I was a brand new resident, timid and insecure
and anxious to please everyone, and Colin pleased no one but himself back then. Why
would he have cared how I felt about him?

I’m his to do with whatever he pleases, and it’s made me a better man—and believe
it or not, a better Dom—than I ever thought I could be.

He
was
a Dom, wasn’t he? He’d been one from the beginning, or at least felt the urge to
be one. He’d tied up girls and wanted to tie me up. Had he gone all hot and dominant
for me right away and I just hadn’t seen it, hadn’t responded to it?

I wanted to be reserved for you. I love you, Rachel.

Chills rose on my skin and I started to tremble. I’d always thought Colin had some
hidden agenda when he was with me, and in Montaneva I’d decided it was getting me
together with Julian.

But what if it wasn’t? What if Colin’s whole agenda all along was becoming my Dom?

The minute I thought it, I knew it was true. Colin had been in love with me long before
I ever thought about wanting him. He’d loved me even before he loved Julian, and wanted
to be better for me. Wanted to be worthy of me. He’d waited and worked for me all
those years, and he’d been thrilled to have me back.

And I’d left him.

Tears burned in my eyes, and then I started to sob. I’d was so wrapped up in what
I was doing to Julian, it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder what Colin might be
suffering. Oh God, how could I have been so blind? Colin was the love of my life,
and apparently I was the love of his. And I’d just…given up on it.