Page 18 of Cruel Master

He pushes up off of me again, his eyes resting at the juncture of my thighs.

I move to pull my dress down, but he stops me, dropping to his knees and staring at my embarrassingly wet panties. To my mortification, he moves his head in between my thighs and then inhales deeply, scenting me.

It's so raw and dirty, and coming from him, it's disgusting. So why does it make more moisture flood between my legs? He looks at me knowingly, and I swear I hate him for this.

I hate him for everything he's doing. I hate the way he's making my body feel these things and then mocking me for it. Maybe that's what he gets off on—my humiliation. He finally stands and stares down at me a beat before he instructs, “Don't touch yourself again. If I have to come back in here, I promise I will shed blood.”

My heart pounds against my ribcage. I know he means it. The threat is clear in his eyes, and something tells me the blood he would shed would be that pertaining to my virginity.

He starts walking away, and I finally call out to him, asking the question I'm burning to know. “How did you know?”

He pauses but doesn't turn around when he speaks. “Silly kitten, do you think I would leave my most precious possession unmonitored?”

My stomach drops as the realization hits me like a ton of bricks. The bastard has been watching me this entire time.

Why should that surprise me?

ChapterTwelve

He’s seen everything.I’ve tried to find the cameras, but of course, I haven’t. A man as rich as Gabriel undoubtedly has them professionally installed. He probably has some of those microscopic ones that you can’t see with the naked eye embedded into the walls and ceiling of this room.

All I can think about is the fact that he can see everything I do. Now I feel his eyes on me all the time. I search the room like a woman possessed, scratching at the surfaces and checking behind every knick-knack for anything that might look like a camera.

When I come up empty-handed, I become paranoid—so much so that I begin taking my clothes into the bathroom to change in there.

But then it hits me that he might very well have the bathroom outfitted with cameras too. How do I know he's not watching me in here?

So, then I start doing this thing where I keep my towel wrapped around me as I pull my panties up underneath me and then try to put my clothes on over my towel before pulling the towel down.

It's ridiculous, I know, because this man has probably seen me naked before. He all but admitted to stalking me. There's no telling how long he's been watching me or what he's seen.

Still, I can't stop myself from trying to preserve what little of my dignity I may have left—if I even have any after he caught me trying to masturbate and then effectively recognized that it was because of him.

My cheeks heat in shame and embarrassment every time I think of it, making me hate the bastard even more.

To make matters worse, his psychological games are wearing me down. I’m alone all day, so by the time he visits me at night, I’m so desperate for something to break the monotony that I’m even glad to see him—as much as I still hate to see him.

He makes me join him for dinner every night. It's like some sort of ritual from the medieval days. He's always dressed in an impeccable suit, and he expects me to dress likewise in dresses. And he took my choice away in that matter since they're the only options he gave me in my wardrobe.

I want to wear something else just to defy him, but the only other option I have is to wear one of the equally beautiful pieces of lingerie, and that would show even more skin than the dresses so that's a no.

He’s maneuvered everything exactly the way he wants to and left me no choice but to comply.

We don't usually speak much over dinner. I sit there sullenly, only eating enough food to keep me alive, glaring at him.

And he makes no move at small talk. He doesn’t ask me inconsequential questions he already knows the answer to from all his time watching me. He's not one who stands on pretense or puts on airs. If he already knows everything there is to know about me, why ask the questions he already knows the answers to, right?

I begrudgingly have to admit that I do appreciate that about him. As horrible as he is, he's real. There's nothing fake about him.

Most nights over dinner, his eyes blister at me, prickling along my skin as if they're touching me. They burn me until there's a deep throbbing between my legs.

I don't know how he always knows, but I can tell by looking in his eyes, he somehow always knows when he gets me all hot and bothered—which he does every night, which confuses the hell out of me and only deepens my hatred.

I hate the way my body responds to him this way when I don’t want it to. To make matters even worse, when he can tell he's got my body all worked up, he’ll lower his lips maddeningly close to mine—close enough to kiss, yet he never does. He just breathes on me, his hot breath fanning against my lips, sending sparks lighting all across my skin.

Sometimes he'll taunt me. “Say the word, kitten. There's no need for you to be in such misery.”

But then his eyes show his delight when I stubbornly press my lips together and look away from him, refusing to give in, and that infuriates me even more because it proves that I'm giving him what he wants. But how can I give in to my captor?

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