Page 57 of Promise of Punishment

“Not openly, but there is a gleam in her eyes that wasn’t there before.” For a while, her smile was so forced her face looked frozen with Botox.

She probably thought I was the serpent Lord’s new bed partner. She thought wrong. After screwing me against the wall in the Gilded Cage, giving me my first orgasm during sex, my Lord left me thinking he wasn’t interested anymore.

He returned the following night—to my surprise and quiet delight—and for four weeks more, keeping our agreement. But he never claimed me the way I had dreamed about ever since we did it that first time, the only time.

He paid me extra attention: dancing with me in the ballroom when he was in town and making it clear I was his and no one else’s. Clearing out the Gilded Cage so I could dance privately for him. I learned some moves from Ashlyn, who pole-dances as a workout, which had my Lord so turned on, he masturbated while watching me dance. On two different nights!

“I’ve never done that with anyone,” he said, and I felt special. So much so, I crawled to him and sucked him off. His cock was hot and thick in my mouth. I gagged a few times but kept going, unwilling to quit until he came again.

When we were in the Gilded Cage alone, he always had me take off my wig and mask. He stroked the back of my head, threading his fingers through my hair, while I gave him oral. At one point, his hold tightened on my head, and he slammed into my mouth ruthlessly, making me gag, before halting just as suddenly. He let me take over again, doing all the work until his hot cum spurted down the back of my throat.

He gave me an orgasm afterward, but not through sex.

The next night in the private room, our clothes were on when I climbed onto his lap and dry-humped his hard cock, begging between hot kisses, “Will you screw me against the wall again? Please.”

Maybe if I’d used the word “fuck,” he would have. Maybe not. He licked and bit my neck, then removed my tights and fucked me with his tongue.

I cried to God and the Lord—my Lord—wishing I could call out to him with his real name.

Last weekend, we spent Friday and Saturday in the Crimson Chamber with two other Lords—who sounded just like my Lord—and their dates. The conversations were impersonal and odd. Everyone talked about other people, or the tabloids, or music and artists. They were safe topics. Anything personal might be revealing. My Lord ordered them out when he got bored and fucked me with his fingers. We’ve never once been completely naked. I’ve accepted we may never.

During the day, we’d meet in the lake garden and talk for hours about places I’d love to visit, many of which he’d been to, although not to the abandoned locations I wanted to see. I was more open than he was, but he shared his likes and dislikes in a vague way. The last time we met at our daytime retreat, he surprised me with cheese and wine in a basket. No one had ever done anything like that for me. It felt like a real date, even though we were masked and he wore a hat. He got more personal with his questions too.

“Why did you choose to work at Hellfire?” he asked in his British accent, which I decided I liked better than the Scottish. It must mean something that he’s not faking it around me anymore. Don’t read into it. I told myself more times than I could remember.

“I like how safe it is,” I replied by mistake.

“Safe?” His tone got low and protective. “What are you afraid of, little angel?”

I loved the way he called me that. No one had ever given me a nickname.

“You know I’d protect you from anyone,” he added when I dropped my gaze to the checkered blanket we sat on instead of answering.

I came so close to telling him who my dad was and how he had someone threatening my life. But it’d been a month, and I hadn’t gotten a single letter. How could I here?

So I told him, “He’s in the past. Some memories are better left there.”

He rubbed my jawline and kissed me fiercely as if he were trying to erase the memories from my mind. He’d never kissed me when we were exploring outside, only in the club and at night.

When I begged him to take me right there in the open, under the warm summer sun, he brought me somewhere else.

“I had this section reinforced so it’s safe for you to video,” he said in the abandoned room of the west wing where I first met him—well, the British version of my Lord, the real version.

My jaw hit the floor as I stared at his plain black mask. “Why?”

“You love it.” He shrugged like giving me this was no big deal as he strolled around the crumbled debris near the staircase. From behind, in his black pants, shirt, and hat, I could pretend he wasn’t wearing a mask and that I knew his face. It was gorgeous, an older version of James Beaufort, the main character in Maxton Hall, except James had blond hair, and my Lord’s hair looked brown—what I could see of it under his hat. “And your content is getting repetitive. The same old lake garden,” he added, teasingly. But he wasn’t wrong.

“You’ve seen my posts?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s all you ever talk about. I was curious.”

Tears formed in my eyes, and emotions clogged my throat. “Thank you.”

It wasn’t how he reinforced part of the building for me that had me choked up. It was the thoughtfulness behind it that I never expected from another human after my mom died.

I sniffled and removed my mask to wipe my nose.

My Lord turned and walked to me as a tear slipped down my cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. “It’s just a decrepit room.” He tried to dismiss the magnitude of what it means to me.