Page 39 of His Toy

“Please, sir,” she said. “I’m so close.”

“Beg me.”

“Please, sir! Fuck!” Breaking her composure, cursing aloud, as if the world could help her, was enough to make me forget everything. She wasn’t mine, she wasn’t my slave, but I wanted to forget that. Another world, another time. Another me. “Please, sir. Please Zaid! I need to come. I needthis.”

Her legs shook, and I held her tight around the stomach, edging her closer with my hand, holding on, bracing ourselves for what came against us. I demanded her answer: “What do you need?”

“You, sir.”

I bellowed, “Who owns you, Heather?”

“You, sir!” She bit her lip. “You own me, sir. Everything. Please, Zaid. Please let me come.”

Looking deep into those blue-green eyes, I wanted to see her come, to see her let go of everything, to forget about her sister, about the pain in her past, about everything that the world had done to her. I wanted her to feel pure bliss. To watch her as she came, and melted into my hands.

“Come,” I growled.

“Zaid!” she cried. Again, and again, she said my name, cursing the world, cursing me, thanking me. To see a woman like her crumble beneath pleasure was like watching the sunset over the mountains. I never wanted her to stop.

***

Heather slept on the king bed in a puddle of blankets, the whimpers of her snores audible. I liked her that way. Spent. Completely exhausted. Succumbed to her desires. To me.

Out of the panoramic window was a direct view of the Great Pleasures Palace. Eric lived in the top floor penthouse. He hadn’t left the building in years. He told his followers that he didn’t need to leave his palace. Why would he, when he was powerful enough that his servants came to him? When he had men, killers, ravenous criminals who would find anyone who betrayed him, and bring him their bodies? Eric ruled in fear. He had controlled my mother that way. Mixing desire with fear, pleasure with pain, feasting on addicts and lost souls, finding ways to use their deepest thoughts against them.

As a child, he had used my love for my mother against me.Your mother wants it this way, child. You realize that.

His mistake was letting me live.

But in the back of my mind, I always knew it was punishment. To live beyond my mother, when I couldn’t save her, stuck in fear. He didn’t think anything of the child then, of me. I was ten years old. Twenty years had passed.

But I knew him better than he realized. Though Eric was no more than sixty now, age had made him wary of travel. Excuses, what he justified as reasoning, kept him in his palace. He could pretend thatthatwas how he operated. But it was fear that kept him in place. Fear of people like me. People who wouldn’t be trapped by him. People who would stop at nothing to avenge their loved ones.

People like Heather.

She turned over in the bed, rearranging herself so that her head rested on the pillow now, a small stream of drool wiped away before her eyes settled into dreams again. Heather might not be able to imagine killing for her sister, but I knew there was very little that she wouldn’t do for the people she loved.

I wish I had been like that. To be foolish, outright reckless, but to do anything for my family. Like I should have done so many years ago.

I called one of my contacts at the Great Pleasures Palace. “He’s present?”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Eric was only street lengths away. The mother fucker was still breathing.

“No change?”

“No, sir.”

I hung up.

Heather stirred again. I glanced at her, then faced the window.

“Who’s present?” Heather asked, her voice sleepy.

“Eric,” I said. She didn’t need to know the details. The less she knew, the better off she would be.

“You must really hate him,” she said. She was sitting in the bed now, the plush comforter tucked around her, a protective nest.