Page 8

8

Griffin

I wasn’t sure at first whether his teeth had broken skin. His saliva had been warm on my arm, and I’d been sure he’d bitten me deeply enough to draw blood. He hadn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered much if he had because it wasn’t like anyone was going to see my arm, but it was the principle of the thing.

I should’ve expected him to fight at some point, and I had. I kept expecting him to come at me, but he hadn’t done that. He’d waited until I’d been distracted — until I’d been kind to him, even! — then lashed out with his teeth like some unruly, cowardly beast.

I’m sure people would’ve considered me the cowardly one, keeping him locked behind bars where I didn’t have to face him in a fight. But this was kennel training for a feral creature that didn’t know its proper place.

After I left him alone downstairs to think, I fixed myself my own meal, eating it in silence — alone, as always, and wishing I’d picked someone who might’ve surrendered a little more easily to me. It would’ve been nice to have the companion I’d paid so handsomely for .

Maybe I should’ve paid extra to have him trained before he got here.

But no. He had to learn from my hand. I didn’t want his loyalty going to anyone else, forced as it might be. I didn’t want him yearning for some other master or mistress.

I wanted him to want me.

It sounded so pathetic even to me that I abruptly shoved my half-full plate away, my appetite gone. I couldn’t let the boy figure out just how much he was getting to me. He’d play me like a fucking fiddle if he realized just how desperate I was for him to surrender.

There was a knock on the door, unexpected and out of place, and I froze. Could I pretend I wasn’t there?

It was probably some delivery person, come to deliver one of the countless packages I ordered on a regular basis, but I wasn’t used to them knocking. They usually just left the box and went on their way, knowing I wouldn’t live this far off the beaten path if I didn’t want privacy.

I glanced down at where my arm was a little red from where Toby had bitten me, shaking my head. I didn’t have time to slip into a long-sleeved shirt, so I dared going to the door without it.

On the other side, as expected, was a bored-looking delivery woman.

“Yes?” I asked her, willing her to just go away .

“I have a package that needs to be signed for,” she told me. Her eyes flicked over me, avoiding the sight of my face and where the scar went down beneath my shirt. It went instead to my arm, and I could see her looking curiously at the mark.

Goddamnit. I should’ve just ignored the fucking door.

I took the device and stylus from her, explaining offhandedly, “Training a new dog. ”

She brightened at that. “Oh yeah? What kind? I have two German Shepherds at home.”

“Just a mutt,” I told her, flashing her the most charming smile I could manage from beneath the deterring mask of scars.

“Oh, those can be the best dogs,” she said, taking the thing back from me and starting to tap different sections of the screen.

“He will be,” I said with a nod, ignoring the way my heart raced in my chest. “He’s just semi-feral right now. He’ll calm down soon.”

She chatted with me about dog training, and all the while, I could only think about the fact that I had a human being in my basement. I was training him to be a dog, calling him a mutt, resigning him to a fate he knew but wasn’t ready to accept yet. But it hadn’t even felt real to me until that moment.

It felt real to me then, as I picked the package up from the ground. More supplies. More things to use against my unwilling pup. More training tools.

More. So much more.

I was genuinely smiling by the time I closed the door behind her, but that didn’t stop me from locking it with all three of its locks as always. She might’ve seemed nice, and she might’ve bought the dog story hook, line, and sinker, but that didn’t mean anything.

I was breathing normally even though it felt like a near thing.

The exhaustion that adrenaline had mostly kept at bay was coming back to haunt me with a vengeance, and I realized just how few hours of sleep I’d gotten over the past few days. I’d been too busy trying to break him down that I’d lost track of time, and it was past time for me to sleep .

Part of me felt bad for leaving him down there with no water, but I wasn’t going to give in. He was going to have to drink water my way now, and he wasn’t going to like it. He was going to wish he’d just put on the collar.

Never mind that this had been inevitable anyway. He’d give in to one thing after another, each worse than the last, until he no longer saw a reason to fight.

That would be when things would get dangerous. He’d seem trustworthy, but I’d have no way of truly knowing when he gave in…

But I was getting ahead of myself. First, I had to continue to break him down, which meant breaking myself down a little in the process. If there was ever a time to sleep, though, it was now. It would give him plenty of time to think.

I retreated to my room, pulling the blackout curtains in place to keep the sun at bay. I stripped down, crawling naked beneath the sheets, and I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

It was evening when I woke again, and I headed straight into the shower. My new pup had to be thirsty and hungry again, and it would be time to see him wrap the collar around his own throat…

I could picture it in my mind, the strip of leather against his neck, the padlock shining in the light. I could see him kneeling. I could see him eating out of the bowl again without his hands. I could imagine what he’d look like with the mitts I ordered, too, though I wasn’t ready to take away the use of his hands. He had a little bit of a ways to go before that because it meant he wouldn’t be as easily able to humiliate himself for me…

I groaned, fisting my cock tighter, and stroked myself. I imagined the look on his face, and I imagined him barking for me, playing with his ball and his squeaky toys and—

My release sprayed against the wall, quickly washed away by the shower.

I leaned my head back, breathing heavily. His face lingered in my mind, the way he’d looked when I’d bathed him and he’d gotten fully clean. It had been a good look on him.

I turned the water off and got out, drying myself off vigorously before plodding back to my room to get dressed. It didn’t take me long, but it was important that I look impeccable compared to his nudity.

He didn’t say anything when I got back downstairs, and neither did I. I went straight to the boxes of supplies I’d had delivered over the past few weeks I’d been planning this, searching for one item in particular. I started to take it out, then I paused.

No, he didn’t need to see what I was planning. I grabbed a second collar, like that was the thing I’d really been going for, and headed back to the kennel.

He was awake, gazing out over the cell, and he refused to look at me — like that was going to make me go away.

The collar I’d put in there was nowhere to be found, and I slowly shook my head. “What did you do with the collar?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure if he was going to answer me for a moment. He kept ignoring me, and I waited for a moment, curious to see how long he’d play this game.

“You’re only making this worse for yourself,” I warned him — as though he really needed the reminder. He knew what he was doing, even if he didn’t know just how bad I could make it… or how prepared I was to do just that. “Acting like a sullen child isn’t going to help. ”

“Nothing is,” he finally said, still staring across the kennel instead of turning his head to look at me. “No matter what I do, you’re still going to keep making it worse.”

“It’ll get better,” I promised him, playing with the collar in my hands.

He scoffed.

“Once you learn to behave.”

“You mean once I let you turn me into your dog .”

How he could put so much vitriol into one word was beyond me, but I ignored it. He’d had to deal with a lot in a short period of time on very little sleep — and most of it drugged, at that. I didn’t want to be outright cruel, even though he probably would have argued that all of it was.

He had no idea. He could’ve landed in the hands of a true sadist who got off on his pain, who’d already started raping and whipping him. What I was doing was positively mild in comparison.

There was a part of me that wanted to show him how bad it could get, how gentle I’d been in comparison, but I bit back that part of me. I had plenty of other toys and punishments I could use without ever touching him that would make him miserable.

“What happened to the collar?” I repeated.

He finally looked at me, and I could see the tear streaks down his cheeks. “I threw it down the drain,” he spat. “Where it belonged. Then I pissed on it.”

I stilled. I hadn’t expected that answer, and I wasn’t even sure why it was a surprise. I nodded slowly. “That was an expensive collar,” I told him, but I still spun the new collar around in my hand. “But the good thing is, I have a spare.”

“I’m still not putting it on.”

“No food or water until you put that collar around your throat and snap the padlock into place,” I countered .

He flinched. “You’d kill me?”

“You’ll give in before it ever gets to be dangerous,” I told him, dismissing the words. I knew I was right, too. He had yielded so beautifully so many times before. “Are we going to play the same game again? Bark when you’re ready to give in?”

He stared at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He had to be hungry and thirsty already, and it wouldn’t take long for him to give in. “What if I don’t?” he asked, putting on a brave front — but I could see the scared little boy behind the adult’s defiant mask.

“Then I’ll eventually force-feed you and put a tube down your throat to make sure you get water,” I said evenly.

“So why shouldn’t I just wait for that?”

If he thought that was the better option, he’d never been force-fed before. “Make yourself miserable, then.” I shrugged and deliberately set the collar next to the padlock on the nearby shelf. “I’ll just leave this here.” I met his eyes, but he flinched and looked away first. “You know the drill,” I said. “When you’re ready to give in, just let out a little bark.”

If looks could kill, I’d have dropped dead then and there. As it was, I watched him without a word before turning.

I waited until I was at the top of the stairs before telling him, “Oh, and I’m not coming back until either you give me that bark or I have to chain you down and force-feed you. You decide which is preferable.”

“Fuck off, you ugly-ass scarred bastard,” he muttered.

My face went blank, but I said nothing of it. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been called worse, and I was sure he had more where that came from.