Page 42 of The Enslaved Duet

“Crawl to me.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Was there anything more demeaning than that? I didn’t think my knees would bend me to the floor or that my arms would carry me if I dared to try.

“I went to work today in London,” he told me conversationally, completely throwing me off balance.

I’d been sure he was going to shock me.

“Meetings after meetings, my beauty, and do you know what I thought of through each and every one?” Quick as a flash, he snapped the whip in his hand through the air with a viciouscrack. “You, crawling to me across this floor with mirrors all around us so that you could not escape how right you look doing that for me.”

My pussy swelled, my clit like a diamond at its peak. I wanted him to get on his knees and mine me with his tongue.

But this wasn’t about me or my desires.

It was about him.

“Crawl,” he ordered again in a voice just like the lightning crack of the whip.

My body felt filled with lead as I tried to make it move against the objections of my heart. I stared at my trembling knees, but they would not bend.

Why was the act of crawling so difficult?

If I could understand it, I could do it. I knew I could.

But the answer to that question wasn’t easy. It was buried in the cultural norms I’d had instilled in me since birth, and the tangle of Catholicism I’d forsaken as a girl never quite having figured it out.

I caught Alexander’s dark eyes daring me from across the room and grasped that he took pleasure in my struggle.

Maybe it was easier to ask another question.

Why did my Master want me to crawl?

Those answers boiled to the surface of my brain from deep within my gut.

It was sexy. The slow slink of my body over the floor, the high crest of my ass in the air and the way gravity held my breasts in its hands. There was something about seeing a beautiful woman crawl toward you that would made a man feel like primeval lord.

It was power. He was above and I below, my limbs shackled to the ground by his words, my stubborn mind bent under the strong hands of his will. He would be hard beneath his suit trousers, harder maybe than he had ever been before knowing that our wills were at war in my mind and his was winning.

Of course, my Master would want to see me crawl.

I collapsed to the ground gracelessly, like a balloon punctured thanklessly by a child. I focused on my breath as I rolled onto my hands and knees, knowing that if I allowed myself time to reorient myself in my mind, to draw back my empathy from Alexander and root it once more in myself, I would stand up and fight back.

Fighting back was fruitless. Fighting back was for the dumb.

I wasn’t stupid. I was a survivor. I would submit to Alexander’s sexual games if it meant I could earn insight like this into his character. Insight that might get me home.

So I started to crawl.

There was nowhere safe to look save the veined marble floor, which made it impossible to tell where I was moving, but at least I didn’t have to face the sight of me in the mirrors, or even worse, his eyes.

“Master says stop,” Alexander drawled.

I took a moment to comprehend what he had ordered and didn’t stop immediately.

Electricity bit into my skin at the site of my paddles on my breasts, hips, tummy, ass, and thighs. I curled my fingers and toes into the ground, gritted my teeth, and rode out the wave.

After the long pulse of sensation, it was over.