Page 29 of The Beast Who Broke Me
“You told me to use you,” I point out. “I did. You got any other training tricks for me today, or are we done here?”
His face changes, morphs from understanding into glacial neutrality, and he slides off the desk to grab his pants and pull them back on. “There’s one more thing. What’s your status?”
“My what?”
“Your STI status.” He buttons his pants, not looking at me. “Have you even been tested recently?”
The question stings. Not because it’s unreasonable, but because it’s completely normal. The kind of thing anyone should ask before?—
Before.
“I’m negative for everything,” I tell him.
“And you know this because?”
“Because I ain’t stupid. I get checked.”
“How reassuring to finally know.” He smooths his hair back with one hand.
We never had that conversation. There was a contract and an auction and himpushingandpushingme until I fucked him bare…
I want to remind him that hesoldhimself. Signed a contract, agreed to his treatment, which would’ve been a hell of a lot worse if that now-dead Russian had bought him?—
But I keep my mouth shut.
He steps into the elevator and turns to face me, and even hoarse-voiced and flushed and wearing a shirt with no buttons, he looks like he’s the one dismissing me. “We’re done for tonight. But I think it would do you good to spend the night down here, Dami. You can send me up to your bedroom.”
He signed that contract at the Obelisk. So what I did to him was?—
“Fine,” I say.
I thought for sure he’d demand that I give him bio-access to the elevator, but he doesn’t. So I send him back up and then turn to look around the basement.
Caligula Clemenza really hates it down here. So he figured I must hate it, too. Joke’s on him. I spent all the free time I could down here before I had him, thinking about what I’d do when Ididhave him.
So I wander over to the layout of his old bedroom. It’s getting a little dusty down here; I used to clean it out once a month while I fantasized about which “room” I’d eventually kill the Clemenza in. I shake out the bedspread, and then I slide into his bed, just like he’s doing to mine upstairs. I put my arms behind my head and think of him up there, all those floors above me.
He might think he has me where he wants me, but I just need to wait him out.
And I’m very good at waiting.
CHAPTER 12
DAMIANO
I wake earlyand shower in the facilities I so kindly provided for the Clemenza during his stay down here. And then I wrap a towel around my waist and use the elevator to go up to my room.
Caligula is still lazing around in bed when I walk in, and jumps like he got caught doing something. I bet I know what it was, too, because he’s very quick to pull both hands out from under the covers. His eyes drop to the towel around my hips, and stay there a beat too long before snapping back up.
“Do I need to put the cage back on you?” I ask him, leaning against the door after closing it.
He goes pink. All the way down to his collarbones, visible above the sheets. “You will not use that thing on me again,” he says imperiously, as though he has any say in the matter.
“Why wouldn’t I? You said you’d honor the contract you signed. That means your body belongs to me. If I want to cage you, I’ll fucking cage you.”
I let him think about that as I walk through to the closet. I know he’s watching me go. I feel those eyes on my back, tracking thetattoos across my shoulders and that nasty slice I got working on one ofhiscrazy schemes.
“What are you doing in here anyway?” His voice carries through. “I didn’t call for you.”
