Traded for Love (2 page)

“Is everything okay?” I asked, approaching the crib.

“Hm?” He shifted his attention to me, and the faraway look in his eye dissipated. “I'm fine.”

“She probably wants her bottle. Could you make it for me?” I asked as I put Katherine over my shoulder and patted her back. He didn't smile, just watched me soothe her. The silence became too much for me, and the way his eyes bored into mine made me uncomfortable. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about how motherhood becomes you.” His mouth kicked up in a smile. “You're the picture-perfect wife, you know that?”

I feigned humility, though I secretly agreed with him. “If you say so.” I chuckled and bounced the baby in my arms. He started to leave, but stopped in the doorway. He was still smiling. “Are you
really
okay? Or are you just saying that?” I probed.

His smile grew to a grin. “Of course. Everything's fine. I'll go make the bottle now.” He disappeared through the doorway and I heard his footsteps going downstairs to the kitchen.

Katherine calmed and quietened, so I took her to the changing table to get a fresh burping cloth for her feeding. I sat down in the rocking chair and put my feet up, scoffing at a hole in my sock as our daughter gurgled in my lap.

My thoughts wandered to why Jack was acting so strange. At least it wasn't really a
new
thing. He'd been that way for months. There were nights he never came to bed. He'd say he was working late in his office, yet I could swear I heard the front door open and shut.

What I hated most about his behavior was that it included him not being interested in me sexually anymore. Things had dried up and I was beginning to suspect the worst. A man with a libido like Jack's didn't just
stop
wanting sex, not without something serious happening chemically or physically.

He reappeared a few minutes later with the bottle. I smiled at him as he brought it over. To be sure it was the right temperature, I tested it on my wrist.

“Ouch!” I exclaimed with a hiss.

“What? What happened?”

“It's scalding hot, Jack! You could have burned the baby's mouth! Didn't you test it?” I scolded as I wiped the hot milk off on the burping cloth. The baby whined at my change of position. “Shh. It's okay, sweetie. Mama just got hurt. Your bottle's coming.” I stood up and put her over my shoulder again.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Well, I can't give her
this
, can I? I have to make a fresh one and put this one in the fridge.”

He shot me a glare and my cheeks flushed. I clamped my mouth shut.

“You know, there was a time you wouldn't
dream
of talking to me that way,” he said. His jaw flexed and I knew he was clenching his teeth. The anger in his expression might have aroused me in the past. Now that I knew it wouldn't mean a swift, hard spanking, it terrified me instead.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you that way.” My gaze dropped to the carpet. “I'll be right back.” I went down the stairs and into the kitchen. He'd left the stove on with a pot of boiling water going. I turned it off and put Katherine in her high-chair while I made the new bottle.

Once the milk was just right, I returned to the nursery.

Jack wasn't there.

My heart sank.

I fought the sudden urge to cry. I hadn't asked him to stay, but I'd hoped he would.

It was like I never saw him anymore.

The baby and I both suffered from whatever had changed Jack. His love for Katherine had seemed to wane. Initially, he'd seemed enthralled with the idea of having a baby and being a father, but now …

To both me, and the baby, he'd become distant—and cold.

(The Next Night)

I'd been holding back the question for which I craved an answer. I had to know where my value lay—if I still had a place in this mansion he'd brought me to, if I still held a place in his heart.

We sat in the dining room at the long table draped with a white cloth. I was at one end, watching him. He was at the other, reading an article on his iPad. Nadine served the soup course and he didn't even bother to look up from what he was doing to thank her.

As she set my bowl down, I smiled up at her. “Thank you, Nadine.”

“I hope you like it, ma'am,” she said, her face brightening up.

I dipped my spoon in the Italian wedding soup she'd made and took a bite, keeping my eyes on him. For a few minutes, he sat there absorbed in whatever he was reading.

“Aren't you hungry?” I asked.

“Hm?” he hummed, swiping his finger across his screen.

“I asked if you were hungry or not. You haven't touched your first course. It's Italian wedding, your favorite.” I tried hard to put genuine love and sentiment into my smile, but what did it matter if he couldn't even see it?

I dropped my spoon, angry at him for being so ignorant. Our lives were passing by right in front of us and he didn't care to give me the smallest bit of respect or attention.

At the sound of my utensil clattering against the porcelain dish, he turned his eyes slowly up from his device. “Something wrong, honey?”

I couldn't do anything but frown at the smart-ass way he called me
honey
.
The only way to reign in my anger was to bite the inside of my lower lip. I often steadied myself that way. “I need to ask you something.”

One of his eyebrows rose, but both his eyelids drooped. “Can it wait?”

“No,” I said firmly.

He set aside his iPad and adjusted the collar of the dress-shirt he wore underneath his sweater vest. “Ask away then. I'm all ears.”

I looked him directly in the eye. “What am I to you?”

“What do you mean?” His lip curled in obvious disgust at my question. “You're my wife.”

“And what does that word mean to you?” I didn't take my gaze from his.

He sighed and sat back in his chair. “You're the woman I love. You're the woman I take to bed. You're the mother of my child.” He recited the list casually, as if he'd rehearsed it a hundred times.

“Do you love me?”

He thumbed at the corner of his bottom lip, then narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. It was one of the attitudes he always assumed when analyzing something or someone deeply. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Never mind that. Answer the question,” I demanded.

He stood up from his chair and paced over the marble floor to my chair. He seemed to tower over me. The fact that he hadn't answered my question and the steely reserve with which he looked at me was breaking my resolve.

Seeing him standing above me like that made my insides melt and my core temperature jump up by a thousand degrees. It was remarkable the effect he had on me, even after the months we'd gone without touching.

He cupped my chin and looked down at me with half-naked eyes, the eyes of a true dominant Master. “I'm surprised at you, Emily.”

I swallowed hard as his thumb ran over my lips. “You know, it's been too long since I've enjoyed this mouth.”

Just like that, I was paralyzed, lost in his blue eyes. I'd been lost like this before, but now he'd caught me at a time when I was
most
vulnerable. Already, between my legs, my tender nerves were remembering what it felt like to be ravaged, licked, pressed by his fingers, his tongue, his cock.

He bent his head and my eyelids drifted closed. I couldn't count the number of times he'd cast this spell over me, but I'd always gone willingly along with the magic. Now he was doing it again, seducing me as he had all those months ago, making me a slut for his touch.

His breath was hot on my lips, but was suddenly gone. The pleasure I expected to feel was replaced by the pain of a slap across the face.

The sting of my punishment was unexpected, torturous, and delicious. I was breathing hard, my nipples painfully erect and pressing through the satin bra under my blouse. Every part of my body was awake for him, wanting him, waiting for him—brought out of deep sexual hibernation by his answer to my question.

If he didn't love me, he wouldn't have done what he knew would make me ache for him. The slap was his answer, and all I wanted to do was get on my knees and please him right there in the dining room.

“Nadine!” he barked. “No more food. You're dismissed!”

I heard the kitchen's second exit door open and close.

Nadine was gone and it was just us.

“Get naked. Now,” he ordered.

He'd trained me so well that my heart jumped at his command. “Yes, Master,” I said, drunk with lust.

I stood and pulled off my shirt and pants. The underwear I'd picked for myself were not fancy by any means. They were plain satin, meant more for comfort than coverage or support.

“Since when does
naked
mean bra and panties?” he asked, irritation in his voice. “I said
get naked
!” he shouted.

I reached behind me and unsnapped my bra, then slid my panties down to my ankles.

His line of sight moved to the table, then back to me.

“Bend over your chair,” he instructed.

“Yes, Master.” I did as he asked, laying stomach down across the seat and sticking my ass out for him. I could feel my warm juices flowing down the inside of my thighs. I was already prepared for him, already ready to become his whore.

I heard his belt-buckle and my inner masochist wept tears of joy.
He's going to spank me
, I thought. I secretly hoped he would leave marks, ones I would feel in the morning.

The feel of leather
did
come, but not where I expected. He wrapped his belt around the thick of my thighs and closed the clasp around them. Before I knew it, he'd restrained me to the chair legs.

I heard the ice in the bucket near my plate rustle.

“Spread.”

Trembling with both excitement and fear, I reached behind me and pulled the folds of my pussy apart. My mind was a riot. I expected that he'd be using ice on me.

“Have you stayed tight for your Master?” he asked.

A shiver rocked me. “Yes, Sir.”

“What's that?” He cupped his ear and bent closer. “I can't hear you.”

“Yes, Sir, I've stayed tight for you.”

“You haven't been playing with yourself have you?”

“No, Sir.” I actually
was
telling the truth. Orgasms didn't come easy, and when I did have them, they weren't through penetration, but through clitoral stimulation in the bathtub or shower.

“I don't know if I believe you,” he said. I did feel something cold, but it was
not
ice. Then I remembered that the only thing in the ice bucket had been a long, thin wine bottle. It was the smooth, frigid glass of the wine bottle rubbing against my clit.

I cried out and squirmed, but there was no way I'd get away. He'd secured me to the heavy chair. I wasn't going
anywhere
.

“We'll have to see how easily you take this,” he said. “If it goes in easy, I'll know you're lying.”

Bracing for untold amounts of pain, I pulled myself apart as wide as I could.

I heard him spit, then felt the warm wetness trickle over my asshole and around the entrance to my core. Gasping, I curled my toes in anticipation.

I clenched as the chilled, wet glass pressed over me. Then, without warning, he began inserting it. The circumference couldn't have been too wide, three inches maybe, but it was still a massive stretch for me, especially since nothing had been inside me for months. It took effort for him to get even a small part of the bottle in. I bit my lip against the sting.

“It's going in so easily,” he said with disappointment in his voice. He was lying, but I knew why. It was so he could punish me for it, and I was more than happy to accept it. “You
have
been lying, haven't you?”

He struck my ass hard with his open palm.

“Ah! No, Master!”

“Liar!” he screamed, delivering a quick succession of blows to my ass cheeks. With each one, my hips jumped.

He began rotating the bottle, which coated another few inches of it with natural lubrication. “You want the whole thing, don't you, you dirty slut?”

“I want whatever you want, Master,” I said obediently. “Whatever you want … ” I whispered.

Without mercy, he began violating me with the wine bottle. It was unforgivably cold and hard, nothing like the warm cock I craved. Still, I took what he offered, allowing him to fuck me up to the edge of an orgasm. He could always tell when I was about to come. There were responses I couldn't control, telltale signs that I was about to lose it.

The pitch of my voice would escalate; my breathing would quicken.

He knew just when to stop—so that he could deny me.

Grunting, he leaned over and growled in my ear, “You disgust me.”

I stayed silent, hoping he'd grant me an orgasm,
hoping
he'd show me a little bit of grace.

When I heard his zipper, I thought my heart would burst. I was no better than a bitch in heat, happy to get her share of his affection.

“I bet you'd love to have both holes filled, wouldn't you?” he asked, punctuating the question with a dark laugh. “Fine. I'll give you what you want.”

The hot head of his cock, slick with precum, pressed against my asshole. I was sure I'd died and gone to Heaven. It'd been so long since I'd experienced double penetration that I'd almost forgotten what it was like.