Contract Renewed (Contracted Book 3) Read online

  So some days I went to the trial, and some days I didn't. Many days when I wasn't at the trial, I stayed in bed, unable to bring myself to leave. Nathaniel didn't bother me when I stayed in bed. Just like I didn't disturb him when he would rage and lock himself away.

  The smallest thing would set it off. The news would mention the trial. A fork would be slanted on the napkin.

  I think the serving staff understood that we were both stressed. It took a long time for me to get over seeing Nathaniel like that. To my eyes, he'd be fine one moment and throwing a tantrum the next. Whatever was going on with him, he'd have a still moment that came over him as suddenly as the rage, and he'd lock himself away in his rooms.

  I never asked about that. I was afraid to.

  The trial consumed so much of our lives, on and off for months on end. In those first few months, we struggled to find our new places amongst the chaotic disorder that Albert created. Every bit of our lives was marched before the public eye. We had to find our new place amongst the new world.

  Change makes people act strangely.

  For myself, I drank more.

  I'm not happy to admit that. There was a week where that was all I did, which was why I made no public appearances for that time. I wouldn't say that I ever sank to the lowest of the lows with alcohol, but I went from not drinking at all, to drinking every other night depending on what happened.

  Do you recall Mary? How her Dom had pushed the habit onto her?

  Doms can also break a habit rather quickly when they set their minds to it.

  I may have been on the road to alcoholism, but it did not last long.

  Outside of the trial, it was surreal to see life continue as per usual. My mother got a hold of those in the Program building, and not through Mr. Wrightworth. She told them who she was, who I was, and then demanded she be given access to phone calls, or she'd go to the press with every sordid detail of my affair with Mr. Wrightworth.

  Which I hadn't told her about.

  I talked a little about my time with Mr. Wrightworth. I did not mention the sex at any point. She didn't even know that her threat was very real until years later. She also hadn't realized that, had she waited a few more days, the permanent visitor's pass would have made its way to her through the mail.

  I may have shared every little detail of my sexual relationship with Nathaniel, but even then I wasn't ready to tell her that I had slept with two men within a year. Let alone that I had slept with both of them within a few hours of each other.

  Nathaniel and I went to church every Sunday. Reporters followed us a time or two; many were sent away. One day Ezekiel got fed up and let someone slip in.

  With a camera.

  What was recorded was a group of prominent members of society sitting alongside poor folk whom they had taken contracts out on. All paid very close attention to Ezekiel as he preached about loving thy fellow man, and God's love. He talked a great deal about not carrying our beliefs into public because we might cause pain to others by pressing our beliefs on them, and it was not our place to cause pain.

  The reporter got up, and he left.

  And then someone snickered.

  Ezekiel had such fun giving a demonstration of proper impact play on the... er... volunteer.

  We did dinners. We did movie nights.

  But Albert Edwards stood between us at every turn once the trial started. To say the sex was lacking would be putting it accurately. Every day that I went to the trial, I felt violated all over again. Every day that I stayed home, I felt like I was failing other survivors.

  If I couldn't stand against Albert Edwards, I reasoned, why would they stand against the men who had done them harm?

  I didn't touch or caress or giggle. Not with Nathaniel, Mr. Wrightworth or myself. Definitely not with Patrick or Susanne as some rumours at the time seemed to imply.

  The first month was very much what I feared it would be. Nathaniel not touching me, and me not even able to masturbate.

  Between the pair of them, Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth had opened me up to a world of sexual pleasures. By the end of the month, my skin was itching with a need to be ridden.

  It made me cranky and bitter, and just a little bitey.

  The day that my trainer filed a formal complaint, I ended up sitting across from Nathaniel in a formal meeting. The man watched me with his cold green eyes as if summing up every bit of the previous month, wondering just how far I had fallen.

  “Formal complaint,” Nathaniel said, reaching forward to push a sheet of paper towards me. “I've never had to deal with a formal complaint before. So this was an interesting course of events. During which I had to learn just what a formal complaint meant.

  “What it means—don't you dare speak until I am done—is that your trainer, a man who I trust with my life, who I enjoy working with because he's the only one who can spar with me and doesn't make me feel like I need to have sex with him, is threatening to quit because you bit him. Like an animal.”

  “We were sparring.”

  “On the testicles?”

  “I grabbed the purchase I was offered, perhaps he should consider where his crotch is in proximity to my mouth.”

  “I don't want to lose the man.”

  “I don't want a crotch in my face.”

  “I'll put a crotch in your face, and put your mouth to good use.”

  My guts roiled at the prospect. It had been so long, and despite the fact that his words were said in anger, I desperately wanted him to act upon them. If I thought for a moment that being a brat would draw that sort of attention, I would have just started batting things off his desk.

  A bit like a cat, I suppose.

  I eyed a prized business award perched on the edge of his desk. It was made of thick glass and wood. It would probably survive the fall. I didn't understand why he placed it so close to the edge of the desk, so very near to falling. All it would take was a little tap with my hand, and it would tumble over and toward the floor.

  Ever so slowly, I turned my attention to Nathaniel and met his cold green eyes.

  There might have been a time to be a brat, but he was truly upset and didn't want to deal with that right then.

  “Perhaps you should put my mouth to better use on a more regular basis.”

  “I don't think this has anything to do with my putting your mouth to better use,” Nathaniel countered.

  “You know what? Fuck you. I bit a guy. His dick was in my face.”

  “It was nowhere near your face, I have the footage to prove it, you lunged at him. You went from his face to his crotch. What the fuck, Izzy?”

  I sat there feeling small and stupid. I didn't know why I had attacked the trainer the way I had. There was no answer that I could provide to Nathaniel as to why. He watched me for a very long time as the silence predominated over the room.

  “I need an answer.”

  “I don't have one,” I mumbled into my lap.

  “We have a party in a few days. I can't have rich folk here if you're biting people. Even if it is BDSM themed, biting people is wrong, do you at least understand that?"

  “Of course I understand that,” I said to my lap.

  “So why did you do it?”

  “I dunno.”

  Nathaniel was silent. The quiet drew out so long that I looked up from my lap. He studied me as one might a puzzle. There was no judgment in his eyes, no anger either. Just a blank look.

  Eventually, he sighed out.

  “Obviously I've been too lenient with you.”

  My heart dropped even as heat flooded my limbs. I tried ever so desperately not to adjust in my seat as his eyes flowed down me, taking in every twitch of my fingers as I registered his words.

  “No biting—that should be obvious at this point—no attacking your trainer—I don't give a fuck if he's a man and you have a problem with them—and I will no longer accept 'I dunno' as an appropriate response. Look at me, when I'm speaking to you Izzy.”

  I me
t his eyes, but I had to grit my teeth and clench my hands to do so.

  “If you bite again, I will gag you until you learn to behave. If you attack your trainer, I will use you as a punching bag. Don't think a public trial will stop me. And if you use such illiterate terms again? You will be copying books on correct grammatical usage until your fingers are raw. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Nathaniel shuddered. His eyes drifted closed for a moment. I swear he relished that shudder. He relished every second of whatever it was that went through his mind. And then his eyes opened again, and the ice was back in them.

  “Say that again.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  His lips quirked upward, just ever so slightly. Nathaniel was up and around the desk before I completely registered the fact that it wasn't the words that might be the problem. The tone of voice I was saying them in could best be described as 'fuck off and die slowly.' It was a tone of voice that many are likely familiar with. I agreed with him in words, but I was never one to hide what I felt from my tone.

  I sounded snide. I sounded arrogant.

  I sounded like I was talking to a man.

  My Sir perched on the edge of his desk, looking very much amused as he watched me.

  “Say it again,” he purred out.

  By that point, I knew something was wrong. Twice is, well, it's a whatever. Sometimes he'd ask me to repeat what I had said because he misheard, or his mind was simply in the gutter. Three times, though, and something was wrong. I struggled as I stared up at him mutely.

  No matter my answer, I was in trouble.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I've had a dress made for you, for the party. You will wear it.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said, understanding that this was what was required.

  Nathaniel reached out, taking my chin in his hand. He drew my face upwards until I met his eyes. As our eyes locked once more, another flush rushed through me, but it had the unmistakable tinge of arousal. Heat flooded me, the likes of which I hadn't felt since I had first entered Nathaniel's estate.

  “Obey,” he said.

  “Yes, Sir,” I whimpered in response.

  His thumb grazed over my jaw, smile growing more noticeable.

  “Finally, there it is,” he murmured, leaning closer to me. “The proper way to greet your Sir.”

  He pulled away suddenly. When I let out a small, startled sound, he stopped, glancing over his shoulder at me.

  “You may go.”

  I fled the study.

  It wasn't until I was back in my room, heart pounding in my chest, that it occurred to me that I had nothing to fear. My heart wasn't pounding from fear, though. It was attempting to beat out of my chest as I struggled to comprehend what had just happened.

  My tone of voice had challenged Nathaniel, and rather than confront that challenge with a physical assault—which I very much would have enjoyed—Nathaniel had taken control in an entirely different way.

  He forced me to submit without so much as touching me.

  Because before Nathaniel's hand was on my chin, I was already his. At that moment I also realized that he had sent me away as punishment for attitude, or perhaps for the bite that started the conversation. I ached with need but knew better than to try to relieve myself.

  Nathaniel hadn't expressly forbidden masturbation, but orgasm control was technically still in effect.

  I looked down, tempted for just a moment. But Mr. Wrightworth had inadvertently taken me to that edge before. I had been oh so sore for days on end afterward. And I knew that if I did such a thing and Nathaniel thought for a second that I might enjoy the punishment that ensued, he would alter the discipline.

  I didn't want to know what else a sadist might do to deter un-approved orgasms.

  Shakily, I approached the desk and sat there. I wrote about the day I filled out my journal for the first time in days and flipped back through the scribbled pages. It didn't take long to figure out that I only wrote while drunk, a fact that disturbed me. I went to great lengths to fill the pages after that point. Half of what I had written before was incomprehensible to me. The other half was best described as riddled with angst.

  I was disturbed at that time in my life. I knew that even then.

  But no one likes looking back and seeing evidence of their weaknesses, which is what I see whenever I pull out those journals. Weakness. I was weak, not because I had been victimized and taken advantage of, not because I had been hurt, but because I let the hurt continue for so long unchecked. I went about my daily life as if nothing happened, and then in the dark of the night, drank instead of dealing with the pain.

  That was the turning moment for me. One moment being with Nathaniel, being us again, and then the next being alone in my room, reading my journal and realizing that the only thing that separated Albert and me was time. I had been reliving what he had done to me, and it had been allowed. I had remained in that time, and the problem with Nathaniel and I wasn't that we didn't mesh any longer.

  It was that I was caught someplace else, at a different time.

  I don't blame myself now, but then there was a lot of anger, self-hatred even. I sat at that desk for a very long time, just staring at the journal. I fought the urge to burn the damned thing. Rationale won out. Destroying it wouldn't change anything, it would just deny what had happened, bury it as some poor folk would sweep the dust under a rug when an unexpected visitor showed up.

  One way or another, it had to be dealt with. I couldn't move on with my life otherwise.

  For lack of another option, I called Mr. Wrightworth. I was honest with him about how I felt. He didn't ask if I had told Nathaniel, there was no questioning about it besides whether or not I was okay.

  I looked at the empty wine glass sitting on the desk, at the half-empty bottle of wine that I didn't recall ordering, and responded the only way I knew how.

  “I... don't know.”

  The next morning a therapist—one I had never spoken to before—arrived at Nathaniel's estate. Until the day of her death, she was my therapist. She never told me who had hired her, or if I was her only client, but she was there whenever I needed her. She answered every call I ever had, and we had a regular schedule.

  She made me feel like a person when everyone else in my life made me feel like a victim. Even looking at Nathaniel, I still felt like he only saw his father's punching bag.

  That was what I needed right then. She was the stepping stone back to reality, back to the person I was before Albert Edwards.

  Fuck Albert Edwards.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Has she gone home?” Nathaniel asked as I slipped into his room.

  He was asking after my therapist, who visited so often. Directly before Nathaniel's party was the first time that she insisted I let her come over, and we talk. She knew the party was going to be a big event and wanted me to be as comfortable as possible.

  Directly after the trial, she met me on the drive of Nathaniel's estate. We had spoken for well over an hour before I had walked her to the front and said goodbye. By that time, the Dommes were filing in to set up in the front hall, and the party was two hours away.

  I showered, dried my hair, prepared both my hair and my face to the best of my amateurish skill with makeup, then had dressed and gone to present myself to Nathaniel, who I found irritable as he had been for the past week.

  The man adjusted his tie and turned to me, sliding his hands into his pockets. Not before I caught a glimpse of a purple square cut rock in a ring I had never seen before. With a frown, I met Nathaniel's eyes.

  “They're aware of the ring,” Nathaniel said. “The metal wasn't the important part, so I had it reset in something a little more masculine.”

  He had cannibalized Mr. Wrightworth's ring. A million questions welled up inside me, but I bit them all back. What it all boiled down to was one simple, small question that had to be a
nswered before I laid eyes on Mr. Wrightworth and blurted out what I knew in the hopes of avoiding a whipping.

  “Did he agree to that?” I asked.

  “No, he didn't,” Nathaniel murmured, closing the distance between us. “There comes a time when you need to stop begging for permission, and just do it.”

  “What did you do with the ring?” I asked.

  Nathaniel shrugged. The answer was dismissive and uncaring, neither qualities that I expected in a reply from Nathaniel concerning Mr. Wrightworth. It almost seemed like Nathaniel wanted to bait Mr. Wrightworth.

  With his recent mood, I didn't doubt that his plan may have been just that, to bait Mr. Wrightworth into taking action. The use of the ring as the bait seemed excessive and hurtful. I couldn't imagine how Mr. Wrightworth would react to such a betrayal and, frankly, I wanted no part of it.

  “Nathaniel, he spent a lot of money on that ring,” I protested.

  “I'll pay him back for it.”

  “That's not the point, and you know it," I said. "Mr. Wrightworth wasn't born rich, the monetary price of that ring is not as important as what it meant."

  “The other option would be to give it back to him,” Nathaniel said. “I'm not ready to make that step, so I'll pay him for the base of the ring. As I said, it's the stone that's important, not the ring itself.”

  “Why?”

  “Purple Sapphire," Mr. Wrightworth said from behind me, causing me to stiffen. "But it's true worth is between Nate and I. Which is why he kept the stone, though I would have appreciated being spoken to before it happened, and not walking in on Darling about to panic after the fact."

  “You aren't allowed to just walk in any longer,” Nathaniel said over me, to Mr. Wrightworth.

  “Guests are starting to arrive,” Mr. Wrightworth said smoothly, walking to the pair of us. “Darling, why don't you be the good sub and go greet them?”

  “Yes, Master,” I said, then glared at Nathaniel.

  I turned to leave but was grabbed by the wrist. Turning back, I glared at Mr. Wrightworth, who had grabbed me. The man's eyes flowed up my backside, then back down before he met my eyes.

  The dress Nathaniel had made for me had a collar, not like a normal clothing collar, but like a collar for a sub, only made of fabric. The collar sat around my neck like a choker and was connected to the body of the dress with two strips of fabric. The main body of the dress was red with a layer of black lace over top of the red.