Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
On this evening, a week on from the beginning of my punishment, I sit on the floor beside him at the dinner table, being fed occasional scraps from his fingers. Every time I try to rise from my kneeling position, I am pushed firmly back down. There is absolutely no respite from his vicious mastery.
“You can’t treat me like this forever,” I mutter under my breath.
He slides two fingers under my chin and turns my face up to him. I look up into his reddish-brown eyes that have so much soul and somehow so much darkness in them at the exact same time.
“I could happily do this for years,” he says. “A lifetime of owning a pet like you would be quite entertaining. But I understand you might need more than I can feed you with my fingers, so I have made arrangements.”
A silver bowl was placed on the table earlier by a butler who pretended not to notice what is going on. He places some food in it, then slides it onto the floor in front of me.
“You can feed yourself,” he says. “But not with your hands. Be a good little pet and eat it like the animal you are.”
He’s trying to shame me. He thinks if he can break me of my humanity and force me to act like an animal, he’ll be in more control. But this is all game playing really. There is no amount of punishment that will bring his brother back, and we both know it.
“Hey,” he snaps, tugging my head back so I look up at him. “You’re thinking,” he says. “And I don’t care for what you’re thinking.”
“How would you know what I’m thinking?”
He smiles at me, but it doesn’t get to his eyes. It lingers about his mouth for a moment, then dies. “I know so much about you, Ella. I know what lives inside you. I know what you love, and I know what you hate.”
I know that can’t be true. People can’t see inside other people’s heads. But there’s a little part of me that almost believes him. Aiden’s instincts are uncanny, and his temperament is well known as being borderline psychic.
He releases me again, and I am faced with the choice to eat from a bowl like a common household pet, or go hungry. I am much more inclined to go hungry. He can starve me to the point of eating out of a bowl if he likes, but I’m not going to hand this victory to him so easily.
“Lay off her, man. Let her at least sit at the table,” Luke speaks up.
Luke doesn’t have the stomach for this the way the others do. The Levin family could be understood, in some ways, as having been printed on a machine with evil ink. Aiden got the first, best, fullest dose. It started to run a little lower with Leo, but he still has plenty of it in him. Luke got perhaps a quarter dose, and it was all but gone by the time Teddy was born.
“Pets belong on the floor,” Aiden says. “Vicious little creatures who plot against us are fortunate to be alive.”
“I didn’t plot against you. I was a tool in it.”
He knows that. They all do. I don’t know why I am bothering to defend myself, knowing that it isn’t really a defense. I was involved in Teddy’s death, I am guilty, and this treatment could be worse.
Aiden looks down at me, then up at his brother. “I think I’ll take my girl for a walk,” he says, clipping a leash to the collar at my neck.
Aiden
My brother keeps arguing for the woman who needs to be punished. Ella needs for something to happen. She needs to suffer to some extent so she can forgive herself, let alone be forgiven by us. Sometimes these nuances are lost on my brother.
I, in the meantime, have a new toy waiting in my bedroom that will continue the process of atoning for sins so deep they stain souls.
She crawls next to me, more lithe and agile than she gives herself credit for. I know that holding these rules for her, forcing her to do as I tell her, enforcing the boundaries of my world will help her adjust in time. Giving in and letting her sit at our table is not an option. Not yet.
What awaits for my sweet pet is a set of low stocks, the height for a woman to put her head and arms through while kneeling, keeping her head under control.
“In you go,” I order gently, but firmly.
She looks pouty and resentful, and I am sure she thinks she deserves better treatment than this, but I disagree. She does not argue. She puts herself into position, her head and arms supported by the stocks, her upper body resting on a padded bench that makes the position less painful than it might otherwise be.