Max peered over the top of his newspaper as he sat at the breakfast table with Ella. She’d been quiet all week. He watched her push the egg around her plate. She’d hardly touched her breakfast, again. Her face looked pinched and drawn. The woman, who had blossomed over the last two months had disappeared. An unemotional, gaunt figure took her place. He knew she had something on her mind.
Last week he’d found out she’d lied to him. Ella said she’d gone to sign the papers, finalizing the sale of her house. An hour after she’d left, he’d taken a phone call from her attorney, wishing to speak with her. When he’d pointed out that she should already be at his office, her attorney had politely informed him that she’d already signed the relevant papers the previous day.
He had hoped she would come to him and confide her worries. After waiting a whole week, he figured that wasn’t going to happen. If the woman he loved refused to confide in him, there were just two options left. Leave her be and watch their relationship slide further into decline, or try and reach her before it was too late. Now was time to take matters into his own hands.
With exaggerated movements, Max folded the newspaper and slammed it on the breakfast table. He saw Ella flinch as he caught her by surprise. Her eyes warily looked at him. She tried to smile, but he knew it didn’t come easy.
“I’m sorry, Max. Did you say something?”
“You seem a little distracted, Ella. Is there anything you wish to confide in me?”
Her eyes looked huge and she shook her head. “No, Max. I’m perfectly okay.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied her intensely for a while. She squirmed uneasily under his scrutiny. He knew she was still lying. “Are you sure? You know you can’t have any secrets from me. If you are to be my permanent and true slave, you have to surrender everything to me, and that includes your personal thoughts. I need to know everything you are thinking, good or bad.”
He just saw her lower lip tremble before she covered her unwanted reaction, with a hand to her mouth. “I’m fine, Max. I just have a throbbing headache, that’s all.”
“And you’ve had it for an entire week,” he stated incredulously.
“Yes,” she answered meekly.
Max breathed in. “I’ve tried to be patient with you, Ella, but the time for waiting is over. You need to come face-to-face with your Master’s displeasure. I know you are keeping something from me, and it is my duty to find out what it is. Last chance, Ella. Have you anything to say?”
When she didn’t answer, Max sighed resignedly. “Then go and prepare yourself, and meet me in the playroom in half an hour. You need reminding of your place.”
“Yes, Master.” Ella rose almost immediately and hurried from the dining room.
He kept his thoughts firmly on the task in hand. It was his duty to calmly win what he needed from her. To have her true submission would be priceless. Using anger would serve no purpose at all, but using punishment and reward would eventually bring him the results he desired the most.
Max removed his T-shirt and strode over to the playroom. He unlocked one of the full-length mirrors and withdrew a large, bespoke A-frame made of steel. It stood over eight feet tall and could accommodate a person within its structure. He locked it into position in the center of the room by attaching the feet to the floor and clipping the top to the ceiling of the playroom. From behind a wall mirror, he pulled out a table and neatly laid out a number of items that he removed from the old chest that lay in the corner. Some of them were just for show, like the antique pear of anguish. It was an evil device that opened up, inside the body, and was used frequently in medieval times as a sadistic form of torture. If he as much as showed it to Ella, he felt sure she’d use her safeword. He dimmed the lights, setting the scene. Using a video projector, he made the playroom look like the interior of a medieval dungeon. He could almost smell the sawdust on the floor.
Ella appeared exactly on time, as he knew she would. Her beauty still astounded him as she walked toward him in her flowing white robe. He’d given it to her as a gift. It heightened the sacrificial elements of their role-play.