“And you will. I’ll take you into my world slowly. I’ll make you crave it.” Since she’d given her consent, Leo had been filled with anticipation over the idea of turning someone with no kink inclinations into his willing slave who learned to beg for each lash of the whip or strike of the cane. After a week of delving more deeply into Skinner and Breland’s work on conditioning, he was convinced he could create in Faith everything he needed. She already had the most important component—an inborn submissive tendency. With that one trait, he could work miracles.

In their early weeks together, he’d assumed her reactions to him were all fear-based, but as time went on and she’d begun to trust him, her behaviors hadn’t changed. Her shy deference, the way she couldn’t meet his eyes—not due to some duplicity as would have been the case with Caprice, but rather, something in him made her shrink back in recognition of his dominance over her.

She was back to fear at the moment, but he could teach her that even fear could be a good thing. Dread and anticipation were very different, but they could set off the same sets of physiological reactions in the body. The difference was attitude toward the thing anticipated, nothing more.

He watched as she picked over her meal.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine, Master,” she whispered as she tried to get through the baked ziti.

He was toying with her. Leo wondered if his sadism had kicked up a notch. Was he now only satisfied if there was more fear and resistance? What separated him from a serial rapist or a serial killer if he was willing to let this line of consent blur? She’d said she would do these things, but she was clearly so terrified, she might pass out at any moment. Could any attraction or feeling she’d developed for him make this okay in her mind? Or his?

He went to the side pantry to get a roll of aluminum foil. He wrapped his dinner and put it in the fridge then took hers away as well. She was too nervous to eat; she was picking over it. It was better to move them forward now, to let her see that he could ease her into his world and there was nothing to fear.

“The human body is a funny thing. It can be programmed like a computer,” he said. “I can reprogram you so that you like the things I like. I don’t want to torture you.” He wasn’t one hundred percent sure on that last part. But if he said it out loud enough times, maybe it would become true.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

She took his hand and he pulled her into his arms and held her. It was the first time he’d touched her since the previous week when he’d kissed her in her bedroom and sent Mei Lin away. He’d been afraid if he started touching her again he wouldn’t stop. And his touching involved whips and belts and canes and clamps.