In the event that he intended to slowly work her up going by her list, she wanted to move the clamps further into the future. Given that, should she have listed the belt as the worst?

* * *

Leo observed as Faith went through each item on the wall and in the tray. They’d yet to catalog everything in the toy box. There were still many things in the large box she might find fearful—things she may not have gotten a good look at on their previous tour. He was sure she thought the violet wand was another vibrator and that the concept of playing with electricity would send her over the edge. It would be months before he could introduce it.

And then there was simply the matter of how certain things—even meant for pleasure—might humiliate or scare her because of how much they would expose her to him. He’d seen her naked once in those fleeting moments the first night she’d been in his home—in his room, and briefly in his bed. He’d gorged himself on the look of her, the lush, soft curves. The unmarred flesh. He’d held the memory in his mind for weeks as he’d jerked off in the shower.

He’d been new to her then, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think her shyness was all about newness or the circumstances of them being thrown together. It was something innate that he wanted to exploit.

He could practically hear her heart trying to escape out of her chest as he peeled his sweater off and laid it over a spanking horse. It was clear from the way her body shrunk in on itself that her heart racing was more from fear than from attraction.

Leo crossed to the far end of the dungeon to stand in front of a large, leaner mirror, typically a tool used for humiliation, and it would be again—most likely in a few moments. But for now, he looked at the scars on his back. It was true he’d hired a dominatrix to come to his dungeon when he’d first created it. But the marks were about so much more than that.

Since puberty, he’d had the fantasies: tying women up, hurting them, fucking them, sometimes kidnapping and forcing them. The latter fantasies disturbed him the most. He’d tried to be good. He couldn’t understand what evil had possessed him or what he’d done to deserve these thoughts and feelings that wouldn’t leave him no matter how often he went to church or how much he prayed or tried to be good.

For a long time, it had only been thoughts and masturbation. He’d avoided the fairer sex, fearing he’d hurt someone. But once he’d made his money and everything became possible, he’d started collecting. The estate had been built from the beginning with what he’d originally said was going to be a large and extensive wine cellar. And true, he did keep wine down here, but not nearly the collection so vast a space demanded.