Read Online Surrender to Mr. X by Rosa Mundi - Free Book Online Page A

Whatever was in the chocolates was making me feel very nice.
    â€œThe rich are different from you and me,” I mumbled to myself. “They have better drugs …”
    Lam raised an eyebrow, but his eyes stayed impassive.
    â€œWhat did she say?” asked Alden, but Lam just shook his head briefly and dismissively. Alden’s wheelchair took him up to the head of the bed; he took each of my hands in turn and with a pair of nail clippers, carefully, took the nails of the first and second fingers down so they were really short and smooth, almost down to the quick. Thumb, third and little fingers stayed long, pinky-silvery and oval. It would look pretty odd tomorrow but I didn’t care. Alden was marking me, as a cattle dealer might brand a cow. Let him. If I changed my mind about it in the morning I could always take the other nails down to match. Time would pass, nails, like hair, always grow.
    I had only known Alden for a few hours. Very nice of me to be such a trusting person. I congratulated myself. Alden, disadvantaged by a sour fate, crippled since he was a boy, was my good deed for the day, and I felt good about it like a girl-scout helping a crippled man cross a busy highway.
    â€œI do love you!” I confided in him. “I want to cure you and make you whole. I want to make you happy.”
    â€œWhat a sweetheart you are,” he remarked. “But sshh—you don’t need to speak, Joan my pet. Best not to say a thing.” And he gave me a delicate little kiss, which was bliss: the very first time our lips had touched, and it seemed extravagantly romantic.
    â€œPets need collars,” Lam spoke for the first time, and Alden frowned and gave a sage nod of assent. Lam foraged a studded leather dog collar from the cupboard, which matched the wrist straps and was as wide as I’d ever seen. Alden slipped it under my neck, raised my head, and buckled the collar round my neck, fastening it at the back. Lam handed him a leash which he clipped onto the collar, letting it hang loose—or so I thought, but now I could barely turn my head to see. But there was no mistaking it: an ordinary dog lead, just like the one we used to walk Vera, our over-demonstrative, annoyingly loving golden Labrador bitch. I thought this was touching and sighed affectionately and would have laid my head on one side but I could not. It would just have to stay high, as in a deportment class at school when we walked round with books on our heads. Ifelt proud, and saw great symmetrical dignity in the V-patterns my stretched limbs made in the overhead mirror.
    I found I was singing the “70s” Coca-Cola song: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.” That didn’t go down well. I had forgotten the stricture to silence. I soon found I had a rather large red plastic ball in my mouth, attached by a ribbon tied round my head, and all I could do now was gurgle.
    Lam then saw to my make-up, which seemed odd, but maybe butlers are trained to do anything. I don’t usually wear a great deal—my skin being lovely enough without it, and my eyelashes naturally long and dark: I mostly stick with eye-shadow, eyeliner and eyebrow tweezers. He patted foundation on with his clammy hands, ringed my eyes with brown liner, brushed on sweeps of green and brown eye-shadow. He penciled soft dark-blue kohl along the pale inside lower rims of the eyes. You feel vulnerable around the eyes, but I had to trust him. His hand did not falter. He lipsticked heavily round such of my lips as he could get at for the red ball-gag in my mouth, though the bright red he was using was so unsubtle it would never have made the first round to my dressing table. Then he rearranged my hair to hide the straps which held the gag in place.
    Alden watched.
    â€œNow Joan perfect dream partner,” said Lam.
    I looked up at myself in the mirror and saw