Free The Salvation of Daniel (The Blue Butterfly Book 2) by D H Sidebottom

lowers your value, causing us quite the problem.”
    I scoffed. “I’m so sorry, Master . I would have asked them to stop to save you the misfortune of losing a few pounds, but at the time I didn’t think they cared about my opinion.”
    He lifted his chin, narrowing his eyes. “Training?” He whispered the word. I nodded subtly.
    “To fear pain is a burden. To feed from agony is of profit.”
    “Mmm, well let’s hope the training prepares you for the devil’s wrath, Connie Swift.”
    I smirked at him. “I’ll survive.”
    He tipped his head, deliberating my statement. “That remains to be seen.”
    I pursed my lips. “You need to be aware that Helen is under strict instruction to return Annie to me only. She is now at an undisclosed address. If I don’t make it back, then you don’t see your daughter again.” He glared at me, anger morphing his face. “Just a small insurance policy in case you had other ideas about how this would play out.”
    I hissed when he punched me in the face, his furious spittle spraying over me as he made me pay for my foresight. I let him play, because after all, this was what it was compared to what I had endured at the hands of Isaac – mere child’s play.
    He yanked me close with a hard grip on my hair, his face an inch from mine. “You want destroying? Then let me accommodate. You’ll wish you never met me.”
    “Oh, Daniel. I wish you’d never met Mae. Maybe she would have had something to fight for if you hadn’t decimated her.”
    He spun round. His body was rigid and hard, the deep contours of his back muscles straining against the material of his shirt. Anger and fury poured from him, its presence smothering and crippling. Rolling his head around his shoulders he ran a finger along the many instruments lined up on the wall until he stopped at a long thin crop.
    “How Mae loved this particular piece.”
    Fury surged through me but I closed off to it, refused to let it and him eat at me.
    “Her pale skin glowed so beautifully under the thrash of leather.” He turned to me, his eyes hard and full of wicked intent. “Her sweet voice as she begged me to stop was most lyrical, her cries as hypnotising as the starlings’ morning chorus.”
    Breathe. In. Out. In. Out
    “The way she arched beneath my hand. The way she came apart underneath me was quite something. Simply mesmerising.”
    He orbited me slowly, dragging out his vocal torture until I struggled to blink back the tears that pooled behind my eyes. His words brought visions of Mae’s torture, her need for me, her want for the pain to end.
    “She even asked for it. Did you know that, Connie? Begged me to hurt her.”
    Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
    “She craved the dark side. Needed the pain to breathe. And I had no trouble obliging her with every sick and twisted need she had.”
    “You bastard!”
    I was almost glad when he finally ended his verbal assault and brought forth the physical. The pain from each of his lashes didn’t reach into my soul like his words had. My body was trained to accept the pain and I let it flow, allowed it to empower the hatred that was always inside me, authorised each slash of agony to awaken the dormant passion inside me. I moved into each hit, taking its full strength and devouring the power it gave me.
    My skin tingled, my nerve endings coming to life as my mind closed off to the world and concentrated on the adrenaline flowing through my veins. Channelling it, my training kicked in intuitively. I consumed it, let it curl around me and bring out the side of me that needed pain.
    Daniel was unaware of my arousal, oblivious to the energy he was building in me. He was ignorant to the fact that the first lesson as a Phantom was the adaptation of pain, the conversion that took place in each of us until our bodies literally hummed on the rawness that slithered over us.
    I was no longer breathing, I was absorbing air. My lungs didn’t inflate and deflate, they just magnetised the