by Loki Renard
“You embarrassed yourself, young lady,” Savage rumbled down at her, swatting her cheeks low. “You know better than to behave like a spoiled little brat.”
Zora couldn't really respond to that without blabbing their secrets to the entire diner, so she was forced to take the rest of the spanking without shouting what she really wanted to shout, that Savage was betraying her by going back, that his lack of faith in their ability to ever truly escape was the only thing standing between them and freedom, and that she was crushed he was choosing the military over her.
When Savage stopped spanking and let her up, she was crying nearly uncontrollably. Savage held her close and soothed her with gentle kisses and tight hugs that worked even though she didn't really want them to. She wanted to hate him, but she couldn't. She loved him more than she loved life and as she buried her face in his neck, she knew she'd follow him to the pits of hell if he were to go there.
“You don't see too many young ladies getting their backsides tanned right these days,” Susan said approvingly.
“Shut the hell up, Susan,” Zora snapped, earning herself another hard slap to her bare bottom.
“You're really going to need to learn to curb your tongue,” Savage growled down at her. “There's no excuse for rudeness. Now, do you want your pants up, or do you want to be spanked some more?”
“I want my pants up,” Zora mumbled, hating the stupid question. It was so unfair, how Savage always seemed to have the upper hand.
He slid her off his lap and she was permitted to raise her pants and panties, which felt a lot like dragging sandpaper over her bottom. Then she was told to sit down, which didn't feel a whole lot better. Sitting on a freshly spanked bottom was one of life's great unpleasantries. No, that wasn't right. Unpleasantitudes? Zora didn't know. She didn't care either. She was upset and she was sore and she was feeling about as not free as it was possible to feel without actually being in a cell.
The only slightly bright glimmer of good news was seeing Savage and Anja take their leave of one another. Zora watched through the diner window as Savage embraced Anja and sent her on her way in a beater vehicle. Their last words to one another were private. Zora did not intrude on their farewell. She could see that Anja was upset, and she understood why. Losing Savage wasn't easy. Even if you were only his sidekick and not his lover.
“Here, honey,” Susan said, delivering her a chocolate sundae and a sympathetic look. “You look like you could use this. I put extra fudge on top.”
“Thank you,” Zora said, feeling her eyes grow wet at the kindness.
“I don't know what sort of trouble you all are in,” Susan said. “But you look like good folk. Good things come to good folk, you'll see.”
Zora couldn't share in the woman's optimism. But the sundae was good.
“Do we have to? Do we really have to?” Zora tried one last ditch attempt pleading for Savage not to turn himself back in to the military.
“Zora, everyone wants you dead. Everyone. At this point, it is simply a matter of aligning ourselves with the people who want you dead the least. And those people are my people. It just makes sense.”
“I don't like it,” Zora muttered.
“You don't have to,” Savage said, sounding entirely unsympathetic. “You just have to do as you are told. These first few days are going to be tricky. I'm going to have to convince my superiors that I'm loyal and that you're loyal too.”
“I'm not.”
He turned on her, nearly snarling. “You damn well will be.”
Zora bit her lower lip and held her tongue. Savage was not in the mood to be argued with and she knew he wouldn't hesitate to repeat the earlier spanking if she didn't at least play along.
Two hours later, an unmarked sedan drew up outside Susan's diner. The back door opened. That was it. No fanfare. No kisses or cuddles. No pointed guns. Just a dark portal back to the world they'd come from. She couldn't quite believe what she was seeing as Savage got into the car.
Moving mechanically, Zora followed. She had no faith at all that her safety was assured. But Savage was going and so she was forced to go too. She shuffled into the black leather seat; finding that the car had that newly detailed scent.
There were two men in the front. They were both wearing white shirts and black suits. Their brown hair was cut fashionably short and aviator sunglasses hid their eyes. They had faces, but they were entirely extraneous and Zora was fairly certain that if not having faces were an option, they would have elected to roll with nothing at all. They were entirely, devastatingly, wildly inconspicuous.
“Captain Savage,” the man in the passenger seat said in a voice that was pleasant, but nigh devoid of accent. “Welcome.”
“Yes,” Zora said, instantly mocking. “Welcome to the car.”
The man swiveled his head to look at her directly through plastic shades that hid his eyes from her. “Ms Matthews, I presume.”
“Yes,” Zora said. “Is this the part where you shoot me?”
The man's lip curled ever so slightly in an acknowledgment of her dark humor. “We have no intention of shooting you.”
“You people say that,” Zora said. “But then... pew pew pew! I know how you work. I know your secrets.”
“So we've been lead to believe,” the man said. “My name is Martin Holt. I'll be your liaison, Ms Matthews. We have orders to ensure that your transition is relatively painless.”
“For you or for me?”
“For all concerned.” Martin Holt turned his attention to Savage. “It is a great honor to meet you, Captain Savage. We are very pleased to have you back.”
“I bet you are,” Zora piped up.
“Zora. Enough.” Savage gave the order – and it was an order, in no uncertain terms.
She would have challenged his authority, but challenging Savage wasn't a particularly bright thing to do at the best of times, and when your ass was still sore it was definitely not the best of times. So she sat back in her seat, buckled the seat belt and hummed to herself as they were driven into the wild blue yonder.
Savage's insistence on returning to the fold was beyond frustrating. Could he really not see another kind of life for himself? Maybe he couldn't.
“Your problem,” she said after a time, as she happened to be staring at a cornfield. “Is that you lack imagination.”
“My problem is sitting right next to me,” Savage rumbled. “And it needs a gag.”
“There is one in the trunk if you need it, Captain,” Martin Holt said obligingly.
Zora scowled at all of the men, including the one driving. The one who had yet to speak. “The first person to try gets a limited edition print of my teeth embedded in his hand.”
Savage was giving her a dark look. She knew why. She was making him look bad. It was the worst sin one could commit against Savage, making him look bad in front of his comrades or co-workers or whatever they wanted to call themselves.
She didn't feel bad about annoying him, not in the slightest. He was annoying her greatly, and she didn't have the option to spank him if she felt he needed it. Zora intended to stick with Savage, but she didn't plan on making it easy for him.
“So how long is this trip going to be? No longer than two hours, I suppose.”
“And why do you suppose that, Ms Matthews?”
“Elementary,” Zora said. “Because that's how long you took to get here.”
“We happened to be in the area...”
“You happened to be looking for us,” Zora filled in the blank. “But hide and seek is so much easier when you can get the hider to just call his location in.”
She could feel Savage's eyes boring into the side of her head. “You do remember that they just made you a murderer in the eyes of the nation, right?” She turned to him with her face scrunched up in disbelief. “These people are not your friends, Brett.”
“Be quiet, Zora.”
Savage repeated his earlier sentiment, this time more quietly. She knew she was slip
ping into ever more dangerous territory where he was concerned, so she did shut up. She shut up, she looked out the window and she fantasized about being the one to tell him to shut up for once. They were in fucking custody, and she wasn't even allowed to be sarcastic about it.
The journey was quiet and tedious. She watched fields pass by the windows of the car, most of them filled with corn, no doubt being grown to fuel the nation's insatiable demand for corn syrup. Everywhere she looked she saw corruption and decay. The blue sky itself seemed to be mocking her, stretching on as it did forever and ever, a blue dome that was itself a prison.
Silently, she despaired. Everywhere was a cell. Savage himself had become her jailer. Her love for him chained her to him – though she could comfort herself with the knowledge that had she chosen to run away from him, she would have been hunted just the same, and no doubt captured in a far crueler way.
The hardest thing to handle was that for a brief moment, for a few sweet days they had been genuinely free. Those nights in the ghetto were not at all comfortable, but they were entirely self-determined. Nobody had pulled their strings. Nobody had intervened in their daily lives. And Savage had not snapped at her simply for speaking.
Zora glanced sidelong at Savage. He looked firm, and hard and unyielding. He was not looking at her, or out the window, he was staring straight ahead, like the two automatons in the front of the car. She gleaned no comfort from his proximity at that point.
A wild impulse made her want to open the car door and throw herself out of it. She put her hand on the handle, not intending on actually doing it, but wanting to simply feel the choice. With every mile they drove, her choices were becoming more limited; and she could feel the time coming when there would be no more choices. Then she would be expected to do precisely as she was told. And that point, even the contemplation of it, was nearly unbearable.
There was a clicking in the door, as Martin Holt activated the lock on her door. “I'd prefer you stay in the car, Ms Matthews,” he said in his pleasant, even voice.
Zora opened her mouth to deny his insinuation, but she felt Savage's eyes boring hard into her and knew nobody would believe her anyway. She moved her hand away from the handle and put her fingers to the glass. Such a narrow barrier separating her from the expanses of the world, and yet it was so very effective.
“Captain, your companion is becoming restless,” Martin Holt observed.
“I am not,” Zora denied hotly.
“I was going to suggest that we perhaps took a break, stretched our legs,” Martin Holt replied in soothing tones. The man had a way of speaking that drained the color out of everything – along with the stress and the tension and the drama.
“Aren't you afraid I'll run away?”
“I think we could probably catch you if you did.”
Such arrogance. It did not surprise Zora, because practically everyone she'd met in the military seemed to think themselves bulletproof. Their arrogance was their greatest weakness.
“We don't have a schedule to meet?” Savage asked the question.
“We can take the time,” Martin Holt assured him. “I would prefer to bring a calm, compliant subject in.”
“That's not going to happen,” Savage replied. His tone was hardly complimentary, but his words made Zora grin. “Ms Matthews has made non-compliance an art form.”
“Still,” Martin Holt said. “We will stop and let her run for a bit.”
True to his word, the car pulled over at the side of the road. Martin Holt unlocked the doors and Zora was given the opportunity that was not an opportunity at all, to run. She got out of the car and walked around a bit, noticing that none of the men had gotten out after her. After kicking a stone for a moment or two, she wandered closer to the field. Then stepped into it, feeling the stalks of corn close around her. Still there were no sounds of car doors opening. She peeked back out of the corn to see what was happening. Nothing. Nothing at all.
She wandered back into the corn, stepping on the ground between the rows, which formed long channels extending quite far into the distance. Then she realized that what she was doing wasn't just pointless, it was boring. Yes, she could have run away, but they had Savage. And that meant they had her.
“Assholes,” she muttered to herself, sitting down cross-legged in the dirt. She was not happy. This whole 'let her stretch her legs' thing, this was just another way for Mr Martin Holt to prove the point she was already keenly aware of. They held all the cards. And she was a pawn in their game. Or the three of clubs, or something more appropriate to the metaphor.
“Ms Matthews?”
Martin Holt appeared at the head of the field. Standing, he continued his campaign of aggressive averageness. He was about 5'9” in height, and of very standard stature. The suit was cut well, but not well enough to be worth remarking on. He had taken his sunglasses off, however. Zora was treated to her first look at his eyes. They were wide, but quite narrow in height. They were also a rather pretty green hazel ringed with dark gray. Finally, something remarkable about a man who otherwise looked like something out of a 1950's detective comic book. She noticed these things as he drew closer and crouched down beside her.
“Are you ready to go, Ms Matthews?”
“Not really.” Zora picked up a clump of dirt and let it crumble through her fingers. “I thought we weren't in a hurry.”
“We aren't. You can play in the dirt as long as you like.”
She scowled at him. “This isn't funny.”
“I didn't say it was.”
Zora did not like being handled, and Martin Holt was definitely handling her. His every word was an indulgence.
“Zora!” Savage shouted from the car. “Let's go!”
“Captain Savage has given me an order,” Zora said, wiping her hands on her jeans. “I'd better obey it.”
She stood up and ambled back in the direction of the car, hating every step. She was so frustrated, and Martin Holt was only making it worse by showing her that there was no possible way to alleviate that frustration. At least Savage didn't pretend that she could have her way.
Chapter Four
She slung herself back into the car, folded her arms across her chest and clamped her mouth shut. Martin Holt got back into the car and then they were off once again, driving toward incarceration with her as a willingly unwilling passenger.
“We're heading to Texas,” Martin Holt declared a few minutes into the journey. “To Fort Thistle. It's top secret, of course.”
“Is it underground?” Zora could not resist the question. It was driven by fear, the fear of being once again buried by a regime that barely acknowledged her existence as a human being.
“No,” Martin Holt said. “The main facilities are located in a Georgian revival mansion. It's very nice. There are extensive grounds and more besides.”
“Sounds like a sanatorium.”
“A data center, actually. One of many, of course. The sort of place you'd probably enjoy, Ms Matthews.”
She glared out the window. “I don't enjoy data. I'm just good with it.”
“Yes, you are, prodigiously so,” Martin Holt said. “And you should be glad for it.”
“I should be? “Zora took the opportunity to snap. “Oh, thank you for letting me know what I should be glad for. It's so much easier when I don't have to know my own mind.”
Savage nudged her and raised a brow. “One more word, Zora, and you know what I'll do.”
Zora shut her mouth. She did not want to be spanked in front of Martin Holt and his silent friend. It was bad enough having been spanked in front of Susan of Susan's Diner. She did not need further humiliation that day, especially as it seemed that this Martin Holt was to play an instrumental role in her life, in the short term at least.
“You'll have to teach me that trick, Captain Savage,” Martin Holt said from the front seat.
“If Zora does not behave herself, I will.”
Zora's eyes widened. They'd only just met this Mart
in Holt and already Savage was talking about letting the man spank her.
“You will not,” she hissed under her breath, trying to whisper, trying to keep her rage silent.
“Don't test me, Matthews,” Savage replied softly. “Behave yourself.”
Zora pouted. She hated that she was pouting, but she felt the pout take her over. She felt herself become the pout as she slumped down and gave up entirely.
They drove to an airfield and there were loaded into a tinny little plane, which would have scared Zora witless, if she'd been in the mood to care if she lived or died. As far as she was concerned, if the plane did go down at least she'd die with Savage by her side. And that was the point, was it not? It was what she was sacrificing the rest of her life for anyway.
The thoughts were sulky ones, but she entertained them at great length, enjoying the small internal rebellion that was all she had left.
When the flight had landed and another car trip had been undertaken, Zora found herself standing outside a large gorgeous building, brick red with great white marble columns. There was a grandeur to Fort Thistle that impressed Zora in spite of herself. The prison she feared had not eventuated; it was a very pleasant place, a place with people coming and going wearing professional suits. There were a few uniformed officers who were armed, but only lightly.
“I don't get it,” she murmured to herself. “This place can't hold anyone.”
Martin Holt walked up to stand beside her. She found she rather liked the fact that he was not all that much taller than her. It made her feel less compressed and controlled.
“Ms Matthews,” he said mildly. “You have escaped from one of our toughest, deepest prisons. Is there any point in shutting you up in a box?”
“I suppose not,” Zora agreed as she and Savage were ushered through the front door and into a nicely furnished lobby.
“My office is this way,” Martin Holt said, escorting them into a very pleasantly furnished room with a long broad couch, a neat desk and several armchairs. All the furniture fit neatly on the blander side of Georgian aesthetic, comfortable, but just a little bit foreboding.
