Tabula Rasa

by Kitty Thomas

  When he saw me, the hint of a smile appeared on his face, and I let out a breath. He did still want me here. So it must have been a test.

  He seemed so much calmer and more relaxed than he’d been before. I’d always thought of Shannon as calm and methodical, but now, by its absence I realized there had been a buzz of restless energy below the surface. He might not give it away overtly, and he might not react strongly to things, but wheels were turning behind the scenes all the time. Now it seemed some tightly coiled thing inside him had been released and a reset button had been pressed.

  “How was the job?” I asked.

  He seemed caught off guard, surprised that I’d ask or care about the job, particularly since I knew what kinds of jobs he did.

  “Satisfying. Everything went smoothly. The target knew he was being hunted. It’s always better when they know. It’s a bigger challenge. More fun.” He looked nearly giddy. Like a kid on Christmas morning discovering Santa got him everything he wanted, even though he’d asked for crazy things he shouldn’t expect to receive.

  I must have made a bit of a freaked-out face at this display of too much information, because he noticed and changed the subject. “Jesus. It looks like a fucking greenhouse in here.”

  “I need them.”

  He took a moment to look around, assessing the changes to his space. “What about the cat? Some of these might be poisonous.”

  “They aren’t. Botanist, remember? I know my plants. I considered that when I bought them.”

  “Okay. But you are the one who has to water and take care of them.” His eyes narrowed. “So you obviously left the house. I see you came back.”

  “I want to be here with you.” It sounded so childish when I said it out loud. So nakedly hopeful. For a moment, I worried he’d laugh at me, but it was a wasted worry.

  “Good. If you’d run, I would have come after you. I just wanted to know if I could trust you to leave and return on your own. It’s simpler if I don’t have to keep you on lock down. Did you say anything stupid to anybody in town?”

  I was sure my face went a little white at that because I could feel the blood draining out of it.

  In contrast, Shannon’s expression darkened. “What did you do?” The muscle in his jaw clenched.

  “N-nothing.”

  “What did you say?”

  “J-just that I was staying with you. Somebody from town asked me.”

  He stared at me for a good, long several minutes as if trying to determine if he believed me. “And that’s all you said? Nothing incriminating?”

  “N-no.”

  “No, what?”

  “N-no, Sir.”

  In his absence, I’d been cavalier about his anger. I’d forgotten how completely terrifying he could be if he was displeased about something. And I wondered again at my sanity in staying or even wanting to. One would think, with my memories back, that I’d want to stay the hell away from men, especially men like Shannon. But I didn’t think Shannon was anything like Professor Stevens or Trevor. In his way, he was more terrifying than the two of them put together, but he was scary in the way live volcanoes and tsunamis were scary. It didn’t feel personal. He was a force of nature to be respected, but despite everything I knew about him, I just didn’t believe he was evil.

  I know that’s stupid. But I couldn’t help how I felt. There wasn’t a deep core of malevolence in him. He just didn’t have as strong of emotions or empathy as everybody else. Certainly it could be turned toward evil, but the military had used it as a tool, presumably for good. And when Shannon said the people he killed were bad people, I believed him.

  “How much of my money did you spend?”

  “M-most of what was in the drawer. You can take it out of my account. I wasn’t trying to steal from you.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Besides all the plants, what did you buy?”

  “Umm... snacks, wine, candles, magazines, stationery...”

  “Candles? You burned candles in my house?” His voice rose the most subtle degree higher.

  “Y-yes, Sir.”

  “Candles drip.”

  “I-I know. I didn’t make a mess.” I didn’t mention the fact that I’d spilled a bunch of dirt all over the house, getting the plants in and set up. I didn’t want him to have a heart attack. And I’d cleaned it all up.

  His eyes narrowed. “We’ll deal with the candles later. What was the stationery for?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “Tell me.”

  So I told him the whole inane thing about the letter to my professor, just wanting to scare him, and ripping it up and throwing it away because I didn’t want to risk Shannon’s location. He smiled at that, obviously pleased. At least I’d done something right. I didn’t tell him the nightmares were getting worse. I told myself it was because I didn’t want him to go do something about it. But really, I was afraid if I told him, he would barely react again and not care and refuse to do anything at all except tell me to stop whining about it.

  “Is that all you bought?” he asked, oblivious to my internal struggle.

  I felt heat flood into my face. “I bought some lingerie,” I mumbled.

  An eyebrow raised. “Oh, really? Put it on. Now. Then come back downstairs. And bring the candles with you.”

  My heart was nearly throbbing out of my body. I felt like I was vibrating from the inside out as I changed out of regular clothes, and into the lingerie. I added a swipe of cherry red gloss to my lips. I put the candles in the paper shopping bag the lingerie had been in and descended the stairs back to Shannon.

  But he wasn’t in the living room.

  “Shannon?”

  “I’m in my office. Come on back.”

  He glanced up when I walked in. “Are those the candles?” he asked, indicating the bag I carried.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good. Put them there on the side table.”

  There was a large glass table next to a window with a white leather chair beside it. On the table stood various decanters of alcohol that appeared to contain different types of whiskeys—bourbon, scotch, all the usual suspects. Next to that were glasses of varying shapes to allow the flavors to do whatever magic thing they seemed to do in just the right glass. Next to all this was an empty space where I put the bag.

  “You can sit,” he said, indicating the white chair I stood beside. I sank into the leather. On the ground at my feet was a thick black shag rug.

  Meanwhile Shannon clacked away at the keys on his laptop. Every now and then he’d make a hmmm sound, but other than that, he just stared intently at the screen. I had no idea what he was looking at, and although I was deeply curious, I wasn’t foolish enough to ask.

  I also tried not to be too put off by the fact that he hadn’t had any strong reaction or even any discernible reaction at all to the lingerie. Did he not like it? I hated the way this made me feel. For weeks before our relationship had changed, I’d felt comfortable and safe with him. But the moment things had shifted... he made me so nervous now. Those nerves were no longer about what he might do to me but about what he might not do. I couldn’t stand the idea that he’d lost interest in me, not because I thought he might get rid of me in some gruesome way but because I couldn’t stand the idea of losing him.

  Shannon’s eyes narrowed, and he looked up at me, accusation in his gaze. “You drank red wine in my bathroom.” When he spoke, the words came out in that scary dead calm of his.

  “I-I’m sorry. I was taking a bubble bath.”

  “Yes. I can see that.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, you thought I’d just leave you alone in my house without monitoring the situation? There are hidden security cameras all over this house. I’m watching the footage. Additionally, I’m confirming all the places you’ve said you’ve been. I can’t know what exactly you said or did while there, but I know everywhere you went and when you went there.”

  “How?”

  “I put a tracking device
in your shoes.”

  “But... when?” He’d left so fast that day.

  “The night before I left. I set up the money and everything else the night before as well.”

  So... if I’d run, he would have just brought his little computer with him and tracked me down that way. I had no doubts that Shannon could find me anywhere. I just hadn’t thought he would do it in such a literal tracking device way.

  “I can’t believe you put a tracking device in my shoes.”

  “Be glad I didn’t insert a chip under your skin. I’m still considering it.”

  This was the kind of thing that always brought home to me what an idiot I was where Shannon was concerned. I thought he had no malevolent intentions and that I could trust him, and yet he was calmly considering implanting me with a tracking device. Wasn’t that evil? If Trevor had done it? Yes. If Professor Stevens had done it, no question. But my mind went out of its way to give Shannon a pass for everything. As long as he was feeding me, caring for me, not hurting me, and giving me orgasms, my brain refused to register him as a threat—at least for more than a couple of minutes at a time anymore.

  And he wasn’t hurting me. Outside of sex games, he’d never raised a hand to me. He’d never lost his temper in any measurable way that would give the average person pause. And I really, really liked being here with him, despite all the fluttery nervous fucked-up feelings he made me feel. And half of that I would have felt with any man I was so attracted to.

  Shannon closed the lid of the laptop and slid it into the middle desk drawer. Then he opened another drawer and pulled out some scary looking chains and cuffs and a collar.

  “Come here.”

  I swallowed around the hard lump in my throat but went to him. When I reached him, he finally took a moment to appreciate the lingerie. He drank me in slowly, his eyes roving over every inch of me as if trying to mentally capture the image forever in his mind. His hands followed his gaze, skimming over me.

  “I like this. We have to buy you more beautiful things that you can barely wear in my presence. And once we have these things, I expect you to only put normal clothes on to leave the house. Is that clear?”

  My breath got stuck in my throat for a moment. “Y-yes, Sir.”

  “Good.”

  His hands traveled under the sheer black lace. He ripped the panties off. “No panties,” he said. “I don’t care if it comes with it. No panties. I don’t want anything ever in my way.”

  When his hand moved between my legs without any obstruction, I started to grind against it, unable to help myself. He pulled away.

  “No, not yet. Down on your knees.”

  There was a second black shag rug underneath this desk. I knelt on the thick carpet and waited for further instruction. None came. Instead, he took the black leather collar off the desk and secured it around my throat. The chain that was attached made a sharp clanking sound against the desk as it was dragged along.

  Shannon undid his pants and freed his cock. He didn’t have to say anything else. I took him into my mouth and sucked like my life depended on it. I dragged it out as long as I could, teasing and pulling away whenever he seemed close to the edge. I licked and stroked and caressed him until I’d worked him into a state I’d not yet seen him in. His fingers tangled in my hair as he groaned and came with a shudder. But I didn’t let up until he was finished and pushed me away.

  His breathing came very heavy for several minutes. I felt flushed and pleased with myself as I stared up at him from the floor.

  “Your punishment is going to be worse, now,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you thought that talented little mouth could lighten your sentence. Well, you are quite talented, but that sort of manipulation doesn’t work on me.”

  “I wasn’t trying...” We both knew I was lying.

  “Of course you were.”

  Shannon put the cuffs on my wrists and ankles, then he stood and pulled me up with him by the chain.

  “Bend over the desk and spread your legs wide.”

  When I did, he moved the chain out of the way, and he took my arms and spread them out to either corner of the desk. He attached the cuffs to discreet metal rings that were attached to the corners. I hadn’t noticed them before, though I was sure they must have been there the other night when I’d used the computer.

  Off my confused expression, he said, “I put them in the day after the party.”

  I was stupidly happy that he hadn’t done this with another woman in here.

  He similarly attached my ankles by the cuffs to the rings at the bottom corners of the desk. Then he moved behind me and shoved the lingerie up over my hips. I thought he was going to fuck me like this, but instead, he went to the side table and withdrew the candles one by one from the bag. There were six in all. He brought them back to the desk and put three on either side of me in the large empty space of the desk that my body wasn’t occupying. He lit them.

  “Elodie, you know how much I dislike messes. You knew I wouldn’t approve of candles burning all over my house. Or you drinking red wine—or any wine—in my bathroom.”

  I was about to protest, but yeah, I knew. And I’d done it anyway. But sometimes a girl needed a glass of wine in the bubble bath and candles.

  “I just needed comforting things. And you weren’t here.”

  An odd expression moved over his face, and for a moment, I thought I’d somehow moved him to compassion, but in the next second, it was gone, replaced with the kind of devilish glee I imagined he got on his face moments before he completed a job.

  “Be that as it may... candles drip.”

  “Not the fat ones.” If they were taper candles, I’d see his point, but he was being over-the-top about this issue.

  I shrieked when his hand came down hard across my ass without warning.

  “Don’t talk back,” he said.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  I let out a hiss and gripped the side of the desk as hot wax landed on my flesh right where his hand had been a moment before. I glanced over to find Shannon holding one of the candles with an almost maniacal look on his face.

  “Like I said, candles drip.”

  I wasn’t nearly stupid enough to ask why he wasn’t worried about the mess he would no doubt make by intentionally causing the candles to drip. I just kept my mouth shut about that one.

  “All of these candles drip,” he said, as if this were some novel discovery the world should know about.

  He shoved the lingerie farther up my back, giving him a nice expanse of flesh to work with. I felt another sharp sting as what seemed to me like molten lava dripped down my back. I squeezed my eyes shut, whimpered, and tried to breath through it.

  “Please, Sir, it hurts.”

  “I know it hurts. Punishments are meant to hurt. That’s why we call them punishments.” He poured the remaining wax out of that candle onto my skin to the sound of my shrieking protest. Then he blew that candle out and set it on the desk. “Only five more to go. You can take it.”

  He pushed a finger inside me. “Maybe I should punish you more if this excites you so much.”

  I shook my head furiously. “No, please... no. I can’t help how my body reacts, please, please Shannon.”

  He smacked my ass. “Sir,” he corrected. “Don’t try to get personal with me. I know what you’re doing. If you’d been a good girl in the first place, this wouldn’t be happening.”

  Shannon moved on to the second candle and a new fresh piece of skin. I gripped the edge of the table as he poured all the wax over me at once.

  “Shit!” I shouted.

  “Tell me you’re sorry, Elodie.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir. P-please. Please, I won’t do it again.”

  He moved close to my ear and whispered, “You may as well have a little fun occasionally, I’ll probably do this to you anyway.”

  “N-not this much, okay?”

  “Be good and we’ll see.”

  After th
e third candle and a lot of panicked tears and pleading, Shannon did something miraculous. He showed mercy and blew out the other candles.

  “T-thank you, Sir.” In some strange way I was sure this meant something. Why should he show me any mercy when he liked this so much and when it wasn’t going to actually harm me? Did my distress bother him now? Was that possible?

  In moments like this, he was more human to me. It seemed as though we had some sort of real connection. It wasn’t hard to imagine he was a regular guy, and I was his regular girlfriend. No trauma or skeletons in our respective closets

  My hands went limp, no longer clutching at the desk. Despite how much it had hurt, I was humiliated to realize how wet I was now. Shannon chuckled as his hand moved between my legs.

  “Despite your protests and begging, part of you likes that,” he growled.

  I didn’t bother denying it. For better or worse it tripped my wires, and delivering it tripped Shannon’s. With the fingers of one hand, he stroked my clit, and with the fingers of the other, he penetrated me. Both of those large, strong hands touching me like that had me gripping the desk and begging again, this time for more.

  “Please,” I panted as I moved with him.

  “I want you to come for me. Come harder than you’ve ever come. I want to feel it. If you don’t, I’m going to have to relight those candles.”

  The panic of that possibility sent me spiraling into the strongest, hardest orgasm I’d ever had, not only with Shannon, but ever.

  “Good girl,” he whispered in my ear. “You know I hate messes.” He held his hand next to my face and I obediently licked my juices up.

  While my breathing went back to normal, he uncuffed me from the desk and peeled the hardened wax off my skin. He ran his fingertips over the places where it had dripped. “You’ve got a few burn marks, but they aren’t serious. Go get cleaned up and I’ll take you out for dinner. There’s a nice little Italian place on the other end of town. Do you like Italian?”

  What the fuck? Not that I was complaining about being taken to a nice dinner, but what the actual fuck was going on? I wasn’t stupid enough to verbalize this, however.

  “Yes, Sir.”