by Kitty Thomas
“Put the blindfold on,” he says.
“But, I've seen you.”
“This isn't a negotiation, Ms. Lane; put it on.”
“Yes, Master,” slips past my lips as I reach for the scrap of black fabric hanging over the barre. I can almost feel his smile from wherever he is. It permeates the air like a hot breath during a slow fuck.
A few minutes later, he's beside me. He takes my hand and slings my dance bag over my shoulder.
“Step down,” he says when we reach the stairs at the side of the stage. I tentatively feel my way down each step. “Where are we going?”
But he says nothing. He just leads me up the aisle and out through the concession area. I only know because of the way the sound of his shoes change when we go from carpet to hard floor. Then outside into the cold night.
My breathing is coming harder as unease winds its way through me. I hear a double beep on a car, and a door opens.
“Get in,” he says. He helps me into the car, then shuts and locks me inside. My hand reaches out instinctively for the door, but the child locks are on.
A moment later, the other door opens, the locks snap down again, and the car starts up. I reach to remove the blindfold, becoming increasingly panicked by this change in our pattern.
He grips my wrist, hard. “No.”
A moment later, a rope is being tied around my wrists and then looped and tied around my hands so I can't remove the blindfold. I'm crying now. I can't help it. I'm scared. I haven't been this scared of him in a long time.
Sebastian's identity is no longer a mystery, but somehow he seems wilder now. Because I've seen his face. What if he's decided I'm a threat? But if that were true, he would never have let me out of his sight. He wouldn't be talking like we're going to dance together.
I know I'm being crazy, but being bound and blindfolded in his car while he drives us to god knows where makes it hard to think rationally. What if he just takes me out into the woods somewhere, kills me, and dumps my body? It's not as though I'm the only person he can dance with in his big ballet comeback. Even though I thought it was special between us, maybe he doesn't feel the same.
Maybe he's crazy. He's obviously crazy. He blackmailed me. He's made me do all these things... for weeks... blindfolded... How could I have allowed myself to trust this man even for a moment? How could I have allowed myself to forget the way this all started? This is not a man playing by the rules of society, so why do I think he wouldn't hurt me? Conall hurt me! I lived with that and danced with that for three years. So maybe he won't kill me... but that doesn't mean he won't hurt me.
“Please, tell me where you're taking me. I-I'm not going to say anything. I swear. Please, Master, I swear. I won't tell anyone about anything...” I trail off because I'm becoming increasingly afraid that the more I talk the more he may begin to see me as a bigger threat.
We drive for what seems like forever. He is silent. He doesn't try to calm me. He doesn't reassure me that I'm safe. Why won't he reassure me that I'm safe? Because I'm not!
They say don't let an attacker take you to a second location. Is he an attacker? Is that what he is to me? My body hasn't seemed to think so. In fact, until this exact moment, my body has treated him like a welcome lover, not a potential true threat.
And wasn't the opera house technically the second location? So are we going to the third location now? Is that worse? Where the fuck is he taking me?
“Master? H-how did you know about what I did to Conall?”
I can't believe I've never asked this question. I've been so consumed with keeping my secret that I haven't pushed him for answers. But now things feel so precarious. It feels like I'm about to die. And if that's true, I need to know these things. I wait in the dark silence of the car, thinking he won't answer, but finally he speaks.
“I saw him getting aggressive with you earlier that day outside the company. I pulled your file from the computer and went to your house that evening. I was about to ring the doorbell when I saw him stumbling to the bathroom through one of the front windows. I watched the rest and followed you from there.”
“W-what were you going to do when you came over?” I need him to keep talking.
But he doesn't answer me. Silence descends, and I start crying again. Why won't he talk to me? Why is he taking me off site?
I keep telling myself over and over that he's not going to take me somewhere and kill me. Why would he? He knows I won't report him. And wouldn't it look suspicious if I just disappeared?
“A-are you done with me?” I ask. “Please... you said if I did what you said... u-until you were done that you would let me go. You said you wouldn't report me and...” I'm rambling now. I'm so fucking terrified. I can't seem to rationalize my way out of this fear.
“No, cupcake. I'm far from done with you,” he says.
I hold onto this endearment even though I'm unsure if him not being done with me is a good thing or not.
Finally the car stops. I flinch when his car door slams. It has a sort of echo-y quality—like we're in a parking garage. This causes me to tense. Why would he bring me to an abandoned parking garage? Is it abandoned?
He opens my door, and before I can protest, he's scooped me up in his arms and is carrying me. I hear a ding and a metal door slide open.
“Service elevator,” he says.
Service elevator to what?? Are we at his house? What is going on?
“You're scaring me,” I whisper when the doors close, and the elevator begins its steady lurch upward.
He grips me tighter in his arms. “I know.”
All I can think is that he likes keeping me on edge. He likes my fear. He likes forcing me into situations where I have no choice but to trust and rely on him. And now that I've seen his face, he's finding new ways to raise the stakes. Why? How far will he raise them, and will I come out of this alive?
My crying is louder, and I swear he doesn't seem to care. What happened to the man I was starting to trust even though I couldn't see him? The way he held me on stage, his shhh you're safe.
I realize suddenly that for the first time since we started this, tonight when he told me to put the blindfold on, I didn't have the normal excited reaction. Too much hung in the air. I had too many questions.
And now both my body and mind are finally in accord. They both see this man as a threat. Does he now see me the same way?
“Are you angry with me? Did I do something wrong? Master, please...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”
But that's all he says. Why is he doing this?
The elevator stops. The doors open. He carries me down a hallway, unlocks a door, and then takes me inside... wherever we are.
He sits me down in a hard chair and begins untying the ropes around my wrists and hands, still silent.
Finally, I can't help it. I have to know. “Are you going to kill me?”
He actually laughs at this. “Of course not. Why would I kill you?”
“You're being weird. I know who you are. You're scaring me. I don't understand...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Do not speak. I still own you. You have lost all but the barest hint of etiquette between us. I want you back the way you were. I want you perfectly obedient. Just the way I like.”
This makes some small measure of sense, that he's trying to get us back to this state we were in before I saw his face.
He wipes tears off my cheeks, and my breathing starts to return to normal. I want to know where we are, why he took me somewhere else. Is this his place? But I'm afraid if I ask these questions, he'll be disappointed. I want to earn his shhh, you're safe. I need it.
He takes my hands in his, helps me to stand, and guides me through the room. I suddenly have that eerie feeling again, like I'm being watched. That feeling I got that day in the theater when he made me believe for the smallest moment that someone else was there with us, watching the things he did to me on that stage.
Music s
tarts from a sound system across the room. A piano concerto. Sebastian stands behind me, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Take your clothes off for our guest.”
“Bastian, for fuck's sake. She's terrified.”
I freeze. I know that voice. It's Morgan.
“You said you wanted to see her cry, that you like her when she's a little afraid,” Sebastian says. “I aim to please.” He removes my blindfold, and Morgan is giving me that assessing stare, the same one from the day we met, the same one I've caught him giving me in rehearsals.
And now I know Sebastian wasn't just fucking with me that day when he said I had an audience. Morgan has been watching from the darkness of the theater. He's been watching everything. My brain is still struggling to catch up with this new revelation.
That look... it wasn't assessing. It was knowing. All this time I've thought Sebastian and I shared a secret, but there was a larger secret I wasn't in on.
“You wanted to go with him when he asked you out for lunch, didn't you?” Sebastian asks.
“N-no,” I protest, even though it might be a lie. I'm not sure. I was caught off guard. Morgan is quite good-looking. But Conall's jealousy is a hard thing to forget, and it feels too risky to give Sebastian honesty right now. I'm still so afraid he'll hurt me. I'm afraid he's the same kind of monster I already killed.
“No, what?” Sebastian says, his finger hooking into the platinum band of my collar to remind me that he is not Sebastian to me. He isn't even Sir anymore.
“I...” I look to Morgan as if he can save me.
“Say it,” Morgan says, a greedy voyeurism in his eyes. “I want to hear you say it.”
I turn back to Sebastian, unable to look at Morgan when I say the word, even though I know he's heard me when I thought Sebastian and I were alone. “No, Master,” I whisper.
“I'm never going to be done with you, cupcake. You're moving in. Here, with me and my brother. We're going to share you.” His tone is completely nonchalant. As if this is a normal thing to say.
I look back and forth between the two men, for the first time seeing the resemblance in their features. I saw the similarity in their build and hair color the day I met Morgan. It was why I was so sure he was my blackmailer until he spoke.
“You can't be brothers. You don't have the same last name.” I must sound like such an idiot, or like a child trying to figure out whodunit in her first Nancy Drew mystery.
“This might shock you, cupcake, but many people use aliases. A lot of people want to hide their family name when there's too much money behind it that might draw unwanted attention.”
I finally look around at my surroundings. We're in a huge modern penthouse, with giant floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall. The view is gorgeous, the city lights twinkling in the distance.
Morgan moves closer and presses a kiss against my throat, his hand slipping underneath the gray leotard to stroke my breast. “Be calm, little rabbit. We won't hurt you... much.” He pinches my nipple.
The arousal that fled in the face of my fears over what Sebastian might do with me has sparked back to life at this man's touch. I moan. I can't help myself. I don't want to think about what this says about me.
“He's been hogging you for too long,” Morgan says.
“Oh, shut up, you got to touch her, too.” Sebastian sounds exasperated.
“Not nearly enough,” he murmurs as he kisses a trail over my collarbone.
My body goes rigid. Morgan touched me? Does he mean outside of rehearsal? I close my eyes, thinking about all the things that have happened between me and Sebastian in the opera house. All the times he's touched me in different ways. Were some of those times Morgan?
“I fed you the cupcake,” he whispers in my ear in answer to my unspoken question. “That was my finger you sucked the frosting off of. But Bastian made it. He's always been better in the kitchen.”
I feel so aroused right now but also so betrayed. The tears come again, and I wrench free of Morgan's grasp. I back away from the two of them. I think back to all the things that happened in the theater, trying to reconfigure my memories to account for two men instead of one.
“W-which times was it you?” I ask Morgan. I can't keep my voice from shaking.
I know all the dancing was Sebastian. I know all the orders came from Sebastian's lips.
“I stroked you that first day on the mattress,” Morgan says. “Bastian and I took turns getting you off. And I waxed you that day on the stage after your punishment.”
“Who fucked me?” I blurt out.
“That was me,” Sebastian says. “Morgan hasn't had that pleasure yet.”
“Yet?!” I shriek, hysterical. “Fuck yet! You're both insane.”
They advance on me, and I back away until I'm pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows. I look behind me at what would be a precarious drop if we were outside. Still, the height makes me dizzy, and I have to shut my eyes for a moment to steady myself.
“I believe we had an agreement,” Sebastian says. “The small matter of the price of my silence.”
“OUR silence,” Morgan says, happy to insert himself into all my memories after the fact.
I look back and forth between the two of them. “You'd really turn me in? After everything?” I'm crying again. I just can't fucking stop crying. Sebastian just got through telling me tonight that I knew he wasn't going to report me after our first few meetings. Did I? If that's so, why are they making the threat now?
Both men just stare at me, and I have no idea what their stony expressions mean. They won't tell the police. They won't. They get off on this too much. The way they've used me, fucked with me, lied to me. And yet... my body is betraying me.
My body is screaming at my mind, telling it to shut the fuck up and just enjoy this. Because the idea of their hands on me elicits the deepest, most carnal need I've ever felt. I want them to take me together. And I'm so ashamed that I want this.
They're both so beautiful. And masculine. And... frightening. And it isn't Sebastian's scar that makes it so. It's the unapologetic ruthless nature of these two men.
“What else have you done?” I ask Morgan.
“I've kissed you. Some nights I was the one who slid the toy inside your ass.”
I whimper at the memories.
Morgan takes this as encouragement and continues, his voice going low and gravelly. “Sometimes when my brother was fucking your mouth, I was the one stroking your cheek, encouraging you.”
I don't know what to say to this. I don't know what to feel. So I just stare at him.
“You belong to both of us now,” Sebastian says. “Morgan's initials will be added to your collar, and you will call us both Master from now on. You will obey both of us. That’s the price of our silence.”
“How long?” I ask, an echo of that first night. But I know before he says it. Still... some perverse part of me needs to hear their intention spoken aloud.
“Forever,” Sebastian says.
I look to Morgan, whose bright green eyes are so intense I have to look away again. I look back to Sebastian, and then back to Morgan, unsure which man is more dangerous, which is more safe. Who should I appeal to?
“Please...” I don't know why I'm begging. I don't know what I'm begging for, but suddenly I’m one hundred percent sure that it doesn't matter what my body wants right now... I can't do this.
I can't be their slave. They can't take everything from me and expect me to smile pretty and take their cocks like a good girl. I crumple to the ground, my legs no longer willing to support me.
I kneel on the hardwood floor, sobbing. “Please... please please...” I beg. “Please just let me go.” Another part of me is screaming no I want to stay. But what difference do my conflicting desires make if I don't want them to send me to prison?
Someone is sitting on the ground beside me, pulling me into his arms.
“Shhh, little rabbit,” Morgan says. He's petting my hair. “I think we should give her some spa
ce to process things. Let her go home... just for a few nights.”
I look up, my vision blurred from my tears, to see Sebastian is considering this. They know I'm not going to report them. They have more power. They have the better card to play. The justice system won't absolve me because of their blackmail. Their crimes aren't as high as premeditated murder, and they have enough money and power to buy their freedom from anything anyway.
“Very well,” Sebastian finally says, his eyes never leaving mine. “I'll take you home. You can have a few more nights in your own bed. Are you going to be able to dance tomorrow or do we need to use the understudy?”
Oh yeah. I'm dancing with him. How can I dance with him? But I nod my head quickly. “Don't call the understudy. Please, I can dance.” I just got this role; I can't lose it now.
“We'll see,” Sebastian says, skeptical.
I pull out of Morgan's arms and crawl the few feet over to Sebastian. “Please, Master, I want to dance.” He absently strokes my hair.
“Get up, I'll take you home.”
I struggle to stand, and Sebastian leads me out of the penthouse, to the service elevator, back to his car. We are silent on the drive. When he pulls up in the circular driveway in front of my house, he finally speaks.
“You belong to us. We won't be moved. Neither of us. So don't think you can play us against one another. Take this time to make peace with your fate.”
I only nod, willing the tears not to start up again. I take my ballet bag and get out of the car without a backward glance.
Once safely locked inside my house, I slide to the floor and sob. By the time I finally drag myself to bed, I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep. I masturbate five times, because it's what I do when I have insomnia.
I try not to think about anything in particular. It's just for comfort. But even I don't believe this lie. Now the fantasies have two men. My body betrays me over and over as I stroke myself to orgasm, my moan filling the darkened room.
15
For four nights, Sebastian and I dance the Firebird. Each night when he rips off the blindfold, revealing himself to me, it feels just as shocking as the first time. Each time, I flinch at his intense expression, that scar. Each time I run from him and leap across the stage. And each time he recaptures me.
