“What's my punishment?” I tried to make my voice appropriately subservient, not for me, but for him. If he wanted me broken, I could fake it to get what I wanted.
The whip, I thought. A vibrator, deep and hard to open me. Then his cock.
Lane laughed as he fingered my chin. “I can read everything you're thinking in your eyes. You haven't earned any of that.”
I swallowed. “Tell me. Please, sir.”
“I like that. You should remember to use that more often.”
“Yes, sir. I'll remember, sir.” My voice sounded false in my own ears, but it wasn't entirely false. A part of me was sincere.
Anything to get that massive cock where it belonged...
“You have lost the right to a name. For now, you are called Boy.”
What. The. Hell.
“I hope you're not questioning me, boy.”
“No, sir, but...”
“You have a long way to go before you get fucked. However, I'll grant you this much. You have the right to beg for my cock as much as you want. Just remember to keep saying ‘sir.’”
Chapter Fifteen
LANE
Two steps forward, one step back, around we go and do-see-do. Thorne was back and forth, hot and cold, needy and defiant.
He knelt in front of me, wrists cuffed behind him, head almost touching the floor at my feet. “You've broken me,” he said. “Take me. Use me.”
“You're a long way from earning that.”
“Please. I'm begging.”
“It isn't about what you want.”
He looked at the front of my pants. “How about what you want?”
“It isn't about that either.” Anyway, what I wanted was to demonstrate my self-control.
“Please. Fuck me. I feel so empty.”
He was hollow on the inside but it wasn't just a physical emptiness. “I'm not here to fill you up with my cock. I'm here to fill you with a sense of purpose.”
“Fuck. Please. What purpose? I'll be your slave, I'll do anything...”
“Being my slave sounds fun, but fun isn't your purpose.”
“You son of a bitch. You enjoy hearing me beg.”
“What was your first clue?”
“You should use me. Punish me. Make it rough.”
“That wouldn't be a punishment for you. That would be a reward.”
From time to time, I allowed him to service me with his mouth. Sometimes I diddled him with a toy, but it was always a carefully chosen one—too small, the batteries too weak, the intrusion too brief—to allow him to reach the deep satisfaction he craved.
“Please. Please. Please.”
I had decided I would no longer allow anyone else to handle Lane's case. When I couldn't be there, someone was always assigned to man the monitor to keep an eye on him, but no one else was allowed to enter the room unless I was there. I didn't want to share him.
A week later. A sticky-hot Saturday morning, but not dangerously hot. It was early. Seven in the morning, maybe eighty degrees. I used the flogger to spank my naked boy down the path to the punishment tree.
Hands cuffed behind his back. Metal cuffs on each ankle with a short chain between them to hobble him. A single strap buckled around the base of his cock. I didn't plan on a long session because I knew it would be too hot by ten.
I liked walking him down the path. It would feel exposed to my boy, but the camouflage mesh over the area meant we wouldn't be photographed by satellite.
There was a glint in the sky. At first, I thought it was a big thing far away—a jetliner, maybe. But it was a small thing up close.
Fucking hell.
A little white camera drone.
My boy froze in place, his eyes wide as he looked up.
“It's fine,” I said. “I'm a good shot.” I pulled the Glock 22 out of my ankle holster. The drone, blind to what it recorded, flew closer.
My boy stood absolutely still while I took aim and fired, and the drone came down in pieces.
“Fuck,” I said. “What the actual fuck. Come here.”
He hobbled silent and barefoot to where the debris had fallen out of the sky. It hadn't been flying very high, and it wasn't very hot. After a moment, when I nodded, he nudged it cautiously with a bare toe.
“You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?”
“No, sir.”
“You would be able to arrange it if you wanted to.” I didn't say it like a question, because it probably wasn't.
“Yes, sir. Drones like this are less than a few hundred dollars.”
“So anybody could have bought and programmed this thing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They'd need a motive, though.”
“Yes, sir.”
We looked at each other, both of us wondering how much of our scene had already been streamed somewhere else.
“We have jammers,” I said.
“Yes, sir. I, um, it's not strictly legal, sir, but I could make some improvements in your set-up to double or triple the effectiveness of your jammers.”
I'd have to trust him back inside my network to let him do that. Hmm.
“Somebody knows there's something going on here,” I said. “Somebody's checking us out.”
“The forest service, sir,” he said.
“What?”
He kicked over a bit of broken wing to show a metal plaque.
Property of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “I've had to chase those guys off before.”
He waited for me to decide, and eventually I nodded.
“Keep going. We're not letting those guys fuck with our quality time.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hobbled on, his stride kept short by the chain that jingled between his ankles.
Our destination was a cypress tree almost five meters in diameter. It was probably over a thousand years old and might still be alive a thousand years from now. I was careful about the places where I'd set the hooks and ropes. The sapsuckers who overwintered here were less careful, but their peck marks hadn't done any lasting damage to a tree this size.
I grasped his cuffed-together wrists and pulled his arms over his head. “Do you trust me?”
“I do trust you, sir.”
“Even after the intruder?”
“I'm not concerned about the intruder, sir. We'll deal with the intruder.”
Good answer. And I don't think it's the same answer he would have given me the week before. The games we played, the tests I put him to, had proved I wouldn't take him further than he needed to go.
I tested him, and I would keep testing him, but not to his destruction.
I used a rope to secure his cuffed-together hands high over his head. It was a position that left his back long and exposed, although I was careful not to yank him up so high his hobbled feet left the ground.
"Tell me what you want. Say it."
"Fuck me, sir. Please. I feel so empty inside."
I gave him my lubed fingers one by one. The first finger was a tease that made him twitch violently enough to cause the long muscles inside of him to clutch hard at my hand. Slowly, slowly, I added the second finger and then the third.
“You need to talk to me, boy. You need to tell me everything you're feeling, and you're not allowed to hold anything back.” My other hand was fingering the strap around the base of his cock, then sliding to squeeze his nuts just hard enough to slow him down. I didn't need him spunking all over the cypress roots.
At least not yet.
It was still hard for him to talk about this stuff. Oh, he talked and talked and swore and cursed and bluffed. He was all defiance. But it was hard for him to show the hollowness beneath the defiance.
"Open, sir,” he said. “I, um, I feel open.”
“I need more from you, boy.”
“I feel like there's something inside of me that wants to pull you deeper and deeper. I feel needy, sir. I can't help it. There's this sense
of need like a hunger that's eating me up from the inside.”
“Good boy. That's what I want you to feel.”
I kept stroking in and out, the three longest fingers of my right hand going a little deeper every time while my left hand continued to squeeze his nuts and his root.
"Keep begging.”
"Please don't make me beg, sir. Please.”
"It's a direct order. I want you begging."
"Fuck me, sir. Fill me. Or if you won't fuck me, fist me." He was openly weeping from the force of his need.
I squirted some lube sloppily into his crack and over my hand without ever pulling my fingers out. After a little while, I curled thumb and pinky close to my other fingers so I could pulse half my hand in and out of him. It was the most he'd ever opened to me. If the drone had caused him to tense up for even a moment, I had no evidence of it.
Perfect trust. It was a beautiful thing.
“Harder, sir. Please make me come.”
But I was working him hard enough, connecting with his gland on every stroke. The only reason he hadn't popped was that maddening strap around his base. Soon, soon...
"When I fist you to the wrist, come. At that precise instant and no other."
"Yes, fucking yes, sir, yes."
One more slipslide of the fist into his ass, and it was done. He was screaming, his cock jerking repeatedly as it spewed everywhere. Because of the way he twisted on the rope, he could turn to spray not just the trunk of the tree but the clearing around us and even my own leather jeans.
I laughed out loud, delighted he'd given me another reason to punish him.
“Look at this mess.”
“Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir.”
I unclipped him from the tree, and he fell to his knees. “I don't want to hear about the sorry,” I said. “I want you to clean it up.”
His tongue worked fast and hot. Soon, he was using his gifted lips to tug down my zipper, and I was letting him.
His head bent over my cock. His hair fell to either side to expose his nape. I felt pleasure and power but I also felt tenderness.
“I'm going to take good care of you, boy. I'm going to keep you safe.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I know that, sir.”
A buzz in my pocket on the walk back. I would have normally silenced all notifications, but I had to take this call. I gestured at my boy, and he knelt at my feet to wait patiently while I pulled the device out of my pocket.
Thorne's eyes narrowed. He could see it wasn't my usual cell phone. This one was something else. Something that got through the jammer.
Seemed like a lot of things were getting through the jammer today.
“Lacompte,” I said into the device.
“You thought any more about what I was talking to you about the other day.” Fucking feds. It wasn't a question. It was more or less a direct command.
“Nice to hear from you too, Wendell.”
“I have a real job.”
As opposed to being district attorney of one of Louisiana's most sparsely populated parishes. “Fine,” I said. “I thought about it.”
“And.”
“And I assume I don't have much of a choice in the matter.”
“This is a joint task force formed under the express authority of the Department of Justice. So, yeah, you're expected to cooperate.”
“Then color me cooperating.”
I put the device away, and my boy stood up again. He'd gotten good at getting off his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back.
“You have permission to ask your questions,” I said as we continued down the path toward the building.
“I can arrange to jam that one too, sir,” he said. “If you want me to.”
“Was that a question?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Do you want me to jam all communication frequencies?”
“You would feel safer if I did, wouldn't you, boy?”
“Yes, sir, but I trust your judgment, sir.”
Good answer. His answers were getting better every day.
Chapter Sixteen
THORNE
There are cameras everywhere in a casino. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, depending on the size of the resort. The Talokka's Talon Claw Casino wasn't as big as the Chitimacha's Cypress Bayou complex, but it was plenty big enough. My best guesstimate was over a thousand cameras.
Still, there are weaknesses in any security system. Human weaknesses, for the most part.
The job was real, an assignment from our federal friends who were trying to track down some wandering millions. However, it was more than just a job for the Department of Justice. Lane was also taking the opportunity to test the depths of my submission. Was I a fake submissive who would cut and run the minute I had a chance? Or would I respect the will of my dom?
I was pleasantly sore in a way that's hard to talk about. Inside and out. A warmth. A sting. A reminder. Little linear bruises I could feel when I first settled behind the wheel of the gray Ford Fusion Lane assigned me to drive out to the casino.
I savored an enjoyable feeling of being possessed. Although I told myself a man shouldn't enjoy being possessed.
Not as much as I enjoyed it.
I could have driven anywhere, but I was here. A guy in a monkey suit gave me a claim ticket before he drove off with the car. A guy at the door looked hard at my face to decide whether or not he should make me show proof of age. Slot machines cling-clanged the recorded sounds of coins falling, even though they all ran on paper vouchers.
What was the real sign of weakness? If I ran? Or if I didn't?
Eight o'clock on a Friday night. Through the door, through the maze of machines and tables. The live poker room, less profitable than video poker, was buried somewhere in the back on the third floor.
I put the name Larkin on the list for five/ten no-limit. In the not-too-distant past, I'd played two/five under the name Bling, and the poker room hostess rolled her eyes but otherwise refrained from comment. I wasn't the first gambler to have more than one nom de guerre, and I wouldn't be the last.
The clothes, like the name, were an upgrade. Armani straight-leg jeans, a Tommy Hilfiger button-down shirt with palm trees printed all over it. The eighteen-karat gold bracelet on my left wrist was a nice touch.
Lane had spent a lot of money on my look. I felt spoiled, although I knew he only did it so I'd fit in.
There were nine players—eight men, one woman. It was a high-stakes game for this place, and the table was elevated on a little platform to keep the railbirds from breathing down people's necks. The chairs were the padded, rolling kind. A little too plush for poker. A little too easy to relax. I rolled my chair up tight under the table and leaned back instead of forward.
I believe in skill, but I'm aware of the existence of luck, and luck put me in the exact seat I would have chosen for myself. No need to bother the dealer for the seat change button. The target was immediately to my right, where he would always act before me in the game.
Bernard Justire looked old in his photo and older in person. Around eighty. Colorless eyes. Red and brown age marks on fragile skin. Cowboy hat. An aroma of cigar and cheap beer in a cloud around him.
“Do I know you?” His voice creaked with age and irritation, telling me he was aware of my scrutiny. Nothing odd about that. It would be odder if I ignored him. High stakes poker is all about evaluating the guy on your right.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yeah, I know you. Thornhill Raynaud's kid. The one who stole the Manderson Satsuma.”
“I don't know where people get that idea.” Satsumas are what people in Louisiana and Japan call what's called mandarin oranges everywhere else. I sometimes thought how unfortunate it would have been if the stone was named the Manderson Mandarin.
A smile twitched the corners of my lips. When you're playing poker, it's all right to smile, as long as the smile has nothing to do with the cards in your hand.
Justire smiled too. It wasn't attracti
ve. When he put his cigar in his mouth and chewed on the end, a little dribble of saliva ran down his chin. The way the dealer looked at him told me it was an old habit. Annoying, disgusting even, but they wouldn't kick the old boy out of the room unless he actually lit up.
“Where do you sell something like that?” he asked.
“If I told you, I'd have to kill you.”
He cackled an old man's creaky cackle.
Somebody bet a couple hundred, and the action folded around to him. He squinted a long moment. Chewed the cigar. Finally folded. So Justire was one of those slow-playing dudes who wanted to milk the moment for as long as he could. When you're as pretty as he is, slow-playing at poker might be the only way to still have people look at you.
All in all, it took longer for him to lose his money than I would have predicted. Finally, he got heads-up in a pot with a pair of queens against aces, and his chips were history.
“The ladies will always cost you,” I said.
He glared at me and reached for his wallet for the re-buy. A chip runner was already hovering to take his money.
“Son of a...” He pushed back from the table and stood up fast, his hand still grabbing the empty right pocket of his jeans. He thought he'd been sitting on his wallet, keeping it all nice and safe the whole time. Oopsy. “Son of a fucking bitch...”
I looked up at him, my eyebrows lifted in a beautiful flutter of perplexity. “What's wrong, buddy?”
“You know what's wrong, you thieving son of a bitch. I'm going to get hold of your ankles and turn you upside-down and shake my fucking money loose.”
I looked wide-eyed at the dealer as if to say, Are you hearing this shit? Is he allowed to abuse another player like this?
The runner cleared his throat. “Isn't that your wallet, sir?” He gestured toward the old boy's left pocket.
The old boy yanked it out of his pocket and thumbed rapidly through the thick wad of bills. His face turned an interesting shade of beetroot purple.
“It happens to me all the time,” I said. “I wouldn't remember where I left my head if it wasn't screwed on.”
“You little... don't think I don't know what you did. I know exactly what you did.”
Choice of Cages Page 10
