Contract Broken (Contracted #2)

by Aya DeAniege

  No, I hadn’t had a complete meltdown. Sitting with Mr. Wrightworth, with popcorn in front of us, I was suddenly taken back to Nathaniel’s entertainment room. The other time I struggled to get a word out.

  “Feelings?” Mr. Wrightworth asked, setting the back of his hand against my forehead.

  I miss Nathaniel.

  Who could be a smart alec at times, sarcastic and witty when I needed him to be, who wouldn’t judge me for getting the wrong word out. Mr. Wrightworth didn’t think it was adorable that I had said ‘feelings’ in place of the word I meant to use. I had no idea f he found anything adorable.

  That kind of upset me.

  “Good, I meant to say good,” I responded, dropping my head to his shoulder. “Last night was good. I enjoyed it, at least.” Mr. Wrightworth tensed under me, which only made me feel the need to defend myself. “I mean, not on a regular basis or anything, but it was weirdly good.”

  “She’s probably dropping,” Nicole said in a singsong voice as she stared at the television and jabbed a button on the remote.

  Mr. Wrightworth’s arms tightened around me, drawing me closer. “You don’t need to defend why it felt good.”

  “It was supposed to be discipline,” I protested.

  “Sort of, weirdest scene I’ve ever played, more like,” he grumbled in response. “Typically everything is negotiated beforehand. I don’t go off script at all, except when you call your safe word.”

  “Well, thank you,” I murmured, feeling the flush over my face as my throat ached slightly. It reminded me of what we had done. “It just had a different sort of quality to it than the scripted stuff.”

  We had been caught up in the moment. It was a dangerous way to be caught. Both sub and dom might go beyond their limits when in that place, but it’s so much fun introducing a new thing every once in a while. Not everything can be written in stone, and, as much as I need to know what is going to happen, it can be boring to always play within the parameters negotiated before play.

  “Ah, they have that movie you like,” Nicole said loudly.

  “That’s amusing, considering they didn’t have it yesterday,” Mr. Wrightworth grumbled. “I think the controllers slipped something in.”

  “How hard did you beat them, that they think you need this movie?”

  “Shut up and press play,” Mr. Wrightworth growled.

  Mr. Wrightworth’s favourite movie was from before the collapse and then another twenty or thirty years. The dates on movies were often lost. The dates were more of a generalization created around the lives of the actors who participated in the movies.

  Whenever Mr. Wrightworth was feeling unstable, he’d flick through all the movies available until he either found the movie or discovered it wasn’t there and settled on something else.

  He’d never use the search function.

  Which drove everyone mad.

  What likely happened that day was that Nicole had started the search and texted the controllers at the same time. They didn’t just control the building. They could also launch imitations of the services that the building received. Mainly streaming services, which was about the only way anyone outside of the slums watched movies besides Nathaniel. The controllers had then loaded the movie to save us three hours of searching to settle on something else entirely.

  That day I didn’t get to watch the movie. I ended up falling asleep on Mr. Wrightworth. When the movie ended, he shifted me off of him, waking me momentarily.

  I woke up entirely when a hand tightened on the back of my neck. Almost like picking up a cat by the scruff of the neck, Mr. Wrightworth lifted me, and I moved with him. It was the oddest sensation, made a little stranger when he deposited me back in his lap and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I’d offer a massage, but I suspect that would be more painful than not,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “And I’d offer you one, but I don’t know how so it’d probably just hurt,” I grumbled in response.

  “Oh, I can help with that,” Nicole said, sounding far too interested. “Come on, you know whatever Dom she goes to will want that service at some point.”

  Mr. Wrightworth sighed. “You’re right. Nearly everyone uses it at some point.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Could be discipline,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “Or even have you give someone else a massage. If your Dom is a rich person, such so called services will insinuate sex without being sex. Your Dom will want to share you in a capacity that others will view as him being loose. Those who keep a sub close are usually muttered about by the rich folk. Whining and bitching about classless whores.”

  “So it’s something I should learn,” I said.

  “Yes, it’ll also help knowing pressure points,” Mr. Wrightworth said with that Cheshire cat smile. “He makes a lewd comment and you just need to put the right pressure on the right part of the back. You can bring any man down.”

  “Or by their thumb,” Nicole said, standing to move to the same couch as Mr. Wrightworth and me. “Men follow their thumbs, pretty well their entire balance can be controlled with the thumb alone.”

  The rest of the day was spent teaching me massage and relaxing. Nicole didn’t stop adjusting what I was doing until Mr. Wrightworth moaned and shuddered under my touch. After the massage, Mr. Wrightworth went off to take a bath. Nicole told me to lay down, and I fell asleep again.

  So tired.

  Thank goodness it was a Saturday. There was nothing to pull us away and no one had any expectations of us. We rested, we relaxed, we ate.

  And Sunday morning we got up and went to church.

  That was a stupid idea.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the way to church, I was told very simply, “Do nothing to Mayfair. At all.”

  Which made perfect sense given the incident when I attended church last.

  I was resolute in my determination to obey. Mr. Wrightworth knew what had happened and why, though he hadn’t done anything about it as far as I knew on the way there. Walking into the church, I kept my eyes downward, embarrassed that everyone had witnessed what had happened the last time I was around.

  “Cellphone, Mr. Wrightworth,” Ezekiel called as Mr. Wrightworth tried to walk off after receiving his wristband. The greeter stepped up beside me and looked down the sundress, then back up to my eyes. “And I have to ask because you’ d be surprised where women can hide things. Do you have a cellphone on you, Darling?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” I murmured, with a shake of my head before I lowered my eyes once more.

  “I’m a Daddy, not a Sir,” Ezekiel grumbled.

  “I think Darling meant it the way she’d call any man ‘sir,’” Mr. Wrightworth said, returning to the table with his cellphone held out to Ezekiel. “I forgot.”

  The no cellphone rule was new. There were many reasons to ban cellphones in a place that actively participated in technically illegal activities. The police, the government, even the people in general, were willing to ignore us and live as we wished to live. So long as the video and photographic evidence was not leaked to the public at large.

  I wondered, even hoped, that the new rule had come about because of Mayfair. I hoped that the Doms of the community were taking actions to correct a mistake.

  “Sure you did. Like Mayfair wasn’t looking for blood when we demanded her phone,” Ezekiel said. “Her sub’s not very well trained, makes faces behind her back. Almost full on laughed.”

  “Subs need to be respectful of their Doms, no matter how they came to be a sub,” Mr. Wrightworth said to me before he turned his attention to Ezekiel. “Funny, I don’t recall seeing a sub contract come through for her.”

  “Not a poor sub,” Ezekiel whispered as he took a step backward.

  The motion of stepping back was not usual for a Dom, let alone Ezekiel. Certainly, I had only seen the man a few times by then, but he was of the sort that you knew he didn’t cede ground to just anyone. There was something about the way his other
foot seemed to shift as if he were getting ready to bolt, which made me wonder what was going on.

  Mr. Wrightworth’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks. He glanced at me, then back to Ezekiel. The greeter seemed to cock his head in my direction, but barely so, causing Mr. Wrightworth to make a sound at the back of his throat and turn his full attention to me.

  Obviously, they know each other well enough to talk without actually talking.

  “Come, Darling,” Mr. Wrightworth said, holding a hand out to me.

  I slid around Ezekiel and went to Mr. Wrightworth, accepting his hand. He led me down the aisle of the church as I kept my eyes on the floor. I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes. I was afraid of them judging me. We came to a sudden stop. I glanced up once, meeting Mayfair’s almost purple eyes before squeaking and trying to hide behind Mr. Wrightworth.

  The man stiffened as I buried my face in the back of his suit jacket.

  “Mayfair,” Mr. Wrightworth purred out.

  “Wrightworth,” Mayfair responded arrogantly. “Is Darling going to apologize to me?”

  “No,” Mr. Wrightworth responded, a chuckle altering his tone. “She’s not. Darling suffered from a break. I’m not going to risk her breaking again by making her confront the person who caused the break in the first place. The poor thing’s trembling in fright already.”

  “She should. Do you know how much it cost me to get my face fixed after that incident?”

  “Probably not as much as it cost you to get that permanently perplexed expression,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “I heard you made a fuss about the new policy.”

  “I run a business, I can’t just be separated from my cellphone,” Mayfair snapped back.

  “So do I, so does Nathaniel, and a great many of us here. Nathaniel has never used his phone at church, shuts it off before he attends. I have only ever used it to entertain a nervous sub. Church is for us, not for business. If you’re so concerned about your business, you need not attend.”

  The response to a disgruntled Dom was so fluid that it hardly seemed practised, though it must have been. It was also worded in such a way that no one who wanted to continue attending meetings would be able to protest.

  “But my sub would be stripped of me if I didn’t attend with him in tow. Isn’t that what you said to me about Michie?”

  “It is because I would. As you well know, anyone who touches Michie answers to me, then to Nathaniel if anything is left of them.”

  “I believe you know my new sub. Would you two like to greet each other like the old friends that you are? Dear?”

  Mr. Wrightworth seemed to lurch forward, making me squeak and step back as I almost followed him. I was still regaining my balance as everything else happened.

  There was a loud crack. Then the rumpled sound of someone hitting the floor.

  Mr. Wrightworth snarled as Mayfair peered up at him from the floor, blood flowing from a crack in her lip.

  “Ow,” she said, a hand touching her bottom lip gently. “What was that for?”

  “I believe Mr. Wrightworth thinks you may have intended that I use his real name,” Nathaniel purred out.

  A cold washed over me.

  Then the tingle of fear made everything feel weak. I felt the way I had that day on the plane, like everything else was moving and I was just trying to stay still and upright.

  I lifted my head and met those icy green eyes as the man smiled ever so slightly.

  The smile disappeared, and a mask came over Nathaniel’s face as he bent to help Mayfair to her feet. I had to watch as Nathaniel smoothed out Mayfair’s dress and offered her a handkerchief to hold to her split lip.

  “No,” Mayfair growled with an attempted frown. The woman’s face wasn’t moving the way it should have been. “I know the price of doing that. No, Mr. Wrightworth, I wouldn’t do that to you. I wanted Nate here to greet you with the respect you deserve as a founding member.”

  He’s her sub.

  That was why, I thought. He had moved on and had become a sub to Mayfair, though I couldn’t understand why. I had supposed that he wanted her because she was rich and pretty and had everything.

  Whereas I was poor and stupid and couldn’t pull off that dress no matter how much I starved myself.

  I dared to glance up again. My eyes flowed over Nathaniel’s tailored suit, to the perfectly rumpled hair and the shape of that face. He was perfectly shaved, as he always was, though there was a darkness along the left side of his jaw as if he were recovering from a bruise.

  How well I knew what sort of damage a sub could suffer under the hands of a Dom. Mr. Wrightworth and Nathaniel had avoided my face. Most Doms did because bruising on the face was difficult to hide from the public eye. To see any bruise on Nathaniel was a shock.

  To try to imagine Mayfair striking him hard enough to cause such damage? That was just absurd.

  Around Nathaniel’s throat was a black choker, which looked a little ridiculous on a man. I turned my eyes to Mayfair and over her dress. The fabric hardly made an impression on me. I skimmed over the look and colour of it.

  What I did catch was the ring.

  She wore the purple ring on her left hand. The one that Nathaniel had worn around his neck when we had attended church. At the sight of the ring, I stiffened like a board, reaching for Mr. Wrightworth, eve though he was out of reach. I had to step forward so that I could touch him.

  She was his Mistress before.

  I poked Mr. Wrightworth in the back as he stepped back, peering around him to the ring.

  Nathaniel wore the ring that last day, perhaps—I decided in those moments—that was why he had gone to Mayfair. Maybe he had only gone to her because he had felt out of place after I had been taken.

  Mr. Wrightworth trembled ever so slightly and turned, pulling me to his side. I couldn’t hide at his side. Feeling self-conscious, I gripped my left arm with my right hand and kept my eyes down. My eyes fell to about knee level on Nathaniel. The man had his hands in his pockets. As I tried so desperately to block out what was going on around me, a hand slid out of his pocket, and a finger jabbed upwards.

  I looked up, my legs feeling weak again. Nathaniel’s mouth opened just slightly, eyes sliding down me in a seemingly pointed manner, before he glanced at Mr. Wrightworth and suddenly down and away.

  Nathaniel looked away just as Mayfair turned towards him.

  It took a moment to realize that Mr. Wrightworth had said, “Your sub needs to learn to respect you. Put some fear into him.”

  “Perhaps I simply cannot strike him hard enough to drive the point home,” Mayfair grumbled.

  “Workout more,” Mr. Wrightworth responded blandly.

  “You still do discipline?” Mayfair asked.

  To which both Nathaniel and I stiffened. Mr. Wrightworth made a sound that almost sounded like the purring of a cat.

  “I haven’t since taking on Darling, but... I can make an exception for Nate, I suppose.”

  “Trade you.”

  “Trade me?” Mr. Wrightworth demanded.

  “One night with Nate, whatever you please. And I mean... whatever you please. With his consent to the one small thing,” Mayfair hesitated as Mr. Wrightworth shuddered. I couldn’t decide if she was claiming Mr. Wrightworth was small, or that it’d be no trouble to talk Nathaniel into it. “And I get one hour with Darling.”

  “Yes, but a night is almost half gone after sleep,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “Oh, Mr. Wrightworth. You forget that I know exactly what you like. Sleep deprivation isn’t in his hard limits. If necessary, he can sleep when he returns to me. But I know that of all the people here, you can drive a fearful respect into anyone. By the time you return him to me, I’m sure you’ll have driven home the fact that if he doesn’t obey, he will spend more time with you and he won’t like it.”

  “I’d beat it into his thick skull,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “No beating around the face or neck, he does have a corporation to run, and they’d ask ques
tions if he showed up with one of your love taps,” Mayfair said. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Let me mull it over,” Mr. Wrightworth murmured. “As you can tell, my preferences may have shifted somewhat.”

  “As if they’d shift that far, but it’s a standing offer. Just let me know. I’d love to get my claws into her.”

  Mayfair walked off towards the front of the church as Mr. Wrightworth drew me to the back of the church, on the other side of the seats where she sat. We were literally on the other end of the church.

  “He makes a terrible sub,” Nicole said, thumping loudly into the seat beside me.

  “Nate is a very good sub,” Mr. Wrightworth purred out, a finger rubbing over his bottom lip.

  He seemed suddenly distracted. Like he was caught in thought.

  “Then... she makes a bad Dom?” Mary, Nicole’s sub, offered up from the other side of Nicole.

  I knew she was the grief councilor I had met when I had first entered the Program, but I still couldn’t seem to place her face. I recognized her as the person who brought me free wine, but after drinking both bottles, the entire thing was hazy. It was as if we were strangers. We had only spent an hour or so together, something like six months previous.

  “Well, yes,” Mr. Wrightworth said, draping an arm around me possessively. “But I suspect we’ll see a much more submissive Nate over the rest of the meeting.”

  How could he have known that?

  Ezekiel stepped up to the pulpit and raised his hands to draw everyone’s attention.

  “As you all no doubt know, we have now banned cellphones from inside the church,” Ezekiel said. “It seems that a walk-in that we knew was here, had a cellphone and took several images which then fell into the hands of authorities. Photographs in the hands of the authorities would count as causing a raucous. It would work against everything we’ve done so far. These images have been retrieved and dismissed, thank God, but we are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

  “If you have a problem with the ruling of the founding members, you can kindly go fuck yourself, as per usual. The punishment for having a cellphone within the church will be four hours submission to Mr. Wrightworth and one other Dom of his choice.”