Contract Broken (Contracted #2)

by Aya DeAniege

  “It seems I didn’t need your services after all,” he said.

  Nicole rolled her eyes, then glared at Mr. Wrightworth.

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” she said.

  “What’s it pay?” I asked, hardly believing those words were coming out of my mouth.

  Mr. Wrightworth looked surprised as he said, “Emancipation.”

  No debt. No name either, but no debt.

  I would be free to build whatever I could of my life. I would need to choose a new surname, but my debt would be entirely erased. My family would take on the debt that was linked to my name, debt which would have passed on to my children.

  “The term?” I asked.

  “Six months,” Mr. Wrightworth responded.

  “That’s not long at all,” I said with a frown.

  “No, not long at all,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “Why?”

  The man frowned, glancing at Nicole. She responded with a shrug.

  “What do you mean, why?” Nicole asked.

  “Why is it six months with emancipation, a blank slate but offers protection? The judge ruled that a contract would protect me from Albert, which means that Nathaniel doesn’t need to hide anything from his father any longer. Taking me back on, it’s obvious what would be going on. So why a six-month blank contract offering emancipation?”

  “For protection, sweetie,” Nicole said.

  Mr. Wrightworth held up a hand to stop her from speaking. His eyes narrowed as he considered me, lowering his hand slowly until it was sitting on the table top.

  “She’s too smart for that,” he said, hazel eyes locking with mine. “Six months, because that’s about how long we expect the trial will take. At the end of that time, you would be free to do as you please.

  “It’s a blank slate, not because we want to hide what Nathaniel might do to you, but because that was what was offered to you before. Also because it is a blank slate. You, me, him, we don’t know what’s going on, and we don’t want to put terms to it. Signing this contract does not mean that you need to be his sub, or that you need to sleep with him or be subservient to him in any manner or form. It means that you will be under his protection and live in his estate for six months in exchange for emancipation.

  “Emancipation needs to be cleared by the government. Having heard of the charges we want to lay against Albert, they agreed readily. They think this is Nathaniel’s way of soothing his ego. They believe he holds himself responsible and that he wants to make amends, so they have allowed him to. Don’t take that as an offhand thing either. Emancipation requires a hundred thousand dollars be paid to the government by the contractor as well as your entire debt. In this case, they demanded twice the debt, a payment for them as well as repaying the portion of your debt that you would have passed on to your children.”

  “But that’s not what emancipation is,” I said.

  “As I said, they believe he wants to make amends. They gave him a way to do so. So Nathaniel took it and paid. This has already been paid. Whether you take the contract or not, the government retains the fee.”

  “And why emancipation, why not make another payment to my family?” I asked.

  “So that you won’t be returned to the slums,” Nicole said. “Emancipated poor folks are found jobs outside of the slums. You also can’t take another contract after you’ve been emancipated unless you have a poor person representing you, or you sign a contract before your contract with Nathaniel is up.”

  “If we lose the trial, we believe Albert may try to strong arm you into signing a contract with him,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “Protection, he’s offering protection,” I said.

  “For six months you would live with Nathaniel, learn all you can. I strongly suggest you take the contract, but I can’t make you.”

  “You want me to go away?” I asked.

  He must have known about the contract when Nathaniel left.

  Mr. Wrightworth had sex with me, then told me about the contract because he knew what my answer was going to be. Even though I didn’t know it, he did. He knew what I wanted better than I ever could. He could anticipate every move I made during play, of course he knew me well enough to know what I actually wanted from life.

  “Don’t view it as going away,” Nicole said.

  “Nathaniel’s estate is only an hour drive,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “I would still have my visits with you at least once a week, as well as church on Sundays. Nicole could also visit. You will not be alone.”

  “But...” I said.

  “No buts, no maybes,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “You know I don’t take this lightly. You know that I normally keep to myself and let others come to the decision they want without telling them what I think they should do.”

  “But he’s still with Mayfair,” I protested.

  “She’s got a point,” Nicole muttered.

  “The charges are being laid on Albert on Monday. Nathaniel will be coming in for the interviews which contractors need to go through. He will be here most of the day, and Mayfair thinks he has business meetings. Once he’s done there, Tuesday and Wednesday will be for reviewing. If you take the contract, you will wear the black plug, if you decline, the purple.”

  The black plug was smaller than the purple. Mr. Wrightworth had just purchased the purple plug, and it had never been used before. If I chose to wear the purple one, I’d be highly uncomfortable throughout because of the upgrade in size.

  “Fuck you,” I snapped.

  Mr. Wrightworth smiled in response to my outburst.

  “I’m not wearing a fucking plug while that cunt beats on me!” I added.

  “If you don’t, she might peg you,” Nicole said.

  “Or have Nate do it, and he doesn’t want to,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “By wearing a plug, I can set a limit. It stays in, or so help me. Nate is very well trained.”

  “So well trained,” Nicole muttered. “Use the right word or tone, and he’ll react.”

  “Mayfair has arranged for her time Wednesday night,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “So Thursday morning you be formally offered the contract. If you choose to take it, you will need to go through the interviewing process again. The board is up in arms about everything that has happened revolving around your retrieval. There’s an entire review of our policies because, as you’ve said, you slipped through all the cracks. They will not allow you to sign a contract without following due process.”

  “Church tomorrow?” I asked.

  “No, because Mayfair may be there,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “And if I see her again I might just bend her over and give her the fucking she’s been telling other people I’ve offered.”

  “She wants vaginal,” Nicole said idly.

  “She’s not getting vaginal from me,” he said sternly. “She’ll have to settle for Nate if she can figure out the triggers to make him hard.”

  “What is that trigger?” I asked.

  Mr. Wrightworth stared at me, frowning slightly as he seemed to process what I had just asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked in response.

  “What is Nate’s trigger word for what you just mentioned?” I asked. “I already know his trigger for orgasm. Though I’m not sure I can imitate the tone yet.”

  “And what do you believe is Nate’s trigger?” Nicole asked.

  “Good,” I said, trying to imitate the tone.

  Nicole went a funny colour, Mr. Wrightworth choked, apparently on air.

  I watched the two of them as they seemed to struggle to cover their surprise.

  “What?” I asked.

  Mr. Wrightworth cleared his throat before he countered with a question of his own.

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “You said it last night,” I said, motioning towards the play room.

  “No, that tone, where did you learn that tone?” Nicole asked. “You some sort of mimic, hear it once and can imitate it?”

  I blinked at them, not understand
ing why they were asking that. Ever so slowly it dawned on me.

  The doms in the community weren’t saying the word to torment Nathaniel. They didn’t know they were doing it. It was something they heard Mr. Wrightworth say, and it was a tone of voice that implied a pride and something deeper.

  “You all use that tone, on that word. A lot. I learned it from you all. And Nathaniel.”

  “He uses that tone?” Mr. Wrightworth asked, sounding amused with himself.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Interesting,” Mr. Wrightworth muttered.

  “She should pull out of the time with Mayfair,” Nicole said. “As of Monday, she’ll know something is up. Especially if they take Albert into custody. She might take advantage of that hour and actually try to kill Izzy, say it was a play accident or something.”

  “No breath play, no strangulation,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “She knows that, Mayfair knows that, would Nate know that?” Nicole asked. “She should pull out, damn it.”

  “To gain access to Mayfair’s records I need someone either on contract or being watched in her house. Izzy is being watched in case Albert has someone threaten or attack her.”

  “Which Mayfair will do. If she wasn’t in cahoots with Albert, Izzy’s given plenty of reason for Mayfair to want to cause real, actual damage, lasting damage.”

  “She hasn’t got the balls to attack Izzy,” Mr. Wrightworth said.

  “After Izzy attacked her at church? You really think she wouldn’t take action after that?”

  “I’d like her to,” he said sternly. “At least if she did, I wouldn’t have to press to find evidence connecting her with Albert to subpoena her records and have her charged with whatever I can. Or bring her down. Or... something.”

  “Vengeance isn’t the answer,” Nicole said.

  “She broke the trust. The tenets and almost outed us to the whole world!”

  “You’re outing us to the whole world!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry that you haven’t lost someone to that man’s fucking appetites,” Mr. Wrightworth snarled back at Nicole. “We aren’t outing anything but Izzy and me and Nathaniel. The prosecution has asked about the community, and no names have been, nor will they be, given.”

  “You’re risking us all to take down one man.”

  “Well, I would kill the bastard, but if I do it voids the contract and results in all of us either being killed or outed!” Mr. Wrightworth shouted. “Isabella Martin is the one pressing charges, not me, not him, no one but her. So don’t you fucking sit there and tell me that I’m wrong for doing what’s right.”

  “You are a master manipulator, of course, she’s doing exactly what you want her to.”

  “He is a rapist and a murderer. He has destroyed numerous lives, killed tens of women, and gotten away with it all because of his damned money. We finally have him. He’s stuck. There’s no amount of money that can save him from the evidence we have.”

  “Except them proving that she’s a masochist. Which clearly she is.”

  “It’s not whether or not she’s a masochist. She’s already admitted that she is. It’s whether or not she consented to him doing what he did.”

  “Which is made easier by the fact that she’s a masochist. A fact that you told them, and then outed the community.”

  “Law enforcement knows about the community. What they don’t understand is the consent.”

  “Which is what they’ll be debating!”

  Awkwardly, I stood and left the dining room as the pair of them began arguing at a louder volume.

  In the bedroom, I closed the door, which drowned them out a little bit but not completely. I sat at my journal and wrote about the night before and that morning. After finishing my writing, I went back and tried to read, but couldn’t focus.

  I stood and went back to the dining room.

  “Can I borrow a phone?” I asked.

  Nicole pulled hers out and handed it to me. I looked at it, then back up at her.

  Holding it back to her I added, “make it call Nathaniel.”

  “He might be busy,” she said, typing in the number before she handed the phone back to me and rounded on Mr. Wrightworth as he growled something under his breath.

  The two of them ended up shouting again as I walked back into the bedroom.

  The phone rang several times in my ear.

  “Nikki, not now,” Nathaniel growled.

  “Nicole gave me her phone,” I said.

  “Oh, because only Nikki calls from this number,” Nathaniel said, there was a flurry of something, and he growled something at someone else. “Give me one second. I’ll call you back.”

  “Wait! How do I pick up the phone?”

  “Hit the green button when it pops up and slide your finger the way the phone tells you to.”

  The line went dead.

  I sat in the half darkness until the phone went off. I almost dropped the phone trying to answer it.

  The name that lit up the screen?

  ‘Sir.’

  Nicole and Nathaniel hadn’t been involved in years, yet he was still labelled as ‘sir’ in her phone. For all her proclamations, I don’t think even Nicole fully understood what she wanted from life or where she stood. Even though she had been in the community for years, she was still very confused about what she wanted out of the fetish lifestyle that she participated in.

  “What’s going on?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Are you alone?” I asked in response.

  “Yes, I’m in my study, you remember that room?” he asked.

  I could almost hear the smile in his voice.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Your book is still sitting on the table, waiting for you to return and finish reading it,” he said. “I’ve desperately wanted to reread Paradise Lost, but thought I should wait until you came and read it to me.”

  My God, I think he still likes me.

  Dense, I was so dense back then. But a man waiting to do something until I was there, that I understood.

  “I’d like that,” I said. “But Mr. Wrightworth and Nicole are arguing about the...”

  “About the charges, you’re pressing,” Nathaniel finished.

  “Yeah,” I said sadly.

  “Who’s debating what?” he asked.

  “The, uh, consent issue,” I said. “She seems to think that we’ll fail in proving that I didn’t give consent. Mr. Wrightworth seems pretty confident.”

  “I’d rather not talk about evidence, it might tarnish the case somehow,” he said with a sigh. “I wish I could, Izzy, but I can’t. I can’t risk there being a mistrial because you needed someone to talk to. It’s too important. It’s bigger than us.”

  I sat in silence for a while, struggling for something to say.

  “Suppose I’ll see you Wednesday,” I said quietly.

  “That you will,” he said, sounding happy again. “It’ll only be an hour, and it won’t just be us, but I look forward to any time we spend together.”

  “That’s, um, that’s good.”

  “Are you looking forward to it?” he asked.

  “Nicole thinks I should withdraw consent,” I said.

  “That’s up to you. You can withdraw at any point during as well.”

  “But what if I withdraw consent, and she keeps going?”

  “That would change the play to assault, the community takes that very seriously,” he said. “I’ve never known Mayfair to ignore consent. I trained her for crying out loud.”

  “Not very well,” I said. “She’s already broken one rule.”

  “That’s true, but consent isn’t the same as sharing an image,” Nathaniel said. “And besides, from what has been said, I’ll be participating in the event. She’s, well, Mayfair is like a wet noodle. Rich woman arms.”

  “So she’s going to use you?” I asked.

  “Yes, and I’m going to beat you senseless,” he said, then chuckled. “My only regret is that I can’t fuck you afterward,
make you come for me, then use the vibrator on you until you beg me for release.”

  I whined out, desperately wanting that.

  “Would you like that?” he asked. “Would you like me to tie you up and pleasure you until you beg me for release?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Perhaps if you’re good, I will even grant you that release.”

  I bit my bottom lip as the door of the bedroom opened, and Mr. Wrightworth walked in. Our eyes met, and I realized, in a startling moment that I still recall years later, that I knew what my answer had to be.

  “Mr. Wrightworth is here,” I said.

  “That means you need to go, and I need to get to work,” Nathaniel said.

  “I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  “See you Wednesday,” he said, then hesitated. “And Izzy?”

  “Yes, Nathaniel?”

  “I feelings you.”

  I smiled and lowered my head. “I feelings you too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wednesday came up very quickly.

  Going in I knew that Nathaniel had been approved for the contract, but not whether or not the Program board would allow me to sign it.

  The rules for the hour I would spend with Mayfair were set while we were at her second home. It was said with all four of us in her sitting room so that there’d be no question as to who said what and what the rules were.

  Two homes, like she’s queen of the world or something!

  Once the rules were set out, we went into the playroom. The rules had been relatively simple, and Mayfair had gotten suspicious because Mr. Wrightworth always had very strict rules for those borrowing time with a sub. He claimed the rules were simple because he needed her to obey what he said. It boiled down to no sexual activity, which Mr. Wrightworth passed off as my being frightened after the attack months before.

  I wasn’t afraid, but the look on her face when he said that?

  I was glad that he brought it up. I didn’t want that woman anywhere near my genitalia, and I certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near hers.

  In the room, she commanded me to strip, which I did. Happy to do so because I didn’t want the dress getting damaged. In underwear, I stood before her with my eyes downcast.

  “Those as well,” she demanded.