by Cerys du Lys
Then Jeremy twirled a finger in the air and she turned.
There was writing across her back, big letters. At first El thought they were tattoos, but then she saw that the darkened skin was raised into welts. Not tattoos: branding. These letters had been burned into her back. As Keira came to stand still, El was able to read the writing:
GIVEN to JD
“It’s our contract,” said Jeremy. “Her commitment to me. She gave herself to me, Eleanor. One hundred per cent. She is mine.”
9
Darkness. More muggy heat.
Lying on the bed, unable to sleep but never feeling fully awake.
Her life was like this now. Brief periods of lucidity emerging from long spells of drugged stupor.
She’d seen Jeremy today. She knew that. Out on the terrace, the sun burning her bare skin.
I need to know that you are mine.
How could he question that, after all she had done in his name?
She had always been his.
§
She’d come here for revenge.
That all seemed so distant now. Another person. Another her.
She’d been on a journey, from the woman she had been to the one she was now. She’d learned that she could be bad. All the way back in prison, she’d leanred that: from the very first time she had fought back against Anja.
Now, she realized one more thing: she could be Jeremy’s, but more – she could be like Jeremy.
In many ways, they were the perfect couple. Each capable of violence... anything to achieve their desired ends. Dark lovers, destined for each other.
That muggy heat!
She lay there with no covers, tossing and turning, her head full with dark fantasies and even darker dreams.
She was his, but also, he was hers. This was what her life had led up to.
The perfect couple.
§
Rob came to her some time the next morning, while she still lay in bed.
He came to rescue her, the poor deluded fool.
She heard the door and thought it must be Keira with some breakfast, but when she looked he was standing there, hesitating. Was he taken aback by her nakedness? Surely not: he’d seen her naked before.
She put a hand to her face, and remembered Danny’s beating. She must be bruised: that was why Rob stood there, his eyes working over her face like that.
She swung her legs to the side and sat, hands folded in her naked lap.
“Has he given me to you, too?” she asked, in what she hoped was an obedient tone.
He said nothing, still staring.
Finally, he moved further into the room, stopped before her, dropped to his knees and took her hands in his.
“El,” he said. “Jesus, El. What have they done?”
“I deserved it,” said El. “I earned it.”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, El. So damned sorry.”
Her hands were tiny in his. She looked into his silvery blue eyes and wondered why he should be sorry.
“I never wanted any of this,” he said, rocking back on his heels, then standing, turning, walking away to the wall and turning like a caged animal. “I never knew just how bad it all was until it was too late. Too many favors given, favors owed. Too much inside information up here.” He slapped at the side of his head. “It was always so easy just to turn a blind eye, pretend that none of this was happening. Pretend I was living the dream.”
He stood in the balcony doorway now, a silhouette against the bright morning light. “But I can’t be a part of it any more. I’m not a criminal. I’m not fucking evil. I’m getting out, El, and I’m going to get you out of here, too. You’ll be free, El.”
She looked at him. She didn’t even know what that meant. Free.
Free from Jeremy? Free to make her own choices?
She shook her head. “I want to stay,” she said, simply. “I want to be with my husband.”
He moved back into the room and kneeled before her again. The look on his face... she couldn’t read it. Surprise? Anger? Shock?
“El,” he said. “You have to get out of here. You’ve seen what he’s like – what he’s really like. He’ll destroy you, and then he’ll get bored and find someone else to destroy.”
“He loves me.”
Rob shook his head. “You’re drugged,” he said. “You’re broken – that’s what he does to people. Can’t you see? I know about your past, El. I know you were in jail. Can’t you see that when you’re in this state it’s so much easier to do what you’re told, to believe that you deserve to be owned and controlled? You’re still imprisoned in your head, El. But you don’t have to keep finding ways to be caged in. You can be free, El. I can get you out of here.”
It was too much to take in. His earnestness, his passion, his words.
She shook her head. He didn’t get it, did he? He just didn’t get it.
“What did you come here for, El?” he asked now. “You came here because you’re a fighter. You didn’t come here for this. It’s the drugs that are making you like this. Believe me: you just need to get out of here and get your head straight and then you’ll see.”
So much confusion in her head. She couldn’t think straight. She opened her mouth to speak–
There was a sound from beyond Rob and then the door opened.
Rob twisted, still kneeling before her, clutching her hands.
And in the doorway Jeremy stood there, smiling.
“Rob,” he said. “So good of you to come by. I’d been wondering why you’d been so quiet of late, but then Danny here alerted me to your presence. CCTV is such a useful thing, don’t you think? Cameras and microphones in every room. You just never know when you’re going to need them.”
§
Jeremy moved into the room, followed by Danny. A third man, the one Jeremy had referred to as Bruno, remained in the doorway blocking any possible escape.
Rob rose to a standing position, moving almost in slow motion. They all were... or was that just El’s perception, screwed over by the drugs?
“Your little speech was very sweet,” said Jeremy, still smiling. “But entirely misplaced, as you learned. My wife does not require your assistance. She is free to make her own choices, and she has chosen not to be free.”
Rob had positioned himself protectively in front of El. She had to lean sideways to see around him.
“You’ve made your choices, too, haven’t you, Rob? For instance, it would appear that you have chosen no longer to be obedient to me. It would appear that you have chosen to attempt to steal my property.”
“She’s not your–”
“And so now it is time for a choice of mine,” Jeremy went on, cutting through Rob’s protestations. “I choose to punish you, Rob. I choose to punish you most severely.”
At that, Danny stepped forward and reached for Rob. Even then Rob’s first move was to protect El, stepping sideways to block Danny off in case he made a move for her instead.
Danny swung a hand lazily and grabbed Rob’s upper arm. Rob jerked away, but the grip was strong.
El watched as Danny raised his other arm behind him then swung, his fist balled. Everything still seemed so slow! The fist swung low and then rose in a sharp upper cut, landing in Rob’s solar plexus and making him double up instantly. Head down at waist level, coughing and gasping for air, Rob seemed frozen, unable to move as Danny’s knee came up into his face.
His head jerked upwards at the impact, and then his body slumped, his knees folding as he went down in a heap on the ground.
Danny turned casually and raised a hand, gesturing for Bruno to come in and help him drag Rob out of the room.
Seconds laster, it was just El and Jeremy in the room.
“How touching,” said Jeremy, and then he, too, turned and left.
10
El drifted, sometimes lucid and others sleeping or in some semi-conscious state between the two.
She lay on the bed until the hea
t of the room got too much.
She went to the bathroom and drank from the tap. The water was cool, and it managed to stir her a little from her lethargy.
She went out to the balcony and sat on the tiled floor for a while, along at the far end where there was a little shade and the tiles were cool.
When Keira brought food she left it inside and El ignored it, drinking water from the bathroom again to quell the raw emptiness in her belly.
You’re drugged. You’re broken – that’s what he does to people... It’s the drugs that are making you like this.
Rob’s words rattled around inside her skull, as did the dull thud as Danny’s knee came up into his face.
She drank more water, then cupped her hands and sluiced some over her face.
She set the shower running, the temperature barely lukewarm, cool enough to bring her skin out in goosebumps as it played over her body. She tipped her head and let the water wash down over her, her hair hanging long and wet behind her.
You don’t have to keep finding ways to be caged in.
Caged in by her fear, by her drive for revenge. Caged in by a Jeremy she barely even recognized; made to obey, to give herself up to him.
Was this where her journey had brought her?
Still wet, she went out onto the balcony and sat in the shade again.
You can be free, El.
Free... whatever that meant.
§
How was it so easy to forget that magnetism? There was something about Jeremy that made her so desperate to please him. There always had been.
Even now, as Bruno led her down the stairs into the basement and Jeremy looked up at her, that smile on his face. Just the sight of him set her heart thudding. She even held herself differently as she walked, conscious of the curve of her spine, of her breasts jiggling as she moved, of her long legs and that smoothness he had commented on before.
Then she glanced across and saw that the bench in the middle of the room was now occupied. Rob lay there, his wrists and ankles enclosed in heavy metal cuffs that were attached to the bench. His face was a bloodied mess, his white t-shirt now smeared with blood.
“My dear,” said Jeremy, as she came to stand before him. “We have an audience. I hope you don’t mind.”
Rob’s eyes had fixed on her as she came down the stairs and now followed her every move. She had to look away. He looked so broken.
Maybe she could persuade Jeremy to spare him?
Jeremy took two steps towards her and put his hand to her cheek. That touch! She pressed her face against his hand, closed her eyes so that there was just that touch, just the two of them.
When she opened her eyes again she saw Rob’s silvery-blue eyes fixed on her.
She reached up and put her hand on Jeremy’s, holding it in place.
He moved closer and she felt the fabric of his loose cotton shirt brush against her breasts. Her nipples hardened instantly in response.
There was only Jeremy. Right now, nothing else mattered.
He drew his hand away and ran it lightly down her neck and down to cup a breast, find a nipple and pinch it so hard she gasped.
Down across her belly to that smoothness, fingers sliding through the folds of her sex and then – oh my God! – one finger angling up and into her.
“It’s time, my love,” he said softly, his mouth close to her ear so that she could feel his hot breath when he spoke. “Time for you to commit yourself. Time for you to accept my contract.”
He pulled his hand away then, and stepped back.
The absence of his touch was like the floor being snatched from beneath her. How did he have such power over her?
He started to walk, circling her so that she had to turn to still see him.
That was when she saw a doorway she hadn’t noticed before, an archway set into the stonework with a door standing open. It led on to a side-room where she could see a glow, the figure of Keira in there, tending to something. The glow was from a fire-pit, she saw now, and she knew that the metal rod protruding must be the shaft of a branding iron.
She looked at Jeremy. That smile never seemed to leave his face. “Are you mine?” he asked.
She swallowed, then stepped towards him, put her hand to his face, stretched up and pressed her lips softly against his.
§
Stepping into his embrace, she pressed against him, her breasts squashed against his hard ribs.
His arms wound round her, one hand between her shoulder blades, the other sliding down to the small of her back and then on down to the swell of her ass. He pulled her hard against him, and she felt his erection, a solid lump pressing into her belly.
She pushed against him, rolling her hips to work that hardness, shifting so that a thigh pressed between her legs.
“I’m yours,” she said. “Have me. Fuck me. Break me.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw that Rob had turned his head away now, unable to watch.
She reached down and found that hardness, squeezed it and then started to grind the heel of her hand against it.
“Hurt me. I want you to see just how much I’m willing to give.”
He pulled away and she staggered, almost falling.
He did that circling thing again, his eyes exploring her hungrily.
She stood, aware of the way her posture accentuated the curve of her back and pushed her breasts out. She shifted her legs slightly apart, drawing his eyes to her smooth sex.
Now – oh so slowly... – she ran a hand down her body, fingers clawed so that her nails left red scratches down the inside of one breast and onto her flat belly. Turning her hand, she trailed it farther down, found that smoothness, pressed.
“Hurt me.”
He gestured at the archway with a nod of the head, and she walked slowly towards it, letting his eyes follow the swing of her hips, her ass.
The side-room was much smaller than the main part of the basement, and the fierce, dry heat from the metal fire-pit was intense.
The branding iron was nestled into a bed of fiercely-glowing coals, its long metal shaft protruding, with a rubber grip at the end to protect the user from the heat.
She looked at Keira, meeting the girl’s eyes briefly, a moment of connection and then it was gone.
Keira had been through this already. She had proven her obedience.
Now it was El’s turn.
Keira reached for the handle of the iron and shuffled it in the coals, as if to emphasize El’s thoughts.
El swallowed, and turned to face Jeremy as he walked around her to stand with Keira and then turned to face her again.
She reached down again, and started to rub herself. “I’ll do anything,” she said.
His eyes were drawn downwards and that smile grew broader.
He was so close... he could just reach out and touch her, too. Or he could reach out and take the branding iron from its resting place.
She started to rub harder, the sensation sending stabs of pleasure through her belly.
“Hurt me,” she sighed, eyes locked on his.
She stepped towards him. So close now.
Still rubbing.
Another step.
Another.
§
When disturbed, the black widow spider may bite people or animals, but those most at risk from this spider’s bite are insects – and male black widow spiders, who may be killed and eaten after mating...
§
El lunged... at him, past him.
The heat from the pit was so intense this close!
She took hold of the branding iron’s rubber handle and yanked it upwards. Hot coals scattered, and Keira squealed and tumbled away.
El caught herself and turned and Jeremy was right there, almost on top of her.
She swung an elbow and caught him somewhere soft, then managed to take a step away from him, another. She turned, holding the branding iron out in front of her like a sword.
Jeremy stood there, poised either t
o attack or flee, his look jumping bewteen the white-hot brand and El’s eyes.
He was still smiling. That smile that never left his face.
“So what’s it going to be?” he said. “You think you can get away from here? You think you can get past Bruno?”
She glanced past him, and Bruno was standing in the archway, blocking the way.
She swung the branding iron at Jeremy, a threat rather than an attack.
He swayed backwards, and laughed.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You’re mine and you’re going to put that thing down.”
His tone was so gentle, so persuasive.
“You’re going to put it down and then we’ll–”
He dived towards her, catching her off guard.
She’d never have thought he could move so fast!
She stepped back and to the side and her heel hit something. She staggered, fighting for her balance but she just couldn’t quite hold it and she started to fall back.
It was over. All lost.
Her ass hit the ground first, sending a jarring pain up her spine. Then her elbow, and the heel of the branding iron hit the ground at her side.
And then...
He was coming through on top of her, falling on her, his face suddenly so close, his eyes widening and his mouth flipping open.
She looked down at the space between them and Jeremy’s fall had been halted by the shaft of the branding iron, the handle lodged on the ground and the other end – the white-hot burning brand – in his belly.
His scream was so high-pitched it was almost beyond hearing.
He seemed to hang there in mid-air for long seconds, but it could only have been an instant.
He clutched at the shaft, but away from the rubber grip it was too hot: his hands burned and he snatched them away.
El still had hold of the rubber grip and with all her strength she drove it upwards. The stench of burning meat was nauseating, a rich, almost sweet, barbecue smell.
There was a sudden giving sensation, then, and the logical part of her mind told her that the brand had burned through his skin and into the muscles of his abdomen and that sensation was what it felt like when hot metal suddenly burned deeper actually into his belly.
