by Cerys du Lys
Bastard. The blanket was wool, scratchy and hot. We were in the Aegean, and the air was already feeling warm and humid. Was he planning to keep me naked?
At least he hadn’t raped me. So far, he’d kept his promise about that.
I used the bathroom and washed as best I could at the sink, wishing for a shower. Then I had nothing to do. I could vaguely hear voices on deck—the men talking among themselves—but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten much in the past 24 hours and I was hungry. There were several water bottles on the shelf over the sink so I helped myself. I was surprised at how thirsty I felt, but I suppose being scared out of my wits had contributed to that.
I tested the door just to make sure I wasn’t free to wonder up on deck. Nope. Locked.
Fortunately, the books weren’t locked up, so I found the historical mystery I had started reading yesterday and fell into Stephen Silkwood’s world. The story was good, if rather violent. I kept turning the pages until I heard steps outside the door and the sound of the key in the lock. I wrapped the blanket more securely around me as my captor entered the cabin.
He was holding a tray of food. I smelled hot coffee, which made my mouth water. “Hungry?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Yes, Master.”
I rolled my eyes and repeated the words, “Yes, Master.”
He set the tray on the end of the bed where I was sitting. “What’s your name?”
“I told you my name? Have you forgotten it?”
“Wrong answer. You’re a slave. You no longer have a name. Drop the blanket. Fold it neatly and lay it on the bed. You are not permitted to use it in place of clothing.”
I clutched the blanket to me. “Where are my clothes?”
He pulled something from the pocket of his pants. It was a couple of pieces of rope, roughly woven into a circle. “This is all you will be wearing today.”
It was a collar. Probably handmade. When I just stared at it, he grabbed me by the hair—my long thick hair made this easy to do—and dragged me to my feet. He ripped the blanket away from me. While I struggled with the idea that he was now looking at my naked body in the full light of day, he took advantage of my frozen stance to twist the rope collar under my hair and tie it in back. It fit me tightly, and I bucked under his hands, beginning to panic even as I told myself that I could breathe fine and to calm the fuck down.
“Next time I give you an order, you will obey me instantly or be punished. Do you understand?”
“Fuck you.”
He slapped me lightly across the face. My hand flew to my cheek and I backed away from him, more angry than hurt. No one had ever raised a hand to me before. I’d certainly never allowed any man to strike me!
“Are you crazy?” I shouted. “Some kind of psycho abuser? Don’t you ever fucking hit me again!”
He grasped all my hair in his hand and forced me to my knees. “You forget yourself, slave. Either we do this my way, or you go overboard with a weight bound to your feet. I don’t have time for your bullshit defiance. We’re going to spend the day curing you of it.”
He went to the door and yelled out for Metin. I heard footsteps approaching and, to my horror, Nicholas opened the door and let the younger man into the cabin. I was kneeling on the floor, naked, and he allowed Metin, who had been kind to me, to see me like that. Well, maybe he couldn’t see me too well, because Nicholas had placed himself between me and the door, mostly blocking the other man’s view. I stared at the floor, afraid to see if Metin would try to look. “My slave isn’t hungry, after all,” Nick said. “Please remove her tray.”
I wasn’t sure which was worse, being deprived of my coffee and the traditional Turkish breakfast of bread, white cheese, fruit and jam that had been on that tray, or the shame of having been naked in front of another man. Either way, I pretty much wanted to die.
“You’ll eat when you learn to obey,” Nicholas informed me.
I was beginning to hate Nicholas Gabriel. “From a psychological point of view, this is not the right way to deal with me,” I informed him. “I don’t respond well to people pushing me around.”
“You don’t get it, do you? What you like or don’t like is irrelevant. Your thoughts and feelings are of no interest to me. Your sole reason for existing is to obey me and please me. Your body is no longer your own.”
“But...it’s all an act, right? You don’t really believe that?”
“You have to believe it. That’s what counts. You have to believe it so utterly that you don’t make any mistakes. You have to be conditioned to believe it. Am I getting through to you yet?”
He was. It’s a game, I told myself. He had written this part for me, and now he wanted to rehearse.
“If you fuck up, you die,” he reminded me.
Intellectually, I understood, but my instincts told me there was something more going on here. “If it’s an act, why do you look like you’re enjoying this?”
He stared at me in silence, and I thought I saw something kindle in his eyes before that cold control stamped it out. “I have a lovely, naked woman kneeling at my feet. What’s not to enjoy?”
* * *
He informed me that I was being slave-trained. That this was usually a much more lengthy process, but that I would have to endure a crash course. Apparently we would be meeting his evil associates tomorrow. I had one day to learn to act like a broken woman with no will of her own and no fight left in her.
He was ruthless. I told myself that it was like boot camp—designed to be just short of unendurable. He was the harsh, angry drill sergeant who was teaching me to be a soldier. To follow orders. To survive.
“Eyes down,” he said, pointing at the floor. “You don’t look me or any other man in the face unless I give you permission.”
Jeez! I bowed my head. I was not cut out for this.
I heard him moving, and lifted my head enough to peek at what he was doing. He got a leather belt from his cupboard and a long piece of cloth. As he turned back toward me, I quickly pressed my forehead against the carpet.
He pulled my face up by sliding his hand into my hair and twisting. He wrapped the cloth around my head and eyes several times before tying it off. “I’m going to teach you to respond to the sound of my voice. The blindfold will prevent any distractions.”
The cloth was completely opaque. I couldn’t see a thing.
“The rules are simple: You do what I tell you to do with all possible speed. If you don’t obey, I will hurt you. If you don’t obey quickly enough, I will hurt you. If you make a mistake, I will hurt you. If you complain, I will hurt you. If you speak without permission, I will hurt you. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” I snapped.
He slapped my thigh with the belt, and I yelped. It stung. Because of the blindfold, I couldn’t even see if he had left a mark.
“What mistake did you just make, slave? You may answer.”
“What mistake did I make? I took a few pictures of a beautiful dawn sky.”
“Jeez, you are asking for it. Answer the fucking question.”
I sighed. “I didn’t call you by your lordly title of, what was it? Oh yeah...Master.”
He struck me again. When I cried out (more out of protest than pain, since it didn’t hurt that much) he said, “Don’t scream. One more sound and I’ll punish you much more severely.”
He opened the door and took me out to the main salon of the yacht. I inquired nervously where Metin was, since I was still naked, and he assured me he was at the helm and would not see what was happening. Since I’d been unconscious when he’d brought me aboard, I didn’t know the layout of the salon, but it seemed a lot larger than the sleeping quarters.
In rapid succession, he made me crawl, walk, move three paces. Stop. Move four paces to starboard. It took me a few moments of trying to focus on the vessel’s forward motion before I figured out which side was starboard. Turn. Crawl four feet forward on my belly. Stand. Walk in
a circle. Crawl in a square. Walk to the port bulkhead wall. Go to him and kneel.
Blindfolded.
The slightest mistake, hesitation or confusion was punished with a smack from the belt. Once I turned right when he’d told me to turn left. My circle, he said, wasn’t a circle. My square wasn’t perfectly square. When he twirled me around four times before he told me to find the port bulkhead, I got disoriented and went starboard instead. I crawled five feet, not four. When I objected that it was impossible to know how many feet I’d crawled while wearing a fucking blindfold, he whipped me twice–once for the complaint and the second for failing to address him correctly.
His voice as he commanded me was unfailingly calm and even. He sounded in control of me, of the situation, and of himself.
There seemed to be no order to the locations on my body where he struck me, but soon I felt the stinging all over–my thighs, arms, upper back and buttocks. It was mildly painful. He wasn’t hitting me hard, but it was a bitter reminder that he now had access to my entire body.
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted at one point. “It’s stupid and pointless.”
“I want you conditioned to respond to my voice.” He said this in a different tone from the one he was using to harass me. “It might save your life.”
What the fuck did that mean? I wanted to call bullshit on that claim, but he kept me too busy as the orders came fast and furiously:
“Head down!”
“Kneel.”
“Crawl.”
“Don’t speak.”
“Don’t make a sound.”
“Don’t shed a tear.”
“Stand up.”
“Bow your head.”
“Kneel down.”
“Kiss my foot.” Eew, I thought, but it was fine. He smelled clean and kinda good.
“Don’t cry out when I hurt you.”
“Don’t say a word unless I give you permission to speak.”
I lost track of how many orders he’d given me or how many times he’d punished me. So, of course, he asked me how many instructions I’d received and ordered me to answer. When I guessed wrong, he whipped my ass harder than usual and told me I had to keep count from then on.
At some point, I began to balk. I just couldn’t take it anymore. He punished me for resisting and gave more orders, demanding things that were harder all the time. I couldn’t remember which was the port side, and because he spun me around after every attempt to locate it, I got more and more confused. Just as I was about to collapse from stress and exhaustion, he knelt beside me and stroked my hair. “You’re doing very well. Don’t give up now, Ellie.” It was the first time he’d called me by my name since he’d told me I no longer had a name. “Just a little longer. A little more practice and I’ll let you stop.”
Being told that I was doing well helped to calm and center me. I recognized what he was doing–this was a trick, a way to control me, a way to make me want to please him. But I could feel it working on my emotions anyway.
The next time I came to the edge of my endurance, he caressed my shoulders and told me to breathe slowly and deeply. To focus on the sound of his voice. I could get through this, he encouraged me. I was strong, and I was doing well.
He gave me water, and held my head while I drank it.
Then he told me to find the port bulkhead.
At last, unexpectedly, he interrupted me in the middle of a ridiculous task where I was supposed to build several levels of plastic mugs into a tower without allowing any of them to fall. My hands were shaking as I tried to concentrate. The weather must have deteriorated because the boat was bobbing merrily on the waves. This wave action kept toppling my pathetic tower.
“I’ll make it easier,” the sadist offered. He untied the blindfold and unwrapped it from my eyes. The sudden light dazzled me, but he gave me time to adjust. He allowed me complete the task with the help of my vision, making me feel so absurdly grateful that I actually thanked him.
This time the punishment for speaking without permission was only a light pat on the top of my head. Good puppy. But he soon started giving commands again. It should have been easier without the blindfold, but I was so weary that I couldn’t concentrate.
At some point, tired, thirsty, hungry, and emotionally overcome, I curled up in a ball and stopped responding to him. I heard him move and felt the bottle of water applied to my lips. I drank. When some dribbled over my trembling chin, he wiped it away.
“We’ll take a break.” He picked me up off the floor and carried me back into the stateroom, where he bathed my face and neck with water from the sink. Confused and trembling, I didn’t raise a protest, lest he change his mind.
He didn’t, though. “Lie on the bed and try to calm down.”
I complied, curling up in his bed. He tossed the blanket over me and left the cabin, locking the door behind him.
Once again, I cried.
Chapter 9
Ellie
Thinking it over while I was alone, I was thankful for one thing: Despite my nakedness, I hadn’t been forced to do anything sexual. Maybe being forced to obey commands and being whipped on my bare ass when I failed was erotic in some context, but it didn’t feel as if he was sexually abusing me. He didn’t touch me any more than absolutely necessary. He didn’t make any humiliating comments about my body. If he was aroused by anything he was doing, he didn’t give any hint of it. He was wearing loose trousers, so I couldn’t see if he was erect. Anyway, I was supposed to keep my gaze on the floor.
So even though I had accused him of enjoying this whole thing, I wasn’t sure I really believed that. He did not give off many emotional signals. He continued to seem frosty and mechanical. I wasn’t sure if that meant he really was cold or if he was just extremely good at keeping his feelings hidden. I suspected the latter.
I had examined my skin anxiously, after he left, expecting to see welts and bruises. But the damage was superficial—there were only a few red blotches, and those were fading rapidly. He hadn’t touched any vital areas. He hadn’t struck my breasts or ribs or belly or kidneys, my hands or feet, or anywhere on my face or neck. He knew how to cause pain without causing injury. He was, I realized, a master at this.
He left me alone for maybe a couple of hours. It was hard to judge how much time was passing. The day was windy and cloudy, so even though I had a porthole to look through, I could only estimate that it was now afternoon.
When he returned, he brought another tray. This time I was docile, saying nothing and keeping my head bowed. Having eaten nothing all day, I was famished. He placed the tray on the end of the bed. “Thank you, Master,” I said, playing his game. Or was that a mistake? Was I not supposed to speak?
“You may eat.”
He wanted me dependent upon him for my most fundamental needs. If he was pleased with me, I’d have food, water, sleep, relief from pain. If he was not pleased, I’d probably have none of these things.
Still, I didn’t waste any time in grabbing a peach and biting into it. I almost wept at the divine juicy flavor. Turkish peaches were the best.
There was ample bread, cheese, fruit, yogurt and a large mug of strong, black coffee. It tasted fresh-brewed. I gulped it down as I ate.
“At least you haven’t lost your appetite,” Nicholas said.
“It’s delicious. Ellerinize saglik,” I said automatically, then panicked. I wasn’t supposed to know Turkish.
“How much Turkish do you know?” he instantly demanded.
“Just a few polite phrases. I have a traveler’s phrase book somewhere.”
“You said that accurately. Can you translate it?”
“Um...” It had already become difficult to lie to him. Was that related to the “training”? “Something about hands? I know it’s what you say when the food tastes good.”
“Health to your hands. It’s something you say to the cook. Or to someone else who creates something by hand.”
“I know el means hand,” I volunt
eered. “But the extent of my Turkish vocabulary is pathetic. It seems like a difficult language. I studied French in school, but Turkish isn’t a romance language, right? I rarely hear words that sound at all familiar.” Desperate to get the focus off my knowledge of Turkish, I added, “How did you learn Turkish?”
“My mother was half Turkish, and we lived there when I was a child. It was my first language.”
“Your English is perfect.”
“I’m bilingual.”
“That’s cool.” The food was reviving my spirits. “I’ve always envied people who were raised to speak more than one language.” I remembered the Greek and Latin tomes. “Do you speak other languages, too?”
“Yes. Several. Bana bak.”
Shit. He had just ordered me in Turkish to look at him, and it had almost worked. I happened to be looking down at my food when he said it, and my inner alarm bell was still stronger than my “conditioning.” “Huh?” I said, keeping my eyes averted. He was fucking testing me.
“I told you to look at me.”
I screwed up my face. “How am I supposed to obey an order if I don’t understand it? Is it a trick? May I look at you or not, Master?”
“You may.”
So I did. I couldn’t make out what his expression meant, though. He seemed puzzled, and possibly amused.
“You’re doing well,” he said some time later, after he had once again gone through the drill from this morning. “You learn fast.”
Again, his praise made me feel good. I tried to suppress the feeling. All he deserved from me was hatred and revulsion. His freaking assessment of how obedient I was learning to be couldn’t be allowed to affect me.
“It’s not exactly hard,” I snapped. “Repulsive, but not difficult.”
I waited to be struck with his belt for disrespecting him. Instead he put his hand under my chin, lifting my face up to look at him. I was kneeling naked on the floor of the cabin, as usual. He was standing over me, also as usual. He was wearing loose pants made of some light, synthetic fabric that had lot of pockets and would be convenient for hiking or trekking. No doubt they dried extra fast and protected against the wind. On top was a black T-shirt with a smoky picture of some rock band I’d never heard of. His feet were bare.
