The Puppetmaster

by Linnea May

  I didn’t think I’d be actually be afraid of his retaliation, but my heart wrenches up in a scare when he suddenly appears next to me, walking through the wide French doors in slow but meaningful steps.

  He is dressed rather casually in a dark gray cashmere pullover and black pants. He looks as handsome as he always does, his black hair styled to the nines, the dark stubble framing his strong jaw trimmed perfectly, and a fresh scent engulfing his presence when he sits down next to me. He doesn’t look angry or bothered by the fact that I dared to come out here all by myself without waiting for him to fetch me from my room.

  But he does appear to be preoccupied. A contemplative expression masks his handsome face as his eyes trail off into the distance.

  “Good morning, Master,” I whisper in a demure voice, shifting closer to him.

  A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Good morning, Puppet.”

  He doesn’t even look at me as he speaks. I’ve never seen him like this before—and it worries the hell out of me.

  “Did something happen?” I inquire, leaning over to him in an attempt to catch his gaze.

  He softly shakes his head, his face tensing. “Nothing happened.”

  The silence that follows between us is too heavy to bear. I don’t know what to do, whether to touch him, to seek his attention, to bow down at his feet, to apologize. If we were a normal couple, I’d probably lean against his shoulder and just enjoy the moment, because other than his weird mood, it really is wonderful.

  “Aren’t you going to punish me?” I ask eventually.

  He casts me a quick look from the side. “For what?”

  “For leaving my room without you,” I respond, furrowing my eyebrows.

  He didn’t even notice? Really? What the hell is going on with him?

  Suggesting a nod, he turns his attention back to the yard in front of us.

  “Oh yes, I will,” he promises. “You know you’re not allowed to do that.”

  There’s no menace in his voice, no ominous threat that would cause my heart to jitter with excitement. He just recites the words mechanically, as if he feels forced to do so.

  “I know,” I say, deciding to tickle him a bit more. “I just wanted to know what it’s like.”

  Finally, I seem to draw his attention toward me. Raising an eyebrow, he asks, “Know what what’s like?”

  “This. Sitting here in the morning all by yourself while the city is still waking up around us,” I say. “Like you do every morning.”

  Our eyes meet, and I expect to see something in his that isn’t there. He doesn’t look alarmed or concerned at all, or in any way curious as to why I’d even know about his regular early-morning sessions.

  “You know, I’ve seen you,” I push further. “Every morning around five, way before the day starts. You sit here in this exact spot for about an hour, and then you go back inside.”

  “Didn’t know you were an early bird,” he simply says, still seemingly unimpressed by my revelation.

  “I’m not. I just noticed on one of my first nights here because the light woke me up,” I tell him. “And then a few other times since then. And without fail, every time I was up at that time, so were you, sitting down here all by yourself.”

  He looks at me as if to ask “so what?” but doesn’t give voice to the question.

  “Why are you up this early?” I dare to ask. “What are you doing down here every morning?”

  He shrugs, drawing out a deep sigh as he sinks deeper into the bench.

  “It’s just a habit I’ve adopted,” he says. “It’s still nice and quiet out, no one wants anything from me, I have nowhere to be, nothing to do. It’s a good time to think.”

  “About what?”

  He smirks at me. “You don’t need to know that.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments, and I’m surprised to find him accepting my offer to share the blanket and snuggle up to him underneath it. We’ve never cuddled like this before, not when there was no play preceding it. My heart is speeding with excitement while I try to contain it. The moment feels so intimate, so special, as if we just crossed a line that has separated us ever since he took me in as his puppet.

  A line he maybe never crossed with any of his other puppets before.

  I shouldn’t be thinking such nonsense.

  “My mother actually used to do it,” he says eventually, baffling me once again. He has never brought up the topic of his mother voluntarily. “That’s one of the very few things I remember about her,” he goes on, his voice streaked with somberness. “She’d get up early for Fajr, the dawn prayer.”

  My eyes journey up to him, but he averts my gaze. “So… you pray?”

  He shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve just inherited that one particular habit from her, I guess.”

  My heart feels heavy with two rivaling emotions—the palpable sadness about the early loss of his clearly beloved mother, and my own happiness about him finally opening up to me.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I want to know.

  He suggests a shrug. “Because I felt like it. And because I like you.”

  Heat rushes through my body and all the way up to my cheeks. Did he really just say that? He likes me?

  “How can that be?” I blurt out helplessly. “How can you like someone like me?”

  There it is again. That reoccurring doubt. He knows my darkest secret, he knows how cruel I am, how heavily the guilt weighs on me. Yet he claims to like me.

  He sighs heavily and wraps an arm around me before he squeezes me closely.

  “Alena,” he says in a voice softer than I’ve heard him speak before. “You should really let that go. Give yourself a break.”

  Let it go.

  There it is again, that one command that has elevated me so often, granting me a gratification that is intangible.

  But it doesn’t work for this. I can’t just let it go, and I shouldn’t. Too heavy weighs the guilt that’s been a constant reminder of my troubled character for years.

  I almost killed a person. I destroyed that person’s life forever.

  How could I ever let that go?

  Chapter 41

  Alena

  Dear Puppetmaster,

  There is something that almost no one knows about me, a dark secret that I keep hidden from anyone new who enters my life.

  But I want to make an exception with you. Because you’re not just anybody.

  You’re the man whose strings I want to hang from, and you’ve already given me a taste of the salvation that awaits the lucky ones who are chosen to become yours.

  Please take this story for what it is: the most valuable thing I can give you.

  I trust you will handle it with care.

  Okay… here it goes.

  I’m not a lady. I can walk in heels, I can doll myself up to appear like one, and I can be soft like one, but where I come from, none of these virtues mattered.

  Physical violence has always been a part of my life, for as long as I can remember.

  But no, whatever you’re thinking now is wrong. I’m not a victim. There was no abusive father or mother, no bullies in school who I had to fend off, no brothers or sisters who were beating me up any chance they got.

  It wasn’t like that.

  It was rough where we grew up, that’s for sure. There were gangs and drug dealers on every street corner and it was so normal for me that I hardly noticed. I wasn’t aware how dangerous our neighborhood was until later, until I started high school, because that was the time when everybody started pointing out to me how dangerous my life was.

  I was surprised at their words to say the least. Because how could I realize that what I knew wasn’t normal? My reality was a pit of darkness and I never even noticed.

  But I knew one thing: violence. If you want something, you have to take it. And if someone is threatening you or the ones you love, you have to fight. A simple set of rules dictated my entire upbringing.

  I
wasn’t exactly a member of any of the gangs that controlled our hood, but I was a force to be reckoned with. I was stronger than I looked and I was schooled in combat because I took martial arts classes from an early age. I earned respect with my fists, even though I looked like someone who’d duck away if anything ever came flying her way.

  That was probably my biggest asset. People underestimated me.

  But it was also my downfall, because I had no self-control.

  You see, I have a little sister, too. My father left us before we were able to remember him, and my mother died of cancer when I was still in high school. I managed to keep us out of foster care and took care of my sister until she went off to college.

  Because as soon as she left the hood, so could I.

  I got the hell out of Brooklyn and fled to Boston, following a shitty job offer that never panned out. I soon found myself jobless and in danger of ending up on the street. I’m not telling you this to justify what I’m about to tell you. That is just the way it was back then.

  I was desperate. I was scared.

  I was so hopeful when I moved to Boston, but that night, when I walked home from a night of drinking with the only friend I’d made in the city, I was not in a good place.

  That’s when they showed up. Two guys, both taller and stronger than me—and they asked for my money. They thought I was an easy target. They thought I’d be a scared little girl who would just hand them whatever they asked for, too frightened to even think of fighting back.

  That’s not who I am.

  But they didn’t know that.

  I fought back. Fiercely.

  It took them by surprise.

  One of them ran away.

  The other… almost died because of me.

  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I got out of it without a scratch. Two of us ended up on the ground that night, but only one of us was unconscious when help arrived—and it wasn’t him. I don’t remember much about that fight because his last action was to take me out with a strike against the head that made the world turn dark. You can still see the mark his fist left on my left temple.

  Still, he’s the one who still has to live with the aftermath of that fight because of what I did to him. I hit him so severely that his heart gave out on the way to the hospital. My violent hits had put his body under so much stress that he ended up in a coma.

  I opened my eyes a few hours after we were brought to the hospital, waking up to my sister telling me that they weren’t sure if the guy who assaulted me would make it.

  He didn’t die, but he never recovered. I know that up to this day, he’s no longer living the life he used to live.

  I know, he was the one attacking me. Yes, maybe he was a bad guy.

  But maybe he wasn’t? I never contacted him or his family after that, but I looked him up to see whether he survived. You see, we actually have a lot in common, that guy and me. He didn’t have the easiest upbringing either, and he was just a few years younger than me. He had never been convicted before, so it could very well be that that night was just a stupid exception, a mistake he’ll regret for his entire life.

  He’s sick now. He’ll never be able to live without his medication because the heart failure caused by that night took a toll on his body.

  And no matter how you want to angle this story, I’m responsible.

  I don’t say it was wrong to defend myself—but I didn’t have to do it like I did. I didn’t have to beat him up until his body gave in. I could have screamed, I could have run.

  I could have done so many other things, but I didn’t.

  And I’ll live with that guilt for the rest of my life.

  It’s not the first or even the last time my aggressive temper has gotten the better of me, but it was definitely the worst. It was the very worst of me.

  And now you know.

  I know you told me to write down a fantasy, maybe some dirty kink that I’m too ashamed to admit in person. But if you’re looking for vulnerability and the will to be honest with you, this is the most harrowing thing I can share with you.

  And it’s also the reason why I want to dance for you.

  I want you to break me. I want you to show me what it feels like to lose myself, to stop thinking and to serve at the will of another. I need a strong hand to guide me, a very strong hand.

  And I’m sure there’s no one who would be better at this than you, Puppetmaster.

  Chapter 42

  Raad

  I decide it’s best to give her as little time as possible to think about it. The more time Alena has to ponder and scrunch the idea around in her head, the more chance there is of her becoming wary of my intentions.

  She came here to stop thinking and that’s exactly what I need her to do right now, even without a clamp around her sweet little clit or a whip biting into her ass. That lust-induced vertigo is useful when I need her to be my pleasure slave, my little fuck toy and the object of desire she yearns to be.

  But it’s not how I need her to be today. At best, I can hope that those experiences have left a mark on her and seeded a trust deep enough to follow through with my orders, even though they seem ambiguous to her.

  Make her an ally, Nate told me, without her knowing what exactly I need from her. That’s easier said than done, because if I wanted to make her a true ally, I would have to share a lot more details with her than I’m comfortable with.

  My business, the pharmaceutical industry, is not recognized as the most benevolent market. And while many companies have been cursed with an undeserved bad reputation—mine included—that assumption is still not completely off base.

  It’s true that our industry sometimes plays dirty to be profitable. I’ve been guilty of that before myself, and I’m about to do it again. In fact, this one will be my biggest coup yet, and if everything goes the way I’ve been planning it out for years, it will make me rich beyond belief. Not that it’s really the profit I’m after; I have no actual need for more money, but it’s a nice bonus on top of the gratification that will come with my victory.

  But it can’t come to fruition without Alena. It all depends on her and her willingness to follow along.

  “We’re going out today,” I announce, as I get up from the bench we’ve been sitting on for the past hour.

  Her questioning gaze follows me.

  “Out?” she inquires. “Out where?”

  My chest tightens at the thought of having to tell her, but there’s no other way around it. The sooner I do this, the sooner it’s all over and done with.

  I look at her, jutting my chin forward with indignation.

  “Come with me. I’ll explain on the way.”

  She hesitates for a moment, pulling the blanket tighter around her body, silently inspecting me with a befuddled look.

  “Now, Alena,” I urge, turning my back to her as I walk toward the house, knowing that she’ll follow me like an obedient puppy as she always does when summoned this way. And sure enough, a moment later I hear her hurried steps padding closely behind me.

  Dan is already waiting for us outside the house, greeting me with a discreet nod before he opens the car door for us to get in. I stand next to the car holding my briefcase, waiting for Alena.

  I notice that she has stopped at the top of the stairs in front of my house. She’s simply standing there, fully dressed with a light trench coat thrown over her shoulders and a black scarf that I gave her wrapped around her neck. I’ve gotten so used to seeing her in nothing but lingerie that she almost looks like a different person. A scared person hugging herself while she scans her surroundings like a caged animal who’s been set free for the first time in its life.

  “Everything all right?” I ask, impatiently.

  Alena hurries to nod. “Yes... it’s just been so long.”

  Her shoulders appear tense when she walks down the stairs, pulling at the sleeves of her coat to hide the cuffs around her wrists. She follows my gesture to get in the car.

  “I
t’s weird to be outside with you,” she comments after I’ve taken my seat next to her and Dan has closed the door. “Especially since I have no idea where we are going.”

  She regards me with an inquiring gaze as Dan starts the car.

  I push a button at my side to draw up the blackened privacy pane that separates us from the driver. I watch it move up agonizingly slowly, waiting for it to be fully closed before I’m ready to respond to Alena.

  “I need you to do something for me,” I begin. “And it’s going to sound very strange, but I need you to trust me. I need you to know that I would never hurt you or cause you harm in any way.”

  She reciprocates my look with an intense expression on her face, but her lips remain sealed.

  “Do you trust me, Alena?”

  She hesitates. She fucking hesitates. After a few more seconds, she gives a nod.

  “I think so.”

  “No, that’s not enough,” I insist. “I need you to trust me.”

  Her face tenses. “Tell me what this is about.”

  She pins me in place with a look that allows for no objections or prevarications.

  “We’re on our way to a branch of your bank,” I say, ignoring the questioning unease that instantly appears on her face. “They are waiting for us there, for you specifically.”

  “To do what?”

  “You will have to let it go through and sign something—”

  “What exactly?”

  I don’t like the way she stiffens up now, her entire body seeming to turn to stone, the expression on her face stern.

  “You will be buying shares of a large pharmaceutical company under your name,” I finally say. “It’s a large amount of money, but don’t worry. I’ve got you covered—”

  “Got me covered?” she cuts me off in a shrill voice. “Covered for what? What does this mean? Why am I buying shares of a pharmaceutical company—and with whose money?”

  I let out a deep sigh. “Please, Alena, you have to trust me—”