Taking Her Down

by Vonna Harper

  She’d spent the long day kneeling near her captor with his ropes on her wrists and his hand occasionally on her exposed breasts. She hadn’t had to look up at him to understand the message he was giving out. He considered her his property.

  His.

  Destined to spend the rest of her life on her knees before him, except when he had other uses for her.

  As several older women stepped forward to start the evening fire and begin preparations for the peace meal, she made comparisons between her future and theirs. As free women, they had countless responsibilities and tasks that, over time, would bow their backs and cripple their hands. They’d carry water long distances, build the structures their families used, gather wood and much of the foodstuffs. Their men hunted, but then they turned the game over to their women to gut, skin, cut up, smoke and cook.

  As a slave, a sex slave, her life would be quite different. She anticipated being required to do many of the things the free women did, but her loads would always be lighter so she’d remain what her owner required of the female who shared his bed.

  “The elders have spoken,” Master said. “You will be mine for as long as we both live. Now I can mark you.” He made his point by pressing his fingertips against the top of her left breast. “The tattoo will proclaim my ownership.”

  Her heart raced as she lifted her bound arms and placed her hands between her breasts. “I will wear it proudly,” she told him. “A warrior’s slave must never doubt who owns her.”

  Laughing, he grabbed the ropes around her wrists and hauled her to her feet. She thought he’d take her into the woods and fuck her while waiting for dinner. Even though she hadn’t eaten today, anticipation made her empty belly unimportant. Master fucked well. Sometimes he prepared her in a special way that involved a switch. Occasionally he forced her to bend over a log so he could take her from behind as if she were his animal. Rarely, he ordered her to join him on his sleeping pallet. Once there, she straddled his hips, placed his cock inside her, and did all the work while he entertained himself by playing with or abusing her breasts.

  She loved all his ways.

  She’d even been looking forward to wearing Master’s brand.

  “Over my knees,” he ordered.

  Shaking off the secret places her mind had gone to, she stretched out with her middle resting on his thighs, her feet scraping over the ground and her head and arms hanging. He pushed her legs apart and rammed his thumb into her sex.

  “Here’s proof of what this captive has become,” he announced to the crowd she could no longer see. “I’ve taught her to be my pleasure slave.” He started pushing in and out, making her moan and squirm. “She didn’t cry when she learned of her fate today because this is all she wants.”

  All. Helpless to fight her body’s need for his expertise. A slave to his domination over her.

  “Master, Master,” she whimpered. She couldn’t hold still, didn’t care that they had an audience. “I—please fuck me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Shana. Shana.”

  Desperate to stay with the dream, she slapped the hand on her shoulder.

  “Sorry, but I’m not going to let you go back.” He shook her again.

  “Go back where?” she muttered with her eyes closed. Despite her efforts to not let it happen, the world she’d been living in faded.

  “To where it wants to take you.”

  As Master’s words made more of an impact, she acknowledged his wisdom. It might be all the explanation she’d ever have for why her imagination took flight. His hand continued to rest on her shoulder, as if he had every right to touch her like that.

  They’d had an intense conversation before going to bed. Mostly, she’d made it clear—or tried to make it clear—that she didn’t want anything more to do with MSDB and everything it represented. As a result, the man beside her wasn’t her Master. He was—what?

  She was what?

  “You were begging someone to fuck you,” he said. “You called that person ‘Master’. Do you know who it was?”

  You, and you know it. “Sorry.” Hating the evasion, she bought time by getting out of bed and turning on the lamp. The covers ended at his waist, leaving his chest in glorious view and drawing her thoughts to what was hidden. “You, ah, know how dreams are. Pretty hard to nail down.”

  He sat up and slid over to the side of the bed, leaving the covers behind.

  Damn him for having an erection.

  Damn him for being so male.

  “Come back to bed,” he said. “I won’t touch you.”

  She wasn’t sure she could make the same promise, but standing here shivering when her body felt as if she’d been in a wrestling match didn’t make much sense. She slipped around him and sat cross-legged behind him. His back became her world.

  “I have dreams,” he said, without turning toward her. “Vivid ones that hit me most nights. They’re basically the same and— I don’t remember a lot of what I did or said to you, but have no doubt that today ran parallel to what takes over when I’m asleep.” He let out a long, low breath. “It’s one thing to be in the grip of something inescapable when I’m alone in bed, quite another when it’s daytime and a storm…”

  Storm.

  Struggling with herself, she gently fingered the nipples he’d clamped earlier. Something about the gesture made up her mind for her.

  “I was part of some primitive society,” she told him. “The rules were different from what I’m used to, a kind of ‘to the victor go the spoils’ mentality.”

  “And you were a spoil.”

  “Yeah.” Strengthened by thoughts of what his broad back and powerful shoulders were capable of, she detailed everything she could remember about what had been deeper than a dream. She made no judgments about her behavior or that of her captor. Certain things had simply happened.

  “I accepted my fate,” she said at length. “Worshiped it.”

  “I know.”

  Instead of being shocked, she nodded at his back. “Tell me about your dreams.”

  Now it was his turn to get up and position himself by the window. It was still humid and hot, the aftermath of a Florida summer storm. Despite the now-still air, she felt invigorated.

  Turned on.

  “As a warrior, it’s my responsibility to protect my clan. I risk my life to assure theirs.” He placed his hands on the screen. “From childhood I accepted my role. Warriors don’t speak of fear. If I don’t acknowledge my vulnerability, it doesn’t exist.”

  “It does exist,” she whispered. “You’re human.”

  “Am I? Sometimes I wonder.”

  Frightened for him, she got out of bed and joined him. Most of the clouds had dissipated while she’d been asleep. The nearly full moon illuminated the thick vegetation and brought home the message of how isolated they were. Much as she needed to touch him, she didn’t.

  “Do you ever wish you weren’t a warrior?” she asked. “Maybe you’d like other responsibilities.”

  He shook his head. “In my day job, I’m a lawyer. I don’t know if I told you that. My life—much of my life—is defined by the law. I can’t always prosecute those who deserve to be and sometimes my job calls for putting away someone who never had a chance. I’m expected to see life as black and white and follow the law, but it isn’t that simple.”

  She’d given thought to how the legal system worked, but never like this.

  “There’s no getting away from it—until something I don’t comprehend and can’t stop turns me into someone who lives or dies by the strength in his arm and sharpness of his knife.”

  “A man who needs to control,” she said. “And knows how to make it happen.”

  “Yeah.” He ended his study of the world beyond those walls and stared down at her. Made her feel small. “MSDB gives me a structure for taking control, but it isn’t always enough.”

  She couldn’t think what had happened to her clothes or why she needed to be naked before him. “Sto
rms change things for you.” She felt wise. “They allow you to break free of constraint and convention, to enter another realm.”

  He fingered her collar. “The same happens to you.”

  “Yes,” she admitted as her pussy flooded.

  “Maybe one rainy day I’ll come to where you’re working. It’ll be nearly dark.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You won’t know I’m there as you walk around the worksite making sure your employees didn’t leave any tools out. You’ve sent them home and are looking forward to getting out of the rain. You’re wearing a hooded raincoat. Your view of your surroundings is compromised. You walk around the back of your equipment trailer where there’s little light.”

  She’d been in situations like that, the last to leave, the one working alone as night had pressed around her. Most times she was too focused on her task to think about her isolation, but occasionally she’d wished she’d been carrying mace.

  “Suddenly someone grabs you. He clamps a hand over your mouth. You can’t scream. He lifts you off your feet with your arms pinned to your sides and carries you to his van. He throws you inside and…”

  She couldn’t hear the rest of what he was saying for the sound of her blood roaring in her ears. The dark stranger could be a mugger, a thief intent on stealing her tools. Or he might want to lock her inside his vehicle and take her somewhere even more isolated where he’d rape and eventually kill her.

  That man wasn’t Master. Neither was he the warrior, captor or savage of her erotic imaginings.

  Instead he was a monster.

  A nightmare.

  “Don’t.” She pushed his hand away. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  He leaned toward her. “I think you do.”

  Everything about the past few hours had been beyond her control, her fantasies most of all. “How can you say that when you don’t understand what’s happening to you? Not once during the— During what took place did you remind me that I could say red if things became too intense.”

  His features seemed to sag. “I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t. If you had you would have realized how overwhelmed I was.” She hated herself for blaming him for her emotions but couldn’t stop. “You sucked me so deep into your delusions that they became mine. I left this world”—she jabbed a finger at their surroundings—“and entered yours. That’s insane!”

  “You enjoyed most of what happened.”

  “Of course I did,” she said. Her anger was already subsiding. What she couldn’t put behind her was the depth of his impact on her—her loss of self-control. “I’m a red-blooded female and you’re good at arousing one.”

  His nod reached her deeper than she wanted to be reached. It was all too much.

  “Think about it.” She slipped a finger under the collar. “There’s nothing normal about our relationship.”

  “I never said there was.”

  “Didn’t you?” she threw at him. “You think you can just seek me out some day when you have the time? Most men would call first, maybe ask if I’d like to go out for a drink or dinner. They wouldn’t think to scare the shit out of me by jumping me and—”

  “Yeah.” His arms hung at his sides. “I’m not most men.” He looked out of the window. “I’m lost.”

  Don’t do this! I don’t want to care about you.

  Everything had gone sideways between them. That said, she still craved the feel, the taste, the sound of him. Maybe she always would.

  But what they had going wasn’t safe or sane. The next time it stormed he’d turn into a Dom, a Master in search of a slave. He wouldn’t be interested in role playing and he sure as hell wouldn’t concern himself with her willingness.

  Whether it happened tomorrow or next week, eventually it would start raining and he’d come for her. He’d gag her, throw her into his vehicle and take her—take her—

  “There has to be a flashlight here. Give it to me. I’ll find my way to the dock. Wait there for the morning boat.”

  “Shana, no.”

  Her name on his tongue again. Tearing her apart. Making her ache to get to know who he was on sunlit days off the island.

  “Yes.” Her hands shook as she searched the collar for the clasp. Feeling numb and sick, she drew it off her neck. She refused to ask herself why she hadn’t done this before.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “You stay here.”

  He was offering to step into the night? Maybe putting himself at risk for something she might never comprehend?

  “I need to be outside,” she heard herself say. She tried to hand him the collar. When he didn’t take it, she dropped it. “To walk and think—safe in the knowledge that you aren’t around.”

  He studied the discarded proof of her subservience. “You don’t trust me.”

  I don’t trust myself around you. I’m not sure I ever will. “That’s right,” she lied.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  She should’ve asked the powers that be at MSDB what kind of flashlight the one she held was, because it was the strongest she’d ever seen. It not only showed her where she was walking, it illuminated the vegetation ahead of her for several hundred feet. Unfortunately, it remained dark behind her.

  Foolish, she berated herself. Stupid.

  And a coward, don’t forget that.

  With every step she questioned her sanity. It made absolutely no sense for her to be out in the middle of the night when there was a perfectly good bed in the cabin, to say nothing of no bugs or critters inside the four walls.

  Master was there.

  Stop thinking of him like that! she continued her inner lecture. The Master-sub experiment was over. She’d broken free of whatever madness had engulfed her. She couldn’t do anything to wrench him loose, not that she suspected he wanted a vanilla life.

  Her breathing quickened as she recalled how he’d looked standing under the porch light while she’d descended the stairs. She’d put on her sandals and wrapped another large towel around herself before taking off. In contrast, as far as she knew, he was still naked.

  Walk. Just walk.

  As soon as someone showed up at the dock she’d insist on getting back her belongings. She wouldn’t say more than what was absolutely necessary while waiting to be taken back to the mainland, and no way would she fill out some stupid evaluation form.

  MSDB was behind her.

  Master was part of yesterday—if it was past midnight.

  A shiver slid down her spine at the thought that he might be stalking her. Considering what he’d said about surprising her at work, she’d be wise not to put anything past him.

  Hell, maybe he’d grab her here. Take her to his hideout. Keep her.

  * * * *

  Rope around her neck. More fibers squeezing her elbows together behind her. Another length hobbling her and causing her to stumble as she fought to keep up with the big naked man hauling her into the night.

  Ferns and leaves brushed her bare flesh. She couldn’t see because he’d put a blindfold over her eyes. He’d also gagged her, not that it mattered.

  Every step she took caused the cotton strands against her labia to stimulate her. She’d fought him as he’d snugged the rope around her waist and had drawn it between her legs, but had stopped resisting once the impact of what he’d done registered. Every move sent more fire to her core.

  Fire that made her feel alive.

  He’d told her he lived deep in the forest where his enemies couldn’t find him—where he’d be free to take her at all times and in all ways. The last thing he’d said before they’d struck out had been that she’d be more than ready for his cock by the time they reached their destination.

  He was right. She was high with need, hot with desire. So terribly hungry for her captor.

  Her Master.

  * * * *

  She sat slumped back on the wooden bench on the dock as the horizon started to lighten. Although she couldn’t be sure, she figured she’d been here for at least thre
e hours, sometimes dozing but mostly sitting and thinking.

  Thinking about walking blind and mute into a wild world while controlled by a nameless and powerful man.

  She chalked the experience up to a combination of exhaustion plus constant sexual stimulation and submission training, and told herself the journey into the wilderness had been nothing more than her imagination. And when she felt tension against her sex she told herself she’d stop having those thoughts, that sensation, once she’d gotten some sleep.

  Gotten away from this damned island.

  Trying to keep the towel on when there was no one to see her seemed foolish so she’d left it to its own devices as she’d tried to nap. As a result, it had slid off her breasts and lay puddled on her lap and the bench.

  Hoping to hurry the day, she kept staring at the slowly brightening sky while straining to hear something other than waves and seabirds. The breeze seemed to be picking up.

  Why hadn’t she asked Master what time the boat would arrive?

  Why hadn’t she insisted on getting something to eat before coming here?

  Why not a lot of things?

  The eastern sunrise was more muted than on most mornings, but she refused to acknowledge that the clouds were responsible. Before long today’s weather wouldn’t matter to her.

  It would to Master.

  “Stop it!”

  If she had a decent brain cell she’d stand up and pace. Instead, she brushed the towel off her lap and eased her fingers over her so-sensitive pussy. As dark as it still was, she couldn’t tell whether her pussy was as red as it felt. Earlier, she’d explored to see if her skin still carried the marks Master had put on her. She’d encountered nothing but smooth flesh. Would she have nothing to remember him by?

  As if in reaction to the stupid question, her inner muscles tightened. Wondering if she could fool herself into believing Master’s fingers were responsible, she slipped her forefinger into her wet opening. Her head fell back and she slouched forward on the wooden seat. She didn’t rush the invasion. Instead, she worked up an image of Master standing over her while she was spread out on the bed. This time no ropes or chains held her in place. She was there of her own free will.