“It’s Cynthia,” she corrected. “And what can I do for you tonight, Meredith?”
Meredith scoffed. “Aren’t we formal all of a sudden? What you can do for me is nothing, as usual. But I can certainly do something for you.”
“What’s that, Meredith?”
“I can give you back your daughter. Sin Junior.” She shrugged. “Or I can send her to jail too, if you like.”
Cynthia looked over the blonde’s shoulder to the passenger side of the luxury car sitting in the driveway. Reyna was inside it, crying. Cynthia tensed her jaw. Her calmness was settling into resolve, fierce and determined.
“Meredith, I want you to listen very closely now,” Cynthia said, choosing her words most deliberately. “In a moment I am going to walk over to that obnoxious vehicle of yours and I am going to take my daughter. Then I am going back into my house. If I were you, I wouldn’t get in my way.”
Meredith put her hands defiantly on her still slender hips. Two decades had done little to reduce her devastatingly cold beauty. “Is that a threat, little girl? Don’t tell me you want to take me on again? My friends have all moved away, but I promise you I can have you and that little daughter of yours licking out of my hand in ten minutes flat.”
Cynthia had closed her fingers into a fist before Meredith had gotten the words out of her mouth. The timing was perfect, so that just as Meredith looked at her smugly for a response the blow was already coming, hitting her square in the eye. She went down instantly, holding her face and crying out loud like a baby.
Cynthia stepped over her prostrate body and went to the car window, knocking to get Reyna’s attention. Her daughter looked up at her, looking very young and very grateful as she thrust open the door and leaped into her mother’s arms. Cynthia held her, trembling in her arms. Eventually she walked her back to the house. Meredith was sitting up by this time, clutching her eye.
“Get the hell off my property,” Cynthia told her, just before she slammed the door in her face, “or I’ll call the cops.”
Meredith’s car screeched away a few moments later. Cynthia had won the battle, but she had no illusions about the outcome of the war. All that mattered, though, was that she had protected her child. What Meredith could do to her by way of revenge was of no import in comparison.
Reyna had wanted to give some explanation when they got inside, but Cynthia silenced her. For the first time in her life, she didn’t honestly care what trouble her daughter had gotten into, just that she was safe. Besides, whatever had occurred had been a result of what she’d seen in the backyard today, a result of having to see her own mother tied up like an animal, abused and humiliated.
Helping Reyna take off her dress, she triaged her wounds, saw they were stinging but minor and decided to draw her daughter a warm bath. It was almost like she was little again, needing her for everything. If only Cynthia could go back in time like that so she could give her child better values, teaching her to respect herself, to demand right treatment from men, instead of becoming their sexual toys, objects to be denigrated.
After a while, Reyna began to relax, twirling bubbles in her fingers and talking excitedly. That’s when she learned about Jason, the boy in the Mustang, the only child of Caleb and Meredith Trace. Talk about ironies.
“Mommy,” she said, reverting to a long lost term of intimacy, her eyes lost in emotion, “I love him, like I’ve never loved anybody.”
Cynthia took her daughter’s wrinkled hand, smiling, bittersweet. The Trace family had always raised wild young stallions, lady-killers, all. Why should this newest generation be any different?
“I know, baby,” she soothed. “I know.”
What Cynthia didn’t know, though, even after hearing the whole story was what was in this boy’s heart for her daughter, other than a very obvious lust after her ripe and willing young body. Reyna had painted Jason as Sir Galahad and Gandhi wrapped into one, but whether he intended to make her daughter anything more than just a sexy target on which to display his penchant for sadomasochism remained to be seen.
“I wanted it,” Reyna kept insisting, as her mother found more and more signs of sexual usage. “Can’t you understand that?”
All too well, she could.
Toweling her dry, their bodies very close, she said, “I’m not judging you, baby. I just don’t want you to get hurt. The truth is, I crave these things, too. I’m not like other women. I want someone to be strong with me. I want to have to submit, to be put on my knees and dominated. I’m so sorry, honey, but I can’t help what I am. Men have taken advantage of me, your father included. And I know I’ve scarred you as a result.”
Reyna clasped her mother’s face. “No, Mom, you haven’t. I’ve been a brat most of the time and that’s my own fault. I’m sorry, too. But I’m grown now, I can be my own person.”
Cynthia let Reyna embrace her, feeling for the first time what it was like to receive such unconditional love. It was a love her own mother, for all her good intentions, had not been capable of giving. Cynthia began to sob and then Reyna did too.
“Mommy, I want him to love me,” she said at last in a small voice.
Cynthia wiped tears from her child’s eyes.
“He will, baby, he will.”
She spoke with a mother’s assurance, though she had no idea how, or even if this unknown boy could ever love someone like Reyna, given his parents’ influence. It was a crapshoot to say the least. Meredith would certainly try to break them up, but what would Cal do? Deep down, she’d always thought him capable of good, like his brother, but after all these years, would it be too late for him to do the right thing?
Cynthia wrapped Reyna in a fresh towel and took her to bed. At the girl’s request, she lay down next to her, letting her daughter fall asleep on her breast, under the influence of soothing lullabies from long ago. Once she was asleep, Cynthia got up and made her preparations. It wouldn’t be long now before they came for her. Meredith’s avengers.
It happened a little past two AM. Cynthia was already downstairs, dressed as simply as possible in jeans, sneakers and a denim blouse. She’d showered, tied her hair back in a ponytail and worn simple cotton underwear. The note for Reyna was by the nightstand and it told her not to worry, that Mommy had to go away for a few days but that she’d be back.
It was the police, as she knew it would be. With a warrant. There were two of them. One was a young patrolman, the other was Billy Gates, who’d been a rookie when she lived here and now was introducing himself as Chief of the town force.
“Cynthia Louise Marshall?” Billy asked, as though he didn’t know her.
“It’s still me,” she smiled, determined to hold her own.
Billy frowned, drew an uneasy breath, like maybe he wasn’t any more comfortable about this than she was. “Cynthia Louise Marshall, you are under arrest for assault and battery. If you come quietly, we won’t use the handcuffs.”
“Thank you,” she said, cognizant of the irony that handcuffs were what she used to dream about whenever she saw Billy striding down the street in his smart blue uniform.
The back of the patrol car was surprisingly narrow, not at all like a regular backseat. Though she was hardly as tall as five foot eight inch Meredith, she was eating her knees. When the door was shut, she had her first taste of imprisonment. Plexiglas separated her from the front seat and there was no inside handle on either of the back doors.
Cynthia had no illusions that the system would play fair with her. Billy’s new young assistant had read her her rights, but she couldn’t imagine those held much weight against the wrath of a powerful member of the Trace family. She’d kept Reyna out of it, though, and that was what mattered. Her daughter had committed no crime and Cynthia had made her swear she’d stay on the straight and narrow.
The Charred River jail had always struck her as being surprisingly large for such a small town. The row of underground cells seemed to stretch forever. The only time she’d ever seen this part before had been with Shep, during the F
ounder’s Day picnic. It was all decorated then, as was every public building, open for inspection. The few prisoners must have been moved to the county lockup, because they had the place to themselves. Shep played at locking her in one of the cells and she’d enjoyed it, more than she dared reveal.
“Cynthia, this wasn’t my idea,” Billy finally blurted, as he escorted her down the silent corridor, still looking like he’d just been woke out of bed. No doubt he had, after receiving an irate call from Meredith.
“Personally, I’d have waited till tomorrow,” he shrugged.
She put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, Billy.”
Rubbing the back of his neck, hesitating a moment after closing the cell door shut, he said, “Cynthia, you know, back when they used to talk about you, well I, I never, um—”
She cut him off. “Billy. It’s really okay. It isn’t your fault. It never was.”
He smiled weakly and walked away, looking like he had more weight on his shoulders than any man should. He was a decent sort, always had been. The little validation he’d just given meant the world to her. She never had been a bad girl, she knew that now. Low self-esteem had made her prey to people like Cal and Meredith, but deep down she had things they envied, and they’d hated her for that.
The cell had a thin bed, built into the wall, with a single pillow and mattress. The toilet was exposed and made of steel. Feeling very fatigued, but also strangely peaceful, Cynthia lay herself down, still dressed, and closed her eyes.
Sleep came quickly, along with a very peculiar dream, in which she was a small child, being led down a long corridor of a school. She was terrified because behind each door was something very unpleasant. The head master, a man in a long gray coat insisted she go into each one. The first had the body of her mother, in a coffin, the way she’d been at the wake, all cold and white and stiff, made to look live, but dressed all wrong, in a formal dress the way she never was in life. Cynthia had screamed at the funeral people about that at the time, and someone had escorted her out for a while.
The second room contained her father, a man she hadn’t seen since she was two. In the dream, he was played by Zeke, laughing stupidly in his greasy Braves’ cap, shaking out his belt, and wanting to do what he used to like to do to her. What she let him do, even though with him it was all pain, and no magic, all sadness, no true love, no true mastery and slavery.
Then there was the room with Auntie Marianne, only when she went inside it was Reyna who sat in the rocker, looking like a grandmother with a bun on the top of her head.
“I don’t want to go to the next room,” Cynthia told her daughter, because she knew in advance this room would represent her time at Pioneer High, and the terrible summer after graduation. Reyna bent low and caressed her head. “It’ll be all right, child. Don’t you understand that you’re little again? You can start all over.”
Cynthia’s heart leaped. She was thinking of Shep. “Do you mean . . .” The words never escaped her mouth. Someone was waking her up. The last thing she saw in her sleep was Reyna, nodding her head yes.
“Cynthia?” It was Chief Billy. Daylight surrounded him. He’d changed clothes and looked sick about the fact she hadn’t. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I need to talk to you.”
She sat up, stretched, feeling years younger. “What is it?”
He was doing the neck-rubbing thing again. She saw now the circles under his eyes and how far his hairline had receded. His strong jaw was softening under the influence of jowls. “There’s somebody here to bail you out,” he said. “But I don’t think you should go.”
“Who is it?”
“A man named Foster.” A slight lip twitch indicated he’d like to be at liberty to say a whole lot more. “He works for Meredith.”
Cynthia rose to her feet. “I’ll go.”
His eyes flashed concern. “Are you sure? I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“No, I want to go.” Meredith wanted revenge, she was sure of it. Just as she was equally sure that she needed to let her have it. As a way to wipe the slate clean. To free her own soul so she could start over.
“I want to go,” she told him again.
Billy sighed deeply, studying her. “All right,” he shrugged at last. “Suit yourself.”
The man Meredith had sent was a giant, with the build of a pro wrestler and a long mane of tightly bound black hair. He wore jeans, loafers and a t-shirt. She decided he had kind eyes, despite the clear professional mayhem indicated in the tenseness of his jaw.
“My name’s Foster,” he told her, as he opened the door of his jeep for her. He sounded vaguely Australian.
“I won’t make trouble, Mr. Foster,” she told him, as he drove her down old Highway 19. “I know what this is about.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” Wasn’t it obvious? Foster was sent to punish her, and if she cooperated, Meredith would drop the charges, end the vendetta against her and Reyna. As for the torture she was about to endure, she would prefer to avoid it, but she sensed there would be a cleansing in this, a passage from one phase of life to another. It wasn’t really about Meredith Trace at all. Foster was meant by fate to prepare Cynthia for something. And she had very high hopes as to what—and who—that might be.
He had a motel room outside of town. “I admire your spunk,” he said sincerely as she preceded him into the equipment-laden room following at once his instructions to strip off her clothes.
“I won’t draw blood,” he promised as she stood before him naked, arms at her sides. “And if it gets to be too much, you blink your eyes three times in a row. Got it? Show me, then.”
Cynthia repeated the signal, though she had decided in advance she would not use it. Foster was a professional and a gentleman. A breed altogether different from Zeke and most other men of this world. He was like Shep, and like Cal, if he could ever find his true heart.
“Just try to relax,” Foster advised, as he secured her wrists and ankles to the plain wooden throne-like chair. It was impressive, really, how much he’d fit in here. There was no way it had all fit into the Jeep. The leather restraint fit round her head easily. There was a bit inside, and she had to bite down on it as he drew the straps tight.
“I gotta hand it to you, between you and me,” he grinned, clamping each one of her nipples with a tiny vise clamp connected to a set of wires. “You really gave Merry Trace a dose of her own medicine.”
Cynthia tried to smile her thanks with her eyes. She had never had her nipples tortured, and frankly she hadn’t been prepared for the sensation. The gag took her screams, but she still writhed for him, bucking wildly, sweat pouring as she tried irrationally to get free.
Just three blinks away, she told herself, three blinks away from freedom.
His activity down below distracted her for the moment. He was attaching clamps to her labia lips. These also had wires on them. He took his time, patiently manipulating them between her rigidly spread legs. Tingles passed through her cunt from sitting like this, so exquisitely exposed and at his mercy.
It was only after he moved across to the small electrical panel that she realized the true purpose of the wires. The voltage itself was small, but the effects were very real. She’d have sold her soul to stop it, but in a very real sense, she felt her soul had been sold already. There was only one way out, and that was forward. When she’d taken the worst Merry could dish out and still stand, then she’d have bested the arrogant ex-cheerleader. Then and only then.
Foster’s face betrayed no emotion, nor did he look anywhere but at her eyes. This she knew was only for purposes of watching for the signal. A lesser man would have taken pleasure, would have been fixated by her thrashing, sweat-covered body, helplessly aroused and stimulated.
The arousal part was due to Foster’s fingers, which he inserted inside her, alternating with the five-second electroshock treatments. He carefully avoided the clips, centering his attention on her clit only. Diligently, he stopped her short of orga
sm time and again.
It was probably less than a half an hour later when he undid the clamps and straps and helped her to her feet, but it felt more like days. The tension in her legs was gone and she could hardly stand without assistance. He brought her not to the king-size bed, but to a floor mat. She was put there on her knees in readiness for fellatio.
To hold her in place, he used sets of oversized handcuffs, attaching each wrist to its corresponding ankle. This left Cynthia the option of closing her legs and bowing her back painfully or else leaving her legs widely opened. She chose the latter.
When she was thusly secured, Foster unfastened his trousers and pulled out the largest cock she had ever seen. She did not close her mouth upon being released from the gag, but kept it open, alert, and submissive. Foster was not yet hard (she appreciated that this meant he was not a true sadist) but set about stimulating himself by rubbing over her cheeks. She tried to lick at him, but he held her head still, keeping her that way till he was ready.
Foster’s eventual motions in her mouth were deep and efficient. She was thankful she knew how to deep throat, because he was giving no quarter, ramming his pulsing organ to the max. It was a technique Cal had used on her. Face fucking, as he rather rudely termed it, was one of his favorite things to do to Cynthia. He’d wanted it virtually every time. When he came to her late at night, if he was drunk or if he’d just been with one of his other girls, and couldn’t get hard right away, he would plop down on her frilly window seat cover, his head leaning out of the open window, as he spread his legs so she could do her thing. There were times he couldn’t make it at all and he would just push her away, swearing up a storm as he zipped back up in readiness to leave her high and dry. If he remembered to be cruel, he would tell her not to masturbate and then she would have to wait, lying there all night and maybe two and three nights besides. Of course he’d never know if she obeyed or not, but she always did anyway.
The most horrible times were after he’d been with someone else, because he wouldn’t clean himself up and then she’d have to taste the other girl, too. At first he only pulled this off on handcuff nights, when she was helpless to keep him going into her as he pleased. But as her dependency deepened she could be made to crawl to the window seat for abuse, even without the cuffs.
Bondage Town Page 8
