by Lila Dubois
“What are you talking about? What doesn’t Savannah know?”
Robert and Karen looked at each other, then at him. “We thought about showing her, after.” Robert shrugged helplessly. “But she was so broken.”
“Showing her?”
Robert plucked a bag from the trunk of the car. “Wilcox filmed everything that went on in that room.” He opened the bag, pulled out a laptop.
“How did you know? Were you…?” Roman still couldn’t understand how they were involved.
“No.” Karen shook her head. “We were down the hall and happened to look in an open door and see a room we’d never seen. There was a big window in the wall, and on the other side of the window…” Karen pressed her lips together.
Robert took over the story. “We saw Savannah. She was…screaming, bruised, bleeding. Wilcox was,” Robert swallowed. “Wilcox was torturing her. We didn’t realize it at first—you know sometimes BDSM play looks bad, when it is actually pleasurable. It wasn’t until Wilcox left the room and we got a good look at Savannah—and saw she was still sobbing—that we realized what was going on. We snuck in and got her out.”
“I saw a computer,” Karen added. “I realized he was using it to control some hidden cameras and audio equipment. I took the external drive and corrupted the hard drive. That’s where we got the video, the video of what he did to Savannah.”
“We started to watch it once, but…” Robert looked at Karen. “It was too much. What he did to her.”
“She was… He was hurting her? You mean he was training her.” Roman leaned back against the car, his legs week. What they were saying was all wrong.
“You should watch. See for yourself.”
They handed Roman the laptop and headphones. He slipped the headphones over his ears and hit play.
Roman watched himself lead Savannah into the inner room, both her hands clinging to one of his. She was so beautiful. He watched as his five-years-younger self strapped Savannah down, saw the smile she tried to hide. He watched himself kiss her goodbye. If he’d known then it was the final one he would have lingered.
He left the room. Wilcox stepped forward, bringing the vibrator into play. Its humming was faint, but then Savannah moaned his name. He missed that sound. She moaned his name again and he frowned. Why was she calling out to him? He was gone.
It was then he realized.
She didn’t know. The blindfold was still on and she didn’t know it was Wilcox.
“No,” he whispered, sickening realization spilling over him.
He heard her moaning for her Master to pleasure her. Words Wilcox had played back, words Roman thought were addressed to Wilcox had been meant for him.
He watched fear fill her when the blindfold was removed, heard her cry out for him, begging him to save her.
His heart, which he’d thought long broken, shattered. There was the woman he loved, crying out for him, begging him to rescue her—from a situation he’d forced her into.
He watched, made himself watch, what was done to her. When Wilcox cut her with the cane, Roman sank to his knees in the dust, cradling the laptop.
He understood the full extent of the deception when he heard her condemning Wilcox, calling him a perverted freak. Again, they were words Roman had heard, thinking they were meant for him. Wilcox must have used the computer to key up only the parts he wanted Roman to hear, then played them back as if they were live.
Let me go, you pathetic son of a bitch.
He watched her fight, even though there was no hope of escaping.
When Wilcox left her, her body twitching in pain, he knew what would follow. He knew he was about to be played for a fool. Wilcox had wanted Savannah, and he’d done everything to get her.
He watched, tears on his face, as Wilcox reentered the room and held up a small recorder. He heard himself say, “Keep her.”
Savannah’s grief was terrible to behold. She’d gone there with him, wanting nothing from the weekend but willing to indulge him. She’d found pleasure and become an enthusiastic participant, and in reward he’d turned her over to a sadistic monster.
He watched as Wilcox beat her, tortured her. He watched the fight leave her, her screams fading into little gasps of pain. It went on and on. When he wasn’t physically tormenting her, Wilcox was telling her that Roman had chosen another over her, and that she was now Wilcox’s slave.
“You should fast forward,” Karen said softly, “it goes on for hours.”
Roman wanted to watch each second, as if he could find a moment when he could jump through the screen back in time and save her. When he didn’t move, Karen knelt beside him and fast forwarded the video, stopping periodically to let him see and hear what his beloved was going through.
The next time Wilcox left, the Stalwoods snuck in. The tape ended with Robert carrying Savannah from the room.
Roman carefully set the laptop down. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He’d been kneeling there for probably close to an hour.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered. It sounded like an excuse and he hated himself for it. He owed her so much. “I should have. I should have seen what he was doing.”
“What did he tell you?” Karen asked softly.
“He told me she wanted to stay with him. He said I was too weak for her.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I loved her. I should have protected her.”
Karen rubbed his back. “When she said you’d given her away I wondered. It didn’t sound like you, but she was so hurt, we didn’t question her.”
“Later,” Robert said, “we watched the first part of the tape, and realized you may not have really understood what he was doing.”
“But we couldn’t tell Savannah,” Karen added. “She was too hurt, too scared.”
Roman nodded. He understood now. He understood everything too well. “I was a fool.”
“You were manipulated.”
“And the woman I loved paid the price.”
Roman got to his feet. He looked across the fields at the house. His need, his desire had destroyed something, someone beautiful.
“Tell her…” He looked to Robert and Karen. “No.” He shook his head. “Don’t ever tell her I was here. She deserves her peace. I’m just sorry I confronted her in Chicago. I didn’t know.”
Roman cast one last glance at the house and turned to his car.
“Where are you going?” Robert asked.
“I won’t hurt her again.”
“No, you have to talk to her.”
“I won’t. I don’t want her to remember that.”
“She deserves to know you loved her.”
Karen’s words stopped him. He looked over his shoulder at the couple.
“You thought she left you and she thought, and still thinks, that you gave her to Wilcox, that you condoned what was done to her.” Robert’s steady gaze held him pinned in place.
“When we took her away, what she cried about was that you didn’t love her. I think… I worry, she believes that she isn’t worthy of being loved. You loved her, and yet you let someone hurt and torture her, so that must be all her love is worth.”
“No, no.” Roman shook his head. “I’m the one who isn’t worthy of her.”
“She needs to know you loved her, that you really loved her, and that you never wanted this.”
Roman nodded. Robert and Karen got into their car and pull it off to the side, creating a gap just big enough for his car to get by. Robert rolled down the window as he came level with them.
“She’ll be in the barn,” Robert said. “Remember she was hurt, and that she doesn’t know the truth.”
Roman pulled up in front of the white house and parked. He got out and studied it, trying to see her here instead of in their sunny apartment in L.A. He didn’t know the woman here, he didn’t know Savannah Jones, and yet he couldn’t help but want her to be the same girl he’d loved all those years ago. That wasn’t fair of him, and he’d just seen
the proof that his actions, his stupidity and his own insecurities had led not only to the end of their relationship, but to her having to create a new life and a new identity for herself. The large wraparound porch, so intrinsically Southern, was dotted with chairs and benches. The pillows and cushions were brightly colored, matching the flowers that filled the pots on the rail. Over the front door was a little spot of blue. He took a few steps, stopping at the edge of the porch. The spot of blue was an evil eye. A glass talisman to ward off evil. There’d been one over the front door of their apartment.
Seeing that made him feel as if there was some part of the girl he still loved alive and living, even in this place so far from the home they’d known.
Roman walked to the barn. The words he’d composed on the flight were gone. He’d planned to approach her civilly, address their past and say he’d wished she would have just told him if she wanted to be a Domme rather than run away from him. What an arrogant fool he’d been. He’d been so overwhelmed by events, so blinded by his presumed failings and then the hurt of her leaving that he hadn’t seen what was in front of him.
He stood at the small door set into the wall beside the massive barn door, hoping words would come. He wanted to apologize, to beg her forgiveness, to wrap her in his arms and protect her from the past.
You murdered me.
He words from Chicago now made horrifying sense. He could tell her he hadn’t known, that it had been a mistake, but it was he who had led her into that room, he who had strapped her to the table.
He opened the door.
Chapter Eight
Savannah stood, wiping her hands on a cloth. She felt calmer now that she’d sketched. The door to the barn opened. She stiffened but didn’t turn to see who was there.
“Savannah.”
His voice didn’t surprise her and she realized she’d been expecting it, been expecting him. He stood in the doorway, tall, strong, seeming both larger and harder than he’d been five years ago.
“Savannah,” he said, and his image wavered. She blinked and tears slid down her cheeks.
The late-afternoon sunlight left his face in shadow and, in that moment, when the world seemed to wait, she saw before her not the man she’d met again last night, nor the man she’d been betrayed by all those years ago, but the boy she fell in love with.
“Roman?” she whispered.
“Savannah.” He ran to her, scooping her up in his arms. She froze, shocked and angry that he would touch her, but there was something in his voice, in the way he said her name that made her feel it wasn’t the stranger who she’d seen in Chicago or the man who’d betrayed her, but her beloved who held her. Savannah buried her face in his neck and sobbed. Being held by him brought her back, back to the time when she was happiest.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. He hurt you. I’m sorry, so sorry I didn’t come for you.” She didn’t understand what he was saying, but she didn’t care, not right then. His body was just as firm as she remembered, his arms as strong and sure around her. He smelled the same. She pulled away to look at him. There were lines at the corners of his eyes. His face was harder, leaner and his eyes grim.
The boy she loved was gone. The man holding her was a stranger.
Savannah pushed away, turning her back on him. How sickly masochistic she was to let the man who had betrayed her so cruelly into her arms.
“Why are you here?”
“Savannah, please.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Just to talk to you. There are things I need to explain and things I should say, questions I want to ask. I’ll leave whenever you want. All you have to do is tell me to go and I’ll be gone. But please, let me talk to you. We’ve wasted so much time… I think you deserve answers from me.”
“I’ve learned to live without them,” she said, back still to him.
There was a beat of silence. She heard him sigh.
“The Stalwoods are outside.”
“I know. They rescued me. Took a job on this coast to be close to me.”
“I should have rescued you,” he said, voice low with conviction.
“Rescued me? You’re the one they rescued me from.”
Silence filled the studio, uncomfortable and heavy.
“Are these yours?” He was standing by an easel, frowning at a half-finished painting.
“No. I don’t paint anymore.”
“They don’t look like your work.” He wandered from easel to easel, ending at her desk area where one of the sketches for the sculpture she was making for his building lay. It was a rough drawing, not nice enough to have been included in the portfolio.
“I recognized us in this,” he said. “That’s what made me come after you. Even after I saw the artist’s name, I didn’t think it was you. Your work was never this dark. But it’s us, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“The knife in his hand, my hand. The murder weapon?”
“She’s not dead,” Savannah said, tracking him with her eyes.
“But she is. In Chicago you said ‘you murdered me’.”
She looked away, didn’t answer.
He set the sketch down and came toward her. He didn’t touch her and she was grateful for that. “I kept your paintings. I took them with me when I moved to Chicago. Anything else of yours, a few clothes and books, are boxed up in storage. I couldn’t throw anything away. I though you left me because I was weak and you wanted a strong man, a Dom.”
“How could you think that?” she asked, rubbing her cold arms. “You gave me away, traded me to him in exchange for one of his slaves.” She spat the last word out, hating the taste of it. “I left because you’re a heartless, self-involved bastard.”
“Savannah, look at me, please.” He waited until she’d met his gaze. “I loved you. You were my world. You were the only person I’d ever trusted enough to try sex games with, but if you hadn’t liked them, I would have given them up in a heartbeat. For you.”
“No, no, that’s not right.” She paced away, heart beating hard. Hope, a traitorous emotion, was rising within her. “You took me there, tricked me. Gave me to him.”
“You’re right. I did take you there, to that room.”
It was almost a relief when the hope died.
“But I did not give you to him.”
“I heard you, heard you tell him to keep me. You gave me to a monster,” she whispered. She looked down at her last sketch—Roman, but not the man behind her, or the man she’d loved. Roman as she remembered him that day, back to her, walking away. “I cried out for you. I begged you to save me.”
“I know. I heard.”
She rubbed her belly, trying to draw breath past the coldness there. “You heard me begging for mercy and decided to trade me for his whore? Did I really mean so little to you?”
“God, no! Savannah, no. I didn’t hear it then, not five years ago. I had no idea what happened to you, what you went through. He told me… I guess it doesn’t matter what he told me. I should have known he was lying. I should have protected you.”
Savannah turned, his words finally sinking in. “What do you mean you didn’t know? You gave me to him.”
“No. I would never do that. I loved you.”
“But you…” Savannah shook her head. “You took me to him, you left me there, you—”
“I took you to him, to train you. He said he would teach you to go into sub-space—God, how stupid this all sounds now—he said he would help me make it so that each time I touched you it would be as good as that night. I felt stupid because it wasn’t until you were surrounded by other people and I was being coached that I was able to give you that kind of pleasure. I thought I wasn’t doing enough to you. He said that if he trained you to find sub-space, it could be that way all the time. Just a few hours with him would teach you how to tap into that part of you, and once you knew how you’d be—”
“A better submissive, a more willing sex toy for you?”
“No. You know I never thought of you like that. I thought you’d be able to experience intense pleasure, even if I wasn’t good enough for you.” His words were clipped and hard, matter-of-fact.
Savannah met his gaze. His emotionless words were at odds with the pain in his gaze.
Had he really not known what Wilcox was doing? Part of her had always wanted to believe that, but he’d been there, he had to have known.
“He had me, he…hurt me…for hours.”
Roman’s eyes closed and his face creased in pain. “I know.” He blew out a breath. “I took you there because I thought you would enjoy it. He convinced me you were some sort of…born submissive. I wanted to give you a chance to know pleasure at the hands of a skilled Dom. And yes, I thought you would enjoy it, and when it was over you’d come back to me, and I’d have learned new things, and we would both be happier.
“I stood outside the door. I stood there and waited to make sure you were okay. I heard you, heard you calling him Master and moaning as you came.”
“No, no. I never came for him.” Thinking back she remembered those first few happy minutes. “I was blindfolded, I thought it was you.”
“I know that, now, because Karen and Robert showed me the video.”
The video. They’d told her there was one, but never let her watch it. Savannah had never wanted to, but she knew they’d kept it, in case she ever needed to press charges.
“He told me he’d take the blindfold off the minute I left the room. He was supposed to explain why he was training you, then he’d turn on the audio so I could make sure you wanted this. I didn’t hear you calling my name, didn’t know it was me you were calling Master.”
Savannah felt as if the earth were tilting under her feet, changing her understanding of who she was—and who Roman was.
He met her gaze. “Later, when I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone else touching you anymore, I went back. I tried to get into the room but it was locked. Wilcox came out and told me you didn’t want me anymore, that you wanted a real man—that you wanted him. He pressed some buttons, made it seem like he was turning on the audio. I heard you, but I realize now, and I should have realized then it wasn’t me you were talking to.”
