A Captive of Fear and Desire

by Sophie Kisker

  “I assure you, sir,” Dan said tightly, “having her here is no problem. I remain as committed to this organization as ever. She will be just another slave, no more, no less, just like all the others. My concern is only for the security of this organization.”

  “Glad to hear it. Marco may have made a bad decision, I admit, but it’s done, so we’ll just move on. I think that perhaps the best way to make her disappear without a trace is for me to arrange to take her as my own, instead of auctioning her with the rest. There won’t be any finding her after that, I can guarantee.”

  Dan grew cold. “Sir?”

  “I saw her processing video. She intrigues me. I have some specific things I want done to prepare her for my needs. I’ll send the list to Marco, and I’ll pick her up when I arrive for the auction. It’s a loss of a sale, yes, but it’s safer that way.”

  Dan found himself paralyzed, almost unable to breathe.

  “Dan? Anything wrong? Do you have an objection to my plan?”

  He took a deep breath. “No. No, sir. None at all.” The phone was shaking in his hand.

  “Good.” The connection broke.

  Chapter 12

  After lunch, was “P&P” as the masters called it—Pain and Pleasure. The day before, Laura had been introduced to all manner of pain, but today someone must have taken pity and figured she was in enough pain already. So they assigned her to pleasure, or what passed for it in this place.

  Laura crawled after Master 4 into the room with the Sybian. She was absurdly grateful to see it, reasoning that even pleasured torment was better than more pain. She was right, though it didn’t mean she exactly enjoyed a solid hour of orgasm denial. After that, they put her to work cleaning floors, since she was already down there. By now, her knees were red and raw from the unforgiving concrete and dirt.

  But at least she wasn’t being punished. Amazing how her perspective had changed in two days.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Jackie’s almost finished with her kitchen training,” Dan reported. “We’ve had some interest in her already. You don’t get a fully-trained cordon-bleu chef every day.” These were bizarre conversations Dan and Josh needed to have each day for DeLeo’s benefit. They never knew when he was listening and couldn’t let their guard down.

  “What could she possibly need training for? She was qualified before she got here,” Dan wondered to Josh.

  He grinned. “Cooking without the use of knives or sharp implements. It’s been a challenge to figure out how to get around it, but we’ve gotten creative, and we’ll supply her new master with a ‘manual’, so-to-speak, of how to take advantage of her training without giving her the means to murder him at the same time.”

  Dan shook his head. It had been his idea to change the training of the women from simply brute force obedience to developing their talents. It also seemed to help the women cope, and gave them a non-sexual activity for a little while each day. Even the sex training had evolved into how to please a man in many different ways, some nonsexual. It was what had made DeLeo notice him, and in the several months Dan had been in charge of the training facility, the anticipated value of the women had skyrocketed. DeLeo, skeptical at first, stood to make more money than God when he auctioned them off, though Dan had no intention of letting that happen.

  Dan had emphasized over and over the necessity of keeping the ‘merchandise’ in good working order to bring the best price. He’d lectured the men at length, his stomach threatening to rise up into his throat each time, that discovering each woman’s talents and unlocking her sensuality would make the women much more valuable. Anyone could break a woman; only the best organizations could turn her into a pleasing slave with skills in different areas that might attract the eyes of men who didn’t want to own a broken object.

  Indeed, the change was visible to anyone looking through the sales videos sent to the prospective buyers—instead of trembling, underfed, and broken women covered with bruises, they saw soft, curvy women, dressed in silky translucent dresses, hair shining down their backs and spilling over their shoulders as they knelt quietly and submissively in front of the cameras. DeLeo had intended to save most of the women for the auction, but five times he’d made arrangements to sell a woman to a friend or associate immediately. It gutted Dan, who could do nothing but rage in his private text messages to Josh. A carefully placed tracking device inserted under her skin along with her birth control implant hopefully meant that each one would be rescued when the time came. Dan prayed that by giving them some skills, he had made them just a little more valuable to their new owners, who would be less likely to harm them until the day came that they were rescued.

  After the first couple of those unexpected but wildly profitable sales, Dan had managed to convince DeLeo to give bonuses to each of the men as a reward, which meant they’d become much more invested in training than raping these last few months. The biggest grumbling came from the fact that Dan had decreed that only he or Josh were permitted to dole out severe punishments. Both of them gritted their teeth and accepted the idea that the other men were allowed to administer lesser punishments. To forbid the men from giving any at all was to foment rebellion and to cause DeLeo to wonder about the reasons for the restrictions. The two men intervened when they could.

  A knock on the door brought Dan back to reality. Marco pushed the door open and with undisguised arrogance, he strode over to the desk. His nose looked a little crooked from Dan’s assault earlier and his stench suggested that he’d been drinking. He thrust a paper at Dan.

  “These are the requirements my uncle has for the girl. If you can’t do them, I get to.” He wheeled around and walked out.

  Dan had a list of men he wanted to personally kill when this was over and Marco was at the top of it, right after DeLeo. They were all sadistic pigs. He was pretty certain the Agency wouldn’t permit him to commit homicide, which would be one of the greatest disappointments of his life.

  He knew he wasn’t going to like what he saw on the list so he braced himself as he sat down, Josh peering over his shoulder. He was right.

  Now he knew he was going to kill them both, no matter the personal cost. He crumpled the list and threw it at the wall.

  Fuck.

  He was going to go mad. He could not—would not—let Marco and DeLeo get their hands on Laura. And though he was certain that Laura would never truly end up in DeLeo’s hands, he had no idea how to get around DeLeo’s orders.

  WTF are you going to do? Josh texted as he picked up the crumpled list and smoothed it out. He held it out to Dan who grabbed it and threw it on the desk.

  He wants her in excellent physical shape. I’m going to start her training as soon as I get back this afternoon.

  Training? She can’t walk yet.

  She has to. We have to talk.

  Dan put his head in his hand, struggling to hold his anger in check. He didn’t have time to dwell on the implications of DeLeo’s demand right now. He had an appointment to keep.

  Josh looked at his watch. “Aren’t you headed to the dentist soon?”

  “Yep. Have to get it over with sometime.” Dan grimaced with the effort of faking a lighthearted tone. “It might be a while.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look after everything.”

  Chapter 13

  Dan drove down the steep, winding road. The Farm was hidden in thick woods on an isolated section of the mountain and only a vague set of tire tracks off the main road revealed the miles-long dirt path that led up to the two buildings.

  It was early summer and still cool. The trees were lush and the sky a bright blue. The paved road was almost deserted; he only passed two cars the whole way down. He drove over the bridge that crossed the wild churning river and continued on into town. It was a small town, and he cringed at the evil located so close to the place he’d grown up and still cherished.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the medical building and walked in, up to the third floor, looking for all the world like a m
an dreading a root canal.

  He entered the small office and once the door had closed, he nodded to the receptionist. She nodded back. Instead of sitting down, though, he continued past the desk and entered the hallway that ran between the small rooms. He shivered at the high-pitched whine of a drill from behind one door. At the very back of the office was an elevator. He took it down to the basement, which doubled as a garage, and without comment, opened the door of the SUV waiting there. As soon as it closed, the driver took off.

  Thirty minutes later, he disembarked at the entrance of a shiny office building that sat on a busy city street. He had no official ID with him so his boss met him at the front desk and the two entered the elevator together.

  “You look tired,” Pearson informed him.

  “Yeah, well, it’s just gotten a whole lot harder than it was a few days ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fill you in in a few minutes.” The elevator door opened and the pair made their way down the hall to a large conference room, filled with some familiar faces and some strangers, all connected to this case. He’d worked with some of them a few times before, doing highly covert things that were the bread and butter of this shadow organization that had loose connections between a number of governments.

  Assistant Director Lawter welcomed him with a firm handshake and steered him to the head of the table. At his arrival, the room quieted.

  “As you all know,” Lawter began, “in four weeks, there’s going to be an auction of sex slaves nearby. This, in itself, is unfortunately not unusual, but what is unusual is who is hosting it. Victor DeLeo, head of the largest human trafficking ring in the world, will himself be present to oversee the auction. Also attending will be some of the wealthiest scum who have ever bought and sold women. This sting has been almost five years in the making. Though these women are all from the United States, DeLeo has been running this ring in many different countries. The buyers come from all over as well, and with those facts, we have secured the covert cooperation of a number of governments around the globe. Their participation is chiefly to raid the homes and hiding places—the ones we know of—where women are being held, at the same time this auction takes place. No owner will be able to alert another owner. Here in the US, the operation will be staged by participants from a number of different agencies working together. The methods that we have used to put together and manage this operation are slightly irregular according to US law–” here he was interrupted by widespread chuckles “–and therefore we have made it plain to all our agents from the start that there would be no public acknowledgment of this operation or their participation in it. Reality tells us, though, that rumors will fly, and we anticipate Congress taking a deep and abiding interest in this operation after the fact. Though by then, we all hope to have presidential pardons locked in our desk drawers.”

  There was nervous laughter at this statement, mostly because it was true. Every person who was heavily involved in this operation had been promised a pardon, though the highly prized documents could not be issued until after the crimes were committed, so it was an act of faith for each of them to participate.

  “Most of you know Agent Westbury; a few don’t. He’s been with the Agency for almost seven years. When we started investigating this sex traffic ring and it seemed that there was a ‘branch’ in this geographic area, we assigned him to the investigation. As a local man, he stands out less, and he has some, er, unique talents for this type of work. And indeed, the compound where the women are being kept, called The Farm, was found just a few miles outside of the town he lives in. He’s spent several years working his way up the ranks of DeLeo’s organization and now runs The Farm. He’s here today to provide an update of the plans and the current progress.”

  Dan was warring within himself as he stepped forward. He didn’t really want to go into a description of the circumstances surrounding Laura, but her involvement had very real implications to the investigation. He had no choice.

  “Thank you. Unfortunately, my first piece of news is not a good one. A very close female friend of mine was kidnapped and is now one of the slaves I oversee.”

  Voices broke out in question, but Dan held up his hand for silence and they died down. He described Marco’s attempts to curry favor with his uncle, leading to Laura’s capture, and what DeLeo had decided to do with her.

  “So can you put aside your personal feelings and just train her like the others?” Pearson asked.

  “Sir,” he started. This was a sore point for Dan, and one he had trouble ignoring. Though he used the word ‘training’ himself because he had to, he knew Pearson would never see the difficulties with the word. “I don’t train anyone there. Training is for willing submissives who ask for it. I have accomplished the goal of controlling these women through the fear of punishment. That is not training. Second, he wants me to do more than control her; he wants me to break her.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Dan had tried to talk to Pearson over and over to educate him about BDSM. The man had steadfastly refused to have any conversation about the topic, calling it ‘deviance.’ ‘–Oh, but not you, Dan. You’re okay. It’s just those weird freaks out there, you know?’

  He was going to have to lay it out bluntly in front of all of these people. He took a deep breath.

  “‘Breaking’ means that he wants me to rape and punish her until she no longer fights back.”

  “Don’t you have sex with and punish women in those weird clubs you go to?”

  It seemed Dan’s private life was very public.

  “The sex and the punishments at the clubs are consensual, sir. The submissives agree to them ahead of time. They receive pleasure from what we do to them. The women at The Farm are not submissive. They’re just afraid.”

  Pearson opened his mouth to say more, but Dan had had enough. “I’ll be happy to discuss this with you at another time, sir. We need to keep moving.”

  Pearson looked like he wanted to argue, but closed his mouth and nodded.

  The topic turned to details of the auction and the hundreds of carefully coordinated moments they needed to plan.

  Eventually Dan looked at his watch and realized time was running short. “Sir,” he said to Lawter, “I need to get back, but we need to talk about how and when to remove the women at the scene.”

  “Pearson, you’ve got this all worked out, right?”

  The man stood up. “Yup, all taken care of.”

  Dan looked at him quizzically. “May I ask what the plan is, sir?”

  “After the auction is done and the buyers have incriminated themselves, we’ll do the raid and round up the women. We’ll transport them in a van to the nearby Air Force Base—it’s about twenty-five miles. They have an unused unit in their hospital that they’re going to open up for us. We’ll get medical in there to take a look at them, do a rape kit and all that, and once they’ve been medically cleared, law enforcement will be in to take their first statements. I expect they’ll be there a few days to answer all our questions, and of course they’ll be kept in their rooms to avoid tainting testimonies. We’ll hold off notifying the families until we’re done questioning them for the same reason. Then we’ll release them to go home after their families make it there.”

  Dan stared at him.

  “Question?” Pearson asked.

  “Yes. I thought we were not going to put them through the auction?”

  “We can get better evidence for convictions if we have the buyers on video actually doing the buying.”

  Dan turned to the group of mostly men. “Any trauma victim experts here?” There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Why the fuck not?” He wheeled around to Pearson.

  “You’re out of line,” Pearson snarled.

  “And you can’t tell your ass from your elbow.”

  Pearson turned an interesting shade of purple but Dan ignored him and turned to Lawter.

  “Sir, I’m really close to walking ou
t of here and not going back. I’m sick to death of these women being treated only as a means to the end of arresting DeLeo. Their wellbeing seems to be really low on the list of priorities around here. From the beginning, I argued over and over that they should not be held until an auction could be set up. I felt that it was unconscionable to keep them captive once we discovered where they were being held. Now, in addition to the twelve women currently at The Farm, there are five women who’ve been bought and removed from our protection. The remaining women believe that one of them has died, and they are barely holding on to sanity at the thought that they will all be sold to be kept as sex slaves for the rest of their lives. My concerns about keeping them prisoner were repeatedly dismissed in the name of a ‘greater good’ and the only reason Agent Contaldo and I agreed to keep going was that we are the least of all evils for them, if you aren’t going to free them. And as much as we’ve tried to make conditions better, the fact remains that we’ve had to do some really awful things to keep DeLeo from becoming suspicious.” He shuddered at the memory of beating Laura’s feet just this morning.

  He turned back to Pearson, his voice betraying his anger. “Do you have any idea what it will be like for them to be put naked on a stage and have strangers bid for the rights to own their bodies? Let me tell you. It’s something they’ll wake up with nightmares about for years. It also mixes civilians in with the bad guys and makes hostage-taking a real possibility.”

  Pearson seemed to have finally found his voice and he opened his mouth to reply.

  “Gentlemen!” Lawter’s voice cut through the tension. Pearson closed his mouth and shot a look of hatred at Dan.

  “Dan, what do you recommend?” The Assistant Director’s voice had a reasonable tone.

  Dan stared at Pearson in a silent challenge before ticking off his demands on his fingers.

  “First, the auction only happens as a last resort, if something goes wrong. The plan is to have the raid before the bidding starts. It’s your job to figure out how to prosecute the buyers if they’re arrested before the auction. Sir. And by the way, as soon as the women are out of the building and safe, I want hospital scrubs available for them to put on. They need to have something to wear that makes them feel safe, and I have a feeling you’d be giving them a sheet or something like that. Second, they’ll be taken together to the hospital, where they will stay together. They are a unified group that has gone to great lengths to help each other while captured and each of them will need the support of the others. It wouldn’t surprise me if they all wanted to sleep in the same room together, so find a place that’s big enough and has enough beds to do that. Only female medical personnel will examine them, and only as much as they are comfortable. If they agree to a rape kit, fine, but you won’t find anything because I’ve discouraged penetration and I’m very strict about using condoms each and every time. Their families will be notified within the hour of their release, transportation will be provided for them to get here, and they’ll be provided with hotel rooms as long as they are here. The women will not be pressured to talk until they’re ready to, which might be days. Or weeks. They’ll see their families immediately if they want to, which might be different for each woman. They’ll receive psychological counseling as soon as they want, and you will arrange for it to continue once they get home.”