Laura peeked up over the side of the truck to see the driver and the Agency men set off in different directions. Anders jumped out to join them. As they disappeared into the trees, she saw more than one of them draw a revolver. She looked over at Dan with a question.
“We’re about a quarter mile from an unofficial border crossing.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “This is the one we were supposed to come across when we came over. They’re checking it out to make sure no one is waiting for people to try to cross without papers.”
“Like us.”
“Like us. We were able to get internal passports—the ones Russians use to move around inside the country—but we couldn’t get international ones.”
“You went to a lot of trouble for me.” Her eyes welled up with real tears for the first time in days.
He stared at her for a moment then turned away. “It was my fault you were here.”
She reached her hand out to him but he was too far away and made no move to take it. She rolled herself to the side of the mattress and sat up. The world wobbled a bit but held.
“What are you doing?” He was at her side in an instant.
“I’m fine. Or at least better. I wanted to come sit next to you.”
“No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” He refused to meet her gaze again as he pushed her back to lie down. She resisted.
“I want to sit up!”
Now he did look at her. “Young lady, you almost died. You will lie down, now, and stay that way until Anders thinks it’s safe for you to get up.” The tone of his voice was quiet and determined, and exactly what Laura wanted to hear. She melted back down onto the mattress, feeling taken care of.
Then the moment vanished. He stood up abruptly. “Oh, hell. Who am I to tell you what to do? Obviously, I don’t know how to take care of you, or anybody else, or we wouldn’t be sitting out in the middle of some godforsaken Russian forest trying to sneak back over the border to Latvia! You should do whatever the hell you want. It’ll probably end up better for you anyway.” He turned away and jumped out of the truck.
Laura watched him walk away, stunned. What had just happened?
~ ~ ~
A figure appeared out of the woods, running hard towards the truck. Dan swerved to meet him and after a hurried conversation, put his fingers to his mouth and uttered the strangest birdcall she’d ever heard. Apparently, the others knew what it meant because they appeared out of the woods at a run.
Anders and Dan catapulted into the back of the truck almost simultaneously. Anders gave Dan a questioning look.
“There’s multiple Russian Tigers headed up the road this way. I have a feeling our soldier friend called the hospital in Pskov and when we didn’t arrive, they started looking for us.”
“Shit! How far behind?”
“About a half mile from the sound of the vehicles, but they’re made for traveling fast over rough terrain. These trucks might break apart if we push them too hard.”
Dan grabbed Laura and hauled her off the mattress to the end of the truck bed, instructing her to stay below the level of the tailgate. He threw the mattress over the top of her. The truck careened over the rocky and uneven ground, and more than once she was thrown hard against the metal. The air was stifling and she was thinking of peeking out to get a breath when she suddenly heard a loud voice.
“Stoy! Ostanovite avtomobil!”
She didn’t know the words, but the intent was clear. The truck didn’t pause. The voice repeated itself and then suddenly there was the sound of gunfire. She heard a tire blow under the truck and it swerved. The driver fought for control and kept heading forward. There was more gunfire and this time she heard it strike the truck close to where she was crouched. She shrieked but the sound was lost in the chaos.
Suddenly, there was the sound of metal striking metal but this time it seemed to come from the front of the truck. The truck didn’t pause.
“Shit!” she heard Dan yell. “They aren’t stopping!”
“Guess an international border isn’t a good enough reason to call off a chase.”
The tense flight continued, the truck’s back end swerving left and then right as the driver fought to stay in control. She felt them swing around a curve in the road and seconds later, they ground to a halt.
She heard a chuckle from Dan. “The border might not be enough to stop them, but armed civilians are.”
She dared to peek her head up. Behind them about a hundred yards, between them and the Russians, was a line of civilian vehicles. Standing behind those vehicles was a group of men and a few women, armed with an assortment of shotguns and revolvers, staring down the Russians. A Russian commander was yelling something at the Latvian citizens from the armored personnel vehicle he stood next to. One of them yelled something back. The commander spit on the ground. Then he turned on one heel, motioned to his vehicles, and one by one they turned around, their tires digging deep furrows into the dirt on the side of the road as they swung wide circles. Eventually they disappeared back into the woods, though they could be heard for a long time.
When the sound finally faded, the civilians turned back to the Americans. Big smiles appeared as their guns disappeared. There was a lot of back-slapping and laughter between the two crowds. The truck and the cars all started up and they were escorted to a small town. Most of the cars veered off to park in front of a bar, but the truck and one other car pulled up a few minutes later at a small, neat house with a bright flowerbed in the front.
As soon as the truck stopped, Dan picked Laura up and swung her over the tailgate into Anders’ waiting arms. Anders started to carry her towards the house.
“I’m fine!” She wiggled to get down. This was undignified.
“Stop, Laura.” Dan’s voice was flat and serious. She wanted to protest but she caught a glimpse of the fatigue lining his face and held her tongue.
As they reached the front door, an older woman pushed the screen open. She caught sight of Laura and began firing rapid questions in Dan’s direction. She didn’t wait for the answers, though, before ushering them into the house. She pointed towards a door and Anders carried her into a bedroom. He deposited her on a brightly colored bedspread, pulled a blanket up over her, and left.
Despite the adrenaline racing through her system, she was exhausted and she gladly closed her eyes. She listened to the animated conversation in Latvian going on in the living room between the woman, someone who was translating, and Dan. Dan kept his voice low enough that she couldn’t hear what he was telling them, but the outrage she heard in their voices told her they were hearing at least part of her story. She tried to stay awake but it was a losing battle. She gave up and drifted off.
When she woke, it was dark outside. The cheerful woman was coming into the room.
“Tu esi nomodā!” She seemed pleased to find Laura awake. “I am Darya Vasilyeva.” She beamed, her accent thick but understandable.
“Hello Mrs. Vasilyeva. I’m Laura Hurst.”
“Please. I am Darya. I have some food for you.”
“Real food?” Laura struggled to sit up. How long had it been since she’d eaten? A week?
“I think you call it pudding.”
To put something with texture in her mouth was a sensory explosion. The small bowl was empty all too soon.
“More, please?” she asked, feeling like Oliver Twist.
“Not yet. A little bit only now. A little bit later. Too much can make you very sick.”
Laura knew about refeeding syndrome—giving too much food at once after a period of prolonged fasting could actually lead to death. What she didn’t realize was how desperate the hungry person would feel once she started eating. It took an act of supreme will to hand the bowl back to Darya.
“Darya.” She was suddenly seized with inspiration. “Do you have a mirror so I can look at my hip?” She was finally ready to see what had made DeLeo so mad, and she wasn’t about to ask Anders or anyone else to help her l
ook at it.
Darya’s face clouded. “Is horrible man who put that there.” Darya handed her a small mirror.
“Yeah. But at least it’s not his initials. Anyway, he’s dead now.” Laura twisted around and held the mirror so she could see the mark that would be burned into her forever. It was a design Laura had seen before called a ‘Celtic knot’. It looked like two figure-eights, one vertical and one horizontal, seemingly drawn with one continuous line. Woven in and out of the figure was a circle. It was an attractive design, but why had Dan chosen it? She touched the scab that formed over it. Though the lines were still red and raised, it was only a bit sore now.
“It is getting late. You need to sleep now. Mr. Westbury say to drink this first.” She handed Laura a small mug of milk. Laura looked at it with glee and downed the warm beverage in seconds. “He say you drink more during the night. I will bring it to you.”
“Darya, where is Dan—Mr. Westbury?”
Her expression turned down. “He is at the bar with my husband. Drinking. Something bothers him.”
“Yeah. I wish I knew how to fix it.”
Darya tucked her in and turned out the light.
Chapter 35
Laura slept well. When she awoke, she wanted to get up and go outside, but Anders asked her some questions and insisted she get another bag of IV fluids before she did anything else. She winced as he reinserted the needle and taped the catheter down, but convinced him to let her lie in the swing on the porch while it ran in. She reveled in the feeling of freedom she promised she’d never take for granted again. It was a wonderful morning—the birds sang loudly and the garden exploded with riots of color. Darya bustled around the house, stopping outside to chat in broken English with her. Dan had gone to the American consulate nearby to make arrangements for Laura to leave the country, since she didn’t have a passport.
She’d had eggs for breakfast and was looking forward to promised homemade bread and butter later. In the meantime she was dozing in the sunshine under a blanket, when Dan arrived back.
He walked up to the porch and sat down next to her. “The consulate will have a passport for you tomorrow. We’ll leave then. The other guys all made it across the border without problems and they’ll go home on a regular flight today, but we’ll have a private plane. I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”
He got up to leave. Laura’s mouth hung open. “Is that all?”
He turned, confused. “Is what all?”
“Dan, the week before this happened you asked me to go away with you when it was all over. Now it’s like a wall of stone has dropped between us.”
“Laura, what do you want me to say? I was the reason you got kidnapped. Then I had to make you submit to me and I put you through all kinds of things no one should have to go through without consent. I fucked up further and you got branded and flown to another country to be a sex slave for the rest of your life. I’m honestly surprised you still want to talk to me.”
She gaped up at him. “Dan, let me tell you a few things without interruption, okay?”
He nodded with obvious reluctance, and sat down facing the road, avoiding eye contact.
“Yes, this experience has without a doubt been the most horrible thing I’ve ever lived through. But—I’ve also learned a few things about myself.”
He snorted.
“Yes, Dan, I have. It might have come about in an unusual way, but…I’m submissive, Dan. Just like one of the women at the clubs you used to go to that you’d never really tell me about.”
He turned, and now he did look at her, his face full of disbelief. “You’re fucking what? You yourself just said it was the most horrible experience you’ve ever had!”
“And what better time to learn just what I’m really like? I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last month. I decided to put my trust in you, and despite what you think, you protected me and took care of me the best you could within the circumstances we had. My trust has not faltered for one minute, Dan.”
Now his face registered fury. “You submitted from fear, not some misguided emotion that you think is a need. Let’s be honest, Laura. I raped you. A number of times. I beat you. You might think you gave me permission to do those things, but you had no fucking idea what you were saying when you said it.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, submissive does not mean stupid! I know the difference between submitting from fear and submitting because I wanted and needed to please you. Because it filled me with pleasure to obey you. I admit it started out as fear, but it changed, Dan. It changed, and by the end, my submission to you was not being forced from me. You had my full consent for everything you did.”
“That’s called coercion, not consent.”
“I get to decide what it was, Dan, not you. It was consent. You want to call it rape? Fine. I’m going to call it a Dom taking his sub the way she realized she liked it—rough. You want to say you beat me? Fine. Remember it however you want to. I’m going to choose to remember it as a discipline you needed to give me to drive home a point. And let me tell you, Dan, yes, I was frightened while I was there—but never of you. In fact, with you, I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life. It hit me like lightening in the midst of all of that other shit that I liked most of what you were doing to me. Even after spending two days on the fucking blowjob machine. I didn’t like it at the time, but later I realized I needed you to demand obedience, even when I was scared.
“Remember when I was disrespectful to Master 2, when he came to check on me that evening? I was goading him. I had so many conflicted emotions running around inside my head, and somehow I knew what I needed. When he was done whipping me, I had a peace and calmness inside that carried me right through the next day. My only regret is that I wish you had been the one to punish me. And you know what? You were right about the nipple rings—I should have trusted you. My fear made it a whole lot worse than it would have been. By the way, I’m keeping them.”
He threw her a look of disbelief.
She took a deep breath. “Dan, the most contented times in my life were when I knelt in front of you and called you Master. I want to do that again.”
“Yesterday you said that you never wanted another master.”
She thought back to their conversation in the garden behind DeLeo’s house, and realization dawned. “Is that why you’ve pulled away from me?”
“You told me you refused to kneel at DeLeo’s feet because you never wanted another master. Which I completely understand.”
She reached over and picked up his hand. He didn’t object, but once again, he made no move to hold hers. “Dan, I meant I didn’t want another master besides you! I want to kneel at your feet! I want to move on, not live in the past—and I want to take what I’ve learned about myself and explore it with you, when the time is right. I know we’re going to need to take it slow.”
“I’m the worst possible choice for you right now.”
“Dan, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I know you’re trying to sort it out. I could tell that sometimes you were really turned on by what you were doing even as your mind told you it was wrong. I know that seeing me on that machine made you incredibly aroused, and I know that’s why you were so rough with me. It’s okay. I know it all messed with your head, and I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive your bosses who thought you’d be unaffected by it. Dan, I’m not asking you to plunge into anything heavy with me right now. But I want to be with you. Please don’t push me away until you figure it all out by yourself, because you never will, and by then I’ll be gone.”
“Yes. You’re absolutely right. I liked what I did with you. I was so fucking aroused I’d masturbate almost every night thinking about you. I broke every rule a decent human being is supposed to follow, not to mention a real Dom, and I liked it! I’m a rapist and a thug. I’m no different than Marco. How can you ever trust me again? How can I ever trust myself?” The pain in his eyes was visible.
“Don’t you ever
compare yourself to that scum. The only emotion any of us ever felt with him was fear. The more terrified we were, the more turned on he was. You did what you had to do. Sometimes it wasn’t what we liked at the time. I’ll admit that. But I’m a strong woman. I can live through things I don’t like and not crumble. If you hadn’t done what you needed to do, I would be dead. Claire would be dead. Staci would be dead. Don’t you see that?”
“Instead you get to go to therapy for the rest of your lives.”
“Goddammit! I can’t speak for Claire and Staci, but I’d sure as hell rather be dealing with this shit as a live person than as a dead one!”
“Tell that to Josh. I got him killed, too.”
“For cripes sake! Stop taking this all on yourself! Josh gave his life to save me and Claire! That was part of his job. Would you have done the same?”
“Of course!”
“Then don’t dishonor his sacrifice by refusing to move on with life. He didn’t do it so that you could wallow in guilt until you drink yourself into suicide.”
His head flew up and he started to protest—and stopped. Instead he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was silence on the porch.
When he finally spoke, the loneliness in his voice almost broke her heart. “Then what do I do?”
“Let me in. Let me love you. Let me help heal you. Let us both heal, together. Trust me when I say I’m not interested in staying with someone who’s a thug. Dan, I’ve wanted to be with you since before this all happened—you know that—and knowing the truth about you, about me, about any of this, doesn’t change that. We can start out completely vanilla, if you’d prefer, and I’ll pick a safe word. Not for play, but for our relationship. If I feel there’s something not right, something of your past few years that’s creeping in between us, I’ll use it. And we’ll talk. Maybe we’ll talk with Claire if that would help.”
A Captive of Fear and Desire Page 23
