Taken from School

by Emily Tilton

  Now, after he had ordered for her, which made her face hot, and had given her sips of his red wine—her very first—which made it hotter, she had expected that he would say something suggestive, at least. The confusion in her body and her mind only seemed to grow with each passing moment, as the leather of the banquette reminded her subtly that she had received a spanking from the woman with whom he had sent her to live. When she looked at Mr. Killington, and thought of her spanked bottom, feelings rose in Lauren, down there, of which she had only ever felt hints before.

  “Lauren?” he asked, after she failed to answer the question about history being her favorite subject.

  “Is history?” she said weakly. “I mean… do you mean was?” She blushed again, and looked down at her salad plate, wondering very vaguely if by referring to her status she would earn some kind of punishment. Mrs. Fredericks had made it very clear that Jessica got punished by Mr. Graves even more severely than by the matron herself. Did Mr. Killington manage affairs in a similar way?

  “Well, I suppose that depends on you, sweetheart,” he said placidly, giving her a little smile that seemed to hide the knowledge that Lauren wanted so desperately. “You may certainly enroll in online courses while you’re with Mrs. Fredericks and, afterwards, if you want to attend college in a more traditional way, that will also be an option.”

  Lauren stared at him, wondering how he could speak as if her stay with Mrs. Fredericks were a normal thing that might feature as part of any eighteen-year-old’s life.

  “Why am I… did you…?” She bit her lip, feeling her cheeks get hot, but she managed to look him in the face, wondering if seeing her confusion might evoke sympathy but also suddenly feeling that she wanted to evoke sympathy for very complex reasons—not only because she hoped he would let her go home but also because she wanted… what?

  I want to understand. I want to understand why he did it. I want to understand why I haven’t tried to run away, when I could have screamed on the street and people would have helped me. When I could get up from this table and run outside and find a policeman.

  Part of her mind told her that Mr. Killington clearly had such wealth and influence that Lauren would end up right back at Mrs. Fredericks’ apartment, undoubtedly confined there and not allowed to go to the museum tomorrow, or out with Mr. Killington.

  And… spanked. Held down by the men from the limo if necessary. Paddled. What did the paddle look like? What did it feel like?

  Something about that part of it seemed to derail her ability to plan an escape, and Lauren couldn’t figure out why.

  Mr. Killington reached out and took Lauren’s right hand, which lay on the table near the knife she hadn’t picked up yet to cut the lovely long leaves of romaine lettuce on her plate. She started at his touch, looking down at the sight of her little hand inside his big one, the contrast between the hair on his knuckles and the paleness of her Celtic skin. She tried to pull her hand away, slightly, but he held on until he felt her yield, and then drew the hand toward him so he could clasp it also in his own right hand. She looked up into his dark eyes again.

  “I know it’s difficult now at the beginning, Lauren, but I promise that you will look back on this time—and perhaps even on this birthday dinner—as a very special time… one that helped you become the strong and successful woman you’re going to be.”

  Lauren lowered her chin as she felt a crease form on her brow. “Strong?” she said, so softly that she almost mouthed the word rather than saying it. She had meant to speak scornfully, to indicate that what Mr. Killington said had not the slightest possibility of being the truth. Something in her—not in her mind as much as in her body—took away the harsh edge and turned the sarcastic question into an actual query.

  Mr. Killington nodded. “I know that probably seems odd, when I’ve had you kidnapped and put you in the care of a woman who doesn’t hesitate to discipline you when you need it.”

  Those words again: discipline you when you need it. Lauren felt like she had heard them, or some variation of them, from Mrs. Fredericks, over and over in the last few hours, the first hours of her captivity. When you need it. Including, apparently, when she committed the sin of saying I’m or like.

  “You’re not going to understand it for a while, but I promise that your responses even today, as observed by the men who took you and by Mrs. Fredericks, and now by me, tell me that you will benefit from what I have given you—though I know you don’t see it as a gift right now.”

  The part of Lauren that had grown up thinking of old-fashioned discipline as something from the dark ages rebelled. “But… but…” She tried to seize on something that would reveal how wrong the man was, despite his reasonable-sounding words and his money and his suit. She found it, and lowered her voice as her face grew hot at the thought of this counterargument. “But the lingerie.”

  She saw Mr. Killington’s mouth crook up into a little smile, and she tried to pull her hand away, because she realized that instead of finding a reason why no one should have a girl taken from school on her eighteenth birthday she had somehow indicated that he had spoken the truth—that Lauren needed old-fashioned discipline, whatever that would actually mean. She sensed in the smile, too, that it wouldn’t just mean spanking, or even paddling: somehow she knew that it also meant the lingerie. Her face blazed.

  He spoke gently as he let her have her hand back, to lay it, trembling, in her lap. “You mean that the lingerie indicates my real interest in you, and that that interest is, let us say, immodest.”

  Lauren felt her brow crinkle. Immodest. What a strange word for the obviously sexual nature of her captor’s intentions. She nodded tentatively.

  “You are eighteen, now, Lauren,” he said, a little sternness coming into his voice and making several butterflies take wing in her tummy. “Any man who deserves to be called that, in my book, given the opportunity to put a beautiful eighteen-year-old in the kind of underwear that shows her what a lovely young woman she’s become, would do it.”

  Lauren’s eyes went wide, and she couldn’t keep them raised but had to lower her burning face to look at her hands, folded in the lap of the beautiful green dress. Shows her. Not shows him. Suddenly she realized that the fire in her face wasn’t the only fire he had ignited. Down there, inside the lacy panties, at the center of the strange frame created by the garter belt and the nylons, Lauren felt again what she had first felt when she had listened to Jessica being spanked over Mrs. Fredericks’ knee, her nose in the corner of Mrs. Fredericks’ kitchen.

  “Put,” she whispered, for that seemed to her the most important word.

  “We’ll talk more about this when I bring you home to Mrs. Fredericks’,” Mr. Killington said with decision. “Eat your dinner, please, sweetheart.”

  Lauren didn’t try to steer the conversation toward sex again. As they ate, she let him draw her out about history, which was indeed her favorite subject. She found that he knew a great deal about the medieval European history that Lauren loved most, though he modestly professed his ignorance, several times saying, “I’m only an economics guy,” as he told her things about the Wars of the Roses that to Lauren’s surprise truly interested her.

  “That’s why it was so significant that they found Richard III’s bones there,” he said, as she finished her very first crème brûlée—the most delicious thing Lauren thought she had ever tasted. “I’m only an economics guy, but I find this stuff fascinating. We wouldn’t be who we are if those bastards—a lot of them literally—hadn’t decided they had to slaughter each other.”

  She looked up, unable to repress a real smile. She understood then that he meant it—that if she wanted to study history at Mrs. Fredericks’, or after, Mr. Killington wanted to help her do it. She remembered what Jessica had said about jobs, and she suddenly wondered what it would be like to teach history. She could certainly do it better than her high-school teachers—she wished that Mr. Killington had taught her medieval history, because then she might have rem
embered about the Battle of Bosworth Field.

  * * *

  Mr. Killington walked her back to the apartment building after dinner, still talking of history, of books, of movies. When he had used his own key to let them into the apartment, gotten Lauren a glass of water, and brought it to her where she stood looking out over the park, she thought for a moment that he would try to kiss her, and she wondered what she would do—for she had no idea.

  But instead he spoke, more seriously than he had at any time that evening.

  “It’s going to take you a few days, maybe even a few weeks, to get used to the rules, sweetheart. Until you are used to them, I’ve told Mrs. Fredericks that you are to be spanked once a day at most.”

  Lauren looked up at him in the semi-darkness, feeling the furrow return to her brow and the heat come back into her face as she bit her lip.

  “But you must understand that real discipline isn’t something you can avoid. You are going to be held accountable to me when we are apart. That’s Mrs. Fredericks’ job.”

  Lauren nodded, not sure she understood but afraid that if she didn’t acquiesce she would earn a spanking.

  “One rule that will surprise you, and which I know you will find difficult at first because of its immodest nature, concerns a thing you must do when told to do it by any man Mrs. Fredericks or I have given permission to request it of you.”

  Her eyes went wide and she swallowed hard, remembering Jessica’s story about the day Rachel had to be held down over the sofa arm.

  “I’m not going to make you do it tonight, but tomorrow night you can expect to fellate me for the first time, sweetheart. After that, your mouth will be available to other owners, and to the men we employ.”

  Chapter Six

  Ed Stevens could tell from the moment he heard about it that he felt more concern about Lauren O’Hara’s disappearance than her parents did, and it made him angry—and even more determined to figure out what had really happened to the sweet, beautiful eighteen-year-old. Ed, thirty-five and a highly successful personal trainer, had watched from his house across the street from the O’Haras as Lauren matured into a confident young woman—maybe not college-bound, though she obviously had the smarts for it, but Ed respected that as a guy who worked for a living.

  He rang the O’Haras’ bell at 4:30 in the afternoon of her eighteenth birthday, having arranged his schedule at the gym so he could get off a few hours early and give Lauren the birthday present he had ordered specially off the net, a new book about medieval history that had caught his eye while shopping online. It had made him think of her, and he had clicked on it because he remembered her eighteenth was coming up. He knew her parents wouldn’t make a big deal of it, and he knew her friends probably wouldn’t get anything together for her either because he remembered what spring of senior year was like.

  “Hi, Mary,” he said to her mother, who had a particularly absent look on her face today. “Excited to have a daughter come of age?”

  Mary O’Hara frowned. “Well, I might be if she hadn’t decided to run away from home just as soon as she could.” Her eye fell on the giftwrapped book in Ed’s hands. “I guess I should thank you for always having a soft spot for her. With four older sisters I suppose she got little enough attention. But we tried, Ed—and look what she did. Just like my youngest sister Tess did twenty years ago—broke my father’s heart.”

  “Whoa,” Ed said, frowning. “Slow down, Mary. What do you mean Lauren ran away?”

  For a woman who seemed to be saying she had lost her daughter, Mary seemed calmer than Ed would have expected.

  “Oh, we got an email. I can’t say I didn’t expect something like this. Jim will be sad, of course, but he’ll smoke a cigar with his golfing pals and get over it. Fathers always indulge the youngest, I suppose, when they can be bothered to pay attention to their children at all.”

  Ed had to suppress the urge just to walk away. He thought back to the toxic environment of his own family, growing up, but it seemed like that didn’t hold a candle to the O’Hara house.

  “An email?”

  “Well, two emails, actually. The one from the man she ran away with is better than the one from Lauren, if you ask me, and that’s not just because he promised he would send money to pay for us to ship her things.”

  Ed generally had something to say on all occasions, but now he felt his jaw literally drop.

  “I hope you can return the gift,” Mary said, looking again at the brightly wrapped book in Ed’s hands. Her words dripped with scorn for the daughter who had run away, and suddenly Ed thought he might be beginning to understand. Mary must feel some strange kind of envy of Lauren.

  “Wait. A man? Not a boy?”

  Mary sighed, exasperated. “I suppose you want to send the present. She doesn’t deserve it, but that’s kind of you, Ed. I’ll forward you the emails. I’m sure we’ve got your address from the block party signup thing.”

  * * *

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I am really sorry to break it to you this way, but I have left home today. I need to try to figure out on my own what I want to do with my life, and, hey, now you will not have to help with college, right? I do not mean to be flip about it, but do not worry about me. I will write you once a month to let you know I am okay. You are going to get another mail, from a man named Mr. Killington. He runs a special program for young adults to help them get started without going to college right away. I will be exploring career options with him and discovering my aptitudes.

  I will mail again in a few weeks.

  Love,

  Lauren

  It took Ed two times reading through the mail to realize why it sounded so strange. Lauren hadn’t used any contractions. He felt his eyebrows knit together. It could just represent something an eccentric English teacher had drummed into her, or it could be something more. A code?

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. O’Hara,

  My name is John Killington, and I’m a counselor for New Career Partners, a program that seeks to help young adults like your daughter Lauren find rewarding careers in a variety of fields. I just want to reach out to you to make sure you know that Lauren is well and safe. We’ve placed her with two other girls in a secure living situation in New York City.

  My program operates with a good deal of privacy, in order to ensure that we can place candidates in organizations such as foundations and private investment groups, who prefer that their employees be hand-picked the way we hand-picked Lauren based on her application. She didn’t tell you about that application, I know, because that’s a condition of acceptance to New Career Partners.

  We aim to make sure our candidates can be certain their families are taken care of, and to that end, if you need anything in relation to Lauren’s departure from your household, I would be happy to make funds available. To begin with, when you send Lauren’s personal items in care of my office, please let me know how much it cost you, and I will cut you a check immediately for that and any other expenses you incur in the process.

  It’s important to our program that Lauren get a sense of what life as an independent adult, making her own choices and accepting the consequences, is really like. To that end we request that you not seek to see her for six months, though please do email her—especially if you find, as I believe you should, that you can support her decision to take this bold step toward a bright future.

  With my best wishes,

  John Killington

  New Career Partners

  725 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1200

  New York, NY

  New Career Partners had no net presence, but the mail gave what Ed thought could be a plausible reason for that. He had no idea what foundations and private investment groups even did, though he knew they existed—some of his wealthiest clients worked at them.

  The next day he asked one of them, at his five a.m. training session before the hedge fund managers rode the train into Grand Central, whether he’d ever heard of New Career Partners.

&n
bsp; “Maybe?” Tom Georgiou said noncommittally.

  Ed explained briefly the reason for asking. Tom frowned.

  “That’s a little odd,” he said. “Usually the minimum qualification for working as anything more than an administrative assistant at a foundation is a college degree, but… you know, there could be special training involved. The education sector is changing very quickly these days. Do you want me to ask around?”

  “Sure,” Ed said, feeling reassured. “Thanks, Tom.”

  As he thought about it that morning, though, he wondered more and more about Lauren’s decision, and about the mail with no contractions in it. He had a trip into the city to make, to look at some new equipment for the gym, and he decided to clear his schedule to go that afternoon and see what he could find at New Career Partners, bringing the book for Lauren. At least he could let her know that he had thought of her on her birthday, maybe.

  * * *

  He didn’t get past the lobby. The security guard called up to the New Career Partners office, and after a moment’s conversation told Ed he could leave the present there at the desk.

  “They say they’ll make sure it gets to her,” he said unhelpfully.

  “No, thanks,” Ed said. “I’ll hang onto it and see if I can find a way to give it to her in person.”

  He sat in the lobby next to a potted plant with very large green leaves, and took out his phone. He typed out an email.

  Hi Lauren; it’s Ed from across the street. Your parents told me you’d left home to join a career program. I’m in the city for a work appointment and I thought I’d swing by to see if I could drop off the little present I got you for your eighteenth. They said I could leave it for you with your program’s office, but I’m hoping I can give it to you in person some time. I’ll be around for a couple hours, so if you get this, mail me back and maybe we can set something up. No big deal—just want to wish you good luck.