by Linnea May
But it all faded instantly when he called out my name, and I saw him reaching out his hand in a failed attempt to save me from falling.
"Ruby!"
Nothing else mattered in that moment. Suddenly there’s no fear, my face fixated on his, seeing my name on his lips, but yet I doubted myself at the same time.
Did he really say it? Did he really call out my name? What does it mean?
A split second later, my mind is drawn back to reality, to me falling down the stairs. I helplessly flail about as I try to catch myself, stop the forward momentum of the fall, and swallow the sharp pain from my back hitting the wall, but I realize it won't be as bad as I feared.
I'm lucky. The fact that I'm bouncing against the wall and trying to hold onto something that isn't there, cushions my fall enough to allow me to take control, at least to some degree. I'm successful at managing to redirect my fall, no longer tumbling backwards but dropping forward, though I’m sure I’ve sprained my ankle in the process.
I land at the bottom of the stairs. My ankle is on fire, and the sensations coming from my thighs and calves confirm that my lower body will be a colorful rainbow of purples, black, and blue tomorrow. There's a moment of complete silence, during which I sit on the floor, staring ahead in disbelief as I try to fathom what just happened.
His heavy steps hurriedly thudding down the stairs behind me reinforces his concern. Our eyes meet as soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs.
"Are you okay?!" He’s breathing heavily and his eyes are huge and panicked when he drops immediately to his knees beside me. "Did you break anything? Is anything hurting? What's hurting? Talk to me. Don’t move."
I'm trembling. My eyes slowly shift from my hands up to his dazed face, then back to my hands, and next to my legs. I'm sitting in a very awkward position to say the least, my legs sprawled out at an angle suggesting that I might've broken or twisted something. I'm pretty sure my ankle is the worst thing affected.
I try to gather myself, pulling my legs closer to my body. My face contorts in pain when my foot drapes over the last step.
"What?!" he rushes. "What is it, toy?"
There it is. Toy. Now that he's no longer in a state of shock, I'm no longer Ruby.
"My ankle," I whimper. "I think I might have sprained it."
His eyes dart over to my foot, quickly scanning it as if to make sure it's not twisted in an absurd way, and then he gathers me up from the floor, gently picking me up as if I was a child.
And this time, I'm not fighting him. I wrap my arms around his neck, and from how I’m positioned against his strong chest, I can feel his heart beating so fast that it almost scares me.
Much to my sorrow, he doesn't carry me back upstairs, but follows through with his original intention. He effortlessly opens the door to the dungeon, making sure that I don't bump against the wall or the door as he takes me into the room, my cell.
He carries me over to the mattress, lying me down as carefully as possible, but I still groan in pain when my back meets the mattress.
His eyes widen. "What? Does something else hurt?"
I shift a little, changing my position to reduce the pressure on my lower back. It seems I've bruised that area, as well.
"My back," I say. "I must've hurt it when I bumped against the door."
Our eyes meet, and the way he looks at me almost makes me cry. He's so strong, so big, so secure, my master, the man who controls my every move, and now he looks as if he's completely lost. As if he's the one that was just broken, and not me.
"How strong is the pain?" he asks. "Can you breathe? Does it hurt to breathe?"
I shake my head.
"And your foot, how bad is that?" he probes. "And anywhere else? Do you have something else that hurts?"
"Pretty sure it's just a few bruises and possibly a sprained ankle," I say, narrowing my eyes as I look at him. "You won't have to call a doctor and explain to anyone how you threw your captive down the stairs when she tried to fight being restrained, don't worry."
It just occurred to me that this might be his biggest worry. That he might fear calling a doctor or taking me to a hospital because I'm seriously injured. I wonder if he'd even consider doing that. After all, it would bring this whole game to a quick end - and he'd wind up in prison.
His expression changes, and before I know it, he's back to the version of himself that I'm most familiar with.
"You could've gotten seriously hurt!" he yells.
I flinch at the tone and volume of his voice, but I’m quick to recover and shoot him a comeback.
"You're saying that as if it was my fault!"
"It was your fault!"
"What?!" I cry out. "How is it my fault when I merely reacted instinctively to you dragging me back into a dungeon that I don’t want to be in?"
"I told you, you shouldn't fight me!"
I gasp with indignation, trying to sit up from my horizontal position so that I‘m eye-level with him. I'm soon paralyzed by a stinging jolt of pain that lands me back on the mattress.
He lets out a sigh, placing his hands on my shoulders to encourage me to remain where I am. As if I had a fucking choice.
"Well, at least now I'll be easy to handle for you. Immobile and unable to run, even if I had a chance."
I glare at him, meeting his face just in time to see his expression break.
He looks hurt, devastated.
It's another one of those moments when I wish I could take back what I said. He's cruel, a psychopath.
But he's not a monster.
"This is not what I wanted," he says in such a low voice that it almost breaks my heart. He doesn't have to elaborate for me to know that he's not simply talking about what just happened.
He's talking about all of this. About almost everything that has happened since he took me.
But the sorrowful expression disappears almost as quickly as it appeared.
"This doesn't give me anything," he hisses, gesturing toward my body. "I don't enjoy hurting you like this. I don't fucking enjoy seeing you like this."
I bite my lower lip.
"You didn't do it on purpose," I say. "It was an accident."
I reach up to his face, placing my hand on his cheek, and he lets me. He even leans into it for a second, but retreats quickly then as if I slapped him.
"You were right," I whisper. "I like this. I like what you're doing to me."
Our eyes meet, and he reaches up to my hand then, gently removing it from his face.
"But I don't like this basement," I say. "I don't want to be down here. I hate being locked up in here all by myself, every day, all day long."
My attempts to fight off the tears are futile. I assume that's one thing we have in common: the inability to allow ourselves to show weakness in front of the other.
I know I'm just churned up by the accident. I was in shock, and now that I'm recovering, I'm bereft of my defense mechanisms to keep the dark thoughts away. They come swarming at me all at once, filling me with despair and hopelessness.
"I don't like this fear," I mumble. "I don't like not knowing what will happen to me. I don't like the uncertainty of this. I don't like fearing you as much as I do. I want-"
"Hush," he interrupts me, placing his index finger on my lips, and only worsening my anxiety.
I close my eyes, trying to calm myself. The first wave of tears is rolling down my cheeks.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he whispers. "I'm not going to end you, toy."
"But what are you going to do?" I ask pitifully, opening my eyes so I can meet his gaze.
A dark smile plays around the corners of his mouth, frightening me even more.
"Just promise me you'll be a good girl from now on," he says. "Just be a good girl for me - and no harm will ever come your way."
Chapter 28
Ruby
Nineteen days. It frightens me that I know the number so well.
It makes me sad that my life is so empty that I’m for
ced to do little more than count the days as they pass by. At least my life is full enough that the days no longer seem as if they stretch on for eternity.
I've ascended, quite literally. He allowed me to leave the basement dungeon after falling down the stairs. He claimed it was only temporary until my wounds healed, but maybe it was his way of minimizing his guilty feelings, whether he admitted to feeling guilty or not. I was pretty fortunate to only end up with a few bruises on my leg, a deep bruise splattered across my lower back, and a twisted ankle, as it turned out that it wasn't sprained after all. It did swell up the following day, but it went down rather quickly once he started icing it. The ankle is fine now, and the bruises are barely visible at this point.
He took care of me much better than one would expect of a kidnapper. I never called him out on it, just as I never mentioned that he called me by my name. We both know he did it and that it means something, just as we both know subconsciously that his gentle, concerned caregiving means something.
It may be my way out, my ticket to freedom. If he accepts that whatever it is that we’re doing is growing into something bigger, then we might be able move on from this. I have no idea exactly what that something different could look like, though.
Could we ever be a normal couple? Probably not, considering how we met. But would I even want that?
Normal. I’ve never known normal, and it has never been me.
He has feelings for me, feelings that are stronger than they should be between a master and his slave. He doesn't have to say it for me to know.
He's not ready to admit it, nor is he ready to hear that I'm right there with him.
He's not ready to hear that I'm ready to forgive him.
This is where we're at. We’ve spent three weeks together, so close to each other that it would wreck most couples, even those that have known each other for years, and we‘ve only grown stronger.
He still locks me up every time he leaves the house. He only leaves occasionally, always returning with groceries and something nice for me, something to wear, something to pretty myself. I thanked him profusely when he gave me my make-up back. As silly as it may sound, I really missed having it.
“It’s a part of you,” he said when he gave it back to me. “A side of you that I haven’t seen in a while, so maybe it’s time to refresh my memory.”
He always does that. Every time he does something nice for me, he phrases it as if he’s doing it for himself.
I still don't know what he does for a living, but it sure doesn't seem to be an average nine-to-five, five-days a week job. He often works from home, too, which ends up being the perfect time to dole out any punishments I’m due. Once I was locked downstairs spread-eagle on the St. Andrew‘s Cross, with a vibrating plug stuck up my ass, agonizing over the agitative pulsations that never quite took me over the edge. He watched me for a while, but then he left the room and only returned when he was done working.
He's out again right now. I don’t know where he went, but I heard him drive off a while ago. When I saw him for a few minutes this morning, he seemed stressed, absent, so much so that he forget to cuff my ankles together when he brought me upstairs for breakfast. I didn't point it out to him, just like I don't mention a lot of things these days. It's as if I've put myself on hold, waiting for something to happen, for something that will break us free from this routine.
But I don't know what that is.
The only possibility that comes to mind is if there’s a search underway to find me. I haven't had access to the news for almost three weeks now, so I don't know if I’ve been reported missing. My client must have reported that I was missing to the agency by now, right? The agency must have tried to contact me, and when I didn’t respond or show up, they must have started looking for me, right?
They must be looking for me.
A wave of cold terror tingles down my spine every time I consider the possibility that my family might have been contacted about my disappearance. My sister is the only one who knows that I've been working this job since college, and she's always been kind enough not to mention it in front of my parents. I still don't want them to know. Not because I'm ashamed, but because I know it would only make our relationship worse than it is already. We don't need that. It's okay the way it is. They live their lives, I live mine. Sometimes, I decide to visit them for Christmas, sometimes I don't, and everybody is fine with that.
They have never asked me about what I'm doing with my life. As long as I'm alive and able to pay my own bills, they're fine. Knowing that I willingly sell my body, despite insisting on getting a college education even after they ridiculed the idea all my life, would only infuriate them beyond belief. Maybe it would even make them laugh. Maybe it would only give them more reasons to spite me and make fun of me.
I don't want them to know.
But if there's an ongoing search for me, which there must be by now, then it's safe to assume that they know all about my life by now. I can't shake the feeling that this is another reason for me to accept the current situation that I’m in. As long as I'm here being held as his captive, I won't have to face the world outside. I don't have to face my family. I don't have to worry about anything other than pleasing him - and receiving pleasure in return.
And damn it, he's good at that. He has me wrapped around his finger, bending at his will with a smile on my face.
He has his own ways of showing his affection to me, ways that may be weird to others, but are heavy with meaning for those, like me, who have an understanding of this lifestyle. My heart almost burst out of my chest when he closed a collar around my neck a few days ago. It’s not a permanent collar, and I could take it off at any time if I wanted to, but I don’t and I don’t want to. It’s symbolic that I’m his possession, and I treasure it, feeling desired and scared at the same time.
There’s a leash attached to the collar, one that he uses to guide me, choke me, and sometimes just to pull me in closer for a kiss. He wants to see it on me every time he walks into the room, and he wants me to hold up the leash, presenting it to him using both hands as a gesture of handing over control to him.
I feel even closer to him now, but I still don’t know his name. In my head, I sometimes call him J, because I've been told that it was the first letter of my client's name. I know it's not his name, but it's the only thing I have - next to referring to him as my master. That's what he is to me, my master, but I don't feel this title really entails who he is and who we are together.
I've been standing at the window like a dog waiting for its owner to return. I have to stand on my tiptoes and stretch as far as possible to see outside the tiny windows. The frosted glass makes it impossible to see anything clearly. I can only perceive movement and shadows, but the driveway is close enough that I‘m able to hear every time he leaves and returns to the house. He always comes to see me right after he comes back, and I always greet him in the way I've been trained. The position he wants me to greet him in hasn't changed, and neither have many other things between us.
But I have changed, not only emotionally, but physically, too. The bleach blonde in my hair is starting to fade. It was a cheap treatment, and I should have known that it wouldn't last the entire thirty-nine days, the original amount of time I was to spend with the client who wanted a blonde. My dark red natural-colored roots are starting to show more every single day. As my hair claims back its natural state back, I feel more like myself every time I look in the mirror.
He has noticed it, too. There was a warm smile on his face the first time he pointed it out to me.
"I was looking forward to this," he said, curling a strand of hair around one of his fingers. "To see what you really look like."
I'm flattered that he likes my red hair because I've always considered it an essential part of me. I used to hate it, because it's one of those things that people constantly point out to you, and kids have a tendency to make fun of it. But the older I got, the more I started to like it. The fact t
hat he likes it, too, feels almost feels like an admission of love for who I really, truly am. But it’s an admission I know he's not ready to make officially.
My heart jumps when I hear his car rolling up on the driveway, and a broad smile appears on my face. I can hear the door closing. I can hear his steps coming toward the house, I can hear him unlocking the door, I can hear him enter, the door closing, and then his steps fading until he makes his way down to the basement.
I move away from the window once he's inside the house to get ready to present myself to him when he comes downstairs. The time between him closing the door and his steps sounding on the stairs that lead down to the basement varies, but it never takes too long.
Today, the wait is longer. I can't hear him moving around in the house, but after a while, something else draws my attention.
I can hear another car coming up the driveway.
Chapter 29
Loran
Meeting my brother is always infuriating. My hands are clenching around the wheel the entire drive home. I told him to leave me alone with this, and his response is to blackmail me? Is he fucking serious?
I'm beginning to feel like an idiot for helping him out all those years ago. I was the idiot who took the blame for his tax fraud by acting as his bookkeeper and the main IRS point-of-contact for the business when he failed to file and pay his personal income taxes. He was stealing money from the payroll tax account, big fucking amounts of money. There's no excuse for what he did, especially because it almost ruined our family's business. By redirecting all the blame to me, I saved his neck and received what was left of his generous trust fund, in addition to his blood promise about discretion in regards to my dark desires that have gotten me into trouble more than once.
Maybe it was mistake, even though it left me with more money than I had before and more than he has today. Our deal enabled me to have the financial means to build something of my own, a business that's unrelated to my family and closer to my interests. Marketing automation software is something I understand, something in which there’s a lucrative future. It wasn't easy to build, but it's my own, a successful business that's growing daily.
