by Amy Faye
The number in green kept going down. Five minutes had passed, and more than three dozen bids. A little more than thirty-thousand. Harper’s breath caught in her throat.
The computer rang out again, and the number changed. Harper’s head hurt a little. It was late, and she ought to be in bed, particularly after the late night last night. But she couldn’t sleep, not wondering what was going to happen. Not knowing that she was going to be sold tonight, and that the little number in the middle of the screen was what she was going to be making for it.
So it wasn’t immediately clear whether or not she was crazy, or confused, or what.
But the one thing she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, was that the ding didn’t come again for a long time, which gave her plenty of time to be sure of the number:
Two and a half million dollars.
And then the web site went white, and the words Bidding Has Ended appeared. In the corner, the time was still there, and it confirmed what she suspected: thirty minutes remained.
That was unusual, right?
Her heart pounded hard. She refreshed the page, and it was identical, except for one difference. The time in the corner had disappeared. Harper blinked. This was a mistake, right?
She pushed herself back from the computer. She poured a glass of milk and walked back to the computer. She refreshed the page again. There was a mistake and at some point she’d get an explanation. She was sure of it.
This time the page didn’t refresh at all. A raid? What was happening?
Then, as if in answer to her question, Harper’s phone rang.
Seven
Harper sat back in her chair, perfectly still. She almost felt as if she were asleep, but she wasn’t. Her eyes twitched open, and then slowly she let them shut again with a long, low sigh. She hadn’t really expected to stay around home, but somehow she hadn’t really expected to be on a cross-country flight on New Year’s Eve, either.
She let her head lay down to the right, and then opened them. In the late night darkness outside her window, clouds flew by, what seemed like miles underneath the plane. It was probably really only a few hundred yards.
The whole arrangement was as unusual as they come. There was generally no buy it now option. But apparently, when Thayer Stone says jump, even black market flesh merchants ask how high. It was all very strange.
It was even more strange dealing with a call from Mr. Stone’s very confused secretary, who was evidently arranging the whole thing without knowing precisely what was going on. Just that Miss Summers was to be brought over to California overnight to arrive the morning of the new year.
Harper should have slept. ‘Should have’ being the operative word: she hadn’t. And now, it was looking as if she wasn’t going to get much of a chance to. The lights in the cabin went up, and the captain’s voice spoke over the intercom.
“We’re about ten minutes out of San Jose, folks, so please, make your final preparations, and we’ll be buckling in in just a few minutes.”
Harper stayed in her seat, her mood and position unchanging. Something was coming, she knew that much. She wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but at this point, it couldn’t be any worse than it was last year. She was prepared for just about anything, at this point.
The fact that it was Thayer Stone who had bought her just confirmed the facts that she’d already figured. It had to be someone who had more than enough money for whatever he wanted, and yet, couldn’t afford to be found out doing it.
Stone was an enigma to the world, and he seemed to delight in it. The media, always ready to do their part, delights in it just the same. It felt as if there isn’t a day that went by that the phrase reclusive tech tycoon Thayer Stone didn’t appear somewhere in print or spoken on Television.
The real joke of it all? To the best of anyone’s knowledge, he’s never appeared. He’s a myth. A ghost. A legend. People claim to have met him, but no photos ever come from it. So anyone who wants can claim that they’ve met Thayer Stone, and say that he looks like whatever they want.
The most reasonable people claim that he’s ordinary-looking for a man of perhaps thirty-five. But that’s not interesting enough, so you occasionally get tabloid photos claiming to be him that have him in a wheelchair, missing both legs, or claim that he’s a dwarf, or whatever exciting story you can tell.
Some of them, the wildest of all, claimed that he’s Bat Boy from back in the 90s, and he grew up to be a tech giant and now he uses his billions to scrub the internet and tabloids of all Bat Boy references. Everyone knows, of course, that one isn’t true. But it could be, because nobody could prove any different.
Harper was going to be in an interesting position, soon. She was going to be one of the few people who could say it and have it be true. He was reclusive, of course; anyone could say that they’d met him. Some of them wouldn’t be lying. But nobody would ever know who those people were.
The pilot made another announcement when they were about to start their descent. The ‘fasten seatbelts’ signs lit up, and then a moment later, they were descending. Harper’s stomach did a flip, the same as it always did on airplanes. Descending felt like crashing.
She knew that it was intentional, that it was controlled, and that it happened a thousand times a day. She knew that plane crashes were exceedingly rare, and that even then, they only happened when something went catastrophically wrong. Today was the day when a catastrophe would happen, though. She knew it with the sort of certainty that someone knows that the sun is going to rise in a few hours.
After all, she’d already had no less than three catastrophes in the past two years, and one of them was the absolute confusion that had arisen the night of her purchase. So there’s no way that she’s going to get off scot-free like everyone else. She’s going to be at the center of another catastrophe, so that right next to the column about reclusive billionaire Thayer Stone there could be one about tragic heiress Harper Summers died today in a freak accident.
There was the headline. Perfect. It was beautiful in its own way. And of course, nobody would ever realize that the two were connected. Just a pair of page-five stories that had nothing to do with each other except their placement on the page and the fact that in secret, one had bought the other, and inadvertently cause the other’s death.
Then the wheels hit the tarmac with a soft jolt, and the plane slowed down hard and turned at the last moment, and then taxied into the spot without any problem at all. Harper’s hopes fell, and she got her bags from the overhead compartment and slowly made her way out.
A woman was waiting for her, with a sign that said in big letters Summers. It wasn’t that unusual, all told. Harper greeted her. There was no need to wait for any baggage. She hadn’t bothered to bring anything but an emergency change of clothes. The rest would be provided. That was part of the arrangement.
“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Karen Akita. We spoke on the phone.”
“Yes,” Harper agreed. She didn’t look Japanese, but the name sounded so ethnic that she couldn’t believe she wasn’t. Maybe it was her married name.
“If you’ll follow me, we’ve got a car waiting. Mr. Stone regrets that he couldn’t be here in person, but…”
“It’s fine,” Harper said.
“You understand, he’s a man who values his privacy.”
“Of course.”
Karen turned and started off. She looked stiff and formal, and she walked the same way. Her body didn’t sway as she stepped, even though it should have. It looked nearly robotic. She turned after a couple of steps and turned. Harper followed after, and Karen kept walking.
True to her word, a car waited outside. The engine was running, and Harper could see a man sitting in the front, wearing a black suit. The instant that he saw them he sat straight and faced forward, his hands on the wheel. Karen opened the door and gestured Harper inside. She obliged, and then the secretary stepped in after.
“How was your flight?”
“Fin
e,” Harper said, letting out a long breath. She was tired. “Late night. I’m a little tired.”
“Then you should get some sleep on the way,” Karen said simply. Harper wondered a little bit about the way that she said it, but she was already in it. There wasn’t going to be any backing out now. So she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, and before she knew it, she’d managed to do just that.
Eight
Harper woke up when she was shaken awake. The car had stopped. The engine noise had been soft inside the cabin, almost impossible to hear at all. Like a soft white noise machine, far away. But now it wasn’t sounding at all, no matter how hard she listened. Outside the black-tinted windows was a garage. On one side was a heavy wooden cabinet, the doors pulled open and left that way.
Inside the cabinet was a large collection of old tools. At least, she knew that they were old because they were the same shapes as old tools. The brass and steel glistened even in the dim overhead light of the garage, and beside it stood a workbench, the wooden top thick and covered in wood shavings.
Harper rubbed her eyes. The other side, her side, was a large shelf, the usual sort of thing you’d expect in any garage. Gardening equipment, DIY tools, and the like. The door beside Hailey was open, and Karen was leaning in to shake her, as if she’d been out of the car for a little while already and just came back in to get her.
“Are we there?”
Karen Akita nodded. “Your presence is requested.”
“Are you going to be here?”
“Not once I’ve finished getting you situated.”
Harper scooted herself out of the seat. Her body felt stiff from sleeping sitting up, and her head ached from tiredness that still hadn’t been entirely washed away by her nap. She yawned and stretched and looked around again.
It wasn’t an exceptional garage, all told. The floor was oil-stained and there were projects of all descriptions hanging on the walls in various states of completeness.
“This way, please,” Karen said firmly from the door. It was meant to say stop gawking, rather than clear up confusion, but she was a professional.
Harper turned and ignored the room. There would be time, eventually, to look around. That was, of course, if she were going to be expected to enter the room at all. If she weren’t, then there would be no reason to familiarize herself with the contents.
It took a great deal of effort to remind herself that there was no reason to look at anything as they walked. Through the garage door, and out into the living room. Straight through the living room, past a large-screen television, through the door on the opposite side of the room, which led to a hallway. Through the hallway, passing doors that led to dining room and to kitchen and a lavatory, and several other doors that remained closed and silent.
Harper followed without questioning any of it because she had to. That was her role here, whether she liked it or not. They eventually turned and entered a front room, and off to the side of it, a spiral staircase that led up. Karen went up the steps and Harper followed. She had plenty of time to look over at a semicircle of couches that all faced each other.
As with the rest of the house, the upstairs was still and silent except for the two of them. Wherever Thayer was, he was staying out of sight and made no particular noise. It occurred to Harper dimly that there was a possibility that the reason that reclusive billionaire Thayer Stone was so reclusive was that he didn’t exist at all. Perhaps she’d been bought up by Karen herself.
Karen guided her through a closed door, with a very noticeable lock that hadn’t been shut on the outside, and into a room.
There was a great deal inside; a small television and a large four-post bed. A walk-in closet on the far side of the room, and a standing wardrobe as well. Karen gestured to the bed as she stepped inside. Harper noticed that on the bed was a set of clothes.
“You’ll want to get changed. Mr. Stone will be dealing with you personally from here on, as soon as he arrives. You’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.”
Karen didn’t make any response except to start towards the door, as if that was the extent of her job and she didn’t care to involve herself any further. That was fine. Harper had no particular reason to hope that the woman was going to take an interest in her at all.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Harper heard the rasp of a lock clicking, and knew without having to be told that she was being locked inside. She let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Nothing to freak out about, at least not yet. But first she had better do as she was told.
She was a slave now, and getting changed into a new set of clothes was nothing out of the ordinary for that. For another year, she was going to be Stone’s plaything, and she was going to have to accept that.
She stripped quickly, tossing her clothes into a pile on the floor, all the time looking over the clothing laid out for her. It was nothing unusual, which was the latest in a long series of surprises that this entire thing had brought down on her.
There was some assumption that Harper was going to have to do something really weird. Maybe she was supposed to walk around naked all the time, or wear some fetish-y gimp outfit, or something.
Instead it was just a pair of jean shorts, admittedly fairly short, a tee shirt, and a jacket. The heiress wondered briefly if she was supposed to keep her underwear on; there was none provided for her. She decided to err on the side of caution, and took that off, as well, dropping it in the pile with the rest of her clothes.
The shorts fit tight. Not impossibly tight, but it took a little bit of negotiating to get the waist up over her ass, and when it buttoned, the fit was only slightly looser than a second skin. She moved in them. Aside from the mild discomfort of the denim on her most sensitive areas, it wasn’t all that bad.
The shirt, on the other hand, was a noticeably tight fit around the bust. She would find out, by the clothes he supplied her over the coming year, whether that was intentional or not. The jacket might have been optional; it was warm outside, compared to what she was used to.
It was better to assume that nothing was optional, though. At least for now, until she was able to get to meet Mr. Stone, and find out who he was as a person. Assuming that he existed, and this wasn’t some sort of confusing attempt at an episode of Punk’d.
She slipped the jacket on and then folded her remaining clothes quickly, set them aside on the bedside table, and sat on the bed to wait for something to happen.
She didn’t have to wait long. There was the sound of footsteps on the floor outside her door, heavier than Karen’s. The lock rasped again, and the knob turned. The man on the other side didn’t knock before he opened the door.
“Miss Summers,” he said. He smiled at her. His clothes weren’t what she’d expect from one of the richest men on the planet, but then, they never are.
He had a hard smile, and from what she could tell, a good body, and more than that, he was familiar. She’d slept with him less than a week ago.
“You’re Thayer Stone?”
He smiled again. “Yes, but that’s not what you’re going to be calling me,” he said, his voice low. “I want you to call me Daddy.”
Nine
“I want you to call me Daddy.”
Harper blinked as she heard the words. “Yes sir. Uh. Daddy.”
He took a deep breath. “It’s a start. Now, Harper. Let’s talk ground rules. Get on your knees.”
Harper did what she was told. The carpeted floor was comfortable. The clothes didn’t hold her back, in spite of the tightness.
“You’ve already figured out the first one, and that’s good. Open your mouth.”
She did as he was told. One hand worked on his belt, the other tracing a thumb across her cheek. Harper waited obediently.
“You do what you’re told, when you’re told to do it. If you cannot do what you’re told, then tell me what is preventing you from doing so.”
“Yes sir, Daddy,” Harper said, making her voice obedient. This was her
first time as a slave, sure. But it wasn’t her first time with a little kinky sex. She could handle that, at least.
She didn’t see the slap coming in response. Her face lit up in pain, his hand coming across her face just hard enough to hurt. But she didn’t see it coming, and turned into it, and it hurt that much more, sending her to the floor.
“Second rule: Don’t interrupt me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said. But it wasn’t clear.
“Third rule is that the rules are up in the air.” He paused a moment as Harper got back up from the ground. “Do you have a question?”
“What if I have a problem?”
Thayer undid the button on his pants and took a deep breath, and then got a real thoughtful look on his face. “You’re right. Speak freely, but respectfully.”
Harper smiled in spite of herself. “Yes, Daddy.”
“Now, little lady. Use those cocksucking skills of yours for me, will you?”
She opened her mouth again. His cock wasn’t to full hardness yet, but as it entered her mouth, entered her throat, Harper was already overwhelmed. It was too big for her. She knew it deep down, but she’d signed up for this, and she’d already done it once before.
His cock forced its way into her throat, and she wasn’t sure what the noise that came out of her mouth was except that it was something between a scream and a moan and she wasn’t sure which it was supposed to be.
His hands dug into her hair and pulled her on harder, his cock hardening in her throat, and then he pulled her off.
“Are you ready?”
Harper’s breath caught in her throat, but she managed to choke out an answer. “Yes, Daddy.”
Her body tingled, partly with the oxygen deprivation and partly from illicit pleasure at what she was doing. From the knowledge that she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this, but her body reacted on its own.
