Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  “She’s so spoiled. The usual punishment for slaves who try to escape is total isolation and starvation.”

  “And a few hours alone with Demetrius for reconditioning,” said Faith, with a glint in her eye that made Chloe’s stomach turn. The twins’ words nauseated her.

  “He has a special punishment designed for you, little girl,” said Charity. She and Faith stood beside her, facing Rodney and Three.

  “Don’t move,” Faith warned, “or we’ll make it worse for her.”

  Chloe frowned. For her?

  “Look at Three,” said Charity. “Demetrius told us about your little rescue attempt in the backyard.”

  “You’re a little hero,” said Faith. She drummed her fingers along Chloe’s scalp. Chloe flinched, too afraid to jerk back. “Demetrius said that this would be the most effective punishment for you.”

  Charity shook her head, “I still say a beating would do her better.”

  “The boss is allowed to have a soft spot for a slave every once in a while,” said Faith.

  “Demetrius doesn’t have soft spots.” Rodney’s voice brought Chloe’s attention back to Three. She stood beside the bath, her hands behind her back, head lowered. Her chest shivered with staggered breath. She was frightened, and Chloe didn’t understand.

  Charity motioned to Rodney, “Go ahead.”

  Rodney tossed his shoulders, grabbed Three by the hair, and thrust her head into the bath water.

  Chloe gasped. She jolted into motion, struggling to stand. Faith and Charity held her down by the shoulders.

  “Don’t move, slave,” Faith snapped. “Every move you make, we’ll add a minute to her punishment.”

  Rodney lifted Three’s head from the water. The girl gasped, retching, but she barely took a breath before Rodney plunged her back into the bath. Chloe felt as if her heart would explode. Three’s arms twitched but her hands remained clasped behind her back. Rodney held her under until Chloe was certain she would drown. He lifted her up again, drowned her again, lifted her up, until her frail cries faded, and only Chloe’s remained. Tears coursed down her face, and she screamed, screamed because she could do nothing, because this was her fault.

  “Look at her!” Charity sneered over the sound of gasping and splashing water. “Look what you did to her.”

  Chloe felt the twins’ hands on her, impossibly smooth and soft, stroking her shoulders, her neck, as they watched Three struggle. Chloe fought the urge to recoil, yet her skin awoke under their touch after so much time without contact. Why did they caress her? She couldn’t bear it.

  Three’s torture stretched for an eternity, almost hypnotic in how methodical it was; submerge, struggle, lift for a single breath, submerge, struggle…Chloe witnessed every agonizing minute. Only when Three’s knees buckled did Rodney stop. He scooped her limp form into his arms as if she were a sleeping child and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  “Good girl!” he said over her ragged breath.

  Chloe felt as if she had been drowned herself. Her limbs were heavy, as if filled with sand, her chest heaving with sobs. She couldn’t stop staring at Three’s fluttering eyelids, her pink face. Charity was right. This was her fault. She despised Demetrius for punishing someone else for her escape. If he had only punished Chloe herself…but that was the point, wasn’t it? He had known what she could take and what would break her from the moment they met eyes, it seemed. How could she fight someone who knew her weaknesses before she did?

  “Why?” Chloe whispered. “Why?”

  Charity shushed her gently, stroking her hair, “Because your Master desires it, little girl.”

  Her words broke something in Chloe, something deep inside that she had been clinging to. Now she was adrift, and there was nothing to anchor her to the world outside of this room, this house. She stared at Three again, cradled in Rodney’s arms as he stroked her with the hands that had held her underwater only moments ago. Chloe’s mind was quiet when the twins urged her to her feet and eased her into the bath. They washed her with swift gliding hands, exploring every inch of her body. She flinched when they pinched her nipples, and her tears returned when Faith’s fingers found their way to her sex, spreading it wide, penetrating, searching, but it was as if she were not really there. She felt outside of herself, watching Faith and Charity assault her body like she had watched Three’s punishment; horrified, but not there.

  Faith and Charity toweled her off and led her back into the bedroom. She knelt by the cage as instructed. She didn’t understand the numbness that had taken over her body, but she found it strangely comforting. At the very least, it was a reprieve from the fear and pain.

  Three and Rodney filed in behind the twins. Three set down a bucket of hot, soapy water and a sponge. The sight of her hurt Chloe, but it was a shadow of the pain she had felt in the bathroom.

  “Like I said,” Charity began, “Demetrius is very disappointed in you. He’s spoiled you so far, but he’s very fickle. Soon he might not think you’re worth the effort.”

  A sharper sting in Chloe’s chest. Shame crept along the edge of blissful numbness.

  “If he loses interest,” said Faith, “We’ll have to get rid of you.”

  Chloe’s stomach lurched through the haze. Faith knelt in front of her, stroking her hair with a gentleness Chloe didn’t trust. Her black eyes were so empty, so blank.

  “If you don’t want to be a pile of ashes in the back woods,” she said, “clean your cage, lock yourself in, and hope he comes for you.”

  Faith rose and the group filed out, the twins’ heels clicking. The door closed with a beep.

  Chloe sat on her knees, alone. She was unchained save for the handcuffs, yet somehow she felt more trapped than she had in the cage. She stared at the wall where the cameras had to be. Demetrius had been infuriated in the storm, but...she felt the ghost of his lips against hers, his tongue penetrating her mouth. Was he truly ready to give up on her, to kill her as Faith had insinuated? Her words had cut through Chloe’s numbness. Maybe it had just been a threat. But was that how she wanted to die? The thought of being broken and brutalized like Three and the bound slave in the yard was unbearable. But she would be alive. Her father’s face floated in her mind’s eye. As long as she was alive, she had hope. Another opportunity for escape would have to come eventually. She would have to be ready for it. And next time she could not hurt anyone. Seeing Three punished for her escape…that couldn’t happen again.

  Chloe took the sponge on the floor beside her and soaked it in soapy water. Hunger swelled in her stomach. To be ready for escape, she had to eat. She had to make Demetrius trust her, as he trusted Three, to give her the freedom to open doors and go about unsupervised. Outwardly, she had to comply. She opened the cage and began to hum La Vie en Rose, the lullaby her mother had sung to her until the day she died. It would be her anchor to sanity, her reminder that she had a life outside of this place.

  Chloe scrubbed the cage floor clean, locked herself in the cage, and waited.

  Chapter 10

  October 13, 2011

  Demetrius trudged up the stairs, balancing a water bottle and a bowl of fruit in each hand. His legs were stiff from hours on his feet at the Oryx, a successful night as always this time of year, but he had been off his game, unable to keep his mind off what awaited him in the suite.

  He hesitated at the top of the staircase, his finger hovering over the keypad on the suite door. His heart was pounding. Why? How many years had he been doing this? How many women had he broken? His method was canon at this point. He could train a slave in his sleep. Demetrius mulled this over. Perhaps that was exactly what he had been doing for the past few seasons; sleepwalking through the all-too-predictable patterns: resistance, struggle, breaking, training, success. He fingered the gunmetal studs on his mask. Was he ready to wake up? What would that mean for him, to care again? Was it even a possibility, or was he beyond his old passion, as he hoped?

  She was on the other side of this door, and he stood du
mbstruck like some anxious novice. He steeled himself and punched in the new code: 6463. It was the first time he had had to change the code mid-year.

  The door opened, and there she was. Chloe Madeleine Leroux, the trembling girl for whom he had taken the biggest risk of his career. The girl he had kissed, bare-faced and exposed in the backyard. The beeping lock must have woken her; she was groggy, her eyes a little puffy, but wide. She was in the cage, though the door had not been locked. He knew the twins had left her to clean the cage. It looked spotless, and the bucket was a few feet away. Demetrius glanced at the room. She had slept in the cage despite having access to the bed. Nothing had been moved or destroyed in an attempt to escape again. It looked like his punishment for her had worked, and she had moved on to the next stage of her captivity. Many slaves broke immediately under starvation and isolation alone, but most--including Chloe, he suspected--moved to a state of false compliance, where they “played the game” physically, but still entertained plans for escape or resistance.

  “Slave,” said Demetrius, “on your knees before me.”

  Hesitation and fear in those wide doe eyes, but also a hunger, and it wasn’t for the fruit she hadn’t yet noticed. She drank in his image as if the sight of him could quench the thirst she suffered. He still wore his clothes from the Oryx, tight black pants tucked into studded boots and a form-fitting snap vest, all coated in talcum powder for his popular dusty look. She looked as awestruck as she had the night he had first seen her before she remembered herself and crawled out of the cage. He smiled. He would have to teach her not to look at him without permission eventually, but his skin warmed under her candid stare.

  She sat on her knees a safe distance away from him, still relatively close to the cage, as if she felt it was a place of safety. She hugged her arms to her chest and her knees were locked together. She peeked at him through the fall of her short hair. Oh, yes, she was still frightened. His breath quickened.

  “Bring your hands to the base of your neck,” he said. She hesitated again.

  “Do it,” he ordered, “or I’ll cuff them behind your back.”

  She crumbled under the authority in his voice, raising her arms into the proper position. She would break easily, yet her predictability didn’t bore him. Yet.

  “Spread your knees wide. Wider.”

  He drank her in, finally able to study her nude body without distraction. Her pale skin flushed in shame from being exposed. She was trembling, her rose-pink nipples hard, legs tense. The briefest glimpse of her sex stopped his breath, just a hint of delicate pink folds between her spread knees.

  “Good girl,” his voice was softer than he wanted it to be.

  He came toward her and she tensed immediately, her back ramrod straight. He smiled to himself and walked past her, setting the bowl of fruit on top of the cage. He took his time, savouring the tension in her limbs. He pulled a small flogger out of his pocket, a nasty little device with a braided leather handle and a handful of thin rubber tubing around twelve inches long. It was designed for maximum sting, the perfect jolt with which to begin training. He did a slow circle around Chloe, resisting the urge to run his fingers through her hair. She was tense as a piano string with her toes curled beneath her feet as if she was prepared to spring up at any moment. He had to touch her, he couldn’t help it. He ran his finger along the back of her shoulders, and she flinched, but gooseflesh sprung up along her skin. Touching her shocked his senses like a bolt of electricity. Oh, he wanted to rip her from her knees and fold that sweet flesh against his, to crush her against him and bury his face in her short hair. But why? What was it about her that did this to him? He thought back to her escape in the storm, how quickly his rage had become pure lust at the sight of her soaked with rain, the flash of defiance as she cursed him. He had taken off his mask, barely able to control himself enough to distract her from seeing his face before that kiss. Oh, that kiss…

  “I can’t…” Chloe’s frail whisper brought him back to himself. “I’m so scared.”

  An infantile plea. She was terrified. Demetrius stepped away from her, back to the cage, and took a mental breath.

  “You will not speak again without permission,” he said. “Your little moment on the run has made me wonder if you’re worth the trouble, ma chère. I don’t recommend you disappoint me again.”

  His words had her openly trembling. He forced himself to look at her with a cold eye. She was thinner than she had been when she had first come, a shade paler. Her fear was obvious and yet she remained in position, ready to comply, or at least pretend to. Despite the escape attempt, she was in right on schedule in the breaking process. She was starving, teetering on the edge of dehydration. She was ready.

  Demetrius took the flogger in one hand and the bottle of water in the other. He stood before her, letting the silence stretch a moment further. She looked at the floor, quivering softly. The silence bothered her.

  “Look at me,” he ordered.

  She hesitated before complying, pausing at the strip of his torso curtained by the open vest. Those wide hazel eyes met his, her body radiating fear and awe and, savour the thought, desire. Desire, that was it. The majority of slaves he broke over the years were street-hardened women, who had deadened their desire for others out of necessity. He normally had to condition their arousal, eroticize the need to please and obey. But Chloe wore her desire like a neon sign, bright and burning even through her terror. Desire for him.

  “Answer my questions correctly, obey me, and this is your reward,” he said, holding up the water bottle. Chloe caught sight of it and a different sort of desire filled her face.

  Demetrius flicked the flogger, just enough to show off the rubber strands, “If you answer incorrectly or you lash out, I will punish you. Do you understand?”

  Her pink lips trembled. Her face had paled. Oh, she was so frightened. She could not keep her eyes off that little flogger. But the water, too, held her attention.

  “Slave,” he brought her attention back to him. “Do you understand?”

  Chloe looked at him. Her mental struggle between fear and thirst was naked on her face. She hid absolutely nothing. She finally spoke, her voice so frail, so uncertain.

  “I do...yes,” she whispered.

  Demetrius grinned, the desperation in her voice inflaming him.

  “Lesson one, ma chère,” he said, coming to stand just in front of her. “I am your Master. When I talk to you, you will respond with Yes, Master or No, Master. Comprenez-vous?”

  A film of tears made her eyes glisten.

  “Yes, Master.”

  His heart gave an unexpected jolt.

  “Say it again,” he said, his voice laced with something dangerously close to supplication.

  Chloe’s gaze dropped to the floor. Her chest quivered with a shaky breath.

  “Yes, Master,” she murmured.

  Demetrius closed his eyes, tilting his head back. Those sweet words washed over him like a burst of sunlight.

  “Oh, that,” he purred. “That is perfect.”

  He had to get ahold of himself. He felt like the undisciplined hedonist he had been a decade ago on the streets of New Orleans. He tilted her chin up with the edge of the flogger, just a shade roughly.

  “Good girl,” he said. He nudged the bottle between her lips and gave her a small sip. She slurped without modesty, nearly lurching forward to retrieve the water when he pulled away. He tried not to focus on the desperate little sigh that escaped her slick mouth.

  “Now,” he said. “Who are you?”

  Chloe frowned. She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t supposed to.

  “Answer, slave,” he ordered. Oh, that got her trembling. She was already so receptive to the change in his voice. A slave so accommodating to a Master’s moods so soon in training was a rare find indeed.

  “Who are you?” he repeated.

  “I...” her voice was barely a whisper. “I’m...Chloe Leroux.”

  So predictable, even a nov
elty like Chloe.

  “Incorrect.”

  He struck her left breast with the flogger, a solid hit, but not full strength. Chloe shrieked, breaking form immediately and curling into herself. Her breast bloomed pink. Each rubber cord left a bright red streak on her white, white skin. Demetrius was hard so quickly it hurt. He clenched his jaw against the rush of heat.

  “Stay in position, slave,” his voice was rougher than he wanted it to be. He assessed her response. She obeyed his command. Tears, trembling, one nervous glance toward the door. Had she the strength, she would run before she would fight. That was good to know. Her chest heaved, jolting those ripe round breasts. Demetrius sucked in a breath through gritted teeth, uncomfortably firm against his zipper. Oh, her skin was a dream. He would have to be careful; she would bleed with very little work. The thought of that skin breaking, of thin streams of blood cutting through all that paleness...

  “Chloe is gone, cherí. You’re in my world now. My twenty-first slave of the season. Now, who are you?”

  He could see the wheels turning behind those misty eyes. He had given her the answer outright the night he had brought her to the Manor; “After this night, you are Twenty-One, and you are my slave”; but she may not have remembered that moment during such a chaotic period. Still, he knew from the security cameras that she has spoken with Three and learned her name, and the slave on her knees before him was a clever one.

  “I’m…” she finally murmured, “I’m Twenty-One?”

  The slightest lift at the end, questioning. He lingered for a hair too long, relishing in her tension as she waited for reward or punishment.

  “Good girl,” he said, bringing the water to her lips. He let her drink deeply this time. He was spoiling her already, all because he couldn’t stop watching her delicate little throat undulate with every swallow. He pulled the bottle away abruptly and rose back to his full height. There was so little distance between them. She was close enough to grab the back of her head and force her to take him into her mouth.