Twenty-One

by D. Victoria BonAnno

  “Do you have a death wish?” Rafe asked over the stuttering door man. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Bobby’s sweat had become streaming rivulets. He spoke as if his tongue were too big for his mouth.

  “They got me up on drug charges, man. If I don’t do this I’m back in prison!”

  Rafe frowned as Bobby backed away from him, perhaps expecting some kind of blow.

  “Cops? What do the cops want with D?” he demanded.

  Bobby shook his head wildly. “I don’t know, man, something about a missing girl. They told me if I wore a wire and got him to talk about her…but he don’t talk to me much. So they told me to find out where he lives so they-”

  Rafe’s mind raced as Bobby talked. Missing girl. He remembered Mariane coming to speak to Demetrius about some girl a little while ago. Everyone in town had heard of a student gone missing, some bitch last seen around the Oryx. He remembered the tears in One’s eyes, the way she squeezed his hand.

  “Give me the wire,” Rafe ordered, cutting off Bobby’s rambling. “And get out.”

  Bobby ripped the watch out from beneath his hoodie sleeve, dropped it onto the desk, and scrambled out of the office. Rafe locked the door behind him and sat down at the desk, taking a moment to let everything sink in. Bobby’s cheap accessory lay on the desk, its face smeared with greasy fingerprints. A watch. Didn’t know why Rafe hadn’t thought that was weird before. Nobody wore watches nowadays, not with everyone carrying a cell phone. He couldn’t see a tiny camera eye or a microphone. He glanced at the door in case Bobby was lingering, but the door man had fled like a frightened rodent.

  “Hey,” Rafe muttered into the watch. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if Demetrius was involved with that girl, but if he was, you aren’t gonna get anything from Bobby. He’s a fucking moron.”

  He hesitated. What the fuck was he doing? Demetrius had an ominous reputation, and Rafe had been him around long enough to believe at least some of the rumors surrounding the DJ. But he had no proof to claim that Demetrius was some sort of kidnapper. No proof but the tears of a silent woman.

  In his memory, One squeezed his hand. Help me. Help me.

  Rafe swallowed.

  “Demetrius trusts me. He’ll talk to me. Give me a call.”

  Chapter 17

  November 5, 2011

  Demetrius fought to control himself. The crop lay discarded on the bed. He was supposed to introduce a little pain to Twenty-One in this session, but he had thought better of it. One look at her on her knees in front of the cage, waiting for him, and he knew that if he struck her today, he would not be able to stop. This week had proven to him that he was the danger here, not the quick-witted little slave in the suite. She had already mastered the basic slave poses and had even shown progress in some of the more advanced ones. She spoke perfectly. She barely hesitated when he gave a command. There was still quite a bit of psychological resistance, and her tendency to dissociate was still strong, but all in all, Twenty-One was fast becoming the ideal Model Slave he had proclaimed she would be to his partners. But for him…for him, every session was a battle for self-control, eerily similar to the days in New Orleans when every single encounter was a struggle, when he had to give the prostitutes he picked up extra cash for a hospital visit. He had far more command over himself than he had in those days, but the strength of his urges still concerned him. Even now, as he held her against the cement wall, he knew that his grip on her hair was too tight, that he was pressing against her too hard. Her muted whimpers stoked the flames. He struggled to keep them at bay.

  Still, the strangest moments in his encounters with Twenty-One were the tender impulses, the gentler urges he had never really had toward a slave before. He suspected it was because of the kiss he had stolen in the rain, but he wanted nothing more than to rip off the mask and kiss her again. Her punishment for her failing to ask permission to come had been so long because he very nearly had ripped off his mask in front of her. He wanted to hold her in his arms, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he had left Dia behind in New Orleans. This, more than anything else, gave him pause.

  Thoughts, whither have ye led me?

  But Demetrius slid himself inside of Twenty-One, and his reservations faded. She gasped, and he had to cover her mouth with his hand or he would go mad. She was wet but far too tight; not ready for him, but that was the point. He had given her no warm up. Not only did it reinforce that she was a vessel to be used for her Master’s pleasure, a lesson with which she struggled, but it also served the sole purpose of this brief training session.

  But only if he could control himself.

  He forced himself all the way inside of her, steeling himself against her muffled cries, and threw his head back. Oh, this was so difficult. He wanted to thrust into her over and over again, but he had to be brief. Unlike most slaves, Twenty-One became very aroused by simple penetration. He did not think it was the act itself—most women are not aroused by penetration alone—but rather the meaning she placed on the act. He felt something break within her every time he was inside of her, her defenses cracking like a door under a battering ram. He suspected that for Twenty-One, him taking her in this way was the truest demonstration of his domination of her, of owning her. It was a very traditional belief, an outdated one for most, but this little slave held fast to it like the good little Catholic she had probably been. Either way, it worked wonders for her. Despite herself, she enjoyed the domination, the ownership, the loss of control. She was a born slave.

  His second thrust was easier. She had already opened up to him. He had to move quickly or she would become too aroused and defeat the purpose of the exercise. He looked down at her quivering breasts he forbade himself to touch, at the sight of him sliding out of her. Fierce need threatened to overtake his senses. Oh, that was a mistake. He shouldn’t have looked. He tightened his grip on her hair and buried his face in her neck. The urge to lift his mask and take in the scent of her skin was so strong it hurt.

  Twenty-One’s elbows twitched; he had ordered her to keep her hands at the base of her neck. Maybe she was struggling with balance, or maybe she had just resisted the desire to put her arms around him. Demetrius banished the thought before he could imagine what it would feel like for her arms to encircle him. He thrust into her, hard and swift. She moaned into his hand, a sound that sounded pained as much as inflamed. Demetrius steeled himself. It was now or he would fail this session completely and lose himself, fuck her into the wall with abandon.

  “Come for me,” he ordered.

  The response was immediate, as he had hoped. She clenched around him, a sensation that ripped a moan from his lips, threw her head back, and screamed as her first involuntary orgasm rolled over her. The sounds she made were so intoxicating that he had to think of something, anything else, or he would fuck her, finish her, and destroy the lesson. For no reason he could identify, a snippet of a Keats poem sprung to mind, and he clung to it like a life raft through the storm of her orgasm, mouthing the words to keep in control.

  “Now more than ever seems it rich to die…to cease upon the midnight with no pain, while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such ecstasy.”

  The storm passed. Twenty-One quieted, her body soft and pliable against his, doused in sweat. He allowed himself to look at her. Her eyes were wide with shock. She looked at him, and his order to keep her gaze down died on his tongue. He cupped her cheek, stroking her with the pad of his thumb. He smiled. Her face, with that bewildered expression, was so innocent.

  “Congratulations, Twenty-One,” he said, brushing the hair from her eyes. “You’ve done it.”

  xxi

  “Well, I just don’t understand why you even decided to take up a Model Slave when you yourself told me it was pointless years ago,” Abigail’s voice had taken on an annoying whine. “Not to mention you don’t even talk to us about it, you just snatch some girl off the streets halfway through the season. It just doesn’t sound like you, D.”


  On the TV screen, Abigail sat at the corner of her bed, her arms and legs crossed, her top foot bouncing up and down rapidly, a perfect portrait of irritation. She did not bother with theatrics this time. Her faithful slave, Ash, was nowhere to be seen, and she was fully clothed in a dress that did not flatter her figure, though Demetrius would bet that it boasted a designer label.

  Demetrius cut his eyes to Dr. Konri Boukman, his second business partner, who had remained characteristically silent through the entire meeting. He wore his usual slacks with a button up shirt, his lab coat slung over the back of his office chair. His unreadable face often reminded Demetrius of Mama Dede. Their complexions were similar, though where Dede’s light brown skin and freckles were ambiguous, Konri’s pointed to his part-African heritage. His expression was far sterner than any that had ever crossed Dede’s face; he wore it like Demetrius wore his mask.

  “Konri?”

  Konri’s light eyes bounced from side to side, probably looking at both Demetrius and Abigail on his screen. He sighed and scratched absently at his greying temple.

  “A Model Slave,” he said, as if tasting the phrase in his mouth, “serves as an example for the following season’s slaves?”

  “Yes,” Demetrius replied.

  Konri’s eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly. “That means you’ll be keeping her for the entire year.”

  Demetrius nodded.

  “Which is exactly why you told me a Model Slave wouldn’t be profitable,” Abigail countered, throwing up her hands. “You said that it was risky and pointless to keep a slave in the off season, and they’d never-”

  “Has she been examined?” asked Konri.

  Abigail’s face rouged at the interruption, but she quieted down. Konri rarely spoke unless directly addressed, which was part of what Demetrius liked about him. His question was brilliant; it revealed to Demetrius that Konri also questioned his impulsivity in kidnapping Twenty-One, but there was no way Demetrius could deflect the question with a threat or promise of pain, as he frequently did with Abigail and the twins to keep them in line.

  “She has been examined,” said Demetrius, choosing his words carefully, “but she has not had a physical, so I will need you to see her the moment you come to town in December. I assume you can’t make a trip before then.”

  Konri nodded, his face blank, but Demetrius could guess what was going on behind those pale eyes. Demetrius himself was only just realizing how foolish he had been in taking and using Twenty-One with such abandon. Konri normally visited for the month of June and all slaves were questioned and checked out before use. Demetrius could make the excuse that she wasn’t a prostitute and therefore less likely to be a concern, but he knew that that was a fallacy, and so did Konri. He also did not want to reveal Twenty-One’s identity. Konri worked in Cleveland and it was highly likely that he interacted with Twenty-One’s cardiologist father. He knew how his partners would react if they knew who Twenty-One had been before she had come into this house. He already knew how stupid a risk he had taken. But to use her without an exam…he hadn’t given that a single thought, and that was quite possibly the biggest blunder he had made in his career.

  And Konri knew that much, at least.

  “I don’t get it,” said Abigail, chewing on the inside of her lip. “You make us consult you on every little thing, and you didn’t even broach the subject with us before running out and snatching a girl for the job.”

  Demetrius took a breath. To reply to her or explain himself would only reinforce her belief that they were equals in business. He was not in the mood for power play. He fixed Abigail with a cold stare and let the silence stretch. It only took moments for her to fidget. She gave a dramatic sigh and rolled her eyes, tossing her loose curls over her shoulder.

  “Well, I wish you would have informed me,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “I could have found one myself and we could have run this little experiment together.”

  Demetrius turned his attention back to Konri.

  “Twenty-One is progressing very well. She’ll be branded tonight. If there are any issues, I’ll call you.”

  Konri nodded. Whatever he thought, he was wise enough to keep it to himself.

  “At least tell us what a Model Slave means,” Abigail demanded. “Are you going to sell her in the next season, or keep her forever like some little housewife?”

  Demetrius fought a grin behind the mask. He had expected Abigail to react harshly to his picking up an old idea of hers, but she was outdoing herself by pouting like a punished child in a corner. He wondered what her adoring slaves would have thought of her after seeing her in such an infantile state, so far removed from the golden goddess persona she emulated in their presence.

  “This year is unorthodox,” he said, “but should I choose to continue this, a Model Slave will be taken at the beginning of the season like any other and trained along with the rest of the stock. After the auction, she will remain with me for extensive training; advanced positions and pain eroticism, domestic training, everything will be expanded upon. She will serve as an aid in breaking the new slaves in June, and will be a model for them as they learn, the ideal they should strive to reach, always by my side. She will be sold with the crop of slaves she helped teach for double the price due to her extended training.”

  He studied his partners. Konri gave him nothing. Abigail tried to do the same, but couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

  “It sounds like an awful lot of work,” she said. “Can we at least see the girl that inspired this brilliant idea? She’s moving through training pretty fast if she’s ready to be branded already.”

  Demetrius didn’t like the way her question made him tense.

  “You’ll see her when you get here in December,” he said, leaning back against his headboard. “Now, unless anyone has any other idiotic questions, I think we can conclude for the day.”

  Konri shut off his screen immediately. Abigail held up her remote and gave Demetrius a smile that threatened to stir his temper.

  “Enjoy her, D,” she said, slowly spiraling a lock of hair between her fingers. “You work so hard. You should let yourself have a favourite every once in a while.”

  The TV went blank, leaving Demetrius’ own face glaring back at him.

  Demetrius sighed and let his head fall back against the headboard. The meeting left him with a cold feeling in his chest, the same feeling he had when he had first figured out who Twenty-One was, after she already lay naked in a cage in the upstairs suite. Once more the thought invaded; What have I done? Dread prickled along his spine, and he had the same sensation as he had when he touched One in the truck, and when Twenty-One had first uttered the word Master. He brushed it aside. Fate was a superstition. His own impulsivity had gotten him into this, and there was no need to search for a deeper meaning. He had made sure his tracks were covered. Mariane was too frightened to say anything, and no one else knew of any connection between him and the missing Chloe Leroux. All that was left to do was the same thing he had done for six years; break, train, own.

  A neglected pile of mail sat on the nightstand beside the bed. He knew that at least one envelope would hold a New Orleans address. He dug through the pile until he found it. He traced the sender’s name with his fingers. Dia Belaire. His sweet girl still wrote to him religiously, even though he had stopped replying a couple months ago. To stop writing to her was like tearing out a piece of himself, but he had to. She was getting married. And no matter how badly he wanted to deny it, the subtext of her letters spoke loud and clear. She wanted him to rescue her.

  Demetrius adjusted his mask and pressed the sealed envelope to his nose. Did he actually catch a hint of her jasmine perfume, or did he just imagine it? The same Keats poem that had sprung to mind earlier with Twenty-One crept into his consciousness.

  “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?”

  Demetrius set the letter aside.

  Chapter 18

  N
ovember 6, 2011

  It was dark, too dark to see for a moment. Her eyes adjusted and she could make out the blank walls of her suite prison. She lay tangled in the bed’s satin sheets. Demetrius had rewarded her by feeding her a bowl of strawberries dipped in honey, so overwhelmingly sweet, and by allowing her to sleep in the bed tonight rather than her cage. He had shut off the lights for the first time since she had come to this place. The darkness terrified her at first. However, the comfort of a bed in the dark gave her the deepest sleep she had experienced in a very long time. Now she was wide awake without knowing what had stirred her. The room was silent, yet something in the air was strange, as it had been the night Demetrius had taken her from her apartment, a night that seemed so long ago.

  “Time to wake up, cherí.”

  Chloe tensed, frozen in mid breath. She felt him now, standing at her back on the other side of the bed. She sprung to her hands and knees, scrambling to sit At Attention.

  “No,” his command stopped her. “Stay there, on your stomach.”

  Chloe sank back onto the bed, her breath shallow. Silence stretched and Chloe felt exposed with the sheets having fallen away from her bare body. Demetrius’ fingertips appeared on her back, trailing down the length of her spine. His touch was delicate, and she shivered beneath it, but her heart would not slow. He never visited her twice in such a short span of time. She did not know what to expect. She had orgasmed at his command, orgasmed long before she was primed to do so. She would never forget the feeling, how his voice simply summoned the flame with no spark at all, bringing her body from calm to ecstasy in an instant. It had been terrifying and…wonderful. She did not know if she was ready for it again.

  “Look at me.”

  Chloe turned her head to face Demetrius. He was shirtless, wearing a white mask and pale pants that in the darkness seemed to blend with his skin. He held a black toolkit in his hand. Chloe opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but she stopped herself. She was a slave. She would not question. Instead, she stared at her Master while he allowed it. His hair and makeup were a stark contrast to the rest of him. He looked like an elemental thing in the dark, the same cold white as the stars, with hair as black as the night sky. He stood still a moment longer, letting her drink him in, then he reached into his pocket and the lights in the room rose to a dim glow. Chloe wondered if he always carried a remote with him, if he always had control of every room in the house. He set the toolkit down on the nightstand and opened it. Chloe dared to steal a glance. She spotted a metal clamp, a thin, flat wedge of steel not an inch long, and something cylindrical she couldn’t identify. She had no idea how the pieces fit together, or what it meant for her.