He gestured toward Abigail. She did not move for a moment, a subtle defiance, but she crumbled the moment he met her eyes. She stood with exaggerated grace and pulled a whistle from the confines of her fur coat.
“Without further ado,” she said with a laugh Marilyn Monroe would have been proud of. “Ladies and gentlemen, let the Winter Hunt begin!”
xxi
Abigail blew a piercing whistle and the slaves around Chloe sprung to their feet. Chloe froze for just a moment. She looked at Demetrius. Gabe had only given her the vaguest of instructions as he had prepared her for the mysterious Hunt: When the whistle blows, run like hell. She flashed back to her escape attempt, the last time she had been in the backyard. The Hunt felt strangely similar. Demetrius caught her gaze. He nodded at her. Chloe swallowed and got to her feet.
“Run, girl!” Gabe urged. “Into the woods!”
He slapped her on the buttocks. Chloe yelped and the shock threw her into motion. She ran past Gabe, past the crowd of cheering attendants, and into the woods. Her ribs ached with every breath. The pills Konri had been giving her all week helped dull the pain.
The other slaves were ahead of her, scattering in all directions like startled deer. Her mind raced as quickly as her heart. She gathered from Abigail and Demetrius’ conversation that Abigail’s slaves would come after them at some point. Did the other slaves know that, or did they receive the same instructions Gabe had given her? Were they teased with the possibility of escape?
Chloe veered right, uncertain of where to go. Her toes were numb against the frosted leaves and sticks carpeting the ground. She wished she could pull her fur bolero over her breasts. Having fur lining her shoulders and legs but leaving the rest of her exposed was torment. It made her feel all the more naked in the bitter air. For a moment, she wondered what month it was. She had lost track of time so long ago. The snow suggested winter, but she could guess no further than that.
She wandered aimlessly, trying and failing to come up with some sort of strategy. She looked up into the trees and spotted mounted cameras high on the branches. Someone had climbed up into the trees to set them there. Maybe climbing was a good way to hide. She saw a tree with a low, thick branch. She wrapped her arms around the branch and crippling pain in her side stopped her mid-motion. She whimpered through gritted teeth. Her ribs were too hurt to allow her to climb.
In the distance, another whistle blew. Chloe’s stomach dropped. That could only mean the male slaves had been released. Chloe ran again, stumbling over twigs.
“Hey! Hey, over here!”
Chloe stopped. She spotted Rodney, crouched behind a fallen tree, beckoning her. He glanced up somewhere into the trees and crouched a little lower.
“Come here, baby,” he said. “Hide over here. Hurry!”
Chloe hesitated. Rodney was the only attendant she saw in the woods. The rest were with Demetrius and Abigail in the backyard. What was he doing there?
“Get over here,” Rodney ordered, his face turning red beneath his shaved blonde hair. He glanced up once more. “You need to hide or the game will end too fast.”
Chloe hugged herself and complied. Rodney was an attendant, her superior. The last thing she wanted to do was disobey an order and end up in trouble again. She knew Demetrius and Abigail were watching her closely after the dinner party. She did not want to give them any reason to doubt her again. She knew she would not be given another chance.
She approached Rodney. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back away from the tree. Her ribs protested the sudden movement with a stab in her side. She cried out.
“Shh!” Rodney hissed. “Follow me. Quick!”
Chloe followed, trying not to trip. In the distance, she heard a sharp scream that jumpstarted her heart. Someone must have been caught.
Rodney stopped at a patch of leaves. He bent down and lifted up the edge of a brown tarp, which had been covered in the foliage like a hunter’s trap.
“Hide here,” he said. “Don’t come out til I come get you.”
He glanced behind Chloe, then grabbed her arm and dragged her under the tarp. Chloe shouted again, her ribs throbbing.
“Shut the fuck up,” Rodney snarled. He piled leaves over the tarp and disappeared as quickly as he had shown up.
Chloe sat, her pulse heavy in her ears. She peeked out through the tarp and found she was too far away from the others to see anything but small figures in white fur. Something felt wrong as she sat there. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Rodney made her skin crawl, but it felt deeper than that. She wasn’t sure if any other attendants were out there helping other slaves draw out the game, and Rodney’s behaviour had been strange. Why had he been crouched and hiding? Why had he looked up into the trees?
Chloe heard another squeal, and the distant sound of cheering. She strained to see past the tarp. She spotted a figure in black and one in white, entangled in some fashion, but she couldn’t see clearly enough. One by one, she heard cries, cheers, saw figures in the distance heading back toward the yard, and again she felt that something was off. She felt too far away. She wondered if the cameras could still see her.
Chloe gasped. The cameras. Rodney had been hiding from cameras in the woods. He could have been hiding so the buyers wouldn’t know that the game was so controlled. But why choose her to hide? Demetrius said he had wanted her in the Hunt to demonstrate her obedience to dubious buyers. Chloe swallowed hard. She could either stay here or listen to her gut and reemerge, but that would mean disobeying an attendant’s order.
The screams and cheers had diminished. Chloe finally rose from the tarp and headed back the way she had come. She trembled with fear from having disobeyed, but the gnawing feeling in her gut would not allow her to remain.
It was not long before Chloe spotted movement. A male slave stood a few yards from her, scanning the woods. He wore nothing but an open black fur coat that barely brushed his waist. Chloe took a deep breath and waited for him to notice her.
She lost her nerve the moment his wide brown eyes locked onto her. He charged and she turned and ran without thinking to. He was an animal chasing her, and she took on the role of prey instinctively. She screamed when his arms locked around her waist and they fell to the ground. Her ribs protested, but adrenaline kept the pain at bay. She struggled in his arms, but his weight against her was solid and strong. He flipped her onto her back. There was no mistaking his intention. He entered her, claimed her, and she writhed, her back digging into the frozen ground. He had Cupid’s bow lips, so feminine on the body of a young man with a blonde mohawk and tattoo sleeves all the way down his arms. She met those lips with teeth and tongue, dragged her nails down his lean torso. A vicious heat sparked in her at the sight of the marks she’d made on his pale skin. Was this how Demetrius felt when he marked her? The thought inflamed her. She sank her teeth into his lower lip until he growled for her, a primal sound that maddened her. She shoved his chest with all her might. The slave teetered off balance. With a snarl of her own, Chloe shoved him onto his back and took him inside of her again. She rode him, biting his neck, his chest, any flesh she could, while he moaned beneath her and dug his fingers into her hips.
Control. It was an ecstasy, so exotic after so long in submission. She rode that feeling over the brink, screaming her orgasm to the grey winter sky, as the slave beneath her bucked and groaned. She didn’t give a damn how many buyers were watching, or even if Demetrius was. Damn the buyers. Damn Demetrius. This was hers, and they couldn’t take it from her.
When the warmth faded, the male slave slipped out from under her, hoisted her over his shoulder, and carried her back to the yard. She put up no fight. She did not blush when the attendants cheered.
Abigail’s voice cut through the glow of satisfaction like an ice blade.
“Well, Rowan, we thought you’d never find her.”
“I told you a search wouldn’t be necessary, Rodney,” came Demetrius’ voice.
Chloe glanced up. Rodney stood in front
of Demetrius. Abigail’s glare cut her down before she could see anything more. Her stomach turned. If she had stayed where she was, Rodney may have convinced Demetrius to search for her. Something told her that wasn’t how the game was supposed to go. She slid off Rowan’s shoulder and they both knelt in line with the other slaves, who seemed to have been waiting for them. Chloe caught them shivering out of the corner of her eye.
“Slaves,” said Demetrius.
The slaves looked up at him. Chloe couldn’t read him from this distance. She remembered the rage she had felt from him after Ash had taken her against the cross. Would he behave that way again? After all, he had wanted her in the Hunt. He was stone-faced with his mask.
“Excellent Hunt,” he said, his voice as unreadable as his eyes. “The captured slaves will be mounted for the night, and we will continue the party with our remaining slaves. Take your trophies to the dining room.”
Not a glance her way. Chloe despised the ache in her chest. Rowan rose and swept her into his tattooed arms again, and as she and the other female slaves were carried to the dining room, she tried very hard not to look back at Demetrius sitting there with Abigail like some twisted King and Queen of frost and fur.
Chapter 38
December 9, 2011
“I am Twenty-One. I am a slave. I will obey. I will be used. I will not question. I will please my Master. I am Twenty-One. I am a slave.”
Chloe whispered the words over and over, focusing on them, trying desperately to believe in them as she once had. This was not a place for Chloe. This was a place for Twenty-One. She and the other “trophies” of the Hunt were in the dining room, attached to the most humiliating device Chloe had ever experienced in this place. Her arms were suspended over her head by a bar, her splayed legs shackled. She had been mounted from behind onto a polished wooden phallus, raised at an angle so Chloe had to stand on her toes. She had been blindfolded and gagged, a nasty little strap with a small rubber phallus on the inside. Chloe and the other slaves stood that way for what felt like hours, impaled by sex and by mouth, their legs numb and trembling.
She could hear the other slaves close behind her, shifting and moaning, but she could not see them. She was thankful for the blindfold, in all honesty. The darkness helped her keep calm. But she felt the phallus filling her sex with every small movement, and without being aroused, it was painful. It was harder than any human organ. It reminded her of the horrid little golden ball the twins had slipped inside of her.
Chloe tensed at the sound of heavy footfalls. She hadn’t heard anyone pass by after she and the other slaves had been displayed.
“There you are,” Gabe’s voice startled her. “Twenty-One, Seventeen, Demetrius wants both of you with him tonight.”
Chloe was too relieved to be afraid at the moment. All she could think about was the ache in her limbs when Gabe unbound her wrists and ankles and hoisted her off the phallus. She took a deep breath through her mouth when he removed the gag. Her jaw hurt from accommodating the phallus for so long. Gabe removed her blindfold. Night had fallen; the dining room was in total darkness, save for the lights in the backyard which seeped through the French doors. Seventeen stood beside her, her long black hair rumpled from the blindfold. Gabe stripped them of the fur boots and boleros. Chloe was once again fully nude. She welcomed the air that chilled her freshly exposed skin.
“Let’s go.”
Gabe led Chloe and Seventeen through the study in silence and knocked on the door Chloe had nearly opened when she had tried to escape. At Gabe’s urging, she followed Seventeen into a cavernous room with navy walls so dark they were nearly black. Chloe first noticed the flat screen on the far wall, so large she had first taken it for a window. Then she realized there were no windows in this room, though two thin black curtains hung from the ceiling over the king size bed. She saw Demetrius standing on the other side of the bed, nude and gleaming in all the darkness. Chloe’s breath caught in her throat. She tried to keep her eyes down, tried not to trace every scar and curve of muscle on his body. She failed. She had never seen him nude without distraction, without being entwined with him.
“Thank you, Gabe,” he said.
Gabe left with a nod, and Chloe and Seventeen were left standing At Attention across from Demetrius. Chloe fought to keep her breath slow. Demetrius looked at her, his grey eyes sending a jolt down her spine.
“You put on quite a show in the woods, didn’t you, ma chère?”
Chloe knew she was in trouble the moment the words seeped through his mask. His voice was low and dangerous. Every muscle in her body was tense in an instant. There was no exit but the door behind them. She knew she would never be able to escape, even if she turned and ran that very moment.
“Oh, yes,” Demetrius growled. “It was very entertaining for the buyers, but not the behaviour of a Model Slave, now, was it?”
Chloe’s voice failed her for an eternal moment.
“Was it?” Demetrius repeated in a snarl.
“No, Master,” she replied as steadily as she could.
“No, no,” Demetrius echoed, tossing his long black hair from his shoulder. He still wore the mask from the Hunt, black leather with a line of fur down the center. “No, a Model Slave would never be dominant, now, would she? She would never wrestle a man to the ground and mount him like a broken horse. Oh, no, cherí, you weren’t my slave in that moment, were you? That was all for you, now, wasn’t it?”
Chloe bowed her head. “I…I’m s-sorry-”
Demetrius rounded the corner of the bed and came at her so quickly that she shrieked and broke form, curling into herself to stave off a blow. Demetrius caught her in his arms, crushing her against his naked waist, growing hard against her thigh. Chloe’s ribs throbbed with pain, but her cries fell on deaf ears. He twisted her head up by her hair. His face was an inch from hers. Seventeen remained where she was, motionless, At Attention, her eyes on the bed.
“Have you completely forgotten yourself?” he hissed. “Have you forgotten to whom you belong?” He stroked her face with hard fingers, wiping away tears she couldn’t keep from falling. “You dominated that slave like you were some sort of Mistress. Is that what you are now, Twenty-One? Is that what you want to be?”
“No, Master!” Chloe cried. His grip tightened on her hair and she screamed for him. He grew harder against her, digging into her thigh. “I’m your slave!”
“Oh, I think you’re lying, ma chère, I really think you are.” Demetrius’ fingers became talons against her throbbing ribs. She gasped, but his grip was far too strong to wriggle out of. “I think you need to know what it feels like to be a Mistress. You only had a little taste, didn’t you? You must want more.”
“No, Master,” Chloe didn’t know what he had in mind, but she didn’t want to find out. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean-”
“Oh, but I think you did.” Demetrius’ voice fell calm in a flash. “I think you meant every moment of that…performance.”
He stopped squeezing her but did not let go, trapping her in his arms. Chloe drew deep shivering breaths, terrified of the sudden stillness. She found his gaze on her, waiting for her to look at him. His eyes burned with a sickening fire, storm clouds caught in lightning.
“Let’s see what you can stomach, my little Mistress.”
He released her so fast that she stumbled. It hurt to breathe. She resisted the urge to hold her side. Demetrius reached beneath the bed and pulled out a studded leather belt and a small grey object Chloe couldn’t see very clearly in his hand. Her heart jolted.
“Seventeen,” said Demetrius. “Get on the bed and kneel At Attention.”
Seventeen obeyed. She knelt on the bed, facing the headboard, her hands at her neck, elbows spread wide. Demetrius approached her and moved her long olive black hair from her back.
“Come here,” Demetrius beckoned Chloe.
Chloe didn’t want to approach the bed. She didn’t want to play whatever game was coming. Demetrius snatched
her hand the moment she got close enough. Chloe fought not to jerk back. He looped the studded belt around her right hand and held up the grey object. It was shaped like an electric razor, but a long plastic wand protruded from the top. Demetrius pressed a button and a high-pitched electric whine emanated from it. Chloe’s blood ran cold.
“Strike her,” Demetrius ordered. “Her shoulders, her back, her ass, her legs. Avoid the kidneys. Strike her until you draw blood, little Mistress,” he wriggled the wand in his hand, “or I hit her with this.”
Chloe’s stomach dropped. She saw the muscles in Seventeen’s back tense. Other than that, the slave remained still.
“Electricity is the one roadblock Seventeen has yet to overcome.” There was a purr to Demetrius’ voice that made Chloe feel ill. “You don’t like shocks, do you, Seventeen?”
“If it pleases you, Master.” Seventeen’s rich voice was tight with fear. Chloe had heard her voice calm and hollow, or roaring with rage. She had never heard fear come from the steel slave. The dark bedroom grew fuzzy for a nauseating moment.
“Master,” Chloe’s own voice was weak. “Master, I can’t. Please…please punish me. Seventeen has done nothing.”
Demetrius stared at her in a silence infinitely more frightening than anything he could have said. He pointed the wand at Seventeen and tapped it against her right hip.
A nasty static zap and a tiny burst of light sent Seventeen’s voice to the sky. She shrieked, curling in on herself, breaking form before Chloe for the first time.
“No!” Chloe cried, reaching for the slave. Demetrius held up a warning finger, the wand looming close to Seventeen as she recovered, whimpering, and came back to attention.
“Tell me how to treat my slave again, Twenty-One.” Demetrius’ voice held venom. “Tell me again.”
Chloe sobbed so hard she nearly fell to her knees. She felt sick. The belt in her hand turned her stomach.
“Master…”
“Strike her,” Demetrius said calmly. “This is what you wanted, Little Mistress.”
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