by Kitty Thomas
“Let’s go then.”
He held her hand and guided her to his car. She was silent during the drive, unsure what to say that wouldn’t somehow piss him off.
What the fuck are you doing, Vivian? It’s one thing at Dome, but going to his house? This guy is clearly short on sanity. Getting into a car with him? Have you lost your mind?
No, she’d lost her impulse control right about the time her libido had spun out of its natural orbit. Her panties were soaked again. She wasn’t in the best position to make a rational decision. Most people weren’t when they were that horny, or they wouldn’t make half the stupid sexual choices they made.
He must have seen fear on her face because he let one hand leave the steering wheel to stroke her thigh. “Everything will be okay, flower. You’ll see.”
She smiled weakly, irrationally comforted by his touch.
The drive was long, and the lights of the city soon faded to reveal countryside. As the minutes marched on, fewer cars passed. It started to feel as if only she and Anton existed.
He took her hand from where she’d been clenching it in her lap and squeezed it. “Someday you’ll be glad we met and that I made you face yourself.”
She looked out the window at passing pastures and cows sleeping under the moonlight. Her cell phone rang, jolting her out of the surreal head space she was in. She looked at Anton, questioning.
He released her hand. “Answer your phone.”
She sucked in a breath. “Hello?”
“Hey, Baby.”
“Michael!” They hadn’t spoken since the night in the hallway when she’d been pressed against the basement door, hoping he would just throw her down on the ground and take her. Suddenly his voice was the best sound in the world.
“I was just calling to check in. Someone’s going to come by and bring groceries tomorrow. He’ll leave you about a hundred dollars in case you need anything before I get back.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that had started to stream down her face. Guilt for cheating? Guilt for leaving? Shame over not trusting him to believe her if she’d gone to him from the start? She didn’t know.
“What’s wrong, Vivi?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. I just miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I’ll be home soon. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
After she disconnected the call, she slid the phone back into her purse and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Are you all right?”
She sniffled a little. “What do you care?” She caught herself only after the words had left her mouth and looked over, afraid that might have earned her a punishment. But he didn’t seem to care about her outburst.
Anton lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Just making conversation. I thought you said you were leaving him.”
“I am.”
“Why? You just told him you loved him. Were you lying?”
“Why do you care about my personal life all of a sudden?”
“Just answer the question.”
“We don’t make each other happy. I’m an obligation to him, and he’s not what I need.”
“I don’t believe you have the slightest notion what you need.”
A few minutes later the car rolled up to a house big enough to qualify as a mansion. Could Dome earn him that much money?
Anton must have read something off her expression because he said, “The spa is only a small portion of my income. My real money is in something else.”
Before she had time to process his response, an iron gate opened to let them in.
She and Michael lived in a very large house, but this was . . . well, it was ridiculous. No one needed this level of luxury, especially if they lived alone. Which Anton must, if he was inviting her over to have kinky sex.
Vivian imagined he must have a fully-equipped dungeon in a house that big. Maybe more than one. She shivered at the possibilities.
He helped her out of the car and led her up the front steps while her anxiety mounted higher. She didn’t expect the door to open from the inside, or for a large, tall man who looked like a cross between a butler and a bouncer to be standing on the other side.
A mop of blond hair fell over the man’s eyes. He looked surprised. “Isn’t it a little early?”
Anton pushed Vivian inside before she had the chance to catalog her situation, before she had the chance to scream. Not that anyone could have heard her on such a large, rolling estate.
She looked back to Anton, needing reassurance that the warning bells going off in her head loudly enough to give her a headache, were just anxiety over her decision to come back when she could have been free.
His eyes held annoyance, but it wasn’t directed at her. He was focused instead on the butler/bouncer. “I had to move the timetable up on this one. She’s too unpredictable to control from a distance. It’s not worth the risk to play the game out as usual. My instincts keep us out of prison and my instincts say, now.”
“Shall I show her to her suite, then?”
Anton nodded.
9
The stranger gripped Vivian’s arm and led her through the mansion. She looked behind her to Anton, as if the pleading in her eyes would move a man who had obviously done this before. But he was the devil she knew.
Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it against her temples. The man led her through the entryway in front of a massive staircase, then down a long, ornately-decorated hallway and unlocked a door near the end.
The room was sparsely decorated, much like the hideaway at Dome had been. There was a full-sized bed with a black duvet. Chains hung behind it. A flat screen television was attached to the opposite wall. There was a large, black trunk at the foot of the bed. A small bathroom stood off to the side.
Vivian looked up to see a security camera near the ceiling. What the hell was this place?
The walls were a dark stone that reminded her of a dungeon. Maybe it was a dungeon. Her own personal dungeon. She could hear faint sounds coming from next door. Moans, whimpers, and cries of “Please, Sir”.
She struggled futilely in the arms of the stranger as the adrenaline surged through her.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I know you need to feel like you did something to get away, but all you’ll earn is
punishment. We’ve had hundreds of girls in his house over the years. And not a single one of them has escaped us. You won’t be the first.”
The man’s accent was local, his voice deep and strangely soothing despite the situation. The fight drained out of her and she turned to look into his eyes. Kind eyes. Too kind for this.
“Please, I don’t belong here. You don’t have to be like Anton. You can help me get away.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You aren’t the first to use that line on me, either. You may be here sooner than he normally brings them, but Anton never brings a girl to this house who doesn’t belong here.”
He guided her to the bed and locked the chain around her wrist. “This is just to keep you from rushing the door every time it’s opened. The chain will reach to the bathroom when you need to go. We aren’t complete monsters.”
Her lip trembled as she stared at him. Not complete monsters? Who let the crazies out of the asylum to create that platitude?
After he secured her and slipped the key into his pocket, he got up to leave. “Someone will be with you in just a moment. Try to relax.”
As if relaxing was an option in her life at this point.
“Anton?”
He shook his head. “No.” The door clicked softly behind him and she was left with her self-recriminations.
How fucking stupid. Why did I go back? For a few cheap thrills? It was all fine and good that she was suddenly willing to explore her darker side, the secret needs and desires she’d pushed below the surface of her sterile, Stepford existence for the past several years. But couldn’t she have left Michael and made those explorations in a safe
r environment? With someone who wasn’t a deranged criminal?
There were kinky clubs with rules and safeties in place. She could have asked around, found someone safe to play with.
She tried to think back to earlier in the day when she’d looked in the mirror and decided she was finished playing the victim and the whore. And now? She was going to actually be the victim and the whore. No more playing.
“Michael, I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the empty room.
He’d return, and she’d be gone. Then what? Would he ever give up searching for her? Would he make the connection? She dropped her head in her hands thinking about the journal she’d filled then burned. The only clue to her whereabouts, and she’d destroyed it.
Although the fantasy of being rescued by Michael was nice for a moment, she couldn’t imagine the shame of him finding her here. Even if it was only partly her fault. Even if she hadn’t asked for most of it. Maybe it was best the journal was ash, to save her from one more indignity.
She got off the bed and tested the length of the chain. The bathroom had a simple shower and tub combo, a toilet, and sink. There was nothing special or extra, nothing she could use as a weapon. Though with a chain locked around her wrist, fighting seemed pointless and only likely to make the situation worse.
Vivian returned to the room and sat on the bed, scooting against the wall. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs as she anxiously watched the door, afraid of who might come in, and what he might do with her.
She didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes passed before the door creaked open to reveal a blonde wearing a black silk robe and a delicate leather collar with a silver ring protruding from it.
“Janette?”
Don’t worry about Janette. Janette thinks what she’s told to think.
The woman shook her head. “No, sweetie. I’m her twin, Annette.” Her mouth drew up in an annoyed fashion as if waiting for judgment to fall for having a rhyming name with her sister. Such a small identity difference when they already looked so much alike.
“Oh.” Vivian wasn’t sure what else to say. She was at least mildly comforted by the presence of another female. The woman appeared relatively healthy and not in any way traumatized.
Annette sat on the bed beside her. “I’m here to explain things and to answer any questions you may have.” She stroked her fingers through Vivian’s hair. Vivian flinched, then, realizing there was nothing sexual in the touch, she relaxed and let the other woman continue her ministrations.
The blonde took a deep breath and started a speech she’d probably given a hundred times at least. “You are here to be trained and sold as a piece of sexual property.”
Blunt. Jaded. No bedside manner.
“No!” was the only thing Vivian could think to say. It was the correct thing to say. But she wasn’t acting merely from what seemed proper. The sold part of the equation started a new sense of dread and unease, one more intense than she’d felt since her world had gone sideways.
“Shhhh.” Annette brushed a strand of hair out of Vivian’s eyes. “The man who brought you here is my master. I’m the only one he owns, the rest he trains and prepares for sale. You don’t need to be afraid. He does an intensive background check on prospective buyers before they’re allowed to take a girl home.”
Vivian couldn’t hold back the reflexive shudder. She looked at the collared woman with disgust. “How can you act as if this is okay? Anton is a monster. You don’t mind that he’s raping and then selling all these women into slavery? What kind of person are you?”
Annette’s eyes narrowed. “Look, sweetheart, he gave you plenty of chances to escape. You kept coming back.”
Vivian was quiet for a moment as she tried to picture Anton discussing her plight with the other woman. “He blackmailed me.”
The blonde made a phhpt sound. “Oh, please. If your husband truly loved you, he would have believed you. If he didn’t love you enough to even listen to your side, then why would you be with him in the first place? Easier to live a pampered existence than to forge your own path in life and take care of yourself? Face it, you want to be controlled. You want the choices taken from you so you don’t have to think about whether or not you made the wrong ones.”
Vivian could feel herself shattering. With everything that had happened and everything that was probably yet to come, the sting of this woman’s words were what made her come apart. To either have stayed away from Anton or embrace with self-possession the way he’d awakened her body, would have been honorable. But this? This horrible limbo where she could neither accept who she was, nor deny it. That was the worst.
The tears started to fall until her shoulders were shaking with it. Annette pulled the trembling woman into her arms. “He would have let you go if there had been any indication you didn’t ultimately need or want this.”
Vivian pulled back and searched the other woman’s eyes. “How can you know that?”
“Because he let my sister go. She’s one of very few women he’s been wrong about. When he touched her, she wasn’t excited or turned on. She was just scared. She wasn’t holding something tightly coiled inside of her like you were. He stopped, said he was sorry, and released her.”
Vivian’s mouth fell open. “Said he was sorry? Oh hey, I just molested you, and you didn’t secretly like it? Sorry I didn’t pick a more mentally fucked-up target?”
“It didn’t go that far. He stopped immediately. Janette came to me and told me what happened. Even though he hadn’t taken it far, she needed to talk, but she didn’t want to go to the police. I began dreaming about him. He starred in every sexual fantasy from that point until I sought him out. In the end I became his because I’m the only one who came to him without coercion.”
“What he’s doing is still wrong.” Vivian wasn’t about to accept a sugar-coated retelling of this freak show.
Annette shrugged. “From this point on you’ll have several trainers. My master doesn’t want girls to get too emotionally attached to him, or to bond with him or anyone else like they will with the man who buys them. You’ll address all men here as Sir. When you’re sold, you will address that man as Master unless he wants a different title or for you to address others that way.”
Even as the other woman’s words repulsed Vivian, they still tripped her wires, still made her wet and aroused. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself how wrong it was, she couldn’t make her body respond like a normal person.
“I want to go home,” Vivian said.
Annette laughed. “No you don’t.”
“You said Anton would let me go.”
“He gave you every chance to go. You chose not to. The choice is now out of your hands.”
Vivian wiped her face with the back of her hand, angry at herself for all the tears. “I miss Michael.” Michael was safe. Predictable.
“That feeling won’t last. What would your husband say if he knew you’d slept with Anton? You know you’ve been too complicit for too long. Mourn the relationship like a death if you must, but accept that it’s over.”
“Why can’t I just stay here? Why do I have to be sold?” The truth that she wouldn’t be released was finally sinking in, but she was still bargaining, hoping for a lighter sentence.
“You need a master who can properly care for you and bond with you, perhaps even love you if you please him.”
“Does your master love you?”
“Yes. I think he does.”
“And do you love him?”
The smile on the blonde’s face spoke of her honesty. “I do.”
“What right do you, or Anton or anyone else have to dictate what I need? Surely there are plenty of women out there who might sign up for something like this voluntarily.” Vivian had seen her fair share of websites where people did more than just play at being kinky.
“And those women will find what they need without our help.”
“Help. Right. You’re all a bunch
of sick fucks. Especially Anton. Your master is a psycho.” It was like she’d fallen into a cult where the order of the day was bizarre rationalizations.
Annette got off the bed then, clearly fed up. Anger and hurt warred behind her eyes as she crossed to the door and pushed a red button.
A few minutes later, the door opened to reveal Anton. Annette dropped to her knees.
“Leave us, pet,” he said as his cold gaze met Vivian’s.
“Yes, Master.”
Annette left and Anton came in, the door shutting behind him with a heavy thud.
“I understand you haven’t had the same amount of time as others to acclimate before being brought here. However, it’s hurtful for her to hear you talk about me like that. If I ever hear you speak to my slave in that manner again, you might have permanent scars by the time I’m finished with you. Do you understand?”
Vivian couldn’t stop the seething hatred. She knew she must be glaring daggers at him and she didn’t very much care. In that moment she would prefer he kill her than break her . . . or do something as gauche as make money off her.
He blazed across the floor and took her chin in one hand, forcing her gaze to his. “I said, do you understand?”
“Yes,” she replied tightly.
“So help me, Vivian. Do not try my patience. Yes, what?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Undress.”
The metal cuff and chain on one wrist stopped her from getting too far with her shirt and bra. Anton took a key from his pocket and released her wrist so she could finish disrobing. When the blouse and bra were on the floor, he relocked the cuff.
Vivian stood by the bed, wrapping her arms around herself and watching him with an increasingly heightened wariness.
“Lie on your stomach, and stretch your arms over your head.”
“Please, Sir. I’m sorry.” Pride was a distant memory anyway. She may as well attempt begging for leniency.
“You are right now, yes. And you will be even more sorry in a few moments. You’ll only make it worse if you don’t submit to me.”
