The Pleasure House

by Kitty Thomas

  Damian moved closer, but there was still space between them. Enough to run, to slip past him up the stairs? But if she did that... what then? Would it set him off? Would it set in motion a chain of events that nobody could save her from? Suddenly she was very aware of the isolation of this huge house beside the sea—not another living thing outside for miles except seagulls.

  “Shannon...” he said.

  “Please... don't.” The tears already flowed down her cheeks. She could hear Brian's knife moving along the stone walls of the dungeon. Shannon cringed as the memory of the pain searing through her flesh came back to vivid crisp sensation in her mind. And all she could do was whimper.

  Damian watched as she seemed to huddle in on herself, almost like she'd gone someplace else entirely. She slid down to the floor, her head in her hands sobbing out the words, “No, please... no no no, I'll be good. Please, I promise. I promise I'll be good.”

  Lindsay had said nothing about this. Yes, Damian knew about the sadistic psychopath that had hurt her so many years ago—marking her forever. And of course that wasn't something you just got over.

  But Lindsay had punished her without much problem. And she'd seemed fine in the times Damian had seen her, both on video and in person. Then again, Lindsay had saved her life, and she'd known him for years before he'd ever touched her. Damian was still an unknown quantity. He tried to see it from her perspective.

  He moved quietly to sit on the ground beside her and pulled her trembling body into his arms, stroking her hair.

  “Shhhhh. Shannon calm down. It's okay. Shhhh I won't hurt you. The seams are just a game. I don't care about the seams.” It was foolish to start with something like this. It was just that what they'd done in Lindsay's office that day, and last night the events at the opening and the party... it was easy to forget her damage even as it glared off her flesh. He suddenly wanted to rip that motherfucker's head off his body.

  How could she live in the same house with someone who'd hurt her like this?

  “You trust the doctor, don't you?” he asked, gently.

  She nodded, her head pressed against him. Her hands clutched at his shoulders now, her fingernails digging in through the fabric of his shirt.

  “You know he'd never leave you with someone who would hurt you, right?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said, her words coming out muffled against his shirt.

  “I won't punish you today, partly because I don't care about the seams, and partly because you don't trust me yet. But at some point, I will punish you, you understand that, right?”

  She nodded again. Then she pulled back from him, looking into his eyes. Her crying had stopped at least.

  “I'm sorry I freaked out on you,” she said. “You must think I'm such a...”

  He pressed a finger against her lips to hush her. “Shhhh,” he said. “I don't think anything except that you don't know me, and I moved too fast. This situation is very different from... what I'm used to.”

  Even as he bumbled on like an idiot he wondered how he could have misread her so badly. It was the doctor's presence that made her feel safe enough to let go. And from what Damian had heard of her phone call, she was feeling abandoned right now.

  With the other girls he'd had in his life, they'd been... well, subs. There had been negotiations... checklists of what she would and would not do. Layers of consent and safewords. Lindsay had offered Shannon to him on the condition that he wouldn't bring any of that into the relationship because Shannon had entrusted the house with something very different.

  If Damian came in and started talking about negotiations and safewords and contracts and checklists and all the rest, it would undermine the reality that had been built around her. And then her suffering at Brian's hands would be for nothing because suddenly nothing would be real and secure anymore.

  Damian knew about the previous master, the one before the house. The last thing Shannon needed was to feel like the chains around her weren't real, binding, and forever. Even though Damian had never seen himself as the type of man who would take someone like this—truly own someone, what Shannon needed wasn't a game. A game would only make her fear the day it might end.

  If it wasn't a game, he couldn't let her go. Because if it wasn't a game, it was a crime. And in some twisted way, there must be a safety in that for her, an assurance that she wouldn't be tossed out on a whim when a new and novel girl showed up offering submission.

  Damian wished he could tell her she didn't have to worry about that from him anyway. He'd had his fill of girls who didn't take any of this seriously. Maybe he didn't want to be the type of man who bought a slave, but he didn't want a game anymore, either.

  “He's not tired of you,” Damian said, stroking her cheek. “I wanted you. Don't ever think he's shared you with me out of anything other than our friendship.”

  She nodded, looking away, going shy. Damian stood and grabbed her hands, pulling her to stand. “Let's go outside for some fresh air.”

  She didn't reply but allowed him to guide her back up the stairs.

  “Wait,” she said when they reached the front door. “Don't I need shoes?”

  “We're going down to the beach. So, no.” He didn't bother to take his own shoes off.

  They were both quiet as he led her down a small path by the house that ended in a rolling green hill that spilled out onto a wide ribbon of white sandy beach.

  The coastline stretched for miles. A good portion of it was part of Damian's private property. If you squinted, you could just make out a dock far down the coast and then across from that dock back on land at the top of another small hill, was a large Cape Cod house. His closest neighbor.

  Damian knelt beside her and rolled her jeans up. “Go. Walk in the surf. I need to make a call.”

  She seemed uncertain, like she might say something... a protest? A question? But in the end she decided against it and went down the sloping beach to the waves lapping at the shore.

  Damian took the phone out of his back pocket and dialed.

  “Damian,” Lindsay said on the second ring. “Is everything okay?”

  “No, you fucking asshole, everything is not okay,” Damian said, not expecting the anger that came out of his mouth until it was out.

  Shannon's head whipped around, a look of fear on her face.

  Damian lowered his voice. “She can't stay in that house.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Damian recounted what had just happened in the basement and concluded with, “I don't want her in that house with Brian. She can't possibly feel safe there.”

  “She's not yours yet,” Lindsay said.

  “She's partly mine. We agreed. You offered her to me; don't act like this wasn't your idea. I'm not going to share her with you if you keep pretending she's not also mine when it gets inconvenient.”

  There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “You can have her on the weekends for now and the foreseeable future.”

  Damian wasn't sure why he felt so attached to her already. No, that wasn't true. He knew exactly why. As much as he hated her fear of him, he'd loved that she couldn't just walk out the door. She would never be a brat or run out on him. She would just sweetly obey. It disturbed him just how appealing he found that idea.

  In fact, the thought sent all the blood in his brain rushing to his pants.

  “I'll pay you. Name your price. I can wire the money this afternoon.”

  “No,” Lindsay said. “She is ours. I never thought you'd be the one who had trouble sharing.”

  “It's not about that. I just don't want her near that monster.”

  “Why don't you ask Shannon what she wants? Then get back with me.”

  Before Damian could reply, Lindsay had disconnected the call. That smug son of a bitch. He put the phone back in his pocket.

  The good doctor hadn't even told Shannon his plan yet. Maybe she'd be feeling less abandoned and uncertain if he had. She had no idea she was to belong to bot
h of them and then... someday... in some nebulous future Lindsay had planned out in his head, she would belong only to Damian.

  Damian had his doubts Lindsay would ever let her go fully. He'd have to leave this world before he'd let go of her. Damian knew this because it's what he would do. He didn't mind sharing with the doctor. He had a busy life that included a lot of traveling during the week. He liked to make appearances at functions and visit the organizations he donated to. It was polite and felt more personable.

  While he could fit Shannon into that life without neglecting her, he didn't need her to fill up lonely empty spaces for him.

  When she looked up again, Damian motioned her back. There was the slightest hesitation—the lingering fear and uncertainty—but then she made a decision and walked up the sandy slope to him.

  He was at such a loss of what to do with her. The Shannon he'd thought he'd known from their previous sexually charged interactions seemed absent now. In that sexually free woman's place was a shy, scared girl. He'd fucked her over Lindsay's desk while the doctor had held her in place for him while she'd whimpered and moaned and come like a rocket. And yet right now she seemed like a tentative virgin who hadn't even seen her first dick.

  He held out a hand to her. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  70

  Shannon took his hand and let him lead her back up to the house. Who had he been yelling at on the phone? It occurred to her that she didn't know anything about Damian. She didn't know what he did for work or if he even worked. He was at the art show so maybe he was involved somehow in the art world? He seemed to know Hunter well enough to host him for a party at his house.

  “I'm not going to hurt you,” Damian said, as they walked together.

  She knew that. She did. Somehow she believed him when he said it but she couldn't help her instinctive reactions to things. Brian had altered her ability to trust the kinky things she wanted. Once she knew first hand just how real and dangerous that power could be when it was wielded over her, she'd become afraid of all the things she wanted and the people who might give those things to her.

  And it didn't escape her notice that this wasn't exactly a date. Lindsay had loaned her to Damian. For his pleasure. She just didn't know what his pleasure was. Did he like giving out pain?

  She quietly whimpered as he led her back to the dungeon. But it wasn't quiet enough. He noticed. At the door at the top of the stairs, Damian pulled her into his arms and petted her hair again.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered. “Your master is still in control of everything. He knows where I live. What do you think he'd do to me if I hurt you?”

  Shannon didn't know exactly what Lindsay would do if Damian hurt her, but the realization that he would do something, relaxed her enough to let him pull her down the stairs into the dungeon.

  “Go sit on the bed.”

  Shannon went and sat tentatively on the edge of the bed wondering if he was about to fuck her now, wondering if she wanted him to. Was she supposed to want him to? Would she be betraying Lindsay if she wanted Damian to fuck her? What about if she liked it? Lindsay hadn't set any guidelines or parameters except that she should obey Damian in his absence.

  She watched as he took a remote from a drawer and opened a panel in the wall to reveal a large flat screen. He pulled out a keyboard and pressed a few buttons until what looked like a giant computer desktop screen was visible.

  “I'm going to show you something. I want you to watch it without freaking out, and then we'll talk about some things, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, worried now about what she was about to see.

  “Lindsay sent this to me a few weeks before I met you the first time at his office.” Damian clicked on a little box and a video came up, filling the screen. He turned up the volume.

  Damian came and sat on the bed behind her, pulling her back against his chest as it played. It was the film she and Lindsay had made in the playroom. The punishment that had been waived because she'd agreed to the video. Or maybe the video was the punishment.

  She couldn't be sure. She'd turned it over and over in her mind and still she wasn't sure what that day had been about. All she'd known was that she felt scared and exposed with the camera on her back but also strangely aroused by the fact that he was taking something so upsetting and turning it into a kink. A fetish. Eroticizing the aftermath of a terrible thing that had happened to her. And she still couldn't decide if this was good or bad. If she liked it or hated it. If it was a punishment or mercy.

  But even as she'd feared he might share it, deep down she'd thought he would keep the video private.

  “D-do you like to hurt women?” Shannon asked, barely able to keep the tears out of her voice. Those scars in the video were so clear, so well lit. There was no hiding anything.

  “I can be a little sadistic,” he admitted, which only caused her to cry harder. But then he began to stroke her back, “but I'm not a monster. I would never give you more than you could take, and there are lines I won't cross.”

  “Is that why you came to the office to meet me even after you saw my scars in the video? Because you like pain?”

  “No, baby,” he said, “That's not why. I know they bother you, but I don't have strong feelings about the scars. I'm more interested in the person that emerged out of them.”

  Maybe it was the vulnerability, the exposure and openness that he craved. He did have a glass house, after all. Damian's hand moved between her legs to find the evidence of her arousal as they watched the video together.

  She couldn't help it. The things Lindsay said to her. The things he did to her. The fact that Damian had watched this and still wanted to come meet her and fuck her over Lindsay's desk. It did things to her.

  “I came so many times from watching this,” he whispered in her ear. “I could barely stand waiting to meet you.”

  When the video ended, Damian clicked the remote once to turn it off and a second time to shut the panel in the wall. He turned her toward him and stroked the side of her cheek.

  Then he got out of the bed and pulled her to her feet and began to undress her.

  “A-are you going to fuck me now?” she asked. But he swallowed her question with a kiss.

  When he pulled back he said... “You'll know when I fuck you, there won't be a need to ask me about it. Just relax.”

  She raised her arms as he pulled the soft gray shirt over her head and tossed it on the bed. Then he unbuttoned her jeans and quietly slid them down, his lips grazing over her hips on each side as he did so. Then he removed her bra and panties until she stood before him, naked.

  He took her hands and raised them over her head, guiding her to face away from him and grip the tall post at one corner of the bed.

  “Don't let go of this post until I tell you.”

  He began to stroke her back. But he didn't linger there. He lingered on her ass. He leaned in close, his erection pressing through his jeans, resting in the cleft. Then his fingers stroked her there. Her breath hitched.

  His mouth was next to her ear when he said, “Tell me baby, has Lindsay ever fucked you here? In your ass?”

  “No! Please...” She started to struggle but she didn't remove her hands from the post. Not yet.

  “Shhhh,” he soothed, stroking her back again. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm on an information gathering mission.”

  When she'd settled, he asked his next question. “Has anyone ever fucked your ass?”

  “N-no, Sir,” she whimpered, the title slipping out easily now.

  “What about toys or fingers there?”

  “No, Sir.”

  Damian chuckled, like he'd won the lottery. “So, what you're telling me is you're a kinky freak who somehow has a virgin ass?”

  “Y-yes, Sir.”

  “Excellent,” he said, still caressing her there. “This is going to be my private entrance. No one else gets this. Only me. I'm going to turn you into the biggest anal slut.”

  She star
ted crying. “Please... no.”

  “Tell me why,” he said, still speaking softly, gently next to her ear.

  “I-it will hurt.”

  “Not the way I do it, it won't. Look, I'm not going to just fuck your ass like a porn star. There is so much to do before we get there. And when we do, you will beg me to fuck your ass. You will whimper and plead and beg me sweetly for it. I promise I won't hurt you. But I do want to teach you and train you.”

  He took her hands off the bedpost, holding them both in his own for a moment. “Come with me. We'll start with a bath, so you're clean and comfortable. This isn't meant to shame you, and it isn't meant to hurt you. Trust me. Lindsay trusts me. Do you trust Lindsay?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Good. Then trust me.”

  She followed him naked up the stairs to the main floor, and then through the house with all the glass walls. Her gaze darted to each wall in turn, looking outside, searching for anyone who could see her, but they were far from the prying eyes of others.

  She followed him up the stairs to the second floor, through his room, and into an enormous attached master bathroom. The master bathroom also had the gray granite floors and the mottled glass walls to afford privacy from the rest of the house.

  “Sit,” he said, indicating the wide edge of the tub. It was practically a bench.

  Shannon sat while he filled the tub with water.

  “Don't move. I'll be right back.”

  While he was gone, She watched the tub fill up and wrapped her arms around herself. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't curious about the things he offered. She knew the other girls at the house had done it with some of the trainers and some of the buyers insisted on it. Shannon's training just hadn't gotten that far.

  And when she'd first agreed to go to the house she hadn't realized anal was part of the training package. Not only had she not gotten that far in the training, but Lindsay didn't seem especially into it. He had never asked for it or drifted in that direction.