by Kitty Thomas
Anton knew if he asked for clarification about who the witch was, Brian wouldn’t tell him. It was something from the past. If Anton acknowledged it or asked any questions, Brian would just shut down.
“Lindsay said you can’t just go off the drugs. You have to wean,” Anton said reasonably.
“NO!”
“But the withdrawals...”
“I don’t give a good goddamn about the withdrawals! I can’t have that poison in my system. You can’t trust me with it. I can’t trust me with it. I have to be in control. Do you understand? I’m not in control. I’m so fucking tired. I have to sleep.” Brian got off the treadmill and started for the door.
“What about Annette?”
“What about her?”
“Gabe said she had some kind of breakdown. Lots of screaming.”
“That was her? I thought it was inside my head. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I have gaps in my head. I have to sleep.” He left without another word.
Anton would have to make sure Lindsay monitored Brian during the withdrawal. And he had to be kept away from all the girls until he was safe. Brian was dangerous under the best circumstances; still, maybe he was right about the drugs. There was a difference in dangerous and out of control. Brian was always dangerous. Adding out of control on top of that was a recipe for disaster.
Finally Anton went down to the dungeons. Annette was locked in cell B. When he opened the door he found her crouched in a corner looking wild with blood on her hands.
“Are you hurt?”
“GET OUT!” She picked up a paddle from the ground beside her and threw it at him.
Anton jumped out of the way just in time.
“Did he hurt you?”
Annette glared at him. “He sliced. She screamed. He sliced. She screamed. Blood everywhere.” Then Annette started to scream.
Anton left the cell and locked the door and went in search of Lindsay. He needed more information, and he knew he wasn’t going to get it from her in that state. He found the shrink in his office.
“Tell me what you know about what happened with Annette.”
“The short version?”
“I don’t care which version.”
“She led a riot. That’s why all the girls are locked in their rooms. Punishments will be forthcoming for all of them. You can mete out whatever punishment you feel necessary to your girl.”
“She’s got blood on her hands, and she’s screaming like a mental patient.” He wasn’t sure punishment was the sanest course.
Lindsay nodded. “She was very upset by what happened to Shannon. Apparently, Brian did what he did while she was outside the door pounding on it and screaming at him. Then he stormed out of the room, and she went to Shannon. Brian came to me, said he did a bad thing, but wouldn’t elaborate. I found Annette downstairs trying to stop the blood. I would have cleaned her up after I took care of Shannon, but she wouldn’t let me. I injected her with a mild sedative instead, and she took a nap. It must have worn off.”
Anton was confused. “You and Gabe both said she threw things here on the main floor and broke a bunch of stuff. When exactly did that happen?”
“When I was stitching Shannon up in the medical room. That’s when I heard the screaming and smashing. From what I’m told, the other girls joined in. A case of monkey see monkey do, I’d imagine.”
“Is she crazy? I mean… is she broken?”
“She’s very upset. She watched a friend get tortured by a psychopath, so what do you think?” Lindsay made some notes on one of his patient files.
“But will she be okay?”
“I think so. I can prescribe something...”
Anton shook his head. It seemed drugs were the source of Brian’s flip-out; he didn’t want to take the same risks with Annette. “No, we’ll work through it.”
The doctor shrugged and went back to his paperwork.
Anton went back to the dungeon and unlocked the door. “Come with me.”
She seemed slightly more lucid now, but she still glared at him and didn’t make a move to obey. He also noticed she hadn’t addressed him.
Anton wasn’t exactly sure why she was mad at him. Shouldn’t she be mad at Brian? Maybe she was mad at everyone, the whole situation. They’d had weeks of progress. Everything had been damn near perfect with her. Of course there would be an incident.
They all acted out. All subs acted out. Eventually. You could practically set your watch to it. But somehow Anton had thought Annette would be the exception. She wasn’t. Not that he could entirely blame her. It was reasonable to freak out in this situation. He really hated that he had to punish her. What if he broke her beyond repair?
No, it had to be done. She needed to know that good behavior carried rewards and bad behavior carried punishment. He’d had enough subs to know that the worst thing he could do right now is let this go. It would only introduce instability and uncertainty. Once a sub had been in a cage for a while, she craved those bars. She needed them to feel safe. She sought the reinforcement of boundaries. She tested the strength of them.
Anton was sure that what she’d witnessed had been traumatic. At the same time, he also thought it was a perfect excuse to act out. He wondered if perhaps something inside her hadn’t been screaming and clawing to get out, to rebel, to scream and smash things for a long time now—even if it was all subconscious. This was a good excuse to let it out.
What she needed right now was the bars to close back around her and to know there was stability here. If there weren’t firm consequences, she couldn’t settle back into the routine, and they couldn’t move forward.
“Brian had a bad reaction to some medication. He acknowledges he was out of control. He flushed the pills.”
“He killed her,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
Oh, God. She’d just assumed. Of course she hadn’t seen, and Lindsay probably hadn’t explained anything before sedating her. He wouldn’t have been able to reason with her or explain with her being so out of control.
“Shannon is fine. The doctor stitched her up.”
“S-she’s okay?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
She got up off the ground and went to him, her expression wary like a beaten dog.
“Did he hurt you?” Anton asked again.
“No.”
Still no address. This was going to be a long evening.
Anton led her up to his room and to the bathroom. “Strip,” he said.
She just stood and stared at him. He let out a sigh but proceeded to take his own clothes off.
“Let me put it to you another way. Get in the shower with me, or I’ll take you to Brian.” He got in under the spray and closed the glass door before he could see her expression. He didn’t want to see the terror there.
He would never give her to Brian for any reason, but she didn’t know that. And at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to make direct threats. He just needed her to get in the water with him so he could get her cleaned up and get this punishment over with.
A few moments later, Annette got in the shower. She turned away and faced the wall just letting the water fall on her.
***
Annette flinched when she felt his hands on her. And then she inwardly cringed at how much she still wanted them there. She stared at the bottom of the shower while Shannon’s blood mingled with the water, turning it pink. She tried desperately not to let her body react to him. The scent of him, the strength of him. His voice.
He’d just threatened to send her to Brian for God’s sake. Even knowing what he was capable of! Anton was just as bad. Just because he wasn’t explicitly insane didn’t make him better. How could she ever trust him if there was even the possibility that he’d let Brian hurt her?
This was the moment she began plotting her escape. She would find a way to get both her and her sister to safety, and she would be done with all of this. The tears ran down her face as she thought about Shannon.
Those horrifying screams. Annette hadn’t been able to leave her, but she couldn’t stand those screams. So she’d started screaming to drown it out or to stop Brian. Anything. She’d screamed so much that she’d fallen into a sort of madness. She’d been dimly afraid Brian would open the door and drag her into the cell with Shannon, but she hadn’t been able to stop screaming.
When he was finally done with her, and he’d flung open the door, Annette had rushed in. Shannon had been so pale. There was so much blood. She was sure she was dead already. She’d used her hands to try to keep the blood from spilling out. She vaguely remembered Lindsay coming down and taking her away.
She’d run after him, but he’d locked the door of the medical room. And Annette had kept screaming. Things she hadn’t known were inside her had come out in one long primal expulsion of sound and fury and frenetic energy pouring out of her as she turned over tables and threw chairs.
Other things were being thrown, not by her. It must have been the other girls. Annette couldn’t be bothered because she’d just wanted to hear glass shatter. She’d raced into the kitchen and just started flinging plates and cups and saucers and anything and everything that would make that nice satisfying shattering shriek against floors and counters and walls.
Finally, Gabe had gotten to her, he’d held her firm, and then Lindsay was there with a needle, and everything went dark. She’d woken in the dungeon as the key was turning in the lock. At first she’d though it was Brian, but it was Anton.
All at once, anger boiled over at him, and she’d started to scream again.
Now, standing in the shower with his hands running over her, she slowly became aware that everything she’d done this afternoon was very, very bad. There was no way Anton would let it go.
She bit back a moan as he massaged shampoo into her scalp.
“Rinse,” he said, barely restrained anger in his voice.
She moved under the spray to rinse the soap suds out.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lack of respect and proper address. It’s going on the list of things you’re being punished for.”
Annette laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was a dark, hard-edged, cynical laugh. It was the kind of laugh nightmares are made of. If only she were the nightmare instead of the dreamer. If only she had the power. Breaking everything in her path had felt like power for one brief shining moment. She’d acted. In that moment, no rational thought had been able to penetrate. She’d been sure Shannon was dead, and she just didn’t care about anything anymore.
Of course she cared for Janette, but her sister seemed so distant and unreal. So far away from this world and all its horrors. So far from the twin and opposite dangers of Brian and Anton.
“The list of things I’m being punished for,” she said bitterly. “What was the appropriate response to what he did?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Yeah? Well, I think it’s the point.”
He shut off the water. “Get out.”
When he said it, quietly, calmly, it was so much more threatening than when she’d screamed those same words at him down in the dungeon.
She got out and stood dripping on the tile while Anton got towels and wrapped one around her.
“Don’t just stand there. Dry off.”
He left her alone in the bathroom. She dried off and tossed the towel on the counter. A few minutes later, he was back in jeans and a black t-shirt.
“Why isn’t your collar on?”
She wanted to lash out at him, but he was so fucking beautiful. And the way he looked at her… he had never looked at her with this level of scary intensity before. It was terrifying. It was the kind of look she’d never wanted to see directed at her, and yet, even so, it excited her in fucked-up ways it should not have had the power to excite her.
She put the collar on.
He attached the chain and led her out of the room.
“But… I’m naked. You said...”
“All the girls but Shannon are on lock down. Food is being delivered to their rooms, and they won’t be let out until morning. Let’s go.”
She kept her eyes down as he led her down the hallway past guards and trainers then to the main level of the house. He didn’t take her to the dungeons like she’d expected. Even he must have known how wrong it would be to punish her there after everything that had happened today.
Instead, he took her to one of the play rooms on the first floor. They weren’t supposed to be used for punishment, but he was obviously making an exception. Anton locked the door and flipped on the light switch. This particular room wasn’t much different from the dungeons except the equipment and furniture were a little nicer. And the room was brighter with a soft red wallpaper that had an intricate black lace design overlaid on top of it.
In the middle of the room and against one wall was the sex furniture. Against another wall were boxes of toys, and hanging on hooks above that were black leather paddles, whips, riding crops, all the various implements she’d come to know over the past weeks. But she’d come to know them mostly in play. He rarely punished her.
An anger began to boil inside her. How could he punish her after what she’d been through? After what Brian did? Did he really think this was okay?
She may as well have spoken those words out loud because from the expression on Anton’s face, he’d learned to read her mind. Or at least her facial expressions.
“I’m not sure what would be a strong enough punishment for the things you did today. Do you know you caused thousands of dollars in property damage? You caused disorder and chaos with the other girls. And you were a terrible example. You’re supposed to be the example they follow. And today they followed it. What should I do to punish you? What would be good enough? What would be a strong enough deterrent?”
Annette shrugged.
He led her over to a sturdy metal pole that connected at both the floor and the ceiling. A hook came out from the pole a little bit above her head. Anton quietly tied her wrists together with soft rope.
“Stand with your back against the pole.”
She did as he asked, and he stretched her arms over her head and looped the rope over the hook. “It’ll give you a little slack and take some of the tension off your arms. You’ll need it. You’ll be here a while.”
He left her legs free. Then he blindfolded her.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He left her there, tied to the pole, naked, blindfolded, worrying that anyone could come in, worrying that Brian could come in. Technically, if she stood up on her toes and stretched her arms high over her head, she could get the rope off the hook and free herself, but she didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she did that.
It felt like a lifetime passed before the door opened again. When it did, she tensed as she heard more than just Anton’s footsteps. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them. All around her.
She hoped Brian wasn’t among them, but if she had to guess, at least the other trainers and partners were. Maybe the guards.
“I’m told you were completely out of control today,” Anton said. “So I don’t see what good a standard punishment will do you except just causing you pain. I’m not sure it would be a strong enough deterrent since you’ve had painful punishments before, and yet today you did this.”
A cold flat blade pressed against her collarbone. Then it was slowly, lightly dragged down her torso and over her belly. Annette could barely breathe. Why the fuck would he do this to her? Why would he bring out a knife after what happened today with Shannon?
“M-master please, I’m sorry.”
“Are you, pet? Shouldn’t you have behaved in a way where you wouldn’t have to be sorry? I can understand the screaming and freaking out. What I refuse to understand is all the property you damaged. Maybe my property ought to get a little damaged. What do you think, kiska?”
She felt her lip start to tremble as tears slid down her face.
What she thought was that she wanted to be far away from him forever. But she wasn’t stupid enough to say those words out loud.
“Now. Here is how this will go. I’m going to pass the knife around, and each of the guys gets to determine based on your apologies and your behavior whether or not he wants to leave a mark on you. You might be able to bargain with some of them.”
“Is Brian here?” she asked.
“Brian’s asleep. It’s all of us but him.”
She couldn’t believe Gabe would participate in this.
“Gabe, you go first,” Anton said.
Someone lifted the rope off the hook and spun her around so that she was facing the pole, then hooked her back up.
“Convince me you’re sorry,” Gabe said.
“Please, Sir, I’m sorry.” Already she was crying.
“How sorry?”
She felt the tip of the blade skate lightly over her back. Okay, if Gabe was participating in this, it had to be just to scare her. He wasn’t like the others. He wouldn’t do this. And the shrink; would he do it? He had to know how dangerous it was. He’d seen how upset she’d been.
“Annette?” Gabe prodded.
She wanted to believe she was right, but could she really afford to be wrong?
“Very. P-please, I swear I won’t do it again.”
“Won’t do what again?”
“Break things.”
Glass shattered on the ground near her, and she jumped.
“Things like that?” Gabe asked.
“Y-yes.”
He ran his free hand along her side and up over one of her breasts then he leaned in close to her ear. “I think we need to mark you. It’s only fair. Some property damage for some property damage.”
No, this wasn’t Gabe. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t cut her. How could she have been this wrong about him?
He stepped back from her and then there was a sharp slice in the air and a cane landed a hard blow across her ass. She shrieked at the searing pain. But the tears that flowed down her cheeks were tears of relief that it wasn’t the knife.
