by Stella Hart
“That’s exactly what you’re doing. Trying to program mindless sex slaves.”
Elias suddenly pushed me up against the wall, his hands above my shoulders. His breath was hot against the shell of my ear, sending unwanted tingles down my spine. “Mindless? That’s what you think I want?” Another cruel laugh. “You stupid little slut. You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. I want you completely lucid and aware of everything I do to you. I want you to know exactly what’s happening when I force you to your knees and choke you with my cock. I want you to know exactly what I’m doing when I fuck you and punish you. Mindless is the last thing I want you to be.”
The elevator door opened, and he dragged me out, pulling me down the artificially-lit hallway toward my cell. I didn’t struggle. As much as I hated the tiny room, I craved it, because it was the closest thing I had to a home now, as messed up as that sounded.
Elias swiped a keycard in the door, then shoved me into the room. “Goodnight, little whore.”
“I hate you,” was all I had to offer in response.
“Good. I want you to hate me as much as I hate you.” He smiled at me, but there was no mirth or kindness in that smile. It was reptilian, evil. Strangely sexy.
I hated how hot he was, hated myself for noticing and physically responding. It’s just the drugs, I told myself. They were dulling all sense of reason and rationality as they coursed through my veins. Any tingling, heated response I had to this man was induced by that. It wasn’t real.
Was it?
He turned away. I reached out and tentatively touched his shoulder before springing back in case he turned and slapped me like his father seemed so fond of doing. “Wait,” I said in a ragged whisper, forcing my twisted attraction to him aside. “Just tell me… what’s going to happen to me?”
“I already told you,” he said, his upper lip curling in disdain. “You’re going to be punished for the things you’ve done.”
I shrank back. “By who? Just you?”
“Yes. You’re mine now. I own you.”
I swallowed and shook my head. “No. You’ll never own me. No one will.”
His eyes glittered with malice. “We’ll see about that,” he said, his voice soft and deadly. “You’ll be begging to obey me soon.”
“No. You can never truly own something that hates you,” I said softly.
He smiled again, as if I’d just told a hilarious joke. “Like I said,” he began, words laced with cold finality. “We’ll see about that….”
11
Tatum
Another week passed. My brand was healing nicely. I was kept in my cell for the most part, with a few changes. I was allowed out for an hour every day to exercise in a gym on the mansion’s first floor. After that I was allowed to take a shower, brush my teeth, change the gauze padding on my brand, get into fresh clothing and, if so desired, put on some makeup.
I did not desire that. I ignored all the powders and perfumes and potions. If I was going to be kept here with Elias as my new ‘master’, whatever the hell that even meant to these people, I didn’t want to look pretty for him. I wanted to look as plain and unappealing as possible. Perhaps then he’d leave me alone and stop making threats about jamming his cock down my throat till I choked.
So far, touch wood, there had only been threats. I was beginning to wonder if this was part of the mental torture he had in mind to break me down, as if I would become so starved of human touch and affection that I might beg him to strip me naked and fuck me. After all, he had made a comment the other night about me begging for him. Soon. So obviously, he thought I would actually do that.
He was in for a nasty surprise. I would never do that. Never.
My feet were currently pounding away at the treadmill in the gym. Sweat dripped over my forehead. I ignored the dampness and took in a deep breath, relishing the stimulation and exercise. It wasn’t about making my body look fit and sexy for Elias, of course, which was supposedly the official purpose of these gym trips. I used to go jogging every day, so being allowed to do this brought back some normalcy to my life. As much as that were possible in this scenario, anyway.
The other girls at the Finishing School were allowed to train in the gym at the same time as me, but we were never allowed to speak to each other. Hulking guards in black were positioned around the room to make sure we followed this rule. However, they weren’t always able to hear the whispers and hushed murmurs between girls on adjacent exercise machines. Because of this, I was occasionally able to catch a few pieces of information about the other girls.
There were twenty of us, and it seemed most of us had been taken at various stages from various places. Most of us weren’t considered missing, according to things we’d been told upon arrival. Crown and Dagger had made sure of that.
One girl had been here for six weeks already (the society had spread a rumor around her hometown that she was involved with a drug dealer, so no one was all that surprised when she vanished) and the last girl to arrive just a week and a half ago was a tanned blonde all the way from Kansas. Because she was still so new, she spent most of her time crying hysterically.
I didn’t cry anymore. There was no point.
Using my peripheral vision, I saw a petite girl with black hair get on the treadmill next to me and start it up. It was Pri, the other Roden girl. She’d been across the gym doing some free weight exercises until now, and her caramel-brown skin glowed with a sweaty golden tinge in the morning light streaming through the window.
“Hi,” I murmured. “Pri, right?”
“Yeah,” she whispered back, beginning her jog at a steady pace. “I think I know you.”
“I’m Tatum. We were at the same college.”
“I must’ve seen you somewhere there,” she whispered. “Did you live in Bamford?”
“Yup.”
“That’s it, then. My best friend was in the same residence as you. I must’ve seen you around there.”
I nodded and wiped my brow, keeping my eyes ahead. If the guards saw us looking at each other, they might get suspicious, and I’d seen a girl get a black eye the other day for daring to say ‘good morning’ to another girl when she walked in.
“So how did you end up here?” Pri asked.
“I’m still not sure. They say my parents sold me here, but I don’t know if they’re telling the truth,” I muttered.
“Me too. Apparently I’m back in New Zealand, if anyone from Roden asks. And if anyone from New Zealand wonders where I am, my parents will tell them I’m still in the States.” She sighed dejectedly.
“I’m backpacking around Europe,” I said with a wry smile.
“Lucky you.” She let out a short, angry breath. “Do you sometimes pretend that you really are?”
I nodded briefly. “Yeah. I have to imagine all sorts of stuff to pass the time here.”
“Same.” There was a brief pause. Then she lowered her voice even further. “Do you know what they’re going to do with us?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I’d made a few educated guesses. This place was obviously a training ground for sex slaves, but I had no idea where we would be sent afterwards or when the official training would even begin.
I said as much to Pri in a low, halting whisper. Her sorrowful eyes dropped to the black conveyor belt under her feet. “That’s what I figured,” she said softly.
“Who have they assigned you to?” I asked.
Her brows knitted. “What do you mean?”
“They told me Elias King is my ‘master’. Apparently I’ve been sold to him specifically.”
Her face was still etched with confusion. “They didn’t tell me anything like that. I guess that means I could be given to anyone once they finish training us. Whatever that even means.”
I wondered why I’d already been assigned to a man when she hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t heard any of the other girls talk about being given to anyone in particular either. Why was I different?
We
settled into a grim silence. When my damp hair lay like a second skin over my cheeks and I felt like I’d been caught in a sudden storm, I turned the treadmill off and stepped away from it, whispering a brief ‘see you’ to Pri.
I told one of the guards I was done, and he nodded and led me into the communal bathroom. Before stepping into one of the showers, I looked at myself in the mirror, gawking at my sweaty form. The young woman who faced me wasn’t familiar. As much as I’d tried to keep my head straight and my resolve intact, I looked like a stranger with the bruised look of a victim. My skin was pale, my eyes had dark circles under them and a defeated expression within them, and my shoulders seemed permanently slouched in acceptance of my fate.
No. I couldn’t accept this. I couldn’t let them continue to break me down mentally, forcing me to believe I belonged here. I didn’t. No one did.
I turned my back on the strange woman in the mirror and stepped into the shower.
Elias came to my cell later that day. He had a black bag in one hand and a long tool in the other. I recognized it immediately. A cattle prod.
I gulped and sat up on the bed. “What are you doing here?”
He stalked over to me, then held the cattle prod out to my abdomen and flicked a button. A painful zap shocked me, and my body jolted so far backward that I nearly fell off the bed.
“From now on, you don’t speak unless spoken to. Got it?” Elias said, a cruel smirk playing on his face. “And when you do, you address me as Master. There will be other rules, but we’ll go through them later.”
“You can’t be serious.”
He zapped me again, and I yelped. He brandished the prod threateningly in the air. “You want more?” he asked. Amusement and malice glittered in his eyes. He enjoyed hurting me. “Or should I take you out, string you up and whip you instead?”
I swallowed hard and shook my head, biting back any words of protest. It wasn’t the worst pain in the world. Being whipped would be far worse. I knew when to pick my battles, and this wasn’t the time. I would only get myself badly hurt.
“So,” he went on, putting down the prod and opening the bag. I half expected him to pull out some sort of medieval torture device, but instead he pulled a notebook and pen out and threw them on the bed. “This is for you. I know you were a journalism major. You love writing.”
“You’re letting me write something?” I asked, my heart leaping. That would be an incredible luxury. I’d be able to pass the long, mind-numbing hours in this cell by jotting down all sorts of things—my thoughts, feelings, even fictional worlds I created in my imagination just to amuse myself.
Elias picked up the prod and held it toward me again. I skittered backward. “What did I just tell you?” he said, eyes narrowed coldly.
“Um. I mean, are you letting me write something… Master?” I said, venom practically dripping off my tongue as I said the final word. There was no way I would ever accept him as my master, but if it meant I wouldn’t get shocked with the cattle prod or whipped half to death, I would say it just to protect myself.
“Sort of,” Elias replied, amusement flickering in his eyes again. “Last night, I called you ‘doll’, and afterwards, I realized how much I enjoyed that. So I’ve decided. That’s your new name. Doll. Because you are nothing but a fuck-doll. A toy for me to play with. And now, I want you to write lines to that effect.”
I gaped at him. My new name? Did he seriously think he could strip me of my identity as well as my dignity?
“I can tell by your face that you aren’t pleased with your new name, Doll,” Elias said. “But you need to realize: things have changed for you, permanently. It’s what you signed up for. If you refuse to accept this and continually displease me, I can do any number of things to punish that behavior. I can hurt you, I can take away your food, and I can prevent you from sleeping. I can even sell you to a far worse master. You don’t want that, do you?”
I shook my head, tears springing to my eyes. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry, and just this morning I’d been musing on the utter pointlessness of showing emotion in this place. But at the mention of being sold to someone even worse, I couldn’t help it.
Elias pointed to the notebook and pen. “I want this written five hundred times. My name is Doll. I belong to Elias King. Got it?”
“Five hundred times?” I said, my eyes widening. I knew I’d forgotten to call him ‘Master’, but I was too shocked to notice at first. It was bad enough that he wanted me to write lines like a misbehaving schoolgirl from the 1950’s, but five hundred times? My hand would fall off. “Master,” I finally added in a reluctant mutter.
“Yes. After you’ve done that, you might be more willing to accept your new place in life. Begin.”
Asshole.
My hands shook as I picked up the notebook and pen. This would take hours. If I took an estimated thirty seconds to write the two short sentences, that was still only a hundred and twenty per hour. Writing five hundred of them would take well over four hours, and that wasn’t including any breaks I had to take to rest my hand.
“I’m not completely sadistic,” Elias said. “If you finish without any issues, you will be rewarded.”
“How?” I asked, glancing up.
He let it slide that I’d once again forgotten to call him Master. Or maybe I would be punished for it later. That seemed far more likely.
“You’ll see. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
He left the room. I let out a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t have him breathing down my neck as I faced the arduous task ahead of me.
I kept myself as detached as possible as I wrote down the horrible sentences. My name is Doll. I belong to Elias King.
After the first hour, my hand began to cramp, but I kept going, intent on finishing before the words imprinted themselves on my mind. The more they did, and the more degraded and humiliated I felt, the more likely it was that I would begin to believe the words were true.
I’d seen movies about Stockholm syndrome before, and I knew it affected people even if they tried their hardest to stop it from happening. It was a survival technique, a coping mechanism. If it happened to me, there wasn’t much I could do to stop it. I just had to hope writing these lines wasn’t the first step in that direction for me.
With every line saying ‘My name is Doll’ I thought to myself ‘My name is Tatum Marris’, and with every line saying ‘I belong to Elias King’ I thought ‘I belong only to myself’. It helped me remember that the mind-numbing mental torture was just that—mental. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t tangible. It was all in my head, which Elias couldn’t actually see. He could only presume the damage it was doing to my emotional state. So as long as I chose to believe I was still my own person, he could never take that away from me. I could let him think he had, let him think he’d won, but deep in my mind, I would never be his.
He returned somewhere around dinnertime with another bag and a tray of food. This time it wasn’t the bland slop or plain old salad they usually gave me. It was a divine-smelling bowl of duck and mushroom risotto with truffle oil. I’d always loved risotto, and I wondered if Elias knew that or if this meal was just a coincidence.
“As promised, your reward. A real dinner,” he said, placing the tray on the end of my bed. “Are you going to thank me, Doll?”
“Thank you, Master,” I murmured. Go fuck yourself, Master.
He picked up my notebook and began to leaf through it. As he did so, I dug into the risotto, wolfing mouthfuls down as fast as possible, like it would vanish from under me if I paused for even a second.
“What’s this?” Elias frowned and threw the notebook at me. The tray was yanked away from me a second later.
I stared at the food longingly. I hadn’t even been halfway through it. Then my eyes fell to the notebook page Elias had directed my attention to.
My heart sank. At some stage, my brain must’ve gotten mixed up between my assigned lines and conflicting thoughts. I’d written ‘My name
is Tatum Marris. I belong only to myself’ several times.
I looked up at Elias, my eyes wide and my hands shaking. “I didn’t mean to,” I said frantically, terrified that he would tie me up and whip me like he promised earlier. “Please, Master.”
I hoped the use of his preferred title would placate him, but he glared and leaned down, strong fingertips digging into my shoulders as his face hovered only inches from mine. “I guess we’ll have to try it another way, Doll. I had a feeling this might happen.”
He reached into the new bag and pulled out something that looked like skimpy women’s underwear. “Strip, then put these on,” he commanded.
I stood up and did as he said, shame creeping over my cheeks in a hot blush as I removed my clothes and stepped into the black panties. I didn’t want him to see me like this, but I desperately wanted to avoid punishment.
His eyes glimmered with arousal as they roamed over my body, settling on my breasts. My nipples were hard. “Good girl. It really is a shame something so beautiful can be so ugly beneath the surface,” he murmured. Then he pulled something else out of the bag and clicked a button on it.
A breathy moan ripped through me as the underwear began to vibrate. Within seconds, I was too aroused to function, my clit throbbing and my core pulsing.
Elias turned it off. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
Against my better judgment, I nodded.
He smirked. “Read the words you’ve written there,” he said, pointing to a line on the notebook. The cattle prod from earlier was back in his hand, along with the remote controller for the panties.
“My name is Tatum Marris. I belong only to myself—ow!” I screamed and fell against the bed as he zapped me with the prod. He must’ve turned the voltage up, because that one hurt far more than the others. I felt it in every inch of my body, every muscle aching and cramping.
“Now read this line.”
“My name is Doll. I belong to Elias King… oh….” I let out another breathy groan as he switched the vibrating panties back on, wishing I wasn’t so physically pliable. I didn’t want him to know how much it turned me on, how amazing it felt, but it was impossible to keep inside.
