Blinking back tears, she focused once more on the room beyond the two-way mirror, surprised to see it had emptied, except for Dawn, who sat at the bar, a tall, iced drink in front of her as she tapped something onto her smart phone.
“The men have made their choices already,” Alex said. “You were rather”—he paused, lifting his eyebrows, his lips curving into a cruel smile—“occupied.”
Mara thought about the men and women, now presumably paired off, save for Harvey, who chose two. “Please,” she dared, both terrified and desperate to know. “What happened to Sam? Where is she?”
Alex frowned. “Sam is no longer on the island. Occasionally we get a girl who refuses to obey, to learn, to adapt, despite my giving them every opportunity to correct their behavior. Sam was such a girl.” His expression darkened. “She was damaged goods and had to be disposed of.”
Mara’s gut clenched into a hard ball, her skin suddenly clammy, her heart skipping in an irregular beat. “What did you do to her?” she whispered, fearing the worst.
“She was sold,” Alex said brusquely. “You will not speak of Sam again, not to me or anyone else. She is a closed subject.” He flicked the wall switch, turning the glass back to mirror. Placing his hands on the back of the bondage chair, he used his foot to release the wheel brakes. Swiveling the chair, he pushed Mara along the floor toward the opposite mirrored wall, settling her in front of it.
“We put Lucas in the Gold Room. He is, of course, unaware he is being observed. The sen—uh, Lucas always chooses Joanie. Joanie is an excellent and obedient submissive. You would do well to emulate her.”
Alex touched the wall switch and the lights dimmed once more, the mirror turning to clear glass. The room looked like any luxury hotel suite, complete with a king-size bed, a huge flat-screen TV, a long, shiny mahogany bureau-desk combination, and sliding glass doors beyond through which the sand and ocean beckoned like a distant, impossible dream. It didn’t seem right, somehow, that the sun was shining outside, when Mara was caught in this bizarre, terrifying nightmare.
Lucas sat on the bed, Joanie kneeling in front of him, the two of them in profile to the two-way mirror. Joanie was naked, the lacy dress she’d worn in a heap on the floor beside her. She was in the process of removing one of the man’s black cowboy boots. The other boot was already off, as was his shirt. Probably in his late forties, Lucas was still broad-shouldered, his chest covered in auburn curls graced with silver.
When the second boot was off, Lucas stood and yanked open the fly of his pressed jeans. He pushed them, along with his boxer shorts, to his knees and sat back on the bed. Joanie carefully removed the jeans and underwear, a serene, if vacant, smile on her face.
Standing once more, his cock at full attention, Lucas grabbed the back of Joanie’s head and pulled her roughly forward. He rammed his cock into her mouth, his fingers tangled in a tight grip of her dark hair as he thrust forward.
Joanie made choking sounds at first as Lucas thrust and grunted. Eventually she quieted, the only evidence of her discomfort the clench of her hands behind her back.
“Watch,” Alex instructed. “Imagine yourself in Joanie’s position.”
Mara didn’t want to imagine herself there, as Lucas jerked in a sudden thrust and threw back his head, the tendons taut on his reddening neck. “Yeah,” he groaned. He let go of Joanie’s hair and stepped back, his shaft shiny with saliva.
“That’s the ticket,” Lucas said with a satisfied grin, stroking his flagging penis as he stared down at the silent, kneeling girl. “Now I can concentrate.” Stepping around Joanie, he walked toward the mahogany counter and, bending down, opened a small refrigerator in one of the cabinets beneath it and retrieved a can of beer. He popped the top and took a long swig.
Joanie, meanwhile, hadn’t moved from where she knelt, her hands still behind her back, her head bowed.
Lucas reached for something on the bureau, and when he turned to face the room, he held a thick-handled whip, the tail a long, cruel coil of leather.
“Oh my god,” Mara blurted, without meaning to speak.
Behind her, Alex chuckled. “Lucas does love his toys.”
Lucas uncoiled the whip and ran his hand along the tail as he lifted it to his nose, inhaling the scent of the leather as if it were a fine wine or a bouquet of flowers. “I’ve been waiting all month for this,” he said in a voice hoarse with lust. He snapped his wrist and the whip cracked like thunder.
Joanie jerked her head up at the sound. Mara could see the fear in Joanie’s face, the serene smile wiped away. A shot of pure adrenaline gushed through Mara’s veins, as if she could somehow break free of her metal binds and leap through the glass to save Joanie.
Mara tried to twist back to meet Alex’s eye. “Please,” Mara dared. “You aren’t going to let him whip her with that thing, are you?”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said calmly, “Lucas knows his way around a bullwhip.”
“Stand up,” Lucas said as he approached Joanie. “Hands behind your head, legs shoulder-width apart. You know the drill.”
Joanie rose gracefully from her knees. Mara’s heart ached for the girl, who was trembling as she lifted her arms and laced her fingers behind her head.
“Practice your breathing,” Alex murmured. “Open yourself to the pain. You know what to do. Breathe. Breathe.”
Mara realized he was speaking to Joanie, though of course she couldn’t hear him. But somehow his words reached her, or at least the memory of his lessons, because Joanie drew in a deep breath, her high breasts rising as her lungs filled with air. After a moment she let it slowly out.
“Good girl,” Alex whispered, adding in a louder voice to Mara, “Breath control is key in handling erotic pain. You’ll see.”
No! I don’t want to see! Mara bit her lip to keep from screaming her protest. She watched as Joanie repeated the breathing exercise several times while Lucas danced around her, snapping the whip in the air. Mara, safe on the other side of the glass, flinched with each sonic crack, while Joanie showed no reaction.
“Let’s see how many you can take this time, baby,” Lucas said to the slender, naked woman who stood waiting in mute anticipation of his lash. The man’s eyes glittered with wolfish lust, his cock once more fully erect.
Lucas stepped back and to the side just behind Joanie. His wrist snapped and the whip coiled and struck her ass with a sharp crack of leather against flesh. Mara yelped, while Joanie remained stoically silent. The dildos still embedded inside Mara suddenly hummed back to life, stimulating her already sensitized sex.
Alex reached over her shoulders from behind. He rolled and teased her tender nipples until they stiffened and engorged beneath his touch. The whip snapped again in the other room, each lick of leather leaving a small, dark red welt on Joanie’s ass.
Alex continued to fondle Mara’s breasts as Lucas whipped the naked girl he’d purchased for the day. Alex’s voice was low and sensual, his lips brushing Mara’s skin as he spoke quietly into her ear. “Keep your eyes open. Watch what is happening. Don’t close your eyes; don’t hide from the experience. In spite of what you may think, Joanie can derive pleasure from what’s happening to her right now. It’s all in how you perceive the experience. All our rubies are submissive, or at the very least, sexual masochists. They may not have known it before I teased it from their psyches, but I can always tell. I can find the seed of pleasure in their suffering, and I can nurture it and make it grow. Like you, Joanie resisted at first. But once I broke down her reserves, she gave herself completely to my training. I sense the same potential in you, Mara. You understand the power of erotic suffering, maybe not yet with your mind, but with your body.”
He gave her still-tender nipples a sudden, savage twist. Mara cried out at the unexpected pain. At the same time, the dildos whirred inside her, the vibration pulsing through her vulva in a rush of pleasure. Her nipples still caught in his grip, Alex lightly bit her earlobe.
Joanie had begun panting. She was
dancing lightly on her toes and jerking each time the whip met its mark on her ass or her thighs. When the leather struck between her shoulder blades, Joanie screamed. Mara gasped in horror as a line of blood rolled down Joanie’s back.
The whip struck again and again, each stroke on Joanie’s narrow back creating a dark welt, several of them beading with droplets of bright red blood that formed shiny stripes as they trickled along her skin.
Finally, Joanie dropped to her knees. She was crying softly. Lucas flung the whip aside and crouched behind her on the floor. He fell upon her like a rabid dog, his face twisted in a snarl, his eyes wild. He entered her from behind with a feral cry. Despite Alex’s admonition, Mara closed her eyes in shocked disgust as Lucas leaned over Joanie’s back, his long tongue snaking out to lick a trail of her blood.
The steady thrum in Mara’s ass and pussy intensified. Alex, still behind her, stroked her breasts and let his hands move in sensual circles down her body. Though Mara’s mind rebelled, her over-stimulated, hyper-sensitized nerve endings reacted. She was overwhelmed with emotion and exhausted from all that had happened. When Alex reached down and cupped her mons, his palm moving in a slow, sensual circle over her throbbing clit, she gave in to the sensations, every defense breached.
“You will learn, Mara, to come from the pleasure, to come from the pain, to give yourself at my command. You will exist to serve and to please. Begin now, Mara. Do as I command. Surrender yourself. Come for me.”
Against her will, hating both Alex and herself, Mara did.
Mara jogged along the beach beside Raeanne, the other girls in pairs behind them, Curtis driving alongside in a golf cart, blowing his whistle whenever their pace flagged. Though Mara was allowed now to wear clothing at certain times of the day, the girls were required to jog naked in order to make sure they didn’t get any tan lines, Dawn had explained. They were slathered in a light sunscreen each morning as part of their grooming regimen, but Mara’s skin had still darkened to a rosy tan during the several hours a day she spent outside.
As threatened, Wallace, DJ and Dr. Morgan had all used her sexually, Wallace and the doctor one time so far, DJ twice. While each encounter was as disgusting and violating as the first time, at least none of them hurt her—not the way Alex did.
In the eight days since she had been abducted, he had subjected her daily to a barrage of erotic pleasure and pain that left her exhausted, terrified and, though she hated to admit it, sometimes deeply aroused. It wasn’t that she craved the bite of the lash or the sting of his hard hand, though Alex continued to insist it was only a matter of time and training before she begged for what he offered.
She was as scared as ever of the electro-shock, the bucket of saltwater, the blindfold that prevented her from anticipating the hot sear of melted wax, the total restraint of rope and chains, the sharp point of a knife’s blade that sometimes drew blood if she failed to remain perfectly still during an exercise.
But along with the pain, Alex always added dark, compelling pleasure. As odd, as impossible as it sounded, he would both torture and pleasure her, mixing the two in a confusing blend of passion and pain.
He spent hours wresting powerful orgasms from her with his cock, his fingers, his mouth, but always at a price. Each bout of pleasure must be matched by a gift (his word) of pain that included whipping, spanking, forced submersion in the bucket, and intense bondage with rough rope that forced her body into contorted positions as it cut into her pussy and turned her breasts an angry purple in its confines.
Though Mara still burned with the idea of escape, so far she’d found no way out. All the other girls seemed to have completely resigned themselves to the situation, and it was clear, at least for now, she would find no ally among them. Meanwhile, as horrifying as it was to admit, life on the island had begun to settle into a kind of routine starting with calisthenics, followed by grooming, grace and deportment training with Dawn, her personal workout regime with Curtis and the intensive sessions with Alex.
Yesterday, however, there’d been a variation in the schedule. That afternoon Curtis had taken the girls out to a clearing on the far side of the island, where they’d been forced to run obstacle courses, climb trees and hide in the woods, one at a time, while the other girls sought them out. If a girl was found before the thirty-minute time frame Curtis had imposed, he tied her to a tree and hit her with a stinging switch he’d made from a tree branch. Only Joanie, Esmé and Whitney had succeeded in hiding long enough to avoid the whipping. Mara had been so exhausted after the bizarre exercise, which had gone on until dark, that she’d skipped dinner, opting instead for a long, hot bath and early bed.
Now, running along the beach as the sun rose in the sky, she asked Raeanne, “What was that all about yesterday in the woods? It’s like we’re being trained for some kind of survival camp.”
Raeanne glanced around with a nervous air. Curtis was behind them, out of earshot. Still, she whispered her reply close to Mara’s ear as they jogged. “It’s the hunt.”
“The hunt?”
All at once a conversation she didn’t realize she’d remembered slithered like a snake into her consciousness, along with Dan Wallace’s leering face. She’ll give the guys a run for their money during the next hunt. Though the morning air was warm, an icy shiver moved along Mara’s spine.
“We’re not supposed to talk about it, so be careful what you say. Most of the girls here have already been through it but they won’t say much, except to warn me with vague hints that it’ll be my turn soon. All any of them will say when I try to feel them out is that Alex had forbidden them to say anything. Apparently whatever he’s threatened them with is bad enough that they’ve stayed quiet about it, even when no one’s listening. But I can guess,” Raeanne added darkly.
“It sounds horrible,” Mara exclaimed. “Like something out of a nightmare.”
“Yeah, I know. And we’ll be next. You, me and Cassie, since we’re the newest ones here. It’s pretty brutal, from the little I’ve been able to gather.”
Faceless men in camouflage brandishing rifles and knives erupted like demons in Mara’s mind, a terrified, naked woman covered in blood lying at their feet. “Jesus!” she blurted, shaking her head to dislodge the unwelcome image.
“Shh. Keep your voice down,” Raeanne whispered furiously. “Curtis will hear us.”
The whistle shrilled suddenly beside them, making both girls jump. Curtis had pulled up alongside them in his golf cart. Thankfully, he was grinning rather than scowling. “Quit yakking and pick up the pace, girls. You’re slowing down the line. Let’s go. Lift those knees. One-two, one-two!”
After breakfast the girls were taken to the resort building, to which she hadn’t returned since Alex had forced her to watch Joanie’s session in the two-way mirror. Instead of going to the observation room, this time Mara was herded along with the other girls into the dressing suite.
They were instructed to wash and condition their hair at a bank of sinks, and then report to the chairs in front of the huge lighted mirrors. Two silent men in the island uniform of black and white moved along the line of seven girls, expertly blow drying and styling their hair.
When Mara’s hair was done, Dawn took her to a huge closet that contained rack after rack of gowns and silky lingerie, plus row upon row of high heels and strappy sandals.
“Hmm,” Dawn said, tapping her manicured fingernail against her chin as she surveyed the dresses. “I think this one.” She pulled a long, shimmery gown from the rack. “It will go well with your coloring.” She thrust it into Mara’s arms. “Go on. Put it on.”
“Underwear?” Mara asked uncertainly.
Dawn shook her head. “You don’t need it. Those breasts of yours are nice and perky. Our guests will want to see your pretty pink nipples when they’re making their selections.” She bent down and held up a pair of flat-soled gold sandals. “You’re tall and some of today’s guests are a bit on the short side, so we’ll go with these.”
Though the dress didn’t seem to be much more than a few yards of sheer fabric, Mara was glad, at least, she wouldn’t have to wear high heels. She slipped out of the sundress she’d been permitted to put on after her post-exercise shower and took the gown. It weighed next to nothing. She slid it over her head, pulling it into place over her body. She turned to the ceiling-to-floor mirror that covered the back of the closet and regarded herself. The dress clung to her curves—she might as well have been naked or painted with gold glitter for all the cover it afforded her.
“Perfect,” Dawn announced behind her. “It brings out the gold highlights in your hair and complements those lovely hazel eyes. You really are a beautiful girl when you wipe that unpleasant expression off your face.” A trace of steel had entered Dawn’s otherwise breezy tone, and Mara glanced reflexively toward Dawn’s right hand, which always held a cane during grace training, but which was at the moment, thank goodness, empty.
Still, Mara made an effort to compose her face into the bland, pleasant expression Dawn drilled into them daily as a requirement during presentation and selection. They had also been forced to practice what Dawn termed “ecstasy training”—simulations of sexual pleasure and orgasm designed to convince the guests they were having a wonderful time with the most exciting man they’d ever been with, no matter how disgusting and odious the man might actually be.
“Remember,” Dawn had said time and again, “this isn’t about you. It’s about them. We are providing an experience, and it’s your job to make sure it’s a terrific one. No one gives a shit, pardon my French, if you’re having a good time or not. Think geisha girl—you are pleasure ladies, but the pleasure is theirs. And remember”—here she would pause ominously and stare at each girl in turn, the cane tapping against her open palm—“you are being observed at all times. One word, one gesture, one hint that makes our esteemed guests question your complete willingness as part of the Pirate Island experience, and I can promise you, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
Dark Obsessions Vol II Page 8
