by Sophia Reed
The world was a strange place.
I didn't wake Kie. I kept going, winding through the maze, until I came to Ariel's door.
37
Annie
Chloe led me up the hall to a locked door, stood before it and let her eyes be scanned before she entered a code on a keypad. I was shaking, my stomach in knots, trying to work out why I'd gone to dungeons in San Francisco voluntarily, submitted to St. Martin and returned to him, but here I was a wreck of terror.
No answers. Other than by now I hated Claude. His fussy mannerisms. His arrogance.
His air of being dangerous.
Jesse was dangerous. But Jesse, despite his rages, actually liked me.
The room didn't surprise me, except to wonder if all billionaires had a secret pain room fitted with spreader bars and spanking benches, with the ubiquitous St. Andrew’s cross. His had a few more. There was a shower stall that scared me, a three-sided thing with a shower head, no, a long hose. Probably for cold water showers. Or enemas. Or something. Not waterboarding. I'd heard of people who took their play that far.
I was not among them.
"There's no point," Chloe said.
I looked at her, surprised. Claude hadn't hurt me before. But Chloe hadn't talked to me before, either. Not a word. When we got to this point, she went into herself. What I had perceived as cold, I thought now was a sort of protection.
No way to know how much time we had before Claude would come after us. I followed her lead and sank to the floor and, assuming there were cameras, assumed the position, waiting for him.
Then, testing the waters, I said softly, "Chloe?" For all her openness other times of day and other situations, I didn't know if she'd even acknowledge I'd spoken, let alone answer my questions.
"What, Annie?" She sounded resigned. For Chloe, this might not be too far from normal.
I found I didn't want to be the reason she was punished. Which very nearly made me laugh right then and there. As if! If she didn't want to be punished, she needed to find a different relationship.
Which was all part of what I wanted to ask her.
"Is this something you enjoy?" Leaving my hands behind my head meant I had no way to gesture. Just as well. I didn't know if I meant the room we were in and the events we were about to experience or her life as a whole.
Did I enjoy being undercover with a gang that sold meth and China White to pre-teens? No. But that was work. This was a choice.
Chloe was quiet for so long I had decided she wasn't going to answer after all and maybe that was a good thing.
"Yes," she said, and on the heels of that word, "No."
Silence. But still no footsteps. Could Claude hear us as well as see us? Or was he watching. He could be somewhere in the rest of the house watching porn, getting aroused for his session. Or inviting all the neighbors. Or feeding raccoons. I had no fucking idea where he was or what he was doing and I didn't care. As long as he wasn't here, that was good.
"It didn't start this way," Chloe said. She didn't look at me but she also didn't try to pretend she wasn't speaking.
And I was tired of trying to second guess the rules. I was the kind of keyed-up that happens on a sting operation when everything hasn't gone sideways but the timeline is being fucked with because the inconsiderate druggies have no idea there is a timeline because they're the focus of the sting. All wound up and nowhere to go. So I didn't pretend I wasn't talking with her and I didn't lower my voice. I just let her set the lead.
"Oh, fuck it," Chloe said and dropped her hands. This time she rose clumsily and dragged me to my feet after. "He's going to punish the fuck out of you and me for not training you better and Cole's okayed it and unless you're prepared to walk, you've okayed it too. You want to hear the story? My feet hurt." She leaned on a counter and tapped one finger against the side of her face before she put her cheeks in her hands and said, "It wasn't always this way. We started off curious together. There are people at all income levels and all walks of life who do what we do but it's easier I think for the very rich because they don't have to answer to as many people. They should, but they don't. it's just how it works. And to be honest, at least with Cee, there was a lot of arrogance already. He knew what he could do, he had evidence of what he'd already done, he was..." She shrugged. "...You know?"
"King Pharma," I said, meaning St. Martin. "I know."
Chloe ran her bare toes over the floor, watching them. "It was fun. A paddling. A tawse made of feathers. Being tied up and having my fantasies played out." She'd been looking off into the distance. Now she looked at me. Every bit of the woman she was poured back into her eyes and I resisted the urge to either step back, or take her in a hug. "My fantasies ranged from sweet moonlit sex on a tropical beach – " she said this scathingly, as if it were idiotic. "To being tied up and raped by strangers and he's made all of them come true." She looked intently at me, making sure I understood she meant all the fantasies.
I did understand. I shuddered.
I looked around the room. There was very little she'd be able to hide from me and very little I wasn't going to be a part of very soon. So I asked.
"But is this what you want now? Not just this room now, but sitting on the floor? Being traded when he wants to? Being – I don't know, whatever the fuck it is that happens here?"
Her smile was sad. "No. But now it's too late."
Of course it was. She had grown sons, both out of the house. If the youngest was even twenty, the eldest what, my age? Then she was probably in her mid-forties as least and had spent two decades with Claude. How would she change?
I expected if she answered me, it would be with something like that.
Instead, Chloe said, "He's a plastic surgeon, Annie."
Without any further explanation, my blood ran cold.
Chloe didn't seem to notice. She was caught up in her own story. "He can only do to you what Cole allows and Cole's not going to let you be permanently hurt. But Annie – he can do pretty much anything to me, make it look like an accident, and fix it after."
I opened my mouth to tell her we could leave. It wasn't impossible. Claude wasn't a super villain, he was a man and a nasty little toad of a man, at that. We could leave, we could go to St. Martin and if that didn't work, what the fuck! We could steal one of St. Martin's cars and head for Seattle. I may be furious with my family but that didn't mean they wouldn't help if I needed it and that I wouldn't turn to them if I had to.
But her face had already shuttered closed, the fear wrapping her into herself.
And Claude was already coming up the hall.
38
Cole
Ariel stood when I came in, then slid to her knees. On the screen of her laptop, she had a detailed page of text open. When I looked closer I saw it was a college catalog, open to the offerings of arts.
So. She'd decided to live. I stood facing her laptop for a minute, running one finger absently over the space bar without pushing it down. Blinking. Breathing in control. I had come here automatically, seeking the relief Ariel always provided one way or another. Sometimes it was turning her ass red. Other times birching her or leaving cane marks up her thighs and ass. Sometimes I sat and talked to her, laying out one concern after another. Even if she had nothing to say on a subject, just pouring it out was relief. Because there was no one she could tell. Her companion, or her therapist. Both were sworn to secrecy and buried under so many nondisclosure agreements I'd own them if they did listen to her and did share.
Everything with Annie. With Claude. With Kie. I'd come here to talk to Ariel.
And found her unwilling to listen.
The tears I needed to blink away were both gratitude and rage. That she was healing. That she thought she could leave me.
Neither won. I simply turned and looked at her and found her calm. For all that she was trapped down here, as locked down as any prisoner in supermax solitary, she was calm and unworried.
I gestured at the screen. "Where is this?"
She shrugged. "Nowhere."
I felt the anger rise, that she was, even now, claiming not to matter. But stopped, reconsidered. "What do you mean?"
She glanced away from the screen, up at me, surprised. "Are you all right? You look weird." Then she giggled self consciously. "I mean… oh, well. You know."
My lips twitched. "Of course I don't look weird. So of course I don't know."
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "Oh? Right. My mistake."
"So what do you mean nowhere?"
"I mean it's not a select college. That's..." she leaned on the couch to look past me, then rose and stalked past me. "Oh. San Diego. But it doesn't have to be."
"They probably think it does."
"I meant..." she realized I was teasing her. "I meant..." she said with emphasis, as if I were something less than the sharpest tool in the toolkit"...I'm not set on San Diego. Or anything. Just..." She broke off and looked up at me, big dark eyes, slim body. The scars on her arms were healing. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her bloody from self harm.
I could remember the last time for Annie, but I shrugged that away.
"Just, you're ready to go somewhere. Do something."
She looked up at me wordlessly. I stepped over to her and lay one hand on her cheek and she nestled her head into my palm.
"You're ready to live."
Her tears were sweet. "You sa – "
"No." I tightened my lips. "No. You did. You saved your own life, Ariel." But I didn't move to let her out and I didn't take the lead in discussing schools.
"What happens now?" Suddenly her eyes were wide, looking around the cell that held her.
I sat down next to her on the couch. "You've got some time before any summer sessions start, or were you hoping to start in fall?"
"Fall. I should." She stopped and swallowed audibly. She was shivering.
I nodded. "Yes. You should. Slowly. Because it would be possible to fall all over again if you scare yourself." Or let anybody else scare you.
She leaned against me and I put an arm around her. "I'm proud of you, Ariel."
"Do you know? What my next steps should be?"
"Not for certain. But I can help you through them. I think you come upstairs. Now. Tonight. You live in the compound. You talk to the guards and anyone who comes over. Eat your meals with other people around. Read. Watch the news."
"I've been watching the news." She wrinkled her nose. "Best reason I can think of to stay down here."
I laughed. "Put that way, I'm tempted to join you."
"So come upstairs and...?" She was stalling. That was all right. It was a lot to get past.
"Come upstairs. Meet people. Talk to people. See the sun in real life, not through a skylight. Talk to your therapist. Meet your friends. Start working out more. Go outside. Get a tan. Get sunburned. We'll worry about getting you enrolled this summer."
"What if I miss enrollment?" she asked, for the first time sounding stressed.
I laughed. "Then you go to my alma mater. They never say no to alumni cash."
She made a sound of contentment and stood before I was ready. Hands on her hips, she surveyed the room she'd occupied for years, never wanting to venture farther out of it than to a treadmill down the hall and then only with me or one of the guards or her therapist accompanying her.
"Shall we go?"
I smiled. "Not. Quite. So. Fast."
She was standing and looking at the door and now she looked back at me, first in question, and then smiling somewhat ruefully. "Got ahead of myself?"
"Not too terribly. But I think tradition and all. I'd like to say goodbye to that beautiful butt."
She blushed. "Does it have to be goodbye?" There was a quaver in her voice I shouldn't have liked hearing but I was kind of glad she couldn't just recover from me that quickly.
"Not until you leave the compound. And then I'll be here if you need me. But you'll be better off putting this..." I paused, then laughed.
She looked at me inquiringly.
"Behind you," I said, and patted my lap. "If you wouldn't mind."
39
Annie
Claude stood in the doorway. Chloe knelt again, her knees on the marble, her face contorted. It was as though by asking what she wanted, by asking whether or not she could leave and make things better for herself if this was no longer what she wanted, that she had ended up with what she had being intolerable.
That might be my fault. Or not. Probably some time ago she'd awakened to her own fear and the fact that she'd trapped herself. All I was doing was reminding her.
"Chloe."
She stood, as if him saying her name had been a command. I watched, heart thundering, because I wanted to know what I was facing. Her name made her rise. She moved across the space between them to stand before him. She didn't kneel again.
He stood beside a spanking bench, the kind with two padded arms on which to kneel. The bench itself caught her at the hips, pretty much perfectly. Obviously it had been designed for her. When she lay her torso on it, her ass was high in the air and her upper body sloped down. Her hands were tied together and the leather leash fixed to an O ring set into the floor. Claude walked around her and adjusted her hips more to his liking, then used the restraints on the bench arms to bind her at the ankles to it, and also just behind her knees, above the swell of calf. Finally he cinched a restraint around her waist.
It looked like overkill to me. It also looked like he was making a point. She'd never be free. I thought that point had set in pretty thoroughly. I also thought I'd like to argue about it. She could be free.
Whatever it was he picked up, it was nothing I had ever seen before. About eighteen inches long, swathed in what looked like a rubbery, velvety cover. It had a handle and when he moved it, I could see it was round and thick, maybe an inch thick.
He held it in front of Chloe's eyes and she began to scream.
Everything that happened next was fractured, too fast and too slow to track, too loud and too horrible. Everything I'd seen on the job and everything that had been done to me since I started down whatever this inane path I was following was, all of it came down to these moments.
Chloe thrashed, unable to move more than her head. Her face was wet with tears. Her hands grabbed at the air, fisting and releasing, looking for something to hold on to.
I stood frozen, ready to dart over to her, to take her hands as I had the other night when Claude punished her. I must have made some minute movement, because he stopped and pointed the thing at me and said, "Don't move. Don't you fucking move."
The stick, whatever it was, rattled and hissed on the downward strike, making Chloe wail before it hit. Her backside grew a deep shade of red by the fourth blow and Claude showed no signs of wearing down.
Cole couldn't know that Claude intended to do this. Could he?
I moved again, and Claude pointed the stick at me. Chloe was breathing in whooping gasps.
"You come over here, I start over on her."
"Sir." My voice trembled. He was no one I would show deference to but I didn't want her further abused. "How many?"
He looked amazed. For one instant he looked impressed. And then he just snarled, "Shut your mouth," and hit Chloe again, catching her at the place where her legs joined her ass.
She'd stopped screaming now. She was breathing hard, but her face had changed. She looked lighter, somehow, beatific, like she was on really good acid or really good E. I watched, amazed, as she offered up her ass to the extent she could move, and yet the beating remained horrendous, the misery stick leaving dark streaks of flushed skin behind it.
Chloe had gone somewhere else. Suddenly I wasn't so sure I could get her out. I wasn't sure she would even want out. I felt small and sad and lost.
"Come here."
The command came out of a bout of personal darkness, as if lights had gone off all around me. As if I were blindfolded.
"No." But it came out pleading, n
ot determined.
"Come. Here. Or I will make it so. Much. Worse."
I went. It was like being out of body, like the worst times I've ever depersonalized, sliding out of myself, dissociating until I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep.
He took my hands roughly, jerking me faster than I was walking on my own, dragged me to a place where rings hung down from the ceiling. He tied my wrists together tightly, lacing them into leather cuffs that wouldn't move, then connecting rings on the cuffs to leashes that hung from the rings in the ceiling. He yanked until I rose up on my toes, body taut.
"Please." The voice didn't even sound like mine. I wasn't like Chloe. I couldn't take what she'd just undergone. I couldn't take that thing he'd beaten her with. I could see it from the corner of my eye and it terrified me, it might as well have been a rattlesnake lying there.
"Shut up."
I was on tiptoe. I was taut. Every muscle ached with tension and terror.
Claude picked up the stick he'd used on Chloe and I drew in my breath, expecting to scream. But he just looked at it and then threw it toward a sink in the back of the room. It hit some distance away, rolled, and was still.
I let out a trembling breath.
Claude walked in the same direction he'd just thrown the stick and I caught my breath again, but when I twisted, trying to see, I could see him picking out a fat, black leather strap, long and heavy and with not much give.
"Claude…" Chloe said. Her head was up, her eyes open though not very focused. She was looking at the strap.
"I don't care," he said.
"But I don't think – "
"Shut up!" He shouted it and turned and rained a dozen blows on her back with the thing, hard enough the welts showed instantly and Chloe stopped talking, put her head down, squeezed her eyes closed.
I had no doubt she was back in her body behind those eyes again. She'd come back from flying, from subspace, for me.
