Stolen Flame

by D W Marshall

  My Vivian,

  His Vivian. That’s becoming truer and truer in my heart as each day passes. I’m such a dork that I can’t seem to get past the greeting.

  My Vivian,

  I nearly scooped you up and carried you away from here when I came into your Chamber tonight. The thought of you being in any pain is unbearable to me. Even though I haven’t known you very long, that is not how it feels to me. I risk so much getting these letters to you, but I want you to go to sleep with thoughts of me. I want you to know what is going on in my head. You really enjoyed the pony tonight. That was so fucking sexy. I have never wanted to be a horse more in my life. When you climbed onto it the second time, just for me…I nearly combusted! I have never had an orgasm watching before. I will thank you properly very soon.

  I have a final request. I want you to pleasure yourself tonight before you fall asleep, please, and if possible, see me behind your closed eyes. Envision me holding you, kissing you, adoring you, and making love to you. Most of all, envision me falling in love with you, because, Vivian, that is exactly what is happening. I will be doing the same…

  Yours,

  Dominic

  P.S. I love your pony’s name…and please destroy.

  I wipe the tears that begin to push their way out of my eyes. Against my desires, I destroy the letter. I do it before I can change my mind. All I really want is to curl up with it and keep it forever.

  Can this really be happening in a place like this, in a situation like mine? Dominic is falling in love with me? I hope it is true. The tears keep falling. I realize that all of the signs are there. When I first arrived, Tyson was my lifeline—a big, gorgeous stranger who I let protect me out of desperation. The only emotion that I felt was fear and relief that I’d found someone who could fulfill that role—especially in a place like this.

  Now, that has changed. I have changed. I am looking forward to the letters like they come from a lover, and sex with him has become more like lovemaking. I need him, I crave him, I want him. Am I falling in love with Dominic? How can that be, when I love Liam? Surely, Liam won’t give up on me. What happens when I get out of here? That is the thought in the back of my mind, the same thought I share with Whitney…Sunshine. Will they even want us after we are all used up?

  What about Liam? I push the thought of him back. I won’t survive a year with the things I want but cannot have clouding my mind. I will have to work on faith that when I return back to my normal life, Liam will love me no matter what I have endured, and I pray that I will be able to leave this place behind me. The bizarre thing is, before it was thinking about Liam that kept me grounded. Hmm.

  I blush deep red at the idea of pleasuring myself for Tyson again. I know now that there is not much that I wouldn’t do for him. I go back to into my bed. My crimson bath towel hits the floor, leaving me completely nude. I have never slept naked before. Neither Sky nor Sapphire have made it back from their Chambers, which makes sense. Creepy Stranger pulled a hit and run on me that I was most grateful for, shaving a little more than an hour off of my Chamber time.

  Once the covers are up to my shoulders, I bend my knees. A nervous giggle escapes me. I don’t know why this is so embarrassing. I wet my fingers with my mouth and find my little pleasure nugget. Images of Tyson flood my mind. I can see his Thunderdick that I have come to adore. Electricity flows throughout my body and deposits itself between my legs. I begin massaging it in earnest. Now Tyson is stroking the shaft of his massive erection and I take him into my mouth. I moan at the image and slip two of my fingers inside of myself. I feel very hot inside, and silky. I move my hips in a slow motion. The next image is of Tyson plunging himself inside of me. My hips lift automatically at the vision, welcoming him. I come apart. My clitoris goes rigid under my fingers. My sex squeezes around my fingers. I whisper his name aloud.

  “Dominic.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Liam, Guilty Conscience

  I roll over and see Maddie’s naked body wrapped in my sheets. Okay, it’s worse than I thought. I’m overcome with nausea. What the fuck did we do? Now I have to add guilt to my pain.

  Good fucking job, Liam. How will I face her when she comes back? Was it worth it, to be pain-free for a night? Last night I thought it was. Last night, I was free. The bottom line is, this can never happen again.

  “Hey, Maddie, wake up.” I nudge her. Time to face the music.

  “What the hell? I’m sleeping here.” She turns over to look at me. Her expression goes from realization to shock. She jumps up, keeping the sheet around her naked body. “Liam? What did we do? I thought I dreamt last night.” One hand goes up to her mouth. Her eyes show everything. Fear. Shame.

  Welcome to the party.

  “I know, Maddie. I feel like a complete jackass, too…”

  She sits on the edge of my bed and bends forward, burying her face into her hands. “What are we gonna do, Liam? This is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever done. She’s missing, and God only knows if she is dead or alive, or worse, being tortured, and I fuck her boyfriend.”

  I put my arm around her shoulder and she jumps like my touch burns her.

  “Don’t, Liam. Just don’t.” She stares heatedly at me and hops off of my bed. She races around the room picking up her scattered clothes from my floor, and goes out into my hall. I flinch when my front door slams shut. Just like that, Maddie is gone. Fuck, I hope I didn’t lose her, too.

  What if she never speaks to me again? How do I fix this?

  Last night we were two people in severe pain, comforting each other in the most basic way. It was comforting. I didn’t forget about Vivian, but for a short time, I forgot about the pain of her being gone. I’ll have to give Maddie some time to digest her own feelings, find a way to make it right in her heart and mind. No matter what, this has to get resolved. For starters, we’re best friends. This can’t come between us, because no matter what, we still need each other.

  One day, when my girl comes home, we’re gonna have to tell her what we did…what our pain drove us to. I know that Maddie and I will both agree that we shouldn’t tell her right away. She’ll need time to adjust to being home. That’s if she even comes back. Fuck! I really fucked up. Do I even deserve her? I miss her so much. Vivian is the single best thing to ever happen to me. She makes me want to wake up every morning and start my day. When I go to bed each night, it’s her face that I see. That thought makes me want to fall asleep so I can start a new day with her.

  This can’t be the end of my time with her. There has to be more. I need to keep believing that whatever she’s doing, wherever she is, she’s strong enough to fight her way back to me. When she comes back, I hope she can forgive us for the worst transgression any best friends could ever be capable of.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fun and Games

  I wake in the morning to the smell of bacon. It’s unexpectedly normal in this strange, new world.

  Bacon.

  I think back to sleeping in late on the weekends and Mom using our favorite food to rouse us from our deep slumber. My brother and I raced down the hall toward the kitchen and stopped to take in the spread: bacon, biscuits, fresh-squeezed orange juice, toast, and eggs. Smelling it here makes my heart ache and my stomach burn.

  I wasn’t ready for normal here, but I really love bacon.

  I jump out of bed, forgetting for the moment that I went to sleep in my birthday suit.

  “Nice,” Sapphire calls out from her bed. I glance over at her and she’s grinning in my direction, her eyebrows are raised. “Somebody’s acclimating to her environment.” Her eyes drag up and down my body.

  I scramble to cover up with the crimson towel I deposited on the floor. By now, my skin must match.

  “Sorry, I forgot where I was.”

  She pops out of bed, completely naked, but does not attempt to cover up. She has a body to be proud of. She’s perfectly curvy with full breasts, a small waist, and an ample behind. She could be a swimsuit model,
for sure.

  “That shit can be hazardous to your health around here,” she calls back as she struts to the bathroom.

  “Bacon! I smelled the bacon!” I yell after her.

  Never mind. She doesn’t care why I was naked. I grab a short dress from my dresser next to my bed and slide it over my head. Of course, it’s red. I pull on a pair of fresh panties and set out in search of bacon.

  When I make it to the kitchen, I find Ivy, Sunshine, and Violet working.

  “What smells so good? I mean, besides the bacon.” I’m practically licking my lips.

  “Morning, Flame,” Violet says. The other girls smile in my direction.

  “Morning, ladies.” I start helping by grabbing a bowl from under the sink to crack eggs.

  “We decided we should eat healthy breakfasts together as often as possible. We can take turns,” Sunshine says.

  Hope blossoms inside of my chest and warms my center. The possibility of a real sisterhood in the midst of all of this crazy is something I didn’t even know I needed.

  “I’m down for that,” I smile and start beating the eggs.

  “Hey, anybody else wanna search for the nearest exit and risk breaking out of this bitch?” Sunshine asks.

  Three heads whip around in sync to stare at her. By the expressions on their faces, I have no doubt they are thinking the same thing as me. Is she serious? If she is, could we succeed, and what would the cost be if we did? We all raise our hands.

  “Fuck a year,” I say. “I don’t think I can make it another night. I don’t know if we could pull it off, but I’m not against it. We might not have a choice.” We just got here. Who knows how dark this place is going to get for us?”

  The girls all nonverbally agree with me. Ivy nods, Sunshine sighs and shrugs, and Violet gives me a noncommittal head bob.

  We start placing platters of breakfast fare on the dining table. By the time we’re finished cooking, we have eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, sourdough toast and orange juice on the table. The other sleepyheads drag their broken bodies into the kitchen.

  Bacon gets you every time.

  We say grace before we eat. Ivy leads this morning with a beautiful prayer and plea that this year goes by with the speed of sound, that each of us grows in strength, and that we keep our sanity.

  I notice that she doesn’t pray for our release, and I guess I can understand that. While we’re all silently hoping and praying for that, what we need even more is strength. Each day, we die a little on the inside. We want to actually make it to the end. We need to find the strength to escape our mental and physical cages.

  Like zoo animals we get a little patch of land to graze upon on the floors we’re allowed access to. We get to swim, eat, and hang out with the other animals in our habitat. If we’re good at pretending, we can even make ourselves believe that we’re free. We’re not delusional, though… We are not free. We are in captivity.

  The Chamber is our zoo.

  When people come to see us in captivity, they don’t have to worry about appreciating us from afar. The visitors who come to this zoo aren’t merely spectators. This is a petting zoo. Visitors here are welcome to enter our pens and touch, feel, and admire us up close.

  Still, this is nice. I gaze around the table at the six beautiful, different women. We are all strong in our own right. If not, we wouldn’t be here. We all had lives before we were brought here.

  None of us speak about what happened to us last night. I don’t know why they’re keeping quiet, but I feel like saying it aloud makes it true. Even though part of me wants to warn them about the creepy stranger, I’m not ready to admit that I’m really here and this is really happening.

  Instead, we talk about ourselves. I soak up what I can about my new sisters.

  For example, now I understand why Sapphire sounds like she’s from New Jersey, even though Mason calls her a Brazilian beauty. She tells us how she and her family moved from Brazil to New Jersey when she was only six. I learn that Ivy is a model back home in Ireland. Violet, like me, is a college student. Raven was once Miss Teen Hawaii. Sky is a model from Holland who lives in New York. Sunshine is one of those really smart people who finished college before most people finish high school. She was actually beginning a PhD. program in the fall, and she’s barely twenty.

  Now we can all add Chambermaid to our resumes.

  I tell them about living in Vegas, and how we don’t all live in hotels on the strip. That there are actual suburbs, schools, community centers and churches. It gets just as cold as it does hot, and people have real jobs. I probably eat five pieces of bacon before breakfast is over. The girls who didn’t cook volunteer to clean up. This is how a wonderful bonding ritual starts. Half of us cook, we bond over daily breakfast, and the other half clean. We share these mundane tasks in a bizarre place.

  We’ll slowly make this zoo into our home.

  As the weeks go by, I find myself falling into a routine.

  Breakfast with my sisters, time in the gym, then grooming. While I’ll never get used to what happens to me five days a week when the sun goes down, I continually remind myself that I am surviving this.

  I don’t get to see Tyson very much at all, and I really miss him. That scares the crap out of me.

  He has found a place in my heart. Small as it is, it’s there.

  I never stop looking for letters from him. When I see him in passing, a palpable spark travels between us. A butterfly war almost always starts inside of me, and he knows it. I flush pink and he gives me a lopsided smile that stops my heart.

  He’s the type of guy who makes innocent girls actually believe he’s in love with them, just to get in their pants, then drops them the next day. I can tell he cares. He never says much to me when he greets me in a professional tone that I mimic. It’s more about what he doesn’t say. He gives me a buttery smile, and his eyes burn through me intensely, caressing me.

  Our secret.

  He tells me without uttering a single word that I mean something to him. The way my body, mind, and heart react freaks me out.

  We both have a much harder time a couple of months into my stay, when Mason invites us all to a mandatory social indoor barbecue.

  The day of the barbecue, I dress in my swimsuit, grab a towel, then set out for the designated barbecue area. The event will be in part of the castle that we’ve never seen. I find the party in an indoor “backyard” paradise. There’s a huge lagoon pool, complete with a built-in slide, and a hidden jacuzzi, set deep into a cave-like structure. It could be a perfect hiding place for newly budding relationships, if that were allowed here.

  There’s a gourmet kitchen and a massive grill. The skylights are retracted and open, allowing heavenly sun to pour in and beat down upon us. It’s June, and the heat is delicious on my skin.

  Every type of food imaginable is laid out. A man tends bar at one end of the buffet, and a line of swim-trunk-clad guards is already forming.

  An onlooker would think this is a normal pool party at a mega-millionaire’s palace. Everyone is wearing clothes. Image that. The guys are in board shorts, and of course we all have our signature-colored bikinis.

  All are in attendance: our groomers, Roxy from the spa, all of the guards, and Ivory. I decide to enjoy the moment in the sun, allowing myself to forget where I am, and focus on the people here that I like—my new sisters, and Tyson.

  Suddenly, the music quiets, and we all turn to see Mason in front of the pool.

  “Welcome,” he says. “I hope you’re all hungry and ready for some fun in the sun.” He looks up to the skylight.

  “We decided to throw this little soirée so that you all can spend some time together in a social, nonsexual setting. The guards need to get to know who they are protecting, and you ladies need to know who is protecting you. I find that when you care for one another, trust follows. Now, don’t get too into each other. That is forbidden.” His eyes meet mine and linger there before moving on.

  “However, you ladies
will feel much safer when you know who’s downstairs waiting to come to your rescue should you need it.” He pauses so what he’s said has a chance to sink in.

  “Enough with the lecture. Eat up, drink up, have fun!” He drops the mic.

  This could be either good or bad. How do Tyson and I interact and make it look innocent or casual?

  “What’s up, sexy?” I hear his voice behind me and I bite my lip to fight the smile.

  When I turn to see him, he looks equal parts casual and seductive. I would never be able to ignore him, even if I’d met him somewhere else. Something about him speaks to me. I take the glass he offers me tentatively, worried about who’s watching us. Around here, I’m sure someone is always watching.

  “Are you sure?” I glance around.

  “You heard the man. We’re supposed to get to know each other.” He gazes down at me, and the intensity makes my bones feel soft and squishy. He and I take a seat on the pool edge. We sit close, but do not touch, but I still feel him against me. My body aches with want.

  What the hell is he doing to me? I could spend a lifetime under that gaze.

  “Besides, if we avoid each other that’ll make it worse.”

  True.

  I stare down at my legs in the cool refreshing water and focus on slowly kicking them back and forth. If I stare at him as much as I want to, I have no doubt Mason will switch him with another guard, and then I would be truly fucked.

  With so much to look at, I gaze around, pretending to watch the other partygoers, anything to decrease this intense urge I have to hold his hand…or to jump into his arms and crush my lips to his .