by Maren Smith
Alan blinked at her, the intensity of his gaze dissolving into confusion. "Sweetheart… how is that stealing?"
The awfulness inside her soured even more. "You've never had to force someone who's just lost their spouse, the sole provider of their family, to hand over money they can't spare so you'll stop badgering them. You say 'debt collection' and people automatically think about deadbeat debtors. But of all the hundreds and hundreds of people I've called, only one came close to qualifying as that—a stupid kid fresh out of high school, who never should have been given a credit card in the first place. Nobody thinks about widowers, and cancer patients, and survivors of terrible accidents, who now owe more in medical bills than they could repay—even if they worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the next ten years! They don't think about people who never had a problem meeting their obligations until the economy tanked and they lost their jobs, or their child got sick, or their home was destroyed in a flood or a fire or a hurricane and what they get from insurance doesn't come close to helping them rebuild."
She didn't realize she was crying until she felt him smoothing his thumbs over the curves of her cheeks, wiping the wetness away.
"Every day I go to work sick to my stomach. I make phone call after phone call until I have to run to the bathroom and throw up, and then I go back to my desk and do it all over again. But all of that, that's not even the worst part." Tavy scrubbed at her face with the backs of both hands, fighting to even her breathing and bring her voice back up, from the squeaky rasp it had become into something he could hope to understand. "I don't just call them, Alan. I hound them. I humiliate them. Call their families, their in-laws, their work places, and their neighbors. I call early in the morning and late at night, and I don't stop until they pay me. And I'm good at it. I've never been as good at anything as I am at this. When they move, I find them. If they change their phone number, I don't stop until I get the new one. I make life as awful for them as possible, and my dad says I'm wonderful because I bring in more revenue than he and mom ever did. He tells people he's proud of me. Proud! He says that, if we didn't call them, someone else would. I know that's true, I do. I didn't make their problems, and I know that, too. But I make it worse. I split families apart because of the stress I put them under. I've cost people their jobs because I harassed them at work. I take money earmarked for electric bills, water bills, and groceries, and I do it knowing they can't afford it. Two weeks ago, I made a man cry over a four hundred dollar delinquent credit card bill. A grown man, and he was crying. What kind of person does that?"
"The kind of person who begs people to scar her to make amends," Alan countered softly.
Tavy laughed, high-pitched and frustrated. "What do a few scars matter if I deserve it?"
Irritation flashed across his features. "Quit, then."
She laughed again. "I can't."
"There are other jobs."
"He's my father! He needs me!"
Irritation flashed across Alan's features and he caught her chin again, but this time she twisted free, falling off her knees and flat on her butt, just out of his reach.
"Why won't you see what I really am?" she cried, slapping his hand away.
He came up off the couch after her. "I could ask you the same damn thing." He closed his hand on her throat and, even though his grip never tightened beyond her ability to breathe around, he refused to be shrugged, slapped, or pried away. "Up," he said tersely.
Clutching his arm with both hands, feeling nothing but taut muscle and veined lines and all the shame snaking inside her, Tavy climbed awkwardly to her feet. He marched her around the sofa to an easily overlooked door just beyond the fireplace. It was a strikingly modern bathroom that he pushed her into, with a shower big enough for three, a red glass sink on a jet black pedestal, and one entire wall that was nothing but mirrored panels from floor to ceiling.
It took some wrestling before he could get her to stand before it. He stripped his vest off her, baring her completely. She couldn't stand to look at herself, but his hand never left her throat, and when he stepped up behind her and gripped her collar, there was no turning away.
"Look," he ordered. "Look at what you've done to yourself."
He touched her breast. His dark fingers were a stark contrast to the paleness of her flesh and, in particular, to the scarred whiteness of the cell-popped words 'slut' and 'mine' still visible there. His hand dropped to her belly, forcing her gaze to follow as he traced the wrap lines a past whip had left behind. Dozens more lined her back. Cut lines laddered her legs. Needle punctures dotted her labia. She was the submissive who never said no, and she couldn't count the number of men who had taken advantage of that.
"Look at what you've done," Alan repeated, softer now, his hands gentling upon her. His fingers wandered along her curves in tender caresses. "All this pain… for nothing, because none of it helped, did it?"
His reflection in the mirror blurred.
"No, it didn't," she said thickly, unable to see him beyond her tears.
"Do you know why?" His gaze in the mirror left hers only when she twisted partway around to look up at him. "Because without accountability, punishment is only torture, not discipline. All of this…" he gestured to her accumulative scars, "this was just pain without meaning. And you knew that. You knew it in here." He tapped her chest just above her heart with two blunt fingers.
"I've held myself accountable for each and every call," she argued, but he silenced that with a hard, "No, you haven't. Because nothing changes if you keep going back."
"It's my father. I have to go back." The sheer helplessness that swept through her then was overwhelming.
"Do you really think your father wants you to be this unhappy over anything, much less a business he created?"
She couldn't look at him. "He doesn't know."
"You throw up in the bathroom every single day. Trust me, sweetheart, he knows. And I'll bet that, when he discovers why, he'll be appalled."
She shook her head. "He'll never know."
"Yes he will."
She shook her head again, but the refusal she was struggling to summon died unspoken when he shifted his grip from her throat to her lower jaw, and physically turned her face back to the mirror.
"Say goodbye to that sick, ugly feeling inside of you, Tavy," Alan said, forcing her once more to look at nothing but herself. "You've held onto it long enough. It's time to let it go."
Now it wasn't just helpless that she felt. Overwhelming despair rose up to match it. "How?" she begged.
"You are no longer responsible for your own accountability. That's my job now. Trust me to give you what you need—not what you want, but what you need—to make that feeling go away. Can you do that?"
Tavy stared at his reflection, the black of his eyes holding her every bit as imprisoned as his hand upon her jaw. Her bottom still burned from the angry slaps he'd already punished her with, from the cane strokes earlier that morning, from four years' worth of trying and failing to make it go away. She began to shake, for the first time in a very long time afraid, truly afraid, of how much more severe it would need to be for him to accomplish what he was promising. Her knees tried to buckle, but still she nodded.
"Look at yourself."
She did, absolutely hating what she saw. Hating it so much, her stomach roiled. She swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.
"Repeat after me." The heat of his breath brushed just behind her ear as he said, his low voice as soft and calm as it had ever been, "I forgive myself."
She really was going to throw up. Tavy swallowed hard all over again. She looked from her own reflection to his.
He did not back down. "Say it."
Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her nose was red, too. She looked miserable. She felt that way as well—and had for so long she couldn't remember what it felt like to be anything else. "I… forgive myself." Now she also felt stupid.
"Again," he commanded.
Tavy squared her shoulders, glaring at h
erself as if they were mortal enemies. "I forgive myself."
"Again."
"I forgive myself," she spat, completely unprepared for the creep of anger that began to move up through her, seeping into the endless knots that her stomach had become. She didn't feel quite so stupid anymore, but the helplessness remained. She looked to Alan.
He did not look away. "Starting today, everything changes. Say it."
How this was supposed to help, she had no idea, but she dutifully repeated that too, and then she stood there, surrounded by Alan's arms and his reflection, and feeling so very small by comparison. "Now what?"
He turned her from the mirror, bringing her around to face him directly. "Now I give you what you need, like it or not."
Her legs weakened under her. She'd been trying for years to find a punishment equal to the awfulness inside her. She didn't hold a lot of hope that Alan would be able to, either, but she already knew that, regardless of how severe it might be, she wasn't going to safeword out. Not because she was the girl who never did, but because she didn't ever want to see that look of disappointment crawling across his face again. Not because of her. Compared to that, a whip would be infinitely easier to bear.
Not that Alan reached for one. His hand was as gentle as it was strong when he cupped her chin, tilting her face to his. She had just a moment of sparking awareness, the tiniest electrical current that zipped from her mouth the instant his warm lips brushed hers. It moved down her back and over her bottom, and burst like the shimmer of last night's fireworks between her trembling thighs.
One tender kiss became two, then three. His left arm snaked around her waist, drawing her in tight and close. The fingers of his right hand combed into her hair, closing in a fist intended to prevent all struggles.
Tavy wasn't struggling. Accepting this comfort, knowing that, like the calm before the storm, it wouldn't last long, she parted her lips to welcome him in, but he was already moving away. As he held her immobile, all she could do was stand in his embrace while his mouth circled from her lips to her ear.
His punishment, if it could even be called such, was as unexpected as it was devastating.
"I forgive you, too," he told her.
Her legs went out from under her, but Alan's grip was sure. He held her, and though she sagged, he didn't let her fall.
Epilogue
Late Friday morning, when all the day's other departing guests were gathering their things and heading out to meet the waiting buses, Tavy followed Alan through Cook Connie's busy kitchen and out the back door, down the long cement walkway to the hidden employee parking lot where his car, a cherry red—albeit completely practical—four-door sedan, sat waiting for them. She was nervous, continuously rubbing her palms against her jeans, but when he held the passenger door open for her, she didn't argue. She simply slipped past him and climbed inside.
Everything that needed to be had already been said over the last two days, and then again this morning. Repeatedly. Sometimes quite loudly. His belt had put an end to her yelling, which accounted for the expressive wince that accompanied her sitting down. Ten minutes in front of the mirror, repeating her mantra over and over again, had helped dispel the panic and return her to some fragile semblance of calm.
She was struggling to hold onto that calm, and Alan knew it. For the entire journey from the Castle to Granger, although she didn't say one word, he could tell by the way she was breathing, squeezing her hands, and cracking her knuckles that her nerves were starting to fray again.
"Go to your mirror," he told her a few miles before they reached the outskirts of town.
Although by now used to hearing that command, Tavy's moment of confusion dissolved when she turned down the visor and opened up the compact mirror. She drew a shaky breath. "I forgive myself," she began. "Starting today, everything changes."
He made her repeat it, refusing to relieve her of the task until he pulled into the near empty parking lot beside what was once a turn of the century mercantile building (as the faded whitewash near the roof still said), but which now sported a much more modern sign: Sutters and Sutters Debt Collections.
Tavy sat frozen in the passenger seat while Alan got out. He walked around the car to get the door for her, but she made no move to accept it when he offered her a helping hand out.
"I can't," she finally said, raising pleading eyes to his. "I can't face him by myself."
"You don't have to." Alan leaned into the opening, his smile both gentle and reassuring. "Until you're strong enough to carry yourself, this is where I carry you."
Again, he offered his hand. After a moment, she took it and together, they walked inside.
The End
Maddy Mine
He was the Dungeon Master, the Jail Keeper, the mysterious and oft-times feared Gaoler. Master Dominick to the customers, his friends called him everything from Dom to Nick to Dominick, and his lovers… ah, his lovers—like the nubile woman sweating before him, her arms bound in a sleeve behind her back, and her thighs and ankles strapped to the Sybian she rode—his lovers called him Sir. And sometimes, as it was in this case with sweet, seductive little Diane, he was: "Please, dear God, no please, no please, no please…"
He liked being God.
Diane moaned, head bowed, the short, spiky curls of her dark hair sticking out all over, and her eyes tightly closed. Sweat poured from her, every inch shining under the orange-amber glow of the fake wall torches. Her buttocks tightened, quivering in time with the low hum of the Sybian. Her nipples were hardened peaks, little tan buds straining high on glistening breasts as she arched her back. She shivered. Her hips worked relentlessly, grinding and grinding in undulations that quickened and slowed, quickened and slowed, in time with the tensing of her belly and thighs. She had a detachable cock in her pussy, another in her ass, and a nub of textured bumps that she rocked on, preferring to rub to keep the buzzing tight against her clit. It was the dildo in her ass that kept her from riding with the same wild abandon that he so often saw when it came to Diane. She hated anal. So Dominick made sure she got plenty of it every time she requested him. He loved that clench of her jaw, the way her brow beetled and her eyes squeezed, the way her mouth flinched as she felt both cocks invading her at once, rattling inside her, humming along in time with the faint buzz of the machine between her legs.
Dominick circled her, crop in hand, admiring the way she trembled as she neared orgasm. She'd come twice already. She'd wanted to quit after the first one, but three biting lines of his crop across the round swells of her ass and his command—"Ride through it. I didn't say you could quit."—kept her going.
"I can't," she whimpered, shaking her head, but her belly betrayed her. Tiny spasms made the soft rounding of her abdomen flex. Her thighs shook and shook and shook. Between that and the Sybian, it made her whole body jiggle in all the most alluring places. "I c-can't…"
Without a word, Dominick walked behind her, letting her feel the flat, slapper-style tip of the crop caress a wandering path across her shoulders as he circled. Her skin shivered, goosebumps breaking out in a pepper of trepidation as he stroked the nape of her slender neck, down the slope of her right shoulder, following the curve of her arm as he rounded to her front. Her whole body shuddered when it descended to her right breast.
"No!" she gasped, head thrown back, her eyes flying open wide—a pleading storm of grey fixing on him so desperately.
"No is not a safe word," he said, and struck. All considering, it was a light tap, but his aim was dead-on. The slapper caught the thrusting tip of her nipple and Diane shrieked, her mouth rounding in a way that made his already hard cock strain against the zipper of his black leather pants. Yet, the jerk of her body was not a writhe to avoid the crop's next stinging bite. Her back arched, offering her breasts for more, and he gave it to her. Harder this time. Three sharp downward snaps that grazed the very tip of her nipple, making it swell with welts and need.
She moaned, her stomach tightening. The muscles fluttere
d as he let the crop tip wander down between her breasts to her belly, teasing a circle around her quivering navel before journeying lower still.
A soft, two-knuckle rap at the door caught his ear, signaling him that time was almost up. At this point, Diane had two hours before the buses departed for the day and she would have to be on one of them. Two hours wasn't a lot of time once he figured in the necessary aftercare, but it was long enough.
"No," she gasped, bowing forward. As if that could prevent him from reaching any lower. "Please no…"
With her arms bound behind her and her legs strapped to the Sybian, she had no real defenses, and no way but one in which to stop him once the crop found her clit, trapping it between the humming nubs of the Sybian and the slapper. She knew what that way was, too, and he could see she was thinking about it. It was right there, haunting the depths of her stormy eyes as she gazed up at him, her expression one of pleading but her moan betraying nothing but the depth and intensity of her building desire.
One side of his mouth quirking into a smug smile, Dominick used the crop to caress between her trembling legs. She bit her bottom lip, rolling them tight together to keep back the moans but, teased into prominence by the constant vibrations, her clit made such an easy target. She could have called 'red' at any moment. He gave her plenty of time to consider it, while first he rubbed, then patted, then pressed, forcing her clit to the rattling thrum of the seat to which she was bound, and finally, with her wide eyes locked so helplessly upon him, both begging him no and pleading him yes, he commanded, "Now," and struck.
It wasn't hard. One didn't need force to make a blow to so tender an area unbearable, but she still shouted, her need so guttural and hoarse, her hips bucking up into the kiss of the crop and her bottom grinding to ride both cocks. Her belly was a mass of quivering muscle, each straining to reach what she had claimed she couldn't. What she had thought she couldn't.
It was his job to prove her wrong.
