Enslaved (16 page)

He’d been working on aligning the pleasure and the pain in her psyche, teaching her to expect the one with the other, even to require it. As he’d suspected, she was a born submissive with strong masochistic tendencies. She was blossoming under his tutelage, each day more compliant and obedient than the next.

What had begun as punishment for her thievery had turned into more. Not only for her, but for himself. Yet he knew when the thirty days were up, she’d demand that he follow through on the terms they’d agreed upon.

More than once, especially when they were in the middle of an intense scene, with Rae naked and bound before him, submitting to his latest round of erotic torture, he’d found himself thinking he might never let her go.

Young women in New York City disappeared all the time. She’d once mentioned some family out in Nebraska, but he didn’t think they were at all close. She had no roommate, and when her fictional month in Japan was at an end, who was there to know that she hadn’t returned to her daily life?

Her landlord would keep her deposit, dispose of her things and easily re-rent the coveted apartment space. Sam had the key. Maybe he’d even go over there and clear it out. He could keep her stuff in the attic or just give it to charity.

When his mind veered in this bizarre direction, Sam had to pull himself up short. He wasn’t some kind of monster, keeping a woman captive as his permanent slave girl, locked and naked in his dungeon, forever at his mercy…

Yet, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that precisely what he was doing? True, the captivity was finite. Only two weeks left until he had to give her up, but did that make what he was doing any less heinous?

Though it was only three in the afternoon, Sam went out into the kitchen and opened the liquor cabinet. He poured himself some vodka and added a few cubes ice. He drank the first one quickly, draining the glass before pouring a second one, which he took back into the study. He sat in front of the closed-circuit TV and gazed at the screen.

What was really bothering him, he knew, was what had happened earlier that day. Why had he decided to fuck her? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do that again, not after that first time. It was a boundary, albeit an artificial one, that gave him a sense of safety. As long as he didn’t fuck her, they weren’t lovers. He was just her part-time Master, her temporary Sir, her jailer. He was teaching her a lesson, exacting a penance, taking his due for her crime against him.

But she’d been so good lately. So obedient, so responsive, so in tune with his commands and dictates that he’d found himself falling…

No. No, he would not even go there.

Rae Johansen was a liar and thief. She was hot, yes, there was no denying that. And she was submissive, but he was not the Master for her. Their relationship, whatever it was, was forever sullied by her breach of his trust.

And by his exacting such a cost for that breach.

He stared at the screen. She was on her bed, as always. Indeed, he’d chained her there, telling her to rest while he did a little work. He would have her exercise in a while.

When he’d released her cuffs and helped her from the sling, she’d stared at him with those dark blue eyes flecked with bronze, her lips like crushed rose petals. There was more in her expression than obedience or even sexual satisfaction. If he hadn’t known better he’d have thought there was…love?

No, impossible. He was fantasizing. She was his prisoner, his slave. No more, no less.

What had possessed him to kiss her? It was bad enough he’d succumbed to his weakness, desperate to be inside her, but the kiss? The intimacy of it had nearly left him undone. You could pay a hooker to let you fuck her, but not to kiss her.

Kisses were for lovers.

Rae Johansen was
not
his lover.

She was not even his friend. He’d sealed their fate with his strange choice of revenge. There could be no going back, or forward.

Sam tipped the last of the vodka into his mouth and stood, smashing his other fist into his thigh.

Damn it! Enough with the angst and the self-recrimination. She was getting off easy—thirty days instead of years in prison and a record that would follow her for life. Thirty days of letting him pretend to own her. Thirty days of dirty games. For that’s all they were, in the end. Just games.

She was a quick study. He had to give her that. She was docile and obedient, compliant to his every demand. She even seemed to like what he gave her. She begged so sweetly to be allowed to come. She gasped so prettily when leather, wood and rattan struck her skin, leaving their fiery marks and making her cry…

They had two weeks left. Any lingering fantasy of Rae becoming his lover had long since been smashed by the reality of what he’d taken from her. The damage was already done, so why not enjoy what was left and finish the deed? She’d become a willing, even an eager, pupil, a good little submissive who waited each morning with her chin proudly up, her eyes cast down in respect.

She’d taken everything he’d given her. And yet there was always something held back. Something she kept private and on reserve. She hadn’t yet truly submitted to him. She hadn’t given him everything she had. Could he wrest that from her in the short time remaining? Did he dare?

What would it take to reach her—to truly reach the core of her submission?

Could he come up with something that would break through the façade of docility and obedience to find the real submissive woman beneath? Something that would challenge her? Something that would find and connect with her deepest-seated fear and longing? Something that would slip past the barriers and break her down?

Then he remembered.

That first time he’d groomed her—her near-panic at the thought of his using a razor on her, the way she still trembled, even now, when he shaved her. She would close her eyes, her lips compressed, her hands clenched into fists when he ran the sharp edge of the razor’s blades over her skin. Her fear still radiated like heat, even after all this time.

Sam strode to his desk and slid open the top left drawer, extracting the black-handled pen knife he kept there. He flicked opened the silver blade and ran the edge of it lightly over the pad of his thumb.

“My slave girl,” he said aloud, “is terrified at the sight of her own blood.”

~*~

“What are you?”

“Your slave, Sir.”

“What else?”

“Your submissive. Your cunt. Your property.” Rae was standing at attention on the sixteenth night, her arms behind her back, hands grasping opposite elbows.

“While you are here, what will you do for me, for your Master?”

“Anything, Sir. Everything.”

He had taught her to say these words and she obediently mouthed them, telling herself they meant nothing. Again and again he had drilled her on her responses and she’d learned to parrot them almost without thinking. They were just words, after all. They were just part of the game, a requirement of her enforced stay, nothing to do with her.

Stick and stones…

And yet somehow they slipped more easily off her tongue now, and along with the words came a curious kind of safety, of peace. She
belonged
to someone. Someone who took her in hand, removing all need for difficult decisions. He made her come like she never had in her life. Forget about faking orgasms—Sam pulled them from her, again and again until she was completely spent. He made her cry with both passion and pain but he was always there afterwards to hold her and soothe away the tears. He fed her, he bathed her, he kept her cocooned in the safety of carefully prescribed punishments and rewards.

Where had the formidable Ms. Rae Johansen, equal to any man in the bedroom or the boardroom, disappeared to? Or, and this thought shocked her the first time it had slipped mutinously into her mind, was that put-together professional woman the façade? Was that the posture she’d adopted to hide from secret submissive impulses she’d never before understood?

Probably she was only adapting—engaging in some sort of self-preservation to keep from going insane. Once she got the hell out of this bizarre prison, she’d resume her persona of strong, confident woman, subservient to no man.

And yet, there was no denying that when she was being whipped or sexually tortured, the constant whirring rush of her mind finally slowed and eased. She was able to focus fully and completely on what was happening to her. Whether this was a good or a bad thing, she wasn’t entirely sure.

Sam was wearing his black leather pants and a white linen shirt, opened to reveal the blond curls on his powerful chest. Pretending she was gazing respectfully at the floor, she let her eyes glide over his lower half. There was something oblong and hard in his right hip pocket, but she forgot about it as she focused on the sexy bulge between his legs encased in the soft black leather.

The leather pants usually meant an intense BDSM session with very little sweetness involved. Oddly, instead of frightening her, this realization caused a tug of desire deep in Rae’s cunt. Was she actually coming not only to endure, but to crave the pain?

He left Rae, heading toward the cabinet where he kept what he called his toys. He returned with something she recognized and held it out to her. “Put this on.” He’d used this on her before and she knew what to do.

Rae took what looked like a string bikini made of thin leather straps. Where the crotch should be, instead there was a butterfly-shaped vibrator that fit between her legs, its center resting neatly on her clit. Sam held up the remote and turned it on the lowest speed, creating a pleasant, tickling hum at Rae’s sex. The remote was clipped to a leather string, which Sam slipped over his left wrist, wearing it like a bracelet.

He led Rae to the chains that hung from the ceiling and cuffed her wrists so that her arms were suspended, but not pulled taut, still bent at the elbows. There were two black cotton sashes tied to the chains from the last time he’d suspended her there. He’d used them as gag and blindfold, but this time they were left hanging, which suited Rae, as being gagged and blindfolded had left her feeling vulnerable and nervous about what might come next.

Sam turned the remote a notch higher and Rae shifted slightly, enjoying the sensation of the butterfly, hoping he planned to let her come without too much suffering beforehand.

Sam reached into his pocket and withdrew the object she’d noticed earlier. He held it in front of Rae, slowly opening it. Rae stared, her heart leaping into her throat when she realized what it was.

“You’re afraid of knives, aren’t you, Rae? Of knives, needles, blood…” Rae fixated on the sharp blade and held her breath. Surely he wouldn’t…he couldn’t…

He touched the point of the blade to her right breast. Rae screamed and jerked back in her chains.

Sam lowered the knife, holding it at his side. “Direct question, slave.”

“Yes,” she whispered, her voice having retreated somewhere behind her fear. This wasn’t part of the bargain. He had said he wouldn’t harm her. Oh god, was he going to
kill
her?

Reading her mind, he shook his head, reaching with his free hand to stroke her cheek. “Calm down, Rae. I’m not going to harm you, silly girl. You are my prized possession.”

He continued to stroke her, drawing his finger down her throat and along her breast. Despite her fear, her body reacted to his touch, her nipples perking, her clit throbbing against the soft rubber butterfly.

Sam was staring at her with a wild spark in his eyes—part passion, part power, part…love?

She had to believe him—he wouldn’t harm her. Deep inside she knew she was ultimately safe with Sam. So, what then? Was this another test? There was no way in hell she would pass it.

“You speak the words I’ve taught you well enough and for the most part you take what I give you, but you continue to hold back the essence of your submission. I want to reach past the walls that keep us from truly connecting. I want to break them down. I want to tap into the pure masochist I think is waiting to be released inside you. It’s not only something I want. It’s something you need. It’s something you’ve earned.”

“No, Sam. Not the knife. I can’t…” she pleaded, her voice breaking. She had spoken out of turn, but she couldn’t help it.
Not the knife, not the knife, not the knife.

He put his fingers to her lips. “Shh. You need to move through the fear. It’s the only way to get to the other side of your true nature.”

Rae shook her head, her eyes fixated on the bright silver blade as Sam lifted it again. This couldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t do this to her. She trusted him. He wouldn’t hurt her.
Not the knife, not the knife, not the knife.

“Here are the rules. I’m going to draw this blade over your skin. Your job is to stay very still. You wouldn’t want me to accidentally cut you.” He pressed the flat edge of the blade against her left breast. It was cold and hard and Rae shuddered at the touch.

Her heart was beating so loud she wondered if Sam could hear it. He moved the cold metal over her sternum, sliding it across her other breast. “Slow your breathing,” he soothed. “You can do this. You will do it. For me. For us…”

Rae was trembling, and not only with fear, she realized, but with a sudden burst of pure rage. The anger she had put aside as she reconciled herself to her situation burst back into her consciousness like a runaway train. Over these past weeks she’d allowed herself to be lulled into some sort of dark dream. To think she’d almost believed herself safe, taken care of, protected, even loved! What a fool she had been. He would never stop. Nothing would satisfy his sadistic need to punish her, his quest to break her down, to terrorize her into submission.

“There is no
us
,” she hissed, her voice dripping with fury.

The words slipped out before Rae even realized she was going to speak. She bit her lip, the rage subsiding back into pure fear as she stared at the pointed blade. She dragged her eyes away from it to gauge Sam’s reaction to her outburst.

His face was a study of hurt and anger, his eyes flashing, his lips bunching, his nostrils flaring. As she stared, something overcame his features, like a shade sliding down over a window. The emotion drained away, leaving only a hard glint in his eye.