Hansel 1-4: The Complete Series (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Lucas
 

I should have stopped this shit a long damn time ago.

When I arrived in Vegas nine years ago, I didn’t know any better than what I was. Than what I did. I needed things I haven’t needed in a fucking long time now. Dominating women…it was the air in my lungs.

Now it’s goddamned boring.

I’ve cut back—way back; maybe two or three times a year, like tonight, when we have some new investors in town, and my submissives are Luna Trois and French Kitten, a famous porn star and a celebutant bitch who, combined with me, draw a pretty decent crowd.

But this shit is all for show. We don’t do real-time domination at The Forest. Not when most of my submissives are notable in one way or another, and there’s always a full house behind the Plexiglas stage wall.

Luna and Frenchy had to sign off on the cat I’m palming. On the thick plugs in their puckered holes. On the tight cuffs around their wrists, and the spreaders I’ll use when both their asses are good and welted.

They were happy to agree to the nipple clamps I like: the metal ones that can do real damage if left on too long—though, of course, they won’t be.

Neither woman objected to the dual blowjob they’ll give me after I spread them wide and push my fingers up their cunts. Luna will deep-throat me and Frenchy will tea-bag my balls. Luna is thrilled that, after she stuffs her throat full of my cock, she’ll spread her legs for Luna’s tongue while Luna lets me fuck her from behind. I’ve got a nine-inch cock, and she told me she’s shallow, but Luna likes the pain. They all do.

I can’t lie: I like to give it.

I made my name dominating sick showgirls. A lot of it is my body and my face, my XL cock and the absurd length of time that I can wield it. But it’s the showmanship, too.

The rough, whispered words the mics can always pick up.

The heavy-handed spanking—also okay’d by my partners, although it looks and sounds spontaneous.

The way I give it to them, invading mouth, pussy, and ass, often in quick succession.

People like to think of me as some sort of grand fucking conquestor.

Unbreakable.

Unyielding.

The year after I left rural Colorado, I hitchhiked my way to Vegas, where my miserable life began. I made such a name for myself as “Edgar,” my shows at Vixxx would sometimes draw a bigger crowd than the Saturday night fights at the Mirage.

With a little legwork, it wasn’t difficult to sweet-talk investors into fronting a club. I’m good with money—good at betting, I guess—so they were happy to invest again and again, each time lowering my interest rates and increasing the amount of dollars. Now that The Forest is what it is, even the most prudish among them are pleased to have their names up on the donors’ wall here at my primary location.

In the last five years, I’ve opened four locations. Financed one sixth of a casino. Built five apartment buildings, invested in one planned community, and bought out three luxury car lots. And those are just my tangible investments.

I’m interviewed regularly by the
Nevada Business Times
, consulted occasionally by Hollywood, still sporadically beset by huge financial offers from porn studios, discreetly phoned by Wall Street deviants interested in “the lifestyle.”

They all know me as Edgar.

Not my birth name, Lucas Lenore, nor any other name I’ve had.

I’ve made a new life. Become almost famous for my stamina and temper, for my keen eye for submissives and my talent with a crop.

I stay hard all the way through every show, no matter how long. It’s not Viagra. Just lust and unfulfilled longing.

No one ever guesses my secret.

At what my private submissives’ gag orders keep hidden.

That after every show, there must be blood.

Mine
.

Because I’m not a sadist—not just.

Inside, I’m still Hansel. And Hansel is a masochist.

*

Backstage after the show, Luna and Frenchy thank me emphatically for a good time. I smile tightly and thank them for participating.

Then I hurry off into a hidden hallway.

I keep a fully stocked apartment at my main location just for nights like this. Nights when I see her in the audience. When I hear her voice, like a foggy evening drifting through my head, when I feel her hands on me like warm echoes.

This set is new, and probably part of the problem. I had it made when the anniversary of that date passed this year. It’s a strange set, one that probably seems random to everyone in the audience, but I don’t give a shit; I made it just for me.

It’s fucked up, I know, but I still lust for Leah. My dick throbs, rolling a dull ache down the inside of my thighs. 

I think about how ironic it is: I perform the most pleasurable acts, am known for giving my submissives an almost painful number of orgasms, yet I leave every show without finding release of my own.

I’m able to make business calculations—at least about The Forest—by studying the behavior of people with fringe tastes. People who are compelled to visit a sex show are not Regular Joes. They’re outside the mainstream. In Vegas, their numbers are larger than elsewhere, but still—they’re the minority. The ones who are interested in working for me are even rarer. And even among the sexually adventurous—deviants, some might call them—I’m an outsider. Requiring pain for pleasure… That’s not normal. Not in any light.

If I were to showcase what I do in my own bedroom, I’d lose business. So I keep it private. Partner with subs who can stomach my proclivity, who know on the front end what they’re getting into. Women like the one who made me what I am, who don’t mind hurting a man. Some even enjoy it.

Tonight,
her
job will be easy, I think as I take long strides through the darkness of my private hall. I’m so hard from the last hour and a half, my dick has its own heartbeat. My balls are tight and swollen, demanding release I just can’t find unless I’m in the privacy of my own quarters, with a woman I’ve got on lockdown via NDA.

For the last ten months, that woman has been Breeanna Benson. Not that I ever call her that. I call them all
her
. It’s just easier.

I picture her spread-eagled on my bed, her metallic fingertips shining in the dim light. Sharpness down my back as I’m buried in her hot, soft cunt.

My breathing grows shallower. I pick up my pace. Each step makes my heavy balls swing, makes my pulsing dick swell just a little more. I try to get a deep breath to calm my racing heart. Stars dance in my eyes, and I’m grateful for the impeccable sense of direction that makes it easy for me to find my door in the dark hall.

I punch the code into the keypad with trembling fingers. I shoulder my way through the door, drop my leather pants, and palm my throbbing cock, biting down on my lips to keep from moaning—not in pleasure, but in pain.

Every time I get hard, the anxiety begins. I feel the need not for release but for pain. Pain and pleasure go together; when you’re taught this, it’s impossible to forget or move past it.

It’s probably part of what makes me such a good dom in a show. Out there on the stage, my anxiety focuses me. Causes a rush of adrenaline that keeps my spankings hard, my orders sharp.

Being reliant on my submissives to provide my pain makes me beholden to them. I know that. There’s no other choice, and I loathe that. I hate giving any amount of control to anyone.

Still, I make sure I’m the one in charge. I say when and how. My current sub enjoys inflicting pain—she’s confessed that much—but she also enjoys taking my orders, being submissive to me in every other way.

I find her waiting for me on her knees in the center of my king-sized bed, her body bent into a bow, her wrists still tethered to the bedposts the way I left them two hours ago.

When she sees me, she touches her masked face to the mattress.

The mask is a necessity. Every sub wears one. So I can see their pale blonde hair and blue eyes, but not their faces.

“Get on your back,” I say in a low voice.

She complies quickly, moving into the spread-eagle position she knows I like. I hoist myself onto the bed and loosen the restraints around her wrists. Then I reach into the small brown box on the table pushed beside the bed, take out a small, velvet bag, and dump ten small, metal triangles into my palm. Just the sight of them makes my dick twitch. I grit my teeth and fit them over her fingertips. It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve used these. Had to keep my back smooth for the show I just performed.

“Wrap your hands around my biceps,” I say as I move atop her.

She complies, applying a little pressure from the metal claws’ pointy tips as I palm my rock-hard dick.

Before I get a chance to shove myself inside her, I say, “Squeeze me.”

The order is unnecessary. After so many months spent in my bed, she knows what I like. With her fingers stretched out straight, so that her claws are nowhere near my dick, she catches me in between her thumb and forefinger, pressing and capturing my cock just below my head; tugging first, then squeezing. It wouldn’t normally hurt, but I’ve been hard the entire show. All the blood in my throbbing head is caught there for a moment, the pressure building.

“Hold,” I hiss.

She holds her grip. As I see spots behind my closed eyelids, the tightness in my chest begins to ebb.

If arousal brings on fear, the arrival of expected pain alleviates it.

“Down,” I groan.

She slides her hand down my shaft and bounces the palm of her other hand beneath my balls. They throb from heightened pleasure, but when she squeezes from the top down, as if she’s milking a cow, I cry out.

She lets me go, and then repeats. I see stars, moan, “
Fuck
.”

She repeats the agonizing ritual a few more times, until I’m so tender there, I know an orgasm will bring pain.

“Rest,” I tell her.

She lowers her hands to the mattress, and I part her legs. I slide my hand up her thigh and find her soft, warm folds. She’s already slick—probably turned on from what she’s just done to me—but after just a few thrusts of my fingers in her pussy, she’s writhing below me. Her nipples harden into pebbles. Her mouth “o”s, letting a low groan move out of her lips.

“Spread your legs wider for me and grab onto my shoulders.”

Her blue eyes flutter, peeking up at me, then closing. “Yes, Master,” she whispers.

For just a moment as I push myself into her, I see a face that brings me peace. I hold onto the memory as I feel her stretch around me. She whimpers just a little, spreads her legs a little more. She pants as I work my way even deeper into her, then give a few taps on the buttplug she’s been wearing since this morning.

“Master,” she cries.

I start thrusting. Leah. Leah, Leah. Fuck.

I push in as deep as I can go and pull out slowly. My hips are shaking as my cock swells and pulses. My heart is beating hard; the air feels thin. I can’t wait much longer, and for a moment I’m so worried I’ll come before she grabs my shoulders, I fear I might pass out.

“Now,” I manage.

She cinches my shoulders like a hungry animal, gripping tight and clenching her fingers. The metal tips she’s wearing pierce my skin. My cock throbs. Pleasure has me grunting as I thrust. And when perfect pain lights up my deltoids, I allow myself to come.

We repeat this twice more—each time more painful, and therefore more satisfying—before I order her into the bath. I never help her bathe. I wait outside the door, reading the
Wall Street Journal
on my cell phone and shooting off an email to my assistant, Raymond.

When she turns the water off, I join her in the bathroom, bend her over the sink, and gently remove her buttplug. I rub cooling gel over her and carry her to bed, instructing her to sleep only on her side.

No mention is made that tomorrow when the sun comes up, she’s leaving. The only goodbye I give her is a stroke of my fingers over her wrists. Unlike mine, they’re smooth and unmarred. Tonight, for the first time since she’s been my sub, they won’t be bound by rope.

She’s free, and I can’t seem to care about the loss.

I dream of snowfall in a dark alley. I watch it through the tiny, cut-out square in front of me, and when it’s falling fast and I can feel the cardboard over my head dip in, touching my hair with its cold wetness, I draw my knees up to my chest. The slashes on my back pull with the motion, rousing me a little. In my sleep, I think of
her
—the first, nameless
her
who made me what I am—and start to breathe too fast.

I wake up and swipe twice at the space beside me on the mattress. Finally I hear a crumpling sound, feel the cool paper bag in my fingers. I snatch it to my face and roll over on my side. As I shut my eyes again, I wish that I could knock for Leah.

CHAPTER FOUR

Leah
 

The wedding is bad.

Okay, well that’s not really true.

I’m
bad at the wedding.

Superficially, I think I play it off okay…at first. I spend the morning with my sisters, who both treat me like porcelain after my weirdness at the show last night.

After I found out for sure it was him, I re-joined them on our couch and did nothing out of character for the rest of the night as I let the feels rock through me. I slept in the room with Laura, because Todd wasn’t able to fly in until a few hours before the wedding. I knew I couldn’t hide my exhausted, over-emotional self completely, so I told Laura that being at the show, where the décor reminded me of The House, had triggered some anxiety. She gave me a hug and that was that.

I went to sleep hoping I would dream of him and didn’t. So I awoke feeling wrenched and disappointed—and so many other things I didn’t have the words for.

Manis, pedis, fruit-topped waffles in bed in Lana’s hotel room. Then her other bridesmaids joined us in the bridal suite downstairs, and I managed to keep myself normal while everyone rushed around getting ready.

Lana told me about two hours before the wedding that Laura had told her what I said about my anxiety. She hugged me, and we talked about how weird it is, the way life unfolds and sometimes you have choices and other times you don’t.

“That was a time that you didn’t, Leah. You couldn’t help it that she took you. You can’t help it that you have leftover anxiety. I think you handle it so well. You should be proud of how far you’ve come.”

I nodded, and almost cried but didn’t, and I told Lana I was proud of her, too.

After that, everything got crazy. Mom and dad, aunts and uncles, everyone oohing and aahing over Lana in her gorgeous dress. I kept tearing up, but couldn’t tell if it was gladness for my sis or
lasdjlkdfjl
for
him
.

Maybe
alksjdfd
for him.

What do I even call it?

There’s no name.

I held myself together until the wedding started, and Laura and I stood beside Leah at the front of the room. That’s when the snapshot memories started flying through my head.

His arm, tucked over mine.

His hand, stroking my cheek.

Our fingers, clasped so tightly together, all ten of our knuckles a shocking white.

Hansel on top of me, his eyes squeezed shut, my hands pressed on his chest as he pounds into me.

I want to hold the memory close, but I’m worried if I do, I’ll cry in front of Lana’s crowd.

She and Roberto say their vows, and Leah’s friend Xander stands up to read a quote.

Here’s the thing: I don’t like Xander. He’s a snobby antique Star Wars memorabilia dealer who uses words like “pontificate” in his every day vocabulary, so typically when he opens his mouth, I turn off my brain.

But I have Hansel right there at the back of my throat, in the pit of my stomach, in my trembling fingers, and so anything anybody says about love is bound to impact me.

Xander says something ridiculously simple—a quote from a book. Something so obviously cheesy-showy in this context, that it shouldn’t affect me at all. Only it does. So much so, as the ceremony ends and we file down the little makeshift aisle and toward the parlor’s exit, I bolt under a partition gate, collide with a waiter, dart around him, and run all the way out of the hotel, toward the road, where I have to talk myself out of asking for directions to The Enchanted Forest.

Xander’s book quote was by Pablo Neruda. It said, “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply.” And some other stuff you might be able to envision someone like Xander reading at a wedding.

I don’t even remember exactly what it said, but it mentioned hands. And falling asleep. And loving someone without forethought or intention.

It made me hot. Like…sweaty-sickly hot. As if deep down in my belly was a flame.

Standing by the road, I remember what the showgirl told me about Saturday. How applications are due at five o’clock. I check my phone and find it’s almost nine o’clock at night. I missed turning in an application to be Hansel’s sub.

Hansel has a sub.

I sob all the way back up to my room.

As I collapse on the bed, exhausted and already half asleep, I see a snapshot of a lilac, leather roller skate.

*
 

I was at the skating rink. Sophomore year, second Saturday of September. Just me, and the girls my mother called my “just-Leah friends.” Maura, Kaye, Shayna, Tiffany. Maura was dating Trey Reiss, a junior with a compass tattooed on his back. Kaye had just told me about her crush on Shayna. And Shayna, of course, was wrapped in Eric.

Tiffany and I had been the odd girls out. Although I guess we weren’t really odd or out, because we had each other. We shared a king-sized packet of Skittles and a “Monster”-sized Sprite, and when we passed the Sprite back and forth, Tiffany made some kind of joke about how we were lovers. I saw Kaye blanch out of the corner of my eye.

I remember I felt pretty that night. I think it was the brand new, lime green Chucks. I wore them with a short, black taffeta skirt that kind of flounced around me when I skated. I remember the shirt I had on: a floral pattern with little shoelace bows perched on each sleeve. The way it made my boobs look bigger than they were. I was pretty sure the left one was a little bigger than the right, but that night, they were looking even. I had on some watermelon lip gloss, and when I smiled at myself that last time in the tiny little bathroom, I thought,
I’m the prettiest. Not Lana. I might even be completely beautiful.

And then I tilted my head and washed my hands and told myself I didn’t care. Mom and Dad were always telling us looks didn’t matter. That by the time we finished college, we wouldn’t care what brand of shirt we wore, or if our blonde hair was dirty blonde, golden blonde, or pale blonde. How by the time we were their age, we’d be glad we had any hair at all.

Who cared if I was pretty, I told the girl there in the mirror. But still, I was glad about my new Chucks and my flower shirt from Anthropologie.

The rink was dark when I skated back out. The disco ball was glowing pink. The rink had mirrored walls, so little pink disco-ball dots were flying all over everything, moving almost in time with this big, hit song called “Crazy” by some Gnarls guy.

There was this area of the rink that had funky, old, orange carpet—the short, rough kind of carpet, like they have on the floors at school—and it was elevated just a little bit over the rink itself. The rink, a big oval, was separated by a half-wall from this bench-filled, square area. I leaned on the wall and looked out at the clumps of people skating. I inhaled the smell of stale popcorn and slightly sweaty shoes, and found myself smiling.

Tiffany skated by and held her hand out. I leaned over the half-wall and slapped it.

Shayna and Eric glided by, holding hands the way they always did. Shayna waved, beckoning me to come on out, but I kind of liked just standing there.

Secretly, I was looking for Freddy Burke. Freddy was this senior lifeguard who had saved me when I hit my head on the diving board at the community pool back in July. He was loud and sometimes a little…much, but my body reacted to his like Coke and Pop Rocks. Since football season started, my eyes would follow him around the field, watching his legs flex and admiring his butt and shoulders as he moved.

After another song, I spotted him. He looked good in a blue plaid shirt and cargo khakis. He had really dark hair. I liked dark hair.

Tiffany waved again, and I figured I should quit wasting my night just standing there.

I got one foot onto the slick surface when something buzzed inside my pocket. I thought for a second about skating and answering the phone at the same time, but I wasn’t very coordinated. The last thing I needed was to land on my butt right in front of Freddy.

I waited for a break in the traffic, then I turned around and went back to the carpet area.

Missed call: LANA

“Hmmm.”

Lana was dating this guy named Holt McCalister, and she didn’t usually call me when she was over at his house.

Maybe they’d had a fight. If Lana broke up with Holt, I would get to see her all the time again.

Spurred by the possibility, I decided to go outside to call her back.

The rink had a side door, marked with one of those plastic, glowing EXIT signs, situated just to the right of the men’s bathroom. I didn’t bother taking my skates off. I waved at the guy behind the food counter, unsure whether I should ask about using a door that no one normally used, but he was playing on his iPod, so he didn’t even notice.

I used the stopper on the back of my skates to keep from rolling as I pushed the heavy door open. I held my arms out for balance and hobbled onto the asphalt in my rented skates.

The first thing I noticed was how bright the streetlights were. The parking lot was crowded, filled with familiar cars, so I didn’t feel uneasy as I took a few awkward steps, leaned against a lamp pole, and pushed “SEND” to call Lana.

The phone rang three times before a low, male voice picked up.

“Leah?” he asked. “Lan, it’s Leah,” I heard him say.

Lana’s sobs swelled in the background.

What was wrong, I wondered. What had happened?

I didn’t get to find out. The next second, the door of a nearby SUV swung open. A figure rushed at me, and something stung my arm.

The something was a Taser, I learned later. It didn’t just sting; it shocked me into brief unconsciousness.

As soon as I crumpled, Mother reeled me in the back door of her Ford Expedition and wrapped me up in tape, like a spider dressing a captured fly.

I woke up some time later in the trunk area, with an awful headache and the need to puke.

I did, and a strange little laugh carried over the leather seats. “Look who’s up now. Sleeping Beauty. That’s not your name, though, is it darling?”

I was confused, of course—this was heightened by the blaring country music—but it didn’t take her long to turn down the Garth Brooks song and explain.

Lana had probably called me because Laura had been hit by a car. This car, in fact. Mother had tried to take my sister first, but Laura ran into some woods near the high school, where she’d been one of the last people leaving band practice, and managed to hide.

When she couldn’t take Laura, she went after me.

“I know all three of you, dearies. Pretty little blonde girls. That’s what I needed. A pretty little blonde to be my Gretel.”

It didn’t make sense at first, but she explained as she drove—as the lights of Boulder dimmed and I saw the Flatirons pass, and eventually, my ears started popping as we drove west on 285, winding up into the Rockies, past the little towns of Conifer, Bailey, Jefferson, and finally Fairplay.

“I’m Mother, Gretel. I’m your Mother Goose.” She laughed. “It’s a little kooky, I know that, but I think you’ll like The House. It’s not a cottage, like the story, and there’s not a lot of candy. It’s a mansion. Much nicer than that little matchbox you live in. Some of my windows have a view of Mount Bierstadt. Snowy now up there.”

She told me how she was born to be a mother. It was her calling, but her husband, Ben, had died in some sort of accident.

“I never got to bear the fruit of my own womb, but this is better. You’ll see. Pretty soon you will tell me how it’s better.”

She told me I would have my own bedroom. She had already decorated it. And next door, Hansel.

“Your rooms look almost just alike. You’re brother and sister, after all.”

On the other side of me was Sleeping Beauty, she said. Across the hall, Rapunzel. Red Riding Hood had “picture perfect” auburn hair, and Little Boy Blue still looked like a little boy, even though he was almost twelve.

“I had Snow White,” she said. “But… I don’t figure we need to talk about her. She’s gone now. I’ll be replacing her when you get settled.”

I croaked out questions, which she answered readily, telling me in her high-pitched, almost chirpy voice, how she had rescued “her” children.

“They were all unwanted. All but you. I had some trouble finding a suitable Gretel—you know, blonde, with blue eyes and a delicate, Germanic sort of face. I saw your family one day – oh I’d say a month or two ago – down at that Home Depot south of Boulder. I was buying…well, it doesn’t matter.” I turned my head toward the front of the car, not that I could see anything but the back of the third row of seating. “Did you know that I get nervous when I leave The House? If I were never to return, well…I don’t know what. My children would perish, I believe. Stuck in their rooms, the poor dearies.”

She sounded resigned to the possibility. I almost puked again.

“I did a good thing, really, when you think about it. With the other children, most of them were re-homed. That means they had been adopted, but they weren’t wanted. I helped them, welcomed them into my nice, big home. But I couldn’t find a Gretel. No Gretel near here, in Nevada, Utah, or anywhere that I could drive. When I saw you—the three of you—I knew. Your parents have three. I took only one.”