It was after one of these nights, when April went home crying that she began, as any abused woman might, obsessing about all her actions. Had she combed her hair finely enough? Was her makeup flawless? Had she served dinner with the proper balance of respect and gratitude? Had she pleased him in the bedroom? Was she getting fat? Old? She began running the evening's events over and over in her mind, each time going back a little farther. She began to think about the night before. She thought about all the times she had made Milton angry. She remembered the times when he was romantic and sweet. She remembered pining over him as the mysterious "Sir." She remembered the night they met, her rape. She started going over that night's events in her mind. How frightened she was. How she promised to be a good girl. What extreme circumstances those were. How little she knew about role play, but still she was able to please Milton. Now, it seemed, there was nothing she could do to please him.
But the events of her rape continued to run and circle through her mind. Some things just bothered April. Why was she so compliant? Yes, she was afraid, but she was a strong woman. Couldn't she have run? Couldn't she have tried something? Why was she so taken with Milton? She remembered the sense of pride she felt when she could take his huge cock down her throat, up her ass. She remembered how tall and well built he looked all in black, tattoo exposed, as if on purpose. She remembered the strange sense of security that total lack of safety gave her. But they didn't discuss those acts in advance. There was no prior arrangement. There was no safe word. There was no consent. April realized she'd had it all wrong all this time. 'I'm sleeping with my rapist.'
When she came home for that long weekend she was overwhelmed with shame as any rape victim might be, but that feeling was mixed with confused amorousness for one of her rapists and that feeling seemed to mend the deeply personal, internal tear inside of her. Now that amorousness was gone and April was left with nothing but deeply engrained shame. She realized there had been many times in her and Milton's sex life when what they were engaging in was not role play at all but silenced rape. April sobbed. She cried about her abduction, she cried about her misjudgment about Milton, their entire relationship. She wondered if she was truly submissive or just suffering from some kind of psychological damage. She wanted to leave that life behind her. She wanted to heal. His dominance over her was abuse, she thought and she pushed that lifestyle into a dark and obscure crevice of herself. It was associated with Milton. It was wrong.
But April had to endure it just a little bit longer. She had to stay with Milton long enough to discover the identities of the other men who raped her and their female accomplice. April stopped crying and her mind began scheming elaborate plans to sneak into Milton's office and search his files. She tried leaving her purse in an elusive placement and then asking his secretary if she could go in and look for it when he wasn't there. Twice he found it and brought it to her with a kiss. April shuddered once. He seemed to notice. The third time April did this she got into his office and had just enough time to pull her own file and stash it into her purse before Milton walked in. Once again, April had to play the ditz who forgot her purse.
She quickly took the file to her office. 'There's bound to be something in there.' But there was nothing, just her resume, some of her awards, a record of a dispute between her and a colleague. 'Nothing.' Lately, when April felt like she hit a dead end, she went out and talked to Janice. Before Milton, that was something she would never have done, but many of his assignments led her to foster relationships with her staff and coworkers. She went out to Janice's desk and leaned on her counter. Janice obviously was having one of her migraines because her glasses were off and to the side of her and her face was down and in her hand.
"Uh! I just feel like I'm running in circles sometimes," said April.
"I know what you mean," said Janice, picking up her head, putting her glasses back on, April momentarily getting a look at her without her glasses, her eyes, that distinctive eye shadow. She recognized it from the night of her abduction. Janice was the driver. Who would have thought she hid a slender waist under those A-line dresses?
"I actually better keep working," said April, tapping Janice's counter once and going back into her office. Janice seemed nonplussed at the brevity of April's visit. April knew where to look now, she just had to wait until 5:30 when Janice got off and search her office. She called the police station and told them she wanted to report a rape and when should she come in. They told her to come in right away but she said she had one last thing to do. The police told her not to do anything stupid. She explained herself.
After Janice left April began carefully searching her office. Making up excuses in her head, in case she got caught. Making sure to put each file, each paper, each item back in its original position. April searched through the middle drawer in her desk. She searched all along her back wall cabinet files. She stood on a chair and felt to see if there was a file in her coffee cup cabinet. April was fixated on some kind of file when the next day it dawned on her to check Janice's email. She checked her inbox from around the date of her rape, overriding her password, but nothing was there. She looked in the sent box from around the time of her rape, and nothing was there.
Then she remembered something the rapists had said to her. It was about her promotion. She remembered the day it was announced, because it was two days before her birthday. She looked at a number of suspicious emails, but none of them were incriminating. There was one with no subject that was just a link to a coworker, a link to a comic strip on office jobs. There was one titled "get it back" but it was just regarding getting a form back in order to edit an error. Finally April just looked through all the emails from around that time and after five hours she came across one titled "paperclips." It read:
Want to get your power back from her? Man up.
It left a meeting time in the warehouse district. April printed it. She looked several emails later, having searched under the same e-mail addresses and the meeting time of her abduction and place of her rape was mentioned. She printed it all out, closed Janice's email, shut down her computer and finally went to the police office. She was greeted by a Sergeant Duncan Connors.
"But you can just call me Sergeant," he said dawning a friendly smile and a southern accent. 'Georgia, maybe.' "Officer Gains was originally assigned to your case when you called yesterday, but you didn't show up." He smiled at her. "And Officer Gains has since had a family emergency. So I'll be handling your case. Personally." He smiled again. He led her by her wrist through the busy main space, where most of the officers and detectives had their desks, and into his office. He sat her down in front of his desk and leaned against the side of it. There was a single floor lamp on in the room. It was shining just above April's head. April handed the Sergeant the e-mails. He told her to start from the beginning. She spoke of her promotion, the abduction, the tattoo, the eye shadow, the affair.
"The affair isn't going to help you, but I want you to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. If you want to take this to court, and by the looks of it you do, they're going to insult your reputation. But I've seen this kind of thing with women who were kidnapped before. It's called Stockholm Syndrome."
"Wait a minute. I'm not crazy. I don't need to see any shrink," protested April. She wasn't suffering from anything. "I was just confused. The jury will understand."
"Well," it was Georgian, "I'm not your lawyer, but he, or she, is going to tell you the same thing. It's your only bet." Sure enough, April's lawyer recommended she do just that, see a psychiatrist. April gave in and agreed and the psychiatrist testified in court that April had been, indeed, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. April recounted the events of the rape in detail, straight-faced. She recalled the details she noticed, the blond hair, the aged eyes, the distinctive eye shadow. The tattoo. She described how she came upon the evidence, and how each man had motive to get back at her, each man was up for her promotion, including Milton. But back then he didn't know he'd be C.E.O. in a few days'
time, he didn't know the Old Bastard would have a heart attack and die and leave the company to him. She described her mixed and confused feelings the weekend and, really, in the months afterward.
Milton, Janice and the three others were held without bail. The jury charged each of them with either rape or accessory to rape and kidnapping. April took a week off of work. When she got back she got to work hiring a new assistant. The company had a new C.E.O. hired by the board of directors. A week after coming back April entered her office to find a bouquet of roses there, stems cut short, in a short square vase. She read the card. It just said, "The Sergeant," and left his phone number. She dialed it. 'I should at least thank him.' The Sergeant picked up the phone.
"Sergeant Connors? It's April Dowze. I wanted to thank you for the flowers."
"Oh yeah. I really felt bad about what you went through, during the trial. I know that was hard," he said.
"Still, I don't think you send flowers to the ladies in all of your cases," April said, leaning back in her seat, twisting her finger through her hair, a little surprised at herself. His uniform was very cute.
"You've got me there. April, would you like to have dinner sometime?" the Sergeant got right to the point, just as April did.
"How about tomorrow night?" she asked, "Your place."
"Young lady, you are asking to have your socks knocked off. I make mean ravioli." April laughed.
"It's a date. I'll bring the wine." April hung up the phone. She sat in surprise for a moment. 'Sergeant... Sergeant.' She liked the sound of that. She thought she would continue to call him Sergeant, even though their relationship was to be more intimate now. So she hoped. The Sergeant was a big man, bigger than Milton. He was taller and unlike Milton, who was more lean and muscular, the Sergeant was more muscular but also had a slight layer of fat over him. And he was a policeman. An officer of the law. He was the safest man she could imagine in this vulnerable time. She wanted to curl up in the shelter of his arms.
But he brought something out in her, a little wild streak, a desire to lose control. She readied herself differently for the Sergeant than she had for Milton. Instead of using a fine toothed comb and brush she let her hair air dry wavy and wild. Instead of eye shadows in the browns and neutral tones she wore thick black eyeliner. She wore a dress that was very low cut in the front and tied in a halter style around her neck. It fell just below the knees and tight all the way down. She wore high heeled ankle boots with straps and buckles. She wanted to be a bad girl for the Sergeant. Jennifer stood before the Sergeant's door and messed with her hair. She knocked and he led her to his couch. It was chocolate leather and of modern design. The Sergeant opened the wine and brought two glasses out, one for each of them. They spoke briefly about the trial and the Sergeant inched towards April on the sofa. He put down her glass. He was a big, strong man. He was a Sergeant.
And she began to feel that warmth again, spreading through her insides. But as he neared that other feeling tied to the warmth came, ever since that long weekend that shame came flooding back. It coursed through her veins, through her fingers, up her spine and through her scalp, down the backs of her legs. It filled her. Those two feelings were two halves of a whole, the yin and the yang, the warmth and the shame, like Milton's tattoo. She ran from Milton. And now she ran from the Sergeant.
Epilogue
She couldn't run very far in her heels. The Sergeant walked after her and grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her around, his hands digging into her arms in the hallway of his apartment building, his eyes piercing hers.
"I think I understand how you feel, April. I'm a police officer. I'm safe. You can trust me. I've handled this kind of thing before. Why don't we go back inside and talk about it?" he said, holding her back, maintaining eye contact with her, guiding her back into his apartment, pushing all the right buttons. He shut the door behind them, he returned to April her glass of wine and he waited for her to talk. For a long time April sighed, she'd take in a breath and gesture as if she were just about to speak, but no words came out. Finally a flood of words, and tears, came rushing out. Intimate details about the abduction, the rape, the subsequent relationship. The Sergeant too wondered if April's submission was real or just a side effect of the Stockholm Syndrome. He too had urges, like Milton, to dominate April but unlike Milton the Sergeant was a wholly different kind of Dominant. As April was soon to discover. "April, I want to ask you about your submission to Milton. May I ask you about that?" April nodded that it was all right. "Did it ever, at any point, make you feel good?" he asked.
"It did. I had a strong urge to please him. And when I did, I felt so great about myself. But I figured that was all the Stockholm talking. Not really me," said April, taking large sips of her wine.
"April what if it was really you. What if I asked you to embark on a journey with me that starts tonight, with you feeling better, and us working together as Dominant and submissive? Would you take that risk with me, and risk being treated right, risk being lavished, risk being loved. There's something about you April you're so tough, but you're so vulnerable at the same time. No, I don't send flowers to all my female victims. You were the first one." The Sergeant withdrew. April sat thinking deeply for awhile. Then she asked the Sergeant if he really had made that ravioli. The Sergeant went ahead and served dinner. They made small talk which evolved into conversation. The Sergeant couldn't help but feel that he was being interviewed. He was willing to be vulnerable. He could be vulnerable and still in control. April sensed this twilight of vulnerability amidst a world lived under strictest control. She could relate to it. April wanted to feel her vulnerability now too. Yes, she would be willing to go into such a relationship with the Sergeant. She announced her decision. The Sergeant squeezed the hand that was resting on April's lap. He smiled at her. "You've already gone out of your way to please me this evening," he said.
"I have?" she asked. "What have I done?"
"The way you've dressed, made yourself up. It pleases me. You don't normally do this to your hair," he said, stroking it away from her face. "This," he said, gesturing at all of her, "this is a policeman's dream. A sweet little bad girl. What shall we do to you, eh? For getting dressed up so naughtily?" He tapped her cheek. April sat in his silence for a moment. For a moment, she let that warmth well up inside her, like the vines from her dream, growing and filling her stomach. And then she threw herself off the chair onto her knees and pawed at the Sergeant's pants.
"I want your cock in my mouth. You should shove your cock in my face!" she exclaimed. The Sergeant grabbed her by the shoulders and placed her back in her seat.
"Whoa whoa. Patience, kid," he said.
"What do you mean kid? You're, what? Five years older than me?" April asked defensively, their hands still clasped.
"Eleven. I read your file. I'm eleven years older than you. All the more reason you should listen to me. You've got to have some patience... Now I think naughty girls like you deserve a spanking. Don't you agree?" It had become so rare later in their relationship that Milton treated April to a spanking. It required too much care; it seemed April was undeserving of that care. But with the Sergeant she was deserving, she was pleasing, she was good. He led her by her wrist to the couch onto which she climbed lithely and proudly, displaying her curves, arching and bending, stretching herself to the furthest most pose.
April knelt on all fours with her back arched severely. The Sergeant ran his open palm up her lower back, around her zipper seams and up her spine.
"This dress fits you finely. Has it been tailored to fit your unique figure. By unique, I mean to refer to your tiny waist of course," flattered the Sergeant. He quickly unclasped the dress' clasp and unzipped its zipper in one, single motion. Pulling the dress down from the front, having untied the halter, he pulled until the dress was at April's knees. April was wearing a red lace push up bra and matching lace thong. The Sergeant pulled the thong down to April's dress. He wrapped his right hand around her neck and stroked her esoph
agus. He ran his hand down her spine and just down to the tip of her ass, then his hand landed on her hamstring. He massaged and caressed it, with each stroke taking in more skin, squeezing deeper into her flesh until he was squeezing her ass and pulling it open. Because of the extreme arch to April's back this squeezing revealed all of April's insides, her asshole, her pussy lips opened and shut with each grope until the Sergeant released his hand from her and it landed back on her ass not groping this time, but in a single solitary clap. He leaned over her and whispered in her ear. She turned to face him.
"Red," he said to her, snapping her bra, then unclasping it.
"Red?" April had grown oblivious to such civility as having a safe word. She had to be told twice.
"Yes, red." She understood. Their breaths intermingled for a moment and the Sergeant stood up again. He clapped her again. Again and again. His hand landed closer and closer to her pussy and occasionally a finger would land inside it. April tried to press herself upon these wandering fingers but they always disappeared, they always teased. She grew restless, bothered, her pussy lips throbbed severely, giving her the sensation they were fluttering. Her insides throbbed, and she was near orgasm, the Sergeant's fingers inching her closer to the edge. A tear dragged with it a thin line of mascara down April's face, because with every fingertip of pleasure came an immense handful of pain on her rear. The tension was almost too much. She gurgled and moaned.
"Sergeant!" she finally cried out.
"I like how you call me Sergeant. Let's keep it that way. Yes?" he asked. His voice was deep.
"What was that word again?" she asked.
"It was red," his voice a low rumble now.
"Yes. Red. Thank you. Please." April gestured at the Sergeant to continue. He smacked her one more time and leaned into her ear again, one knee on the couch, kneeling over her.
"This spanking was administered because of your naughty dress. From now on you will dress naughtily only for me, in public only with my permission. Do you understand?" he asked. April turned around on the couch so she was lying on her back. She put her hands around the back of the Sergeant's neck as he knelt over her. She nodded. The Sergeant picked her up by her back and stood her up. He pulled her dress up and tied it around the back of her neck. He walked her to the door and told her he was sure she was quite tired. She nodded again, in a trance. He kissed her, deeply, holding her jaws in his hands like a big fruit, kissing her as if he had taken a deep taste. "I'll call you with instructions," he said.
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