by Kitty Thomas
Then he scooped her up and carried her from the room. He didn't take her down any stairs this time.
Ari stopped and set her on her feet on hardwood floor. He removed the blindfold, and she took a moment to look at her surroundings. They were in the kitchen. White, gray, black. It was a very modern kitchen with a large stainless steel island that somehow looked stylish instead of cold. Along one wall beside a long blond wood kitchen table was a sliding glass door. Snow fell in big fluffy pieces, gently landing and collecting on the frozen ground.
Ari began taking things out of the refrigerator and started making breakfast.
Claire couldn't remember the last time it had snowed so much in January. She moved to the table and ran her hand along the natural finish.
“This table is amazing,” she said. She'd never seen a table like this in any store or even design catalog. It was simple, yet elegant. Sturdy. It felt like it could last centuries.
“I made it,” he said.
She glanced up, surprised. “You made this?” For a moment she forgot the circumstances between them. She had to take a break from reality to marvel at this table.
“It's beautiful. Is that what you do for work?”
She watched as Ari kneaded and rolled out dough on the stainless steel island. That island wasn't mere design. It was practical. This was not a man who did instant biscuits out of a tin, she realized, cringing again at all the canned beef stew she'd fed him. He must have been going out of his mind for real food and this kitchen.
“No, not work. It's just a hobby.”
“What do you do for work?” He had to be independently wealthy. Any job would have fired him after a three-week unexplained absence. Another wave of guilt washed over her at all the ways she'd fucked up this man's life.
He stopped working the dough and gave her a stern look. “Are you forgetting yourself, little one? We're getting awfully casual here.”
“I-I'm sorry, Master.”
He nodded and went back to the dough, clearly not prepared to talk about his work, whatever it might be.
Claire looked back at the falling snow. A fox stood outside the door, only feet away, staring at her. She yelped.
Ari came over to where she stood to see what had caused that sound to come out of her.
“The fox?” he asked.
She nodded. Claire had never seen a fox outside a nature show.
“Yeah, that's Arnold.”
“You have a fox?”
Ari went back to his work, flipping some breakfast ham that he'd started frying in a skillet.
“He's not my fox. I found him injured on the property last year. I guess he was lost, and he couldn't feed himself because of the injury. So I kept him safe and fed him. When he got better he disappeared back into the woods. I thought he was gone for good, but he kept coming back. Probably because I keep giving him scraps.”
With that, Ari picked up one of the frying pieces of ham off the skillet and tossed it out the door into the snow. The fox ran after it.
“But you named him,” Claire said.
“I couldn't just call him hey fox. I had to call him something.” Ari went back to breakfast, placing the carefully cut biscuits on a pan and sliding them into the oven. He started a pot of coffee.
“Milk, juice, or coffee?” he asked her.
“Coffee, please.”
Ari nodded and got out two mugs and a single plate. “How do you take it?”
“Black.”
“A real coffee drinker,” he said. Was he teasing her? She watched as he poured coffee into their mugs.
“D-do you have any other pets?” she asked, wondering if she was again pushing too far or being too casual.
His hungry gaze held hers. “Just you.”
Claire's breath caught in her throat, and just like that she was done with the Q&A portion of the morning.
When the timer went off, he turned off the oven and stove top. Ari took the pan out and put three huge biscuits on a plate and a slice of ham inside each one. He carried one mug and the plate to the table.
“Get your coffee and join me.”
Claire got her coffee off the countertop and went back to the table. Was he going to just eat in front of her? Was this when his cruelty would begin? So fucking stupid to think he wouldn't turn on her. Of course he'd turn on her. Why wouldn't he? He'd probably start feeding her beef stew out of a can. Or feed her dog food. After all, hadn't she called him a dog enough times?
She started to sit in one of the chairs at the table.
“No,” Ari said. “Sit here.” He patted his lap.
Claire put her mug of coffee down beside his plate and sat across his lap. He took a bite of biscuit and ham. But then he fed her a bite. Just like with the pizza, he seemed to like making her eat from his hand. Like a pet. She tried not to think too much about how she liked it, too.
By the time they were finished he'd eaten two of the biscuits and had fed her one.
12
Ari woke to the sound of Claire's moaning as she brought herself to orgasm. He smiled. It had been two weeks of that lovely morning alarm. After the first day where he'd had to coax her and give her the images to help her get off, she'd followed his orders on her own. He wondered what she thought about. Did she think of Ari and the way he touched her or had she returned to older fantasies? Either option must carry its own set of difficulties, but she pushed through until the delicious sounds of her moans and whimpers filled the room.
When she'd finished, he got up, took a quick shower, and went to the kitchen to make their breakfast.
Arnold stood at the glass door, peering into the house. The snow had finally stopped three days ago, but it hadn't fully melted. Patches of grass showed through where the sun's rays had melted some of it the previous day. The fox stood in one of those patches watching him cautiously.
Ari took down a box of soft gourmet dog treats from the top of the fridge. They were hidden behind the boxes of cereal. He couldn't say exactly why he'd hidden them, why he didn't want Claire to know he didn't just feed the fox scraps. He'd practically domesticated him. Though he would never keep him indoors.
He'd briefly entertained the idea of keeping Arnold as a full-fledged pet once his leg was healed, but a few videos about foxes as pets immediately cured him of that idea. Foxes were dogs on the outside and cats on the inside and twice as destructive as both. No, Arnold belonged in the wild, even if they'd developed a relationship of sorts.
Ari opened the sliding door and sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor. He dropped a treat onto the patch of nearby snow. Arnold warily approached it. It was the first time the fox had come back since that first morning with Claire in the kitchen.
“Did you miss me?” Ari asked the fox.
The fox stared back. Ari imagined he could see a cross between fear and betrayal in the canine's eyes. Arnold was already going wild again. Not that he'd ever been truly tamed. He just trusted Ari. At least he had before this break in their routine. The fox let out a shrill demanding whine.
“Okay, buddy, calm down. You can have a couple more.”
Ari laid another treat down, and this time the fox moved closer.
Arnold had visited every few days for the past year since he'd recovered. Ari was surprised the fox had returned after three weeks of nothing. The scraps and dog treats couldn't be that good.
With the third treat, the fox was curled up in his lap letting him scratch him behind the ears.
“Don't worry, I won't tell the other wildlife about this,” Ari said.
The fox made a vocalization that sounded almost like a laugh before leaping up off his lap and darting down the hill. Ari could just make out a fluffy tail squeezing through the bars of the gate at the south end of the property.
He shut the door and returned the treats to their hiding spot. After he'd scrubbed up and made breakfast, he took care of Claire. The fox may need to be free, but Claire needed to be contained. In the last week he'd gotten his security
system set up to accommodate her wandering. He'd even set the same security on the outside gate system with a remote option to open the gate from inside the house. Soon he'd let her off the chain to wander but not today.
He moved her through their morning routine. Bathroom, bathing, feeding, blindfold, and finally down to the dungeon. She knelt. She crawled. She said “Yes, Master,” and “No, Master.” In two weeks she was nearly perfectly trained. He still hadn't allowed her clothes. She seemed to have become strangely comfortable with her nudity in his presence. Good.
She didn't fight or cry or beg when he positioned her straddled over the spanking horse and strapped her down. He left her blindfold on. Ari crossed to a chair to retrieve the sleek black box he'd picked up from the jeweler the day before while she'd been napping.
He opened the box to admire the gold collar. There were intricate angular knotwork engravings around the outside of the band. A few days ago Ari had held his hands around her throat to estimate a measurement while she'd held her breath unsure of what he was about to do. He hadn't mentioned the collar.
He didn't want it too tight. He wanted it to rest lightly against the edge of her collarbone so he could still kiss and suck at the skin on her neck above it.
He hadn't fucked her yet. Not in any way. He couldn't bring himself to cross that line with her until he was sure she needed it. It wasn't enough that she just wouldn't be traumatized or that she could tolerate it. She had to need it.
He'd given her pleasure each day, but denied himself outside his own self-care in the shower. And each day she'd become more perplexed and frustrated by the lack of completion. Good.
He bent next to her ear. “Are you ready to be fucked, little one?”
Her breath seemed to lurch from her chest. “Y-yes, Master.” She squirmed on the bench.
“But you just came, moaning like a wanton slut,” Ari said, teasing her.
“Master, please... please...”
That sweet begging. He would never get enough of it.
He left her and crossed to the wall, taking a paddle off a hook. When he returned he smacked her ass with it. She jumped and yelped, not expecting the sting. A beautiful flush of red warmth bloomed out over her ass. He rubbed the sting out.
“M-master did I do something wrong?”
“No. I'm just testing a theory.” The paddle landed again with a loud crack against her flesh. And then again and again until her skin was heated and bright red. Tears slipped from under the blindfold.
“Master, please...” she whimpered.
“Shhhhh.” He trailed the edge of the paddle over her back. Then he set it down on the ground and dipped a hand between her legs.
“I knew this would make you wet,” he said. “Now, you're ready to be fucked.”
Another whimper left her, but this one was desire. As he stroked between her legs, the whimper turned into a low moan.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Master?”
“From this point on, things are changing. I won't just give. I will also take my own pleasure from you. However I want, whenever I want. When I take you in any way, you will say 'thank you, Master', when I'm finished. Do you understand, little one?”
When she spoke, Claire's voice came out breathy. “Y-yes, Master.” She squirmed again.
Ari smacked her ass, and she stilled. “Good girl.”
Then he took her. No more words passed between them. Her tight little cunt gripped him as if for survival as he moved inside her. Her breathy moans filled the spaces of the room, practically bouncing off the walls in their excitement. Her hips rose eagerly to meet his thrusts.
“Please, please, please...” she whimpered.
“I love how you beg.”
Her pussy clenched around him as she screamed out her pleasure. Ari followed with his own climax, emptying himself into her. He collapsed on top of her, his body curling possessively around hers, the relief of the moment overwhelming.
“Thank you, Master,” she whispered.
Ari kissed her cheek and smiled.
Claire lay on her stomach on the spanking horse, trying to get her breathing to return to its normal cadence. Every day for the past two weeks, she'd been sure this was the day he would take her, but every day it wasn't. He'd restrained himself even as she could see the evidence of how much he wanted her tightening his jeans with the hard rigid outline of his impressive cock. Instead he'd only given her pleasure without making any demands in return. Even as she'd wanted him, she'd been afraid of what might happen when he fucked her.
For years she'd lived in almost perpetual fear of even a random flashback hitting her. They'd been frequent the first year, but after that they'd seemed to come out of nowhere, like panic attacks. Everything would be fine, and then it would come like a crippling blow, putting her back in that basement again.
So surely actual sex with someone in such a confusing captive situation would trigger a full-blown terror-filled flashback. But nothing happened. Nothing bad anyway. She'd felt the tight ball of fear unclench when he'd finally pushed himself inside her. And despite every lingering fear, both her mind and body had been on board when he'd finally fully claimed her.
After her orgasm had washed over her, the strongest feeling left in its wake was relief.
Ari had curled around her as if they could be “big spoon” and “little spoon” somehow on a spanking horse. He got up now, put his jeans back on, and untied her. He helped her up, and then he pulled her into his arms and just held her for the longest time. So much strange domesticity with a man who'd decided she should be his slave.
“Are you okay?” he murmured into her hair.
“Yes, Master. I'm okay.”
After a few minutes of holding her in an embrace that shouldn't feel so safe, he led her across the room to a plush round pillow on the floor.
“Kneel,” he said softly.
Claire knelt on the pillow and waited. Her gaze had fallen quite naturally to the floor again. Maybe it was because it was painful to crane her neck up to watch his every move. Maybe it was a natural submission that bubbled out of her in his presence. He barely even needed to tell her to kneel.
If he wasn't holding her upright, it sometimes felt almost impossible to stand in his presence. He was just so overwhelmingly dominant and powerful as though he could take control of any space he occupied or anyone he encountered on a whim. That kind of power should terrify her, but she'd quickly learned he had no plans to use it against her.
Ari stepped away for a moment. When he returned, he placed a black velvet box in her hands.
“Open it.”
Claire opened the box and gasped at the contents. Inside was the prettiest collar she'd ever seen. Someone else might look at it and just see a piece of jewelry, but Claire understood what he was giving her.
It was a solid gleaming gold band that had a hidden groove on the underside that allowed it to be opened. On the outside, the evidence of where the collar opened was hidden amongst intricate engraved knotwork that wrapped around the band giving it the illusion of a complete, unbroken circle.
There had been a time in the distant past when kidnapping had been considered a legitimate form of marriage. It seemed Ari had decided to revive his own version of this tradition.
He didn't have to give her this beautiful piece of jewelry. If he had a thing for collars, he could use a cheap dog collar, or one of those leather BDSM collars. There was no need to spend an extravagant amount of money to give her something this beautiful.
She looked up to find him studying her reaction.
“Thank you, Master.”
Surprise flitted across his features. Had he expected her to be upset about it? They'd established two weeks ago that he was never releasing her, and somehow as the days had worn on that promise had felt more like safety and security and less like a threat. Or had he thought she wouldn't understand what a collar meant to someone like him?
She remembered what he'd said about the nook and
the chain and his last pet occupying that space, and an unfamiliar feeling passed through her.
“Is this the same collar that...”
“No,” he said before she could finish her thought. “Holly had a different collar. I had this one made specifically for you.”
She shouldn't feel so fucking warm and happy about this revelation, but she did. And as Ari took the collar from the box and put it around her throat, the finality of this thing between them sunk in. Instead of the million negative feelings she thought such a realization might elicit, all she felt was calm acceptance.
13
Claire woke the next morning, surprised to find the metal chain wasn't locked around her ankle. Was it some sort of trick or test? Had he just forgotten? Should she stay and wait for him? Two weeks ago her first thought would have been to try to run.
But she didn't want to run now. It was as if the gold band around her throat tied her to him more powerfully than any actual chain could.
Claire got out of bed for the first time without an escort and walked down the stairs into the main part of the room. The fireplace crackled quietly with a small fire that was running out of fuel.
She went into Ari's walk-in closet. Would he be upset with her if she put something of his on? She couldn't bring herself to wander around his house naked. It didn't matter that he'd seen everything.
She found a crisp white button-down shirt hanging in the closet with about fifteen more exactly like it. She put it on and buttoned it up, leaving a couple of buttons at the top open. The shirt was huge on her. It felt strange now to have any fabric brush across her skin beyond that of the sheets and comforter in her bed.
She used the bathroom and brushed her teeth and stopped to admire the collar in the mirror. Then she went to see if he'd left the bedroom door unlocked. Would he be upset with her if she left his room?