by Smith, Maren
He regretted his half-teasing choice of words the instant she startled.
Lingering pleasure forgotten, she sat up. “What? What did I do?”
He picked up her pack, holding it up to show it to her. “Absolutely no cellphones in the dungeon, no exceptions. This was as much my fault as yours. I should have been paying better attention. I’m going to put this in my locker tonight, but after this, you’re responsible for making sure you obey all of Black Light’s rules and regulations. Agreed?”
“Yes, Sir.” She nodded, the set of her shoulders relaxing once more.
“Good girl.” His gaze dropped to her mouth when she smiled. As if he didn’t already feel the need to adjust himself in his pants. Shaking his head at himself, he left before he made himself even later to clock in.
Halfway to the locker room, it occurred to him that he probably should have told her about Pony’s text. After a brief internal debate, he let it go. Pony could wait until after work.
For once, Puppy deserved to enjoy her moment of victory and her new job in peace.
Chapter 15
Why the hell couldn’t she make herself tell Pony no?
Elbows on knees, Puppy sat in the waiting area of the prison, not just ready for the next visiting hour to begin but ready for it to be over. She was irritated, one leg jiggling restlessly up and down, fingers combing over and over through the hair at her temples. The minute pain every now and then as she plucked one only pricked her irritation that much higher.
She wasn’t the only one, either. On another row of chairs on the wall directly opposite of her, Pony sat with her hands clenched tight in her lap, glaring back at her. The cords of her slender neck stood out in angry lines as she breathed. She’d been angry ever since Carlson had brought her home.
He hadn’t wanted to. In fact, that conversation now qualified as the biggest fight they’d yet had by far and she’d only won it because Carlson didn’t want to be her next Ethen—controlling every move she made—and because when he said it was a toxic environment, she’d answered, “And Pony is still in it!”
For almost ten full minutes last night, they’d sat in his car in the parking garage just down the street from the club, quietly calming back down.
“I have to go,” she’d finally dared.
“Why?” he shot back. “Because I’ll be honest with you, honey, I do not want to take you back to that house.”
They say the truth is freeing, but it hadn’t felt like that when she at last admitted out loud, “If I’m not there when she goes to visit him, he’ll make her do terrible things to herself.”
She’d never told anyone that before. For over a year, she’d kept that secret locked up deep in herself. It felt strange to hear filling up the confined space of his night-darkened car. It felt even stranger when his response disregarded Pony entirely and focused only on her.
“You’re going to go visit him? What makes you think I would ever let you…” That he wasn’t Ethen was evident not just in the way he caught himself before he could finish that controlling statement, but also in the deep breath he used to steady and calm himself. “Honey,” he tried again, making an obvious effort to be calm, strained though it was, “I understand you want to protect Pony, but think a minute, okay? If you go and meet with that man, what’s he going to do to you?”
“I can take it. I’m stronger than she is.”
After a startled pause, under his breath he’d said, “Jesus Christ.” But in the end, he’d taken her home. “Two days a week. You can be here two days a week, just long enough to escort her back and forth from the prison, but I want constant communication and an unbreakable promise from you that if he says one derogatory, threatening word, you will get up and leave the room right then. I mean it, honey. If you want to be there for Pony, fine, but that man does not get into your head again.”
She’d agreed, and back to her mother’s house she went. It was after two in the morning by the time she let herself in the front door and waved to Carlson, who wouldn’t leave until he knew she was safe inside. Her mother had long been asleep by then; Pony, although awake, wasn’t talking to her.
“I got a job,” Puppy said, lying in her own bed for the first time in days, hearing nothing but the seething of Pony breathing and all the angry things being kept unsaid. But being hit was far more preferable, she decided, than trying to sleep through her sub-mate’s anger. Over the course of today, it hadn’t gotten any better, either.
Somewhere down the corridor door beyond the guard’s gate, a deep metallic clang signaled the start of visiting hours. Pony’s eyes narrowed just before the locked gate that separated them from the public prison area buzzed open.
Vaulting to her feet, Pony was first in line. She waited expectantly, but Puppy was slow to follow her lead. She felt used, and tired, and the more Pony glared, the more she felt like walking back out to the bus stop rather than getting into line behind her.
Standing up, Puppy got into line, but not directly behind her sub-mate. Rather, she waited so she could be the absolute last through the door. It was a spiteful move and one that immediately showed in the broom-stick rigidness of Pony’s back. As soon as the guards let them enter, she tried to lead, just as she always did, but halfway down the hall to the open cafeteria, she abruptly stepped aside so she could slip back into line directly in front of Puppy. Together, apparently, was better than parted, at least in her mind. It wouldn’t be in Ethen’s, and they both knew it.
Ethen sat waiting for them at his table in the far back of the room. His face was set as stone, his eyes hard and reproving. Puppy heard Pony’s breath catch as his angry stare bored into her. But it was strange, because while that angry swarm of guilt-laden butterflies still gnawed and twisted at her gut when Pony’s step faltered, on Ethen’s part she felt almost nothing at all. He didn’t just look angry, he looked… diminished.
Pony reached his side first, but instead of granting her permission to sit, Ethen glared past her, straight at Puppy.
“Four more weeks,” he finally said. He didn’t give her permission to sit, but after a moment of studying him and feeling nothing but her own growing annoyance, Puppy sat down anyway. His eyes narrowed. “When I do get out, I want you to think on this moment if you’re at all confused about why the punishment is so severe.”
“I won’t,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Think about it, I mean. It doesn’t matter when you get out. I won’t be there, and I won’t be coming back here either. I’ve got a new Sir.”
The tiniest crack appeared in his glacial mask. For a moment, it actually felt good to see that flair of anger darken his gray eyes.
“He’s a better Dom than you have ever been and ever could be,” she said as he drew a slow breath, the clenching of his jaw the only hint he gave as his mask settled back into place.
“You know, I don’t think I need to see either one of you again.” Pushing back from the table, he stood. “I release you both.”
“What?” Pony gasped.
“Take her and go.”
Pony grabbed at his arm when he tried to walk away. “Wh-what… wait!”
It was strange not to be afraid. Puppy watched him yank his arm out of reach, feeling weirdly nothing. After everything that had happened—Piggy, Kitty, this whole last year—he was just releasing them? She didn’t believe it, not for a second.
“No, please!” Pony cried. She grabbed his wrist, but he knocked her back so violently that she lost her balance and actually fell into the table.
A shrill whistle from one of the guards silenced the room, drawing stares from other inmates and their guests.
“You’re done, O’Dowell,” a guard boomed, but Pony’s cry drowned it out.
“Don’t go!”
If this was an act on his part, then it was a damn good one. The only thing Puppy could see in him now was the irritation he shot at Pony as two guards made their way to him, one of them with cuffs in his hand.
“When a horse no
longer pulls its weight, you put it down.” Evading Pony’s reaching hands, the look Ethen gave Puppy next was just as derisive. “The same goes for a bitch.”
Pony burst into tears when the guard shackled him. Scrambling on all fours, she got in front of him in a kneeling position that never should’ve happened in the vanilla world. “I love you,” she begged.
He tried to walk around her, but she latched onto his leg like a two-year-old trying to stop daddy from leaving. Except this daddy had no problem kicking her away.
Both guards grabbed his arms, physically muscling him out of the visiting room.
“I love him!” Pony shouted after them, holding her chest where his foot had made contact.
Ethen disappeared through the locked doors without ever once looking back, and Pony broke down. She bowed, her forehead almost touching her knees. With nothing else to cling to, she hugged herself as she rocked and cried.
They weren’t free. They couldn’t possibly be. Stunned, Cynthia stared at the closed gate, fully expecting him to come back through it. He never did, and in the end, it was a female guard who came to help pick Pony up off the floor.
“Come on, honey,” she said, as immune to her tears as only a place like this could make a person. “He ain’t worth all this.”
Ripping out of the guard’s grip, Pony turned on her. “I love him!” Turning on Cynthia just as savagely, tears overflowed her eyes as she hissed, “Look what you’ve done!”
There at last, she felt something. Not that old creeping sense of guilt, but pity.
“I love him,” Pony moaned, anger giving way to despair as she broke down again. “I love him so much.”
“I know.” She slipped her arms around Pony’s thin shoulders, a little surprised when the other allowed it. “I know.”
Hugging Pony to her side, Cynthia walked out of the prison, leaving both Ethen and Puppy behind.
She was surprised that she didn’t feel better.
* * *
Pony cried nonstop for days. Carlson knew because she was the reason he had to relent on his two-days edict, allowing Cynthia to stay and nurse her sub-mate through the misery. From the texts he kept getting, there was a lot of it.
According to the texts, immediately upon returning home, Pony went to bed and didn’t get up again for days. She refused to eat. She barely drank. Only when Cynthia begged, pleaded, and finally bullied her into sipping a few drops did she comply. On the fifth day, Cynthia placed a frantic call to Carlson and forty minutes later, he pulled into their driveway.
He strode into the house, rolling up his sleeves as he came. In his drill-sergeant best, he ordered her out of bed and into the shower. It was not his finest moment, but that voice worked as well on her as it did the most stubborn of his new recruits. Within minutes, she was crawling out of the blankets and he helped her, stumbling and crying into the bathroom where Cynthia was waiting with soap and a towel. Leaving the two of them to shower, he stripped down her bed and opened the windows to help air out the room.
“I need sheets,” he told Cynthia’s mother and she sighed heavily, but dutifully fetched them from the closet.
“I’d love to get rid of her,” the older woman muttered, arms folded disapprovingly as she watched him work. “Unfortunately, getting rid of her means losing my daughter too, and I just can’t make myself do it. No matter how terrible she is.”
The open hostility should not have surprised him, but it did. He didn’t like Pony. She was a parasite, attached to his submissive in a relationship so brutally unhealthy that both women had hovered and still were hovering on the brink of physical, emotional, and mental starvation. She had physically attacked Cynthia. She had dragged her week after week to visit her abuser.
But she wasn’t a parasite, Carlson suddenly realized. What she was, was deeply wounded. Every bit as much if not worse than Cynthia.
“Tell me you haven’t told her so,” he said.
“Every chance I get,” the older woman bitterly replied. “She doesn’t go, and she never will. I’ll be stuck with that bitch for the rest of my life.”
“She’s not ‘that bitch’,” Carlson told her. “She’s the only person Cynthia had to hold onto while the two of them went through living hell.”
“Nobody made them go through it,” she snapped. “Nobody made them stay. That was their choice. Every single day they could’ve left but they didn’t. They chose to stay with him and put up with what he did to them. I’ll never understand it.”
“It’s hard for me to understand too,” he cut in, trying to hold onto his temper. “The only thing I do understand is that no one who thinks they have a choice would have stayed. To them, there was no choice. But they clung on until they got through it, and they’re still clinging, because there still isn’t any choice.”
She jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “What are you suggesting, that I’m as bad as he is?”
Spreading his arms Carlson gestured around the room. The overt pinkness of it the juvenile curtains, the My Little Pony bedspread, the childish clothing in the closet. The comforter was that of a twelve-year-old. The stuffed animals should have decorated the bed of a child, and the posters on the wall belonged to a boy band that had gone out of style back in the 90s.
She recoiled, folding her arms defensively as she stared, first at the room and then at him.
“I love my daughter,” she hoarsely replied.
“Your prison is certainly prettier than Ethen’s,” he agreed. “But when you break it down, it’s still just a prison. And she can’t escape this anymore than she could him.”
Snapping around on her heel, she nearly ran Cynthia over in her haste to escape.
Cynthia stared after her but didn’t call her back.
“All clean?” he asked. “How is she?”
“I couldn’t get her to shave her legs, but”—she shrugged—“maybe that’s for the best.”
“Probably,” he agreed.
Pushing open the closet door, she dug around for clean clothes just as the trill of a muffled cellphone caught his ear. Lifting the bedding he wasn’t quite done changing, he found the phone tucked under Pony’s pillow. After a brief internal debate, he answered it. “Hello?”
Half expecting it to be Ethen calling from prison, he was surprised when a woman asked, “Anna?”
“Uh…” Startled, Carlson looked at Cynthia. “She’s in the shower, actually. Can I take a message?”
“Just tell her Lisa from the diner called. I’m sorry, but we need someone who’s going to actually show up at work. If she doesn’t return the uniform by the end of today, we’re taking it out of her last paycheck.”
Cynthia was still watching him, patiently waiting until the woman hung up.
“That was the diner,” he relayed. “She just got fired.”
“Pony doesn’t work at a diner,” Cynthia said, confused. “She works at the law firm downtown. She’s a receptionist. It’s how she and Ethen first met.”
“Apparently, not anymore.” Dropping Pony’s cellphone on the bed, he changed the subject. “Your mom’s upset.”
Looking away, she dismissed it with a one-shoulder shrug. “She’s always upset.”
She had her mask back on. Wondering why he felt so driven to pry, he said, “Do you want to go after her?”
“Why?” Cynthia returned, raising her gaze to his and holding it steadily. “I know how that sounds. But she doesn’t want me here any more than she wants Pony.”
“She’s your mom.” He frowned. “I’m pretty sure she does want you.”
“Not me. Not the version of me that I actually am.” Glancing around the room, she looked into the closet and then down at the pink glitter butterflies on the shirt she wore. She sighed. “I haven’t been the person she wants for a very long time. To be honest, I’m kind of tired of trying to be things I’m really not.” She hesitated before meeting his eyes again. “Am I as awful as I sound?”
“No, honey. In fact, it does my heart good
to hear you say that.” He pulled her in close, loving the way her body relaxed into his as he bent to kiss her. It was hard to stop at just one. He swatted her butt before letting her go. “Get Pony dressed. I’m taking us out.”
Hesitating, she asked, “Pony too?”
“She needs it.” He smacked her butt again. “Go on.”
She walked out of the room looking back at him over her shoulder. Just before vanishing into the bathroom, she tentatively smiled.
Smiles like that could make a man do any number of stupid things. For instance, for just a moment, he was tempted to invite her mother along too. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
There were some levels of dysfunction that ran too deep even for him to want to tackle. Pony might be more than he could handle. He wasn’t sure he was ready to take on all three.
* * *
Judging by the look Danny gave them as Carlson signed them in for the night, Cynthia at his side and Pony trailing behind him, her head bowed and her back menagerie girl straight, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find Spencer in a less than convivial mood by the time they reached the dungeon bar.
“You’re late,” he said, and then added, “again.”
Frowning at Carlson first, his dark eyes roved straight over Cynthia and locked on Pony.
“We had, um,” Cynthia flashed a quick glance at Pony, who remained petulantly unresponsive, “a little trouble at the restaurant.”
A tic of muscle pulsing along his jaw, Spencer let it go. “Are we working tonight?”
“Yes, sir.” Turning to her sister submissive, Cynthia asked, “Do you want to come wash down the equipment with me?”
Pony stood there, staring at her hands. Silent.
Carlson met Cynthia’s helpless look with a frown, but he’d walked into this manipulation multiple times tonight already and he wasn’t about to give Pony anything she might twist into his taking command of her.