Dark Obsessions - Volume I: Four Intense Capture Fantasies in One Sizzling Collection

by Claire Thompson

  “The nice thing about electroshock,” Stephen said, “is that it leaves no marks.” He turned to his counter of evil toys and held up a thin dildo with wires attached. “You’ve been exposed enough to this now to take a little more juice. After all, this is a punishment.” He laughed cruelly and Julianna felt herself trembling. “I think an anal probing should do nicely, coupled with this for your filthy little cunt.” He held up a second, thicker dildo. His voice had grown calmer, assuming the clinical, dry tone he used when readying for a long, painful torture session. Julianna’s blood ran cold and, despite the fact she was lying down, a wave of nauseating dizziness assailed her.

  When he’d penetrated both her orifices with the phallic weapons, he turned the dials on the little black box in his hand, not stopping until her screams filled the room. Her body became an arc of rigid pain. When he finally released her from the current, she lay utterly spent, drenched in sweat, her mind as empty and dark as the inside of a coffin.

  ~*~

  A crack of thunder jolted Julianna from a restless sleep. It was followed by a flash of lightening that lit up the cell for a moment, even through the small, high window. Another peal of thunder followed seconds later. She could hear the sound of heavy rain pummeling the roof of the building.

  There was a sudden booming sound, like something exploding, making Julianna jump. She strained to hear what was happening outside. After a few minutes she heard the sound of voices and muffled footsteps outside the building. She sat up, hugging herself, her ears pricked, her heart beating fast. What was happening?

  After the extended torture session with Stephen, she’d been taken back to her cell and left alone until the evening meal. Anders hadn’t called for her or come to her. She had missed his comforting touch, even if it was coupled with what he termed erotic suffering. Why hadn’t he called for her? Was he in trouble too, as Stephen had hinted? Would he even be permitted to make his counteroffer?

  When Jorge had placed her food on the floor, she thought he looked especially subdued, though she realized she was probably projecting her own feelings onto him. Suddenly it had occurred to her, based on snatches of conversations and bits of evidence she had pieced together, what might be troubling him. Alma had once been owned by Jason, and it appeared Jorge and Pete were still his property. Could it be that Jorge was sad Alma had been sold and was leaving the island?

  Taking a gamble, Julianna had said gently, “You’re going to miss Alma, aren’t you? I’m going to miss her too. She was kind to me.” Jorge glanced sharply at her, but per his usual, had said nothing.

  Another crack of thunder shook Julianna from her recollection. She could hear someone shouting and she listened hard, trying to decipher the words over the rushing sound of the rain. She made out the word generator and then fire. Fire! Anxiously she looked around her cell. The building itself was of wood and concrete. Could it catch fire? What would happen to her and the other women held prisoner in its cells? Anxiously she tugged on the chain that was locked onto her collar. She felt behind her, fingering the padlock that kept the hated leather always around her neck. She stood and moved toward the bars of the cell, gripping them as she looked out into the dark of the hallway.

  She startled as she heard the sound of one of the side doors being opened. Someone was coming for them! Yes, of course they were. They wouldn’t leave such prime “property” to be burned up, surely not. She should have known better. She waited, expecting the hallway to be flooded with light, but it remained dark, save for a small thin beam, the beam of a flashlight.

  The light stopped in front of her cell, and she could make out the tall, broad shape of a man. He held the flashlight just below his chin and she saw it was Jorge. “What’re you—” she began, but he hushed her with a warning finger to his lips.

  He unlocked her door, moving quietly, though she sensed a kind of tense urgency in his actions. What the hell was going on? Again he put his fingers to his lips. Reaching for the key around his neck, he unlocked the chain attached to Julianna’s collar. Then, to her amazement, he unlocked the padlock that held the thick collar in place at her throat and unbuckled the hated thing, letting it fall to the floor.

  She touched her neck with the fingers of both hands as she watched him remove a small backpack from his back and withdraw from it a rain poncho, a T-shirt and a pair of cotton pants with a drawstring waist. He held them out. “Put these on. Hurry!” Bewildered but happy at the chance to be somewhat clothed, Julianna did as he said.

  “Where are we—”

  “Alma’s waiting for you. Hurry.”

  Leaving the cell door ajar, Jorge pulled her along, gliding quickly but silently along the hallway. Instead of his usual clomping boots, Julianna saw that his feet were bare. He opened the door cautiously and peered out. Blinding flashes of light illuminated long silver needles of rain that punctured the dark. Julianna saw Pete then. He was pressed against the side of the building. He gave Jorge a nod. “You’re clear. I’ll wait a few minutes and then I’ll sound the alarm that one of the girls is missing. It’ll go just like Jay planned. They’re still all over at the generator hut so you have a few extra minutes. Go!”

  Julianna heard the sound of men shouting and realized the whole island was dark. Recalling the boom, she realized the generators that provided electricity to the island must have been hit by lightning. Jorge took her hand, pulling her along a path toward the palm trees, which were swaying wildly in the wind.

  Alma’s waiting for you… Just like Jay planned. Pete had watched them go, clearly in cahoots with whatever was going on. Julianna knew Alma had been sold, but she wasn’t due to be removed from the island for a few more days. What did Jay have to do with what was going on now? Could it be he was waiting with Alma on the boat? Waiting for Julianna?

  Jorge was trotting now, moving with sure feet through a maze of trees, Julianna barely able to keep up with him. She was drenched despite the poncho, and would have fallen behind, but Jorge kept tight hold of her hand, spiriting her along through the slippery grass.

  Escape! He’s helping me to escape, though god knows why or how! It was the only explanation that made sense. As this realization clicked into place, it sent an immediate jolt of adrenaline through her veins. It felt like a flooding river inside her, powerful enough to take anything in its path. She sprinted along beside him now, her heart thumping in her chest, water streaming over her face.

  They came out on the shore, near the dock where the boat that had brought her to this dreaded place was kept. The engine was running and she could make out two silhouetted forms in the boat. “Hurry!” Jorge urged.

  Julianna saw it was indeed Alma in the boat, along with Jay! A bubble of wild, tumultuous joy rose inside her, but she refused to let it burst. She’d been through too much over the past weeks to trust that all was as it seemed. This could still be some kind of horrible trap. She turned to Jorge. Breathlessly she demanded, “What about you? You and Pete? Don’t you want to get away?”

  Jorge shrank back, shaking his head. “No.”

  “Julianna!” Alma called softly, her voice nearly lost in the wind and blinding rain. “Hurry. We waited for you. Hurry!”

  Jorge let go of her hand and Julianna ran toward the small dock. Jay reached out for her, swinging her in and onto the seat beside Alma. Julianna saw Jorge disappear back into the trees as Jay eased the boat slowly out into the rocky, turbulent waters.

  Julianna looked back toward the island. She could see the fire now, a small orange and yellow conflagration through the trees. The boat was listing sharply as Jay executed a turn. It occurred to Julianna they were probably risking their lives, going out like this in such a storm, but she didn’t care. Better to die like this than be sold and mutilated, her spirit crushed, her body in chains.

  She turned back toward the open sea with one word beating like a drum in her head. Free. Free. Free!

  ~*~

  Tendrils of dawn light worked their way through the morning mist. Julia
nna waited huddled on a bench outside the American Embassy in Bridgetown. She clutched her purse, inside of which her passport waited to prove her status as an American citizen.

  It had taken about an hour to make what Jay told them was normally a twenty-minute trip to Barbados from the island. Though the heavy rain had stopped shortly after they’d left the dock, the seas remained choppy and Jay had given both the women lifejackets to wear beneath their ponchos. He was wearing one as well. While Jay concentrated on piloting the small boat, Alma and Julianna huddled close together. Alma had whispered in Julianna’s ear, telling her they had her to thank for her escape.

  “Jay might not have found out, if it weren’t for you, dear Julianna. They knew he was fond of me.” She ducked her head, smiling shyly as she said this. “They didn’t want him causing a stir so they had planned to send him away until I was sold. He pretended to go along, not even telling Vince he knew the truth. He was just biding his time until he could rescue me. He had told me to be ready—that he would come for me one night. Jorge agreed to be our messenger. I didn’t expect him to make the journey during this weather, but he said this was the best time—when they least expected it.”

  She paused and then smiled, the rain pouring down her face like tears. “He loves me. No one has ever loved me before, Julianna. Except maybe my mother, but she died when I was four. Jay’s leaving the life. He’s got savings. We’re going to disappear. He promises they’ll never find us.”

  Julianna didn’t voice her misgivings about how reliable a man like Jay might be. At least he’d taken Alma away from the nightmare on the island, and her imminent sale. Perhaps love made redemption possible, even for someone like Jay.

  Alma had produced Julianna’s purse from the floor of the boat. It was so strange to see it. It was like it belonged to another world, another life. “We’ll leave you in Barbados,” Alma had said. “Go directly to the American Embassy. Don’t go to the local authorities. Some of them are in Jason’s pay. They might send you back to him.”

  Julianna assured Alma she would go straight to the embassy. “I can’t believe you all took such a risk for me. I’m so grateful. But what about Jorge? Won’t he get into trouble for letting me out? Why didn’t he want to come with us?”

  “Jay took care of the whole thing. He had all the same keys Jorge and Pete have. He told them to blame him for what happened. It’s very unlike Jorge to do what he did. I doubt he’ll even be suspected.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “For me. He did it for me. Remember, I too used to belong to Jason, though only for a year or so. There was one time…” Alma frowned and bit her lower lip, the memory clearly troubling her. “You may know from your own experience, Jason likes to play rough. Especially with the boys. He wants them to fight back, but not too much. One time he was really tearing into Pete and Jorge just couldn’t take it anymore. He dared to get in the way. He told Jason to stop. He threatened Jason, something you just don’t do. I wasn’t there—I heard afterwards from Pete. Jorge wouldn’t talk about it. But Jason turned his rage on Jorge. He let Pete go, but he strung Jorge up between two trees and caned him until he bled. He left him strung up all night and into the next day.” She had leaned closer as she told the story, glancing nervously from left to right as if, even on the high seas, miles from the island, she might be overheard. “When Jason was away from the house, I snuck out back and gave Jorge water, a whole canteen’s worth. He drank every drop. Pete gave him a banana. We didn’t dare do more, for fear of being discovered, but Jorge never forgot it.”

  Julianna thought about her time in the solitary hut, and how Jorge had given her water from his canteen, and Pete had offered her the bruised banana. One good deed planting the seed for another…

  She had asked Alma then, “Why didn’t he come with us! Get away from the island and that horrible man! There’s room for Pete, too.”

  Sadly, Alma shook her head. “They know no other life, Julianna. Jason picked them up from the streets when they were boys, Jorge from Mexico City, Pete from Philadelphia. They’ve been his personal slaves all this time. I begged Jorge to come, but he only shook his head. I know it’s hard for someone like you, someone who grew up free and strong, with family around you, to even imagine, but Jorge and Pete have been living this life for so long, it’s all they know. It’s their comfort zone. They feel safe in their chains, if you can possibly grasp that concept.”

  “The other girls!” Julianna said suddenly. In her own wild relief and joy, she’d forgotten about Rachel, Ashley and whoever else remained imprisoned on the island. “What about them? We can’t leave them there.”

  “We couldn’t risk it. Even getting you—Jay was against it but he did it for me.”

  Julianna nodded. For some reason Alma seemed to love this man—this man who had taken part in the abduction of who knew how many women. And, it seemed, he loved her as well, at least as far as such a person was capable of loving someone else. Maybe Alma would be his saving grace—that which made him human again.

  When they had docked safely in Barbados, Julianna had turned suddenly to Jay, who hadn’t said a word during the tense and difficult journey through the storm. “Please,” she said. “Tell me how to get back there. I’ve got to help the other girls. We have to shut down this whole horrible operation.”

  Jay had backed away at first, shaking his head. “We’ll be gone, Jay,” Alma had entreated. “Maybe Julianna’s right and the authorities will be able to shut the whole thing down. Stephen and Jason will have a hard time tracking you down if they’re stuck in jail.”

  Jay had smiled then, apparently enjoying that particular visual. “You have a piece of paper and a pen in there?” He pointed toward her purse. Julianna pulled out a pen and rummaged for the index cards she’d packed to write her impressions of her spa vacation for the nonexistent advertising company that was supposedly footing the bill. Jay wrote a set of numbers with N and W beside them and handed it back to her. “Those are the longitude and latitude coordinates of the island. It’s uncharted, but using those, they can find it.”

  With that, and a quick hug from Alma, Jay had hailed a cab and put Julianna into it. By the time she’d asked the cabbie to take her to the American Embassy in Bridgeport and then turned around to look through the back window, Alma and Jay had disappeared.

  Julianna watched now as a young woman in a navy blue business suit approached the front door of the embassy and unlocked it. As she pulled the door open, Julianna stood and approached her. The woman stepped back, looking mildly alarmed, and Julianna realized she must present quite a picture, her hair tangled and matted from the storm and the winds, dressed in this old rain poncho and baggy pants.

  She dug into her purse, quickly pulling out the small blue-jacketed passport. “My name is Julianna Beckett. I’m an American citizen, and I need help.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re Julianna Beckett? Of New York?”

  Julianna’s pulse quickened. “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Yes. You were reported missing over a week ago when you failed to return to your job after your vacation. The embassy checked with the spa and they had no record of you ever arriving. I have the bulletin in the office. Come inside, please, and I’ll take your statement. Do you have next of kin I can call for you? Are you hurt? Were you harmed in any way? Where have you been?”

  Julianna’s eyes filled with tears which spilled over onto her cheeks. It was finally sinking in for real. She was free! She wouldn’t be sold to an Arab sheik or a sociopathic slave trainer. She would no longer be kept chained, beaten and tortured daily, fed barely enough to stay alive. She was free! But she wouldn’t forget the other girls, at least the ones left on the island, the ones not yet beyond help or hope. She wouldn’t rest until they too were free, and the men who had abducted them were behind bars.

  She held out the index card she’d been holding for hours in her hand, checking it from time to time to make sure she’d memorized the coordinates
correctly. “Here. This is where I’ve been.”

  Epilogue – Two Months Later

  Julianna sat on a bench in the small park near her apartment building, the novel in her hand unopened. A small dog came running out of the copse of trees along the edge of the park, a red rubber ball in its mouth. Skittering past her, the dog stopped in front of a tall young man in faded jeans and a black T-shirt. Julianna couldn’t see his face, but something about him seemed familiar.

  Hopefully he wasn’t another damn reporter, hanging out where she lived to spy on her. The story had been picked up before she even made it back from Barbados, and splashed all over the newspapers upon her return. Because Anders was so good looking, his photo had been prominently featured in the headlines, his intense blue eyes with those lashes tipped with gold, staring soulfully at the camera as though he were the victim in all this.

  During the first few weeks back, reporters had dogged her every move. One guy, who kept telling her to call him Jimbo, actually had the gall to say, “Come on, Julianna, you can be candid with me. Off the record, wasn’t it kind of hot? At least on some level? You know, being kept naked and chained, serving that movie star-handsome guy Anders, being ‘forced’—” he had actually used his fingers to indicate quotation marks around the word, “—to serve his every sexual whim?”

  It had taken all her self-control not to punch the asshole in the jaw or better yet, knee him in the groin. Instead, she’d snapped, “No, it wasn’t sexy to be repeatedly tortured and raped. I wonder how you’d like it if someone shoved an electric rod up your penis and turned it on. I mean, as long as the woman doing it to you was sexy. Would that be hot for you, Jimbo?”

  Armed with the longitude and latitude coordinates Julianna had provided, the authorities were able to locate the tiny island, and had swarmed the place, rescuing the remaining women and arresting the men. Julianna had tried to find out what happened to Jorge and Pete, if they were also being tried as criminals, but she hadn’t been successful in learning much about their fate. She had told the FBI agents about their situation, but the agents were all so deadpan and difficult to read that she had no idea if they even believed her. She tried, too, without success, to learn what had happened to Jay and Alma. Jay, as part of the slave ring, was a wanted man. She could only hope he was doing right by Alma, and that they managed to create a new and happier life wherever they ended up.