by Kitty Thomas
The house was an open floor plan where one large room flowed into another on the main level without any walls between anything. The house felt like an art gallery, or maybe the art itself. It had been an appropriate place for an art show's private after party.
Shannon was sure the only reason the floor on the main level wasn't that same see-through glass was because the entire basement level was a dungeon/kinky play area. Damian obviously wouldn't want just anyone to see what was underground—unless they were into the same things he was.
She found the guest room easily. Once inside, she happened to catch Damian's gaze as he glanced up at her from the kitchen. He flipped the omelet again.
Seeing through the floor was unnerving. Even more unnerving was the way the room she was in looked like it might fall into the sea at any moment. His enormous home seemed perched precariously on rocky ground, and when she moved to the far wall to look out the clear glass panes, she could again see the waves crashing on rocks below.
There were actual moveable windows set into these larger glass panes, and she opened one, letting in the crisp salt air and the sounds of the waves and seagulls screeching overhead. The windows each had tightly woven screens to keep bugs and birds out of the house.
In spite of everything, that cool salty breeze and the ocean sounds felt soothing.
Shannon went to the closet and found a pair of jeans in her size and a soft gray T-shirt. The shirt was brand new but it was made in that stone-washed rumpled worn way as if it were a favorite shirt, decades old. It was soft, and the large scoop neck would hang off her shoulder. She opened a drawer in the main room and found comfortable-looking white panties and an equally comfortable-looking bra. Sporty, casual. Not slutty.
The last thing she wanted after last night was slutty. She wanted to feel and look like a normal person, not the kind of person who'd participated in last night's party among strangers. Even though that was exactly the kind of person she was.
She wondered how many of Damian's guests had paused in their fucking and kink games to watch her under the spotlight. She'd been too wrapped up in the moment to be able to pay attention to them, only noticing them again when all the porn movie sounds had stopped and she'd been engulfed in the silence of her own experience.
Somehow Damian's watchful gaze on her at the after party had been more unnerving than Lindsay's because she didn't know Damian in the way she knew her master. She didn't know if Damian would judge her or start treating her like a whore.
She felt the blush creep into her face. She was about to drop the wrap to get dressed, but caught Damian's rapt gaze on her again as if he were waiting for the show. She kept the wrap in place tight around her body, gathered up the clothes, and went into the hall bathroom. The bathroom broke the pattern of glass beneath her feet with a gray granite floor. The bathroom walls were mottled glass all the way around, like shower glass.
It was enough privacy to make her comfortable enough to change clothes. Shannon locked the door behind her. The bathroom was an elegant little sanctuary—a place she felt safe and unexposed for the first time since she'd arrived at the glass house.
She carefully folded the wrap and laid it on the counter. She wanted a shower, but she didn't want to keep Damian waiting, so she quickly put on the clothes and finger-combed her hair until it looked a little less like she'd just rolled out of bed. Though he, like most men, probably found that look appealing.
She was right about the neckline of the top she'd chosen. It strayed off her shoulder, hanging halfway down one arm. A few of her scars were visible, but Damian had already seen them. He'd gotten an up-close-and-personal look at them last night under the spotlight in the dungeon. Was that why he hadn't touched her after the party?
Shannon had been so tired, but when Lindsay had left her with Damian she was sure that meant he was about to fuck her. Alone. Without the safety Lindsay provided. Once Lindsay had left, she'd been so scared she'd almost dropped to her knees to beg him, but Damian had told her she needed rest, cutting her off before she could embarrass herself. She wasn't even sure what she would have begged for him to do or not do. She just knew he was still so much a stranger.
Shannon pushed away those thoughts and looked in the mirror, her fingers straying to the collar at her throat. Somehow the thin glittering collar really did go with everything.
Her feet were still bare when she emerged from the bathroom and went back down the stairs. Once again she gripped the railing as if for her life even as the rubber grips under her feet steadied her and reassured her of her safety.
Damian had already set the table when she joined him. He didn't comment on her hiding in the bathroom. It was ridiculous. She knew it. He'd seen everything. But it was different when Lindsay was with her.
“Lindsay loaned you to me for the weekend. I'll take you to his office Monday morning. He'll have the clothes he wants you to wear waiting for you there,” Damian said when she joined him at the table.
“Why?” She'd understood she was staying overnight, but three nights?
Damian raised a brow. “Is my company that offensive?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I, I just don't understand why he would give me to you for the weekend.”
It hurt a little. Didn't the doctor want her anymore? Was he bored already? Did he want to spend time with other women at the house instead? Maybe she was cramping his style and he was rethinking having a girl all his own. Her fingertips strayed again to her collar. In less than a day it had already become an absent-minded nervous habit.
“No, Sir,” he corrected.
“I'm sorry, I'm confused,” Shannon said, still not giving him a title. Of course she'd called him Sir in Lindsay's office that day, but it felt wrong without the doctor here, like she was giving up pieces of herself—little bits of submission—to another man. Like she was betraying Lindsay even though he'd abandoned her here.
“Eat your breakfast,” Damian said, digging into his own omelets and bacon.
She took a bite of the omelet and then followed it with a sip of juice. “It's very good. You're a good cook.”
He laughed. “It's just an omelet, don't get too impressed yet.”
She was used to Phyllis cooking at the house. It was intriguing and maybe kind of nice having a man cook for her. It felt normal and domestic. It brought into sharp focus just how abnormal so much of her life had been for nearly a decade.
“I wanted you,” Damian said. “I find you... intriguing.”
She startled when he echoed the same word that had just been bouncing around inside her own mind. She took another sip of juice to help push the food down.
Damian didn't comment on her jumpiness. The phone rang. “Yes.” He wasn't answering a question. That was just the way he took a call. “One moment.” He passed the phone to Shannon. “It's Lindsay.”
She took the phone, glancing around, searching for a private place to talk to him—as if there could be any privacy in this house with all the glass and open space.
“You can take your call downstairs,” Damian said pointing at the door to the dungeon as if that wasn't the door she'd emerged from when the tantalizing smell of cooking bacon had drifted down the stairs.
“Okay.” Shannon said, avoiding his gaze, trying not to blush. She got up from the table, quickly eating the last bit of omelet and bacon and took the phone downstairs into the much more private and secluded space. She glanced at the huge rumpled bed at one end and then walked to the other end to look again at the painting Hunter had made.
“How are you doing?” Lindsay asked as she stared into her own haunted eyes on the canvas.
“Why am I here? Why did you leave me with him?” It sounded like an accusation.
“Has he mistreated you?” Lindsay asked.
“No, but... why did you just give me to him like that? Am I really staying here until Monday?”
“Yes, you really are,” Lindsay said, sounding a bit annoyed. “I thought you'd enjoy the time out o
f the house. And I know you like Damian.”
“Yes, but... why?” She tried to ignore the comment about liking him. Damian Brand was an objectively beautiful man. What woman wouldn't like him? And besides that wasn't the point.
“Would you do whatever I asked of you if it pleased me?” Lindsay asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She still could hardly believe she'd gone so quickly from thinking she hated the doctor to... this devotion that all at once seemed to consume her.
“Well it pleases me to share you on occasion with Mr. Brand. So be a good girl for him, and I'll see you on Monday.”
“Wait.” She wasn't ready to not hear his voice for another two whole days.
“Yes?”
“A-are you mad at me? D-do you not want me anymore?” she asked, hating how insecure and stuttery she sounded.
“Of course I'm not mad at you,” Lindsay scoffed. “You haven't done anything wrong. Damian has taken an interest in you, and he's a good friend. I expect you to please him while you're with him. Disobedience to him is the same as disobedience to me. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good. I'll see you Monday.”
The call ended, and she stood there, staring at the phone, while her bare feet absorbed the cold from the concrete floor. She startled again when Damian's shoes echoed off the steps into the wide open space below as he descended.
His timing was way too convenient. Had he been standing at the top of the stairs with the door cracked open eavesdropping on the call? She tried to recall everything she'd just said. Had she said anything on the phone that might offend Damian when she'd thought she'd been having a private conversation?
He held out his hand, palm up, and she instinctively shrank back.
“My phone,” he said.
“O-oh. Sorry.” She knew it was silly to act this way. If Damian was a friend and Lindsay trusted him, of course she was safe. But he was still practically a stranger to her, and she didn't have the best track record of safety and security with men.
Shannon had the strong underlying fear that she was a very bad judge of what was safe or good for her. After all she'd let Andrew collar her, assuming they'd be together forever, and he'd just dumped her for some other girl without a second thought about it. Then she'd stupidly gone to the house, where she'd stupidly mouthed off to Brian and nearly died. Now here she was with someone else who wanted to play with her freedom and her life. And though she hadn't chosen this particular man or situation, she still didn't trust herself.
Maybe that was the one good part of this. She hadn't chosen Damian. If he hurt her, it would be Lindsay's fault, not her own. She thought this realization should comfort her, but it didn't.
She edged closer and handed Damian the phone. He slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and simply regarded her for a few moments.
“I think I'm ready to cash in my rain check,” he said, finally.
“What?” Shannon took an involuntary step back, knowing as she did so that there was only a few feet of open space behind her before she'd hit the wall with nowhere left to go.
“Was our time together in Lindsay's office that forgettable? Your seams weren't straight. Lindsay asked if I wanted to punish you, and I decided to take a rain check, to make it... memorable.”
Memorable.
The last man who had wanted to make a punishment memorable had scarred her for life. Shannon held out her hands, placating. “Please,” she whimpered, backing up until she hit that damned wall.
She didn't know what had come over her but she felt the panic rushing in all at once. Starting with begging seemed like the smart move. Don't resist. Don't smart off. Just beg, and... hope. Hope he wasn't like Brian. Hope he wouldn't hurt her. Hope he didn't decide she needed to be fixed and he had just the tools to do it.
Damian moved closer, but there was still space between them. Enough to run, to slip past him up the stairs? But if she did that... what then? Would it set him off? Would it set in motion a chain of events that nobody could save her from? Suddenly she was very aware of the isolation of this huge house beside the sea—not another living thing outside for miles except seagulls.
“Shannon...” he said.
“Please... don't.” The tears already flowed down her cheeks. She could hear Brian's knife moving along the stone walls of the dungeon. Shannon cringed as the memory of the pain searing through her flesh came back to vivid crisp sensation in her mind. And all she could do was whimper.
***
Damian watched as she seemed to huddle in on herself, almost like she'd gone someplace else entirely. She slid down to the floor, her head in her hands sobbing out the words, “No, please... no no no, I'll be good. Please, I promise. I promise I'll be good.”
Lindsay had said nothing about this. Yes, Damian knew about the sadistic psychopath that had hurt her so many years ago—marking her forever. And of course that wasn't something you just got over.
But Lindsay had punished her without much problem. And she'd seemed fine in the times Damian had seen her, both on video and in person. Then again, Lindsay had saved her life, and she'd known him for years before he'd ever touched her. Damian was still an unknown quantity. He tried to see it from her perspective.
He moved quietly to sit on the ground beside her and pulled her trembling body into his arms, stroking her hair.
“Shhhhh. Shannon calm down. It's okay. Shhhh I won't hurt you. The seams are just a game. I don't care about the seams.” It was foolish to start with something like this. It was just that what they'd done in Lindsay's office that day, and last night the events at the opening and the party... it was easy to forget her damage even as it glared off her flesh. He suddenly wanted to rip that motherfucker's head off his body.
How could she live in the same house with someone who'd hurt her like this?
“You trust the doctor, don't you?” he asked, gently.
She nodded, her head pressed against him. Her hands clutched at his shoulders now, her fingernails digging in through the fabric of his shirt.
“You know he'd never leave you with someone who would hurt you, right?”
“Yes, Sir,” she said, her words coming out muffled against his shirt.
“I won't punish you today, partly because I don't care about the seams, and partly because you don't trust me yet. But at some point, I will punish you, you understand that, right?”
She nodded again. Then she pulled back from him, looking into his eyes. Her crying had stopped at least.
“I'm sorry I freaked out on you,” she said. “You must think I'm such a...”
He pressed a finger against her lips to hush her. “Shhhh,” he said. “I don't think anything except that you don't know me, and I moved too fast. This situation is very different from... what I'm used to.”
Even as he bumbled on like an idiot he wondered how he could have misread her so badly. It was the doctor's presence that made her feel safe enough to let go. And from what Damian had heard of her phone call, she was feeling abandoned right now.
With the other girls he'd had in his life, they'd been... well, subs. There had been negotiations... checklists of what she would and would not do. Layers of consent and safewords. Lindsay had offered Shannon to him on the condition that he wouldn't bring any of that into the relationship because Shannon had entrusted the house with something very different.
If Damian came in and started talking about negotiations and safewords and contracts and checklists and all the rest, it would undermine the reality that had been built around her. And then her suffering at Brian's hands would be for nothing because suddenly nothing would be real and secure anymore.
Damian knew about the previous master, the one before the house. The last thing Shannon needed was to feel like the chains around her weren't real, binding, and forever. Even though Damian had never seen himself as the type of man who would take someone like this—truly own someone, what Shan
non needed wasn't a game. A game would only make her fear the day it might end.
If it wasn't a game, he couldn't let her go. Because if it wasn't a game, it was a crime. And in some twisted way, there must be a safety in that for her, an assurance that she wouldn't be tossed out on a whim when a new and novel girl showed up offering submission.
Damian wished he could tell her she didn't have to worry about that from him anyway. He'd had his fill of girls who didn't take any of this seriously. Maybe he didn't want to be the type of man who bought a slave, but he didn't want a game anymore, either.
“He's not tired of you,” Damian said, stroking her cheek. “I wanted you. Don't ever think he's shared you with me out of anything other than our friendship.”
She nodded, looking away, going shy. Damian stood and grabbed her hands, pulling her to stand. “Let's go outside for some fresh air.”
She didn't reply but allowed him to guide her back up the stairs.
“Wait,” she said when they reached the front door. “Don't I need shoes?”
“We're going down to the beach. So, no.” He didn't bother to take his own shoes off.
They were both quiet as he led her down a small path by the house that ended in a rolling green hill that spilled out onto a wide ribbon of white sandy beach.
The coastline stretched for miles. A good portion of it was part of Damian's private property. If you squinted, you could just make out a dock far down the coast and then across from that dock back on land at the top of another small hill, was a large Cape Cod house. His closest neighbor.
Damian knelt beside her and rolled her jeans up. “Go. Walk in the surf. I need to make a call.”
She seemed uncertain, like she might say something... a protest? A question? But in the end she decided against it and went down the sloping beach to the waves lapping at the shore.
Damian took the phone out of his back pocket and dialed.
“Damian,” Lindsay said on the second ring. “Is everything okay?”