by Jade West
His low laugh took me aback. “You wouldn’t be here if that were true.”
“Friends, then,” I persisted. “I’ll be missed.”
“Whereabouts in England are you from?”
His question took me by surprise; enough to answer without thought. “Worcester, you won’t know it.”
“By Birmingham, I do know it. I should have guessed from the accent. I’ve spent a lot of time in England.”
I couldn’t contain the sarcasm. “Good for you.”
“There is nobody coming after you, is there? Be honest. I’m not one of them.”
I wrapped his jacket around me a little tighter, and shook my head. “No.”
“How did you stumble upon the misfortune of meeting my brother?”
His eyes were so calm, the darkest green, like bay leaves. “A club in Vegas. I’d just split from an asshole boyfriend. Alistair seemed nice.”
“Nice and loaded.”
“I’m not a gold digger. He told me he loved my singing, said he knew people who knew people, you know how it goes.”
He smiled gently. “Unfortunately, I do.”
“Next thing I know I’m drinking vodka from the bottle in his Ferrari, speeding through mountains to wind up in this Godforsaken hell hole. I thought my luck was in.” I blinked back the tears, shoving the pain back down behind the mask. There was no way I was breaking for any of them. No fucking way.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I believed him.
“They tried to sell me, didn’t they? To that Arab?”
“They did sell you.”
I put my hands to my temples, reeling. “Shit, this can’t be happening. Why am I here? Why is this happening to me?”
I wasn’t expecting an answer, but when one came Robert didn’t pull any punches. “Because you’re attractive... young... vulnerable. Because you have spirit enough to sell. Because there will be nobody coming after you. You told him you liked it rough, didn’t you?”
I felt the bloom of embarrassment across my cheeks. “Sorry?”
“Alistair picks the easiest targets. The easiest targets are the ones who admit to having submissive tendencies. They take to the lifestyle a lot more easily. Sometimes he even manages to convince them it’s what they want. Sometimes, rarely, it is what they want.”
I shuddered at the thought. “I don’t want that! I’m not even a submissive! Not really! I told him I like pain, I never once mentioned being a submissive. I’m not. I like everything on my own terms, my own way. It’s bedroom only.” I stared past him, into nothing. “This is insane. This whole thing is insane.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What are you going to do to me? Are they giving me to you now instead or something?” I closed my eyes, willing the whole crazy scenario away.
I heard him sigh. “You’re to be retrained, given back to your owner when you have become more compliant. They want me to train you.”
My eyes flew wide. “Train me?! What does that even mean? If you think you’re going to force yourself on me I won’t go down easy.” My mind whirred, grabbing hold of anything. “And I’m diseased! You’ll catch it!”
Another laugh from him, but there was no malice in it. “Please don’t lie. They’ll have done your bloods. You spent the night with Alistair, I imagine. And then what? The next day? The next night? The one after? And then I imagine you had questions, wanted to leave. They’ll have drugged you, taken a blood sample and put you in a cell to recover. Am I right?”
The shakes started, fear creeping back in. “I didn’t know about the blood.”
He rubbed his temples. “And in answer to your question, no. I’m not going to force myself on you.”
I let out a breath of relief. “Please, Robert, please get me out of here.”
He leaned back in his seat, and I realised how tired he looked. He looked ashen, exhausted. Exhausted by all this, no doubt. “They’d never let me out with you, and even if I managed it, they’d find us before you reached the airport.”
“I don’t need to reach the airport!” I hissed. “I can hide! Anywhere! Just get me out of this house!”
“They’ll find you,” he insisted. “Believe me, I know. There’s no escape, not really. The best you can hope for is a pleasant life. Most of the girls are well taken care of, my family’s clients are rich, powerful men who invest a lot in their companions. They may like things a little rough, but they won’t want to damage their investment. In time you may even come to enjoy it.” He stared me straight in the eye. “You must enjoy sex, Amy, or you wouldn’t be here. Frigid, inexperienced girls are a completely different market. You’re here because Alistair knew you’d make some rich dom a very good purchase, even if there are some teething problems.”
I couldn’t repress the heartache this time. My eyes filled without restraint, tears spilling faster than I could swat them away. For the first time in the weeks I’d been here I felt hopeless. Truly, utterly hopeless. Nobody would be coming for a girl like me. Nobody. The friends I did have would assume I’d skipped off with some guy or another, chasing some crazy dream. I was all alone.
Robert didn’t try and comfort me, and I was grateful. Instead he shifted forward in his seat and kept his eyes on mine. His expression was so sad. Sad but calm. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll turn down their request, they can go to hell.”
My words were choked when they came out. “What happens then?”
“I’ll leave, be damned with the consequences. I can only imagine Alistair will have another shot at taming you for your purchaser. Stay strong as long as you can, he doesn’t quit easily.”
I could hardly control my breathing. “And that’s it?! It’s all over for me? I’ll be given back to that horrible Arab guy, whether I like it or not?”
“I’m truly sorry.” He stood to leave. “Keep the jacket, I’m sure they will take it from you, but it’s the least I can do under the circumstances. I’ll try alerting the authorities to your plight, but I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. My family’s connections reach far and wide.”
I watched him pace to the door, ready to leave. Leave me. Leave this shitty fucking country, most likely. The only semi-reasonable human being I’d spoken to in weeks, and he was leaving. “Wait!” I cried. “Just a minute.”
He paused with his hand on the doorhandle, turning back to face me. “Yes?”
I could hardly speak through the tears. “I’m really being sold, aren’t I? Whether I like it or not?”
“I’m afraid so.”
My stomach lurched, churning in defeat. “Why do they want you to train me? Have you done it before?”
“Not for a long while.”
My eyes crashed into his. “But you did? You did train girls? Girls like me? You trained them to submit?”
“Yes.”
“And they enjoyed it? They wanted it?”
A faint smile crept across his lips. “Almost always, yes. Submission is more than a game, it’s a mind-set, an entire way of life. If a woman is so inclined, and has the guidance of a man who truly knows how to awaken that part of her, it can become all-encompassing. She can find fulfilment through submission, genuinely. I’ve never been like Alistair or my father, I’ve never broken a woman to submission that I didn’t believe suited the lifestyle.”
“I don’t think that’s me!” I wailed. “I don’t want to be some vile man’s plaything!”
He retreated his steps enough to crouch at my side and place a warm hand on my wrist. The contact burned, shot through my arm like a charge, but I didn’t pull away. “You said your games were always on your terms, bedroom only. Did you enjoy BDSM, Amy?”
Tears kept on falling. “Yes. That doesn’t mean I wanted to end up here, though.”
Solid fingers squeezed mine. “No, of course it doesn’t.”
“You think I could be trained?”
He paused for a long moment. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a possibility.”
I was out of options
and I knew it. There was only one lifeline to normality in this place, and he was threatening to leave, jump on a plane and never look back. I searched his eyes. “What are they going to do to you if you don’t train me?”
He sighed. “Everything they can. Destroy me. Destroy my businesses. Destroy everything I’ve worked for. It doesn’t matter, don’t worry, I said I’m not going to force myself on you, and I won’t.”
I dried my eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m going to be given to that man, whether I like it or not. Maybe, just maybe, there’s the slightest possibility the training will work, and I’ll enjoy it. Do you think that could happen?”
He didn’t look convinced, but he certainly didn’t laugh it off as a bad joke. “It’s a possibility.”
“I know it’s slim, but if I don’t learn to enjoy my fate I may as well be dead. Who knows what the future brings, right? Maybe the Arab will eventually set me free? That could happen, couldn’t it?”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Who knows, Amy? Stranger things have happened at sea.”
“I don’t want to die, and I don’t want your asshole brother to break my spirit. You’re my only option, Robert. Please say you’ll try.”
He stood and began to pace the room, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “You actually want me to train you? That’s what you want?”
“I want you to try. I don’t know whether it will work, but at least you can give me that.”
“Amy, this isn’t like a college class, I’m talking about sexual instruction. You’ll be expected to give yourself to me sexually, completely.”
I choked back a sob. “I understand.”
“And you still want to proceed?”
“What choice do I have?” I rasped.
It was the wrong answer. He was at the door in a heartbeat. “I’m sorry, Amy, I won’t be a part of this.”
I leapt after him, my hands on his before he could turn the handle. “WAIT!” I said. “Please! Don’t leave. I can do it, just don’t walk away and leave me here with these monsters!” I dropped the jacket to the floor, standing before him in nothing but the collar they’d forced me into. “I can do this!”
Tears streamed down my face but I stood still, unflinching as he brushed a thumb across my cheek. “Let’s both sleep on it. I’ll return in the morning and we’ll discuss it further.”
I nodded, grateful. “Thank you.”
His eyes roved over my naked body, no longer preserving my decency, but his gaze didn’t feel seedy, not like Alistair or his disgusting father’s. I knew he was making note of every bruise, taking in every lingering slash of pain the sonofabitch had etched onto my skin. He didn’t comment, and I was glad.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, Amy.”
I gathered up the jacket from the floor, redressed myself while he waited. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Robert.”
I was still crying when that bastard Albert came back for me, and I still fought him every step of the way.
If there was any way out of this place it would be through the man they’d brought here to break me. I just prayed he’d be back in the morning.
He was my only fucked-up hope.
***
Sleep didn’t come easy in this place. I lay awake for hours staring into the darkness, brain churning over and over my conversation with the elusive son. I tossed and turned, unable to find a position where sleep would find me.
For the first few days of my imprisonment, Alistair had tried to preserve some illusion of comfort in this place. I’d been confined to one of the bedrooms on the top floor, a plush affair packed full of antiques and pretty little trinkets. They’d moved me when I’d torn the place apart, and delivered me a pretty decent hiding in the process; the first of many. They hadn’t realised I was used to that shit. That kind of pain didn’t bother me. I’d been in a couple of hardcore BDSM flings before Alistair ever crossed my path. I wouldn’t break easy, and certainly not for an evil sack of crap like him.
My new quarters were bare and uncomfortable, a scratchy blanket the only real attempt at bedding. I’d thrown every scrap of food right back at them the first week, only to rethink that strategy in week two. When the Arab had come for me I’d been sleepy and disoriented, drugged on some crazy shit, certainly. I’d come back to full consciousness in an unfamiliar bedroom, screamed blue murder and given the guy a bloody nose before he’d got a handle on me. Lord fucking knows what had transpired from that point onwards, but I’d been delivered back here in a flash, with a whole fresh load of bruises for my trouble. Alistair still came for me every night, and every night I’d fight him until there was no fight left. He’d been growing frustrated of late, his bravado waning, fists clenched from the second he walked through the door. He’d had the flogger on me, the paddle and cane and single tail too, hissing out commands and demanding I get the fuck on my knees before he really got angry. Lately he’d taken to bellowing, threatening to lock me up in that room and leave me to die a miserable death. Yet still I wouldn’t kneel. Not willingly. Not for him.
He could go to fucking hell.
Tears came every night, but they came a whole lot worse for the candid discussion with Robert. He wasn’t joking, and I knew it. There was no way out from this place, nobody coming for me, and nowhere to run.
Even the seedy guy who’d paid to own me was looking a superior option to being stuck in this hellhole. The idea of a life of sexual servitude turned my stomach in hoops, but maybe there was a way through this. If Robert could deliver on his task, then maybe, just maybe I could stomach the unthinkable, just long enough to make my escape.
It had to be worth a shot.
It might be the only one I had left.
Chapter Three
Robert
I went back into the library, thrust out my jaw and balled my fists deep into the pockets of my trousers. The old man had the young blonde girl backed up against one of the bookcases. The girl was naked, standing in a pool of silky fabric that was her slip. The girl’s eyes were screwed tightly shut. The old man was grunting against her, biting her neck while his fingers roughly plucked at the dark little buds of her nipples. The girl’s legs were splayed wide apart and I could hear the rasp of her breathing. There was a look of desolation on her face – an expression of utter revulsion worn like a mask beneath her skin. Alistair was standing nonchalantly in the far corner of the room watching, his ankles crossed, hands busy in his pockets. There was a cruel and dangerous look in his eye – glinting like the wicked cast of a stiletto. And at that moment I realized I had misjudged him. Alistair had always been a brute, but also a coward. Over the years he had changed. Now I saw something darker and more menacing in his eyes. Something to be wary of…
I cleared my throat and the old man spun around, startled. His lips hung slack and there was a flicker of annoyance in his gaze. His hands fell limp to his side and he stepped away from the girl as if he suddenly wanted to distance himself from her. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and I saw he was trembling.
“I’ll do it,” I said, putting a decisive tone of resolve into my voice. “I’ll train Amy to submit. But I have some conditions.”
The old man flicked a sly, reptilian glance past my shoulder to where Alistair stood in the shadows and his expression became smug. He shook his head slowly. “No conditions,” he croaked.
“Two,” I countered.
The old man sighed. His face became pinched into a scowl.
“I will train her within seven days,” I said, “but I won’t do it here.”
The old man laughed and the sound of it rattled through his diseased lungs. “You will,” he insisted. He was about to say more when suddenly the granite façade of his features lost their sharp edges as if eroded by an age of desert sands. His face seemed to blur so that for a moment I barely recognized him. He clutched at his chest and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. He gasped once, seemed to sway on his feet – and then the withered parchment of
his skin turned to dust.
Alistair lunged across the room, clasped at his father’s arm. The old man pushed him brusquely away. “I’m alright, dammit!” he rasped. He teetered on his feet then forced himself to straighten. I went on as though nothing at all had happened, my tone and expression scoured of any trace of concern or care.
“The guest house,” I countered. “I’ll train her there. It’s still on the grounds, still secure. But private enough for me to work.”
The old man arched his eyebrows. “What else?” he asked warily without conceding the first condition.
I turned and stabbed a finger at Alistair. “This piece of shit stays away from her. Completely away from her. I don’t want to see him for the next seven days… and I don’t want Amy to see him either.”
Alistair puffed out his chest and the smile froze dead on his lips. I took a step towards him and saw the flicker of fear there.
“Enough!” the old man barked. His hand went back to his chest as though the pain that had doubled him over still lingered. He held up the palm of his other hand like a wrinkled white flag.
“One week,” he said in punctuated breaths, each one a separate agony. “Guest house. No interference.”
I nodded. It was done. And in the morning I knew the real war would begin.
* * *
She came through the door of the bungalow with her hands cuffed, her attitude servile, almost timid. Albert handed me the end of the leash with a curious frown on his wizened old face. He stood in the threshold of the doorway for a long moment, his eyes shifting from my face to the figure of Amy as she shuffled past me and stood waiting silently in the middle of the living room floor.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Albert asked me from the corner of his mouth, concern etching the lines around his eyes into deep crevices.
I grunted at the irony. “I know exactly what I’m doing. That’s why they asked me to do it.”