“Don’t.” His voice was steel, hard, a cold threat as we faced off against each other. “Don’t tell me he’s wonderful. Don’t tell me Simon is some shining beacon of humanity that we must remember.”
“I want to remember him. Just me, for personal reasons.” God, I didn’t even know anymore what those personal reasons were, or why it was so important for me to go. I just needed Price to allow me to make this decision. Otherwise I had no personal power at all. “Let me do this, please. Give me this last chance. What does it matter to you?” I said again, stupidly blundering into my own destruction.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, pulling me up from the floor. “I thought I’d explained why it mattered. I thought we’d been over this enough times.”
But we weren’t over it. I wanted to go to Simon’s funeral, and the man in front of me wasn’t going to let me go, and I was a prisoner here, naked, vulnerable, powerless, and I didn’t want to be a slave anymore, and fuck, fuck, fuck, he was dragging me toward the dungeon, and I couldn’t stop him even though I fought with every ounce of my strength.
“Let me go,” I pleaded, and I didn’t know if I meant Let me go to the funeral or simply Let go of my arm.
Either way, he wasn’t listening, and I wasn’t strong enough to break free of his control.
Chapter Thirteen: Suffocation
I’d told her she wouldn’t always like being under my control, that she wouldn’t always be happy, and she wasn’t happy now.
Bang.
She was in the cage, and she was trying to get out of it.
Bang.
She’d been trying for a couple of hours.
Bang. Bang. BANG.
“Shut the fuck up,” I yelled. “I’ve had enough of the fucking noise.”
I’d put a gag on her, but she took it off. She screamed and swore, demanding that I let her go. After our peaceful, productive week of training, all hell had broken loose because I wouldn’t let her go to that goddamn funeral. Fuck. All I’d wanted was to spend a quiet afternoon with my slave at my feet.
“Let me out,” she screamed.
I stood beside the cage watching her, not just for safety’s sake, but because I’d never seen her lose her shit to this degree. And it was over Simon. Fuck, she made me so furious. Didn’t she understand? This damn funeral would just cause more pointless emotional trauma.
“Let me out. I want out!”
The metallic sound of the bars rattled my nerves every time she flung herself against them. In between flailing, she kicked, bang, bang, bang.
“Give me a safe word,” she pleaded. “I need a safe word. I’m missing the funeral, damn you. It started at three o’clock.”
“You’re not going. That’s why you’re in the cage. I told you that you weren’t allowed to go.”
“Let me ouuuttt!”
“And the fact that you’re still in there kicking and screaming—”
She went nuts again, banging her feet so hard against the bars that the metal strained. It wouldn’t break. I’d studied engineering along with architecture. I knew the cage would hold. I also knew that we were engaged in the battle of all battles, and that she needed to calm down.
“I want out,” she cried, looking up at me. “This isn’t a game. I’m not playing anymore.”
“It was never a game,” I said tightly. “Is that what you thought? That we were just ‘playing?’ That you weren’t really my slave?”
“I don’t want to be your slave anymore.” She buried her face in her hands. Her hair was a tangled mess.
I crouched down beside the cage, just out of hitting and scratching reach. “You want Simon, is that it?”
“Yes!”
I sighed and prayed for calm, and somehow refrained from pointing out, again, that her fucking ex-boyfriend was fucking dead, and that she needed to get over it. I understood about mourning and regret, but they hadn’t been together in years now, and he represented everything ugly in her past existence.
“I don’t want this anymore,” she said. “I don’t want your control anymore.”
“Is that true? Or is that only how you feel in this moment, because I’m not letting you do what you want?”
She made a sound like she’d kill me if she had the chance. “I want you to give me some space, Price. This once, just this once, let me have my way.”
“No.”
“Oh God. I hate you,” she screamed, rattling the bars again. “I’m safewording.”
“You don’t have a safe word.”
“I want you to let me go. I want you to stop being my Master.” She said something else that was eclipsed by sobs. I tugged a lock of her hair through the bars.
“I’m not keeping you in this cage as your Master. I’m doing it as a friend. As someone who cares about you. Simon—”
“Stop talking about Simon. Don’t you dare fucking talk to me about Simon ever again. I trusted you. I returned to you and went through this fucking re-training bullshit. I sucked your dick four times yesterday. Let me out!”
God, the screaming. I thought she’d calm down after a while and listen to reason. I thought she’d remember that she belonged to me, and see the wisdom in staying with me instead of going to some shitshow funeral.
“Let me out of here, damn it! I’m not kidding. I’m finished, Price. I want out. I want out! Please, I’ll lose my mind if you don’t let me out.”
“Out of the cage, or out of our relationship?”
She kicked the bars again, brutal anger and frustration. “What do you fucking think?”
“I think you need to pull your fucking shit together. When this is over—”
“It’s never going to be over.” She rolled over and crouched on her knees, and glared out at me. “Don’t you see? You’re always going to be this way. A selfish, jealous, insecure, abusive prick. You’re holding me prisoner against my will.” With each word, she shook the bars. On the last three, she rattled them hard, snapping my nerves. “Against my will. Do you understand that? I don’t want to be here. This is not consensual.”
She’d taken her collar off a long time ago, before I gagged her, before she took the gag off too, in blatant disregard for the rules. The rules didn’t matter now, though. She was rejecting our relationship, rejecting everything about it. Rejecting me.
“Is he worth this?” I shouted at her. “Is he worth destroying everything between us? All our history, everything we’ve built?”
“You destroyed it,” she shouted back. “It was just a fucking funeral, the only chance I had to say goodbye. What’s wrong with you? Is your jealousy that wide and that deep? How fucking psychotic do you have to be—”
“Watch your fucking mouth!”
“I won’t watch my fucking mouth, Master.” She said Master in a mocking tone and banged the bars again. “How fucking psycho do you have to be to keep someone away from a fucking funeral?”
“From Simon Baldwin’s funeral,” I said, and now I was the one banging the bars. “From the funeral of a man who fucked you up, who took your money, who hit you, who punched you, who cheated on you. You hid from him. You barricaded yourself behind deadbolts. Remember that? I remember. Why don’t you remember? You were fucking there.”
I stood outside myself and watched as I shouted at a naked, raging woman in a cage. I could put the princess in the tower. Any rich fucking prince, or prick, could do that. It didn’t mean I could keep her. She accused me of jealousy and abuse because I wouldn’t let her attend her abuser’s funeral. Fuck my life. The abuse label, after all this time, after all the care I’d taken to avoid it.
She didn’t understand, she didn’t care, and she didn’t love me. I knew it would end up this way. I always fucking knew. I knew she’d turn on me, just like every other fucking woman in my past.
“If you don’t stop kicking the fucking cage—” I began.
“You’ll what? What will you do to me that you haven’t already done?”
I’ll leave you. No, I’d already
done that. Twice.
I’ll hurt you. No, I did that just about every day.
I’ll let you go. There. That was something I hadn’t done yet. My hands curled into fists as a trembling vortex of loss opened inside me, in my gut and my chest and shoulders and all the way up to my brain.
I’ll let you go, Chere, because I don’t know what else to do, where else to take this fucking debacle we call our relationship.
Simon’s funeral was over by now. I couldn’t go back and change my mind, and let her go, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t make her un-hate me, not this time. She was safewording out, bang by bang, kick by kick against the metal bars that were supposed to keep her safe.
But relationships, real, healthy relationships weren’t supposed to be like this. Good girl, Chere. You know you can do better than this. Better than me. You’ve always been a fighter, you scrappy little bitch.
But approving of her choices didn’t mean I was happy about them. No, I wanted to snatch up the cage with her inside and throw it against the fucking wall.
“Shut up,” I yelled. “Shut the fuck up for one fucking minute and listen to me.”
“No.” She put her hands over her ears. “Let me out. Let me out!”
“Jesus fucking shit.” I rubbed my fingers down my forehead, over my eyes and down my cheeks. I didn’t want to let her go. I’d put so much time into our relationship. So much physical and emotional energy. Why? Why had I tried when I knew all along it would eventually fail?
I forced myself to reach for the lock. I opened it, hard, angrily. “You want out? Then come the fuck out, you fucking piece of shit.” I called her a piece of shit. I think I really meant me.
I kicked open the door, my mouth pursed in a furious line. She stopped flailing against the bars and crouched on her knees, staring out at me.
“Come on,” I said. “You wanted out. The door’s open.”
“You go away first. I’m not coming out until you go away. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Get out of my cage.”
“I’m serious. I don’t want you to touch me.” Her voice cracked. She was crying. “I don’t want you to touch me ever again.”
“I’m not going to touch you. Get the fuck out. Get out of my dungeon, get out of my house, get out of my fucking life and save both of us a lot of trouble.” I pointed toward the door. “You have one hour to get the fuck out of this apartment and never come back.”
She crawled from the cage and headed for the door without a glance in my direction. I wasn’t even sure she heard what I’d said, heard my shouted permission. She was leaving either way. I could see it in her movements, in the wary way she fled for the exit.
Fuck.
Slavery shouldn’t end this way. A relationship like ours, that had been so close and so connected, shouldn’t end this way. But facts were facts. I couldn’t give her the relationship she wanted. I felt too emotionally decimated to try.
Instead I sat on the floor by the cage and looked at my watch as the minutes ticked by. She’d be getting dressed now, hurriedly, throwing her things into her suitcases, if she even took the time to do that. She’d run outside and flag down a cab, and scurry to Andrew’s. At least there was that. At least she had a safe place to go, someone trustworthy to take her in.
Damn me to hell. Fuck. I’d only ever wanted to take care of her. Why was it beyond me? I’d designed mile-long bridges across vast bodies of water, and yet I couldn’t bridge a body’s width of distance between me and her.
I’m never leaving you, never. I remembered when she’d said that. I remembered how comforted it made me feel. Lies and empty promises. “You’re just another fake slave,” I muttered in the heavy silence. “Another woman out to use me for money and power.”
I knew that wasn’t true, but I had to say it, or else admit the actual truth, that I was the one who couldn’t make our shit work. Otherwise I had to admit that I was the one with the fucked up past, that I was the one who was weak and haunted by past relationships. I was the one who was an unfixable mess.
An hour and a half passed before I finally did what I’d wanted to do. I stood and threaded my fingers through the bars of the cage, picked it up and flung it against the wall hard enough to leave jagged gouges in the concrete. The cage bounced off the wall and fell sideways. The violence felt satisfying, yes.
But it didn’t feel good.
“Chere,” I yelled.
I turned my head, listening for any sound that she was still in the apartment. Nothing. I walked out into my room, then down the hall to the guest room. Empty. She was gone, along with a couple of her suitcases.
Fuck me. She’d done exactly what I told her to do.
* * * * *
“Can you...? Do you have...?” I tried to pull myself together. “I need a room for a while. Is the tenth floor corner room overlooking the park available?”
The woman at the Gramercy Park Hotel desk blinked at me, then looked down and tapped some keys on her computer.
“It appears to be available. How long will you be checking in?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked dubious. I didn’t blame her. I was so freaked out and messed up in the head right now that I couldn’t even bring myself to go to Andrew’s. I’d thrown on mismatched clothes and packed everything so quickly that my luggage was bursting at the seams. I’d cried off my makeup, and my hair was so messed up I could feel it. A silent porter in a pristine uniform stood beside me anyway, ready to help me upstairs.
“I’m not sure how long I’m staying. Can we take it day by day?” I fished in my wallet for a credit card. I had the money to stay here. I’d already received payments from some celebrity clients, and I got gargantuan monthly checks from Vinod, now that my jewelry was for sale in his vast network of boutiques. I made a monthly income from renting my apartment, and Price never let me pay for anything.
Price.
Shit. Don’t think about him now.
“We can put your card on file,” said the woman. “If you would be kind enough to give us twenty-four hours notice before you plan to check out?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure. I can do that.”
I just needed to go upstairs. I needed to wash my face and take a bath. I needed food. I needed to figure out what I was going to do next in my fucked up life.
A few moments later, I was headed toward the elevator, with the porter trailing a luggage cart behind me. Tenth floor, corner room.
The Gramercy Park Hotel was the first place I thought of when I realized I couldn’t go to Andrew’s. It wasn’t just my emotional state that kept me from running there. It was that Price would look there first, and I didn’t want to be found yet. I also didn’t want Andrew and Craig to be drawn into all our drama.
No, this was my problem to fix, my life to reboot. I didn’t know how yet, or when, or why. Hell, I could barely string two thoughts together. At least I had my phone back, swiped from Price’s nightstand. I had my autonomy back, even if it was too late to make Simon’s funeral.
Oh God, I needed to go somewhere and collapse. I needed to calm down. I needed to think.
Once the porter was gone, I stared at my stack of luggage and considered what I’d done. Well, I’d had to do it. He was crazy. He was pathologically unstable, or at least pathologically jealous and stubborn. But why had I come here?
I remembered the room like it was yesterday, remembered pushing open the door which he’d left slightly ajar. I remembered the lush velvet curtains and dark, heavy furniture. I remembered the sinking feeling when I’d seen his note lying on the bed.
I turned on more lights and perched on the edge of the sumptuous comforter. I’d come to our appointment at this exact time of day, but it had been summer. Lingering sun had fallen across this bed, shining on the replacement dress he’d left for me. He used to regularly destroy my clothes. That was back when I still wore clothes around him.
Fuck. What had I done? What had happened between us to make everything
go so wrong?
I turned on my side and ran my fingers over the place he’d left the note. I remembered picking it up and walking to the window to read it in the evening light.
Good luck, starshine. That was all he’d written. I felt like I might die when I realized he’d left me with no name, no forwarding address. I remembered the crushing feeling of panic and betrayal.
It was important to come to this room and remember that moment when he’d abandoned me. It was important to recall that our relationship lacked trust from the very beginning. It doesn’t matter now, I told myself. It’s over. I picked up my phone and texted Andrew.
Are you there?
I’m here, he texted back. Who’s this?
I was confused for a moment, but then I remembered that Price had had my phone all this time.
It’s me, Chere, I wrote. I have my phone back.
I waited a moment and then I added, I left him.
The phone rang a second later. Andrew’s concerned voice poured into my ear in a stream of frantic syllables. “Where are you, babes? I worried when I didn’t see you at Simon’s funeral. What did Price do to you? Are you safe? Where are you?”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. Calm down.”
“What happened?”
God, how to even explain it? I stuck to the simpler facts. “He wouldn’t let me go to Simon’s funeral. I went ballistic, we got in a huge argument, and he kicked me out.”
“He kicked you out?” Andrew sounded incredulous. This was the man who’d clung to me for months with iron control.
“He told me to get the fuck out of his apartment,” I said. “But I was ready to go. I couldn’t wait to go. I’d reached the point where I’d freaking had enough.”
“You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that. I’ve told you before...so many red flags.”
“I know.”
I didn’t tell Andrew about the cage, and the way I’d begged to be let out. I didn’t tell him about the fury and terror of being truly powerless, not in a cute, fun, BDSM way but in a real, I’m-trapped-in-an-indestructible-cage kind of way.
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