by Trent Evans
“I’m… I had no idea.”
“It was early — we were all still feeling things out. But it was the first time I’d felt it, that I was the one threatened, worried — though I didn’t know how to express it. Rather than tell Blaine — like a normal person would — I’d simply taken it out on my sweet slave. Our slave.”
Kathryn turned then, leaning back against the window, fixing a surprisingly vulnerable gaze upon her. “I had to do something. Break it off — or think of an alternative. Because Erica deserved more from me. If I was really going to call myself her Mistress… I had to earn it.”
Earn it.
It couldn’t apply of course, in this case. Anna was not, and would never be, Quinton’s mistress. He was not hers — even though at that very moment he languished in a prison of her own making. No, he was merely a task, a contract to fulfill.
Do you really believe that?
“How did you do it? Earn it, I mean.”
Kathryn strolled back to the couch, setting her pert backside upon the padded arm, crossing her wrists over one thigh. “Blaine, from the very beginning, has always insisted on a monthly, um, accounting. For me.”
Anna had never actually met a woman more fearsome than Kathryn Forster, yet despite that strength, that formidable, indomitable will, there was one she was powerless against, the one person on this Earth she was truly subject to.
And that man was her husband.
“I told Erica where to hide, what day it would happen. And I let her watch it — all of it.”
“Blaine didn’t…?”
The gentle shake of Kathryn’s head was almost solemn. “To this day, he has no idea — and if it’s up to me, he never will. It was between Erica and me. She needed to know she wasn’t the only one subject to another. And she saw something else, perhaps the most important thing — she saw that he also held me to account for how I treated her. Needless to say, that night I paid — and dearly — for how I’d abused my power, how I’d taken out my own insecurities on our sweet Erica.”
“What happened afterward though?” Anna swallowed, her mouth uncharacteristically dry. “It’s such a danger — to show that vulnerability to her. You were her Mistress, Kathryn.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was the best thing that ever happened to us.” She smiled at her, the glittering back in those blue eyes. “We have an understanding now. She’s my whipping girl. She’s at peace with it — because she knows it helps me. It’s my way. But she also knows now — because what she saw that night, the admission I’d made. My tears as I confessed it to him, on my knees. She knows now how much I feared I’d lose her — or worse — drive her away. That night, it was clear: even her implacable, sadistic Mistress was helpless against the power of what she felt for her slave. Erica found out that night how much she really was loved.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Anna already knew the answer. Somehow, Kathryn, the cold-blooded, brilliant sadist, could see right through her, through all the bullshit.
“Because you’re struggling as I was. It may not be the same sort of struggle exactly, but in time, it will be.” Kathryn’s eyes darkened, a fetching furrow deepening upon her brow. “You know what you have to do. Only you know what he needs. By now, inside, you’ll know. No matter how broken he is, no matter how irretrievable you may — or may not — think he is. If he can be saved, if he can be made to see the truth… then you’ve got to try.”
Kathryn walked back to her, sitting down on the couch next to her, taking Anna’s hand in her own. “But you’ve got to have the courage to do it. Even if it means, at the end, letting him go — just like you did with Greg.”
“I’m in fucking trouble.”
“I knew that the minute you walked in here, chick.” Kathryn’s grin was bittersweet. “I know how hard it is to be… women like us. How much bullshit we have to deal with to satisfy our particular needs. Especially in an environment like the Trust. We have to read people. All the time.”
The pulse in Anna’s neck was pounding. “And what are you reading right now, you blood-sucking lawyer?”
“I’m reading someone who wants to tell the truth — but hasn’t yet.” She squeezed Anna’s hand, not letting it go. “So, let’s hear it, bitch. I’ve got better things to do than bare any more of my soul to a confused I-only-fuck-guys Domme. It’s your turn now.”
She didn’t know why she said it. Her visit to Kathryn that day was supposed to go a different way. Not like this.
“I don’t know if I can do this job anymore, Kath. I just don’t.” Anna took a deep breath. “He’s a fucking hardcore asshole. Maybe one of the worst I’ve ever seen. And tough. The kind of tough that burning hatred lends a man. I just… don’t know what the source of that hate is.”
“You may never know. And need I remind you — your contract doesn’t say you need to find out either.”
“But I want to find it. I want to draw it from him.” She was very still, willing her voice to stay steady, trying to control the rising emotion whirling within her, the strength of it threatening to take her breath from her lungs. “I want to find out, right down to his core, what it is that makes him burn with it. What got to him.”
“And you want to heal him. Is that it, Shaw?”
“I don’t know if he can come back from the place he’s at now. I don’t know how much of the old Quinton is left — the part his father wants so very much to have back. That Quinton might be dead and gone.”
“If this is really the task you’re going to take on — stupid as I think it may be — then it’s your job to rebuild him. Give George back something he’d still recognize.”
Give back.
What if she never wanted to give him back?
“The contract — like you said, Corddray doesn’t care about any of that. He wants one thing. I used to want that one thing too — we all did once we found out what the little shit had been up to.”
“Vengeance.” The blonde litigator spoke the word as if it were unclean, an obscenity.
“But I know if Corddray found out… if I told him what I’ve told you. He’d pull it. It would be over — in more ways than one.”
“And?” Kathryn’s voice was that of the knowing confessor, as soft and smooth as it was impatient and relentless. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
Anna cursed under her breath, looking away. “I’m pretty sure I’d continue with him — Quinton — even if the contract was pulled tomorrow. Whether Corddray wanted me to or not.”
“Oh dear,” Kathryn murmured, softly patting the back of Anna’s hand. “I think you need another drink — or ten.”
* * *
As hard as it was to say the word, at first nothing changed. I felt betrayed, despite the fact the sense of relief was palpable at finally giving way.
Shouldn’t things have gotten better once I’d said it though?
Each day was still the same: Darynn would kick me awake, set the bread and water down before me.
Most of the time I refused the bread.
Then she’d chain me up in the far corner, the heavy steel around my ankles but my arms left free. I wasn’t sure how many days it had been before I’d noticed the grate in the floor in the corner, discovered the way the concrete sloped toward it.
That desolate corner was what passed for my shower.
Then the cold spray would strike my skin and I’d try in vain to cover whatever section of flesh was being tortured by the icy water. I could sometimes hear her soft laughter over the sounds of my groans, my pleading to turn it off. I wasn’t even ashamed of it anymore. It was just something that happened.
The worst though was when she ordered me to turn and bend, to cup my testicles protectively in my palm and hold my ass cheeks open as best I could with the other hand. She lowered the volume a bit, no doubt to avoid forcibly spraying water up into the rectum, but the spray over my anus and perineum still felt like frigid needles, my gasps and curses rising until she mercifully
shut off the water.
Dripping, my skin ice cold, she’d throw a towel at me, standing over me, her arms crossed under her breasts as I wiped down as fast as possible. Sometimes she’d take the towel before I was finished, and no amount of complaining, cajoling, or pleading would get it back.
I’d learned to be very, very fast with drying off.
Still, more than once, I’d been clapped into the stocks still wet, and shivering, and miserable.
Then the quiet, and the dark, and the isolation would resume its work on me, my only companion the pulse of the blood at my temples, the thump of my heart in my ears. I’d count the beats, divide the numbers in my head in increasingly large and complex fractions, anything to keep my mind occupied in those long hours of solitude, my muscles already beginning to tighten. They’d begin spasming within the hour, my torture truly beginning then.
My only solace were my visitors. It was only ever two — either Anna, or the pretty, sweet little Ivy. I still hadn’t decided which was worse.
The sound of the lock turning snapped me back to the present. My lower back felt like it was being slowly stretched apart, my knees numb and cold against the concrete. The skin of my neck, especially at the nape, ached from the abrasion of the stocks, despite the padded leather lining the openings. My wrists had been rubbed almost raw long ago.
Though the light was very low, I could tell from the girl’s modest stature that it was Ivy.
“Hello, Quinton.” She stopped just outside the circle of brilliant illumination that poured down upon me from the single window above. If I was left in the stocks long enough, the light would slowly migrate away from me as the sun moved across the sky, often leaving me in shadow before I was granted mercy by one of my captors, released, allowing me to collapse to the floor, my groans part blessed relief, part abject misery as fresh spasms wracked my muscles.
“Hi, Ivy,” I croaked, the words sounding as if I spoke from inside a burlap sack. I cleared my throat, hating the way my isolation was affecting even my ability to modulate my voice.
Her fingers were soft, gentle as she checked the locks, pulled at my bindings, the chains clinking as she yanked them against the thick rings embedded in the cement.
“I’m not going anywhere.” It was a statement of pure truth. I had long since stopped even testing my bonds, my mind increasingly focused only on that sweet moment when I’d be sprung from the wooden prison, the cold, hard concrete against my skin an almost heavenly pleasure compared to the slow, humiliating agony of kneeling hour after hour at the stocks.
“Are you hurting? Injured?” Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it.
“Hurting in the usual spots… but not injured. You could let me out early, Ivy. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
I had to try.
“You know that’s not allowed.”
Her fingers tested my abraded skin. She stood behind me each time to do it, knowing I couldn’t see her beyond the frustrating blind of the wood imprisoning me. I hissed as she touched a raw spot on the inside of my wrist.
“I’ll bring some cream for that next time,” she murmured.
“Or maybe you could not put me in the stocks for a day. A day off?”
She tittered softly, but didn’t reply. We’d been through this countless times before.
The pleading note in my voice still made my cheeks heat, even though I’d left any scrap of dignity behind long, long ago. That I still felt embarrassment, even shame, was both a reminder of my humanity — and something that made my predicament even worse.
Still, I came to crave these interludes as they were the one time I wasn’t either hopeless, lonely, or in pain. I began to realize I was losing my moorings, devolving into a lower life form, my humanity slowly slipping away from me bit by bit, visit by visit, day by day.
In the beginning, I’d tried to befriend the girl, but she never gave me anything to work with, evasive and shy, withdrawing when I became too forward or strident. I soon learned that I must be reticent, quiet, almost meek with the girl in order to get her to stay longer, to get her to talk to me.
Anything to have as much time with her as I could.
When Ivy would inspect me, I’d be tormented by the vision of Anna’s eyes, replaying in my mind the triumphant flash I’d seen in her gaze the moment I’d spoken the word she’d been waiting for.
Knowing she was the reason for the hell I was going through.
“Looks good,” Ivy said, taking one of my hands and squeezing it gently. She didn’t always do that, but when she did, it filled me with both comfort, and hopelessness. I didn’t know when this would end, if it would ever end. But at least that tiny little squeeze was something. A wordless acknowledgment of my plight, of the way my body cried out for something, anything, that might confirm my humanity, a silent confirmation that someone noticed my suffering.
The door closed behind her as she left, the sound like the stone lid of sepulcher.
The sweet visits from the girl were interspersed with harsh appointments with Anna though.
Sometimes she would come in immediately afterward. Other times, I wouldn’t see her for hours. I could never determine any sort of pattern. No doubt, they assumed I’d try to discern one.
They’d made sure to take that from me too.
Each time Anna visited, I was made to kneel in the cell, my wrists and head imprisoned in the wooden stockade as she sat before me, coolly looking upon me for long minutes, utterly silent. My vision was always restricted by the position of my head — and the fact that she demanded I keep my eyes down during those sessions.
She’d sit before me, legs crossed casually, and finally order me to look at her. Always, it would be the same question:
“Are you ready for this to end?”
And always it was the same answer, sometimes almost screamed. “Yes! God, yes. Please!”
I’d always say it, even as I knew the conditions were ones I could never agree to.
I must look at all the photos, tell her how they make me feel, tell her if what I saw there was right, just, or appropriate.
Though I already knew it, right down to my bones, she always told me that “surrender” was only the beginning, but the first step in atoning for what I’d done, in remaking the man from the ashes of the monster she was slowly destroying. It was always said in that same husky murmur.
“When you surrender, you’re surrendering to me. And when you surrender, you’re simply trading one torment for another. Your whippings and captivity may ease — or they might not — but what you saw in that case waits for you, either way. It will become something you’re intimately familiar with, something that becomes part of your existence in this place.”
And each time, as I shivered in fright, in pain, in humiliation, I said it, pleading it in a voice little more than a cracking whimper.
“I can’t.”
We both knew it was a lie. The only question was how long it would take, how much farther down into my personal Purgatory I’d sink before I admitted it to her.
Chapter 11
“Big day ahead for you, tough guy.”
Darynn said it as she locked down the top part of the stocks over my neck and wrists.
I didn’t reply. It never mattered what I said. In her mind, I think I was little more than a thing, a fractious animal that needed to be tended.
I wasn’t sure if I disagreed with that or not.
Drops of water fell from the tip of my nose, the head of my cock, my swinging balls. My sodden hair was plastered to my skull, locks of it hanging down into my eyes. My thighs trembled as they always did when I first dropped to my knees before the wood frame. She’d put me to stocks before I could do much more than a cursory run of the towel across my back. I knew she got off on leaving me there naked and shivering.
I hissed as the slap echoed, heat blooming across the skin of my ass as she smacked it. “Be a good boy, and you just might get through it.”
Then the door c
losed with a thunk, the silence dropping over me like a shroud.
I didn’t have any idea what Darynn meant. No doubt, I was to be punished — tortured. The thought made my whole body shake.
It’s the lack of calories. That’s all. Be strong.
Be strong for what though? There was no hope. I didn’t have control of anything anymore. I could die here, and not a soul on earth would know — or care.
Anna would care.
I bit down on my cheek to hold in the crazed laughter. But in a sense… it held a note of twisted truth. How else would she enjoy tormenting me? How else would her little game go on without a victim?
How far had I fallen that the only person who might care if I lived or died was the very person systematically draining the life from me?
The truth was that she was my only hope. If I was ever to see anything but the outside of this cell, she was the key to it. I’d please her. I had to obey her, as much as necessary — no matter how hard that might be — if I was going to live.
Saving myself from even some of the hell of my existence made the prospect of obeying her seem… not as bad as it once was. I could do it — because I had little choice.
The brilliant shaft of sunshine warmed my back as I knelt, naked, alone, the water evaporating from my skin.
With a whisper of air across my cool flesh, the door opened, someone slipping inside the cell with me.
“Ivy?”
I looked to my right, but the plane of the stockade blocked my view as it always did.
No one answered, and my heart began to beat faster. This was different, this was change. Change was never good here.
Then came the sound of clacking heels on the cement, slow, stalking. Two sets of heels.
“W-who’s there?” I twisted in vain against the stockade, the wood creaking.
“Be still.”
Anna!
I tried not to think about how grateful I was to hear her voice. How long had it been since I’d last heard it?