by Hannah Ford
At least Hunter’s castle was a bit less ostentatious than these monstrosities, she thought, as they passed one mansion after another, each one seeming to grow bigger and more ridiculous.
Finally, the car arrived at the Jameson estate. The only house that had come close to its size was Kane and Danielle Wright’s house in The Hamptons. But she’d been to their home at night, and this was broad daylight.
Now, as the car passed by the front gate (where they’d briefly stopped to have her ID checked), Kallie looked out at the miles of property stretching in all directions, as far as the eye could see. There were rolling green hills, an enormous pond, a forest, and then the house itself, which was beautiful and frightening all at once.
I’m going to be living here, she thought, shaking her head in awe.
How could she ever get used to this new life? Did she even want to get used to it?
Finally, they parked in front of the mansion and the driver turned to her. “Take your time. I’ll just sit here and read the paper until you get back.”
“Thanks.”
The driver smiled and opened his newspaper—it was the New York Post, not the Times. He was reading the sports pages. Somehow, that little detail made Kallie feel better. If her dad had lived in New York, he might have been a limo driver, and he would definitely have read the sports page in The Post first thing every morning.
She got out of the car and walked to the front door, punched in the code to the keypad, and then used the keys Red had given her to unlock the door itself.
Stepping inside, she was overwhelmed by the majesty and grandeur of the mansion. Her hand went to her chest as she looked around at the marble, the high vaulted ceilings, the enormous windows and long hallways that branched off and stretched into infinity.
Eventually she was able to recover her senses. She climbed the long staircase to the master bedroom and looked around the room.
Red had told her where to go and what she should take back to the hospital with her. She went to the master bathroom and grabbed some toiletries, a bit of makeup for Nicole to use to spruce up for guests visiting her hospital room, that kind of thing.
Next, she went to the closet and grabbed a large rolling suitcase that Red had told her about.
Kallie opened the suitcase and laid it on the floor, then moved to the dresser, where she found plenty of clothing. She had to sort through it to find soft clothes that Nicole could wear comfortably throughout her stay.
They seemed to think she’d be in the hospital for a week before coming home. The baby, Riley, would likely be in the NICU for nearly a month, all told.
As she pulled clothes from the drawers and put them in the suitcase, she began daydreaming again. Her daydreams had a very consistent quality to them lately, in that every single one of them involved Hunter.
Kallie again tried to shake off her thoughts of last night, not to mention the way he’d touched her this morning. How was it that just a quick caress could make her feel more than a thousand kisses from those fumbling boyfriends of the past?
She didn’t know, but she knew enough to realize that the hold Hunter had over her was far beyond what was healthy. Kallie barely knew Hunter, and what she did know about the mysterious writer was enough to raise a series of red flags that should have stopped her in her tracks.
And yet she was still hoping for more, wasn’t she?
Kallie had stopped paying attention to what she was doing, and so she’d practically emptied out the bottom drawer of Nicole’s dresser. It was only when her hand hit something rubbery and foreign that Kallie startled back to reality.
“What the hell?” she said to the empty room.
Kallie looked down and her eyes widened, as she pulled out a small black whip with a bunch of separate strands hanging from the handle. Her heart was suddenly beating fast, and she felt as though she’d done something wrong—intentionally snooped through Nicole and Red’s private things.
In reality, though, she’d simply been doing exactly as Red had asked her to do. They must’ve forgotten that they’d kept some of their…toys or whatever…in this dresser drawer. Kallie examined the whip thing—it seemed more like what she imagined a Cat of Nine Tails to be (and which she’d only read about in that book from the college dorms). It was leather, small, and when she playfully slapped it against her leg, it didn’t feel like much.
She also noticed that there was a black, silk scarf at the bottom of the drawer, too. The scarf appeared to have been tied in such a manner that it must have been used as a blindfold. Kallie picked it up in her other hand, feeling the sensation of the material against her fingers, even holding it to her nose to smell.
There was a rising sense of excitement in Kallie’s belly as she looked over these instruments, the very things she suspected that Hunter intended to use on her someday. She found that when she imagined hunter putting this blindfold on her, or slapping her bare ass with the Cat Of Nine Tails, it was not dread she felt—but rather arousal.
Immediately, guilt and shame welled up beside those other, more pleasurable sensations, and Kallie stuck the whip and the blindfold back in the drawer. She threw some of the extra clothes back on top of the mysterious items and then shut the dresser drawer, as if slamming a door shut on that entire concept of BDSM.
As she finished packing the suitcase, Kallie found that despite herself, she continued to return to the whip and the blindfold in her mind. She found herself picturing Hunter, bare chested, his dark eyes focused on her as she lay on her stomach across his bed, the whip in his hand, coming towards her to do who knew what.
That image wouldn’t leave her no matter how much she tried to shake it.
When the suitcase was finally packed up and Kallie believed she had everything that Nicole might need, she wheeled it downstairs and then out to the town car, where the driver was waiting.
The driver got out and placed the luggage in the trunk, and then Kallie got in the car and they started to drive down the private road, away from the mansion.
Nicole and Red actually used those things, she realized. Which meant that maybe—just maybe—it wasn’t such an awful, horrible thing to do. After all, they had one of the best relationships she’d ever come across—they seemed even happier than her own parents.
Kallie wondered if there might be a way for her to get Nicole to talk about it.
So, do you ever like to be tied up and whipped? She imagined herself casually inquiring as she and Nicole hung out together in the hospital room.
That probably wouldn’t go over very well, but still. Maybe there would be an opening to discuss it, and if she ever saw that opening, Kallie determined that she’d take it.
***
Nicole was sleeping when Kallie arrived at the room with her suitcase. Red quietly thanked her for bringing it.
He was clearly exhausted—his eyes red rimmed and he had dark bags underneath them. He was sitting in one of the chairs and looking at something on his phone.
“Why don’t you go home and rest?” Kallie told him. “I’ll stay here with Nicole.”
Red shook his head. “I want to stay with her. I’ll nap a little here and then sleep at home tonight.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” He smiled at her. “You know what, though? There’s no reason for you to hang around here. I’ve got this covered.”
Kallie’s hands intertwined nervously. “What should I do, though?”
“Take a few days off. Relax. Once Nicole comes home—and then Riley—you’ll be busier than ever. So maybe now is a good time to just enjoy yourself and mentally reset. You’ve been through a lot in the last six months.”
“But, I’d rather have something to do—“
Red shook his head no. “Vacation, Kallie. That’s an order. You’ve got the town car and you can go anywhere you want with it. Go into the city and check out the Museum of Modern Art, go to a movie, a bookstore, anything.”
Kallie knew that she should be grate
ful for the chance to just relax and have fun with the added bonus of job security, but she wasn’t. She was scared about how she’d fill up her days and nights. Too much time to think would make it that much harder to resist Hunter Reardon’s offer.
“Okay,” she sighed, knowing that Red Jameson wasn’t about to change his mind.
Red nodded brusquely, still maintaining his professional distance (which she honestly appreciated, even if it sometimes felt as though he didn’t really like her very much).
“I guess I’ll just go back to the house for now,” she told him uncertainly.
He chuckled. “It’s none of my business where you go or what you do on your days off.”
Kallie turned and left, wondering how much Red knew or suspected about her extra curricular activities. He’d heard about the fight at Danielle’s party, so he obviously knew that she’d met a man. And then Nicole had told him that Kallie had been on a helicopter last night, and Red knew that she’d probably been taken on one by somebody with the means to pay for it.
So perhaps Red knew that she was seeing someone, and this was his way of tacitly approving of it?
Kallie supposed she was reading way too much into his order to take a break and enjoy life for a few days.
But wouldn’t it be so amazing to enjoy these next few days with Hunter? Spend time in that castle, in a dark room, sweating and moaning and pleasuring him in every conceivable way, letting him do anything he wanted to her in the process?
And then that familiar rush of guilt hit her, and Kallie thought that there was no way she could ever go through with what Hunter asked. How could she ever live with herself if she let some rich playboy use her and abuse her, let him discard her like some old toy when he’d had enough?
Kallie got back in the town car and asked the driver to take her home. He put down his newspaper and smiled. “You got it,” he told her, pulling away from the curb.
He really did remind her of her father, which in turn made Kallie think of Ohio. She hadn’t been in touch with anyone in her family in days and days, mostly because she hadn’t wanted them to know how unhappy she was working for the Danvers’s.
But now she was happy, and she was working for a great couple. Besides, talking with her mom and dad might take her mind off…other things that she didn’t need to be thinking about.
Kallie hesitantly took out her phone and called home. It was the landline, so anyone might answer—her dad, her mom, one of her bothers (two of whom still lived at home, while the other three lived nearby and constantly visited).
But when the line was finally picked up, it was her mother who said hello.
“Hey, Mom. It’s me,” Kallie said.
“Kallie,” her mother gasped, sounding as if Kallie had just called her after being released from a twenty-year prison stint. “I was just talking about you.”
“What about me?”
“Well,” her mother said, in a conspiratorial tone of voice, “you know how Sean has been seeing Lydia for a while now…”
“Yeah?”
Her mother gave a squeal. “Sean and Lydia came over for dinner last night and announced their engagement!”
Kallie was equal parts excited and melancholy about the announcement. She instantly told her mother how awesome that was, how excited she was for them, all the right things she was supposed to say upon hearing this kind of news.
But deep down, she was having a familiar reaction—the same way she’d felt about having to witness Nicole and Red’s incredible relationship. Kallie felt lonely, and she felt jealous, and she felt like somehow she was doing something wrong.
Her mother seemed to sense it, even though Kallie stayed upbeat. “We miss you, Kal,” her mom said eventually. “And we wish you were closer.”
“I miss you guys too.”
“The thing is,” her mother continued, “Lydia’s father lives in New York. So everyone got to talking, and it’s been decided that we’re all going to travel out to New York City and celebrate this occasion together.”
Kallie sat up straighter in the back seat. “Everyone? You and dad and—“
“Everyone. The boys, too.”
Of course, none of them were technically boys anymore—they were all men. “I can’t wait to see everyone,” Kallie told her.
“And we can’t wait to see you. We’re so excited to see what you do in New York, the places you spend time, to meet your friends.”
For some reason, this made Kallie think of Hunter once again. “I don’t really have a lot of friends out here, Mom.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?” her mother asked, sounding worried now.
“I’m taking care of myself. I’m actually doing really well.”
There’s this handsome, mysterious man who wants to make me his sex slave, Mom. Doesn’t that just sound like I’m doing great?
“Are you enjoying your job? Are those children behaving themselves for you?”
This was where it might get tricky, Kallie thought. “Actually, I left that job and got a new job.”
A pregnant pause followed this declaration. “You got a new job?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a long story, but basically the first couple I worked for treated me really badly. And so I met this other couple, and they offered me a job working for them. She just had a baby and needs help—“
“Wait a minute. Tell me what happened, Kallie.”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you more about it when you visit. But the important thing is that I’m really happy right now, my new job is fantastic.”
“Good, then. If you’re happy, I’m happy. Just make sure you always take care of yourself and that you don’t let the big city change who you are.”
“Mom,” Kallie cried out, feeling like she wanted to die from embarrassment. “That’s like the most clichéd thing ever. Don’t let the big city change who I am?”
“It may be cliché, but it’s for a reason. You come from a simple family with strong morals and you remember that, honey.”
“I will. I love you.”
They exchanged their goodbyes amidst promises to further cement the times and dates that the family would be coming in for the celebration of Sean and Lydia’s engagement.
Kallie was smiling as she got off the phone, thinking how she should make a point to call home more often. But then her smile faded as she thought about what her mother had said at the tail end of the conversation.
Agreeing to be in a clandestine BDSM relationship with Hunter Reardon would be the exact kind of thing that her mother was most afraid of. Hunter exemplified the elite, power hungry New Yorker who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. If she were to succumb to his demands, then Kallie would be walking away from everything her parents had raised her to believe.
***
Kallie changed her mind about going home and instead decided to take Red’s advice. So she had the driver take her all the way into Manhattan, to the Museum of Modern Art.
There, she spent an hour and a half walking around, trying to make sense of the cavernous spaces and bizarre art installations—she had the sense that everything meant something but she was unable to quite understand what that “something” was.
In one particularly large white room with nothing in it but for a table and two chairs, a strange and intimidating woman sat in one chair and dared onlookers to sit in the chair opposite her. There was a line of people waiting to do so. Kallie watched from one of the catwalks above, looking down in fascination at the scene. On the on hand, it was so completely banal and she didn’t understand what made it art.
But on the other hand, there was an excitement in the air as each new person would go and take their seat across from the artist on display. Apparently, as Kallie gathered from conversation, the female artist was sitting at that table all day long from morning until night, unmoving, unspeaking.
Kallie lost track of time, falling into a kind of hypnotic state.
“Enjoying the exhibit?
” someone asked from just over her shoulder.
Kallie startled, turning around to find Hunter Reardon standing not three feet away, dressed in dark jeans and a dark button down that was probably courtesy of Calvin Klein or Burberry. He smiled at her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, already walking past him.
He fell into step beside her, his body relaxed, his tone confident. “I decided it was time to continue our conversation from earlier.”
“How did you know where I was?”
Hunter didn’t answer at first. Finally, Kallie stopped walking and faced him. They stared at one another, and for a strangely disconcerting moment, Kallie felt like they were playing out a silly performance art piece—staring at one another as the other visitors milled past them.
He smiled. “After you got out of my car, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to just drive away and forget about you. So I—“
“You followed me.”
“I stayed in contact with your town car.” He smiled and shrugged.
“That’s not cool, Hunter.” She shook her head and started walking again. Her cheeks were burning and she was angry with him, but she was also feeling something else—something more inexplicable than anger.
Admit, it. You also like the fact that he followed you.
She tried to deny it to herself, even as she realized that it was true. How else to explain the butterflies dancing in her stomach, the fast beat of her heart, the way she reacted instantly to the nearness of Hunter’s body?
That doesn’t mean he’s good for you, she told herself.
She walked faster, and Hunter kept up with her the entire way. Finally, she exited the museum, and as she was going down the steps, his hand caught her wrist, spinning her towards him. “Kallie, hold on a minute.” His dark eyes penetrated, as if seeing into her very soul.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Hunter. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t owe you any explanations,” she told him.
“Kallie, I know you want to do this. It’s written all over your face. I can feel the way you respond when I touch you.”