by Emily Tilton
Then she cried out, because the man outside the car had used the moment to start hauling her bodily up and out of her seat, as if she weighed no more than a fallen leaf.
“It means,” he said as his henchman—or so Maia had to think of the men who had come to fetch her—got her around the waist, too, “that I’m not going to hesitate when I teach you the lesson you’ve earned.”
* * *
She struggled at first, because the panic took over and she couldn’t help it, but one of the two men in the black t-shirts could have easily manhandled her efficiently enough to put a zip tie around her wrists and put the ball gag in her mouth: two seemed like wasted resources. That in and of itself made Maia think that Gordon, who would presumably not have paid an extra henchman unless out of an abundance of care, had meant what he said about the importance of kidnapping her. She began to understand what he had meant about the calming effect of realizing she had no choice.
When they showed her the crate, though, just big enough for her to fit inside and lined with padding, she quailed back. Then for the first time one of the men spoke, the one who had pulled her out of her car, a broad-chested, bearded man who looked to her like an Italian lumberjack, despite the incongruity of the two categories.
“It’s just to get you out of the house, Maia,” he said.
She looked from him to the other man, suddenly acutely conscious—as she hadn’t been when they put the black ball in her mouth, one squeezing her chin firmly to make her open wide, the other pushing the rubber thing between her teeth and fastening the strap around the back of her head—of the way the gag held her mouth open, filled it with what these men had decided to put there. Girls on NMB often had to be silenced with gags like this one, and Maia remembered wondering once what it felt like, remembered moving her jaw and her tongue to simulate the experience of having her mouth mastered that way. To her horror she realized that she had grown warm between her thighs.
As they bundled her toward the crate, the other man, more of a Nordic surfer, clean-shaven and a little taller, put his big hand on her jean-covered bottom to help propel her forward. That made her give a muffled cry around the gag, because her bottom still stung a little from Gordon’s spanking, and now that warmth seemed to travel straight forward so that she could feel herself flow into her panties again. Her legs felt like jelly as they turned her around and made her step backward into the crate, her bound hands in front of her. Instantly the lumberjack closed and latched the lid and then she felt the crate tilt, and heard the sound of a dolly’s wheels as they settled her, in the darkness, onto it. They started to roll her in the direction her feet pointed.
No choice. It did help, but another part of her brain scolded, If you succumb to that false logic, you’re going to give into whatever nefarious scheme Gordon has kidnapped you for. You are Maia North: you do not give in.
* * *
Whatever truck, or van, the lumberjack and the surfer had put the crate into had traveled only a few hundred yards, Maia estimated, before the lid opened and Gordon looked down at her.
Van, she realized, because he sat on a bench seat, along the side, though she couldn’t see anything more except to note that the van had no windows visible to her.
“Listen carefully, Maia,” the financier said. “We’re going somewhere that’s not very far away from your house. It should take us about twenty minutes to get there. Once we’re there, you’re going to stay there with me for as long as it takes to make you understand why selling Confidelia’s metadata to Selecta represents the best decision you can make. I don’t want to insult your considerable intelligence, and I’m sure you’ve listened, but nod, please, if you understand.”
Various parts of Maia fought one another for a moment as she attempted to fix Gordon Ernkat with the deadliest stare any man had ever received. Gordon looked back impassively, his eyebrows raised.
If I don’t nod, what is he going to do? Spank me again? He’d have to get me out of this fucking crate to do that, wouldn’t he?
But… No choice.
Still, just as she hadn’t been able to help the arousal, now she couldn’t help her defiance: she glared up at him with what she hoped looked like the eyes of a female basilisk protecting her reptilian virtue. I would turn him to stone, if I could.
Then, to her dismay, the double meaning of turning a man to stone struck her, and she felt the blood rush to her face. At the same moment, so much worse, Gordon shifted a little on the bench, moving down toward her feet, and reached his hand to undo the button on her jeans waistband with deft fingers, then, in a smooth motion the buttons of the fly.
Maia gave a little cry around the rubber ball in her mouth. Gordon met her eyes, his eyebrows rising again in silent inquiry, and then without breaking that gaze his hand slipped inside the waistband of her silky panties so that his middle finger could seek her clit as if by some unerring homing instinct of masculine dominance. The little cry became a sob of pleasure, and Maia closed her eyes. Her hips bucked against Gordon’s hand, seeking more of the shameful attention, the touch that made her yield despite her iron will, her piercing intellect.
The hand withdrew. Oh, no.
“Nod if you understand me, Maia,” his voice said calmly, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the road beneath them. Frantically she nodded, mewing for the return of the hand that knew her secret.
“Good girl,” Gordon said. “You’ll come again soon, if you do as you’re told. Not now, though.”
Maia gave another sob and opened her eyes, all the defiance, all the glaring resistance, humiliatingly changed into pleading. See? the scolding part of her mind said. This is what happens when you succumb to his logic.
Gordon looked down with a smile on his lips that Maia found, to her horror, made her pussy clench as if he hadn’t taken away his expert fingers, or as if the rest of her body would beg, even if her voice couldn’t.
Chapter Six
The secluded Guard safe house on the Pacific coast loomed high over the crashing surf. A stairway led down to a rocky beach, but the water was much too cold and the waves too rough for swimming: a heated horizon pool supplied the need. As he led Maia, her gag now removed but her hands still tied, into the house, Gordon caught a glimpse of the flagstone patio and the steps leading up to the pool, and tried to quash a hope that his arms might hold a willing, naked Maia in its waters.
Soon. Maybe. If I can get her to see reason on the one hand and desire on the other.
The comm-link in his ear came alive at last: the electronics in the safe house had the short-range, low-frequency capability of reactivating it. Gordon had talked to Kevin Logan briefly on his encrypted cell phone in the van, but he couldn’t carry on a conversation with Maia looking up at him from the floor—and developing her impressions of this extraordinary breaking and recruitment procedure represented Gordon’s paramount task. He had been able to gather two important things from Kevin, though: the police seemed not to have been alerted in any way to Maia’s pickup, and the safe house was ready to receive the CEO of Confidelia.
Meanwhile Gordon had literally had Maia just where he wanted her: looking up at him, wondering what he meant to do to secure her compliance with his wishes. With each minute of the drive, immobilized and silenced by the gag in the crate but not in any pain or discomfort except from the lingering smart of her well-spanked backside, her face had told him that Maia fought harder with herself. Her struggle had appeared on her brow, and in the adorable movement of her nose: to keep her mind from identifying with him, and from seeing herself as Gordon saw her—to stop herself from yielding to that mode of erotic looking for which she had already a strong predilection before the Guard and the Institute had developed it so thoroughly with the help of NMB.
Now, walking her into the front door of the safe house, it didn’t surprise him at all when Kevin’s first words in his ear were, “We don’t have her perineal data yet, but the externals have Maia at eight.”
An arousal
of eight was a little higher, even, than Gordon had anticipated, and might pose its own challenge. The Institute’s arousal scale used integers one to ten, with the top value calibrated to each submissive girl’s previously observed highest level of arousal and then recalibrated as her training proceeded. Invented by the psychologists and physicians who had created so many of the Institute’s protocols and procedures under the direction of the legendary first dean, Anne-Marie, then refined through the digital revolution brought about by the even more legendary Abigail, the scale constituted the backbone of the assessors’ analysis on the fly as they sat monitoring the girl’s progress deep beneath the innocent-if-opulent manor house three hundred miles or so south of this safe house. Communicated to the ear of the training master, that number let a dominant man use his instincts and his own training to the fullest. Whether he wanted to bring a girl to the brink of orgasm and then spank her for becoming so aroused or he wanted to take her from abject fear all the way to climax in the space of a few moments, the arousal number let him adjust his approach according to her needs and unspoken—and frequently, for her, unspeakable—cravings.
Because Maia hadn’t been a candidate for the acquisition of a full range of sensor data, the way a standard pickup would have been, a little guesswork had certainly gone into that eight. That would change very soon, but in the meantime Gordon needed to bring her down a little so that he could engage her rational mind. If Maia felt herself to be under the influence of the submissive desires of which she still felt ashamed, she might agree to what the Guard needed from her in one aroused moment and then, a few hours or a few days later, destroy the whole operation. What they needed from Maia North had a good deal more complexity to it than the simple obedience a training master sought from an Institute concubine in the early stages of her breaking to the acceptance of her submissive needs.
The wide, heavy door at the top of the stucco steps opened as Gordon and Maia approached, the financier holding the CEO’s elbow to direct her and to propel her slightly in front of him. He heard Maia give a muffled cry of surprise and alarm when she saw a man in a white coat standing just inside the doorway. She turned her head toward Gordon and then quickly back again, perhaps catching sight of Jack, looming dark-haired behind him for support if any became necessary. Blond Hal was driving the van into the garage.
“Nine,” came Kevin’s voice in Gordon’s ear. “Plus or minus one.”
Damn, Gordon thought. Miscalculation. They had dressed the doctor very obviously as a doctor in order to raise Maia’s arousal: Gordon had made that decision himself, because he had felt sure she would come into the safe house low on the scale, a six at the most, and he wanted her at seven. Still, the data had a high uncertainty: plus or minus one represented an unacceptably enormous range to attempt any delicate work. Thankfully the doctor, as arousing as Maia might find him, had the answer, though implementing it might well send her even further up the scale.
“Hello, Maia,” said the man in the white coat. “I’m Dr. Franklin. I’ll be conducting your examination. Go ahead into the living room, please, and take off all your clothes.”
“Ten,” Kevin said, “plus or minus one.”
The possibility that Maia had just recalibrated—that she had experienced more arousal at the command to strip than she had ever felt before—existed. It wasn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, Gordon reassured himself inwardly. Indeed from a general perspective it was very good, above all for Maia’s healthy development as a self-actualized person who could enjoy her sexuality.
The possibility of global financial collapse, however, though it sounded much more general than a particular woman’s sexual needs, presented a very specific set of requirements in training Maia North. Gordon needed to do something quickly, without alerting her to any uncertainty or adjustment in the approach taken by the men who had brought her here.
“Do as the doctor says, please, Maia,” he said into her left ear, sternly but without using the growl he might have employed if her arousal needed raising rather than lowering. He urged her through the doorway and into the dimly lit open space of the house’s central hall—especially by comparison with the brilliant light flooding in from the enormous picture window at its opposite end. The gynecological exam chair stood in the middle of the room, metal knee stirrups rising in their silent threat of holding a girl like Maia open for masculine inspection. The other furniture—a long couch, two easy chairs, and a coffee table fitted with certain attachments Maia wouldn’t immediately notice—had been moved to the walls of the spacious, high-ceilinged room.
“Nine,” Kevin said. “Plus or minus one.”
Well, that’s better, Gordon thought. He knew he had to reconcile himself to it getting worse before it got better, though. Maia had a definite arousal reflex where nakedness was concerned; the scenes she replayed on NMB frequently involved girls like Catherine being told to take their clothes off, or—apparently even more exciting for Maia—taking them off without permission and being punished for it.
Maia took a step forward, then stopped in her tracks, looking back at Gordon. “How am I supposed to take my clothes off if my hands are bound?” she asked, her face startlingly composed.
“Eight plus or minus one,” Kevin said, sounding a little surprised. “Assessor team politely asks that you get her perineal sensor in place as soon as possible. They’re not liking their data.”
I’ll bet they’re not, Gordon thought grimly. What had just transpired inside Maia North? A girl at arousal nine shouldn’t be able to protest that calmly, should she?
His dominant instinct took over, though, and he could only hope it would prove helpful in the end. “Come here, Maia,” he said, letting the growl come through.
Her green eyes widened for an instant, but then narrowed.
Kevin said, “Seven.”
“No,” Maia said very clearly.
“Six. She’s in freefall.”
But that made Gordon smile: Maia thought she had outwitted him, but in fact she had outwitted herself. He wondered for a moment whether he should have had more confidence all along that she would end up putting herself just where he wanted her: Gordon had after all designed the entire scenario around her intellect and rationality.
“Come here, Maia. I’m going to cut that zip tie, and you’re going to take your clothes off for us.”
“No,” Maia repeated.
“Five.”
Maia went on this time, elaborating on her refusal. “You gave yourself away, Mr. Ernkat. You need my willing compliance. You can forget about your twisted little game of perversion. I’m not going to sell the metadata, but if you take me home and show me the exploits you used to hack my security, I’ll ask for leniency when they sentence you.”
Gordon almost laughed. One thing he had observed in Maia North—something fairly typical of brilliant, successful young people in general, but exacerbated in Confidelia’s brash CEO—was a definite tendency to overplay her hand. She had just done so in a fashion so spectacular that Gordon barely had to try, now.
“Four,” Kevin said. “Assessors have never seen a girl get her arousal under control that way, but they’re happier with their data. Still want you to get the sensor in there soon.”
Gordon stepped toward her, and Maia quailed back half a pace, her eyes growing wide as she took in the hard expression on the financier’s face. “It’s going to be a shame to ruin these clothes, Maia, but we definitely don’t need to free your wrists to get you undressed and examine you.”
“What?” Maia turned to Dr. Franklin, then to Jack, as if seeking confirmation that Gordon had lost his mind, but the doctor had gone to stand next to the exam chair and Jack himself had advanced a step to help in subduing Maia if necessary.
“Six,” Kevin said.
“I’m not going to… I won’t help you at all, when they catch you.” Maia’s eyes had gone wide, her breathing ragged. The internal struggle she had certainly thought resolved a moment before had kicked
into high gear. “You need me.”
“We do need you,” Gordon confirmed, standing over her now with Jack a yard or so behind and to his right, ready to close in and take hold of the girl at Gordon’s instruction. “But you don’t know yet how we’re going to secure your cooperation. Last chance to take off your clothes for me instead of having them cut off with the very efficient shears Dr. Franklin has in his pocket.”
Maia swallowed hard, and her bound wrists came up to chest level in a gesture of silent warding and perhaps also pleading.
“Seven.”
Perfect. Gordon closed the distance completely, but instead of the manhandling grip Maia so clearly expected, he stooped a bit and brought his hand down between them to her waist, where her jeans remained unfastened, and slipped his hand inside her panties to find her wetness once again.
“Oh, no,” Maia whispered. “Please… please, Gordon. Don’t.”
“Do you remember what I told you in the van?” he asked. “What would happen if you’re a good girl for me?”
“No,” Maia said in a tiny, whining little voice, so different from her usual assertive tone that it almost startled Gordon. “No.”
“Of course you do, Maia. A smart girl like you?” His fingertips brushed her clit, traveled a little lower, rubbed. “A brilliant girl like you? Of course you remember.”
Chapter Seven
How could it be happening? How could Maia want to take off her clothes and get into the exam chair? She had thought that Gordon’s knowing hands had taken control of her body before, in the garage and in the van, in a way that conformed on a basic level with how a man aroused a woman in the world as she had known it. The promise of an orgasm in exchange for her obedience once they had reached their destination certainly hadn’t seemed abstract—Gordon had made Maia’s body need that release, in the moment there in the van. But she had thought that the twisted erotic aspect of this bizarre plot could be resisted, by means of her growing understanding of what Gordon wanted: for the rest of the ride in the van she had prepared herself finally to bring her intelligence to bear.