For Love & Torture_A Submissives’ Secrets Novel

by Michelle Love

  The ground’s shaking. The circle is breaking. And I’m seeing my body come back to me.

  “Quick, try to reform the circle!” the head witch shouts.

  Turning in a circle, I can see the women all trying their best to get back into formation despite the shaking ground. But I charge at that witch like a linebacker would come after a quarterback.

  “Get the fuck out of here, you bitch!” I run at her, not letting the shaking Earth stop me.

  She totters on the ground as it moves beneath her feet like a wave, knocking her down. “Run!” she screams as she scrambles on her hands and knees to get away from me. “Get out of here!”

  The earthquake is still rumbling as I watch them all disappear into the thick woods. Once I see not even the slightest hint of any of them, I turn to go to my wife and find the earthquake has stopped.

  Pushing the door open, I find Natasha passed-out on the bed, still cuffed to it. A horribly putrid smell hits my nose. Sulphur and something I’ve never smelled in my life fills the air.

  My poor wife is covered in what can only be the semen that came out of my body, and it’s what reeks.

  Uncuffing her, I pull the leather corset off of her and pick her up, taking her to the shower to wash this shit off of her. And still, she’s not waking up.

  She’s breathing, I can feel that. And I can hear her heart beating, but she’s in what is similar to a drug-induced sleep, it seems.

  Wrapping her in a towel, I take her out to the bed and lie her back down. The sun is beginning to set, and I’m sure as fuck not going to be staying here.

  As quickly as I can, I round up our things and take them to the car, leaving only a robe out to put her in. With the car packed, I head back inside to dress my wife and take her home.

  This little retreat did not go as planned.

  She’s shaking when I get to her, so I hurry to take the damp towel off and put the robe on. In the car, she’ll warm up once I get the heater started.

  Picking her up, I take her to the car and put her in the passenger seat, buckling her in, then lay the seat back so she’ll be more comfortable.

  I just wish she’d wake up. I’m starting to wonder if I should get her to a hospital instead of heading straight home.

  After I close her door, I hear rustling in the woods. I look around and see nothing, but it’s growing darker by the minute. “You better stay the fuck away from us!” I shout just before I get into the car.

  Starting it up, I punch the button to get the heater going as my poor wife is still shivering. Then I put the car in reverse and punch the gas, backing up then going forward, trying to get the hell out of this God-forsaken place.

  But just as I get to the end of the driveway, I see what looks like a very tall person. Wide shoulders are what steal my attention. They’re too wide to be real. Whatever I’m seeing is taking up the space of three men. And it’s standing right in my way.

  I have to stop, I have no choice. But I hit the lock button just to make sure we’re secure inside the vehicle.

  The thing doesn’t move at all. It just stands there, cloaked in black shadows. Maybe it is just a shadow.

  I rev my engine, trying to make it move, but it doesn’t. Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement in the woods. A flash of blonde hair lets me know they’ve come back.

  They want us. Or me, anyway. Just like the old man said.

  “Fuck!” I shout and pound my fists on the steering wheel.

  Natasha’s head rolls to one side, her blue eyes open and she looks at me. Her eyes go wide then she screams, “No! No, Nic! Red!” She tries to sit up and grabs for the door handle. “Let me out. I hate you!”

  “No! Natasha, don’t get out of this car. It’s the witches. It’s them, they’re real, and they’re outside. Stay in the car, baby. I didn’t hurt you. That wasn’t me. Calm down.” I reach over and grab her arm. I have to hold it tighter than I normally would, but she’s trying to get out of the car. I can’t let her do that.

  The blonde witch is suddenly right at Natasha’s window. “I’ll help you. Get out. Come with us. We won’t let him hurt you anymore.”

  Natasha looks at me in horror. “Let me go!”

  Looking ahead, I still see the dark figure standing there. But I have no choice. I throw it into drive and gun the engine, shooting right at the thing as I say, “You’re not real. You’re not real.”

  Natasha screams and holds her hands over her face as I barrel straight for the huge thing. “Stop, Nicholai!”

  But I don’t stop. I keep going as fast as I can, right at it. “It’s not real, Natasha. None of this is real.”

  I close my eyes as I come close to whatever this thing is and keep reciting the same thing I’d been saying, only silently. This cannot be real.

  The sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires has me opening my eyes and I’m suddenly on the main road. A bright light tells me something is coming at us, so I quickly pull to the side of the road just as a truck passes by us, the horn blaring a warning at me.

  “You nearly got us killed, Nic! What the hell has gotten into you?” I look over to find my wife shaking and pale. Then she begins to cry. “Why did you do that to me?”

  Somewhere deep inside of me, I let myself believe that she’d wake up and not recall a thing that happened to her. But it seems she recalls it all very well.

  I head toward home, thinking of how I can ever fix this. “Baby, that wasn’t me. I have to come clean with you.”

  “That was you. What happened?” She wipes her eyes then digs through the glove compartment to find a tissue to blow her nose.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I try to think of the perfect words to explain it all to her. But there just aren’t any. “I made a mistake. A huge mistake. I should’ve listened to that old man, and I should’ve listened to you.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says then sniffles. “And my body hurts, Nic. All over, it hurts. I feel as if I’ve been burnt from the inside out. What was in that wine? It had to be in the wine.”

  “There was nothing in the wine, baby.” I reach over and take her by the hand. “I unintentionally allowed that to happen. I thought I knew it all. I thought there was no such thing as real magic. And I thought wrong. It is real. There are terrible things that are very real. But I found out something else too. I found out we really do have souls and we’re really powerful even in that form, with no body to work with. So, I did learn something very valuable from all of this.”

  “And I hope you’ve learned to listen to your wife’s intuition.” She squeezes my hand. “Now tell me every last detail, Nicholai. Because I have to know. I have to understand why you would hurt me the way you did.”

  “Okay, number one. Stop thinking of that thing as me. It was my body, but it was not me. Let that soak into your brain before I say another word. That was something from another world or dimension. It was not me. I wasn’t in that body. I called out to you. I don’t know if you heard me or not. I was far above you and that thing that took over my body.”

  Her blue eyes go wide as her jaw drops. “I heard you. I did. It sounded like you were impossibly far away from me. You called my name. And then you called it again and told me to hang on. You sounded closer the second time I heard your voice.”

  “That’s because I had gotten closer. Sit back and listen to this, baby. You’re never going to believe what happened back there. But you need to believe this; we are never going back into that area again. Not ever. Not for anything.”

  With a sigh, she leans her head back and looks at me. With the calm eyes of my wife

  Chapter 9

  Natasha

  Pulling up to a drive-thru fast food place in town before we head home, Nicholai orders me a burger and fries and a chocolate shake to help me digest all he’s told me.

  It’s unbelievable. But somehow I do believe it all.

  A pack of kids comes by the car as we wait in line. Some wear superhero costumes, others are dressed a
s monsters. And then there’s one little girl who’s dressed up in flowing white material. Not exactly a dress. More like a dress with a cloak over it. But it all flows together. Her blond hair is done up in gorgeous curls.

  “That little girl reminds me of that blonde woman who was at my window. The one you said was the head witch, Nicholai.” I point at her, knowing she can’t see me doing that through the tinted window.

  But she stops and turns her head, looking directly at me. A thing Nic sees too. “Shit.”

  “Do you think…”

  He interjects, “Yes, I do. Look at her.”

  I had turned my attention to him, so I look back and find her still staring at me. She takes a few steps closer to the car then stops. I can hear her voice through the closed window as she says, “You were one of the lucky ones. Most don’t get away from my mother the way you two did. I hope you have a Happy Halloween.” Then she turns away from us and catches up to her friends.

  “God, this place is crazy,” I whisper. “So many things I never thought I’d believe. I never thought could happen.”

  “Me neither, baby. Me neither.” He pulls up to the window and gets our bag of food then drives away, leaving the town behind us. The town that sits on the edge of Hell.

  “Why would anyone live here?” I ask as I take the paper wrapper off my burger. Then I stop and whisper, “Don’t eat the food, Nic.”

  I look over and see he’s just about to bite into the burger without so much as glancing at it. He pulls it back and looks at it then shudders and rolls down the window. “Fuck!” Out goes the burger, wrapper and all. Then he grabs the bag I’ve tossed mine in and flings the whole thing out the window too. My husband is not a litterbug, neither am I for that matter. Under normal circumstances, I’d be yelling at him and making him turn around to go pick that shit up.

  These are not normal circumstances though.

  I roll my window down and toss out the two chocolate shakes, glad we didn’t take as much as one sip out of them. “Best to leave all this right where it belongs. In this creepy little town with its darker-than-shit secrets.”

  He nods and shudders once more. “Rats, Natasha. Who does that?”

  “Evil people. Only evil people would cook a rat, leaving it all intact, head and all, and make a burger out of it. I think you accidentally found a little Hell right here on Earth.” I lean my head back and close my eyes.

  This is all just too much to take in. My core has been shaken. I now know evil does exist and it’s right here.

  Something tells me to open my eyes, and I do, catching the sign at the very edge of town that tells us we’re now leaving Allure, New York. And just as we do, there’s a flash of lightning and rain begins to pour down on us.

  “Shit, where in the hell did this come from?” Nic shouts. He hits the wipers, but the rain is so hard, we still can’t see a damn thing, forcing us to pull to the shoulder and stop.

  “I don’t like this. It’s like the town is trying to hold us, Nic.” I shiver and run my arms around myself.

  He looks at me as he shakes his head. “No matter what, we’re not going back there. I don’t care what we have to do. We will not turn around and go back there.”

  As fast as the rain started, it stops. The skies clear, the moon shines along with the stars, and we can see traffic rolling easily up and down the road. “That was weird,” I mumble as I look around.

  The first thing I notice is the lack of trees. There had been trees along both sides of the road. The woods came right up to the edges of the roadway. Now there’s none.

  Nicholai looks back too. “What the hell?” Red and blue lights pull up behind us, and Nic mutters, “Damn it. Now what?”

  A policeman walks up to his window, and Nic rolls it down as the policeman asks, “What’s the trouble here?”

  “No trouble. The rain stopped us is all,” Nic answers.

  “What rain?” the policeman asks. Then looks in at me, finding me in my robe. “You guys in a hurry to get somewhere? Been drinking before you hit the road?”

  “No,” Nic answers. “And what do you mean, what rain? It was just pouring down so hard we had to pull over and stop to avoid wrecking the car.”

  The policeman takes out his flashlight and shines it into Nic’s eyes. “Pupils seem okay. No signs of inebriation yet you’re talking about something that never happened. When was this supposed rain?”

  “A minute ago,” I answer. “We were leaving the city limits of Allure right when some lightning flashed, and the rain fell in sheets so thick we couldn’t see a thing.”

  “Allure?” he asks, looking at me like I’m crazy.

  Nicholai nods. “Yes, sir, Allure. The sign is right behind us. You came from that direction. You have to know what we’re talking about. The little town right behind you.”

  The officer steps back, looking in the direction of the town. “I’m afraid I’m going to need you to step out of the car, sir. Grab your license and registration first.”

  “With all due respect officer,” Nic says as he pulls out his wallet to retrieve his license. “Why do I need to step out of the car. I wasn’t breaking any traffic laws.”

  “No, but you are talking kind of crazy. You see there’s no town behind me. There’s no town for twenty more miles. And there’s no town in the entire state of New York named Allure. So, I need to see if you’re sober. Get it now?” The officer puts his hand on his gun to emphasize his request. “So step out of the car please so I can administer a test.”

  Nicholai looks at me with his jaw dropped. “No such place? No town for twenty miles? What the hell?”

  “I think you’ve pinpointed it right there, Nicholai. Hell.”

  The officer waits as Nic and I stare into each other’s eyes. What we’ve just been through couldn’t have been.

  Could it have?

  Epilogue

  Nicholai

  9 Months Later:

  “Push, baby. You’re doing so good. I’m so proud of you, Natasha,” I coach her as she brings our fifth child into the world.

  It’s nine months to the day since we left that horrible little phantom town of Allure. Though unintended, we had gotten ourselves pregnant with the little time away from home.

  “My God, Nicholai, it burns so badly each time I have a contraction. This didn’t happen with the other babies.” Natasha looks at the nurse. “What could be causing that?”

  “I’ve seen it happen before. It’s a form of fibromyalgia some women giving birth experience. Usually, it goes away after the birthing experience. You shouldn’t worry.” The nurse looks at the computer screen at the intensity of the contractions. “I think you’ll be seeing your new son’s face very soon. These contractions are getting closer together and more intense.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” comes my wife’s unusually sarcastic response.

  I laugh a little but give my wife a little correction, “Honey, no need to be rude to the nice nurse.”

  The nurse flips her dark hair over her shoulder, giving me a grin. “No offense taken. I’ve been doing this for quite a few years. I’ve heard it all, and I’ve also been called every name in the book.”

  “Still, sorry for that,” I say as I take my wife by the hand. “Natasha is usually very nice.”

  “I’m sure she is,” the nice nurse says then gets back to doing what she was doing, checking on everything.

  I look down at my wife as another contraction has her breaking into a sweat. “God damn it, this hurts.”

  “Try to breathe. Try to relax,” I tell her as I run a cool cloth over her forehead.

  I’ve seen this woman give birth four other times and never have I seen her this bad off. “Fuck!” she shrieks. “I can’t take it anymore. I want something for the pain. And I want it right now.”

  The nurse nods and heads out to ask the doctor about what my wife wants. I take Natasha’s hand and hold it, gently stroking the top of it. “You were able to deliver all the others without pain medi
cation. What do you think is happening this time?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” She gives me a glare then she makes a growling sound as another contraction hits her hard.

  I’ve never seen my wife act this way. It’s crazy what this labor is doing to her. The whole pregnancy has had her temper short. I’ve taken it all in stride, blaming the hormones and trying my best to make things easy for her, but nothing has worked.

  Oh, sure, there’ve been times when she’s herself, but many more times that she’s unnaturally grumpy and growly. I’m glad we’re about to put this pregnancy behind us and move on with our new baby.

  The nurse comes back in, and she looks like she has bad news as she wears a bit of a shameful expression. “I’m sorry. Your doctor has gone to get something to eat. He should be back soon. Once we get his permission, then we can get you something for the pain.”

  “That’s not good enough. Call him,” Natasha spits out at her. “And do it quick. I want an epidural, and I want morphine. Lots and lots of morphine! And I want it now!”

  Spinning on her heel, the nurse hurries back out, and I find Natasha is shrieking with another contraction. I try to help her the best I can, running the cool cloth over her forehead and trying to whisper soothing words to her very quietly.

  All the while, I’m thinking these contractions are coming too close together for her to get any type of painkiller before the baby comes. It’s just too late, and I bet that’s why the doctor didn’t bother to let the nurse give her anything. But you better believe I’m not telling Natasha that.

  Breathing hard, she grabs my hand, and one tear falls down her face. “He’s coming now. I can feel it. Call the nurse.”

  Hurrying to press the nurse’s call button, she answers from the nurse’s station, “Yes?”

  “She says it’s time. We need someone in here now.” I run my hand over my wife’s brow and give her a smile. “Be brave for me. This is almost over, baby. Soon, you’ll be holding our fifth child. Another boy for our family, Natasha. You can get through this. I know you can.”