I’m naked and bruised, too thin, and I do not know this body. I stand and stare at my reflection in the glass walls, touching my slender fingers to the girl mirrored back. Her eyes are hollow, her skin pale, her breasts and hips too small to be considered womanly, and her long, dark hair falls in greasy strands around her face.
A man stands behind her, his features distorted by the reflection.
I scream and spin around, my gaze frantically surveying the stranger. A lazy smile flits across his face as he studies me from beyond the glass. His hair is pitch black, his clothes are too, and a tattoo plays peekaboo with the collar of his motorcycle jacket. Dark eyes bore into mine, unyielding, unrepentant.
“Please,” I beg, hammering on the wall. “Help me. Please let me go.”
He studies me for a beat, and when I think he’s not going to answer he opens his mouth and a low gravelly voice fills the space between us. “I can’t.”
“Yes, yes you can. I don’t know where I am.” I shake my head, trying to recall even the smallest detail of myself, my life, but it’s like looking at a blank canvas. “I don’t know who I am. I won’t tell a soul.”
He cocks his head to the side, his brow furrowed and his eyes tight with skepticism. “You don’t know who you are?”
I shake my head. “I don’t. I-I don’t know what I’m doing here. Please,” I beg as he steps closer to the glass. “I don’t know anything.”
He makes a humph sound, as if he doesn’t quite believe me. “That’s good. It will be much easier to break you if you don’t remember where you came from.”
“W-what are you talking about? What do you mean?” I bang on the glass, louder now, as he begins walking away. “Please, let me out. I’ll do whatever you want.”
He stops in his tracks, turns slowly, and with a smile more wolf than human, says, “Whatever I want?”
All the blood in my veins turns to ice. My hair stands on end, and I shiver in my cold, little cage. Swallowing hard, I nod. “Just let me out. Please let me out.”
He rushes the glass and pushes his body up against it. I jolt, taking several steps back until I fall against the wall behind me. “I’m going to hold you to that, little one. And I can’t wait to let you out to play.”
A sob breaks free of me. It hurts my lungs, my ribs, my dry scratchy throat. “Please?”
“Get some sleep, Pet. You’re going to need it.”
The lights go out. I’m plunged into darkness, and all I see is that satisfied glint in his dark, fathomless eyes when he called me Pet.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ares
“She’s going to be quite the handful. Are you sure you’re not in over your head?” My twin leans against the doorjamb as I watch my little Pet on the monitor. It’s pitch black in her cell, and still she stalks the length of the tiny room like a caged tiger, bumping into things, banging on walls, the floor. Likely looking for a way out. She won’t find one; that room is secure. Like my ability to make even the most stubborn of women kneel.
“Are you doubting my ability to train her on time, Brother?” I lean back in my chair, rest my feet on the desk, and lace my fingers behind my head. I’m the picture of cool, calm, and collected. Hermes doesn’t buy it. Not after the incident with the last slave I trained. My brother has lost faith in me, and I’m not entirely undeserving. “Because I haven’t met a woman yet who I couldn’t break.”
“Maybe not a woman,” he murmurs. Asshole. “But you’ve never quite had a deadline like this.”
“True, but I’m not perturbed. She’s a dancer. She’s used to being given orders, she’s used to a strict regime, and I dare say she’s even sucked the director’s cock a time or two for the perfect role. She’ll do nicely, and her body will do what I tell it, when I tell it.”
“You better hope so, because thanks to you, this just became a fucking PR nightmare. What happens when some old coot who attends the ballet every Sunday with his wife recognizes her face at The Ranch?” He pulls a cigarette from the pack and lights it. Thick rings of smoke escape his mouth and float up toward the high ceiling.
“Then they’ll know why we’re asking four times the amount we usually charge.”
“Yes, and a fat lot of good that will do if you can’t make her yield.”
“Leave her submission to me, Brother.” I set my feet on the floor and lean my elbows on the desk, watching my little Pet grow more and more frustrated by the second. “You just concentrate on finding us a buyer at auction for a pretty penny.”
“Oh, I’ll get a pretty penny. Prima ballerina in the European marketplace? It’s every Russian man’s fantasy.”
“Just make sure it’s the right Russian.”
His face falls, and I regret saying anything at all, but Hermes doesn’t need a reminder of what’s at stake here. “Fine, I’ll leave you to your little plaything. Just remember, she’s a different girl than we saw on that stage.”
“I remember.”
“You have everything you need?”
I grin. “I will once you’re gone.”
“You know to contact me if you need me.”
“I won’t,” I say assuredly, and flip him the bird as he exits the surveillance room and strides down the hall. Asshole. On the monitor, his shiny shoes walk across worn floorboards to the front door.
Then I go back to watching Pet on the screen. She’s still shouting, as if someone might hear and will come and save her. No one is coming. No one can hear. Not even me, but I see it all there in grainy black and green infrared, her mouth gaping in a frustrated, tear-filled scream. Oh, the things I’ll make her do with that mouth.
I run a finger over her face on the monitor and smile as all the blood in my body rushes to my cock. “I’m gonna make you scream, twinkle toes.”
But first, I’m going to jack off, pop a few pills, and take a two-day nap. Forty-eight hours in a cold, dark cell, and she’ll be so starved for company she’ll practically beg me to fuck her.
CHAPTER FIVE
Ares
“Wake up, Pet.”
Her eyes spring open and she skitters across the floor, away from my touch. “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me.”
I make a tutting sound and wag my finger. “Uh-uh-uh. You don’t want to make your Sir mad now, do you?”
Her eyes swell with tears, and they spill over her lashes and down her milky white skin. “What do you want from me?”
“Your total submission, but right now I’ll settle for you getting your sweet ass up off the floor so I can make you clean.”
“Fuck you!”
A dark chuckle slips free of my throat. She’s adorable. About as threatening as a newborn kitten, but spirited, I’ll give her that. I can’t wait to break her of it. “I would, but you’re smelling a little ripe, Pet, and I don’t fuck barnyard animals.”
She sniffles and wipes her nose on the back of her hand. I’ve offended her. “Please, I just want to go home.”
“But you don’t remember where that is, do you?” I bend down and stroke her hair. She flinches. My hands come away with greasy residue. That’s what happens when you’re used to being pampered your whole life. This girl has never known a day without soap or shampoo. She’s never been unclean like this, and though she might not remember who she is, I bet it’s eating her up inside. “I asked you a fucking question. I expect an answer.”
“Don’t hurt me, please? Please?”
“Oh, I’m going to hurt you, over and over until you’re so used to pain mixed with pleasure that you begin to crave it. Until you beg me for more. And that’s not an answer.” I let out an impatient sigh and remember I need to go slow with her. It’s our first day. Our first date, if you will. I could give two shits about her mentally plotting my death every time I enter her cell or her body, she will grow to love the things I do to her. “On your feet.”
She cowers. The whimpering begins, and I close my eyes and listen. I love it when they cry. Nothing gets my dick harder. I’m fucked
up like that.
“Here’s the deal, princess: I don’t play nice. I don’t care if you’re sad and crying for your daddy. I’m your daddy now, and the only thing your tears will do is make me hard as a fucking rock. So get up, because you’re taking a shower, and I am getting between your thighs today.”
“No!”
I bite down hard on my tongue. I need the pain to distract me from wanting to tear this bitch in half with my bare hands.
She raises her leg and kicks my knees. She’s a tiny thing—has to be to cut through the air like a gazelle—but ballerinas have strong legs, and it hurts like a motherfucker. Pet lashes out again, and I grunt and clench my teeth, holding my ground. I will not let her get me on the floor of this stinking, fucking filthy cell. Instead, I tower over her, lean in close, and slide my hand around her throat, gripping hard. “Get the fuck up now, or I strangle the goddamn life out of you.”
Her fingernails claw at my hands. Her eyes bulge. I pull her to her feet, lifting her tiny frame off the ground. She scrabbles for purchase, gasping for breath.
“Are you going to be a good girl? I do hope so, Pet, because I will not tolerate any bratty behavior.”
She cannot move her head. She doesn’t have the air to speak.
I know this, and yet I mock her anyway. “I can’t hear you.”
Her delicate throat works against my hand. It would be nothing to squeeze the life out of her, but then we’d be down one prime piece of ballerina ass, and Hermes would kill me. Or . . . he’d try.
She gasps for air again. I sigh and roll my eyes, releasing her. She crumples to the floor, coughing and spluttering. Are ballerinas always this dramatic?
Pet doesn’t waste her air begging or screaming, but instead asks, “Why?”
Why what? Why did I take her, why pick her, why choke her? Why yell? Why throw her to the floor like a discarded toy? I have answers to all of these questions, of course, but I don’t answer any of them because it isn’t my job to answer questions. It’s my job to give orders, and to make sure they’re obeyed.
“Get. Up,” I hiss through my teeth.
“Why?” She sobs. “Why me?”
I crouch down to her level, seize her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “Why not you, little one?”
Her sobbing becomes louder.
“I won’t ask you to get on your feet again. The next time you make me say it, there will be more than just a little bit of breath play as punishment.” I let her go and smile with satisfaction as she rises as gracefully as a hollowed-boned bird and stands before me. Her head is bowed; she doesn’t look me in the eye. Good. It might be easier to train her than I first thought.
“Good girl,” I growl low in her ear, because I can’t help it. My dick is hard as stone. I do love it when they behave. Almost as much as I love it when they misbehave. “Now, you and I are moving to another room. If you try to run, I’ll kill you.”
I pull the blindfold from my pocket and cover her eyes. She doesn’t flinch like I expect her too. Her body trembles, though. I tie the fabric behind her head and adjust it in front of her face, then I trail my finger over her cheek—her nipples form two tight peaks. I want to bite them, bruise the rosy flesh, and make her beg for mercy, but I need to bide my time. She’ll be arching into my punishing touches soon enough.
I spin her body toward the door. “Walk.”
Her legs shake violently as she stumbles forward, disorientated, before righting herself and walking slowly and carefully toward the door.
I laugh. “Don’t you trust me, Pet?”
I yank a fistful of her hair and pull her back to me.
She screams, her hands flying to my wrists to ease the sting she’s likely feeling in her scalp.
“You need to learn to trust me, and if you can’t do that, trust this . . . I own you now. I own your pain. If and when you come it will be from my hands. If you feel pain, that too will come from me, because you’re mine. I’m hardly going to watch you walk into a door because it amuses me. I need that face pretty, little one, and I need your trust in order to gain your full submission.”
“You’ll never get it,” she hisses. “You kidnapped me. I could never trust you.”
“You will trust me, and you will submit, or you will die.”
She whimpers.
“That’s right, little one. You’ll be mine or you’ll be worm food in the ground.”
God, she’s so sheltered. It’s going to feel like all my Christmases have come at once when she finally submits to me.
I don’t remove my hand from her hair, but I do loosen my hold and use it to steer her forward through the doorway of her narrow cell and into the hall. I direct her when it comes to the stairs, never once allowing her to miss and trip. She listens to my direction. She’s forced to, or she’ll risk falling—and even this is an exercise in trust.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t hurt me,” she mumbles as we reach the landing and I walk her through another doorway and into the house. I slide my hand into the keypad, and the door opens with a high-pitched beep.
I lead her into an extravagant bathroom, the one meant only for her. The tub is huge, easily big enough to fit two, with a hand-held showerhead. Releasing her, I close the door behind me. I’m not worried about her attacking me, because there’s nothing in this space to attack me with. The mirror is gone from above the vanity and the fresh lick of paint—buttercup yellow—hides the fact that it was ever there. I painted these walls myself. Hermes always wants someone else to do it, but the less people who know about this place the better. I change the paint every time, depending on the slave. I chose buttercup yellow for her because it’s the color of the daffodils that grew in the garden of her childhood home in the Hudson Valley. It pays to do your research. I want her to feel at home here.
I remove the blindfold. She squints. When she opens them again, Pet doesn’t appear to be comforted by the color choice. Not yet, but she will. They always are. She’s smart, this one, and I can already tell she’s scanning for weapons, maybe hoping for a razor or a vase she can smash and slice my neck open with. She’ll find neither.
“In the tub,” I order.
She glares at the bath, and back at me.
“Get in the tub, Pet. I won’t ask again, I’ll just throw you. That’s a little more effort than I want to expend right now.”
“No. Please?”
I steel my nerves and put a little extra oomph into my words. “Get in the fucking tub.”
With shaking legs, she climbs in and sits.
I shrug off my jacket and toss it on the floor. Her eyes roam over my tattooed arms and to my chest and torso. She’s probably wondering if I could crush her with my biceps. I could, but I want to break her in other ways that don’t involve brute force.
I lean over her and coo, “Good girl. Now, was that really so hard? All I want is to get you clean, because darlin’, you’re a fucking peach. You’ll always look like a peach, but right now you’re a little too ripe.”
She flames scarlet, and I fight to keep my smile from forming on my lips. I know she’s no stranger to sweat, blood, and hard work, but she’s not used to being filthy. She’s worked hard for her position in the ballet company, but she’s been treated like a princess since birth. I don’t blame her parents or her directors. She is a princess. Now she’s my dirty little princess who needs me to wash her clean.
Pet pulls her knees into her chest and ducks her head into them, even though this position allows me to see her cunt more clearly. It’s a pretty cunt. Pink, swollen lips stripped so bare that it’s hard to believe she ever had hair there to begin with. I guess ballerinas need to keep everything trimmed and taut, waxed within an inch of their lives less a stray pubic hair be seen through their skimpy leotards. I turn on the water and grab the showerhead, running it over her feet first to check the temperature. I don’t want to scald her, or freeze her. I want her relaxed, clean, and pliant so we can begin training as soon as possible.
“Please let me go? Please?”
“I can’t, Pet. I have a plan for you, and letting you go isn’t it.” I reach out and grab a strand of her greasy hair. She’s going to be perfect on her knees with her hair wrapped around my wrist and my cock shoved so far down her throat she can barely breathe. “Now be a good girl and lie back, and I’ll let you soak in the tub a while longer.”
“I don’t want to soak. I want to leave. Please let me leave.”
“Where would you go? You don’t remember who you are. It’s a big, bad world out there.”
“I’ll go to the police. They’ll find out who I am.’
“Wrong answer.”
“I-I won’t go to the police. That was stupid. I won’t tell a soul. I don’t know anyone to tell.”
“That’s right. There is no one to tell,” I say sharply. “Now, lie down, and don’t make me ask again. You’ve had enough warnings already.”
She glares at me, as if she might be thinking about disobeying. I glower back and arch a brow in question.
My Pet submits. Laying back against the tub, she covers herself, one hand across her tits, the other wedged between her legs, shielding her perfect little pussy. I slap them both away. She cries out, but old habits die hard, and her hands cover her body from my view again. We do this little dance several times before she gets the fucking hint, and though I can see it’s killing her, she rests her reddened arms on her flat stomach. I don’t like the look of the nasty gash on her forearm, but if it’s hurting her—and I suspect it is—she doesn’t complain about it. What are the chances I found a pet with an unusually high tolerance for pain. My balls ache just thinking about it.
In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part One Page 2