In the Land of Gods and Monsters, Part One

by Carmen Jenner

  I produce the blindfold from my pocket and let it dangle from my hands. Like a good little Pet, she closes her eyes, and waits. I wrap it around her head, and tie it off, and then I lead her from the room, down the hall, and into the bathroom. I run the bath and help her into it. I don’t get in behind her because I’ve already overstepped the mark today, and I don’t need another reason to lose my shit.

  “Did I do something wrong, Sir?”

  “No, Pet. I did.”

  And I don’t have the heart to tell her why. I don’t know what makes her different from the others. Every slave I’ve trained, I’ve told them of their fate, to torment and terrify them with it, but not her. Not my Pet. Perhaps it’s the amnesia, or the fact that I might be losing my edge. Twice now, I’ve overstepped boundaries I swore I would never cross. Twice, I’ve let a submissive get the better of me.

  I don’t know the reason why. I don’t have the answers, but it’s different with her, just as it was with the last. I need it to not be different. I’d never had any disillusions about what I do, who I am, or what I am. But Pet makes me reconsider all these things, and in turn it makes that kiss the worst kind of betrayal. A betrayal to both of us.

  I cannot let it happen again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Pet

  Ares dries me off and leads me back to my room where he folds down the sheets, removes his boots, and climbs into bed beside me. For a beat, I’m so stunned I wonder what he’s doing. And then I see the weariness in his eyes, in the dark circles there, and for the first time I realize that perhaps the monster is just as vulnerable as the man. Though Ares is a formidable Dom, a force to be reckoned with, deep down I believe he’s as bone-weary and exhausted as I am.

  I decide to press my advantage as I curl up beside him and burrow my head into the crook of his arm. I welcome him into my bed, offering a false sense of security, the way he does with me after our little games are played, and I’m beaten and bruised and shaking with the aftershocks of pleasure. “Do you ever regret the things you do to me?”

  “Should I?”

  Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t want to fall for those dark eyes, that brooding glare, the way he whispers “Pet” while he’s coming deep inside my ass or throat. I never thought I would be one of those statistics. A stupid girl too busy falling for her captor that she forgets to run, to plot, scheme, and most important of all . . . to escape.

  I see this for what it is. I’m smart enough to know that I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Any idiot could see that. I hate him. I hate how he touches me, beats me, marks me, but a part of me craves it too. A part of me loves it, loves pleasing him. “Why won’t you let me go?”

  “Pet,” his tone is sharp, warning, and all Dom.

  My skin erupts in goosebumps. “At the very least, you could take me outside. Gag me, bind my wrists, blindfold me.”

  He chuckles. “Are we still talking about going outside or what you want me to do to you right here in this very room?”

  Of course my freedom is a joke to him. All I’ve wanted since I arrived was to see the sky. There was a window in this room once, though it’s covered with pretty wallpaper. I can see the plaster work where it was boarded up. Sometimes I fantasize about smashing a lamp through the plaster to break through to the other side, but the repercussions of such actions terrified me. The idea of returning to the cold cell below the ground sickens me. So I stayed put in my gilded cage. Like a lonely bird, I chirrup for my Master. I sing when he touches me, but like any caged animal, I long to be free.

  Ares exhales slowly. “We’ve been over this, Pet.”

  “If I promise not to run, if I let you lead me by the collar and cuffs . . .” My pleas are desperate, my voice thick with unshed tears as I clamber over him, straddling his hips. “Will you take me outside, just once?”

  He presses a hand against the nape of my neck and lowers me until my breasts are flush with his abdomen, my cheek pressed against his chest. It’s a surprisingly gentle gesture for a man who was torturing me just moments ago. “Go to sleep, Pet.”

  I don’t want to sleep. I want to beg him. I want to murder him. I want to stay tucked safely in his arms. I want all that, and I want my freedom.

  Right now, I’m not sure which I want more.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Pet

  With a ball gag in my mouth, a blindfold pressed tight to my eyes, cuffs around my wrists, headphones on my ears, and a restrictive collar around my neck, Ares leads me out of my room and through a series of doors. When he pushes me through the last, I’m assaulted by the scent of rain on the asphalt, and a cold breeze on my skin. I can’t hear a thing—the headphones must be noise cancelling—but I can smell and taste the air. I suck in huge deep breaths of it. It tastes like snow, and if the tremors racking my naked body are anything to go off, it’s December already.

  I don’t detect pollution like I would at home, but underneath the clean scent of ice and snow, there are flowers. I’m ushered along an icy path, and the air around me grows still and warmer. A greenhouse, perhaps? The cloying scent of night blooming jasmine, and roses hangs thick in the air. I wonder how Ares has time to tend roses when the wilted flower he keeps upstairs is slowly dying from a lack of sunlight and fresh air.

  Anger shoots through me, a bolt of white-hot lightning from my chest. I wish I could strike him with it. Eviscerate and char him where he stands. Perhaps it’s his brother who tends to the roses. That’s certainly an easier pill to swallow.

  The air chills my bones, my exposed flesh, and though I can’t see it, I can feel the moonlight spilling onto my skin. In my mind’s eye I see me standing here like a fool, when I should be running, should be screaming for help, but I do nothing. I’m too afraid that he’ll haul me back inside, and I’ll never feel fresh air on my skin again. Tears sting my cold cheeks. The breeze through the open door toys with me, kissing my bruises, my welts, and I sob behind my gag.

  Ares doesn’t touch me, and for a moment I believe I’m alone. I worry he’s left me here. I’m bound and gagged, and unable to protect myself, and then he tugs on my leash.

  I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back into the confines of that room without windows, my cage. I dig my heels in, and I’m slapped for my insubordination. A series of hard slaps to my breasts that forces them to bounce from the brutality. The sting is so much worse in the cold. He tugs the leash again, and I move, because I have no other choice.

  He leads me out of the greenhouse, and back inside, and when I feel the temperate air of my cell around us, smell the sweet gardenia oil he rubs me down with, a sob escapes me.

  The first thing he removes are the headphones; the second, my gag. And though I’m still tethered to him by his leash, I take a step back and inhale. I can’t breathe. I can’t get enough air, and even if I could I wouldn’t want this recycled shit, pumped through vents. I want outside. I want snow, jasmine, and roses. Not gardenias and captivity.

  “Breathe, Pet,” he commands. I can’t breathe because he forced me back into this room, into submission, and repression. I can’t breathe stale air forever and be okay.

  I fall to my knees, clutching my stomach, not caring that his hold on my collar is choking me. Why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I at least try?

  He made me wear a blindfold for a reason. He gagged me for a reason, and if it was so important that I be unable to hear my surrounds, does that mean I was surrounded? By what? People? Houses? Buildings? Or was it just to fool me into thinking there was help nearby, that all I’d have to do was ask for it when, really, there is nothing. No one and nothing but jasmine, roses, and the pale moon that mocked me as she kissed my skin.

  “Stop crying, Pet.” His voice is low and as unfeeling as ever.

  I can’t. I can’t stop. “Why won’t you let me go?”

  He crouches by my head and pats my hair. “Because I need you. You’re mine.”

  “I hate you. I hate you. Just fucking kill me now and get it ov
er with. Please? I’d rather be dead than spend the rest of my life here.”

  “You don’t hate me, and you don’t want to die.” He trails his fingertips over my collarbone and down my breast, where he cups and squeezes. “Perhaps you need a reminder of why you love it here, why you belong to me.”

  “I don’t . . .” I shove his hand away, but he places it right back on my breast. He will take what he wants from me when he wants, and I’m helpless to stop it. “I don’t belong to you or anyone else.”

  “Bullshit. You’re mine. You will always be mine. I want you to remember that.” He slides his hand over my abdomen, and down between my legs. I slam them closed, but it makes no difference. Ares pushes them apart and pinches my clit. I suck in a deep breath. I’m devastated. My heart has been shattered into a million tiny pieces, but none of that matters to him. Or to my traitorous body, because within seconds he has me writhing on the floor, begging him through my sobs to make me come, make me forget.

  I won’t though—forget. I can’t.

  “You will always be mine.”

  He’s right. I will always be his because I love a monster. That’s as clear to me now as the air outside.

  I love him. I hate him. I want to kill him, spear him through the heart until his blood pours thick and hot over my hands, and I can finally take back my freedom.

  But in doing so, it will destroy me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Pet

  The days and nights following my field trip outside are a blur of pain, sadness, and pleasure. I never knew it was possible to both love and hate a man at the same time. To feel such elation and despair all at once.

  Ares comes to me several times a day. He beats me, fucks my ass, bathes me, and is over the top with his aftercare. At the end of each day, he curls up in bed with me and sleeps. It’s as strange as it is comforting. Perhaps he thinks I’ll try to harm myself if he isn’t constantly at my side. I might have even considered it too, but I have nothing to harm myself with. He dutifully shaves my pussy and body hair in the bathroom every few days, but the razor stays there, and it’s never within my reach. I could break the mirror over the vanity, but he’d likely see it on the monitors and catch me before I had time to truly do any damage. It hurts too much to invent other ways to die, so I don’t.

  When he’s not with me, I lie in bed and wish for a death I’m too broken to conjure up and carry out, and when he is with me, beating me, torturing me, and making my body come alive under his touch and tutelage, I’m free. I’m flying. I’m so deep in subspace, so tossed in his waves and adrift on the ocean of Ares, that I forget to hate him for stealing my life.

  None of my memories come back, nothing more than that same image of a darkened room, a spotlight, the dizzying heights of elation and fear of spinning out of control, and the unyielding floor as my body brutally slams against it.

  I don’t provoke him anymore. I don’t play our game, at least not as a willing participant. I do as I’m told. I listen when instructed, and I curl into the arms of the monster at night and sleep as soundly as I ever have, but I’m broken, fractured, and no amount of praise or pleasure will put me back together.

  I toss between the covers, unable to get back to sleep. Ares is gone. He left hours ago, and I’m both starving and sickened by the thought of food. I wish I could leave this room, or, I don’t know, watch television, read a book, draw, write—something. Anything to escape the monotony of nothing.

  When the shrill beep sounds from my door, I pull the sheet to my neck and sit up. Ares enters. “You’re awake.”

  He holds a tray with food, fresh fruit, steel-cut oats, and buttered toast with juice. I turn my nose up at it and lay my head back on the pillow.

  “You need to eat, Pet.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t care,” he snaps. “Sit up now and eat like a good girl, before I make you.”

  He’s provoking me. I bet he wants me to say no, to fight, so he can dole out the punishment I deserve.

  I don’t want to play, so I sit up and do as I’m told. I choke down the oats and fruit, the toast and juice until I’m sick with nourishment, my belly painfully distended. I might consider starving myself to death if I didn’t think he’d make good on his earlier promises to force feed me intravenously.

  “Good,” Ares whispers as he trails kisses along my neck. I close my eyes and lean into the sensation, both loving and loathing his attention. “I have a surprise for you, Pet.”

  I open my lids and lean back, searching his face. “What is it?”

  “You’ll see, but first, I need you to close your eyes.” He pulls the blindfold from off his wrist and ties it securely around my head. His lips are warm against my collarbone, his breath hot.

  He cups my breast and draws one aching nipple into his mouth, drawing blood to the surface with the graze of his teeth and his brutal suction. I moan. I’m wet, longing, aching for him to touch me, to fuck me, to feel something more than this suffocating depression. It’s a vicious cycle of hate and loneliness combined with elation when he takes me.

  “Please, Sir,” I beg, though I know not what for.

  He releases my breast with an audible pop, and exhales loudly. “I could just eat you up, Pet.”

  “Yes. Please?”

  He chuckles, and slides his hand under the sheet and between my legs. With slow, languid strokes, Ares massages my pussy. I buck my hips, writhing against his skilled, adept fingers. Heat builds within me, unfurling from low in my abdomen. My breath becomes hurried as my hips rise to meet his ministrations, seeking my release.

  Then he’s gone, the feeling is gone, and my building orgasm disappears as quickly as it came. I release a frustrated sigh and squeeze my legs together.

  The dishes clink and rattle as he picks up the tray table and walks across the room, no doubt sliding his hand onto the keypad to unlock it.

  I lean back against the headboard and squeeze my eyes tightly closed behind my blindfold. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I dart out my tongue and wet dry lips as I wait.

  He returns some time later, twice, actually. The first time there’s a godawful clamor, the second a fluttering sound, like the beating of a tiny bird’s wings. I repress the urge to yank off my blindfold, and I wait with bated breath.

  “You may remove your blindfold, Pet.” He barely finishes his sentence before I’m tugging free the obstruction and launching myself across the room. A white sheet covers a structure beside Ares. It’s almost as tall as he is. I stumble toward him, gather the fabric in my fist and pull.

  A gilded cage greets me. The occupants chirrup in a flurry of frightened wingbeats, and when they settle, I stare at two bright orange–red birds.

  My heart lurches and breaks, because just like me these birds were intended to be free. But humans took them, bred them, and raised them in captivity, and here they are in my cell. Kindred spirits. We are the same, stolen, and yet now that they are here, I can’t possibly let them go. I can’t set them free, because then I’ll be all alone again.

  Tears track down my cheeks, unchecked. Is this how Ares feels? Torn between wanting to see me flourish, exultant in my freedom, and needing to keep me locked away for his own sanity and peace of mind?

  He cups my face between his warm palms and kisses the tears from my cheeks. “I thought they’d make you happy, Pet.”

  “They do,” I whisper on autopilot, but we both know these are not tears of happiness. “What are they?”

  “Red Factor canaries. My mother bred them when I was a child. The males have the most beautiful song.”

  Keeping pretty things in cages runs in Ares’ blood.

  As if on cue, the brighter of the two birds sits taller on his perch and sings a sweet, trilling melody that brings a smile to my face, and buoyancy to my chest. For months now, all I’ve heard are low, graveled commands, moans, the sound of his belt and my corresponding screams, and the quiet hum of
the air through the vent in the ceiling. It’s almost hard to believe that there is a whole world outside this room.

  I sob as Ares wraps his big arms around me, and carries me to the bed, and then I fall apart as I listen to my new cellmates serenading me with their saccharine chirps and lilting songs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ares

  I bathe Pet and dress her in a long floor-length silver gown. It’s made of fine silk, and her nipples bead and press indecently against the fabric, begging to be touched, pinched. I adjust my cock and look her over with an appraising eye. Her makeup is done expertly—by herself of course—because even with thirty slaves under my belt, I still haven’t the faintest idea of how to present a woman when it comes to makeup. Thankfully it’s ingrained in most of them, and it appears it’s a skill this one hasn’t forgotten.

  I tie her hair in a braid, remembering those long ago days when I used to watch my mother do this. I’m not good at it either, but with Pet’s help, we managed to give her one of those overly stressed braids that looks messy and effortless.

  “Why are you forcing me to get made up?”

  “Enough—”

  “Questions, I know,” she finishes, rolling her eyes. Pet stands before her birds and makes hushed clucking sounds. The male begins singing, and an easy smile flits across her face as the smaller female cozies up to her fingers for a scratch. “I know you won’t answer them anyway.”

  “Then why ask, Pet?”

  She smiles as I tug her braid and pull her toward me. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll throw me a bone.”

  “Not likely.”

  She pouts. I take a calming breath. It’s all I can do not to put her over my knee, or worse, kiss her again. I lead her to the bed, cover her eyes with a blindfold, and slide the noise-cancelling headphones over her ears. Her whole body stiffens. I’m sure she believes I’m taking her outside again. I am taking her outside, and from there we’ll get in a car and drive miles away from this room, but I doubt she’ll like our destination as much as the garden.