Vow of Silence

by Roxy Harte

  Chapter Three

  Gigi

  Darkness holds me suspended. I’m uncertain how much time has passed since entering this hotel room. Hours? It could as easily be days. It feels like forever.

  That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? Yes. Bound. I am prisoner of someone else’s wants, needs, desires. I don’t have to think, I can just be. Theirs. To do with what they will. Tease me, torture me. I deserve so much worse than I get.

  I don’t deserve the pleasure, but bound, my body responds. Twisting, writhing, climbing—falling. I don’t seek the pleasure, only the pain.

  Pleasure always finds me though.

  Blindfolded and gagged, I ride his erection, squeezing him with my thighs and vaginal muscles until I am shaking and spent. The true problem is the asshole is so focused on finding his own pleasure he forgets why he is here. Punish me! Humiliate me! Only his commands keep me in motion.

  “Harder, bitch!”

  “Faster!”

  “Goddamnit, whore, fuck me like you mean it!”

  A hard command to follow since I stopped meaning it a while ago, not giving a rat’s ass right after my third orgasm and just before my mucus membranes started screaming for relief.

  I reach for the pain and embrace it. That’s why I’m here.

  Pain.

  And although he stopped whipping me with the riding crop when his own pleasure started rising, he’s created a sort of livable purgatory without even realizing what he’s done. The soft pillow-top mattress beneath my knees no longer provides the heavenly comfort promised by the hotel’s ad campaign. My knees ache. Worse, they feel raw from the constant rubbing against stiff Egyptian cotton sheets. This is the stuff dreams are made of. Suffering, discontentment. Yet in my weakness I am reduced to a silent tirade against Viagra and my inner mantra for him. Please come, please come, please come!

  Close to sobbing, I finally hear him growl, grunt and then shout.

  His ejaculation should bring me jubilation, because I know I will be released from the restraints, I will be able to tend to my throbbing vagina, get out of here and go home; but I’m not elated, not even close.

  He’s done now. Endgame for him. He will release me, I will get dressed, there will be the awkward moment of uncomfortable silence neither of us knows how to fill with words, and then I will leave because I have yet to meet a man who could take his mind off his own goddamn penis long enough to do the job he’s here for.

  Punish me like you mean it!

  I sigh around the ball gag shoved in my mouth. Drool pools out with my breath and lands heavily on my chest. Honestly, I decide I’m pretty miserable. Knees burn, back hurts, and with my hands secured above my head in leather manacles, my arms have been numb for what seems like forever. I am at his mercy still.

  I perk up, hopeful he still has a surprise up his sleeve. Straddling his hips, I push against his stomach with my shaved-bare pussy, nudging him, reminding him I am here. His half-hard penis slides from my body in a warm, wet whoosh.

  “Ee-mmm-oo,” I mumble around the ball gag, and more drool pools wetly onto my chest.

  He wanted me naked except for the ball gag in my mouth and the leather around my wrists. They usually do once they find out that I’m inked. Men find my tats intriguing. I find their obsession with my ink annoying, which doesn’t mean that I’m disappointed that it is a sure thing for luring them in. When I advertise on the internet, I lead with photos of my tats.

  Brightly colored koi swim in a teasing zigzag pattern across my back from my left hip to my right shoulder and then over and around to finish their swim over the top of my right breast. Even without the recent addition of three-quarter-length inked sleeves showcasing lotus blossoms, peonies and seaweed, I am guaranteed a steady stream of men willing to do what I ask.

  This one I met on a BDSM chat site servicing the West Coast. I chose him because he could communicate in complete sentences and use words longer than four letters after two weeks of others sending me one-liners.

  From John in L.A. I want to fuck you.

  From Evan in Hollywood. Bow down to me, slut, and suck my dick.

  The reply winning the prize for using an actual two-syllable word went to S.B. from Encino. Stroke me, fuck me, adore me, worship me. Understood? Yeah, I didn’t call him.

  In comparison, the first quick note I received from Michael435 was almost a literary masterpiece. Upon reading your bio, I am intrigued and find myself drawn to your honesty, the forthright expression of your needs, and your desire to discover the depth of your depravity. I must insist upon absolute secrecy beyond the norm of mere discretion.

  “Eh-ee-oo!” I shriek around the gag. Hey, you.

  He doesn’t move.

  I listen for his snore. I am going to be so pissed if he fell asleep.

  “Aa-uu!” I shrill around the gag, bouncing on his now flaccid penis. Wake up!

  He doesn’t move, doesn’t make even the slightest sound, and I start concentrating very hard to hear his sleeping sounds, trying not to panic with the thought that he might actually leave me tied up until dawn. I have to pee!

  “Aa-uuu! Aa-uu, Aa-uu!”

  Serve you right if I pissed on you, damn it! Wake up! I bounce on him…bounce, bounce, bounce. Wake up, wake up, wake up!

  My cellphone shrills from somewhere behind me. Rachel.

  We’ve been friends since grade school, both of us outcasts in the private school our parents insisted we attend…she too timid, me too weird. I protected her from the hazing of cliques and she protected me from myself. Not much has changed, although I’m not certain I need protecting.

  I can’t answer the phone…

  Holy shit, she is going to be so worried, and I have no way of letting her know that I am okay. Sure, I’m pissed as hell that the jerk in my bed has fallen asleep, and my hands and arms are so numb that I can’t feel them and every movement sends jabs of pain into my shoulder blades, but really, I’m okay, I don’t need to be rescued. The phone rings again and again.

  Wake up! Why isn’t my cell waking you up?

  Oh God, Rachel, I’m sorry.

  She hates it when I play these games, and I so do not want her barging in to save the day! She will too, if I don’t return her call in the next five minutes. She’s my safety net, knowing exactly what hotel I’m at, what room I’m in, and in an emergency she has access to a shared cyber folder that contains every scrap of information I have on the man I met tonight and for that matter, every man I have ever met.

  I wait for the phone to stop ringing, then start counting seconds, then minutes…beginning to panic that he really isn’t going to wake up in time. Pushing down on my knees and rocking, I manage to get rolled onto my feet, squatting, sinking unsteadily into the mattress. Then with some pressure released from my wrists, I manage to half stand on the bed and nudge him with my foot, then nudge him harder. Damn, dude, wake up!

  My phone starts shrilling again. I know it’s Rachel just as surely as I know this is my last chance to stop her from coming to the hotel. Hell, knowing Rachel, she is already in her car and on her way to rescue me. With a ten-minute drive between her house and this hotel, she could already be halfway here by now. Oh hell, this is ridiculous. I’m fine…really…if this asshole would just wake up!

  It’s an almost funny situation, although I don’t think Rachel is going to see the humor in it. Pressing my face to my shoulder, I manage to push my blindfold high enough onto my forehead to see, but barely because the room is cast in the shadow of a single candle flame. My jeans, t-shirt, sandals, purse and screaming phone—literally, because my ring tone is a screaming woman—are still safe and sound on the straight back chair by the desk screwed into the wall where I left them. We’d joked about the desk, wondering how much action the cheap piece of furniture could take, but he’d wanted to suspend me from the ceiling first and that had seemed like a hot idea.

  My eyes finally adjust to the low level of light, allowing me to see that his eyes are bulged open. Enoug
h light to guess he is dead. I can’t believe it, but by the time I kick his unresponsive body a few times I am convinced. He’s dead. Holy mother of God, I fucked him to death!

  I manage to not get hysterical, waiting for Rachel to rescue me. I have no doubt she will, even though more than ten minutes have passed. I know because I’ve been counting seconds to keep from breaking down.

  Counting seconds turned into five minutes and then ten. Counting to stay sane—then finally, I hear her pounding on the hotel room door and emotion I have been holding at bay floods out. I scream like I’ve never screamed before, muffled screaming around the gag, then cry because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do once she announces through the locked door that she has help on the way.

  By the time she enters the room with hotel security on her heels, I am jumping up and down on the mattress hysterically. It doesn’t take an act of God to get me free, merely the force known as Rachel, and she is dynamic, climbing up onto the mattress, releasing my wrists and the ball gag. It happens fast and chaotic, with me falling against her and both of us stumbling off the bed and onto the floor, leaving me wrapped so tight in her arms I can barely breathe.

  I hear the security guard calling 9-1-1, and the gravity of the situation hits me. What do I tell the police? Did he have a wife? Not that it matters to me if he had a wife or not, I didn’t even know the guy, but I really don’t want to be the one responsible for ruining some chick’s illusion she had a happy, perfect marriage, when in reality her husband had sex with strange women.

  Sitting on my ass on the thick carpet of the luxury hotel, I am no longer hysterical but rather quite numb. I start thinking about all the things I didn’t want to think about when I was tied up.

  “Oh my God, oh my God!” Rachel whimpers against me again and again, repeating herself so much that I get bitchy.

  “Would you shut up, Rachel? I’m the one who’s supposed to be hysterical. I’m the one who had a guy go limp inside me, not because he was done, but because he was dead!”

  Holding her sobbing body, I am immediately sorry for my sharp words and pat her back, assuring her I am okay, listening to her mantra, “Oh my God, my God, my God,” and wondering what happened to the powerhouse who barged in ready to do anything required to rescue me.

  The woman in question grabs my upper arms and squeezes hard, making me look into her worried face. “Gigi, promise me. Promise me right now you will stop this insanity. You need an intervention. Do you want me to call your mother?”

  “You are not calling her!” Jerking from her grasp, I rub my upper arms, realizing it hurt so much because her hands, like her entire way-too-skinny body, are boney, and boney fingers hurt like hell.

  “I am if you don’t stop this nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense to me, Rachel.” I eye the hotel security guard who insisted on staying until the police arrived, knowing he is listening and it doesn’t seem right he is here…listening. Judging me. I decide I really don’t care. I really don’t. Fuck him. Who is he anyway? Let him hear all of it. “I like to play rough.”

  “I’m not talking about the playing, I don’t care if you play, but do it the smart way! Go to a club…a sex club where everyone else is into this stuff too. You can negotiate the scenes and have a safe outcome. Where did you meet this one, Gigi, a bar? The country club?”

  I snort. “The fucking country club, Rachel? Do I look like I’m that insane? My mother knows everyone at the club!” I give her a look, big eyes and astonished mouth, hoping she realizes that I think she has lost her mind. Then I look at the security guard, catching him in the act of ogling my tits, or maybe the tattoos littering my tits, but either way, totally unacceptable behavior. I give him the what-the-fuck face, deciding that I am so done with him being in the room with us. “Do you mind? This is a private conversation.”

  Turning my back on him and reaching for my too small black t-shirt that holds everything in place minus a bra, I piss myself off by pulling it over my head to hide my body from a complete stranger I will never see again, thinking I really shouldn’t care what he thinks.

  I hiss at Rachel in a hushed whisper, “I am not going to a sex club. What fun is it if you know the outcome in advance? If it is agreed that you will do A and B and C but you will not even think about doing D or E or F, because that’s too scary… I hate that. I want to be challenged, scared, caught off guard. That’s the rush, Rachel. That’s the rush.”

  “I understand, Gigi, but get that rush with someone you’ve known more than twenty-four hours. Get that rush with someone from the fetish community who has a reputation for playing safe.”

  “I was safe tonight.”

  “A man is dead. The police are on their way to talk to you about what happened. Do you get it? This wasn’t safe.”

  “He was safe. I was safe. I don’t know what happened. Hell, Rachel, maybe I rode him to death…because he wouldn’t come, and I don’t know how long I rode him, but it was a long time, dammit. My friggin’ twat is killing me I rode him so long.” Looking over my shoulder, I send the security guard a wicked glance because he is still looking and listening. “Do you mind?”

  I get even more annoyed because he doesn’t apologize for being so rude.

  A hard knock on the doorframe startles me, stopping our argument. No one has to open the door because it has been left wide open since Rachel arrived. Two police officers stand in the threshold looking very armed and ready for anything. An emergency medical team pushes into the room and starts trying to revive the man in the bed.

  Standing, I pull on my black leather skirt, skipping the panties and shoving them into my purse.

  “Miss, please don’t touch anything.”

  I should probably be scared, or at least crying, but strangely I’m not, I’m not anything. Except cold, freezing. I realize I am shaking and sit down on a small desk chair to keep from falling over. I feel stoned, higher than a psychedelic kite, the problem being I haven’t done any drugs in years. Yet I have that floating, out-of-my-body feeling.

  One of the police officers collects identification from Rachel and myself. The other asks, “What’s his name?”

  His pen is poised over a clipboard. The officer’s nametag reads A. Ortega. I lift my eyes, meeting his hard gaze. He is young, A. Ortega, dark hair and eyes, but behind the hardness in his eyes lies something else. Not judgment, curiosity I think, curiosity that he is trying hard to keep hidden.

  “I-I don’t know, Officer Ortega.”

  He opens his mouth and shuts it again before saying, “I apologize, ma’am, I’m Officer Amistad Ortega. This is my partner, Officer Brian Underwood.”

  Ma’am? I’m not that old!

  “You don’t know?” repeats his partner, eyeing the wrist restraints still dangling from the ceiling. “Weren’t you with him tonight?”

  Officer Underwood refuses to make eye contact with me. I look pointedly at Officer Ortega. “Yes, I was with him. No, I do not know his name.”

  I really wish I didn’t have to relay this story. Again. Telling Rachel was enough. “I met him online, his user name was Michael Four Three Five. Beyond that, I can’t tell you anything.”

  “Online? Like a dating service?” inquires Officer Ortega.

  “Something like that,” I admit. Oh hell, this is going to be a long night. “It’s a sex site for Dominants and submissives to hook up, you know, to play.”

  “I see.” Both officers look from Rachel, to the dead guy, to the restraints hanging from the ceiling, to me. Curiosity flickers across Officer Ortega’s face, but is quickly replaced with his professional, neutral expression as he asks, “Ms. Marconi, did you have this man in restraints when he died?”

  “No sir. I was in the restraints. I was straddling him.”

  “Could you be more detailed, ma’am?” Officer Underwood asks.

  No. I don’t think I can. “Am I being charged with something?”

  Rachel intercedes. “More details, Officer?”


  “We’re just trying to piece together what happened, Ms.—” He tersely looks at his notes to come up with her name and I decide that I don’t like him very much.

  Rachel introduces herself. “I’m Rachel Carlisle, best friend. The security guard can confirm that when we arrived, Gigi was in restraints.”

  “So you weren’t here at the time of death, Ms. Carlisle?” Officer Underwood’s pen flies over a notepad and Officer Ortega asks Rachel to step outside since she wasn’t directly involved, though assuring her that he will need her complete statement.

  “No, Officer, I don’t think I will.”

  “Are you saying that you intend to interfere with our investigation, Ms. Carlisle?”

  “No. I’m here to support my friend during this time of emotional crisis.”

  “Can you explain what your part was in tonight’s scenario, ma’am?” Officer Underwood interrupts.

  Oh good, Rachel got called ma’am too; that makes me feel better.

  More than happy to let Rachel take the heat for a moment, I pick at a lint ball on my shirt, avoiding looking at the white-sheet-covered body lying on the bed across from me while I wait to be asked another question. A coroner arrives and several detectives. The shift in power annoys Ortega and Underwood but they step aside and let the detectives go to work. I am separated from Rachel. She is led from the hotel room; I get to stay with the dead body, which is already being photographed. I also get to repeat the answers to every single question I’ve already answered.

  The coroner lifts Michael435’s pants from the chair where they’d been carelessly tossed. He withdraws his wallet and starts documenting what he finds—identification, cash, credit cards. I know it’s too late for it to matter but I wonder what his name is. God, I can’t believe he’s dead.

  I hear Rachel’s voice coming through the closed door. She must be just outside, in the hallway. “I was her safety net, in case something went wrong. If she didn’t answer her cell at the appointed time, I was supposed to check on her in person, which is what I did when I came here tonight. I found her in restraints with this man beneath her. She was obviously upset and he was obviously dead.”