by Vivien Sparx
The photo showed a pretty teenage girl with smooth clear skin. She had long blonde hair, and big eyes. She was smiling at the camera, sitting on a back-yard swing set, wearing a floral dress.
“My mother took this photo on Susan’s sixteenth birthday,” Stone explained. “She sent it to me. At the time I was serving in the Middle East. It’s the only photo I have of her, and the last one that was taken before she died.”
“Died?”
“Only she didn’t.”
Lilley frowned her confusion. She pursed her lips. “You’re looking for your dead sister?”
Stone sighed, dragged his fingers through his hair. “I thought she was dead. My mother thought she was dead. You see Susan went sailing with a girlfriend of hers off Cape Cod one day. They didn’t come home. There was a big search and the boat was found, but neither girl’s body was ever recovered. They were presumed dead.”
Lilley sat back, silent, looking at Stone.
“The news devastated my mother. Susan and I were her only children. There is a big age difference. I’m thirty-one years old. She would be nineteen today. My father disappeared years earlier, so I always felt like I was Susan’s protector, especially when she was young. When she was reported missing, my mother took it hard.” Stone paused long enough to take another mouthful of coffee. “I decided to leave the army to be closer to my mother. I went back home and stayed with her for a couple of months, but she never recovered. She never got over the loss of Susan. One morning I found her in the bathtub, fully dressed, her hair and makeup all nicely done – and her wrists slashed. She just couldn’t go on living, I guess.”
Lilley gasped, a soft little sound that was sympathy, shock, sadness all rolled into one. Stone stared down into his cup for a minute, remembering.
“Anyhow, I was out of the army, but I got offered work with a private company doing hostage rescue work.”
“Like the FBI?” Lilley asked in a soft hush.
Stone shook his head. “No. We specialized in the dirty jobs – the hard ones,” Stone explained grimly. “We got called in to do the rescue work on hostage situations the FBI couldn’t – or wouldn’t handle. A lot of private jobs for wealthy people mainly. The nasty ones.”
“I see,” Lilley nodded. It explained why and how Stone had been able to take care of the two men back at the diner without breaking into a sweat. “And is that what you do now?”
“No,” Stone shook his head. “I quit eighteen months ago.”
“Because…?”
“Because one day I got a phone call from an old family friend. He was one of Susan’s friends, not mine. I barely knew the guy. When he and Susan had known each other in high school, I was already posted overseas. But he said he knew Susan pretty well. Anyway, he found me. Phoned me one day last year and told me that he had just seen Susan the night before at a BDSM club in Washington. She was wearing a collar and leash, being led by an older man. A big man, like she was his slave, or submissive.”
Lilley’s eyes grew wide.
Stone nodded, noticing her reaction. “That’s how I felt,” he said. “Suddenly the sister I had mourned as dead for two years had been seen alive in a BDSM club.”
“What did you do?” Lilley leaned forward suddenly, and without consciously realizing it, her fingers reached out and touched Stone’s hand. The shock of the contact spread through his body like ripples on a calm lake.
“I quit my work with hostage rescue the next day,” he said. “And I went to Washington to look for my sister. I’ve been looking ever since.”
Lilley shook her head. “You didn’t find her in Washington?”
“No. But I started to dig. I started to discover and hear whispers about a whole underground network of people trafficking. Young women disappearing from around the country, who are kidnapped, brainwashed and trained as submissive sex slaves for wealthy men. So I immersed myself in the world of BDSM. And I met a lot of good people. I learned how to dominate a woman who wants to submit to a Master. I learned about punishment, discipline, bondage, and more. I learned what women want. I learned how to give women what they need. I learned how to control a woman and train her into submission. And that helped me understand the men who buy these girls.”
Lilley looked shocked. “You live the BDSM lifestyle as a Master?”
“Yes,” Stone nodded, and then his eyes became dark again with the force of his intensity. “I learned a long time ago, Lilley, the best way to win a war is to know your enemy. I became involved in the BDSM lifestyle to get to these predators who buy and sell young girls as sex slaves. But I also discovered I enjoy the lifestyle. It suits my personality. I’m an alpha kind of guy. I make no apologies for that. A real Master would never buy a slave. These predators aren’t part of the real BDSM community. They’re something else entirely. They’re scum. They’re criminals,” Stone said.
Lilley stared down at the photo of the young girl again, trying to imagine how she would have felt being kidnapped and trained as a sex slave.
“The girls are fed through some kind of a smuggling network and matched with buyers who pay big money – especially if the girls are young, and especially if they are well trained. It’s a web, a tangled, twisted web,” Stone said, and there was a sudden simmer of anger and hatred that turned his eyes to hard flints of stone. “And so far, every lead I follow brings me closer to discovering the men behind the operation, and that brings me closer to Susan. She’s out there,” he said, turning and nodding his head. “She’s out there somewhere. Maybe she’s here in Windswept. Maybe she was here. I don’t know yet. But I will. I will find out. I will find her one day. And I won’t stop until I do.”
Lilley shook her head in disbelief. “I’m just shocked to think that a little town like Windswept could be part of this elaborate people trafficking ring,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Stone took a deep breath, let out a long weary sigh. “The lead I am following came from a man in hospital,” he said. “The man told me this was a place that was an outlet. It was a place that was discreet and quiet where clients could pick up their packages without drawing attention. It’s not the hub of the wagon wheel. It’s just a spoke. But for all I know, this is where the man who took Susan collected her from. Someone around these parts knows something.”
“Can you trust the man in hospital who told you? Can you be sure his information was reliable?”
Stone nodded grimly. “Yes,” he said. “I broke three of his fingers until he told me. A man won’t lie through that. One finger maybe, but after you break the second and third, you can be pretty sure he’s telling you the truth. But I’m thorough, Lilley, and I’m angry. So I broke his nose, his jaw, and then broke both of his arms. Then I drove him to the hospital.”
Lilley blinked. There was a long silence while she tried to imagine the violence, and considered the man she was sitting across the table from. And then she remembered the conversation they had back at the diner, and the newspaper article. “And you think the two missing local girls are connected?” she asked.
Stone shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said.
Lilley got up, fetched the coffee pot and refilled Stone’s cup. She moved slowly, like she was in a daze, or like she was thinking hard. She sat back down and bit her bottom lip.
“How will you find out?” she asked. “What will you do?”
Stone sat up straight in the chair, stretched his back and flexed his shoulders. He was tired, muscles tight. “I’ll beat some bushes,” he said. “I’ll make some noise and see what gets flushed out. If I turn over enough rocks, sooner or later something will slither out.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll crush it to death in the worst way imaginable.”
Nine.
Lilley’s bathroom was neat and compact; just a glass paneled shower cubicle and beside it a porcelain sink with a mirror above, mounted in the door of a slim timber medicine cabinet.
Standard in every way.
The floor was tiled in small squares of various shades of brown, and there were similar colored tiles in a larger size that covered the lower part of each wall. Stone closed the bathroom door behind him and glanced around. There was a white bathrobe hanging from a hook on the back of the door, and two stainless steel racks on the wall next to the shower. The bottom rack had a single white towel hanging over it, the other a pink face-cloth. Stone hung the towel Lilley had handed him over the lower rack and peeled off his t-shirt.
He stood in front of the vanity mirror to brush his teeth and then stripped off his jeans and stepped into the shower. He could see no cosmetics bag, no make-up, and figured everything was neatly stored behind the mirror – but he didn’t check.
He stood under the stinging blast of steamy hot water for exactly five minutes. There was a row of lotions, shampoos and conditioners perched high up on a shelf, but he used the soap to wash his hair. Then he toweled off quickly and stepped back into his jeans.
He came out of the bathroom, followed by a billowing cloud of steam. He left the door open, went back down the hallway to the living room bare-chested.
Lilley was sitting at the kitchen table, looking pensive, looking lost in her own thoughts. It took a moment before she realized Stone was leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest, watching her.
She looked up suddenly, not startled, but like she was just coming awake from a dream. She smiled.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Just a minute. You looked like you were doing some serious thinking.”
She smiled again, kind of lop-sided and wistful, like there was some meaning behind the expression.
“Not really,” she said. “Just daydreaming. Fantasizing actually.”
“About?”
Lilley sighed, then raised her eyes slowly until they were locked on Stone’s, and her gaze was steady and direct. “I was thinking about how long it has been since I’ve had sex,” she said frankly.
Stone’s face didn’t register shock or surprise. “A long time?”
“A very long time.”
“Since your husband?”
She shook her head. “Not quite,” she admitted. “There was one other guy, a few years ago. He worked in Phoenix and came to stay each weekend. We had a thing for a month or so, until I found out he was seeing someone else at the same time.”
Stone nodded. “But no one since then?”
She shook her head. “For a while afterwards I went through the ‘all men are bastards’ stage, so I didn’t miss the sex at all. But lately…” her voice trailed off, and then she tried another smile. This one turned out better, and brighter as she changed subject. “How was the shower?”
“Hot. Thank you.” Stone didn’t say anything else. He just waited, leaning in the doorway, watching Lilley’s face as her expression went through a procession of changes, like she was asking herself questions and then answering them in her mind.
Finally she looked up at him again, wistful once more.
“What’s BDSM sex like, Jack? Is it really like they describe it in the romance books?” There was a kind of earnest pain in her eyes of longing and desire. “Can you tell me how it makes a woman feel?”
Stone pushed himself away from the door, went towards his knapsack and found another t-shirt. He pulled it on, knowing that she was watching him with fixed fascination. Then he scraped a chair back and sat across the table from her. He saw her bottom lip was trembling, like she was nervous, or anxious, or maybe something else completely.
“BDSM is about power and trust,” Stone said. “It is about a woman giving power to a man and placing her trust in him to respect her and care for her – but at the same time to arouse her and make her feel special.” He frowned as he explained, because now that he had said the words, he didn’t think they were exactly the thoughts he wanted to express. He tried again.
“No woman wants to submit, just for the sake of submitting. Women want a man they can respect and admire to make them submit. They want to submit, but only to a man who is worthy of their respect and trust. Submission isn’t for weak women. It’s for strong women, who know themselves and their needs, and who know what it is they want. A woman wants to be tamed. She wants a man who is strong and dominant, and who is a force they just cannot resist. They don’t want to go to him meekly or weakly. They want him to overwhelm her. They want him to be a presence and an energy and a force they just cannot refuse.”
Stone sat back and replayed the words in his head, then he shrugged. It was the best way he could explain things.
Lilley was nodding, as though the words were touching some private place deep within her mind, and echoing in ways she could understand and relate to.
“I thought so,” she said. “It’s how I always dreamed of being treated.” Her voice was muted and her expression stricken. Then she looked up suddenly, alarmed or maybe embarrassed at her confession and worried what he might think of her. “Are you surprised?”
Stone shook his head. “No,” he said. “I believe most women want to submit to a man, but I don’t believe most women meet men who are worthy of their submission. Maybe, for some women the desire to experience submission comes later in life, after they’ve had their families, and are left to wonder what they might have missed out on in terms of sexual experience. For other women the realization that they crave submission comes quite early. There really is no timeline, and not every woman will recognize the desires, or acknowledge them – or act on them. But I do think it’s instinctive, which is why I’m not surprised. Maybe for you these feelings you have come about because of who you are, or where you are in your life.”
Lilley shook her head. “I’ve always had a desire and a fascination for BDSM,” she said, her voice soft and hushed in the stillness of the night. “Ever since I was quite young. Ever since I can remember being aware of sex. But I never had the opportunity. I never met the kind of man you described.”
Stone said nothing. There was just a couple of feet of tabletop and tense charged space separating them, and all Stone had to do was reach out with his hand to close that space and turn that tension into energy. But he didn’t.
Lilley was sad and lonely, and she was vulnerable. He wasn’t about to take advantage of her. If there was to be more between them, she would need to take the first step without any encouragement from him.
She looked away for a moment. One of her hands went to the top of her dress and began twisting the button. Stone wondered if it was a subconscious thing. Maybe she was wishing he was undressing her… or maybe she was just thinking hard. He remembered how she had torn the paper serviette to shreds when they had spoken in the diner, so he drew no conclusions. Just waited her out, at ease in the silence, and patient.
“Do you enjoy being a Master?” she asked softly, still with her head turned away, still with her eyes on someplace else and her hand toying with the button of her dress. When she finally did turn back to search his face with her eyes, they were welled and glistening with unshed tears. “I know you’re accustomed to violence,” she said softly. “Your background, and the man you put in the hospital, not to mention what you did to those men at the diner. And I know you’re big and broad and muscled,” she paused for a split second, “but somehow I can’t see you as the kind of man who would be brutal with a woman. I can’t see you as the kind of man who would take pleasure from giving pain.”
Stone kept his expression impassive, like he was trying to be transparent, so she could read his eyes and know the truth of his answer.
“No real man ever hurts a woman,” he said. “But some women who enjoy BDSM actually want pain as part of their pleasure. Apart from that, I like sensual torture,” he said. “I prefer the ache of a woman’s anticipation. I prefer to hear her beg for release, rather than cry out in pain. And I prefer the touch of my hands instead of the sting of a whip.”
Lilley’s body seemed to shudder with a sudden convulsion. It was like a ripple that
vibrated down her spine. Her lips were parted, and she gave a soft silent little gasp. Without realizing it she had leaned forward as Stone had been speaking, as if she were being drawn to him in the night by his words and the deep steady sound of his voice, so that now the space between them was just a few inches.
She blinked suddenly, flinched. Then she sprang from the chair quickly and went to the kitchen counter where the kettle was, as if driven by the urgent need to put more space between them.
Stone said nothing. Did nothing. He sat back in the chair, watching the delicate but precise movement of her hands as she spooned coffee and sugar into mugs. She kept her back to him, standing over the hissing kettle until the water boiled and the automatic switch cut the power off. Her body was tense. Stone could see it in the rigid square set of her shoulders and the straightness of her spine.
Lilley brought the mugs back to the table, but she didn’t sit down. Instead she went and stood behind her chair, like she was keeping herself behind barriers.
“You never told me how long you will be in town for,” she said. Her voice sounded husky with strain.
“As long as it takes to find answers,” Stone replied honestly. “Maybe a few days. Maybe a little longer. It depends on what I turn up.” He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, felt the warmth through the ceramic. Then he stood up.
“Lilley, if my being here makes you uncomfortable in any way, I am happy to stay at the motel back on the highway – or maybe a motel here in town. I don’t want to cause you any problems.”
“No – ” She came to him and placed her hand on his forearm, but then could not continue. Instead she stared up silently into his face and her eyes were huge and luminous and unfathomable. Stone saw the throb of a pulse in her long graceful neck, from a point just below her ear. Lilley’s lips parted as though she were about to say something. They were full soft lips, and she dabbed at them with the tip of her tongue, leaving them moist, and somehow even softer. She closed them again. Said nothing. But the pressure of her fingers on his arm grew stronger and she shifted her weight so that her lower body swayed towards him and her back arched, lifting up her chin slightly.