by Savannah May
The gates to the estate at the end of the drive were unusually open so I roared through and was free. I headed south, not knowing where. Soon I'd be on the freeway going nowhere, just driving with relish. I didn't notice the headlights come up behind me soon after I pulled out of the grounds of Valentine winery. The high car was like a tank, heavy and storming along the street like a bully. It required all my attention to drive. The enraged pain pounding through my chest wouldn't quit no matter how many deep breaths I took. Never again would I let myself be used as a toy.
The tears welled, but refused to fall, merely obscuring my vision. When the bend came up fast, I could have managed it with the truck's superb handling but for the high beams that blinded me and the car that came up beside, edging closer and I went over into the ditch.
I was flailing against the air bag, crying back angry tears when the door was jacked open and brutal hands tugged my arm from its socket. All the hatred for those two men-children flared up ready to fight them off. I was not going back to Valentine, never again. A massive hand covered my face, clamped over my nose. The sweet aroma swarmed my nasal passages through some puffy material and I toppled back into the dark.
When I came to, the auto-response triggered in my body before the brain cells had time to analyze the predicament. I was pinned and fight or flight went immediately to full offensive as I instantly thrashed my arms and legs in the attempt to escape or lash out at whoever was my attacker. But both defensive responses had been anticipated and hijacked long before.
I bucked, arching my back to unfurl myself without gaining a millimeter, so fast was my latest prison. I was wasting and depleting valuable energy for no reason. I forced myself to still, sucking deep breaths, blowing out a longer exhalation, impelling the compression of panic out of my armor-plated chest.
First – where was I?
By stretching my eyes from full on close up with my kneecaps, drawing them to the side where some light permeated my personal gloom and refocusing on middle distance, I deciphered no clue as to my whereabouts. This was entirely new, a different space from Valentine's usual torture chamber. The same cool, dank air of an underground chamber but not his regular dungeon. This was a surprisingly opulent room decorated with heavy tapestries covering the walls. And the air was heavier, somehow wet. With an odor of moss.
My body writhed slightly, seeking some comfort and relief from being curled up tight as a caterpillar. But there was not the tiniest unfurling to be had and every thrust caused a burning sensation at the back of my neck. A dense web of ropes had been so perfectly woven around my limbs, it was as though I’d been made into a living basket. Any shifting threw me out of alignment and was more uncomfortable.
I was naked as a baby, fetaly curled and hanging in a sling like a package ready for delivery in a stork's bill. But this baby was restrained at every joint, trapped tight in a mesh entirely constructed from rope, still creaking back and forth at its knotted apex, attached high above me in a thick old beam.
The constriction around me didn't allow so much as a champagne bubble of air to enter under the tight bonds of the rope web. For that's what it was- I was wound up tight in a lattice of intricately knotted ropes. Shibari was one of Jay Valentine’s obsessions but he'd outdone himself this time.
It must have taken him an age to weave the various strands of harsh rope tightly around my curves and joints with such byzantine knots at every juncture. Which meant I had been kept in total darkness for an eternity, completely unaware of him toying with my flesh, his toy while he worked to ensnare me. The man was a sicko but I had to admit as my eyes reached, they were beautiful, sculptural and absolutely perfect, lined up exactly, absolutely exact in size and form.
The pressure grazing various points along my spine indicated the numerous intersections of twine that splayed out to form the hammock I was encased in. The lowest knot at my coccyx, divided into two straps that girdled my pelvis and another two running the length of my ass crack in bands either side of my clit.
The dank air caressing the dampness between my legs emphasized the bulging open spread. The ropes were pulling my clit and splaying it wide in full view through the trellis of rope. The attention along with the cool air brought the prodding nub to life. My naked clit began to pulsate with an ache that craved massaging. The need infused itself like a tisane through my coiled form and I quivered with longing.
The ropes pulling my pussy apart looped back to cuff my wrists in thick macrame bracelets, then continued in a series of elaborate large knotted pendants to loop a noose around my neck. Another set of ropes secured my ankles in a hog-tie connecting to my wrists. Any movement set up a scrape across every part of my flesh and stretched my pussy wider.
Valentine had excelled himself this time. I was repressed and unable to move a muscle without incurring discomfort, while electric shivers of delight ran from my bare slit up my thighs with an agony I had no chance of relieving. The level of heated loathing powering through me was set to explode the moment he entered the room to start my punishment.
37
No one came in for a very long time. Or perhaps boredom made time pass interminably slowly. I’d kind of had enough of being with my heightened sensations. I’d gladly settle for being a boring girlfriend to some normal guy that could get me off when I needed it without having to shroud me in ropes and gags.
I ran through a gamut of emotions, curled up like the stork’s bundle in my rope web. At one point I bucked and thrashed, frustration had built so high at being kept motionless. Valentine didn’t want me to leave and clearly intended to hold me prisoner.
But for how long? He couldn’t leave me here alone to starve, could he?
That thought set my stomach rumbling. Yet more torture. Another excessive amount of time passed before the sound of wood scraping over stone behind me. A man I’d never seen around the winery entered and fed me some slices of egg, some ham and some bread. All of it delicious.
“Is it morning?” I asked, seeing as they were serving me breakfast.
The guy shrugged, presumably ordered not to engage in conversation with the prisoner. He left soon after.
“Hey, what about a latte?” I shouted but the door banged firmly closed.
Shit.
I needed coffee. Or did I? Getting jittery in this tight bond might be even worse. I should try to practice some calming techniques. The only one I could remember was deep breathing.
Facing my emotions was not pleasant. Seeing as they mostly revolved around how much I hate Valentine, my sense of betrayal, of being used by him for some weird game only he understood. When I got out of here I was going to do everything possible to make him pay.
The same guy brought me a sandwich for lunch, feeding me bites through the diamond shaped lattice.
“When can I come out of this cocoon?” I asked, to which he shrugged again. “Is Valentine coming to see me today?”
The guy startled a little at that then made a fast exit.
“Bring me coffee next time,” I shouted. “Or tequila.”
Christ, I could lose my mind alone in here. Was that what Valentine intended, making me crazy so any stories I might tell about him would be written off. I cycled through anger and boredom, even some misery which I flatly refused to permit myself. I’d gotten myself into this, with my eager desire for play right from the night I arrived at the winery. I couldn’t blame anyone but I could hate him with every cell.
The afternoon, if it was that, I had no way of knowing for sure, rolled on as slow as a caveman’s stone wheel. I was on edge, ears stretching for he sound of the door opening the mute bringing me dinner.
“I hope you’ve brought a glass of wine,” I called, my voice cracking with emotion when the door finally scraped back.
“Un-dee, you are always so funn-ee,” a man’s voice replied. A voice I knew.
“Marc, ohmigod Marc, thank god,” I said. “You wont believe it. Josh is here. Josh, my ex.”
“Yes, I know.
He lives here.”
“What are you talking about? He lives in New York.”
“And sometimes he lives here too. He can’t stay away. Neither of us can, we keep being dragged back.”
What the hell was he talking about. His eyes were all distant and glassy as well. If I wasn’t teetering on the edge of coming apart, I’d have thought he had some kind of evil twin. I decided to try another tack.
“Please get me out of this knotted hell,” I begged. “I’ll do anything if you can take me out of this. I know how a chicken feels when it’s locked in an egg.”
“I cannot, baby,” he replied. He set the plate on a low table and cut the food into bite size chunks he could squeeze through the opening into my mouth.
“Why not?” I pursed my lips and refused to eat, feeling like a child.
“You are so pretty,” he said, his hands trailing across my skin, down my outside thigh and back up the underside. I trembled at how his touch connected with my flesh poking out between the taut silk ropes. “It is a shame it must be like this.”
“You’re damn right. What’s going to happen to me? Why am I being held hostage like this?”
“I am so sorry,” Marc said, dragging his fingers along my folds, so I shuddered. I was about to tell him not to touch me but the change in him was scaring me. “I am so sorry I did not take the chance when you offered yourself to me.”
His fingers traced circles around my entrance, teasing me much as he had done on the plane the night I first met him. I was far less eager now. In fact I couldn’t stand his touch.
“I only did that because I was so mad at Valentine,” I said. That seemed to slow him and he took his hand away.
“You might regret that soon,” he said as he picked up the plate and left.
“Marc, wait, don’t go,” I called. Even though he was acting weird, I didn’t want to be left here alone all night. “Wine,” I moaned. “A girl can get very bored of water.”
Arggh. I threw another useless fit of thrashing around against my bonds. At least I moved my body before it atrophied. Or my skin merged into the twine permanently.
I was aware of the presence behind me before I heard it. I hadn’t heard the rough door pull back at all. “Who’s there?” I called, my heart pounding hard. I writhed in the net, trying to turn and see the creeper. If it was Valentine I’d start screaming.
“Shush, baby,” the honeyed sand voice I loved once said behind me.
His fingers parted my folds and glided across my clit, eliciting a shiver.
“Josh what the fuck is going on?” I barked.
“I came to see if that was true. You hurt my feelings,” he sounded petulant, like a child. This was a Josh I ‘d never seen. What the hell was happening?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh my pretty,” he purred, his finger stroking across my exposed point sending sparks up my core. I had to take the chance, now.
“Babe, if you get me out of here we can go back to New York and talk about it.”
“I can’t,” Josh shook his head adamantly. “You’re our pet now. And I’m upset that you said you only want that uptight bastard.”
“Josh please, oh god.”
I squealed as he corkscrewed a finger inside me and I had to buck my pelvis to pull away from his attempt to stimulate me into submission.
“Don’t do that,” I shouted.
“Okay,” he shrugged.
He walked across the stone floor out of my line of vision. I heard him open the door to a cupboard, it sounded like as he said; “But believe me in a day or two you’ll be begging me to do whatever I want with you. And I will. You’re our pet now.”
Our pet? Whose?
“I’m not a pet,” I said, trying to remain calm when really I wanted to screech and flail. “I insist that you take me out of this cage.”
“My princess in a gilded cage. Are you sorry you insisted on being a girlfriend? You could have been my queen instead.”
He was coming back toward me now. I had no idea what he was talking about but I was trembling uncontrollably. Somehow I knew something was about to happen.
The cold metal on my skin made me flinch. Then came the spiteful pinch of a clamp on my nipple.
“I’ll let you get used to these all night,” he said as he applied the other one against my gasps. “Then we’ll be back to have some more fun with our new pet.”
“Who is we?” I screamed. “I’m not a pet. Let me out of here.”
I hurled abuse but it fell on deaf ears. Josh walked to the door and left as stealthily as he’d arrived.
I was alone again and even though I could see no daylight, I sensed night fall. I wondered whether my exposed slit was glistening. Although I hated Josh, and Valentine and Marc too, my body couldn’t help responding to being exposed to the air. And to the touch of a man’s fingers.
I somehow fell asleep in the fetal position, in my made-to-measure hammock. But I came out of sleep groggy and with that snap of awareness that a prowler is close by. My heart rate tripled in an instant, it had to be audible across the room where the man was slowly advancing on me. My first thought was that Valentine had come to taunt me and stroke me and assure me I would never be allowed to leave.
But the shadowy presence wasn’t my boss. Maybe I was hallucinating, in a waking dream, but there was no doubting the dark menace in the air. My skin prickled as goosebumps rose up, seeming everywhere. My body reflexively curled into a tighter ball inside itself. I waited, breathless, lungs starting to burn.
“Oh, my pretty,” a gravel voice burred.
Strange how Josh had said the same thing. That voice, it sounded like Valentine. If he were older and adopted a foreign accent. I let out a stifled whimper as the hard cold of an ice cube was rubbed around my clit.
“So responsive. We could have been great together.”
“Oh my god,” I moaned.
“There are no gods in this house,” he burred.
38
How had his voice not been terrifying as we sat eating dinner on the cliff edge? Now he reminded me of every psycho movie I’d ever seen and my heart was thundering like a posse under my ribs. Gianni GianCarlo’s eyes traveled to my clamped breasts.
They must have been trembling with every resounding thump underneath because he stroked the side of one, like you would a scared pet. I stared at him, holding his eyes, colder than the ice cube, desperate to read his intentions.
The main question galloping through my brain was what was he doing in Valentine’s chateau.
“We are entirely – godless,” he said as he tugged hard on the clamp until he extracted a sharp gasp.
He walked around my hanging basket, examining the fruit poking through and his spiteful fingers again trailed across my pussy, eliciting a shudder.
“Don’t cringe,” he commanded. “Do not cringe from me.”
He walked away but there was no relief. The absolute certainty settled into every pore that I was not going to be living very much longer. Strangely, my heart stopped thudding and a calm wrapped around me. My ears were stretching to hear his movements. The clink of metal on stone. The snap of an old clasp.
His soft footsteps creeping back toward me. I steeled myself, expecting the vicious pinch of a clamp on the flesh he’d just engorged with the ice cube.
With all my anticipation focused on my naked spread, the sharp point in my cheek made me jolt with a gasp.
“Oh my pretty, don’t be afraid,” Gianni burred as he dragged the glinting knife along my thigh and back up. “It won’t hurt after the first cut.”
“Cut,” I mewled, stupidly.
My brain had cut out. He seemed very far away. The sharp burn in my flesh was someone else, not me. Gianni GianCarlo was about to slice me up.
My mind was a whirlpool, spinning, swirling, down, down.
The voice was very far now. Barely audible.
“Get. The. Fuck. Away. From her. Asshole.”
&n
bsp; The dagger probing my flesh dropped away as the sound of metal on stone reverberated around my head. Everything around me was telescoping, like a lens zooming in and out, blurred and way too fast. A flash of black and a thud. Gianni was a ragdoll on the floor, his shoulder propped into the stone wall. For the first time I stopped swinging in mid air and felt myself supported.
“Answer me, Andie,” the voice cutting me down ordered. “Are you okay, baby?”
“Jay?” I moaned, my lips refusing to operate.
“Thank fuck,” he growled. “It’s okay. I’ve got you now.”
He did. He’d cut me down from the hanging pulley with Gianni’s knife but I flinched every time he tried to cut through the tight cobweb of knotted ropes binding me.
“Fuck,” he swore as I cringed again from the chill metal touching my skin. “We don’t have time.”
“Who am I?” I moaned groggily, lolling against Jay’s solid chest where he’d propped me while he removed his dinner jacket.
“Andie Cannon, interior designer and perfectly beautiful woman, that’s who,” he snapped out.
“Where?” I forced my lips to enunciate. I meant to say where am I. “Did you miss dinner?”
“Stop talking, Andie,” Valentine said.
He wrapped his jacket around my shoulders then hefted me up, fireman style, as though I were a weightless doll, over his shoulder. He palmed my ass and I realized he was making sure I wasn’t exposed as he headed out of the dungeon and down the stone passageway.
Valentine was powerful, his shoulder felt solid as rock face under my tummy. He moved swiftly down the corridor and up the stone steps that looked like they belonged in a real dungeon. This was no room I’d ever seen in the winery, ancient and damp. Again I mouthed the word ‘Where’ but Valentine was too occupied with getting me away.
At the top of the stairs, he took another passage. So damp there was green growing at the corners. I lifted my head to look around but I was still bound into the cocoon of rope, hog-tied. Tossed over Valentine’s strong shoulder, I saw only the ground, and then a pair of huge boots.