Every Which Way

by Sasha White

  I held his gaze and shook my head no, and he knew just what I meant.

  “My name is Mark,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too. I’m Bettina.”

  “I know. I looked at your driver’s license.”

  He traced a finger along my jawline, then he kissed me. My Master never kissed me. He said slaves were too worthless to kiss, but Mark kissed me hard, holding my face, sliding his tongue inside my mouth until I responded with giddy fervor. I hadn’t been kissed like this in so long. He tasted like vodka and sugar.

  How was I going to explain all this to my Master? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t dare.

  Mark

  I woke up early the next morning with a slave girl in my arms. Someone else’s slave girl, wearing someone else’s collar. Those small but important details.

  She looked different in the morning light. Fresher, more innocent. Bettina Catherine Silver was twenty-four, according to her license. I was twelve years older than her. Was that why I felt a responsibility to help her? Or was it because of the depraved sex acts I’d committed upon her body the night before?

  Or was it because she was snuggled close to me, mouth open, eyelids twitching so delicately at her slave dreams?

  “Bettina,” I said. “It’s time to get up.”

  Her eyes flickered open, deep brown laced with hazel. It took a moment for her to remember who I was, and then another moment to realize she was sleeping on my shoulder.

  “It’s morning already?” she asked.

  “Are you tired?”

  Of course she was tired. It was my fault she was tired. Instead of answering me, she looked at my lips. I wanted her again, but I had a flight to catch.

  And I wanted to take her home with me.

  “Have you ever been to New York?” I asked.

  “Once.” She sat up a little. “On a high school trip.”

  “Would you like to go again?”

  Her lips were so perfect, even when pursed in consternation.

  “Just for a while,” I qualified. “Until our scene is over.”

  Her fingers curled around the crisp hotel sheets. “It’s not over?”

  I shook my head, trying to look very sage and authoritative. “Not quite yet.”

  “But...my Master...”

  “He told you to do a scene with me, didn’t he? You’ll want to have lots to tell him.”

  She blinked, digesting this. In my mind, she was already on the plane with me. In my mind, this was necessary. I had to break them up, because he was an asshole and he made her do dangerous things.

  “We’ll stop by your place and get some clothes,” I said. “Where do you live?”

  “South of the city, near U of C.”

  “You’re a student?”

  “Grad student.”

  My worthless slave was a grad student at the University of Chicago. Of course she was.

  “I guess you’ve got classes,” I said, feeling way more disappointed than I wanted to.

  “I’m not doing summer semester. I’ve got a little time. But—”

  I pulled her closer, right into my arms. “But nothing. New York’s beautiful in summer. I live right near Central Park.”

  “I don’t think my Master meant to loan me out for so long.”

  “He didn’t specify a time. He told you to do a scene, and we’re still scening.” I threw back the sheets. “Turn over and let me look at your ass.”

  She was so lovely, so lithe. She turned onto her stomach and presented herself for inspection like an obedient slave girl. Her Master didn’t deserve her. That was a simple fact.

  “You know,” I said very soberly, “this scene between us might take a while.”

  * * * * *

  She brooded in the cab, legs primly crossed. We’d showered together after breakfast, and her wet hair still straggled down around her shoulders, trying to curl. Her black dress seemed faded in the light of day, not as stylish or sharp. She seemed so vulnerable.

  What are you doing, Mark?

  I was probably making a huge mistake. I didn’t like fucked up relationships or worthless things or vulnerability. I liked to pick up women in kink clubs and have one night stands that were satisfying for both parties, after which I tipped my hat and rode off into the sunset. For some reason I wasn’t doing that now.

  We pulled up to her apartment, a typical student hovel. We rode the elevator to her floor and walked down a cement-block hallway. Bettina fumbled for her keys and opened the door. I went in behind her. Cramped, but pleasantly uncluttered.

  “Pack a carry-on,” I said. “Anything you think you might need.” I looked at my watch. “Quickly, please.”

  While she packed, I drifted around her bedroom. She had a few shelves, light on books but heavy on contraptions. There was a cylinder filled with water and little liquid globes, and an old tin car. There was a gyroscope and an hourglass with red sand, and an antique metronome. I set the ticker in motion and watched the weight swing back and forth.

  “Do you have a passport?” I asked.

  She almost balked then. I waited for her to break out of character, to stop being the loaned slave and start being a regular person concerned for her safety. I could be a psycho. A human trafficker.

  “Yes, I have a passport,” she said after a moment.

  “Put it in your bag, just in case.”

  When she opened her bag I saw her collar in there, the collar I hadn’t given her. It wasn’t coming with us. I took it out and tossed it on her bed. She didn’t protest, and shortly afterward we set out for the airport, for the terminal with the private jets. Yes, I flew by private jet. Not a mogul-type jet. It was only a midsize.

  As we took to the air, she looked around the cabin at the cozy leather armchairs and polished tables, and asked, “What do you do for a living?”

  I mixed a sloppy vodka tonic. “I’m an art dealer.”

  “You collect art?”

  “No. I’m not a collector. I don’t like to keep things.” Well. “At least not for very long. I’m a dealer. I hunt down notable works and sell them to other people for a commission.”

  She was silent, thinking this over. “You’re like my Master,” she said.

  The plane bumped. Turbulence. My eyes narrowed at her offhand comment. “In what way am I like your Master?”

  “You like things better when you’re passing them on to other people.”

  I appreciated clever parallels as much as the next person. I might have admired her observation if it wasn’t directed at me. Like her Master? That sneering, hipster, fakeass BDSM manipulator, who loaned his pretty, obedient slave out to complete strangers?

  “If you tell me again that I’m like your Master, I’ll open the door of this plane and throw you out. For now, until we’re finished, I’m your Master. Don’t speak to me of him. Do you understand? Don’t say ‘my Master’ again unless you’re talking about me.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  I stewed. The vodka tonic sucked. I put it down and stretched out my legs. I had so many questions for Bettina. I wanted to know how these games had started for her, and how she could stand to serve such a jackass.

  “What’s his name, your guy?” I asked. “And don’t say Master, unless you have a parachute.”

  “His name is Bryan Miller.”

  “How did you meet him? I mean, what on earth attracted you? The leather pants?”

  Her slavey demeanor cracked into irritation for a moment. “I met him through some friends. I thought he was hot and I liked the way he played in the local scene.”

  “How often does he ‘pass you on’ to other people?” Which is not at all like anything I do, by the way.

  She shrugged. Her summer-weight sweater was acrylic. It bothered me.

  “You must know how many times it’s happened,” I prompted. “You must remember every time.”

  She took a deep breath. “He’s given me this task six times before now.”

>   “This task?”

  “He calls them tasks, things I have to do to prove my submission.”

  “Has anything ever gone wrong while you’re performing these tasks for him?” I tried not to sound judgey, but I knew I sounded judgey. They’d drawn me into this and I thought Bryan Miller was an asshole.

  “Nothing has ever gone wrong,” she said. “The first two encounters were with his friends. The last four were people we knew from the club. You’re the first one...the first man we didn’t know.”

  “That must have been exciting.” Sarcasm. I tried to unruffle my feathers. Let’s be honest, I was getting plenty of kicks out of this too. “Did you at least practice safe sex?” I asked. “You made these strangers wear condoms?”

  “He’s never allowed me to have unprotected sex. I wouldn’t anyway. There are a lot of STDs in Chicago.”

  Finally, a glimmer of common sense in an otherwise hot mess of a dynamic. “That’s good to know,” I said.

  “Even Mas— Bryan uses condoms, because he doesn’t want kids.”

  Because he doesn’t want kids with you, I thought. If the man really didn’t want kids, he’d do what I’d done a decade or so ago—gotten a vasectomy.

  It was only a short hop to New York, and a short drive to my penthouse near Central Park. I wasn’t especially concerned with impressing Bettina, but she was impressed. She lingered near my floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the leaves turning colors in the park.

  “You have an amazing place,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Art dealers must make a lot of money.”

  “Good ones do.” I hoped it would be enough to pay my legal fees if I got arrested for trafficking. But she was here willingly. Wasn’t she? “Do you want to go back to Chicago?” I asked. “You can go home anytime.”

  She turned from the windows. “Thank you, Master. This worthless slave—”

  “No.”

  She stopped at my scowl, reworded. “I’ll fly home when you feel our scene is finished, Master.”

  Mine, for as long as I wanted her. My slave, who would do anything. It was Saturday, so I figured I’d give myself the rest of the weekend to enjoy her servitude. Monday, I’d fly her home. “What do you study?” I asked. “What are you in grad school for?”

  She slid a finger into her sweater’s cuff and tugged at it. Acrylic. Ugh. Before I sent her back to Chicago I was going to buy her a nice summer sweater.

  “I’m finishing up a Masters in mechanical engineering.”

  “Oh.” What the fuck? “Fascinating choice. Why did you do that? I mean, what interested you in mechanical engineering?”

  “Mostly the energy side of things. Building grids. Wind turbines, specifically. I have this fear of...”

  Her voice trailed off, perhaps because I was looking at her like she’d grown another head. “A fear of what?” I asked.

  “A fear of things needing to be done in the future, for people to survive. Say, for instance, a meteor comes and knocks out everything, or a solar flare. Some terrorist attack. It’s all apocalyptic.” She waved a hand. “I wanted to know how to create energy for people. I wanted to learn how to build machines from scratch and make them work.”

  “So you can rebuild civilization?”

  She waved her hand again, dismissing everything. “There’s no apocalypse, right?”

  I never thought about apocalypses. Never. I thought about light and shadow, and artistic themes, and posterity. I thought about what paintings and sculptures might mean to people in five hundred years. I thought about how much money I could make selling a five-hundred-year-old masterpiece to an eighty-year-old collector, whose heirs might want to sell the painting again in five years or so.

  “No, there’s no apocalypse,” I agreed. “Take off your clothes.”

  She seemed relieved to hear me say this, and I was relieved to stop thinking about wind turbines and the collapse of civilization.

  “Are you sure you’re clean?” I asked when she was naked. “You’re sure you’ve always used condoms?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  I took her into my bedroom. I had a big mahogany bed for sex, and a wood-slat cage in the corner for after sex. I had drawers of rope and whips, and nipple clamps, and butt plugs, nice things, never anything cheap. That acrylic sweater lying out on my living room floor...I’d never let her put it on again.

  “Time to get fucked, little slave,” I said. “And I don’t like to fuck slaves who can get away. There’s no fun in that.”

  She lay back in the middle of my bed and held her wrists out when I told her to. I had a nice little system of cuffs and rope pulleys already built into the posts, so I had her spread-eagled within minutes. Not just spread-eagled, but cinched nice and tight, so she couldn’t move an inch. I never fucked unbound women. It would be like eating food without seasoning, or ice cream without sprinkles. Why would anyone do that?

  I played with her then, tormented her vulnerable, bound body. I groped and pinched her, and smacked her tits and her face. Not hard, just hard enough to make her wet. I put painful clamps on her nipples to watch her limbs strain in her bonds. She arched, tossing her head back and forth.

  “Do you hate that?” I asked, smiling.

  “Yes, Master. It hurts.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  I thrust a couple fingers into her pussy. Wet as rain. She gasped in disappointment as I removed them. No, no release for you yet, my turbine genius. My mechanical engineer.

  I got out a crop and upped the pain threshold. I didn’t bruise her. I just hurt her, stung her again and again with the whippy, flicky tip. I tortured her breasts, whacking her right over the biting clamps, and then I cropped the tender insides of her thighs. I switched to her belly, and then back to her breasts. She could only move so far, but she did move constantly, sinuous struggles that made my cock ache within the confines of my dress pants. I saved her pussy for last, and I hurt that too, flicking her labia and the shining flesh within.

  “Please, Master,” she gasped. Each time I cropped her pussy, she thrust her hips up for more of the punishment. God, this one really craved pain, and I loved to give it. I played with her clitoral hood, slid it back so her swollen button was on display like a flower. I bent the crop back with my finger and hit it hard. She bucked and fussed, squirming so much she undid all my hard work exposing her clit.

  “I had you just the way I wanted you,” I snapped, giving her thighs a few good stingers. “Don’t squirm away from what you deserve.” I exposed her clit again, pinching it hard, clamping the hood back with a painful metal clip. She hated it. It hurt her. She was so wet. “Don’t you fucking move.” My voice and expression meant business. My cock was about to explode. “Don’t dare move a muscle.”

  I bent the crop back again, hit her clit harder this time. There was an art to aiming for the clit, just like there was an art to causing pain that felt really, really pleasurable and good. All her muscles tensed, but she didn’t move. She kept her legs open, her pelvis straining to hold the position.

  “Oh, please,” she cried. “Please take the clip off.”

  “No, I like to hurt you. You’re my slave, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Then I can hurt your clit as much as I want.” Thwack.

  “Oh, please. Ow. Please...”

  She sounded like she was praying, and I did feel kind of like a god. I gave her another good whack, and another. Her whole body shuddered. Her teeth clenched.

  “Did you just come?” I asked.

  “Please, Master, you didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t. I like when you come, you sick little nympho. But now it’s really going to hurt.”

  BDSM 101: a woman’s body was never more sensitive than after she’d just come. I took the clamps off her nipples and clit so the pain of recovery could mix in with the other sensations. She gazed up at me, hurting, lost, beautifully afraid. I cropped her breasts and thighs
until I got bored with her pleas for mercy. I wanted to be inside her, this struggling, magnificent creature with her limbs pulled taut upon my bed.

  I took off my clothes and crawled between her legs. I was ragingly hard. Magnificently hard. I felt like celebrating the fact that I’d never been so fucking hard in my life.

  “I’m not going to use a condom,” I said. “I’d like to make a baby inside you.”

  Her head snapped up. “Please, Master. I’m not supposed to—”

  “Not supposed to have unprotected sex? That was Bryan’s rule. I’m your Master now, remember?”

  She had a safe word, and I had a vasectomy. Nothing bad was going to happen here, or maybe it was, but I was so, so horny to fuck her mind along with her body. If she wanted to be a worthless slave who scened with strangers, then I wanted her to see what that could lead to.

  “You’re going to grow a beautiful baby for me, aren’t you?” I said, sliding into her delicious, wet warmth. There was nothing she could do to stop me. She was tied tight, and even if she used the safe word, I might not have honored it. At this point, everything was my choice.

  I looked down at her face. She looked shocked, unsettled. Maybe a little turned on. I snapped my hips and ground against her pelvis, doing everything I could to make her want this, even though she knew it was so, so wrong. Her pussy gripped my cock, shooting pleasure all over my body. I almost wished I could impregnate her—the moment was that hot.

  “This... You can’t...” she stammered.

  “Shut up.”

  “Will you at least pull out at the end? If you’re going to do this?”

  I pulled out of her. “Like this? You don’t want me?”

  She groaned and arched her hips. She wanted me, poor thing.

  “If you want me, you get all of me, however I like. That’s how slavery works,” I said. “You open your fucking legs and let Master have his way.”

  She was as turned on as she was anxious. The conflict in her eyes and her body was so sexy, so exciting to me. I pinched her breasts and fucked her, and slapped her pretty face every time she tried to catch my gaze. She vibrated in her bonds, letting out helpless moans. She was going to come again and I was going to let her.