Sacred Revelations

by Roxy Harte

  I touched it and it felt rough. It looked like something I would have created in junior high art, macramé or something very similar. I watched him lift it, fitting it around my throat like a choker, adjusting it until he was satisfied. “Bend your head down.”

  I did and he cinched it down, looping the ends to close it, completing the knot pattern with it on my neck, leaving no loose ends, nothing to untie. It was a solid circlet of rope.

  Swallowing hurt, the roughness of the rope pressed directly over my larynx. “It’s too tight,” I complained.

  “You’re not turning blue, it’s not too tight.”

  “It hurts when I swallow,” I tried to explain.

  “Then it’s perfect. Every time you swallow, you’ll remember that I am the center of your universe.”

  Chapter 3

  “For, what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!”

  -Nathaniel Hawthorn, The House of Seven Gables

  Thomas

  I enter her small room, but she is unaware I am here. Caged, her head droops, cushioned only by the cervical collar I added to help her sleep.

  She is beautiful in sleep, beautiful always, but especially asleep. I hate to wake her. For the first time in months, she glows. She is healthy, well-fed, eating six to eight high-protein, high-carbohydrate meals a day, and oddly, caged, she sleeps.

  Kneeling by her cage, I stroke her face, softly, until she becomes aware.

  “Wake-up!” I shout.

  She blinks and rolls her eyes up at me, but doesn’t move her head. Wide-eyed by her abrupt awakening, her ocean-colored eyes remind me of the blue-green waters surrounding my homeland. Her eyes are made even more exotic by their almond shape and the utter trust that rests in their depths.

  It is hard for her to lift her face to meet my eyes, her joints painful and tight from lack of movement. The last twelve hours she has barely moved at all, and when she does, I see the pain written on her face. The next hour will be the worst for her. I don’t plan to make it easy.

  Dialing the combination on the four locks holding the cage closed, I watch her, and her eyes follow my every move. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips in anticipation of her freedom. If she knew how badly freedom was going to feel, she would beg to stay caged.

  I pull up on the top of the cage and fold it back on its hinges. Kneeling before her, I twist my fingers into her hair and pull her face up to look at me. She squeals in pain, her neck having been supported by the collar for almost a week. “Are you ready to leave your confines, slave?”

  “Yes, Lord Fyre.” Her eyes appear glazed, still wavering between sub-space and reality.

  “And have you learned your lesson?”

  “Yes, Lord Fyre,” she answers automatically, confusion filling her eyes.

  “Crawl to me slave,” I command, backing away three feet and watching her attempt to crawl. She lifts her right hand and looks at it as if she is unsure what to do with it before placing it on the carpeted floor in front of her. Only then does she realize that she cannot crawl forward, she must crawl backward to escape the cage. Tentatively, she moves one leg back, followed by her hand, which she places in the middle of cage for support, a good start. Another crawled motion backward though and she is falling. I let her.

  “Get up!” I growl.

  She presses against the floor with her hand and I see the agony of using her muscles rip through her eyes. She grunts but it is a shrill grunt, almost a scream as she pushes up onto all fours to crawl toward me. Each motion forward is agonizing as blood circulates and tissues stretch. As she gets closer, I back away.

  Opening the door, I step into the hallway and walk away several feet from the room, turning to call to her, “Hurry up!”

  She tries to move faster, I can see the effort, the determination written in her creased brow. She moves agonizingly slow, arms and legs stretching, hips swaying. Without realizing it, she couldn’t move any more provocatively if she tried. She definitely has animalesque down to a science. I wonder if Garrett taught her to crawl like that, or whether it is pain making her limbs reach longer, her muscles stretch more seductively than if she crawled normally.

  Entering the hall, she mentally sags when she sees how far she has to crawl to reach me. I shout at her to hurry up then growl, “Lift your face to me, slave.”

  She lifts her sagging head and makes eye contact.

  I back away another two steps and her head moves side to side, warning me to stop. Her eyes glare. She continues her long-limbed, stealthy approach, shaking her head side to side. She is like a mountain lion, pacing toward me, left hand reaching long, stretching the muscles of her arm taut, her right knee sliding forward only a fraction of a second behind the hand movement. Her hips sway slowly with her long, right-hand reach. She is exotic and mine, if only borrowed. Mine, for now. How did Garrett ever let her go? He only possessed her three weeks…

  I have three months, and yet, after only a week, I am possessive. She is mine.

  Until this moment, I have kept myself in check, but even reading the pain each movement causes her, I want her. My cock hardened with the first long stretch of arm, the first sway of her ass, and the jiggle of her small, tight breasts. My hardness is caught painfully behind unyielding denim. I embrace the ache of it, letting it clear my mind just a little, but then the lust comes back three-fold.

  I press my back against the closed door to my bedroom, feeling the pull of energy coming off her, passing between us. I wonder if she knows the power of seduction that she possesses. I’d planned to get her to crawl into the bedroom and point her toward the bed. I planned to close the door and leave her alone to rest and recuperate. Now, victim of her siren’s lure, I am not thinking about her recuperation…though in the back of my mind I remember the promise I made to her that I would not touch her until she gained at least five pounds, but truly her health is the last thing on my mind.

  She pauses only two feet away, sitting back on her ass, knees pulled up to her body, arms planted in front of her. I’ve seen her do this before, at the club, but don’t remember what it means. Sitting, she glares, eyes narrowed, but not in anger—something else—like she is thinking too much.

  I take a step forward, toward her, and she hisses, showing her top teeth, raising her right hand in mock strike.

  It all comes back to me, her tabletop sideshow, and all the feral cat antics that followed, all because Garrett had forgotten her, forgotten her basic needs—food, water, bathroom breaks. I’ve handfed her three times today, so I know that she isn’t hungry. We overcame her embarrassment of her losing control of her bodily functions the first day of her confinement in the cage. I’d gone in to check on her after the first couple hours, to see how she was tolerating the utter isolation, the bondage.

  I’d knelt beside her. “How does the cage feel?”

  “Tight,” she answered. “The wire isn’t pleasant.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be pleasant,” I mocked her and stood to leave the room.

  “Wait,” she cried out and I was surprised to think she was breaking down after only a few hours.

  “I have to pee,” she whispered as if someone other than me might hear.

  “I’m not stopping you from answering the call of nature,” I answered.

  “Will you release me?” she asked me. “You can put me right back into the cage when I’m done if you’d like.”

  I laughed outright and walked back into the room. I folded into a cross-legged position beside her. “It will be much easier if we come to an understanding right now. I am not planning to release you, not tonight and not the next. If you have to use the bathroom, you will do so in your cage. Here, you are no more in control of this situation than an animal. Here, you are my animal, my pet. At Lewd Larry’s, you pretended to be a feline persona, isn’t that what Garrett said to you when he collared you? Here, with me, you are going to forget what it feels like to be human.”

  She gaspe
d, understanding dawning in her mind. “Really, I have to pee, please release me. Is that what you want? For me to beg, because I’ll beg.”

  “I don’t want you to beg. I want you to pee, right here, right now.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You will,” I promised, then I sat and waited, ignoring her tears, ignoring her curses, waiting for the moment she would break down, waiting for the moment, as I cupped her between her legs, holding her in my hand just tightly enough for her to know that I was, her urine flowed.

  We’d come to an understanding.

  Suddenly, she is falling forward, pulling me out of my memory. She is not slumping slowly, but doing a full-fledged nose-dive into the carpeted floor.

  As fast as it registers that she’s collapsed, my hard-on shrinks, and I am by her side, lifting her and carrying her to the bedroom. Gently, I tuck her into my bed, then make a phone call I’d rather not make to George Kirkpatrick, otherwise known as Dr. Psycho at the club. Although he is a retired psychiatrist, I call him instead of one of the community-friendly MDs or DOs, perhaps because I feel like she’s healthier now than when she came to me. Granted she collapsed, but prior to the collapse, she looked pretty damn healthy, even for a woman who had been caged for a week. I overreact, calling for help…but prefer to think it was a smart decision, wanting to be safe.

  I leave her to sleep while I pace my foyer, waiting for George, the soft click of my leather sandals annoying against the terracotta tile. Normally, I would go barefoot, today because of this particular house-call, I break out the Roberto Botticelli designer footwear. Dark brown leather stands up well to the all-white outfit I’ve chosen, linen pants and an Indian-inspired dress shirt. Of course, the two gold necklaces and dress watch by Forzieri speak even louder of my nervousness. It’s my grandfather’s fault. Calling me by my childhood name, he’d admonished me. “Clothing makes the man, Aristotle. You will dress for success every day, and you will become the man you wish to be.” The worn blue jeans and ancient tank top I wore earlier would have been an embarrassment to him, especially knowing a doctor was willing to make a house call.

  As I answer George’s knock, Garrett slams into me, hands on my shoulders, shoving me back into the two-story stucco wall that defines the foyer. I do not defend myself. George succeeds in pulling him back, an arm looped around his neck in a choker hold. “You promised you’d be calm, damn it!” George growls.

  “I am being calm!” Garrett bellows, struggling to be free of George’s hold. “What the fuck did you do to her?”

  In the Attic, I’ve seen George take down men twice Garrett’s size with his expert holds, so I exhibit little concern, arrogantly brushing down my mussed dress shirt. Crossing my arms and leaning against the wall, I wait, posing, drawing up to my full height, exhibiting my Greek lineage in haughtiness.

  For now, she is mine. I’m not giving her back.

  I hope my posturing makes that clear enough. I really don’t want to do this, and I don’t want to fight Garrett.

  “She’s resting. She’s in bed, she’s conscious, I just want her looked over.” I try to figure out how to explain what happened, saying, “She fainted.” I can’t think of a better way to explain it, saying she collapsed after a week of being caged sounds a little too ugly for Garrett’s ears, at least until he is fully Ice once more.

  “Where?” George asks me, still holding Garrett. “Relax already! Let me check her out.”

  Garrett sloughs out of George’s hold and assumes a tense position against the opposite wall.

  “Second door on the right.” I point him down the hall, holding my position directly across from Garrett. No way is he getting past me.

  George disappears and Garrett and I are silent, both hearing the bedroom door open, his greeting, the note of surprise in her voice, and the door clicking shut again.

  “I haven’t hurt her,” I promise Garrett.

  “I’ll get George’s professional opinion if you don’t mind.”

  I sigh. This is what I didn’t want to happen when I accepted her proposal, putting my friendship with Garrett at risk. “I can’t believe you brought her here,” he accuses, disapproval laced heavy in his tone. “To your home?”

  “It’s our vacation house, Garrett, not my home,” I answer tiredly, squaring my shoulders, feeling defiant. I do not have to explain this.

  “And are your wife and children aware that you are keeping a slave at the beach house?”

  “Not that it’s any of your concern, but they’re in Cairo for the summer, visiting her father.” I shrug, hoping to make light of the announcement.

  Garrett shakes his head and I feel his judgment.

  “I did not send them there so that I could keep Celia here,” I revert to her professional name, not wanting to ignite his anger any more than it already is by calling her Kitten. Defending myself, I explain, even though I don’t want to. “Lattie wants to have her baby in Africa. I couldn’t give her a strong enough reason to prevent her from going, and as her time grows nearer, I’ll join her there.”

  “That’s longer than just the summer.”

  “I know, Garrett. You don’t have to tell me something I already know.” My voice comes out heated. I am better at controlling emotion than this. Stop it!

  “Did she leave because of Kitten?” Garrett asks softly, understanding immediately that there is more happening in my life than he was aware, and not all of it fun and games. It’s what I liked about Garrett the moment I met him, his deductive aptitude and an innate ability to read people and empathize.

  “No, not because of Celia, or me…” I shrug, looking at the ceiling for answers and seeing cobwebs in the chandelier. “…once she thought she wanted all the United States had to offer and would have done anything to come here. Now, she still isn’t happy, if happiness was what she was seeking. She still doesn’t know what she wants. She only knows that she doesn’t want her children raised in the US.”

  “I’m sorry, Thomas,” he says. “I’m pissed as hell at you, but I’m sorry. I hope you two can come up with a solution.”

  I sigh, making excuses for her, even though I don’t need to. “She’s more French than she’d like to believe.” The foyer becomes quiet, neither of us moving, the plaster walls too thick to hear anything happening behind the solid wood door. Funny thing how time seems so very agonizingly slow in moments like this, a second seeming like an hour.

  “There’s no fixing this, is there?”

  My mouth twitches, “Which fix? There’s a lot that needs fixed.”

  His answer is stopped by George’s return. “She’s fine now.”

  “What happened?” Garrett demands. “Why did she collapse?”

  “I need to talk to Thomas, Garrett, could you step outside?”

  George waits for Garrett to step outside and close the door before turning to me. “It’s nothing serious, but I wanted what I am going to tell you to be heard by you—not Garrett.”

  I frown, worry knotting in my belly, and I am not one who worries.

  “It seems that Celia has limited experience with men.”

  My frown deepens.

  “Aside from Lion and Garrett, there haven’t been any other lovers.”

  My jaw drops, quickly corrected, but my brain is still rolling on the floor waiting for the further explanation I know is coming.

  “She said you were leading her to the bedroom when she fainted?”

  “To put her to bed, not to have sex with her,” I defend.

  “You haven’t had sex with her?”

  George sounds annoyingly surprised that I haven’t had sex with her yet. It makes me angry. “No!”

  “And you had no intention of having sex with her tonight?”

  My mouth opens and shuts twice before I decide to remain silent, my silence a larger betrayal of the truth than if I’d lied.

  “She’s terrified of having sex with you. She thinks that if she has sex with you, Garrett won’t take her back, and she thoug
ht that sex was imminent when she collapsed. She didn’t know how to refuse you without losing this.”

  “What?”

  My exclamation echoes Garrett’s, both of us saying the same thing, though our inflection making our difference in meaning clear. George and I turn to find him loitering in the doorway of the living room, he must have re-entered the house through the kitchen, coming in behind us.

  “I told you to wait outside!” George demands.

  “And miss this?” Garrett asks, amusement making his voice a higher pitch. “No way!”

  For some reason it bothers me immensely for Garrett to know I’m not having sex with her. I pace away, retreating to the kitchen for an iced tea, not surprised at all when they follow me. Ridiculously, we sit at the kitchen island, silent, sipping, thinking. The kitchen window is open, emitting a soft ocean breeze. The sound of crashing waves and bleating seagulls arrive with a quickening wind. A glance outside reveals darkening clouds on the horizon. A storm is coming, though I’d estimate it still hours away. Tonight we’ll be in for it.

  George breaks the silence. “Is sex necessary to make this arrangement work?”

  “Yes!” collides with “No!”

  Garrett glares at me. “The agreement was for you to top her for three months. You can top her without sex.”

  “I don’t want to top her without sex.” I stop myself, irritated that I sound so adolescent, “I mean to say—I never planned, I want…” I start and stop myself so many times, I’m confused. “I am going to continue this relationship in the manner I see fit and there’s no room for discussion.”

  “I feel we should discuss this.” Garrett slams his empty glass onto the granite countertop, ice cubes clinking against each other as they resettle, and I am surprised when the glass doesn’t shatter.

  I stand my ground in silence. I am not debating how I plan to top her.

  Calmly, George pours more iced tea all around and we are quiet again, drinking our tea, each of us lost in our thoughts. I find it slightly odd that George has offered no opinion since breaking the news of what the underlying problem was and I can only imagine Garrett’s thoughts. His body language is self-evident, sitting back in his bar stool, arms crossed, his silence screaming loud and clear that he is furious. I can’t understand his obvious resentment. He had to assume that I would have sex with her. Is it because he learned that I hadn’t yet, giving him reason to think I might not?