And more is what I give him. I lap his whole cock, up and down and around the sides, culminating in another tongue pirouette at the head, the tip of my tongue en pointe. Then I close my mouth over it, stroking up and down with my mouth, lips, tongue. I deep-throat him, enjoying it just as much as he is. His hips rise and fall to meet my strokes, and I quicken my pace, faster faster faster, as he moves closer and closer to the edge. I hear his breath quicken, feel the tension growing in his limbs underneath me. But I will not give him the satisfaction he so desires. Not yet. I must satisfy my own desires first.
I pull off of him, clamber off the bed, and stand back to take in the sight of him in his ecstasy and misery. Ecstasy from the sensations I evoke in his body, misery because I deny him the climax he so desperately wants.
I take up the leather whip next. It is sturdy yet light; a piece of fine Italian craftsmanship. I sweep it back and forth in front of me, like a cowboy would a lasso, testing it, cracking it against the legs of the four-poster bed.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
His body jerks with anticipation at every crack of the whip. He wants to feel its heady work against his skin, and not just the air. I tease him some more, cracking the whip again and again, even letting it wrap itself around and around one of the bedposts, its tip passing close to one of his restrained limbs. Close, but not close enough.
“Mmmm,” I hear him say against the gag. “Meeemmms.” I can’t quite make out the word, but I know what he’s trying to say. I know because in his position, I would say the same. Because I have said the same.
Please.
“Your wish will be granted,” I say aloud, the first words I’ve spoken since we began. And I keep my promise. I raise the whip, then let it go, its end landing squarely in the middle of his chest.
Crack.
The whip does its own special dance across Rostovich’s body, leaving a lacy path of red in its wake. With every blow that lands on him, his cock swells, his muscles twitch, and his facial expressions grow ever more pained and primitive. He is mine, all mine, completely under my power now. I feel my own crotch go red-hot underneath my merrywidow, listen to the thump of my racing heart. I am dominant, he is my submissive. I have made him bend and beg under my will. The result is pleasure for the both of us, a kind of pleasure I never imagined possible.
Rostovich’s chest heaves; he breathes like an overworked warhorse. His naked body glistens with sweat. The room smells of woodsmoke, fresh linen, sweat, musk---the heady scent of man. I long to smell that scent upon my own body.
I crack the whip against his body one final time, this time hard enough to leave a welt on his barrel-like chest. For a moment I’m frightened that I’ve gone too far, but he beams me a satisfied smile around the edges of his gag. He relishes this pain, and wears the welt like a badge of honor.
At last, it is time.
I reach down between my legs, and unsnap the steel rivets that hold my leather merrywidow closed there. I wear nothing underneath, and my sex is swollen and glistening, awaiting the culmination of my desire. My clitoris buzzes as it is exposed to the open air. I can smell the scent of my sex mingling with the masculine aroma already in the air.
I climb on top of him, still wearing my stockings, boots, the merrywidow with its loosened crotch. My domino still covers my face, giving me a bit of mystery that matches Rostovich’s own. We gaze at one another, only our eyes betraying how we feel. I lower myself onto his cock slowly, letting my body stretch to admit him in its own time.
Oh, so full. Oh, so thick. There is no feeling as good as this. None.
We begin to move. I control the strokes, and his hips rise and fall in perfect counterpoint. He can move but little though, for he is still restrained. My own hips buck twice as hard as a result. I arch backward, forcing him to penetrate me as deep as he possibly can. The tip of his cock bangs hard against my deepest recesses, sending me into a frenzy. I quicken my pace, rocking forward and back, forward and back, until I hear myself cry out and the whole world splits apart.
****
“Ahem. Ms. Delaney.”
Someone shook me hard by the left shoulder. I opened my eyes and stared into the flinty, bloodshot gaze of Viktor Bluschencko. He’d changed into a fresh shirt, but obviously hadn’t brushed his teeth in a hen’s age. With his fleshy face pressed so close to my own, I could smell a mix of caviar, vodka, and decaying teeth on his breath. He might have a Learjet and an international criminal network at his disposal, but my money said he didn’t have a dentist.
I rubbed my eyes and looked around, wondering how long I’d been out. I thought I’d just been resting my eyes, but judging by the stiffness in my limbs and neck I must have slept for quite a while. I noticed that no light came in from the plane’s windows; wherever we were, it was dark.
“We’ve landed in Sevastopol, Ms. Delaney. Our adventure begins. Or rather, yours does.”
My adventure. Funny, I thought we were discussing my ongoing captivity. My inner self wanted to roast Bluschencko on a spit. But I kept those thoughts to myself. I was on the other side of the world without so much as a passport, so it paid to be cautious. “I can’t wait,” I lied.
“Ah. Enthusiasm. I like that.” He nodded to one of his guards, the one with the Sig Sauer and the bandolier. The guard was still masked, of course. Why wouldn’t he be? And somehow I figured we wouldn’t be going through customs. I’m sure Bluschencko had his own version of customs, just like he had his own version of everything else. And from what I’d seen on CNN lately, the Ukraine didn’t have much in the way of a real government these days anyway. Their last democratically elected leader was in prison, and the one before that got poisoned with plutonium-laced vodka before being ousted in a coup.
We climbed down the Learjet steps to the crumbling tarmac, escorted by the same two armed guards. I noticed the flight attendant was missing. Had she already disembarked? Or perhaps she’d displeased Bluschencko during the flight and wound up dead in the cargo hold? I surprised myself at just how readily I was willing to accept the macabre possibilities of living under Bluschencko’s rule. I wondered what had brought the attractive, calm flight attendant under his authority in the first place. Anyone could tell within five minutes of meeting him that the man was a psychopath; why would anyone get mixed up with him willingly?
Nobody greeted us on the tarmac, other than an unmarked white cargo van that had seen better days. The engine was idling, but the windshield and driver’s side windows were tinted so dark you couldn’t identify the driver, or even see if there was one. No customs officials to stamp passports or inspect our bags, either. Just the battered van and a cracked asphalt tarmac surrounded by pine woods. There wasn’t even a control tower. I wondered how the pilot even managed to land.
“I thought we were going to Sevastopol,” I muttered, more to myself than to Bluschencko.
“We are at my private compound,” he explained, then nodded to the unseen driver of the van. The rear passenger door opened slowly on hydraulics. “Get in.”
The guard poked the barrel of his gun into my back, urging me forward. He really didn’t have to do that; I was well past the point of disobeying my captors. But I remained silent, and didn’t even give so much as an eyeroll. My biggest priority was to stay alive and alert, so I could commit every detail of this ordeal to memory on the off chance I’d get to write about it later.
The van was much like the others I’d been corralled in over the past few days. Bare metal, no creature comforts, not even so much as a rear passenger seat, although this one at least had windows and an overhead light. I sat in the back with one of the guards, and Bluschencko sat up front in the passenger seat. Or so I presumed---there was a steel panel between the cargo section and the driver’s compartment.
We drove over bumpy roads for about twenty minutes. The guard kept me at gunpoint, keeping his assault rifle trained on me to ensure that I stayed low. The other guard who had accompanied us on the plane had remained back at the ta
rmac. Unable to look out the high tinted windows, what little I could see out of the corner of my eye consisted entirely of pine boughs and peeks of the moonlit horizon. The sky was a deep black here with thousands of twinkling stars, no light pollution drowning out most of the constellations like the Cleveland sky, where all you could make out was Orion and maybe the Big Dipper on a clear night. I wished I were here on a pleasure trip, taking in the stunning night air at my leisure, instead of as a quivering captive---perhaps with Rostovich at my side.
Rostovich. He’d gotten me into this mess, and yet I was still obsessed with him. My mind raced with a dozen different fantasies at once---that he’d come and rescue me from this Godforsaken place, that I’d beat him senseless for mixing me up in this ordeal, that somehow this was all a dream and we would someday end up an old married couple living in a simple Cape Cod house in Lakewood. All of them ridiculous, none of them with any possibility of coming true. No, I would in all likelihood spend the rest of my days here, doing whatever grueling work Bluschencko had planned for me. I’d die young, probably without anyone back home ever knowing what had happened to me. I was doomed.
So I was reduced to planning for and accepting my own pathetic demise now, huh? Talk about lacking self-esteem. Shut the eff up, my inner self snapped at me then. Seriously, you are pathetic. You’re a smart girl, you can get yourself out of this. Stop being so goddamned negative.
I had two competing voices arguing in my head---the practical, buttoned-down, everything-by-the-book me at war with my sensual, creative side. Well, I’m sorry, Little Miss Dominatrix-slash-Investigative Reporter, but it’s really fucking hard not to be negative when a dude wearing a bandolier full of seventy-caliber armor-piercing bullets has the butt of his Kalishnikov jammed into the small of your back.
I shut my eyes tight and rubbed my temples, trying to silence the battling voices in my head. I had to stay calm, with a clear rational mind if I was going to keep my head above water now. I had nothing to rely on but my wits, and I was already on the verge of losing them.
The van came to a stop. My guard opened the rear hatch and nudged me out with his weapon. Neither Bluschencko nor the driver got out of the van; as soon as my feet were planted safely on the ground, the van drove away, leaving the guard and me alone in the moonlight.
The guard nudged me forward, always with the barrel of his Kalashnikov. There really was no need for him to be so forceful; I would have obeyed him no matter what he asked me at this point. But there was no point in questioning a masked man with an assault rifle in the middle of an empty woods. One wrong move, and my bullet-riddled body would land on the forest floor to be found by no one but perhaps a hungry bear.
We walked through the pitch-dark forest for ten minutes, finally landing in front of a large, low-slung building that reminded me of the one Hannah and I had encountered back in the state when we were first captured. I wondered if might even be the same building, and that the flight in the Learjet had just been a ruse, but then I noticed some writing on the walls of the building in the Cyrillic alphabet. There was a single floodlight attached to one of the building’s upper corners, illuminating whatever the writing said. I’d never studied Russian, let alone Ukrainian, so I had no idea.
The guard guided me up to the building and directed me to stand just to the left of the front door while he punched a numeric code into an electronic keypad. The door slid open and he gestured me inside.
I stepped into the building, expecting to see yet more stark, Spartan interiors guarded by armed hulks. But instead I found a lushly decorated lobby, with a beautiful female attendant. She looked to be in her early to mid twenties, my own age or perhaps slightly older. She wore her long chestnut hair loose and straight, with tiny wisps pinned back from her face in an old-fashioned Alice-in-Wonderland style. In striking contrast to her innocent-looking locks, she wore heavy makeup, with kohl-rimmed eyes and blood-red lipstick, heavily applied. Her attire could best be described as skimpy, yet in a classy way. She wore a strapless black bustier trimmed with red lace, a short black satin skirt, black lace stockings, and shiny black patent platform heels. Christian Louboutins, I knew because Hannah had a pair just like them. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite place what. I studied her features carefully, almost positive I’d seen her somewhere before, but it was almost impossible to tell what she really looked like underneath all that makeup----it reminded me almost of a kabuki mask, or the makeup worn by models in heavily stylized 1980s music videos.
The woman greeted me with a smile. Her teeth were bright white and perfectly even---most likely an expensive veneer job. “Good evening and welcome,” she said in perfect British-accented English. “Nancy Delaney, I presume?”
FOURTEEN
How on earth did this woman know who I was?
“Um, yes?” To my shock, my masked guard gave the woman a silent nod and slipped out the front door, leaving the two of us women there alone. The door clicked behind him, and a magnetic lock buzzed, sealing us in. “Where am I?”
“You’re at the Hall of Pleasure, which is part of Mister Bluschencko’s private estate,” she explained, motioning for me to sit down on a velvet-upholstered chair. “You’ll be working here from now on. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.”
I looked at her sideways. “How long, exactly?”
“A few months. Mr. Bluschencko has had his eye on you for a quite a while now, as I’m sure he’s already told you.”
“He has. But I’m not sure I believe him. Or you.”
She blinked, fluttering impossibly long lashes. They were falsies that hung to the middle of her cheeks whenever her eyes closed. “Well, believe it. Everything under Bluschencko’s watch is very carefully orchestrated. Though in your case, your role is going to be a bit different than what was originally planned for you. Which can be either good or bad for you, depending on how you decide to approach it.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this, so I just kept silent.
“My name is Elzbeta. I’ve been here for five years. I supervise all the girls here, and serve as a go-between for you and the clients. I’ll answer any questions you might have, since I’ve done pretty much everything there is to be done around here and more.” She lowered her lids slightly, sending those long lashes dancing along her cheeks again. “I would advise you strongly to listen to me, and follow my instructions for you own good. Whether or not you survive here is mostly up to you.”
“Survive?” Did she mean that literally? I hoped not, but then again, I wasn’t necessarily surprised.
“We are expected to satisfy our clients,” Elzbeta replied, as if reading my thoughts. “But Bluschencko gives us a great deal of leeway on exactly how we do it. He does not supervise us directly, nor does he tell us what to do. He just sends us the clients, and it is our job to figure out how to keep them happy. I’ve found that most of my girls do just fine on their own. I don’t step in unless there’s a problem.”
“Perhaps you could enlighten me on exactly what it is I’m supposed to be doing.” I assumed that I was now some sort of prostitute, like the fallen women in Victorian novels who’d taken a wrong turn along the way. Either that or they became hostesses in opium dens, which was essentially the same thing, except with drugs. The many times I had fantasized about living the life of a character from nineteenth-century novels, wishing that someday I’d get to live it out, I’d never expected my fantasies to come true in quite this way.
She smirked at me as if I was some sort of idiot. “I think you should be able to answer that question for yourself, intelligent and educated American that you are.”
I didn’t mince words. “I’m supposed to fuck them, right?” I winced at my own candor.
Elzbeta’s expression softened. “You could. Or you could find another way to entertain them. Not all of my girls use intercourse to please their clients. There are other things you can do that will work just as well, if not better.�
�
I mulled that over for a minute. What else could I possibly do to entertain men---I assumed they would be men---who were paying for expensive female company? Dance a jig? Recite the alphabet? “I assume I’m a prisoner here,” I said.
“We are not free to come and go as we please, if that’s what you mean.”
Of course not. Otherwise the masked guards toting Kalashnikovs would not be necessary. My inner self wanted to brandish a club at Elzbeta and her nonchalance. “So we’re sex slaves then.”
She sighed. “I prefer to think of us as entertainers. Nancy, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you learn to make the best of any situation. The girls here are very talented, and the clients we serve are wealthy and powerful. They can have anything they want, including sex. The key for us is to provide them with something that can’t get anywhere else. That’s what they’re paying for, and providing it for them won’t just keep you alive, it will bring you prestige. It might even bring you your freedom.”
“And yet, you’re still here.”
She pursed her lips. “I could have left several years ago. I stay here by choice. Soon you will too. Bluschencko only forces us to come; he doesn’t force us to stay. Though he can force us to leave if he likes.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
She patted me lightly on the shoulder. “It will in time. Here, I’ll show you to your room.”
****
My room---or perhaps more accurately, my cell---was like nothing I’d ever seen before. At least not in real life. I was stunned to find that it looked remarkably like the room I’d conjured up in my fantasies.
Four-poster mahogany canopy bed. Lots of red velvet and satin. Ornate carved furniture with animal-skin upholstery and gold-leaf trim. Abundant pillows, shag carpeting, a private bath trimmed with brass and marble. There was a table and chairs and a sideboard for serving food and beverages, and a small bar lined with bottles of vodka and whiskey, along with cut-glass highball glasses. There was a tall wardrobe on one wall, made of carved mahogany to match the bed. Along another wall was a mounted cabinet, its doors paneled with mirrors, a brass key stuck in its lock.
Domino (The Domino Trilogy) Page 28