I shook my head.
“Before I tell you, perhaps I should explain what brought me here today. It is unusual, though not unheard of, for me to receive extremely lucrative buyout offers for my girls---more lucrative than your regular earnings, which are themselves quite substantial. I don’t generally receive them the same day I bring a girl to the establishment, however, though it has happened once before. But something happened this morning that has never happened before. Would you like to know what that was, Miss Delaney?”
I gave him a single nod, trying hard not to faint. I knew that whatever he was going to say next had to be related to the handwritten pile of shorthand I’d smuggled out the night before, but I didn’t want him to get any inkling of just how terrified I was at that knowledge.
“Miss Delaney, this morning I received three separate buyout offers for the courtesan known as Domino. Two of whom have never engaged your services, one of whom to my knowledge has ever laid eyes on you. Some men in my position would consider that a stroke of wonderful luck. But I don’t. It concerns me. In fact it makes me wonder if perhaps I made the wrong decision in bringing you here at all.”
He paused them, seeming to expect some sort of reply from me, or perhaps a question. I gave him neither. I was too frightened of what would come next. And I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. I just gave him a wide-eyed stare, practically begging him to go on.
“I had to say I was quite intrigued when these offers came, especially since one of them came from someone who shouldn’t even have known that you were here.”
My heart sank. He knew. He knew what I’d done. And now I would pay.
But he surprised me. “Then again, Peter Rostovich has always been good at digging up information he wasn’t supposed to have.”
My heart leaped at this news. I struggled to keep my expression neutral as I processed it. Peter had offered to buy me? Why? Had he received the clandestine message that I’d sent him through Julian, or had he somehow come of the information of his own accord? Did he make Bluschencko an offer in order to free me, or because he wanted to own me? Knowing Rostovich, any one of those options could be possible.
“I was tempted by all of these offers, Miss Delaney. Not to mention puzzled. But after mulling them all over, I could only come to one conclusion.”
I stood in silence, waiting for him to explain. He drew the moment out as long as possible---for dramatic effect, I was sure.
“I initially sought you out because I wanted you for my own personal use. I believe Elzbeta may have told you of this. But after examining you more closely, I felt you were not up to my own high standards. I have since reconsidered my decision. From now on, you will be mine, and only mine, to enjoy in any way that I see fit.”
The room began to spin. I choked down vomit. There was no way I could go along with this. I had managed to stay in control of things with Ludwig, but I knew I couldn’t do that with Bluschencko. This man was no mashochist, he was no submissive either. He was a killer, a ruthless, coldblooded criminal who saw the world only in terms of dollar signs and things he could manipulate for profit. He had no respect for the law, why would he have any respect for the rules of bondage? He could have me killed with a single word, a gesture even. Whatever Bluschencko wanted, Bluschencko took. He’d already taken me for profit, now he wanted to take me just for myself.
I somehow found the courage to speak. “Where will I live now?”
He took two more bites of salmon and capers, chewing them slowly and carefully before replying. “You will live here for the moment. But eventually you will dwell with me in my own personal quarters. I just need to have your chamber prepared.”
Your chamber. The phrase conjured up images of the tumblers within locks, revolving sockets for bullets, the dark sinister rooms the Nazis used to exterminate Jews.
Bluschencko chewed the last bite of his breakfast, balled his napkin, then pushed his plate out in front of him. “Do you have anything to say, Miss Delaney? Or perhaps I should call you Domino.”
I shook my head once. I knew that if I opened my mouth to speak, only a scream would come out. I grabbed the back of the nearest chair for support. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Elzbeta gazing at me with sympathy.
“Very well then, Domino. I have business to attend to this morning, but I shall pay you a visit this afternoon. Be ready.” With that, Bluschencko guzzled the dregs of his coffee, dusted crumbs from his hands, and left as suddenly as he’d come.
Elzbeta rushed to my side and gently squeezed my arm. I didn’t acknowledge her at first, I was too stunned. I just stared at the floor, trying my best not to be sick.
“I’m sorry,” Elzbeta said. “So very, very sorry.” I noticed then that her usually thick British accent seemed to disappear. She still had a hint of it, but otherwise sounded almost American, and strangely familiar. I racked my brain trying to put a finger on it, then it dawned on me like a rush of cold water.
With that accent, she sounded almost like Rostovich.
I turned to stare at her, incredulous. “Who are you?” I blurted out. “Who are you, really?”
She looked away. “No one. No one at all.” Her original accent returned with those words, but now it sounded forced, phony. “Here, let me take you to your room. I’ll need to help you prepare for what is to come.” She led and I followed, but I hung back well behind her, suspicious now of her motives.
When I arrived back at my room, I saw that several new bondage outfits were laid out on my bed. Elzbeta was already rummaging around in my wardrobe, pulling out silk pajamas and satin slippers and tossing them into a nearby plastic garbage bag. “You will not need any of these things any more,” she said matter-of-factly. She gestured to the bed. “Here are your new lounge clothes. You will need to be in character at all times, not just in your room---that is, chamber---during client appointments. Bluschencko is in the habit of showing up at odd hours, and you’ll need to be prepared to receive him at any time of the day or night. I’ll also have to train you up on his preferences. He is a man of strange tastes, but you do not want to risk dissatisfying him, Domino. Trust me.”
“You say this as if you’ve serviced him yourself.”
She winced. “I have. And I hope I never have to do it again.”
I sat down on the bed, feeling as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me. “How many times?” I asked.
She tossed the last of my satin pajamas---alas, I’d only worn one set for one night---into the trash bag and sealed it off with a twist tie. “Too many times,” she muttered, then shook her head hard as if to clear it of unpleasant memories. “But I was rewarded handsomely for my efforts. So will you, if you play your cards right.”
As the madam of a secret and high-priced house of ill repute, I was sure Elzbeta had seen more than her share of strange sexual doings. What kinds of acts were enough to make such a worldly, thick-skinned woman like her cringe? And what kind of rewards did one earn for doing them? Money? Jewels? Fine art? A new identity? Something yet to be imagined? I didn’t want anything like that. At this point, all I wanted was to go home and see my mother.
See my mother. At that moment, I knew things were desperate. I’d spent most of my life trying to figure out how to get away from my mother, and now all I could think about was how to get back to her. I’d take her cold, flinty stares, judgmental insults, and clueless economic lectures over anything in this place.
“Domino, are you listening to me?” Elzbeta’s harsh tone cut into my thoughts.
“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t. I was----“ I trailed off, not wanting to admit what I was thinking.
She sat down beside me on the bed. “Elzbeta, have you ever heard of something called bloodsport? As it relates to the bedroom.”
I went cold. “Here and there,” I said. It was mostly a lie, though I faintly remembered a unit covered in my Psychology 101 course sophomore year that talked about how some people got a strange high off cutting themselves. My professor had
discussed it mostly in terms of people doing that as a way of coping with emotional pain, though, and not anything sexual. There was a paragraph or two about it in my textbook, along with an index reference reading “See also: bloodsports,” but had offered no other description. In World History we’d studied the bloodsport events in the Roman coliseum, with gladiators, man-eating lions, and the like. But now in this time and in this place, and knowing Bluschencko the way that I did, a detailed, sinister picture of what it meant in his terms formed in my mind.
“You did those---things, with him?”
Elzbeta nodded once. “Think of it as just another kind of bondage and it won’t seem so frightening,” she said. I knew she was trying to reassure me, but the tone of her voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. “And on the bright side, you won’t be on the receiving end of any of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you will not be the person shedding blood. At least, not from your own body.”
I digested that for a moment. “So Bluschencko likes to be cut.”
“Yes.”
“And I would be doing the cutting.”
“Yes. And other things. He will expect you to know what those things are, and how to do them. I will train you. We must start right away. He could be back here demanding your services as soon as this afternoon, or three months from now. With him, there is no way to know. But if you fail to meet his demands, well----” She trailed off and looked at the wall. “You don’t want to know what would happen to you.”
I understood that. I’d seen more than one person who’d failed Bluschencko out in the real world shot. Anyone who failed his visceral sexual demands likely would face something far worse. “Is there any way out of this?” I already knew the answer to the question before I asked it, but the very small part of me that still hung on to the remaining shreds of my schoolgirl innocence had to know if there was even the tiniest possibility of escape.”
“No. Unless you want to kill yourself.”
My heart sank. I sat in silence as Elzbeta picked up the plastic bag of castoff clothes and placed them in the hallway outside my door. She came back in, sat down across from me, and took both my hands in hers. “There may be another way,” she said, staring hard at me in a manner that unsettled me more than I already was. “But it would be very dangerous for the both of us.”
“Then why do it?” I asked. “What’s in it for you?”
She stared off into space for a moment, her expression unreadable. “Nothing, other than the knowledge that you wouldn’t have to endure what I did once.”
That just made me even more curious. “You said that you had the opportunity to leave once, but you stay here by choice. Why?”
“I stay here because I know I would never function in the real world, not after the things I’ve done. I would be too afraid of what my family would think of me. I could never hold a job or do anything normal. Not that I’d have to, I have money enough to last me a lifetime. I know it probably sounds strange to someone like you, but I feel safe here.” She paused. “Think of it in the way that some prisoners grow to love prison walls, and will commit crimes after they’re released so they can go right back. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that you’ll be taken care of, provided you follow the rules.”
“If you’re so comfortable here, then why endanger yourself to get me out?” I couldn’t understand the direction she was taking. “Why not just make sure I stay, too?”
“Because I don’t want you to become like me, Domino. I want you to escape while there’s still a chance for you?”
“Why me? Why not any of these other girls?”
“Because you’re special, Domino. If you weren’t, Bluschencko would not have brought you here. You’re very, very special. I don’t think you realize just how much.”
I stared at my hands. “No. No, I don’t.”
****
An hour later Elzbeta and I were in the House of Pleasure’s kitchen, beginning my training. Before us on the steel counter were two half-frozen sides of beef. In our hands were sharp razor blades, meant to simulate the backs of Bluschencko’s thighs and buttocks.
“Do short, sharp cuts in parallel rows. He has many scars on his backside, you can retrace them to get the pattern that he likes. Be quick and steady. If you’re too slow, the cuts will be ragged and won’t heal properly.”
I held the razor blade between shaking fingers, unable to move. Even cutting into a piece of dead meat felt so revolting I could barely stand up; I wasn’t at all sure how I’d be able to handle the real thing. I grasped at any possible opportunity to delay the inevitable. “Why do you suppose Bluschencko likes----people----to do this to him?”
“I think it’s because he spends his daily life inflicting damage onto other people, and gets a thrill out of having the same thing done to him in private,” Elzbeta mused. “Now stop stalling, Domino. You must learn to do this. Your life depends on it.”
“I thought you said there was another way.”
“There may be. But it wouldn’t happen right away. And if Bluschencko shows up in the meantime, you’ll need to know what to do. Now go ahead. Just do three quick cuts in a row. Try to think of something else while you do it. Something pleasant.”
My thoughts harkened back to that night at the Ritz. Fine food, satin sheets, silk scarves, Rostovich’s expert hands on my body. I shut my eyes tight, breathed in deep, and made the cuts with my eyes closed. When I opened them, I stared at the three incisions oozing fat and red juices in the meet, even and neatly spaced.
“Good,” Elzbeta said. “Very good. If you can do that well with your eyes closed, you’ll do even better with them open. And they’ll have to be open. Bluschencko will demand that of you. It gets easier after the first few times.”
The room swung back and forth then, and I sank backwards onto a chef’s stool. “I don’t see how.”
Elzbeta set her own razor blade down on the counter with a clink. “I know it’s hard, Domino. But you won’t have to do it often. He doesn’t require it at every session. And you can control things a bit. You are a Dominant. Make it a part of the game. Make him work hard for it. Though Bluschencko doesn’t always play by the rules, he enjoys a good game. He views everything in his life as one giant chess match.”
I rubbed my temples. “So what you’re saying is, I have the ability to control when---or if---I actually have to do this.”
“In theory. Though you’ll find that Bluschencko isn’t easy to dominate. You’ll find he isn’t like the usual submissive who just blindly obeys orders. He’ll start ordering you around instead. He wants to control everything, even how he is dominated.”
I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience as a dominatrix---my experience added up to a single sixty-minute session with Ludwig, along with what I’d conjured up inside my own head. But Elzbeta and the other girls had said that my inexperience could be an asset here. “I could still try,” I said.
“Yes, you could. But keep your expectations low. In the meantime, I’ll work on a Plan B.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what exactly you mean by that.”
She sighed. “I don’t want to get your hopes up only to have them dashed. I promise I will try, but you won’t know why or how unless it actually works out. Remember that it’s next to impossible to communicate with the outside world here. I have a few more options than you do, but not many.”
“How will I know if it works out?”
Elzbeta gave me a strange half-smile. “Oh, you would know. In fact, everyone would. And therein lies the danger.”
SEVENTEEN
I practiced cutting lines in meat for another half an hour, then set my razor blade down on the counter in disgust. “I’m not doing this anymore,” I announced more to the air than to Elzbeta. “I just can’t.”
“You’ll have to,” Elzbeta said as she called the cook back in to rehang the meat in the freezer. I shuddered at the thought it
might show up in one of our meals later on; after what I’d done I didn’t think I’d ever be able to eat beef again. “Bluschencko won’t ever let you go if you don’t.”
“That’s assuming you don’t get me out of here first.”
She sighed. “You see, this is exactly what I meant about getting your hopes up. I probably shouldn’t have said anything about it at all.”
“And yet you’d have tried to spring me loose even without telling me.”
Elzbeta closed her eyes, ran her fingers through her short locks. “Yes, I would have. But we won’t be discussing the matter any further. Not with each other, and certainly not with anyone else. That is an order, from me to you.”
“But----“ She held up her hand to silence me. I wanted to ask how she expected to plan my escape if she couldn’t discuss it with anyone, but figured she operated by a different set of rules. As did everyone in Bluschencko’s world.
I decided to change the subject. “How did you come to be here, Elzbeta?”
She shot me an angry look. “I thought I established that we don’t talk about our past lives.”
“You’ve already told me some of yours.”
“I told you about my past here at the House of Pleasure, not who I was or where I came from before. That is a secret I shall take to my grave.”
“Is Elzbeta your real name?”
Her mouth became a thin line. “Yes. I chose to keep it once I came here.”
“Where are you from?” I already had a strong suspicion it wasn’t England. Her British accent was almost too perfect, and she’d dropped it in my presence once when her guard was down. “You’re from around here, aren’t you? Sevastopol?”
She stiffened. “You’ve already asked too many questions, Domino. Please go back to your room and don’t leave it until I summon you.” The hard set of her jaw indicated she would tolerate no more insolence from me. Rather than risk ruining my good rapport with her, I obeyed and went back to my room.
Domino (The Domino Trilogy) Page 32