“Right, but why? Helped him with what?”
“He didn’t tell me that.”
I looked at him in disbelief, and he insisted quietly, “He didn’t!”
“Can you read French?”
“Hell, no! I sell a few foreign titles because we get people walking in here from Rwanda, Algeria, Cameroon. Every so often I get a few white European tourists and a few Asians, so I carry some Indian novels, Asian history. You’ve looked through the store, Teresa. It’s only two shelves for that stuff. I go by titles and catalogs.”
“He must have thought it was pretty important,” I thought aloud.
“Well, he didn’t explain—I think maybe he was trying to protect me. He knew I wanted to stay out. And he was just as determined to win Anna back. He said he could bring the whole group of these psychos—his word, not mine—crashing down. I wished him luck but doubted he could pull it off.”
“Well, how did you get out?”
“Aw, nothing dramatic. I sort of ‘weaned’ myself from them. I left them the impression I didn’t know anything about what else they were doing—and I didn’t want to know. And I stopped coming around so much. I said the bookstore needed me. I was neglecting my business. It’s far easier for a guy than a girl.”
“Better to have a high ratio of girls to guys, eh?”
“Actually, yeah.”
I remembered what Jeff Lee had told me secondhand from Craig Padmore. How did he put it? The group thinks black men are the sexual supreme, and they have to learn how to dominate women as the first step to taking back family power and financial power. I asked Oliver if this was accurate.
“That’s pretty close,” he said, looking embarrassed at the sexism.
“So what else are they into?” I asked.
“Straight up, I don’t exactly know. Really. But it’s got to be criminal—I just don’t know the specifics. They’re sitting on major real estate, and they’ve got cash to burn. I pretended everything was aboveboard for a long time—too long. And then I just couldn’t stand not knowing and wanting too badly to know, knowing it might be dangerous to go looking. So I up and left.”
I didn’t say anything for what felt like close to a full minute.
“No, you didn’t.”
He crinkled his brow, staring at me in mild wonder that I should contradict him like this. But he wasn’t making a denial.
“I saw pictures of how Anna was tied up, how she let herself be tied up,” I told him. “You go to dark places doing this stuff, don’t you, Oliver? It must get pretty wild.”
I was conscious all of a sudden of how he’d slumped against the desk, half out of the light of the one naked bulb. I couldn’t see his eyes anymore. “What do you know about it?” he croaked.
“Nothing,” I said softly. “But I’ve seen it in your face. You’re haunted.”
“Yes…”
“You did things with those people, and after some time you knew what they were capable of. And you didn’t like that you might be capable of it too. So you left.”
“Yes.”
“You still have a conscience, Oliver. We were both friends to Anna. They killed her. They killed Padmore. Help me bring them down.”
“No—fucking—way. You’re nuts! You’re gonna get yourself killed and me too if I keep listening to this shit. Go home. I don’t know what you’ve pulled off in England, but this is America, Teresa. Most of us wake up every morning to a goddamn war zone anyway, and—”
“Quit it!” I said, losing patience. “Just quit it, will you? I have been in real war zones in Sudan, Oliver. I’ve had to run for my life in Chicago. I nearly got my head shot off in Bangkok—and I wasn’t even looking for trouble then! I’ve had militia soldiers shove rifles point-blank in my face, and I once talked my way out of a nasty shakedown in Tunis. I’m telling you, Anna’s dead, they’re responsible, and I need your help. Now will you please tell me about them?”
He came back into the light and looked at me kind of sideways. “What do you plan to do?”
“Get in. Infiltrate them. It’s the only way. Tell me about the leaders.”
“That’s not what you’ll need.”
“Oh?”
He shook his head. “You’ll never get in. And I pray to God you won’t.”
“I’ve got into worse places.”
“It’s not a question of geography.”
“Then what is it?”
He didn’t answer. He moved in close and kissed me. At first it was tender, and I thought there was genuine affection behind it. Maybe it was protective desperation on his part. I closed my eyes and tasted his tongue, and the room felt even smaller, the air staler. Then I felt his hand slide up under my top and cup my breast, and while I enjoyed this, it disturbed me, this sudden inappropriate eroticism.
He was tugging down my bra cup, bringing his lips to suck my nipple as his hand undid the button of my jeans and burrowed down under the band of my panties. I felt his fingers working me, fumbling with me to make me wet.
“Wait, wait…Oliver?”
My lips below were starting to open for him. No.
“Oliver, what is this?”
Breaking away from him now, putting myself back together.
“You’ll never get in, Teresa.” It was the second time he’d said that to me. I was getting tired of it.
“Why not?” I demanded, annoyed at his negativity, wondering what the hell he was doing.
He sighed, his eyebrows jumping, as if there was a huge gulf of ignorance on my part and he would have to explain something about a surgical operation.
Then he said: “It’s the kind of person you are. You can’t…playact with them. You can’t pretend you think you’re second place to a man—you’ve got to act like you believe it, that it’s your duty. And they don’t go in for nasty fluids or leg worship or foot fetish. They’re about fucking with your body and fucking with your mind. I’d have to teach you stuff, and you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“So was that a sample?” I demanded sarcastically.
“No,” he said slowly, with an edge in his voice. “That was because I’m tempted. I like you…. And since I like you, I wanted to touch you a proper loving way before I have to—This is nuts! We’re not doing this. I can’t teach you, and I can’t help you.”
“Try me.”
He shook his head again, his eyes full of disdain. “You have no idea what this shit is about. You’d have to let me do things to you. As a matter of fact, you’d have to give me blanket permission to do things to you, and once you give it, you can’t take it back. These people don’t have safe words for where they go with your head! It’s not about pain at that point, it’s about taking you to mental places that are goddamn scarier than you’ve ever been.”
I don’t know how he expected me to react to all this hype. Sometimes people think an appropriate expression of fear should be displayed like respect, but I was wearing my poker face. After a pause, I said, “All right.”
“No, no, no!” he said, getting frustrated with me.
“Look, all this big talk is not—”
“You don’t understand—”
“I’m sorry I’m not as intimidated as you want me to be.” I shrugged. “I said I’m in. Go ahead and train me for them.”
“Hey, I don’t know if I want to do this either!” he snapped. “I don’t like the person I was turning into, and you want this shit, I’ve got to be that guy again.”
Oh, please.
“How long is this going to take?” I asked, my voice bored.
He considered it for a moment. “You wear contact lenses?” I shook my head. “Any breathing problems? Asthma? Good. I’m going to psychologically break you—I hope you’re prepared for that.”
I tried hard not to burst out laughing.
“Take your clothes off!” he ordered.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Your shop’s still open. Suppose your guy comes back here?” And I noticed that the windows t
oward the back faced out on the cross street. There were protective bars, but anyone passing would still have a view. “Listen, you’ve got no drapes for—”
“Take your clothes off now. Training starts this minute.”
I hesitated. I didn’t care about being nude in front of him. I had considered seducing him, after all, to get information. It was being ordered around that instantly got my hackles up.
“See?” said Oliver. “You want to pass yourself off as one of them, you do instantly what you’re told. Any of their guys can command you to strip. They can come up and touch you. They can play with your tits or your pussy whenever they like, and you say, ‘Yes, sir, that feels good.’ They can fuck you in front of a room full of people—you think you can handle that?”
I didn’t tell him I had done that before.
“You’re still dressed,” he growled.
“How do I know this isn’t just you getting your rocks off?” I asked. “You haven’t told me the name of the group, you haven’t told me who’s in charge—”
“The Sarcophacan Temple of Nubian Princes,” he answered. “There are plenty of ‘princesses’ too—Anna was one. But that’s the name. They own a big-ass mansion where all the shit happens. The leader’s name is Isaac.”
“Sarcophacan temple…” I mumbled that a couple of times. “What’s a sarcophacan temple?”
“Later. First, obedience.”
“At least lock the door,” I suggested.
He muttered a curse under his breath and said, “This isn’t going to work—”
“Oliver!” I said quickly.
I undid my blouse and then shed my bra, slid out of my skirt and panties, and stood in front of him. I felt cold, and my nipples were hardening. He inspected me without one flicker of lust, like a drill sergeant. I stood in place, dreading that someone would walk in or pass the windows at the back and notice. The moment went on, and as my outrage rose over this petty cruelty, I woke up and understood. This was to be a test of wills.
They would all be tests of will.
Okay, then. I can play along. I can do what he asks and take it, and it won’t make me any less, because I’m on a job—
“Come over here,” he ordered, walking backward. “Closer to the window.”
I hesitated again.
“Now.”
I moved toward the window.
“Get down on all fours,” he told me quietly, “and face away from me. Show me your pussy. Do it.”
My skin goose-pimpled, and I felt an outbreak of cold sweat down my spine rounding the tops of my buttocks. I already knew I was supposed to act first and not think, but my mind hung on to a two-second lag. I realized that I’d be under the edge of the window where I probably couldn’t be seen unless you pressed your face right up against the bars. Still, it was humiliating.
I was on all fours like a dog, my vulva facing out, and a shudder ran through me as I wondered what I was supposed to do next, what was going to happen, and as my mouth opened to speak—
“Not one word,” he growled.
We had kissed a little. He had fondled me, but that was it, and now I was suddenly on display, at his command, praying like hell that his clerk didn’t walk through the door and see me like this, and then I felt his finger stroking my labia.
My juices started. I remember breathing his name, but he ignored me, his finger making the shallowest entry into my vagina, prompting me to moan.
He took his hand away.
“Go and get dressed,” he said. “No, no—do it here where I can see you. Aw, shit, no. I can see I’ve got to teach you everything. We’ll go over that later. You understand me?”
“Okay.”
“Say, ‘yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wipe that smile off your face. You want to have your pussy in the display window in the store? I can make you do it—”
“Oh, no, you won’t.”
“Then we’re done here—”
“Okay, okay—”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir!” I felt like I was going to sexual boot camp or something. I didn’t have a clue.
“Listen, I help you with this,” he said, “and you’ve got to do something for me.”
“If I can.”
He looked down at the floor a moment, weighing his request. “You solve murders. That’s what they pay you for, right?”
“Sometimes,” I said carefully. “Most of the time I get lucky, Oliver. It’s not always murder. It’s theft sometimes, extortion. It turns into murder more times than I’d like.”
“My father was murdered. They never found out who did it. If you want to call it the price of my help, okay, that’s it.”
I was still naked. “You mind if I get my clothes on before I answer?”
He smiled. I walked over to him, and we kissed again, long and hard. Suddenly, he pulled back. I didn’t understand what was wrong. It was like he was fighting his own impulses.
“I can look into your father’s murder,” I said, “but I don’t know if I’ll find anything.”
“I’m not talking about reading a file, Teresa. I need a real investigator, you know?”
I dressed in record time. “Okay, tell me when it happened. What’s the background?”
“Later,” he said. “I just want a sincere commitment right now. Halfway through your training, I’ll let you go check into it, and when you find results, you’ll come back here and I’ll finish working with you for what you need with the group—the cult. I have to admit it to myself: They are a cult.”
“But your father’s murder: You expect me to give you a blind answer? I don’t even know what’s involved—”
“Later. I’m going to ask things of you that are a lot tougher than that.”
I relented, nodding. Perhaps it wasn’t so much to ask. Perhaps it could be quickly wrapped up. For now, it was good enough to convey to him that I would try. He had given me a name, and that was progress.
The Sarcophacan Temple of Nubian Princes. And a guy named Isaac.
“Okay, okay. What time do you want me to come over tomorrow?”
He looked at me as if I was being foolish. “You’re not taking a Learning Annex class. This is all the way. Go and get your things from the hotel. You’re staying here—for the week.”
I looked around, not understanding what on earth he could mean. We were in a bookshop. Where was I going to sleep?
“What do you mean here?”
“Basement,” he said.
It turned out to be a basement, all right. It was his personal dungeon, back behind the shop’s stockroom.
3
Suspended, naked, hanging like a child’s mobile four feet above the ground, wrists and ankles in leather cuffs. Not enough slack that I could bring my hands together to effect an escape, and that’s not what I was after anyway. I was here for insight. I pulled, and there was slack in the ropes, but it just meant I flailed about and bobbed and swayed like a fish on a hook. He left me like that for hours at a time. At first I thought: This is bloody dull. And then he got down to it.
He came in and slowly undressed. I watched the unveiling of firm pecs and a six-pack of hard brown muscle, and it was clear that whatever ordeal he had been through with this group, it had confirmed him as a fanatic in the gym. When he pulled down his pants, he took his underwear with them, and he was already hard. Seven inches of thick cock, and if you’re one of those who think penises have their own personalities, then his was a dick that was rude and angry and insistent, a dark brown pole, his large testicles with their skin taut like folds over large eggs. The head of his penis was a red bulb, and I swore I could see a bead of semen glistening there. He was close to coming just thinking about me, up in his shop. Now he moved toward me with his erection like it was to be a punishment.
And I was completely vulnerable.
His fingertips touched my pussy, and he said in a harsh voice, “You should be wetter for me.”
“I’m plenty wet,” I said.
There was a kind of harness to cradle my neck and my head, but I was hung in an almost fully horizontal position. I could see him when he walked in but not anymore, not when he stood in front of my open legs.
“Shut up,” he snapped. “You speak when you’re spoken to.”
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.
I felt a slap across my buttocks.
And I burst out laughing. It was an involuntary response. I felt ridiculous. Too conscious that I was playing a role, that I—
Crack.
I writhed in sudden pain and cried out.
Whatever just spanked my buttocks wasn’t his hand. I couldn’t see, just feel the aftershock of searing heat and mild pain expanding over my ass. That blow wasn’t playful. It wasn’t the clap your mummy gave you when you were bad. It was sharp, precise, deliberate, came from some kind of paddle. It stung like hell.
“You respond to me with conviction,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t need it loud. Just sincere. Like you mean it. I won’t call you ‘bitch’ or childish, stupid names. That’s amateur-hour BS. But you will submit, do you understand? Until your training’s complete, you belong to me. Is that clear?”
I hesitated. Belong to someone. Like property. Like a slave. And my hackles instantly rose at that one.
“I guess I better unlock you,” he said. “You can’t do this.”
“No! Wait—”
Dammit, I needed to know about this stuff to get in, and that meant trusting him, and—
“You belong to me.”
Stop thinking.
“I belong to you.”
“Again.”
“I belong to you.”
And part of me wanted to know, wanted to feel.
He slapped my ass again hard with the paddle. Ohhhh, God. My first instinct was to yank and pull at my bonds, wanting to break out and knock his head off.
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