by Lily White
“I’m surprised you consider the chase to be menial. I happen to think it’s the most important part. Finding your victim, learning everything there is to know about her, tracking her so that you know every small detail about her schedule and habits. I think it’s the time that the abductor begins to fall in love with his crime. It’s when he digests all there is to know about the property he will soon possess. To some, I guess the research and plotting time would seem menial, but to me…it’s the second best part.”
Reaching my car, I pulled my keys from my bag. A chill shot up my spine at Holland’s words and I froze in place at how odd they sounded.
Warmth enveloped me, a hard chest brushing against my shoulders, his legs pushing up against my ass. It was a brief moment of contact, as if he didn’t know I’d stopped, but it was enough to bathe my senses in his scent, for his breath to ruffle my hair.
Shivering involuntarily, I clenched my thighs together when I imagined his mouth trailing down my neck, his hands reaching around to explore my body as possessively as he’d explored Emma’s.
What the fuck was wrong with me? He was a student. He was MY student and I was committing an offense as his teacher to even imagine what it would be like to touch him. I wanted to shake off the feeling, to return to a place where I was able to keep a comfortable distance from the young men and women I taught. Holland was different. He was smooth and cultured. He was temptation to any woman he encountered.
He was dangerous to a woman as sex-starved as me. He was also off limits and that was all that mattered.
He didn’t back away, didn’t speak or touch me again, but I felt him there. I was enchanted by how near he stood to my body. Lost in a lust that shouldn’t exist, it took me a few seconds to find my voice.
Finding the will power to turn around, I asked, “Where is your car, Holland?”
He reached out and held a cloth over my mouth. Moving faster than I could comprehend, he pushed me back, using my car to catch me from behind. The shock that tore through my system caused me to gasp, sucking in a large breath of the chemical he had soaked into that cloth. I blew out quickly, but realized he’d been smart enough to cover both of my airways.
My hands rose up to fight against his and I dropped my keys in the process. He was almost robotic in how quickly he caught them, holding them up and dangling them in front of my face.
The light around me was fading when he finally answered.
“My car’s right here, Ms. Elliot.”
He smiled.
“Thank you for that.”
Chapter Five
Holland
It was rather easy to take her. I’d expected a few kicks, maybe a scratch across my face; for her to do something in an effort to defend herself. Yet, she did nothing. Sure, she attempted to pull my hand away from her mouth, but that was nothing compared to the damage she could have caused before she was fully affected by the chemical.
A small tapping sound echoed across the room and I looked up at Aiden. He was sitting against the side of his desk, his wristwatch raised up where he could examine it. Tapping on the faceplate with his finger, he asked, “Holland, what time do you have? I think my watch is fast.”
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I clicked the button and said, “A little after one in the morning.”
Aiden looked up.
“Are you joking?” His normally blank expression had shifted to concern.
“Why would I be joking?”
“Because she should be screaming by now.” Rebecca’s voice rang out from behind me and I twisted around to find her entering the room. “They usually wake up in an hour or two and scream their heads off for at least another three. Although, the men tend to have a tendency to scream longer. You should know that, Holland.”
The time it was taking for her to wake up hadn’t occurred to me. I was so far gone in my excited memories of having taken her that I hadn’t considered it.
Returning my attention to Aiden, I noticed that he was scowling.
“How long did you hold the cloth over her mouth?”
His tone told me this was not the time to dick around or play word games. He wanted straight answers given as quickly as he could ask the questions.
“For only a few seconds. She passed out quickly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Nodding, he watched Rebecca kneel down on floor pillow by his desk. When his attention was on her, it was if I wasn’t even in the room or hadn’t potentially killed my first courtesan.
“Are you sorry for what you did today?”
She nodded, her lip twitching with a poorly concealed smile. His face, as always, remained impassive.
“Do it again, Pet and I’ll deny you your freedom for a couple days. How would you like to be locked away in your room without my touch or my cock? I can arrange for Holland to bring you food and water. If you’re lucky, he’ll even take you to the bathroom so you don’t have to use a bucket.”
I laughed at the appearance of a heavy frown on her face.
“I wouldn’t like it, Master.”
When Aiden looked from her to me, I asked, “What did she do this time?”
“She complained when I was done using her because she wanted more.”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I commented, “I don’t think she’ll ever lose her rebellion.”
This time it was the corner his lip that twitched on a suppressed grin.
Changing the subject, he said, “Back to the possible dead woman I currently have in my house. I think it’s time we check on her.”
Without another word we set out in the direction of the black room. Completely dark, Claire would have woken up to an environment where she was robbed of her ability to see. There were no windows and the walls were painted black to suck up whatever ambient light could sneak beneath the door into the room. Chained to a bed, she wouldn’t be able to explore the walls to find the switch to the single bulb that hung in the center of the room.
Rebecca stayed behind. She never liked the first few nights a new woman was brought in. We often returned to find her cowering over herself with her hands gripped over her ears. It was only with the women. She never had that problem on the rare occasion that it was a man.
“If she’s dead, I hope you realize the tight spot this will put me in. We’re on a deadline, as usual, Holland, and if we have to find another redhead like this one, our selection is going to be severely limited.” He glanced sideways at me. “Especially with most of the college students out of town for Spring Break.”
I didn’t respond because there was nothing to say.
Arriving at her door, Aiden stepped to the side, motioning for me to enter first. I pulled the key from my pocket, unlocked the door and pushed my way inside.
A chain rattled from the direction of the bed as soon as I stepped in.
Holding the door open behind me, I used the light pouring in from the hall to illuminate her body. Her hands were bound in front of her and her legs were secured to the bed. Hair was spread out over her pillow, falling down softly in front of her face and concealing her eyes. I watched to see if she moved or breathed.
Not able to tell, I stepped closer and noticed the faint jerk of her muscles at my approach.
Now having my answer, I left the room.
“She’s alive. I walked in and she was pretending to be asleep.”
Aiden appeared shocked and then thoughtful.
After a moment wherein he considered what I’d told him, he said, “I’m trying to think back on the information you gave me, but to be honest I only skimmed parts of it and I’m having trouble remembering the details. Tell me again what this woman teaches.”
“Psychology.”
His eyes closed slowly, blinking back open with anger that was almost palpable. “How the fuck did I miss that? Damn it!”
“What’s the problem?”
His stare locked to mine. The smile that crept across his face was dripping
with malice.
“The problem is that she’s going to be far more difficult to break.”
Chapter Six
Claire
I was confused at first. Waking up in a pitch-black room, moving around to notice that my legs were secured to the bed by chains and that my hands were bound, my first instinct was to panic…to scream my head off in hopes that some passerby might hear me and call the police.
However, after years of studying criminal psychology, several years spent in prisons and asylums studying the traits and habits of psychotic and psychopathic people, I realized the screaming would only feed into the feeling of power that those types lived for.
That’s not to say that my body wasn’t in a state of panic physically. My heart rate was elevated, my breathing was shallow and there was a cold, sticky sweat that had broken out over my skin. The room where I was held had stripped my sense of sight. That alone was enough to place me in a position of weakness and disadvantage.
I wanted to scream. I’d opened my mouth at several points, drawing in large amounts of air in preparation for making as much noise as I possibly could. Each time, I’d let it back out slowly on nothing more than a swoosh of air from between my lips. My instincts were battling my logic, but thankfully, logic won out.
Lying back on the bed, I worked my hands around, attempting to loosen the leather binds. Hours could have passed with me doing that and it wouldn’t have done any good. There was no way I’d be able to free myself. Kicking my legs around didn’t help either because I didn’t possess the inhuman strength it would have taken to break the shackles that held tight around my ankles or the links of the chains that were locked to the frame of the bed.
The room was cold, extremely cold. So cold, in fact, that I searched the mattress for a sheet or blanket that I could pull up to wrap around me. There was nothing. Curling into a ball, I shivered uncontrollably. My anger would give me momentary reprieve when it flooded me to a point of heat pouring from my skin.
It was during that time that I started to reflect on how I’d come to be in this place. All I could remember was one man.
Holland Strong.
I struggled to comprehend the situation. He was a young college student with the normal markings of a wealthy and spoiled kid. Good looking, intelligent and astute, there was nothing in his behavior that would indicate that he’d been rejected by society, that he would turn to crime in order to satisfy some need that wasn’t met naturally in his life. However, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something about him I didn’t know.
Abusive parents, whether physical or sexual, could have created something malevolent in him that just now took control. It wasn’t something he had to remember. If it had occurred when he was young, those were the types of memories that could be pushed back in the psyche, lying around dormant, like time bombs waiting for the opportunity to surface after some trigger forced them forward.
He could have been rejected by peers when he was younger, but he didn’t have the social awkwardness you would expect to see in someone who had gone through a childhood such as that. Unlike Marcus or Jackson, Holland stood straight, spoke fluidly, made eye contact without pulling his arms around his body or hunching over to make himself small or unnoticeable. No. Holland wanted to be seen, loved to be heard and was confident enough to place himself as the center of attention if that’s what he wanted at that moment.
I know it’s odd. I’d been abducted, chained up, bound in such a way that I had no means of freeing myself or even knowing where I was being held. Yet, there I was, psychoanalyzing my assumed captor. It was something I was hardwired to do. I’d watched people all my life. Even as a small child, I would walk though malls holding my mother’s hand while my eyes scanned the crowds noticing the odd body language and actions of the people around me. Anger, jealousy, love; they were emotions so well displayed by the people who felt them, regardless of whether the people knew they were feeling them or not.
I knew by the time I was ten that I wanted to go into a career where I could study the mind. It fascinated me, held me prisoner because I always felt like an outsider looking in. I didn’t have many friends in high school or even college, for that matter, so it gave me plenty of time to study, both for school assignments and for pleasure. I’d read the entire DSM, better known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, for fun. I laughed about it then, wondering what that said about me.
After graduating college, I’d interned at a state asylum, then transferred to a prison/psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. Most of my professors and superiors considered me foolish for wanting to intern in those places, but it was my life’s mission to understand the thoughts and actions of the worst types of people in our society.
Now, stuck in this situation, cold, shackled and blind while in this environment, I wasn’t sure if I was happy or upset that I’d spent so many years studying evil.
Perhaps Nietzsche was correct when he said, ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’ It scared me somewhat to read those lines back in my youth. Seeing them come true despite having fled the asylum for the safety of a college classroom, the truthfulness of those words were now terrifying. However, I hadn’t become the monster as Nietzsche warned.
I’d become its prey.
I’d finally found the thing I’d sought out in my youth.
Hearing footsteps outside the door, I tucked into myself tighter. Closing my eyes I refused to acknowledge the person walking into the room. His cologne gave away his identity. Rich and fragrant, the smell that had earlier excited me now frightened me.
I wouldn’t react. I wouldn’t call out. I wouldn’t scream. I wouldn’t give him my fear.
I refused to let him know he affected me at all.
I hated giving away the fact that I was awake, but when he approached me, I flinched. My fear was debilitating. It felt like it was cutting off my ability to think and some switch to my natural instincts was flicked on. The chain attached to my feet rattled and his footsteps stopped. I braced for him to move away from the door to reach out, to strike me or molest me in some way. He didn’t. Instead, he chose to turn around and exit the room after using the light from the hall to look me over.
The relief I breathed out from his absence was halted by the sounds of two voices coming from outside the door. They weren’t clear to me and I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were distinct enough from one another that I could tell them apart.
One was Holland, his tone questioning and unsure. The second voice I heard forced terror to lock my spine. There was no emotion in his tone, no conscience or morality. It was an authoritative voice, sure and strong.
The door opened again after a few minutes and one man entered, closing it quickly behind him. Breathing deeply, I wanted to see if I could smell Holland’s cologne again, but there was no scent there.
Panic set in. I wasn’t dealing with a kid I knew at that moment. I was dealing with a complete unknown.
“You can stop pretending that you’re asleep. I would believe it if your breathing was deep and slow, but instead I hear panting, quick gasps of air that, in your attempt to control them, you’re only making worse.”
He didn’t step forward or move in any other way. Blending into the shadows, his voice was the only thing that he revealed.
“You’re scared. Aren’t you?”
I wouldn’t answer him.
“Very well. Your silence will only make this process easier. It’s my hope you choose not to fight as well.
Finally moving towards me, his steps were slow. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each one punctuating the distance that was closing in between us.
“I have rules in my home, Ms. Elliot. Rules that a wise woman such as yourself would be smart to follow.”
Thud.
Thud.
His hand brushed my face.
I c
ouldn’t help it any longer, I screamed. It was only a quick cry before I could stop it, but it echoed against the walls of the room, stretching it out longer than I’d wanted it to be.
He chuckled above me with an amused and satisfied tone.
“That’s more like it. You can only be brave for so long before the reality of the situation sinks in.”
Hands were suddenly on me, gripping my shoulders and flipping me to my back so swiftly that my breath rushed from my lungs. The weight of his knee was on my stomach, crushing my body beneath it. “You will do exactly as I say from now on…”
His tone sounded practiced and controlled and I quickly realized that he wasn’t affected by what was happening. I was sure that if I could check his pulse and his breathing, it would be normal as if he was lying around, reading a book while soaking up some sun.
“The first thing you need to accept is that you are now owned. For now, I am your Master. I give orders; you follow them. It’s a simple formula that will keep you alive. Any disobedience on your part will result in punishment. You have one job and one alone: to be a courtesan. You will refer to me as Master and I will refer to you in any way I please. My satisfaction and pleasure are the only two things that will matter to you. Your life no longer exists, nor does it matter.” He spoke clearly, as if he’d rehearsed his speech over and over again.
I moaned from the pain of his weight pressing into my abdomen and I jumped when his hand released one of my shoulders to brush across my breast. I still refused to acknowledge his words, still felt that I could upset his resolve if I didn’t behave in a manner that was expected.
“Do you understand the rules I have given you so far?”
I couldn’t speak. The weight of his knee was crushing against my diaphragm, making it difficult to breathe, much less respond. Within seconds, he removed his knee and my lungs expanded with the first full breath of air I’d been allowed since he entered the room. I thought that he’d realized his mistake, was granting me the ability to talk, but his next actions proved to me that I’d been wrong.