Daphne finally revived. Her eyes were shut tight; McGill’s were too intense to look at.
“No. I don’t deny what’s true. To do that would be denying something basic about me. I just hoped…kept hoping,” she opened her eyes at last… “that I might be wrong, that maybe Emerson just needed a few weeks away. But the longer he’s gone, the less I care if he comes back.”
McGill’s hand rested on her ass cheek; his fingers fondled the flesh with some force. She’d never known a man like him. Part of her wanted to tear herself away; the rest of her wanted to stay in his arms forever.
She shook her head, “I can’t now. I just can’t. I’m not ready to be with any man. Obviously not Emerson, and certainly not you.”
“You’re talking gibberish.”
“You haven’t been where I’ve been in the last two years.”
“Well, how about you tell me what that means,” he stated flatly.
“Tell you!” She was horrified. Of course, she couldn’t tell him.
McGill shifted on the bed enough for Daphne to extricate herself from his grasp. She pulled to her feet. Grabbing her robe from a nearby chair, she clung to the two sides, too petrified to do more.
“You have to go now,” she said.
She watched the man slowly rise up and sit on the edge of the bed. From there, he wordlessly grabbed his pants off the floor and lazily put them one, then finally stood up. He held his shirt in his hand and stared at her.
“You’ll get used it. You’ll get used to me. But if you think I’m going to let you have your way, Daphne, if you think I’m going to buy a pack of silly excuses for pushing me off, you’re a foolish wench. You’re afraid. I’ll give you that. And I’ll give you some time to sort this out. But you will be confessing to me whatever it is that has you so spooked. And once we’ve handled that, I bet you’ll be ready to continue what began here.
She stood in the corner of the room, speechless, clutching her bathrobe, shivering in the hot room as if it were twenty below.
When he left the cottage, she could see him out across the property, striding toward his small house without looking back.
***
Two days later, Daphne was attempting to make a cake in the tiny cottage oven. She had a craving for chocolate, specifically chocolate cake. She had a lot of cravings now.
She heard a noise in the drive and moved to the kitchen window, looking out, and saw the Emerson’s yellow VW pull up and stop in front of the house.
***
“It’s all spelled out here, Daphne,” Emerson said as he held the papers open. “I think the alimony is generous, considering. I mean you’ll have your own income shortly with the novel and I haven’t made a dime in two years. I’m thinking of accepting that professorship at Berkeley, although I’m not keen on being in the middle of all the protests going on right now. But I figure I can insulate myself from it and this war won’t last forever. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll agree, we can’t take the marriage any further…” He was too uncomfortable to say more.
“You just need to sign right here,” he pointed to the bottom of the page. “If you want, you can go over it in detail, but I don’t think there’s much point. It’s pretty standard. We do have to appear in court. But that will be later. I just wanted to get the ball rolling. No contest is the best way to go.”
She stared at him expressionless. “In a rush to marry, a rush to divorce. It’s always that way with you.” Her lips moved into a terse smile. “But I understand how right it is. I’m glad to be done with the problem.”
Emerson looked surprised by this sudden change in her feelings. He’d been afraid that she would lay some emotional trip on him, which was what kept him from coming to her weeks before. Now, without argument, she took the pen and leaned over the table, while he watched her sign the papers.
“So, you have a new boyfriend?” he wondered aloud, as she flipped through the document.
“No.”
He seemed a little surprised. “Well, yes, you’re right. Probably not a good idea so soon.”
“What? You think I need to get over you more before my next lover?” she countered him. “I’m actually looking forward to having a man in my life.”
“Good. Yes. And you deserve one who loves you the way you need to be loved.”
“I do, Em. But then that really never was your concern, was it?” She didn’t mean to rude. She rarely ever felt this way. But it felt good to her now.
Emerson was the uncomfortable one when it was finally time for him to leave. While he tried making small talk, she virtually ignored him. When the timer on the stove suddenly buzzed, she turned to pull her finished chocolate cake from the oven, not bothering to look back or say goodbye.
The urge to cry was strangely absent. Maybe she was suppressing the need for later, but she had the odd feeling that her grief about the failed marriage was already over.
Chapter Thirteen
It several days later before Daphne saw McGill again. He was striding toward the chapel—her chapel, was how she thought of it now, although she hadn’t returned to it since the night they made love. She moved out quickly from the cottage, driven by the terrific tempest inside her that had been swirling about since his amazing declarations that amazing night. Emerson’s visit had only made the desire worsen. She had to see McGill now.
Breathless by the time she reached the chapel, she flung the door wide enough for it to bang back against the wall.
“Could I talk to you?” she called to him. He was sweeping the floor. She suspected that he had a reason to keep the place clean, although it didn’t seem as if he actually used it. Hearing the loud noise and her question, he stopped working and gazed down the aisle at her approaching form.
“You have my ear,” he said.
Daphne’s heart was pounding so hard that she could hear it in her temples. She was afraid, terrifically afraid. As afraid as she’d been that night. But she had to speak. She had to tell him. Tell him now. “I need to make that confession, McGill,” she practically shouted. She stopped speaking as quickly as she started. Stopped in her tracks, she waited for him.
McGill did nothing for at least thirty seconds, then he nodded first and finally said, “All right.”
***
Daphne knelt on the chapel floor, while McGill sat on a stool on the raised altar. His legs were spread in a masculine way and he leaned forward with his forearms resting on his open thighs…the position casual, open but authoritative.
McGill wanted her to tell him everything, but even though she’d called this meeting driven by the pressing need, it took some minutes before Daphne could finally spit out the facts. Her mind was filled with good beginnings, but still she didn’t know the right way to tell him the awful truth about her life.
“I’m not waiting all day,” he finally had to prompt her.
She looked up, forced her eyes on him. “Yes, I know. This is extremely difficult,” she whispered softly. She licked her lips, felt the words clutch inside her throat again, and then finally, feeling desperate to get this over, boldly blurted out, “We kidnapped a girl.”
To her surprise, he didn’t even raise a brow. But he also didn’t reply.
Waiting was miserable; the silence like a death sentence. With McGill not saying a word, Daphne was forced to move on on her own. “We, that is Emerson and two of his friends, Zack and Bo, kidnapped an anonymous girl. She was held captive in the cellar of a house we were staying in…for nearly four months. In addition to the three guys, there were two other women beside myself. The kidnapped girl was used for whatever kinky purpose we could think up. It was Emerson’s idea to seduce her, so we started slowly, carefully. She was eventually used pretty hard, forced to have sex in whatever way the six of us wanted. There wasn’t much we didn’t do to her. Oddly, she seemed surprisingly compliant the whole time. When we were finally tired of her and ourselves, I think, Emerson and Zack took her back to civilization. We all went on with our lives and we hav
en’t heard from her since.”
McGill waited for more and when there was nothing forthcoming, he said, “That’s all?”
“That it. A very brief version, but I think it covers all the pertinent basics.”
“Who cooked up this scheme?”
“Emerson. But we all participated. We were all at fault.”
“And how did you feel about it?” he asked.
“Scared…worried…excited…”
“You enjoyed the sex, didn’t you?”
“I enjoy that kind of sex, McGill.”
“And exactly what kind would that be?”
“Well,” she took a deep breath to gather he courage, “long before we took Veronica X—that was what we called her—Emerson and I were dabbling with sadomasochism. I guess it takes little to figure that I’m pretty submissive. I don’t do well trying to control things. I like to be led. And Emerson did lead, even though I think he’s half crazy. He’s also brilliant, maybe the two go hand in hand.”
“So be more specific.”
“Specific?
“About the sex…”
“Yes, about the sex… you don’t have a problem with what I just told you… about the girl?”
“I never said that. But I do want to know more about the sex.”
She shuddered. Her heart was beating so rapidly that she could hardly think. Two, three, four times, she wiped her sweaty palms on her dress. “Well, she, Veronica… was bound and blindfolded for much of the time. Penelope, Kathy Ann and I… we made love to her, prepared her for the guys, I guess, for being fucked, for the rough stuff we all liked. Oral sex, anal…everything.”
“So, you like the rough stuff too?”
“Yes.”
“What does rough mean?”
“It means…” she paused. Her eyes closed again.
But McGill jumped right on that. “Open your eyes, Daphne, and look at me.”
So like Emerson, she thought, but different.
“It means that I like pain sometimes, and bondage, and being forced, being hurt…” she abruptly stopped. Fear continued to collide with her will to speak.
“What else?”
She couldn’t think of anything else, except the bottom line truth she only now realized.
“I think…I think, I wanted to be her… Veronica X.”
“You wanted to be her, or do the things she was made to do?”
“Yes,” her voice rose with certainty, “I wanted to be in her place…in that cellar… bound… beaten… raped.”
“And do you think you deserve to be bound, beaten and raped?”
She didn’t answer.
“You feel guilty for the kidnapping?”
“Yes, very guilty.”
“And you want redemption, so you come to my chapel…”
“It looks like that, doesn’t it? But it’s not holy prayer and meditation that bring me here… but then you know that.”
It was McGill’s turn not to answer. He was deep in thought, while still staring at Daphne’s sorrow-filled face.
“You think I’m unredeemable?” she asked.
“I don’t think redemption is part of any equation. But you do. I think you even want to be punished. And if it’s redemption you need, I can certainly help you find it.”
Daphne stared at him wonderingly.
“But why? Why do you want me? Why on earth…”
He shrugged. His expression was open, accepting, without any of the judgment she feared. “You landed like a lost soul on my doorstep. I figure there must be a reason, and since you’re here and I’m going nowhere, I figure I might as well see this through. Is that a good enough answer?”
“Sure. But the sex? You don’t find that too absurd?”
He laughed, his smile was broad and knowing, the first emotion of any kind he had conveyed since her confession began. “I have an absurd mind. I think most people do. But it would seem that you and I are at least willing to accept that fact.”
Her whole body was trembling. She wanted to scream and cry at the same time. Was he the best thing that had ever happened to her, or the worst? “So, what happens now?” She spoke carefully, still afraid.
“Looks like you’ll pay your penance in the cellar.”
Her eyes shot open wide.
McGill smiled devilishly,
“Yes, there’s a cellar below this altar, a fine one made of stone and dirt. A perfect place for a worthless, sinning penitent to suffer. It will be your home for the next thirty days.”
Her trembling became uncontrollable, she started to cry, and McGill stood up, pulled her by the hair and exited the chapel through a small side door near the altar, which led to the cellar stairs.
***
Thirty days later, Daphne knelt in the chapel as she had before, although this time she was not alone and she was not surreptitiously enacting a ritual masturbation. Her body was naked and exposed, her arms spread wide in humble supplication. Her wrists had been cuffed and attached to chains that were attached to the walls on either side of her. Her head was bowed and her knees spread and throbbing from the hard stone that dug into her skin. Despite her terrific discomfort, she could feel the molten liquid gathering at her crotch as she waited for the next blow from McGill’s lash. He was beating her from behind—as he had before—although she knew this time would be special. Beatings had been a daily diet in the cellar below this sacred space. Only now had she earned the right to be beaten in the chapel above.
All thirty days before had led up to this moment, when Daphne gathered her desires together and focused not just on her redemption for her past sins, but on the eroticism that flowed as the man beat her back with hard, stinging blows.
His technique could be exacting or wild. But today it was very precise, none of the anger that sometimes surfaced and colored their previous sessions in the cellar. Perhaps, he too was working out his demons. She wouldn’t know that, however, until this period of her life was finally over.
Tonight would end the purgatory she had so longed for.
The lash came down across her shoulders. Then it traveled lower to her ass, which now burned with heat. She cried, her voice rising into the steamy air, almost joyous as each significant lashing cut with a beautiful pain against her flesh. It resounded through her body, made her crotch wet with sexual glee… she tripped out, nirvana happening all about her. The pain soon turned orgasmic, one swell of lusty heat built on the next. Then she began to soar, with her brutalized body taking her far away, at the same time paradoxically grounding her to this beautiful earth and the man behind her wielding the heavy leather lash.
She screamed, opening her mouth and venting a cry of exhilaration. “Ohhhhhhhhh, ohhhhhhhhh, ohhhhhh,” she panted. Her face screwed up in torment and she thrashed back and forth. The chains rattled and clanged as her body wrenched hard with each attacking spasm.
From out of the mindless trance, McGill was suddenly close, pulling her to her feet, while the chains still weighted her down. He bent her over, her arms out as if she were flying. He stuffed his thick member into her sex from behind and while he fucked her, he grasped her like a flopping rag doll, until he finished her off. His cries joined her lilting, mewling gasps of climax, until they were about to collapse in an exhausted faint.
The redolent essence of their mingling bodies christened the chapel with a potent incense that would linger in the air for hours afterward. They might even pick up the scent the next day when they returned.
“I’m going to take you home, back to your cottage,” McGill told her, as he quickly unfastened the chains that bound her arms to the wall. Then he turned her inside his embrace. “We’re going to sleep all night together, Daphne. The cellar is over for you; you’re moving on to something new. You’re going to write your books, you’re going to make love to me. You’re going to be happy. That’s going to be your life.”
Daphne stared into his shining eyes; hers were brimming with tears. She figured he must be right. If he said
it would happen, she was certain would.
***
Daphne
Three months later, we got word that Emerson was dead. You know the story, how he was swept off the pier into Lake Michigan. Pygmalian Whore had been released a few months before to rave reviews and some controversy. I didn’t even know he’d been writing it. Of course, it was therapy, even though the story was terribly skewed in some ways and certainly fiction. You would have thought the hoopla surrounding its release would have been enough for him, at least for awhile. But no. That wasn’t like Emerson.
Frankly, I really think he couldn’t handle the thought of Veronica X anymore. And he always wanted a new rush. I can see him now, as if I were there, standing on the pier in the middle of a raging storm, the water cresting over the rock and cement. He felt the rush, the waves, the pitch and roll of the water. He could never be content to settle for the mundane or ordinary. A powerful wave reached out and grabbed his life away. His death was as extraordinary as the way he lived.
Sadie speaking in almost a whisper
He was in love with violence.
Daphne
Violence? You think so? I never thought of our months with the Writers’ Club and Veronica X as violent. For me, the sex was all about seduction.
Sadie
And have you been happy, being married to McGill? Being free of the intensity that was Emerson Gray?
Daphne
McGill is everything that Emerson was not—steady like the Rock of Gibraltar, even-tempered, his footing on solid earth, and he hasn’t needed the exploration of great intellectual concepts. He lives them and that’s all he needs. He is a man to grow old with, of that I’m certain.
Sadie
And you continue to reprise the SM sex?
Daphne
Never in the cellar. But, yes, I still kneel at that old altar with my wrists chained. Sometimes I feel my need to be punished well up inside me—I don’t think it’s about Veronica X anymore, it’s just who I am, the woman I love being. I’m a much freer woman, but the essence of my desire is a river that runs deep in my soul and I wouldn’t for anything separate myself from my truest needs.
The Abduction of Veronica X Page 16