by Radclyffe
“I’m Chris. We met here a few months ago.”
“Hi.” Kyle smiled slightly. “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you at first. How are you?”
“Okay.” Chris shrugged and regarded Kyle uncertainly. “Listen, you’re a friend of Dane’s, aren’t you?”
“I know her.”
Chris looked around and then lowered her voice unnecessarily in the noisy room. “Some of us were wondering, well...There are always stories, and most of us never believe them. But, still, you never know...sometimes when you go home with a stranger...” She looked at Kyle expectantly.
Fear burgeoned in Kyle’s churning stomach. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Some people heard...there’s been talk.” Chris flushed. “We heard there was a bad scene. That Dane got mixed up with a heavy top, that there was...trouble. The rest of us, we worry, you know? No one knows who the top is.”
“I don’t know either.” Kyle tried to quiet her racing thoughts. What does trouble mean? What if she’s hurt? God, how will I find her?
“Okay, well, if you hear anything...” Chris shrugged and started to turn away.
“Wait.” Kyle grasped her arm urgently. “Do you know a couple—Anne and Caroline—friends of Dane’s?”
Chris frowned. “I’ve seen them in here.”
“Do you know where they live?” Kyle’s heart pounded.
“I don’t know them that well, but someone here’s bound to know. Wait a minute—I’ll ask around.”
Kyle paced by the door until Chris returned with an address and directions.
“Thanks.”
She didn’t hear a reply—she was already running toward her bike.
*
Caroline tried to ignore the persistent ringing of the doorbell. She sat at the kitchen table in a worn sweater and faded jeans, knowing that she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.
“Hon,” Anne asked tentatively as she poured more coffee, “shouldn’t I answer that?”
“I guess,” Caroline answered. She looked over at Anne and realized that her lover was as exhausted as she. “Never mind, babe, I’ll get it.”
When she opened the door, Kyle quickly stepped inside and then stopped abruptly, instantly aware of Caroline’s state. “Sorry. Is Dane here?”
“Yes.” Caroline’s voice was as colorless as her face. “You can’t see her.”
“Is she all right?”
“Kyle—”
“I have to see her.”
Sighing, Caroline regarded Kyle for a long, weary moment. “Come with me.”
Kyle followed through the house, pausing at the kitchen door as Caroline spoke to Anne. Kyle couldn’t hear the conversation, but she saw Anne cast a weary, worried glance in her direction.
“It’s all right,” Caroline said to Kyle, motioning her in. “Sit down.”
“Coffee?” Anne asked.
Kyle shook her head, her gaze riveted on Caroline, who leaned heavily against the nearby counter. “Where is she?”
“She’s sedated. She won’t know you’re here.”
Kyle shook her head. Fear twisted in her guts. “I don’t care, I need to see her.”
“Caroline, I don’t think—” Anne objected.
“Please,” Kyle whispered.
Anne sighed.
Caroline continued to look at Kyle. “It’s not pretty. Are you really sure you want to?”
“I’m sure,” Kyle said, needing to know.
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’m all right,” Kyle answered tightly. “Just tell me where.”
Caroline shook her head. “I’ll come with you.”
She led Kyle down a hallway to a room in the rear of the house. No light emerged from the partially open door.
“Just a minute,” Caroline said, motioning for Kyle to wait at the threshold. She entered and lit a small lamp in the far corner, leaving most of the room, including the bed, in shadow. After calling softly for Kyle, she slipped tiredly into a chair in the darkness along the wall.
Kyle closed her eyes for one brief instant, then resolutely pushed the door all the way open and approached the bed. Hands clenched into fists at her sides, she made no sound and merely stood looking down at Dane for a long time. When her legs began to shake, she sank slowly down to the floor beside the bed and pushed her back up against the wall for support. Staring straight ahead, she reached up and rested her fingers in the golden hair framing Dane’s face. Then she closed her eyes and gently let the strands fall through her fingers. Picturing Dane’s satin-soft skin in the firelight—how it glowed with perspiration as they made love—she saw the sharply etched muscles in Dane’s back as she rose above Kyle in ecstasy. Tracing the fine lines in Dane’s face, Kyle remembered how she looked just before orgasm. Oh Dane. Why?
She sat still for a long time, listening to Dane’s quiet breathing. When she finally felt the strength return to her limbs and anger flooded her heart, adding its own brand of strength, she stood. Then, eyes clear and heart steeled, she stared down again at Dane, burning the image into her soul.
Dane lay on her stomach, her face on the pillow, her arms curved upward around it as if in an embrace. A thin white sheet covered her to just above her buttocks, leaving her back exposed. A raw, open wound extended from the base of her spine to the top of her shoulders. Kyle was able to see the pattern of crosshatches from what must have been a thick whip, even though the individual lash marks had blended into one continuous abrasion. Mercifully, the bleeding had stopped, leaving behind patches of crusted coagulation among islands of swollen flesh. The sinewy planes of Dane’s perfect body were obscured by fluid pooled in the layers of injured tissue.
Kyle rested her fingers one last time on Dane’s head, then turned abruptly and walked from the room. She found Anne still in the kitchen and regarded her with eyes as cold as a winter sky. “Do you have any scotch?”
“I think so.” Anne rose. “I’ll look.”
“Thanks.” Kyle sat back down at the table and lit a cigarette, turning the small gold lighter aimlessly between her fingers.
A moment later, Caroline switched off the hall light behind her and sagged into a chair across from Kyle, pushing her graying hair out of her eyes.
“Are you sure you can take care of her?” Kyle asked tonelessly.
Caroline nodded. “I have before. Never like this, but I can manage.”
Kyle took the scotch from Anne and swallowed what was in the glass. She closed her eyes for a second. “Who did this to her?” Her voice was harsh, her pain apparent. I’m going to find her. I’m going to kill her.
“Dane did it, Kyle.” Caroline’s eyes when she regarded Kyle were bright with sympathy. “I don’t know whose hand held the whip. She’s never told me. But she sought it; she allowed it.”
“She’s done this before?” Kyle swallowed, unable to resolve the disparate images of Dane laughing and whole with the broken woman lying unconscious in the other room. “I never saw a scar. Her body, it’s...” Kyle’s voice broke. “Her body is perfect.”
“It’s never been like this before.” Caroline raked fingers through her hair. “She’s always known when to stop. Something must have happened.” She glanced uneasily at Kyle and Anne. “There’s a track mark on her arm.”
“Drugs?” Kyle wanted to scream or curse or break something, but she forced back the fury and despair. She had to understand. “Jesus. Is that what’s at the bottom of this?”
“No. She’s been clean for close to three years. Before that, with Brad—oh God, if you knew how hard Dane has struggled, how far she has come.”
“Don’t you think I want to know?” Kyle’s voice broke and so did her thin hold on composure. Tears filled her eyes as she clutched the edge of the table with white-knuckled hands. “I have to know. We’ve made love, and sometimes she’s let me close. But then before I know it—she’s...gone. I can’t even hold her now.” She closed her eyes then, the tears she had held back for hours burni
ng hot trails down her cheeks. She saw Dane again in her mind and sobbed. “She’s lying in there, her body battered and broken. What must her heart be like? Don’t you realize I have to know what’s happening to her? Oh God, Caroline. Please help me.”
“It’s okay,” Caroline lied, wrapping her arms around Kyle’s shoulders and rocking her. “Come on. We’ll go into the den and talk.”
*
Caroline spoke softly, her words taking Kyle back in time. “Dane met Brad—oh, I guess seven or eight years ago, because of the dogs. Dane had been around show dogs since she was a kid because her family had been into it. Brad owned a small kennel, and Dane started working there part-time when she was still in school. That was about the time she started exploring power, too. Back then she was pretty much alone in her interests. It seems like the guys have always been more comfortable with sex play and power roles than women have. But that didn’t stop Dane—she found the places to go, met like-minded women. She did a lot of experimenting but never got into anything serious until Brad.”
“They were lovers,” Kyle said dully, thinking how love and hate were such passionate and often interchangeable emotions.
“Mmm, lovers? I guess. Sex partners is more like it, but even that didn’t happen until a few years ago,” Caroline mused. “I was away finishing up grad school when Dane first met Brad, so I got a lot of it secondhand.”
Noting Kyle’s questioning look, Caroline shrugged. “English literature. I don’t miss it a bit.” She held up the scotch bottle she’d brought in with her, but Kyle declined with a shake of her head.
“I want to hear this straight.” I want to feel this, however much it hurts. Is that what Dane wanted? To hurt, to feel that terrible pain. God, why? Kyle rubbed her aching forehead. “Christ, I want this not to be true. How could she...” She glanced at Caroline ruefully. “Sorry.”
Caroline waved the apology away. “Anyhow, once I got back to town, Dane and I would get together every few weeks, and she would talk to me about what she was into—I have to admit I was pretty opposed to it all at first. I felt the way many women did—do, I guess—that one of the best things about being a lesbian is that there are no more gender-based role designations, divisions, or limitations. No more dominance and subordination. Any sort of polarization seemed to threaten that freedom. We argued—I always took the intellectual point of view while Dane responded from the gut.”
Caroline laughed sadly and looked past Kyle to some place beyond the small, cozy, book-filled room in which they sat side by side on a sofa. “That’s always been one of the big differences between Dane and me. I can keep most things at a distance, and I’m pretty good at hiding behind my own rationalizations. Dane just lets everything in and tries to take it all. She said she could feel something inside of her that wanted to get out, some place that could only be touched by a certain kind of physical experience. She thought that BDSM would do that for her. Her ideas weren’t very defined in the beginning, but talking with her made me look at my own feelings a little differently, made me acknowledge my own interest in the possibilities inherent in the nexus of sex and power.”
Kyle leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, but she was seeing herself curled up in front of the fire, totally captured from the first instant by that potent image of one woman kneeling before another. “I understand that—what she was trying to find in herself through that kind of interaction. But this...” She turned wounded eyes to Caroline. “This...how did she get to this?”
“The first few years, she was into what people typically think of when they imagine S/M—straight dominant and submissive roles, not much beyond limited sexual encounters. Then around five years ago she became involved with Brad.” Caroline grimaced. “I hate that woman now, and I didn’t like her much then. She was—well, she wasn’t much different than she is now. She uses people. People to her are just playthings for her amusement. I can’t figure her out, and I’m not sure I really want to, but I don’t think she feels—or cares about—anything. Sadomasochism was a perfect outlet for her. She could play any game she designed, be completely in control. And Dane became her pawn. Do you happen to have a cigarette?” Caroline paused and drew a shaky breath. “This is harder than I realized it would be.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Kyle reached for the jacket she had tossed over a nearby chair, found her cigarettes, and handed one to Caroline.
“I wouldn’t ordinarily discuss Dane’s past—even Anne doesn’t know it all.” Caroline shrugged. “But something’s got to be done about Dane, and I can see that you care. And I know that you touched her.”
No, you’re wrong. She never let me that close.
Caroline drew on the cigarette and coughed. “Just don’t tell Anne about this. She’ll kill me. I quit two years ago.” She took one more drag and absently dropped the butt into a glass on the coffee table. “Well, Dane and Brad got into a very heavy relationship. Brad always topped, of course—it’s a matter of pride for her that no one’s ever topped her. I think the sex was pretty rough—Dane would never tell me much.” She laughed grimly. “As often as I tried to get the details. But this was more than sex play. Brad controlled Dane’s life—their whole relationship was very role directed. Brad delighted in having Dane at her total command—her own personal toy. She also had ways of keeping Dane under her thumb. Brad had a side business—selling drugs. She made a big point of being clean herself, but she’d sell anything to anyone. She liked to keep Dane high because it made her even more compliant. And of course the addiction strengthened Brad’s hold on her. In their last few months together, Dane was using regularly, and Brad kept her supplied.”
“Fuck.” Abruptly, Kyle pushed up from the sofa and started to pace. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I just don’t understand it. How could Dane do that to herself? How could she let someone do that to her? It’s—sick. Maybe we’re all sick.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you? You don’t have to be into power to do drugs, and you don’t need drugs to like sex play, either.” Caroline was too tired to be offended, and she knew that Kyle was hurting. “There are plenty of people who like BDSM in bed, and who conduct their daily lives just like everyone else. Sometimes fucked up, sometimes not. Dane was addicted—to the drugs, yes, but to Brad or what Brad made her feel, too. Why? I don’t know. Who knows why we use alcohol or drugs or sex or work or some other addiction to feel good, or better, or just to get through the day.” She stood, too, and eased her cramped shoulders. Sitting on the floor by Dane’s bedside for hours had not been kind to her body. “Certainly Dane has been self-destructive. We all have that capacity—maybe some people more than others. I’d never call Dane weak, but sometimes when she just can’t seem to bear her own feelings, she falls back into old patterns. I know she’s trying to block some kind of emotional pain when she does this to herself. She’s trading emotional pain for a physical pain she can live with, and most of the time she’s been careful. Until this time.”
Kyle ached just to imagine what Dane must have suffered. Voice hoarse, she said, “Go on.”
“After a while, Brad began to get tired of her game with Dane. It had gotten too easy, and Brad was bored.” Caroline took a deep breath and studied Kyle carefully. “It’s important that you understand that this is not something Dane would ever tell you herself. She wouldn’t want you to know this. In order to express our power needs, physically or emotionally, there has to be an understanding between two people. Power is given, not assumed, and it’s anything but static. There can be no top without the consent, the belief and trust in her, by the bottom. If the top doesn’t feel that the bottom believes in her dominance—in her power—then there can be none. It’s a fluctuating balance which is created by the two people who have agreed to participate. That’s why the roles aren’t rigid. Switching is easy, if consent is mutual. Dane would feel that this knowledge of her would make her weak—powerless—in your eyes. She would feel that you could never believe in her, that you could
never grant her the power that she needs to express, if you knew the truth. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Kyle said slowly. “The very first time with Dane I knew that if I wasn’t a part of what was happening, with her, that it couldn’t happen. But there’s more to her than just her sexuality. She’s honest and tender and, sometimes,” she swallowed around the sudden constriction in her throat, “so vulnerable. I care about her for a hell of a lot more reasons than just sex.”
“I believe you,” Caroline stated. She touched Kyle’s arm sympathetically as the two of them sat down again. “But you’ve got to remember that Dane needs to feel a certain way, especially with a lover. She may not always want to be actively involved in a power role, but she’s got to believe she can if she needs to. It’s part of who she is—and most importantly, it’s who she wants to be.”
“Tell me the rest,” Kyle said quietly.
“Brad took Dane to Encounters. It’s a place—”
“I’ve been there.”
“Dane was pretty drugged up, and things had been going badly with Brad for a long time. I think Dane was desperate to keep from losing Brad—I don’t know if she feared losing her drug connection or her connection to herself. At any rate, Brad decided that Dane needed to be punished. She didn’t really need a reason. Encounters was the perfect showplace for Brad. It provided her with all the entertainment she required. It was crowded; people were ready for a scene. Everyone was interested in Brad and Dane. They were such an intriguing couple.” Caroline’s voice was thick with bitterness and old hurts. She shivered.
“So, Brad strung her up naked on the center stage. She did it herself. No assistants. Chains, handcuffs, neck collar, the whole thing. She wanted to display her power, and she did. She used a thin cat on Dane, one that inflicts a lot of pain but leaves very little mark. Dane wanted to please her, and I guess the drugs made it easier for Dane to take a lot of punishment. Brad beat her to her knees, and then she made her crawl. She told Dane she was done with her, that Dane wasn’t woman enough for her, that Dane couldn’t take it. Dane pleaded with her, humiliated herself in front of everyone. And Brad walked out. I don’t know who took Dane home, but someone finally had the sense to call me.”