by Logan Fox
Pearl stuck a finger out of her bundle of blankets and pointed at Gia.
“If she can do it, so can I.”
The left side of Seth’s mouth curled into a sardonic smile.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pearl hissed.
Gia stirred against Seth, and the man shot Pearl a glare. She drew away a little, lifting her shoulders in apology.
“Gia’s had practice,” Seth said. He stroked the flesh between her eyebrows, bringing a soft murmur from the girl. “She’s been doing this for a few months already.”
“A few months? What happened to thirty days?” Pearl’s skin began to crawl. Greg would have noticed if that very obvious part of the contract hadn’t been correct, right? He would have seen if it had said 365 days instead of 30… he would have, wouldn’t he? Good God, she was relying on a stoner as her legal counsel. She was so screwed.
“They don’t make the contracts that long anymore.” Seth shrugged. “Most girls don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. Then they want to leave and they can’t, so they get bratty and unpleasant. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
Pearl shivered as another breeze maneuvered through the blanket’s folds. “How long are we staying out here?”
“Gia likes to get about half an hour’s sleep out here before we go back in.”
Pearl shuddered. Nights were obviously no joking matter out here.
“Where are we?”
“Vermont.”
“Vermont?” A tiny worm of fear began burrowing through her stomach, leaving behind cold, empty chambers. “I didn’t know it was so far.”
“You know you’re safe here, right?”
Pearl started as Seth’s hand brushed against her cheek. She twisted to look at him, her eyebrows drawing together. His black eyes, tinged midnight blue by the dying day, drew words from her she hadn’t known were there.
“Am I? Really? What if one of your guests decides he wants to choke me? Or cut me? What if I decide halfway through one of your fucked-up sessions that I changed my mind? Huh?” She cocked her head at him. “Am I still going to be safe, then?” She spat the word at him and sat back, trembling slightly in her blankets, waiting for his retort.
None came. He watched her for a few minutes before sliding Gia off his lap. He turned away from Pearl, spending a few minutes arranging Gia’s blankets.
When he turned back to Pearl, her stomach fluttered.
“Come here,” Seth said, flicking his fingers at her.
“What? No.” Pearl shimmied away from him.
Seth’s hands dropped. He reached out with his thumb, brushing it against Pearl’s blanketed thigh.
“Want to know why you did what you did?” He wasn’t looking at her — his eyes were fixed on the motion of his thumb.
Pearl wanted to move her leg away, but she’d been frozen in place by his voice.
“You accepted what was happening. Acceptance lets you surrender. And, when you surrender, you lose all your inhibitions.”
Suddenly, Seth didn’t sound like a slab of meat anymore, like a biker who’d lost his way and had accidentally stumbled on the Fox Pit in search of motor oil. He sounded like a guru of all things sensual. A tremble deep inside Pearl made her blush. He still wasn’t looking up at her, but she wanted him to. She wanted those black eyes to latch onto her mouth, her throat, her breasts.
“But when that happens—” Seth looked up at her.
Pearl shrank back from the warning in his eyes.
“You expose emotions and memories that you kept locked up, sometimes for years. They all come out. Especially when you work with rope. That complete submission will take you and turn you inside out. And it’s never a good feeling. You won’t know when it happens because you’ll be so deep in subspace you won’t know your own name, but when you come out… when you’re done and you’ve been turned the right way out again…”
Seth grabbed her shoulder and tugged her against him. Pearl, still trying to metabolize his words, didn’t resist. He pressed her head against his chest — it was firm and warm, his beard soft and thick — and held her there.
“You can’t always put those memories back, Pearl.” His voice, an inch from her ear, sent cold thrills tumbling down her spine. “So it helps to talk about it. It helps to have someone to hold you and to tell you everything’s going to be okay. That what you did out there wasn’t shameful or disgusting. That it was beautiful.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “That you’re beautiful. That you’re loved.”
He hugged her hard.
Pressure built behind Pearl’s eyes. She squeezed them shut, trying to will that ten-foot high wall of tears back.
She failed.
Seth held her while she released a torrent of tears and shame and confusion. Drained — mentally and physically — she fell into a short, deep sleep against his shoulder. Seth woke her with a gentle shake. It was full night, the fairy lights serving less as illumination and more as definition for the edges of the labyrinth’s walls. Seth had already woken Gia; she stood at the exit of the labyrinth, face tipped up to the stars as she waited.
“Ready?”
Pearl nodded at Seth and he went over to Gia, wrapping his arm around the girl’s shoulders. He led them through the glittering twists and turns of the maze until they emerged on the path that led back to the villa.
The Fox Pit was stunning at night: dramatic lighting painted the walls in vivid orange, highlighting the villa’s organic, flowing architecture.
“Clean yourself up before you get into bed,” Seth murmured to Pearl when they descended the last step into the fox den. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Seth turned from her and went to one of the closed doors leading off the den.
“Opal? It’s time, kitten.”
There was a mumbled protest from behind the door.
“Don’t make me come in there. It’s been a long fucking day.”
A pause, and then mumbled assent.
Pearl followed Gia into their room to collect a fresh batch of clothes. Gia sighed loudly and collapsed on her bed, blanket still wrapped around her shoulder.
“Shower and PJs, Gia,” Seth called out from the den.
The girl groaned and dragged herself off the bed. Pearl threw open her cupboard and found pairs of soft, silken pajamas stacked neatly on one of the shelves. There was a choice of full-length pants, shorts, or a nightie, but all were made from the same golden satin.
As she left the room, Gia was still burrowing through her cupboard looking for what Pearl could only assume was a pair of pajamas. Surprisingly, Gia’s side of the room had been tidied. Probably by a maid while they’d been gone: she doubted Morgan or Opal would have ventured inside the room.
Seth was nowhere in sight when she came into the den, but Opal’s door was ajar.
Pearl let herself into the bathroom. She’d just stripped down and begun experimenting with the shower settings when she heard the door open behind her. Gia slipped in, pajamas clutched in her hand, and disappeared into one of the toilet stalls without a word or a glance in Pearl’s direction.
Pearl shrugged and began to shower.
Gia joined her as she was about to step out. For an instant, their eyes locked.
“Did you like it?” Gia asked, expression unreadable, head cocked.
Pearl stiffened, her eyes widening in surprise. “What? I—”
“No?” Gia shrugged. “Sure looked like you did.”
“I… guess?” Pearl hurriedly turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel. “It’s all so new—”
“Doesn’t matter if you do or don’t,” Gia went on as if Pearl hadn’t even spoken. “Fake it till you make it, right? Eventually, you can’t tell the difference.”
Pearl gave her a nod, but the girl was intent on shampooing her hair and didn’t look over at Pearl again. Throwing on her clothes, Pearl left the bathroom
and almost walked into Seth.
“Was just about to check up on you.”
Pearl fluffed up her hair with a dry patch of towel. “Because I’ve suddenly become incapable of showering by myself?”
Seth’s eyes flinched at this, but he quickly smoothed his expression.
“Aftercare is vital,” he said. “It’s what makes this different from a brothel. I need to know that you’re fine. If you need to talk—”
“I need to sleep,” Pearl cut in. “And maybe some cocoa.”
He gave her a slow nod. “I’ll make you some.”
“I can make it—”
“I will make you some,” Seth repeated, enunciating every word.
“Fine.” Pearl gave him a single-shoulder shrug. Her shoulders slumped. “Thanks.”
“Don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to do it.”
She watched him move into the tiny kitchenette, his bulk crowding the meager space. Then she went to her room and combed out her hair, sliding into bed as Seth came back with three steaming mugs. Gia followed close behind, her delicate, foxy face set with a faint scowl.
Seth set one of the cups down on Pearl’s bedside table and disappeared behind the partition. She could see his silhouette setting down the two other cups on Gia’s nightstand.
“Why don’t you go sit with her?” Gia said, her voice brusque.
“I’m sitting with you,” Seth replied evenly.
Gia’s silhouette put her hands on her hips. “I don’t want you here. I’m tired.”
“Gia, don’t—”
“Get,” Gia stuck out an arm in Pearl’s direction.
Seth sighed and took his mug from the nightstand, reappearing from behind the screen. He gave Pearl an exasperated shrug before walking closer. Pearl tugged her duvet over her legs — she’d opted for the full length sleeping gear tonight — and looked up at him with wide eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“Can I sit?”
“Sure. Why not?” She took up her mug and sipped at it as Seth sank down on the edge of her bed.
He brushed a palm over his beard with a sigh and collected his mug from the nightstand. Slurping noisily at the cocoa, he kept giving her scant glances until she had to fill the silence.
“This is nice,” Pearl murmured.
“It is,” Seth agreed. “Sharing space with someone after something so—”
“I meant the cocoa,” Pearl cut in, a blush already blazing toward her cheeks. “It’s really good.”
“Oh, thanks.” Seth shrugged. “Practice, I guess.”
They drank the rest of their cocoa in silence while Gia fussed around in her bed and made excessively loud sighing noises. After a few minutes, Seth rose and gave Pearl a reluctant smile.
“You good, kitten?”
“I guess,” Pearl said.
“Then goodnight. And sweet dreams.”
She was reaching over to put her empty cocoa mug on her nightstand when Seth caught her wrist. Pearl tugged at him, surprised at the unexpected touch, but he simply drew her closer.
He planted a kiss on the top of her head and ran a hand down her face, gripping her chin.
For a crazy, heart-skipping moment, she thought he would kiss her.
“You did good.”
He left with her still holding her mug in thin air, and the beginning of a protest budding in her throat. When her eyes moved over the partition again, she saw Gia was sitting bolt upright.
Pearl could feel the girl’s scowl piercing her through the thin screen.
11
Make Do, Baby Girl
Pearl woke with the whisper of a dream still touching her mind. She’d been tangled in a web of red rope, naked but for her ears and tail. Those had been real; no longer fixtures so easily removed. And she’d struggled and fought those ropes, succeeding only in drawing them tighter. Footsteps had approached her, their owner hidden in gloom. Then more and more. Three, four, five people walking toward her — slowly and dreadfully — but she’d woken up before any of them had stepped into the circle of light where her web had been spun.
Where she’d been trapped.
The dream had probably been brought on by the fact that she’d become twisted in her sheets and pajamas; pajamas that she’d discarded in her sleep — probably because they were strangling her.
It didn’t have anything to do with the realization that, today, she could be strung up in a web of her own. A real-life, knotted, inescapable web. Not, that is, unless her wolf allowed it. Her chest grew tight at the thought and she had to force a dry swallow.
It took her a few seconds to extricate herself from her blankets. She wound the beige sheet around her in lieu of a robe and headed for the bathroom, urgently needing to pee. And she needed to wash her face and try to scrub thought back into her mind.
Like yesterday, coffee wafted through the slightly ajar bedroom door. Unlike yesterday, all she could hear was murmured conversation. No light-hearted giggles.
Did these girls never sleep?
Or was no one bothering to wake her up?
Three foxes — Gia, Morgan, and Ivy — looked up when she stepped out of the room. Perhaps Opal also liked to sleep in.
No one said anything as Pearl slipped past them to the bathroom. She could feel their eyes on her and forced herself not to look when she closed the door behind her. Sighing, Pearl dropped her clothes to the floor and took a shaky step forward.
Then the tears came.
Pearl collapsed to her knees, shoulders heaving under an onslaught of regret and humiliation as vast as the Indian Ocean. She tried to keep her sobs tamped down by slapping both hands over her mouth, but one of them must have heard.
There came a soft knock on the door.
Pearl stuck her hand behind her, trying to wave away whoever had stepped into the bathroom. For a moment, she thought the gesture had been understood and the person had left.
But then a pair of warm, strong arms wrapped around her and lifted her. Pearl struggled briefly, trying to escape Seth’s embrace, but he cradled her to his chest without seeming to notice her defiance.
“It’s the meds, kitten,” Seth crooned into her ear. “Just let it out and you’ll feel better.”
Pearl struggled again and, this time, she managed to jab an elbow into Seth’s stomach. Perhaps catching him unaware — or perhaps realizing comfort was the last thing she wanted — Seth released her. She found her feet, took a few tottering steps away from him, and spun around.
“Meds?” Pearl yelled, stabbing a finger toward Seth. “You think this—” she flashed open her fingers beside her face “—is because of the fucking meds?”
Seth crossed his arms. He wore a short-sleeved black shirt today. Maori-style tattoos formed intricate, interlocking patterns over the bulging muscles of his forearms. Pearl let out a snorting laugh, dragging the back of her hand over her streaming nose.
“You don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that I’ve signed over my body to be used as some kind of circus attraction? Huh? That doesn’t figure into your calculations anywhere?”
Seth remained stolid and quiet.
“You don’t think that maybe—” she sniffed away a new wave of tears as her voice began breaking “—just maybe, it’s because I realized that this was the biggest mistake of my fucking life? Huh?” That last was no more than a whisper. Pearl’s mouth contorted around another sob, and Seth took a step forward that closed the distance between them.
He caught her up, trapping her against his expanse of chest. Holding her tight despite her muffled protests, Seth ran his hands over her back. He tugged at the sheet she’d loosely tucked in under her armpits, letting it fall to the floor.
And she was too drained to fight him.
So what if he wanted to fuck her? This was why she was here, wasn’t it? So what if he got off on her pain and her suffering? Maybe that was the only thing that got him hard. Maybe he’d been molested as a kid. Maybe his whole psyche was a train wreck
of painful memories and confused notions about love and sex and how the two met in relation to each other.
Her mind was still rambling nonsense thoughts when Seth manhandled her into the shower and turned on the overhead jets. She gasped as cold water stung her naked body.
Without losing his grip on her, Seth maneuvered himself out of his shirt and jeans. He held her tight as the cold water froze her weak protests and brought goose bumps out over her skin. She quivered, hugging herself as the torrent of glacial water sluiced over her skin.
Seth gently tugged off her panties, lifting her leg as if she was a racehorse to collect the filmy piece of underwear and toss it out of the shower. Pearl clung to him for the heat his body provided, her teeth beginning to chatter — not entirely from the cold, but as an aftermath from her violent tears. After a few seconds of being pounded by unrelenting cold, Seth switched the temperature to lukewarm, and then just hot enough to scald.
Pearl gasped. She fumbled until she could wrap her arms around him, now trying to shield her body from the painful cascade of water scorching her skin.
Seth’s fingers glided into her hair and began massaging her scalp. The scent of vanilla and berries filled the air. He shampooed her hair, constantly changing the setting of the shower from hot to cold just as she acclimatized to the temperature. When he’d conditioned her hair, he lathered an herbal body wash over her shoulders and arms. She sensed him hesitating before he ran his hands down her waist and over her tummy. He was avoiding her bikini region, of course: as if she had any dignity left at this point. Pearl caught some of the lather as it slid down her shoulder and worked it over her breasts, keeping her eyes downcast.
Like another shower could wash away her shame.
Tears still worked their way down her cheeks, invisible in the streaming water, but the torrent had slowed to a trickle.
“It gets better,” Seth whispered down to her. “I promise.”
Pearl didn’t respond. Her eyes were fixed on his underwear — he wore slate-gray briefs that perfectly encompassed the bulge of his dick.