by Sykes, Julia
“Your name is Lydia Chase,” he said firmly. “You were reported missing on June 10, 2012. We’ve contacted your family to let them know you’re alive. They’ve missed you, Lydia. You need to go back home to them.” His last statements were gentler, but they still had the ring of command to them.
Lydia Chase. Lydia Chase.
The name was so familiar and yet so heinous.
No. I wasn’t Lydia Chase. I was Lydia, Master’s slave. Lydia Chase was dead.
“There’s someone here to see you, Lydia,” Clayton continued, as though he was oblivious to the agony that his calmly-spoken words were wreaking on my entire being
I wanted so desperately to protest. But Master had ordered me to remain silent and still.
I clung to his commands, immersing myself in his will. If I was good for him, if I followed his orders perfectly, then he would make all of this go away. Clayton would leave, and Master would hold me again.
Clayton opened the door to admit the man who had been waiting in the hallway. I jerked my eyes away, unwilling to face him. I fixed my gaze on Master, silently pleading with him to make all of the awfulness disappear.
“This is Tucker Chase,” Clayton introduced the man to Master. “Lydia’s husband.”
Master sucked in a breath, his eyes widening in shock as he broke from my gaze to stare at the man. “Her husband.” His voice was awash with horror as repeated Clayton’s words.
I couldn’t help it; I defied Master’s commands. My fingers shook as they reached for him imploringly. “Master. Please…” My hoarse whisper trailed off when he turned his stunning eyes back on me. They sliced into me, the cruel steel sinking through my flesh to pierce my soul.
“I’m not your Master.”
All of the air was sucked from my lungs, and a horrible gagging sound issued from my throat.
Breathe. Don’t shake your head. Don’t panic.
I would be good. Master didn’t mean that. If I was just good enough, he would take back his impossible words.
“Lydia,” the horribly familiar voice said weakly. “Baby, it’s me. It’s Tuck.”
My gaze was drawn to him inexorably; he was a gory accident I just couldn’t help but study. Only, when I saw him, I realized that the bloody mess was me. I was the tortured remnants of the woman he loved. The broken remnants of Lydia Chase.
Chapter 16
Lydia Chase
His sweet blue eyes were wide behind his black half-rimmed, rectangular glasses, and his mop of curly brown hair was just as untidy as ever. He looked exactly as I remembered, and yet not. The lines of his face were sharper, somehow, and faint wrinkles creased his forehead.
The face that had once elicited such joy now held nothing for me but horror. The memories I had kept at bay for so long surged forth, erupting from a place deep inside of my mind with the destructive force of a volcano. The contented Lydia who was Master’s slave was charred by the heat of it, her mouth filling with burning, choking ash.
Lydia Chase had a life. She had a spirit of her own that wasn’t simply an extension of a Master’s will. She hadn’t been as beautifully, blissfully happy as Master’s slave was, but the burdens of a complex life rich with wants and dreams and petty arguments held their own beauty.
And Lydia Chase’s stomach rebelled at the sudden, vicious knowledge of what had happened to her, at what she had been reduced to.
I forced myself up onto my feet, stumbling in my haste to reach the bathroom. I flung myself over the toilet just in time to heave up the contents of my stomach. My eyes fell on my hands where they were braced on the toilet seat before me, and the sight of the scars that ringed them made me retch again. Convulsive dry heaves wracked my body, and my vision blurred with tears.
“Lydia.” It wasn’t the deep, commanding voice that I craved to hear. Tucker’s hand gently touched my shoulder, and I cringed away from him with a panicked shriek. No man had touched me but Master since I had been rescued.
The realization of the depth of my dependence on him only heightened my distress. Even as I was horrified by memories of my slavish behavior, I still craved for him to hold me and tell me that everything was okay, that I had been good.
My fingers tangled in my hair as I clutched my hands to both sides of my head, desperate to crush the cruelly unrelenting memories from my skull. Everything hurt so much: the knowledge of what that I had lost; the recollections of my torture; the image of kneeling meekly at that Bastard’s feet that was burned into my brain.
But most agonizing of all was Master’s rejection. And the sick, twisted nature of that internal torment held its own pain. Lydia Chase had longed for a Master, but she never would have wanted to be a slave, to live to serve the whims of a man.
I never would have wanted that.
But then why did the prospect of leaving him cause my soul to scream?
“Lydia. Baby…” Tucker’s voice trailed off, at a loss.
I was suddenly gripped by a desperate need to escape the place where I had been contented to surrender all of myself in return for simple human kindness. That Bastard had brought me so low that one gentle touch of Master’s hand had earned my utter infatuation and unwavering devotion.
Wrong. Everything was so disgustingly wrong.
Angrily, I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes to staunch the flood of my tears. My vision cleared, and I turned my gaze on Tucker. He stood several feet away from me, his arm half-outstretched in a desire to touch me, to comfort me. The gold band that encircled his left ring finger glinted in the light. His expression was contorted with horror and longing.
“Tucker.” His name was a ragged whisper on my lips. A watery smile split his features, and tears slipped from his eyes.
“God, Lydia,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t believe it’s you. I thought…” His throat tightened, cutting off his words.
I just stared up at him as numbness began to claim me. I wasn’t shutting down as I had when Master had forced me to acknowledge Lydia, but my mind couldn’t bear to process anything further.
As Lydia Chase so often did – no, as I so often did – I put a pin in it, setting my problems aside until I could face them later. This was of much greater magnitude than what I usually tucked away for later examination, but the old coping mechanism was there, readily available to me.
It occurred to me that this tendency was what had kept me going for so long; this was what had kept me from shattering completely. I had set Lydia Chase aside. Rather than allowing her to be destroyed, I had tucked her away, burying her so deeply that she couldn’t trouble me until I was ready to deal with her.
I still wasn’t ready to deal with her. I wasn’t ready to deal with what had happened to me.
But I also couldn’t bear to keep living the half-life I had known under Master’s care.
“I want to go home, Tuck,” I said wearily.
He just nodded, still incapable of speech. He approached me slowly, cautiously, before offering a hand to help me up. I bit my lip, hesitating.
I shook my head sharply. This was Tucker. I had never known anyone more non-threatening in my entire life. Still, my hand trembled slightly as I closed my fingers around his. As soon as he had pulled me to my feet, I jerked free of his hold. His face fell slightly, but he said nothing as he carefully put a few inches of distance between us.
Steeling myself, I stepped out of the bathroom. I stared resolutely at a spot just above Clayton’s shoulder. Despite my disgust with my enslavement, I knew Master’s silver eyes would break me if I dared to so much as glance at him. As it was, his potent aura threatened to wrap around me and drive me to my knees. I stumbled slightly as I collided with the force of it, but I gritted my teeth and quickly righted myself.
“Lydia wants to come home with me,” Tucker told Clayton.
The words elicited a low sound of disapproval from Master, but he quickly stifled it. I couldn’t help shuddering as the familiar rumble washed over and through me, and I wasn’t sure if my
reaction was a result of lust or disquiet. The small flare of heat between my legs told me it was the former.
God, my responses to him were so ingrained. It was sick. It was wrong. I had to get away from him before I threw myself at his feet and begged him to keep me.
“Okay,” Clayton said with his usual calmness. “We’ve got you booked on a flight back to Chicago in two hours. I’ll escort you to JFK, and then officers from CPD will meet you at O’Hare Airport. Lydia will have a twenty-four/seven protective detail until we track down the guy who abducted her. Tomorrow morning, she’ll meet with Katherine Byrd, one of our agents in the Chicago Division, for an official debriefing. Byrd will refer her to a psychiatrist to help her work through what’s happened to her.”
I frowned slightly, suddenly bothered by the fact that Clayton was speaking to Tucker about me in the third-person, as though I was incapable of absorbing the information for myself. The idea that he thought I was completely dependent on Tucker grated on me. Tuck and I had been partners for years. If anything, I took care of him.
I shrugged off my annoyance. Clayton was just trying to be helpful, even if he was a touch controlling.
Several things suddenly clicked into place. Snatches of conversations I had caught between Clayton and Master abruptly made sense. Master and Clayton were both practicing Dominants in the BDSM lifestyle. That was why Clayton had allowed Master to treat me as he did, even if he had often voiced his disapproval. They thought I needed to be guided by structure and rules in order to function after my ordeal.
Once, I would have found the knowledge that the two incredibly handsome alpha males were Doms to be sexy, but now it just filled me with confusion.
Did I resent them for placing me in Master’s care rather than sending me through the appropriate channels of rehab and therapy?
My hesitancy to answer with a resounding yes discomfited me. If they hadn’t made the wildly inappropriate decision, I never would have known such bliss at Master’s hands.
“Come on, baby.” Tucker’s soft voice nudged through my consternation. “Let’s go home.”
My legs were leaden as I followed him towards the door, my body protesting leaving the home I shared with Master.
No. He wasn’t my Master. Not anymore. Had he ever been? Or had he only allowed me to call him that in the interest of helping me to function on a daily basis?
“I’m not your Master.”
Today hadn’t been the first time he had told me that. Only, I hadn’t been able to face that terrible truth until now. A part of me still didn’t want to face it, but the memory of Lydia Chase that had entered the apartment alongside Tucker made it impossible to deny any longer.
It was time for me to leave the man I had called Master behind me.
I didn’t look back at Agent Smith James as I walked out of his apartment.
“Lydia!” My name left my mother’s lips on a disbelieving sob. She stood beside my father on the front stoop of Tucker’s townhouse. She seemed shorter than I remembered; her shoulders had taken on a definitive slump in the year since I had last seen her. When she threw her arms around me, her body felt shockingly fragile. My mother had always been slightly doughy in a warm, maternal way. Even her now-fully-grey hair felt brittle as it brushed across my cheek.
She pulled back from me just long enough to clasp my cheeks in both of her hands, and her shining blue-green eyes studied my face hungrily. “My baby,” she whispered wonderingly before enfolding me in her arms again. “Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!” She cried out her prayer of gratitude into the night.
I was stiff in her hold for a moment, stunned by the loving contact. But then her familiar scent suffused me: lavender and baby powder. I buried my face in her hair as I breathed her in deeply, clinging to her like I was a child again.
“Mom,” I sighed, my own tears flooding forth.
How could I have forgotten Mom? How could I have ever wanted to deny her existence? She was a story before bed and a snowball fight in the park and a homemade lemon merengue pie. She was a cup of tea and a kiss on the cheek. She was unconditional love.
My jubilation shattered when a pair of masculine arms closed around both of us. I cried out, jerking away from the restraining hold.
I was released instantly, and I took a hasty step back, my body shaking slightly from the adrenaline that had spiked through me along with my panic.
The fresh wrinkles around my father’s brown eyes deepened with confusion and hurt, and his frown was visible through his close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. Only it was more salt than pepper now, and it didn’t disguise his slightly sunken cheeks.
“Di, honey…” He said my nickname weakly.
I took a deep breath. This was my father. He had never so much as spanked me as a child. Carefully, warily, I took a step towards him. He stood perfectly still, hardly breathing as I wrapped my arms around him gingerly. After a moment, he placed a tentative hand on my back.
“Dad.” My arms tightened, squeezing him to me.
He returned my embrace fully. “Di.” He wept as openly as my mother. It was the first time I had ever seen him cry.
I don’t know how long we stood in the night air, holding one another. As though if we just held on tightly enough, it would make up for all of the times that the opportunity had been taken from us.
Eventually, we moved inside the small townhouse, my mother fussing over me needing rest. I never wanted to take my eyes off my parents ever again, but her suggestion made me suddenly, acutely aware of the depth of my exhaustion. Just that morning, I had awoken as Master’s blissful slave, ebullient at my triumph in finally convincing him to claim me. Now I found myself thrust back into my old life, where everything and everyone wasn’t quite as I remembered. The challenges facing Lydia Chase were daunting, and there would be no Master to help guide her through them, to tell her he was proud of her when she made small steps of progress.
The longing and sadness that arose in me at the thought made my stomach twist in disgust.
Put it away. Deal with it later.
Tucker hastily tidied my old bedroom as best he could, rearranging a year’s worth of accumulated junk so that the bed was clear. I pressed my lips together in disapproval. He had clearly fallen back into old habits in my absence, shoving his mess into a room where he couldn’t see it rather than actually cleaning up.
He didn’t try to stay in the room with me. I wasn’t sure if he was hesitant to stay close to me given my skittishness or if he was unsure if he would be unwelcome for other reasons; we hadn’t shared a bed for nearly two years even before I was abducted.
My mother rummaged through the chest of drawers and found a ragged old pair of pajamas for me to sleep in. I hadn’t seen those in quite a while. I wondered what had happened to my clothes that I had kept at my old place. The studio apartment hadn’t had the storage space to accommodate all of my clothes, so the items I didn’t really want any more were still stored at Tucker’s.
“What happened to my apartment?” I asked my mom.
She pursed her lips. She had never approved of my separation from Tucker. In her mind, falling out of love with someone wasn’t legitimate grounds for divorce. Tucker had felt the same, so we had simply lived apart for the six months before my abduction.
“Your lease period ended,” she explained. “All of your things are at home.”
Home. My parents’ house. I longed to return there, to bustle around the kitchen and laugh at my dad’s terrible puns while my mom and I whipped up a culinary masterpiece.
“I’d like to go home,” I said quietly.
She hugged me tightly. “We’ll go tomorrow,” she promised. “Tonight, I’m staying here with you.”
I held her close, more grateful for her presence than I could ever recall. “I love you, Mom.”
“Oh, my sweet baby. I love you too.”
I was careful to face my mother while I got changed so she couldn’t see my scarred back.
I wasn�
�t sure how much the FBI had told my family, but I sincerely hoped they didn’t have more than the barest inkling of what had actually happened to me. Not only did I never want them to know how I had been degraded, but I was afraid for them to learn that I had been abducted from a BDSM club. My conservative family would never understand why I had been there, and I didn’t want any bitter disapproval to mar our reunion.
Terrible dreams tormented me through the night, but Mom held me as I cried after each one. Although the warmth of her familiar embrace was incredibly soothing, I found the coolness of the tourmaline pendant around my throat to be even more comforting.
I was still clutching the necklace tightly when I awoke the next morning. When I realized what I was doing, I had to force myself to pry my fingers loose from where they were twined around the silver chain. Briefly, I considered ripping it from my neck and flinging it away from me. The memories it elicited were painfully bittersweet, and the fact that I was still holding it to find succor from my fear was upsetting in and of itself.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it; the very idea of not having it encircling my throat made me feel naked and vulnerable.
Put it away. Deal with it later.
I would process my disturbing reluctance to rid myself of the pendant after I had made it through the debriefing I faced that morning.
Going about a morning routine in the house I had once shared with Tucker was eerily familiar. Typically, one of the light bulbs over the bathroom sink was out. I wondered how long Tucker had been shaving under the dim lighting without bothering to fix it. The hot water handle in the shower squeaked exactly as I remembered, but the cleanliness of the tub left something to be desired. Tucker was a great guy, but he always had needed a mother more than he needed a wife.
I frowned at the scent of his shampoo. It certainly wasn’t Old Spice. Sighing, I lathered it into my hair. I would buy my own toiletries at the first opportunity. I was done smelling like a man.
The thought made me suddenly anxious as Tucker’s Arctic Ice shampoo washed away any lingering notes of amber and whiskey. I barely took the time to rinse the soap from my hair before darting back to the bedroom, where I frantically gathered up the dress I had been wearing the day before. I buried my face in it, inhaling deeply. Miraculously, it still smelled like him.