‘But…’
‘No buts. It’s already been decided.’
Dominica knows she ought to resist. But a week off work? She can’t remember the last time she had a whole week off. Just the idea of it sounded like absolute heaven. And Max was right. Jo should be her priority this week, especially after everything that’s happened.
‘OK, you’ve talked me into it. But I’ll need some clothes and things.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve already taken care of that. I found your house keys in your purse, so I sent one of my female employees to your house to pack some things. You will find your clothes in the wardrobe, and some personal items in the bathroom. If there is anything she missed, just let me know and I’ll get it sent over.’
‘Oh, my goodness. You think of everything.’
‘I try to. But now I want to see you eat.’
For once, the meal that Max has arranged is a simple affair. Wholesome and nutritious…just what she needs at the moment. Spanish omelet with fresh vegetables, fruit salad and yogurt, freshly-squeezed orange juice and a cappuccino just the way she likes it. After breakfast, she showers and dresses in a light blouse and skirt while Max disappears to make some phone calls. But within the hour, they are speeding on their way to see how Jo is progressing.
At the hospital, Dominica is delighted to discover that Jo look happy and cheerful. When the junior doctor comes round for a visit, she realizes why her daughter is in no hurry to leave. The medic must be barely out of medical school, with a very boyish shock of curly, sandy-blond hair. He looks like a surfer dude, but he speaks with confidence and authority. She was right…Billy had better watch out.
The doctor pronounces that Jo is on the mend, but at Max’s insistence, they are going to keep her in for a few more nights until the head injury is clearly under control. Dominica is happy to agree with that. Now that the bruising has come out, the injury looks worse than it did the night before. Jo says she can’t feel anything, but that is probably because of the painkillers and sedatives.
Max takes a cab straight to his office from the hospital, while his driver takes Dominica home. She hadn’t realized that Max had his own driver, but then that should hardly be a surprise…he can certainly afford one. She is driven home in a car that is not a make or model she recognizes, but which is clearly expensive. Probably one of those cars that is worth more than her house.
The afternoon passes slowly. It is very strange to be alone in Max’s enormous house. Well…not quite alone. There are plenty of staff members busily hastening to and fro, clearly getting the home cleaned, polished and prepared for their master’s return. None of them speak to her, however, apart from a polite nod and greeting as they pass. They all know who she is…or at least they know she is with Max. She wonders what they make of her presence here. As far as they are concerned, she is probably just the latest in a long line of women with loose morals and even looser knicker elastic passing through the property.
Is that all she is? Dominica hopes not. Even seeing all this wealth doesn’t make her greedy. She has no desire to tie herself to Max just to get her hands on his money. It is his company that she wants – his attentiveness, his caring…even his over-bearing insistence on being in control.
However, it does seem strange that there is no Mrs. Rockford. There would be no shortage of applicants for the job, and surely a man like Max needs a woman on his arm for social functions and occasions. Maybe he just rents them in when he needs them. Maybe he has just never met a woman that he wants to be with forever. Who knows what secrets lie within that mysterious heart?
With not much else to do to pass the afternoon, Dominica decides to explore the house. That is no small task. In fact, she feels she should have one of those audio guides they give you when you visit big country houses as a tourist. A spoken tour that guides you from room to room, and details exactly what has happened in each part of the house. But there is no guided tour here. Perhaps just as well, as the details of what happened in the bedrooms might be too exotic to record for posterity. Too much information, as it were.
Dominica works her way through the home, starting at the top. She counts ten huge bedrooms – fourteen if you count rooms which double as studies or storage areas. Each is furnished in a style that even the Princess with the Pea couldn’t possibly complain about. Gorgeous furniture, mostly antique, and conservative but elegant furnishings.
The ground floor is filled with an assortment of living rooms, drawing rooms and other spaces that Dominica can’t put a name to. The whole house reminds her of an English country home in an Agatha Christie novel – tastefully decorated, and shamelessly opulent. It makes her wonder about Max’s net worth. Even though she doesn’t care about taking his money, it would be interesting to know just how successful he actually is. For someone who started with a bankrupt company, he has achieved an amazing level of wealth.
She peeps into the kitchens, but the level of activity there suggests the kitchen staff are busy preparing dinner. So she leaves them to it and explores the grounds outside. It is a beautiful afternoon, and the manicured lawns look magnificent in the shimmering heat. She wanders lazily along the paths between the flower beds, admiring the blooms and the riot of color that assaults her senses.
Max sure knows how to do things in style.
After a while, she decides she ought to get out of the sun. Like all redheads, she is sensitive to the sun’s rays, so she heads back indoors to enjoy the shade and the coolness of the air conditioning. Dominica enters the house through the patio doors that open out from one of the living rooMs She walks through the living room and out into the main hallway. As she is walking towards the front vestibule, she notices a door she hadn’t seen before. Surely not another living room? How many does one man need?
She crosses and tries the door. It is locked.
If the door had been open, she would probably have lost interest in the room beyond very quickly. But because it is locked, she can’t help but be curious as to what lies beyond. She tries to convince herself not to be so nosy.
Don’t be so silly. It’s probably just a broom cupboard. Move along, Ms Dunn…nothing to see here…
But why lock a broom cupboard? You only lock a room if there something of consequence inside. What could it be? Where would the key be?
Dominica can’t help herself. After checking round to ensure that no-one is watching, she pulls back the rug that butts up to the door, hoping to find a key underneath.
Nothing. Damn.
She reaches up runs her hands along the top of the doorframe, in the hope that she might find a key hidden up there.
Still nothing.
Disappointed, she is about to walk away when she sees an empty vase on a shelf a few feet to the right of the door. More out of boredom than expectation, she steps over and upends the vase, tipping the contents into her waiting hand.
There is a rattling, sliding sound. Something falls out of the vase and lands in the palm of her hand. She does a double take when she realizes it is a key.
Ha!
After replacing the vase, she looks around again to ensure that she is alone. She can hear some sounds in the house, but they are far away at the kitchen end. She seems to have this end of the house to herself, for the moment at least. She slips the key into the lock and turns. The barrels roll over effortlessly.
The door is unlocked. Dominica can barely contain her excitement.
Grow up, you big kid. You know it’s just going to be the broom cupboard. What are you expecting? Tutankhamen’s treasure?
Dominica pushes the door open. She can’t help feeling guilty. After all the hospitality Max has shown her, how can she abuse his trust like this? This is something private. Then again, she did let him get his leg over…so it’s all quits, right?
Anyway, all’s fair in love and war. And what woman wouldn’t want to know what her new man was keeping under lock and key? It’s only human to be curious. Of curiosity killed the cat
. Dominica hopes she doesn’t come to the same sticky end.
At first, all she can see beyond the door is darkness. She pushes the door open wider so that more daylight spills into the opening. At first the space seems very small – definitely too small to be anything more than a broom cupboard. Then she realizes this is not a room – it’s the top of a staircase. One that leads downwards, to somewhere dark and mysterious below. She gropes around for a light, but there isn’t one.
She fumbles for her cellphone, and swipes the screen to activate it. The screen backlight comes on, lighting the area with an eerie, whitish glow. Now she can see enough to go down the stairs. Once more she hesitates. Now is the time to turn round and go back. If one of Max’s staff members finds her down here, who knows what they will say. But she can’t turn back now. Even if it is just a boring old storage area, she has to satisfy her burning curiosity.
Dominica starts descending the wooden steps. There is no carpet, and each step squeaks and squeals under her weight. The sound seems impossibly loud, and she is sure staff members and security guards will come running.
But nothing happens.
She descends further, placing her feet wide on the stairs to minimize the creaking and squeaking. There are more steps than she expected. The staircase clearly leads to somewhere below the house.
A basement.
For a moment, Dominica pauses – thinking of everything that has happened in basements in a dozen or more horror movies that spring to mind. If going to the movies has taught her anything, it is that curious women who go down into basements usually come to a very unfortunate end.
But this isn’t a horror movie. It’s real life, and this is just below stairs in the home of your average wealthy man. Except, of course, Max Rockford is far from average. Maybe that’s why there is no Mrs. Rockford. Maybe there was once, but Max murdered her down here in the basement. There could be all sorts of women’s bodies down here, dismembered and rotting…
Oh, Dominica…stop scaring yourself, you stupid woman. Just get on with it…
Dominica hears a loud noise, and it makes her almost jump out of her skin. Then she realizes it was just her cellphone. But she knows what that sound means – the battery is almost dead.
Damn, of course. Because the night before had been so messed up, she had once again forgotten to charge her phone. She had better get out of here before it dies altogether. She turns round to start up the stairs…but it’s too late. With another bleep, the battery dies altogether and the phone goes dead. All of a sudden, it seems very dark down here. It is not totally black, because some light filters down from the doorway above. But it is certainly spooky. In the half shadows, Dominica sees another door in front of her. There is no lock on this door. Just an old-fashioned round handle.
She takes the handle in her hand and turns it gently. Then she pushes the door open. She can’t see inside…the light from upstairs is not enough to illuminate the gloom. But by groping along the wall, she finds a light switch. Should she switch it on? Dominica hesitates for a second. Maybe it is better not to know what is down here. But her curiosity gets the better of her. She just has to know what Max keeps down here in the basement. She flicks the switch and low-wattage lights spring into life around the room.
And what Dominica sees takes her breath away.
***
Well, it’s not a broom cupboard, that’s for sure…but what the hell?
Her first instinct is to switch the light off and get the heck up the stairs before anyone realizes she is down here. No wonder the room was locked. This is definitely something that Max would want to keep quiet. Heck, if the newspapers heard about this, they would have a field day.
But now that she is here, she can’t leave without finding out more. She looks around her in astonishment, not quite able to believe what her eyes are showing her. The basement is a large one, almost a perfect square in shape. It feels old, as if it was built as part of the original mansion, maybe a hundred or more years ago. The walls look as though they are thick, built from heavy stone. And the ceilings are low. Dominica can just about walk around OK, but surely Max would have to stoop in some of the lowest corners.
However, it is not the walls that attract her attention, or the lamps that give off an orange-yellow glow to illuminate the room. What catches her eye – and her interest – immediately is all the equipment.
The first thing she sees is a rack mounted against the wall and filled with whips.
Whips?
Yup. Whips.
Big ones, small ones and medium-sized ones. Leather handles, leather strops.
Next to this there is another rack…this time filled with what appear to be restraints. Black leather belts with silver studs. Mouth gags…like the one Bruce Willis and the gangster find themselves wearing in Pulp Fiction. Face masks – some just to cover the eye area, like Catwoman, some full-on full face masks with just the tiniest slits for vision and breathing. And all round the room there is more. She sees handcuffs and chains, and strange equipment that she has never seen before.
At the far end of the room is a four-poster bed – a replica of the one in Max’s bedroom. It is a striking oasis of normality compared to the scary chains, shackles and cuffs that decorate the walls. Yet it also unifies the room, giving a sense of recreating times past – going back through the centuries. Yes, this could almost be a strange re-incarnation of some English medieval castle. Here the old-fashioned bed of the lord of the manor and his mistress. Over there the tools of the torture chamber, ready to extort confessions from those with secrets to hide.
Dominica doesn’t know what to make of it all. What does it mean? Maybe she was right about the bodies in the basement. But no…this obviously isn’t for real. It is some kind of play den.
Isn’t it?
Dominica doesn’t know. But what she does know is that it is time for her to get out of here. She has gotten herself way too deep into something she doesn’t understand. Whatever it is Max gets up to down here, she is happy to leave him to it. This is not her environment – it is a strange and scary world she doesn’t want to be a part of. She will switch off the light, close the door and climb the stairs as quickly as possible. Then she will lock the door and replace the key. After that, she will stay well away from this part of the house and look for an excuse to go home as quickly as possible. All this is way over her head.
Dominica backs towards the door, taking one last look at the leather, the straps, the strange and scary equipment. Then she switches off the light. It’s a relief when darkness descends, hiding this vision of hell from her view. She turns to step out of the door….
…and stops dead in her tracks.
Max Rockford is standing in the doorway, and he is not a happy man.
Not a happy man at all.
10: A Very Naughty Girl
Dominica doesn’t know what to say. She freezes on the spot, still clutching the dead cellphone in her hand. She tries to speak, but only nonsensical monosyllables come out of her mouth.
‘I…I…it…I…’
Max stares at her with a thunderous expression on his face. Silhouetted against the light from upstairs he seems larger and taller. The muscles in his arms seem to be rippling with barely-controlled anger. This is a new Max, one that Dominica has not seen before. She should have known it would not stay sweetness and roses for long. Her mother told her that everything in life had to be paid for. It all has to balance in the end. She had learned that in spades with Darren. Now her debt of fun with Max was due. She was about to pay for all the sex and excitement.
Max’s face has turned red, and he seems about ready to explode. Finally, his anger is vented in a single expletive sentence.
‘Dominica Dunn…what the hell are you doing down here in my private domain? This area was locked as you very well know. What gives you the right to come down here and poke around in matters that don’t concern you?’
Dominica shrinks backwards, taking a step away from Max.
>
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was doing any harm. I was just exploring the house. I wasn’t expecting you back for ages yet.’
‘Well that’s obvious, isn’t it? While the cat’s away, the mice will play…is that right? Well now, this particular cat has come back early. And when the cat comes home and catches the mice playing, he teaches them a lesson to make sure they won’t do it again. Come here at once, Ms Dunn.’
Dominica shakes her head and takes another step backwards. But each step only takes her further back into the strange and scary world of the basement. Max switches the light on, then steps into the basement and closes the door behind him. Dominica realizes her escape route has been cut off. Now she is trapped in this basement, and the only way to free herself is to get past a man who is significantly bigger and substantially stronger than her.
What’s going to happen to her now?
‘Dominica, you’ve been a very naughty girl,’ Max says with venom in his voice. ‘Naughty girls must be punished. Come to me right now.’
He walks towards her. As he reaches out to grab her, Dominica runs to the back of the basement. But there is nowhere to go, no escape. Max follows her in a few long strides and sweeps her off her feet. She struggles, but resistance is hopeless. Max is far stronger, and she has no more hope of struggling free than King Canute had of turning back the tide. Max strides across the room, carrying her as easily as a rag doll. He reaches a wooden chair on the far side of the basement and sits down on it. Dominica finds herself spread over his knee, her bum in the air and her head hanging towards the floor. Max pulls up her skirt and tugs down at her panties, exposing the bare white flesh of her buttocks.
‘Naughty girls must be punished to make them learn their lesson,’ he says. And before Dominica can protest, she feels his hand spanking her across both buttocks.
What the heck is happening? How did I get myself in this situation?
Dominica is resigned to her fate. No matter how much she struggles, the chances of her breaking free are remote. He spanks her again and again. It seems she will have no choice but to endure whatever Max Rockford wishes to put her through. But then Max suddenly lifts her onto her feet, pulls up her panties and kisses her firmly on the lips.
The Domination of Dominica Dunn: Discovering New Worlds of Sexual Sensation Page 13