I think of him as my rescuing angel.
He came to me with surprising ease once I was ready to resume my life.
Initially, my reacquaintance with civilization was a disaster. I was staying with an old friend, who mothered me for two weeks as the government completed their interrogation. Apparently, they wanted to crack down on Middle Eastern terrorists, but I saw their efforts as only half-hearted. During that time, I wanted to see Jordan, but my friend cautioned against it. It is too soon, she told me. I thought she was worried about Jordan—how he’d take my three years as a sex slave. In fact, she was worried about me and how I’d now find the man I loved.
For days I felt disjointed by the process of being sane as everything whirled by at such a fast clip that I couldn’t keep up. I hadn’t realized how slow my life in captivity had been until New York City whizzed by so rapidly. After the government was through with me, I quickly returned to my mother’s home where we cried a lot; then she let me lazily rest until I was ready to battle the world again. She even offered her home forever—I could stay because I’d never be the same after the ordeal I’d been through. I hugged her long and hard for that one, but days later declined her generosity, knowing in my heart that I could never be out of the commotion of life for long. I’d beat my way back to a life that was right and real for me—even with this weird past to deal with.
I truly thought the slavery was just a strange event among the other oddities of my life; and that it made no real difference to me. The nightmares told me otherwise.
Back in New York, I returned to a world that I hardly knew. I needed an anchor. Though I lived with my kind friend, she was too much like my mother—too fawning to allow me the free space and the foundation I needed. Zachary Kovac gave me all that.
Jordan introduced us after our reunion ended so sadly. I shouldn’t have expected more after three years—but Jordan was all I focused on at the embassy in Vienna. I had to put everything of the past three years behind me, including Colonel Broc, so my mind hit on Jordan and stayed there through all the questioning and rehab. He was all I had to cling to when I felt so weak.
Most of the time, the embassy people were kind, but one fellow, from an intelligence agency, implied that I’d asked to be kidnapped. I expelled a good deal of anger on him, put him in his place, and felt much more like the Michelle Monroe of old when I finished.
I knew it was a crazy thought from the beginning to hope that Jordan and I could carry on where we left off. When we finally met, everything was bittersweet. He had a new girlfriend and the relationship was solid—I wouldn’t be coming between them.
There were tears in his eyes, grief I’m sure he’d stuffed inside him since my disappearance. Our meeting brought out that sheltered pain and, in the vernacular of the time, gave him closure. It didn’t do as much for me; though Jordan gave me a place to begin again introducing me to Kovac.
Like Jordan, Kovac has a mixed heritage, a smattering of every race possible. Unlike Jordan, he has hair—long, straight black hair he ties back at his neck. His skin is dark, and his eyes slate grey. I’ve never met a man, other than Daniel Broc, who understood me the way he does; though I’m quite glad that he doesn’t look like that rough Texas cowboy.
Kovac’s six feet three inches towers over me. A body builder like Jordan, he’s as muscled, driven and intense, though he has a more natural inclination for the kind of life I need than my former lover has. After the nightmares and flashbacks—the psychologist says it’s post-traumatic stress and I believe her—he was the person capable of healing me. I guess because he understands the dark places where I’ve been, and relishes them in the same bizarre way I do. Where sexual submission was once a fascinating possibility, it is now part of the elemental me.
***
“What did you like about it, Shelly?” he asks as we sit across from each other at a candlelit table in the corner of our favorite Village restaurant.
“You keep asking this, I’m going to get sick of the question,” I tell him, trying hard to make light of his serious mood.
“It’s a fair question because it pulls the truth from you. What did you like about it, Shelly?” he repeats.
He hammers on, circling me with this inherent darkness. I find it incredibly sexy. His mystery riles me. I sometimes feel as though I hardly know him, other times he’s as familiar as an old shoe. Now is one of those strange and unfamiliar times when my body is on edge while my mind balks in fear of what I’ll say.
“I liked Colonel Broc,” I finally blurt out. I’ve never mentioned his name to Kovac until today. I’ve always spoken in general terms, sometimes about bondage and being beaten and having sex, but never personally about the man who began my rape and brutalization.
“Broc?”
“He was in charge of my capture. He ordered my pussy denuded. He branded me.” My body shakes as I tell him these details, and I can see that Kovac feels the fear and desires flowing from my body to him.
He smiles. “You loved every minute of that, didn’t you?”
“I was scared to death.”
“And you loved your fear.”
I take my time to answer—like it’s a big deal—then finally admit, “Okay, I loved my fear.” It feels good saying this, like a huge weight is lifted from my shoulders, and there is not as much pain in my heavy heart.
Kovac and I have been playing with sadomasochism since our relationship began six months ago. He takes me slowly, but he knows I want more, especially when little pieces of truth slip from my mouth like this one.
“You were in love with him?”
“I think so.”
“Were you, or weren’t you?” He sounds impatient.
“I was. Yes. I was.”
“And you’d go back to him if he were here?”
“I don’t know. It would be impossible.” I think again then shake my head. “No. No. I wouldn’t, I’m sure now. He’s a terrorist who lives between the cracks. I wouldn’t want that kind of life even if I loved him. Besides, I love you now.”
I know he likes that fact, but much like Broc, he’s not long on tender sentiments. I read well between the lines.
“Sometimes I worry about how far I can take you into that rampant and violent desire,” he says. “But you make the decision easier every time.”
He can feel me. He senses how much I want more, how my body aches, how I love the beautiful horror of those startling moments, when I’m suspended between breathing and fear, hurled down unknown territory and knocked about in a rocky surf of sensation.
The first time he took me to a downtown S&M club, I clung to his arm afraid to move away from him—until I saw that most of the dungeon play was just games, silly games with ‘safe words’ and supposed slaves telling their masters what they want. This was not real life, but some fantasy, like they were actors playing off a script. There was no script for what happened to me. Nothing was that simple.
Kovac even strung me up naked in one of the dungeons and toyed with a whip about my shoulders and ass. Some strikes he meticulously threaded between my thighs so the whip end jumped up to sting my sensitive pussy. I came because I was so filled up with sexual energy that anything would have released that dragon; but we both knew that the finale was only half of what it could have been.
Now, he takes me a little further each time.
One day—for the entire day—he had me in chains in his apartment. For two hours I was locked in a closet, lost in the mesmerizing smallness that comes from being so contained. Later, I crawled the floor at his feet while he flicked a cat o’ nine tails on my ass. He had my cheeks streaked, hot and welted by the time he finally drew me into his lap where he rubbed the raw surfaces of skin with cold cream and kissed my face with love. I spent the night on the floor by his bed, yearning to be near him, but happy that I wasn’t. It was like the brothel—a good deal of denial and a great deal of yearning. It makes the clashes of bodies that much more joyful, (Likely why my memories of Broc still g
ive me such an intensely passionate physical response).
I relish being with Kovac because everything is new and different, at the same time old and familiar. He knows the things I need without my having to ask for the specifics. I tell him pieces of the past when he asks that question—‘What did you like about it, Shelly?’ Seems so innocuous, but he learns so much. He never repeats what I’ve gone through, he just takes the situation and embellishes the acts with his own desires getting the charge they need.
Kovac does this while I continue acclimatizing myself to the real world and returning to myself. It’s a different self, a different Shelly Monroe. Some would suggest that she’s not as strong as she used to be. I think she’s stronger, though. I’m sure she’s softer, easier to be with and much less haughty. Jordan has said that I’m more likeable, and he would know.
Kovac told me the results are what I’ve always wanted.
“You think I asked to be kidnapped?” I remember the insinuations of that foul intelligence agent.
“You might as well have,” he states flatly.
Doesn’t that beat all!
“You told me once that you felt destiny calling you when you took that train,” he reminds me of one of our very first conversations. “You should believe your own jargon, Shelly. It’s probably true.”
I don’t know how he got so wise about me. Especially, when we’ve hardly known each other. But he has the gift to know who I am, and I’m happy to be the recipient of his insight and cutthroat wit.
***
Kovac bought me a slave collar two weeks ago as a precursor to something special—one with white leather threaded through a one-inch silver band, and a two-inch ring at the front. It buckles at the back of my neck, and locks with a small clasp. He has the only key.
He says little when he locks it around my throat for the first time; but I’m beginning to understand his moods, and know that something out of the ordinary will be happening soon.
I wear the collar as often as I can when we’re alone together—often with the leather corset he purchased a few weeks earlier—and occasionally when his friends visit, which has been three times in fourteen days. His friends know the kind of relationship we have because they know Kovac’s sexual tastes. It feels very freeing to express myself this way with people who represent the real world. It seems completely natural. Maybe it’s just the product of being brainwashed for three years, or maybe it’s just a habit I can’t break; but the more who understand this part of me and accept it, the better I feel.
Even Jordan has seen me collared and contained. It shocked when he walked into the apartment and saw me in the corset with the collar ringing my throat. Bare feet, no panties, naked pubic mound. He stared forever, while I offered him a beer and then sat at Kovac’s feet as the two began their conversation. (It’s expected that I sit on the floor when I’m dressed as Kovac’s slave.)
The conversation finally wound its way around to me—after Jordan couldn’t stop staring.
“I’m glad you introduced us,” the new boyfriend told the old one.
“And I guess it’s working well?”
“She has a ways to go, but we’re getting there. I make a few missteps and she revolts, but things are evening out.”
It’s nice to hear him say he makes mistakes; I don’t feel that my failings are all my fault. Though I am punished for every aberration—whether his fault or mine—punishment is easy to take. I think my body has come to expect and welcome it. And—if the problem is really his fault—he always give me a sexual finish.
The standard mode of correction is simple. He sits in his leather chair. I stand before him looking down into his harsh, though sometimes perplexed expression. He addresses the difficulty head on, outlining where I’ve failed to comply or meet his standards (This is not like the brothel or Sir’s house where there were few explanations given.). It’s usually simple things, like attending to breakfast dishes before they start to bother him, or in the course of my busy day, forgetting something I promised to do for him. Or when things are ticklish sexually—I blatantly balk at his extremes, beg to be unbound, cry when I should be cumming, or refuse his advances. These times are always because he’s pushed me into the faces of my past where I’m not yet ready to go. They are what he considers his missteps—because he didn’t gauge my response properly. Regardless, I’m punished.
After he outlines the incident, he lectures me, encourages me. Then, he takes me over his lap and, with a wooden or leather paddle, pummels my ass as hard as he can—though as strong as he is, it’s probably not as hard as he can hit, but it sure feels that way. By the time he’s finished, my poor ass is burning with fire, stinging so badly that I struggle like an angry kid. Sometimes, if he’s particularly put out, he’ll pause several times and start in again, building in intensity until I’m frantic and thrashing like crazy on the firm mountain of his muscled thighs. He even caned me once after a spanking was over, making me bend at the waist, reach for my toes, and take a dozen grim cuts from a thin bamboo rod. There were marks that lasted after that one.
When it’s real punishment that’s all I get. But those times are very rare. Most of the time, once he lays the paddle down, his hand is at my crotch, swathed with the juices that so easily flow from my anxious sexual opening. In seconds, I’m off somewhere in a climax. The session ends with me between Kovac’s thighs, his erection moving in and out of my mouth. The punishment heals the little wounds of our shared days. Admittedly, it’s a very antiquated and even bizarre practice. But I don’t argue with what works.
As much as I might protest, I’m always a better woman when the session is over.
***
It’s a summer night. I’ve been waiting for Kovac to come home from his workout. I’m reading on the fire escape, enjoying the city sounds below, the thick and humid air, even the insects buzzing my head. The book I’m reading lends itself to the somewhat sultry, languid evening this day’s become. It reminds me of childhood, and even the humid nights in the brothel with Broc. The air was filled with the aroma of sexual bodies. I think my body has the same aromatic quality right now. I’m wearing my collar and a thin summery sundress, which is hardly anything it all. When I put it on, I had an instant flashback and a bout with fear. It’s white and feels very much like silk. Since that first trembling moment—it was Kovac’s idea to buy the dress—I’ve become more comfortable wearing it. Right now, I’m feeling very slave-like—collared, dressed for Kovac, and waiting.
When I hear the door creak, I smile. He’s home.
He won’t find me right away, though I hope it won’t be much of a search. I don’t want him mad.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks.
He’s looking very virile, the way he usually looks after a vigorous workout. His black hair is slicked back cleanly off his face, while a bit of dark evening stubble grows on his chin and jaw. His white sleeveless T-shirt clings to his heavily muscled chest. His grey sweatpants droop at his hips
“Reading,” I answer his question.
He pulls me through the window as though I were a tiny child, practically lifting me into the air with his powerful grace.
“Hot, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” I’m staring into his eyes, feeling as though I’m just inches off the floor.
“A good night for taking you out,” he says. “A good night to fuck.”
How can I disagree?
We are out the door so swiftly that I can hardly catch my breath. He made me wear heels, which makes walking even more difficult. As we move into the night, the city surrounds us with sound and light and a sexual essence that has me wild. This is nothing I’ve felt before—I’m almost swimming in sensuousness, as though a warm bath caresses my crotch in every cranny. I sidle into Kovac, his arm around my waist; and, if I’m reading his mood correctly, he’s as aroused as I am.
We move only to the end of the block, to the theatre that a small company of avante garde artists abandoned just a
month ago. They moved to The Village where their work fits comfortably. I’ll miss them—not because I saw many of their plays. It was the actors I enjoyed so much, their pierced and tattooed bodies, weird hair and quirky clothes. Entering the building, I can feel their essence lingering in the empty spaces, in the curtains and the walls.
There is one large black room surrounded by curtains, with a small informal stage in the center. Two large 4x4 posts stand at either end of the platform. Hanging from the light grid above, and dangling far lower than the theatre lights themselves, is some apparatus that provokes instantaneous flashbacks from my past. I let my fear slide, still feeling so carnally aroused that I won’t let it come between me and what Kovac has planned.
There is one spotlight aimed at center stage where apparently I’ll be bound.
That’s all I see. Kovac slides a blindfold over my head, secures it over my eyes, and lifts my blonde hair out from under the elastic bands at the back of my head.
Guiding me carefully to the stage, I step up on the platform where he positions me—I suppose between the 4x4 struts, but then I have no way of knowing. He pulls each arm wide and above my head, fastening the wrists in tight-fitting cuffs that must be a good three inches wide. He repeats the process with my ankles, so that in the end, I’m stretched like a cross—or a five-pointed star.
The room is as hot as the hot outdoors and becomes a fiery furnace as my body flames with lust, and Kovac’s begins to fire. As my lover quietly works his greater magic, clamping my nipples and weighting my labia with pinchers, I feel the atmosphere around me grow in size. It’s not something I completely comprehend until I realize that there are other bodies moving around us—other men, perhaps other women. I imagine their faces, players from the S&M clubs, gawkers, voyeurs and hangers-on. I wonder how much a theatre I make. It dawns on me that Kovac is recreating my days in the brothel and with Sir when I was a sexual exhibition.
White Silk & I Belong to You Page 14