I toss my purse on the living room couch and return to quickly retrieve the envelope, realizing that Steven has already picked it up. I snatch it from him much too fast.
“Hey?” He looks mildly annoyed and concerned.
“Sorry. You know, I think the weekend wore me out. So much sex in two days.” I smile.
He smiles back. “And that’s bad?”
“No, no. It was very good. Wonderful.” I casually toss the envelope to the table behind me and fall into Steven’s arms for a kiss. “Just wish it could last, but it can’t.”
“We’ll make time soon,” he reassures me.
“And I will try.”
“I’ll make sure you do,” he says with a degree of erotic threat that makes my bones ache with lust. The ache settles between my legs and my sex quickens, my crotch all mushy and warm.
When Steven leaves, I grab the manila envelope and tear it open. My heart sinks, my head pounds hot and though that warmth between my legs only gets worse, the feeling is joined by a gut-wrenching fear.
You won’t forget me, will you?
… the note reads. From Aman. He even signs his work this time. And accompanying the cryptic note are pictures of Sunny.
My legs go weak and I slump to the couch behind me, almost in a faint. Sweat beads up on my brow; I can hardly breathe.
I review the pictures one by one in horror. Sunny is in the hands of her master, tied to a bed with her breasts bound tightly with rope, her mouth gagged and her pussy splayed. Even in black and white the wetness there glistens for the camera. She’s being beaten, flogged and caned directly on her pussy. My mind plays tricks, putting the scene in slow motion, seeing her body move with erotic abandon. I hear her moan. The garbled gasps behind the gag. From picture to picture—there are nearly a dozen—the scene moves from one seductive scene to the next. In one, she’s on her knees, her face pressed to the groin of a man, his cock, no doubt rigid, impaling her mouth. His size is enough to stretch her lips to their limit. I see the struggle in her eyes as she stares upward, as if into the face of someone peering down at her. A cruel hand clutches a fistful of her hair.
The images of abuse continue. She’s fucked in the ass, the cunt, the mouth. She’s slapped on the face, spanked and gangbanged by three men. My memories collide with these shots, triggering an explosion in my body that I can hardly contain. I wonder at Aman’s ability to capture my assistant in the middle of these brutal scenes. What devices does he use to spy on her? What knowledge does he have of her to get this close?
I’m scared to learn the answers to my questions, but then, whether I want the truth or not, the last picture fills in the pieces of this story with frightening clarity. Aman is there in the room with her. He’s not her master, but her master’s friend. The two men look joined at the hip, cut from the same cloth of sadistic need. I know the terrible truth now: she’s been set-up by the man who owns me.
To use as blackmail?
I can come to no other conclusion and my heart is sick. A wave of nausea sends me to the bathroom, but though I have every reason to wretch something draws the surge back down.
No! I stop myself. I can’t turn into a weak-kneed child. I can’t! There is no time for dwelling on this nightmare. I have to convince Sunny of the danger she’s in. I have to remove her from Aman’s world now. I must.
Though I brood about the pictures and the new mission I have to save my friend, my mind draws a blank on what to do. I cry for hours in guilty desperation, weeping like a child. Then when I’m too exhausted to keep crying, I pluck my weary mind from its despair and force myself to press on for Sunny’s sake. There must be some way to rescue her, even if I have no clue now what that will be.
When I see her in the flesh two days after the shocking pictures arrive, my mind can’t help but transform the woman into the slave-slut I saw inside those photographs. I see the ropes, the gag in her mouth, the cock forced into her face, her big breasts bound into crude missiles, her nipples suffering from the saw edges of the claw-like clamps. I bite my tongue, knowing that I can’t say anything that would put her in jeopardy. She’d freak if she understood the company her new master keeps.
I understand Aman’s game. He knows he has her, not just as bait to ensure my entrapment, but as his underworld’s newest slave—and all so willingly.
Three days pass. I wait for Aman’s return, assuming it will be soon. But he remains inconveniently out of the picture. Were he here, I’d use whatever power I might have to discourage him from Sunny. I’d give my life to see her safe. Gone is any hope for my own freedom from Aman’s rule and my slavery. My freedom doesn’t matter, but Sunny’s life does.
It’s late in the day. I’m home early, although I have a mountain of work I brought with me. Steven surprises me, showing up at my door with wine, a box of fried chicken from our favorite diner and a salad he personally made at home. This man is too good for me.
“You shouldn’t have.” My voice is slightly chilly; I can’t encourage him.
“Of course, I should. You do the same for me.”
Not exactly, I’m thinking. Oh! How do I burst his bubble?
“No, but you really shouldn’t, Steven. I don’t have time.” I deliver the line with a little edge in my voice, which he readily hears.
He frowns. “Too much work makes you crabby, Michelle,” he says, as he pushes his way inside the door.
Of course it does. That and friends coerced into slavery by cunning white slavers. The more I think of the idea, the more my emotions flood with fear.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
The phone ringing cuts off the rest of my sentence, and I retreat to the kitchen. Steven follows.
“Sunny, where are you?” I answer the panicked voice on the other end of the phone.I hear her sobbing uncontrollably. “Where are you? Are you hurt? Sunny, please talk to me!” I want to shake the words from her.
“Where are you?” I repeat when all I hear is her desperate crying.
Through hiccupping sobs, she finally describes a location in the warehouse district. She slurs her words, I’m afraid she’s drugged. I make her repeat the instructions, giving me more information about the neighborhood.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. She’s a little less distraught.
“Then wait, don’t move! Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right there.”
“Yes, Shelly, I’m waiting. I won’t leave, I can’t.” Her voice sounds pitiful.
“What the hell’s going on…” Steven asks when I hang up the phone.
“I have to find Sunny! She’s in trouble.”
“What do mean, trouble?”
“Steven, I don’t know. I just know she’s alone and afraid, somewhere on Commercial Street. She didn’t sound good at all.”
“I’m going along.”
I’m sure the irritation I feel plays across my face, but I don’t say a word. He’ll overturn any argument I make and I simply don’t have time to dissuade him.
“Okay, then let’s go.” I head for the door with Steven following close.
We take off in his car, driving slowly though the neighborhood Sunny described. For all she knows she could be miles away, but I have nothing else to go on but the vague description of the area and the one street name. My instincts tell me this has everything to do with Aman and Sunny’s sexual slavery. This is just the sort place where he would stage his sexual games. I won’t breathe easily until we have Sunny safely back home.
The dingy night is made more desolate by this dank neighborhood. A feeling of threat rattles my insides. My fear expands as I survey the disgust and filth around us. But sitting side by side with my distaste is something akin to sexual desire rising in my lower belly. How can this be erotic? my saner self wonders. I don’t have to consciously answer that question; my desires take strange shapes and unusual turns. I’m accustomed to that.
I wonder what Steven thinks, but he’s mostly silent, glued to the activity of h
unting the streets for Sunny. I’m actually glad to have him with me now, although I have the feeling that when this night is over and the truth is out in the open, it won’t take much to end our relationship. It will happen of its own accord. Is that what I hope for, or what I fear?
We slow to a crawl, hunting the alleys and the dark shadows for signs of life. My heart sinks with every minute that ticks by and we don’t find her.
Steven’s Explorer zigzags twice through several connecting streets, then starts back again down Commercial. I can almost feel her near. And though our eyes seem fixated on her image, we almost miss the flutter of Sunny’s pink dress as we drive by an unlit alley between two dilapidated warehouses. She emerges, stumbling from thick shadows and waves awkwardly as she moves erratically toward the car. As she approaches, I see that her hands and feet are bound with ropes, her flesh rubbed raw and bleeding.
“My God!” I bolt from the car almost before Steven stops, and rush toward Sunny, gathering her into my arms. She slumps to the concrete in a near faint, but with one great sweep of Steven’s arms, he gathers her in off the cold sidewalk and moves to the car. I open the door and he lays her against the back seat, where I join her, cradling her head, while carefully trying to undo the knots. Steven climbs in behind the wheel and peels away, putting as much distance between us and the horrid district as possible. He feels the danger there as much as I do.
“Should we go to the hospital?” he asks.
“No!” Sunny half rises from my lap. “I’m fine; I know I’m fine.”
“Michelle?” he asks me.
“Let’s take her home, I think she’ll be all right.”
I’ve never seen such knots. In her weakened state, I can understand why she couldn’t get them loose. She seems to drift now in and out of consciousness.
“Were you drugged?” I ask, when she’s half awake.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“And how did you manage to call?”
“There was a phone booth at the end of the block. It was…” she twists against me and winces, “it was hard, but I could get my hands on the receiver to dial and get it to my ear. I was going to stay there in the phone booth,” she seethes as I tug her hands free and the rope grinds into her wrist… “But someone drove by and I got scared…” she’s breathless, but rasps out more. “I think I might have passed out, maybe… Next thing I knew, I’m in the alley and I saw your lights.”
“This was an S&M scene?” I ask in a whisper so hopefully Steven won’t hear.
“It started out to be a good one.”
“What happened?”
“He gave me to two other men I’ve never seen before. They used me hard.”
“And left you like this?”
“I don’t know what happened, Shelly.” She starts to cry. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. You thought it was love, but it was something else.”
“I can’t stop.”
“Can’t stop what?”
“I keeping wanting it harder. I keep making it happen. One minute I tell my master it’s over, and the next, he sweeps me away again. He says it’s in my blood now and I’ll never let go.” She cries harder.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Just rest yourself. We’ll talk more later.”
Steven drives on in silence, and I wonder how much he’s heard.
***
After inspecting Sunny’s wounds, I find them frightening, although I know they’ll heal. It was a hard scene, a brutal one. Her back bears the long biting striations from a single tail whip, while her ass is black and blue from a wooden-paddle spanking. Etched in low across the tops of her thighs are the distinctive marks of a bamboo cane. Her breasts are bruised as well, while her belly and the front of her thighs show signs of clamps and the bite of a thin baton.
I’m stirred by her marks as much I am by the marks my body bears after such a beating. As I rub her skin with aloe, I feel the heat of her sexual energy in my groin, and know that she is still, in part, inside that gossamer headspace where such abuse is bliss. I could fall down into her plush body and make love off the sexuality I feel from her. Her wounds will make for spectacular memories—which will make it difficult to extricate her from the dangerous life she loves.
By the time I finish the soothing massage, she’s almost asleep. Seeing that she’s finally at peace, I let her drift off and then tiptoe from the room. We’ll talk later about her night and the peril she’s in.
Steven waits in Sunny’s living room, and rises immediately as I close the bedroom door. His face is grim and full of worry. “You sure she doesn’t need a doctor?”
“No, she doesn’t need a doctor, Steven. She needs rest.”
“What about the marks on her back.”
“They’ll heal.”
“That’s it? They’ll heal?”
I don’t know what to say, where to begin.
He tries again, his voice rising with irritation. “You going to tell me what happened, or am I just supposed to guess?”
I gulp visibly, knowing what the next few minutes could mean. Why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk?” I motion to the couch.
The few intervening seconds allow me a moment to catch my breath. When I begin to speak, it’s with the trepidation of a novice skydiver on the brink of that first freefall. “Far as I can tell… judging by what she said…her night started out as a good scene and turned bad.”
“Good scene?”
“It was no accident; she consented—at least in part. Sunny’s latest boyfriend is more of a sexual master than a boyfriend and she considers herself his sex slave. The bondage and the beatings are part of the S&M sex games that arouse her. You may not understand it but she actually loves being beaten, and that’s what happened tonight.”
Steven’s face is so totally blank that I think I’m staring at a mannequin not a man, then his jaw twitches and I remember he’s real.
“And being left alone to fend for herself in a deserted warehouse district is part of the game?” he wonders, his voice ringing with judgment.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened there.” As I speak, I’m flying by the seat of my pants, making up the story as I go. I have no idea what took place in that warehouse, or how Sunny got free—because it certainly didn’t look as though she was supposed to escape and she wasn’t cognizant enough to tell me much. Of course, it might have been a set-up for me… hard to say. I can rule nothing out. “The best I can make out is they got spooked by some noises outside the building. She said her car is parked behind the warehouse,” I fib; I have no idea where her car is. “He told her to leave once she untied her ropes. I guess he thought she was safe enough.” Sunny had mentioned several men, not one, but I omit that fact as well, deciding that the less Steven knows of the facts the better.
“Doesn’t sound like much of a master to leave her in that state,” Steven comments sourly.
“Maybe she’ll see that now,” I offer.
Steven looks at me quizzically, his eyes settling on me now, forgetting Sunny. I try to contain the shudder that rides my spine from end to end. “Why is this explanation so easy for you, Michelle? Your nonchalance and acceptance? Masters. Slaves. Bondage. Beating. We haven’t talked about these things but the words come so easily to you. Why is that?”
I take a long time to answer because I’m not sure what to say, and though right now may be the perfect time to end our relationship, I turn tail and run, taking the coward’s way out with another string of lies. “Sunny talked to me about it; she had me read a few essays on the Internet about Bdsm. I already knew a few things from some investigations I did for this new documentary. I think she wanted some sisterly approval, so I obliged her.” The lies come so easily, you’d think I had a script. “She assured me that all this was part of the scene, as she calls it.”
“She told you that tonight?”
“Uh, huh.”
“And she’d do it again like this?”
“I don’t know about that. If I have anything to say about it, she won’t. I’ll suggest she find another master, if she can’t live without her kink. I don’t think she’ll argue.”
He can’t quite believe my passive self-control.
“And that’s all?”
“What more do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell the truth.”
“I have told you the truth. You think I’m lying?”
He shakes his head. “I really don’t know, Michelle. But I’ll bet there’s more to what happened tonight than you’re telling. I’m a big boy, now, you don’t have to protect me.”
I feign a smile and lay my hand on his in a gesture of tenderness. “Honestly, Steven, that is it. If Sunny tells me more, I’ll tell you. I know it looks horrific on the surface, but Sunny will handle it and I’ll be sure she does.”
He mulls the thought, and I see him come around a bit.
“You know what I think? I think she’s damn lucky to be alive, and if she needs any beating it’s to knock some sense into her, not for sexual kicks. If she were my girlfriend, she’d have a blistered behind from a good hard spanking and a talking to she’d never forget.”
I’ve never heard Steven sound like this and these harsh words give me an unexpected reason to quake. I’m amazed his mind even thinks this way.
“Why don’t you let me verbally spank her, hon? She’ll get the message.”
“I hope so.”
Chapter Seven
I dive into my documentary for the next three days, and Steven doesn’t even bother to call. I suspect that he has a lot to think about.
Sunny? She arrives at the studio two days later, subdued, but quietly at peace.
“So, I guess you’ve given up your fascination for kinky sex?” I dash off my opening question, dearly hoping that she’ll say yes.
But no, that’s not the case. She stares back at me looking surprised that I’d even suggest that. “No, Shelly, it turned out to be my fault. I was supposed to wait for my Master’s return, but I got spooked and panicked.” She smiles, eyes deviously merry, “I’m sure I’ll get punished for that!”
White Silk & I Belong to You Page 22