by Stella Hart
I was still sore, but the friction of his fingertips on my clit was taking me higher and higher, winding up my body like a clock. It wouldn’t be long now. Pure pleasure was building deep within, building to a crescendo, threatening to explode out of me.
“Come for me,” Alex growled in my ear. His voice was raw, urgent. “Come on my cock, angel.”
My pussy clenched around him, throbbing and pulsing. I’d already had an orgasm before, bent over the bed the other week, but this was different. Better. Having his thick cock inside me, filling and stretching me, shifted the focus of my pleasure to deep within my core.
One more hard thrust was all it took. I gasped with shock at the intensity of my orgasm as wave after wave of pleasure washed through me, making my inner muscles squeeze Alex’s cock in tight, pulsing waves.
He groaned as he came too, his fingers roughly clutching at me. There would be little bruises all over my skin tomorrow from where he’d grabbed me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
He withdrew from me slowly as I gasped, trying to catch my breath. Then he released me from the cross and carried me back into the bedroom, somehow knowing my legs were still too weak and shaky to walk just yet.
He cleaned me up, then put me down on the big sofa in front of the TV. He sat too, leaning back against the twill fabric, and I curled up between his legs like a loyal pet.
I knew I’d have to go back to the cell after he was finished with me today, as I hadn’t fully earned his trust yet, but I actually wanted to anyway. My mind seemed to have adjusted to the point where I somewhat craved the cell and missed it when I was away from it, because it was ‘home’ to me now. Believe it or not, I actually felt safe there, underground and away from the world. No one and nothing could hurt me down there… except Alex. And as long as I was good, he wouldn’t. At least not in a bad way.
It was amazing how much the human brain could adjust to new surroundings, forced or not. I’d only been here for five weeks at this point, and already I saw a dank cell as a safe haven. A home.
For the next hour, we watched an episode of some new thriller show, and it vaguely occurred to me how absurd this was. I was literally Alex’s prisoner, and here we were watching TV together as if we were just an everyday couple spending some intimate quality time together. It felt nice to escape reality like this, but that’s all it was. An escape. Just like the pain and pleasures of his torture room. Or playroom. Whatever he wanted to call it. It was all an escape from reality.
Somehow, I didn’t mind anymore. One day, I knew I would, and I knew I’d want to run again. But for now, if this was what it took to survive the days here, I could handle it. Even enjoy it.
A couple on the TV show we were watching started to kiss passionately, and the woman drew her head back and moaned. My body stiffened. The actress’s voice was similar to the voice I’d heard in this house the other day, when I was boxed as punishment. Jealousy roiled in my guts all over again.
Alex turned the volume down and tenderly stroked his fingers through my hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, sir,” I whispered.
“Tell me.” There was a warning tone in his voice. “I know when you’re lying.”
I looked up at him. “When you punished me the other day, I heard a voice. You had someone over.”
His eyes crinkled slightly at their corners. He knew I was jealous, and he was amused. “Yes. Do you have a question about that?”
He was going to make me spell it out. I despised him for that, almost as much as I despised myself for being so jealous. Haltingly, I kept going. “Was that… was it someone you’re with? Or someone you want to be with?”
He shook his head. “My guest the other day was a colleague from the hospital. She wanted my advice on a research project she’s working on. Usually we’d meet somewhere more central, but I wanted to punish you. You know that already.”
I lowered my eyes. Just because she came here for platonic work reasons didn’t mean nothing happened. Alex was a handsome man; any woman would be insane not to want him.
He tilted my chin upward, forcing me to look at him again. “She is nothing. You are mine. Not her.”
I nodded.
He gave me an indulgent smile and tweaked my right nipple. “Feel better now?”
I flushed. Messed up as it was, I did. “Yes, sir.”
His brows furrowed. “And how about your nerve pain?”
I shook my head miserably. “Still not great.”
He frowned. “What was it on the scale when you arrived?”
“About eight out of ten. Really bad. Now it’s maybe four or five. Still there, just not as bad.”
Alex nodded. “That’s a huge improvement in just five weeks.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
He grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him again. ”It’s significant, Celeste. You should be proud of yourself. It was eight out of ten with 150 mg of painkillers daily. Now it’s only five with zero painkillers.”
I frowned, confused. “But sir, I’m still taking painkillers. You halved my dose, but I still take them every day.”
He smiled. “They’ve been placebos for the last two weeks. Nothing but powdered sugar in those capsules.”
My brows lifted. “What? Why?”
“I’ve been trying to help you, and it looks like it’s working.”
I drew back from him, covering my nakedness with the thick waffle fabric throw rug. “I don’t understand.”
“I knew about your condition from your medical records, as you already know. I wanted to help. I’m a pain specialist, after all.”
I gaped at him. “Wait… so that’s why I’m here? You kidnapped me and imprisoned me and tortured me to help me?”
He laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle. “No, that’s not why I took you. Not at all. But I still needed to help you while you were here. You’re mine. My responsibility.”
“I don’t understand. All you’ve done is make me do my PT exercises every day.”
He leaned down and stroked my hair again. “No. You just didn’t realize what was happening,” he said softly. “I’m sure your doctor explained your condition with some sort of fire alarm analogy?”
I tentatively nodded, my mind still whirling. “Yes. Something like that.”
“There are a lot of ways to try and train your brain into turning off that alarm. I’ve been using different methods on you, and I’ve been trying to reframe the way you look at pain. I’ve been trying to make you see that there are different types—good and bad. The nerve pain is bad, but the kind I give you is good.”
I shook my head slowly. ”I don’t get it.”
He smiled patiently. “Let me start again. You aren’t like everyone else, Celeste. The reason your brain does this is because part of you wants it. It wants pain.”
I lowered my eyes. That was true, as I’d recently discovered.
“But not this kind of pain,” he went on. “This is the bad kind. You still suffer from it because you haven’t learned to control it.”
“So how do I do that?”
“You know the answer to that. You can’t. It needs to be done for you.”
“Why?”
His eyebrows drew together. I had a feeling he was losing patience with me for asking questions I already knew the answers to, deep down. But I needed to hear it aloud for it to sink in.
“Because you were always meant to be submissive,” he said. “It’s your nature. You have to let someone else control you; have to let go of it all. You’ve always wanted that. I’ve known it about you for a long time, angel.”
He didn’t elaborate as to how he knew this about me.
I guess I already knew how, though. The man stalked me for years. He probably sneaked into my house and peeped through my windows a few times, saw the pictures and movies I used to watch. Or hacked my laptop and read the dirty stories I used to enjoy.
In a way, he probably knew me better than I knew myself at the t
ime. After all, I’d been in denial about who and what I was for so long, convincing myself I liked all that stuff out of pure interest when deep down I knew it was so much more than that.
Even now, I was still trying to come to terms with what I really wanted. What I really craved. But Alex already knew all this about me. He could read me like a book, because he’d been able to stand back and look at me objectively.
I finally shook my head, not quite knowing how to respond. “I…um….”
He smiled and pressed a finger to my lips, silencing my stammering voice. “Think of it this way. I’m not just helping you heal. I’m helping you be what you always wanted to be. I’m helping you give up control. It is what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
I hated that he was right.
I hated myself for not hating him.
“What have you been doing to help fix me?” I asked softly, my eyes widening. “Aside from trying to make me give up control?”
His eyebrows drew together. “I can’t go over all of it right now. It’s too much. But I’ve used lots of distraction techniques. If you touch your body with different, unfamiliar textures, it can distract your mind from feeling the nerve pain from your condition, and eventually your brain starts turning down that alarm system. I’m sure you’ve noticed I like to scrub you every day with that hard brush. Also those incredibly scratchy sheets I gave you. That’s why. It all helps.”
“Oh. So it’s like what you did this morning with the riding crop.”
He nodded. “Exactly like that. You didn’t feel the nerve pain when I hit you with it, did you?”
“No. All I felt was the pain from the crop. It was like my back problem didn’t even exist, and suddenly my brain was back to normal. And it’s the same when….” I trailed off and bit my bottom lip.
His eyes darkened. “Say it.”
“When you touch me,” I whispered, my cheeks heating rapidly. “It feels better then, too.”
“I hope you’re beginning to understand me, then,” he said in a low voice. “I hope you understand that what I give you is good pain. I never want you to feel the bad pain again.”
The message there was clear. It wasn’t that Alex didn’t like hurting me—he did like it. He just wanted me to want him to hurt me. He wanted to give me the sort of pain I liked; the pain I craved.
“I care about you, Celeste,” he added. “I know you don’t believe that, but I do.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I cast my eyes down. As conflicted as I was about him, I was grateful to him for what he’d done. Without me even knowing, he’d been slowly retraining my brain to turn off my neural pain, and apparently it was working. By forcing me to give up some of my control, he’d helped me.
Today was a day of firsts, it seemed, as I whispered three more words I never thought I’d say to this man. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, angel.”
We sat in silence and watched TV again. Finally, I looked back at Alex and risked a daring question, hoping I didn’t spoil the current good mood. “Sir, the other doctor told me that stress makes my pain worse. So… why imprison me against my will? Why punish me? Why refuse to let me go? That’s stressful. Surely that doesn’t help my pain.”
Alex raised his brows. “You’re a smart girl. But like I said earlier, I didn’t bring you here to treat you. Bringing you here and doing the things I’ve done to you was a necessity, as much as it may have stressed you out. I have to keep you here and train you until you’re ready.”
I sighed. “I know you won’t tell me why you brought me here yet. But can you at least tell me when I’ll be ready to know, sir?” I looked up at him with a pleading gaze.
I expected him to give me some vague, esoteric answer like he usually did. Instead, he smiled. “Tomorrow,” he said firmly. “Tomorrow, you’ll start to open your eyes again.”
22
Celeste
I jerked awake in my cell the next day, startled by a scraping noise. Rubbing my eyes, I looked over at the bars, assuming it was Alex bringing me breakfast and water. My heart began to race as I saw what was really happening. Alex was dragging an unconscious man into the smaller cell across from mine.
I sprang to my feet. “Sir,” I said. “What’s happening? Who is that?”
Either he didn’t hear me or he was ignoring me. He pulled the man’s shoes and jacket off, then dumped him on the small cot on the far side of that cell. I squinted over at the man, trying to get a good look at his face. He was relatively young—probably late twenties or early thirties—and handsome.
Had Alex brought me some kind of playmate? Was I supposed to do something with this man as well as him? The thought made me feel slightly queasy. As much as I was still conflicted about Alex, I knew I didn’t want any other man right now. Even if he was cute and muscular like the unconscious guy lying across the hall.
Alex locked him in, then finally approached my cell and unlocked it. “Come,” he said, beckoning me out.
“Sir, you haven’t given me breakfast,” I said timidly.
His eyes hardened. “I have a feeling you’ll thank me for that later. But I’ll give you some water when we get inside.”
I frowned and stepped out of the cell, curiously peering across at the new arrival again. I could just make out something on his upper left arm now that his jacket was off and his arm outstretched. A tiny black double circle tattoo.
A pit formed in my stomach at the sight. It reminded me of something, but I didn’t know what. It was just like the sandstorm in my head whenever Alex showed me those disturbing photos and videos of young girls being tortured or raped. I knew there was something in my mind related to it, but I just couldn’t tease it out, and every time I tried to think harder, the thought disappeared farther and farther into the wind.
Pain pricked at my shoulder blades, and I grimaced. I’d actually woken up feeling fine, but the nerve pain was suddenly back again, just as bad as when I first arrived. I wondered what that signified.
I didn’t question Alex when he carried me up to the house. I knew from yesterday that he had something planned for me—something big—and I had a feeling he didn’t want to answer my questions anymore. He was done with words; he wanted action.
He had his own questions for me, however. “I saw you looking at his tattoo,” he said, frowning down at me as he handed me a glass of water. “Does it mean something to you?”
I took a sip, then shook my head. “I’m not sure. It makes me think of….” For a second, an image flashed into my mind, but before I could even comprehend what it was, it vanished. “I can’t remember. I mean, it was there, and then suddenly it wasn’t. But my back started hurting again as soon as I saw it. I don’t know if that means anything.”
He gave me another hard look. “Things are starting to come back, just like I thought,” he mused, more to himself than me. “You’re so close, but… there’s something else I want to do.”
Vague as ever. Shock, horror…
He pulled me down a different hall in the house, toward an unfamiliar room. There was nothing in it except what appeared to be a giant white pod. It was about five feet wide and eight feet long.
“Sir, what is that?” I murmured, suddenly terrified all over again.
“It’s an isolation tank.”
My knees went weak. Now I knew why the alarm bells in my mind were ringing; why I suddenly felt so scared. I’d heard of these tanks before—complete sensory deprivation was the goal. Inside, a person couldn’t see or hear anything. All they could do was lie there in the dark. Sounded like pure torture to me. In fact, I remembered once reading that isolation tanks were sometimes used as a torture method.
‘White torture’, it was called. A person would be forced into one of these tanks for hours upon hours, and the extended isolation would make them begin to lose their personal identity. No physical damage, just mental.
“Is this a punishment?” I asked, my voice trembling as I quivered beside Alex. I tried
to think of what I might’ve done to deserve it. Did I ask too many questions yesterday? Say the wrong thing?
Strangely, I was more upset about having displeased Alex than the thought of the actual punishment itself.
He looked down at me with a frown. “No. Not a punishment.”
My heart lifted.
“Strip and get in,” he commanded.
“But I don’t….” I was about to argue, but then I remembered who I was speaking to. I couldn’t argue with Alex. He’d made that clear in the past.
I haltingly stripped my clothes off, then climbed into the tank.
“Go slow,” Alex said, watching me like a hawk.
I lowered myself down into the water. It was warm, thick. Slippery with salt. Like I knew I had to, I tipped my head back and lay there, waiting for the darkness to descend.
“While you’re in here, I want you to think as hard as possible,” Alex said, standing over me. “Think about that tattoo. Think about the dreams you have about the hallway and the doors. Think about the photos I’ve shown you. Don’t worry if you hear a high-pitched sound. That’s just your nervous system.”
With that, he leaned down and closed me in. My world was suddenly blank, shrouded in darkness with no sound, smell, or any stimulation other than a faint whining sound, which I quickly realized was coming from me. That must’ve been what Alex was talking about.
Seconds later, I was able to hear my heartbeat as well. Even the flow of my blood through my veins. I’d never felt so close to my own body, never felt so aware of myself. After a few minutes, I felt my pulse slowing and my muscles relaxing. This wasn’t so bad.
I didn’t have to make any effort to float. The salt made my body completely buoyant. Given how pitch black it was in here, I didn’t need to close my eyes, but I did anyway and took a deep breath. I understood why I was in here now.