by Linnea May
I close my eyes. Even when there’s no one looking at me, it still fills me with shame to admit all these things, to give voice to my darkest fantasies. The same fantasies that caused Luke to be disgusted with me. The memory pains me, but I may need to face it aloud so he’ll listen to me.
“You know, my ex-boyfriend, he always said that I was broken because of the way my father treated me and my mother,” I say. “He insinuated that I like to be punished because I was hit as a child. But I don’t want to believe that, and I don’t think it’s true.”
I pause, listening for him outside the door, to see if he’ll interrupt and silence me again. But all I hear is the steady sound of his breath as he waits for me to continue.
“My father was an asshole,” I go one. “I’d never want a man to treat me the way he treated my mother and me. No. I want this. I want you. I want what you’re able to give me.”
I hesitate again, trying to hold back the tears as they threaten to choke me up again.
“If you send me away now, I feel like I will lose you forever,” I proceed. “And I’d rather rot in here for days than to never see you again.”
I can’t help but to start sobbing again, another rush of tears running down my face.
Outside, I can hear him moving, but he’s not banging against the door this time. He’s not hammering against the wood or yelling for me to come out and leave.
“Let me in,” he says instead, his voice soft and defeated.
Chapter 46
Joseph
She lets a few moments pass before she moves away from the door. I turn the knob and push it open carefully, in case she’s still standing close to it.
I find her standing in the middle of the room, naked and distraught, with new tears mixing with the dried-up bloody mess on her cheeks.
A violent cry escapes from her chest when I hurry toward her, wrapping my arms around her small body, as I pull her in for a heartfelt embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper in her ear, while she cries in my arms.
“You said you’d never hurt me,” she whimpers. “You promised.”
I close my eyes, my chest heavy with pain as I’m confronted with her agony.
“You have no idea how sorry I am,” I repeat. “For everything.”
She buries her face in my chest, shaken by brutal sobs as I lift her up and carry her out of the room. Her crying intensifies when she realizes that I’m removing her from the attic, the place she thinks she deserves to be right now.
“You’ve been punished enough,” I tell her as I carry her down the hallway. “My pet.”
Her gaze wanders up to me, searching for clarification.
“You’re not sending me away?” she asks, hope shining through every syllable of her question.
I shake my head.
“You’re insane, crazy, twisted,” I tell her. “But you’re my crazy pet.”
I set her down to open the door to her bathroom. “Let’s clean you up.”
She sniffs and nods, looking so insanely vulnerable and exhausted that I’m overwhelmed with the urge to protect her. No one, especially me, should ever be allowed to make her feel like this. It angers me to know how she’s been treated by other men before, her father, her ex-boyfriend. They don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her.
I draw her a bath, and as I reach over to start the water, she gasps in shock next to me.
“Your hand!” she exclaims. “It looks terrible. You need to see a doctor!”
I hadn’t even noticed the blood on my knuckles, it only caught my eye when I left traces of it on her beautiful face.
She takes my hand, carefully pulling it closer to her so she can inspect the damage I’ve done to myself.
“It’s nothing,” I say, trying to downplay the extent of the injury. “It doesn’t even hurt.”
She furrows her eyebrows as she looks up at me.
“Where’s your medical kit?” she wants to know.
I sigh. “I will take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”
“Please,” she begs. “It’s my fault this happened. If you deny me taking care of you, it’d feel like another punishment.”
She pauses, her face turning to a focused expression as she contemplates her next move.
“You’d hurt me,” she adds. “Not allowing me to take care of you would seriously hurt me.”
She can’t hide a little smirk on her face when she’s speaking those words to me.
“Little minx,” I say. “You know you can’t play that card every time you want something from me.”
Her face changes to a disarming smile as she bats her eyes at me. “But could I today?”
I’m defenseless against her charm and let her do as she wishes. She bandages my hand while we’re soaking in the bathtub together. Now that the adrenaline rush is over, I can feel the mundane but stinging pain on my knuckles as she doctors the wounds.
I watch her as the water plays around the curves of her breasts. Just the picture of her, naked and focused as she tends to me, is enough for my cock to crave her. She smiles when she notices my hardness jutting against her thigh.
“Even after all of this?” she asks, winking at me.
“I can’t help it,” I say. “With such a beautiful pet right in front of me.”
She fixates her attention on the bandage around my hand.
“All done,” she says, moving my hand to the side of the tub. “Keep it out of the water.”
I smile at her, struggling to believe that she’s still here. Only a few hours have passed since I learned that she was not the woman I had planned to kidnap.
I really kidnapped her, I took her from her life, when she had absolutely no idea that this would happen to her.
That’s why everything with her has felt so real from the get-go. Because it was real.
She was a real victim to my twisted needs. And yet, she’s still here. She still wants to be here, just as I want her to be here.
But that doesn’t change the facts we’ve tried to ignore until now.
“People must be looking for you,” I say. “Your friends, your family. If we turn on the news, we might even see you there.”
She curves her lips into a sad smile.
“I don’t have many friends here,” she says. “Most of them were his friends, we always hung out together, and I never bothered to make my own friends since I moved here. But yeah, I guess work will miss me, and they probably informed my mother.”
“You will have to let them know that you’re okay,” I tell her.
She nods in agreement. “I know I have to.”
“And you need to tell them something about where you were,” I add, feeling a heavy lump in my throat as I’m overcome with guilt.
“I’ll come up with something,” she says, as her hands absentmindedly wander below the surface of the water until she finds my cock.
I sigh when she wraps her hand around it, slowly massaging my length by applying and releasing pressure in turns.
“My life had been pretty bleak in the days leading up to you,” she says in a low voice, without stopping what she’s doing. “I can always blame it on that. Say things got too much for me and I needed a break from everything, a little retreat, a hiatus from life.”
Her eyes find mine, locking onto my gaze as her lips part in an alluring motion.
“Is that why you were at that bar that night?” I ask her. “To drown your sorrows?”
She nods. “Yes, I guess you could say that.”
“And what made you steal that coat?” I want to know.
Her eyelashes flutter, while her mouth tips into a coy smile.
“Maybe I knew it would lead me to you.”
Chapter 47
Liana
Day thirty-nine. Today is the day when everything was supposed to end.
He told me everything, and filled me in on every little detail about this arrangement I had involuntarily become a part of. He told me about the agenc
y, about the agreement that there would be no communication between him and them once the girl was in his house, about the girl’s requirements, and the settings and rules they agreed to before consenting to become his slave.
He also told me how much they’d be paid once the thirty-nine days were over. It was enough for them to never have to work again, which most likely served as the biggest incentive for most of them.
“And you never fell in love with any of them?” I asked him at one point.
Joseph shook his head.
“I was done with them as soon as the contract was over,” he said. “They usually bored me at that point anyway.”
I also asked him if any of them ever fell in love with him. The thought that he has done this with quite a few women before me left a sting in my heart, and I’d be surprised if all of them had been as untouched by the entire thing as he claims they were.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It never concerned me.”
His words were cold, but earnest. It’s still hard for me to believe that I, of all women, should be the one to crack his hard shell, but once I did, I found a core so gentle, wise and loving that I never stood a chance.
The last eighteen days were like an early honeymoon, a retreat for two broken souls who selfishly took the time to grow with each other.
I never left his house until this day. I begged him to allow us to complete the deal as arranged, since there was no urgent reason for me to show up anywhere.
I no longer have a job to return to, and another secretary was hired to deal with the aftermath of Professor Miller’s death. There was nothing left for me to do, as most other issues could only be dealt with by the academic staff.
Calling my mother was the hardest part. She had a major freak-out when she heard my voice on the phone, and after her initial shock was over, she soon migrated to fury over my “infantile behavior”. It was the first time that I told her about the break-up with Luke and losing my job. That’s how disconnected we are.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be called by the police in the middle of the night? Telling you that your daughter has been missing for days, and then giving you those reproachful hints when you have no idea where she might be?” she asked, her annoyance palpable. She didn’t know about any of the trouble that had befallen my life, but once I told her, she sighed with understanding.
“I’m just glad you’re alive,” she concluded after I gave her that half-assed explanation, in a tone that insinuated that she was mostly glad to no longer have to worry about me because it disrupted her own life.
It’s all well and done.
I woke up next to Joseph every single day, our nervous hearts intertwining more and more with every moment we spent together. This was the most intense way to start a relationship, but it works for us.
But today, things will change. Today is when our contract ends.
Today is also the day I will lose my collar and have it replaced with something else. When he told me that he would have to take the collar away from me, I choked up a little because it felt as if he was telling me he would rip a part of my heart out once we reached day thirty-nine.
I have to say goodbye to a lot of things today to make room for the new. We’ve already packed up the red fur coat and mailed it back to its owner. I wonder if she ever figured out that I was the one who took it, if she even noticed me at all. It felt wrong to keep the coat, even though I know she has been paid a generous amount as compensation despite never having to go through with her end of the deal. As ugly as it may be, the red fur coat has become special to me, not only because it was the reason for me to end up here, but also because it kept me warm and protected when I needed it most.
Just like that cold and dark time, the coat is now a part of my past and I no longer need it.
I’m down in the kitchen standing in front of the French doors, daydreaming as my eyes wander along the landscape outside. I’m no longer confined to the space upstairs. He’s shared his home with me as if it was the most natural thing to do. And in a way, with us, it is.
He told me that he usually has some staff around the house, but I’ve only met one of them, his house maid Marjory. She’s a sweet, middle-aged lady who’s driving a red sedan, the car I saw driving up to the house the day he left me alone. She had been working for his grandparents before they left for Florida and has been an integral part of Joseph’s life for a very long time, which is why meeting her made me just as nervous as if I was about to meet his mother. She seemed surprised to see me, and it was more than awkward to know that she was in the know about who I was and how I ended up to be in the house. However, she never said anything about it and treated me as if I had entered Joseph’s life like any other girlfriend would.
“Are you ready?” I hear his voice behind my back.
I turn around and find him looking as magnificent as always, dressed in his navy blue suit, my favorite on him because it brings out his dark hazel eyes and hugs his masculine frame perfectly. He’s freshly shaved and has his hair gelled and styled to the nines, making me feel underwhelmingly dressed, despite the new Miu Miu dress I’m wearing. It’s a present from him to mark the end of our first thirty-nine days together, a kind of anniversary that no other couple would celebrate.
“Yes,” I say, but it’s a lie.
I knew I couldn’t flee from my responsibilities forever, I knew this day would come. But I never felt less ready for anything in my life. I wish I could hide in this strange getaway forever, hugged by his strong arms, feeling the warmth of his body pressed against mine, and his cock throbbing inside me. There’s no place I’d rather be.
He comes to a halt next to me, brushing a strand of hair back over my shoulder, while his eyes focus on my neck. I swallow hard, preparing myself for something I don’t want to happen.
“Today marks an end,” he says, as his hands wander to the little heart-shaped lock at the front. “And the beginning of something new.”
His words are concluded by the clicking sound of the lock as he opens it. I sigh when he slowly removes the collar from around my neck. My hand moves up immediately, touching the unfamiliar emptiness around my throat.
“I’ll miss it,” I whisper, casting him a sad look.
He smiles at me.
“You’re still my pet,” he promises. “But today, we have some things to take care of. Come.”
He puts the collar aside and takes my hand to lead me outside.
Chapter 48
Joseph
She’s shy about letting me see her apartment when we first get there, and already begins to make excuses about its alleged chaos when we’re still in the car. It’s cute to see her this flustered about showing me a part of her that’s new to me.
Her hand is visibly shaking when she unlocks the door for us, and she casts me an apologetic smile as she beckons me to follow her inside.
“Please, remember no one has been here for more than a month, there might be dust and-”
“Dead plants?” I ask, nodding toward a sad-looking fern on a dresser in her corridor.
She laughs and shakes her head. “Oh no, that’s been dead for a while.”
Her place is small, but very homey. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place like this, small and simple, but so affectionately decorated that it reflects the character of its inhabitant. I don’t understand why she would make excuses for any sort of mess because she’s clearly a very organized person. Everything matches, everything has its place, even the pen and notebook next to her phone are lined up parallel to the edge of the little table they’re lying on.
She keeps casting me insecure looks as she leads me through her place, and I hate that she feels the need to excuse any of it or even feels inferior to me. She has no reason to.
“I love it,” I say, as my eyes rest on a few photos she pinned on the wall in her living room. Most of them don’t show people, but places and landscapes.
“Oh, that’s… I didn’t have
time to remove those,” she hastily says, covering one of the photos that shows her with the guy I assume is her ex-boyfriend.
I smile at her, gently taking her hand and pulling her close to me.
“Relax, my pet,” I tell her. “You’re mine now, but we both have a past that we shouldn’t be afraid to share.”
She huffs. “You’re one to talk.”
“Touché,” I say, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asks. “I could make you a tea or something.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll be fine, just do what you came here to do,” I reply. “I’ll wait here and just invade your privacy so I can learn everything about you that there is to learn.” I wink.
She furrows her eyebrows, but beckons for me to sit on her small couch.
“Alright, have fun,” she says, before she leaves the room.
On her way out, I can see her checking the answering machine on her phone. She flips through the messages without listening to them, looking distraught.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She sighs, shaking her head.
“Yes, fine,” she says without looking at me. “It’s just… him.”
“He must have been worried, too,” I say, assuming she’s talking about her ex-boyfriend.
“I guess so,” she retorts, before disappearing into her bedroom.
I take a seat, my eyes scanning the room as I try to imagine the life she was leading before I ripped her from it. The kind of woman she was, what her daily routine looked like. It’s obvious that she’s an avid reader. The bookshelf that covers most of the wall to my right is filled to the brim with books of all genres, but her favorites seem to be thrillers and psychological crime fiction. That shouldn’t surprise me.
She’s a good and timid girl who’s worked hard to keep her life in line, well organized and responsible. But her mind is in a constant struggle, yearning for a breakout from all of this. She’s told me about her dark fantasies and how I - unknowingly - made them come true. The terror she felt was real when I kidnapped her, but it excited her as much as it scared her.