by EdenBradley
But what’s burning in his handsome features isn’t pride, exactly—it’s some combination of emotions that’s too complicated for me to take in right now. I’m still the pony, transitioning back to being myself, and my brain isn’t functioning. I am too much an animal right now, and my responses are operating at a purely primal level.
“Christopher,” he whispers harshly, his face inches from mine, “don’t think I am unaware that you plan to leave. Remember what we spoke about. Just…see that you do, damn it.”
He releases me, and walks away, leaving me feeling a little shell-shocked. Is it because I’m so unused to hearing him swear? Because of how angry he is with me?
My earlier euphoria is mixed with a sense of loss now. But I should be used to being a walking contradiction. I should be used to loss.
Victor runs a hand over my back, making me shiver even through the latex.
“Shower time for you, then rest. Do rest, Christopher. You’ve earned it. And you’ll need it.”
The Boys are back, and together they strip me down and get me into the showers. The hot water feels magnificent, and when they’re drying me off, my dick goes hard again. I could stand to come again, but then, I always can.
Victor has disappeared, and I feel a little like shit that I’m relieved, but I need to disconnect. I’ve gotten some of my brain back after the shower, and I don’t want to spend too much more time thinking about things. I’ll rest, as Victor said, but then it’ll be time for action.
The Boys take me to an empty stall, and I lie down in the straw, gladly closing my eyes even as they lock the shackle onto my left ankle. I have much to think about, to dream about. And it all has to do with my beautiful Aimée.
When I wake, the hazy blue-gold of twilight is drifting in through the big barn doors and the air has turned chilly. Someone has come in and laid a horse blanket over me as I slept, and left a tray of real food—a thick chicken stew and a hunk of fresh bread. I get up, take a good, long piss in the bucket, then settle down in the soft straw to eat, and when I’m done I lean into the water trough for a long drink. Then I take a look around to get my bearings.
This is stall eleven, at the opposite end from the handlers tack room, which means Aimée is at the other end of the barn. And there’s a key within reach in here. I have to stretch hard enough that the metal shackle bites into my ankle, drawing a little blood, but it doesn’t matter. Soon I have the key, and I release myself from my chains with only the tiniest edge of regret. Carefully, I replace the key in its hiding place, then poke my head from the stall to make sure the barn is empty of handlers before stepping quietly into the center aisle.
When I make my way to the handlers’ room, I find one of my stash spots behind a cabinet and pull a tight roll of cash wrapped in a plastic bag from it—somewhere around three thousand dollars, if I remember correctly. Grabbing a feedbag from a hook on the wall, I shove the cash into it, then pull a blanket from a shelf, and head to the stall I last saw Aimée in.
But she’s not fucking there! Instead it’s the sleeping figure of a Boy. Luckily he doesn’t stir, even as I cuss under my breath. If they’ve taken her away, Godless motherfucking bastards… But I’m sure they have. He has. Did I really think he wouldn’t fuck with me, if not make it completely impossible for me to get to her? I’m not that deluded, even blinded as I am by my need for her.
I stop swearing and pull in a long breath.
Get your shit together. Go find her.
One by one, I carefully check each stall, some empty, some with sleeping slaves. And finally, in the stall next to the one I’ve just escaped from, there she is—awake and lovelier than ever, blinking at me, which I can see even in the relative darkness of the barn, with only the dim wall sconces in the center aisle to offer any light
“Shh,” I tell her in a whisper as I step in and kneel beside her. I take her face in my hand, feel her shiver beneath my touch. “Will you come with me?” I ask. “Come away and be with me, Aimée. I can’t demand it of you, as much as I’d like to. Are you still willing?”
She lets out a small sob, and when I cover her mouth with my palm, I have my answer as she leans into me, turning her head to nuzzle my hand, to leave soft, fluttering kisses there. I pull it away before I become too distracted by my growing hard-on and the emotion flooding my system. It’s too much, and I need to stay on task.
“I thought you’d left without me. I was so afraid I’d never see you again.”
I hold her face in my hands, letting her tears dampen my skin, and something in me fucking loves her tears. It makes me hot, but it also makes me…what? Her tears do something that’s entirely unfamiliar to me—a painful and glorious tightening of my chest that feels amazing, and at the same time, freaks me the fuck out.
I stare into her eyes, and they’re more green than ever, gleaming with the tears. Beautiful. So damn vulnerable it makes me ache in places I didn’t know existed. Oh, I could become the poet for this girl. I could maybe become everything for her.
“I need you to think about it,” I tell her. “Once we go, there’s no turning back—not for me. They’ll never accept me back into this inner circle once I take you out of here. I don’t know if they’d accept you again—I can’t say. Do you understand what it means to go away with me?”
“I understand I will get to be with you.”
“And that’ll be enough?” I have to ask it. It’s one of the few times in my adult life I’ve been unsure of myself. Will I be enough?
“You are everything,” she says, keeping her soft voice low. “I know we hardly know each other in terms of time span, but the things we’ve said to each other…the strange kind of life we have in common, even the enormous differences in the way we were raised…it all adds up. Except it’s not a mathematical equation—you can’t define human experience that way. There’s an undeniable connection that goes far beyond the kink or the chemistry—and you must feel the same, or you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d simply be gone. You’ve said as much. Do I have to know more than that I want to take this risk with you? That because it’s you, it doesn’t feel so risky? Do I have to know why? Does it really matter? ”
“Not when you say it like that.” Stroking her hot cheek with my thumb, then my palm, I feel the fever of her sincerity burn into my hand. Into my fucking soul. She has to be mine. She is mine. I have no other option. “Let’s go.”
I find the key hidden in the wall and unlock her, then wrap her in the blanket I’ve brought. “I have clothes in an outbuilding, but nothing that’ll fit you, Aimée. We’ll figure it out, okay?”
“Yes. It’s all okay. I know you’ll take care of me.”
A sense of pride unlike anything I’ve felt before floods my system, and as I lace an arm around her waist and we move quietly out into the cool night, I feel almost unbearably protective of her. My girl. Mine.
Something that belongs to me for the first time in my life.
No. Someone.
Chapter Nine
We jog up the road, then I direct her to veer off onto a side path that leads up a hill to a small tool shed. Inside, on a high shelf behind a box of rusting bailing wire, I have a bundle of clothes hidden away—dark jeans, black t-shirt, black thermal pullover, socks and boots—and a cell phone with a battery-powered charger. I plug it in before I dress her in the warm shirt, which comes down over her thighs, then dress myself in the rest. The clothes feel odd against my skin, the soft cotton much stranger than the latex I wore earlier in the day. Transferring the cash to the small leather satchel I kept the clothes in, I stash the feedbag in its place. The less traceable clues to our whereabouts, the better, for a time—until the memory of us fades away. Then I’ll return the contract fees the Master paid into our bank accounts when we signed. It’s what I always do, and he’ll know I’m good for it. I may be the ultimate brat, the ultimate anarchist and an ex-junkie, but I’m no thief. Except that I’m stealing Aimée from him.
Don’t think about it n
ow.
Taking her hand, I lead her down another path until we get to the grand, well-lit iron gates of the ranch, and I call for a cab. The cell phone feels strange in my hand, as if I’m from some other era and unfamiliar with the technology. It’s always like this, when I run. It’s all a little routine to me. But Aimée has been silent this whole time, and I’m worried about how she’s taking all this, escaping like refugees in the night.
“Hey. You okay, prettiness?” I ask her, stroking her silky hair from her cheek while we wait, maybe more for my benefit than hers.
“I will always be okay with you, Christopher. I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“It’s as mysterious as that, isn’t it? You and I?”
“It is. But I’ve decided I don’t have to understand it, as I told you earlier. I know this whole thing is a little crazy. I truly don’t care. I’ve always followed what my heart needed, and this is no different, unless that it’s more so. Impossibly more. And…I think you’re doing the same, aren’t you? Following your heart?”
I nod and pull her in closer.
The cab arrives in a small spray of gravel and dust, and we get in. The driver gives me a puzzled look in the rearview mirror, but I hand him a wad of twenties and tell him to take us to a hotel I know in Monterey, one town over. When I loop an arm around her shoulders, she lays her head on my chest in an attitude of absolute trust, and eventually she seems to sleep.
After having the driver stop at one of those all-night gas stations, where I buy my girl a pair of shorts and flip-flops, we continue on to the Monterey Hotel, an old Victorian inn just up the street from Cannery Row. Not that I plan to stay long enough to play tourist here, but we need a comfortable spot for the night. I’ve learned that a few hours of transition time is important.
The place is lit up, and I can tell Aimée is in shock. To be honest, so am I, but I have to take care of her, so I keep her close to my side while I get us checked in to a room. Then I half carry her up the old stairs, carpeted in a dark red floral print, to the third floor.
Our room is pretty—a suite with a fireplace and a wide, arching window with heavy white-painted shutters that remind me of New Orleans. The whole room reminds me of that old city, with its fine, carved antique furniture, the enormous bed with the intricate wood headboard, the little writing desk against one wall.
“Sit down while I take care of a few things, pretty,” I tell her.
She follows my direction, setting herself on the edge of a damask-covered chair, still in slave mode, with her perfect posture, her gaze on the floor. Or maybe it’s just the shock of our absurd situation. But I have to turn away from her long enough to build a fire, to call downstairs and ask them to send up extra blankets and a meal, and quietly offer them money to send someone out to get two small pieces of luggage and clothes for her. I also give them a contact number to have one of my credit cards, some of my own clothes and more cash sent to me here by courier from my home in San Francisco—I have an assistant who will know what to do. And these fine hotels, they know better than to ask any questions.
I push a glass of sparkling water into Aimée’s hands, and she takes a few sips. But she looks so damn lost sitting there, I pick her up in my arms, drag the soft cashmere blanket from the foot of the bed, and sit down in front of the fire with her half in my lap.
“How are you doing?” I ask, running a hand through her hair.
“I’m good.”
“Are you?”
“No. But I will be.”
“Yeah, you will. Aimée, you have to know that you are my responsibility now, that I don’t take this lightly. I will take damn good care of you.”
She wraps her delicate fingers around my wrist, making my heart beat faster. “I know you will. I wouldn’t have left with you otherwise.” She pauses, then, “There’s a certain safety in that world, isn’t there? We sign ourselves over, and it’s everything I’ve ever hoped for, imagined, fantasized about, masturbated to. But it’s also safe. Safe in that I can lose myself. Safe in that every single thing is attended to for us. But…meeting you has made me realize that in being that safe, I’m losing out on something. And it’s not what an outsider would think, that what I’m losing is my individuality. That’s a given, although that never really goes away, or we’d do it and be done a month later. What I’m losing out on is taking risks. Being willing to walk through life and feel it all. I didn’t know it before. I was simply doing what I thought I needed.”
“And you don’t need it anymore?”
“No, I do. I absolutely do, or I wouldn’t have walked away with you—I would have just walked away. But I think with you I can have the safety and the fantasy, and still have those risks I’ve been avoiding all these years.”
“I’ve never been able to leave the risks behind completely, to lose myself to that degree. I’ve always felt like it’s some failure in me, some defect.”
“No. I think you’re more a realist than the rest of the slaves.”
Grabbing her face, I look into her eyes. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, Aimée. I’m sure to disappoint you,” I tell her more harshly than I mean to.
She shrugs. “Then disappoint me. At least I’ll know it’s real. Because I don’t think I can do this anymore—what I’ve been doing. I really was convinced it was what I wanted, craved, and maybe I did crave it, but that doesn’t mean it’s what I needed.”
“What do you think you need now?”
“It’s a little vague. I’m sure I’ll feel more like I have my feet under me in the days to come. I want you. I need you—need to be yours—but I still need to be myself sometimes. Some kind of balance. I have no idea how to do that. Can we figure the rest out as we go? Will you help me?”
I lean down and press my lips to the tender spot at the base of her throat. Her pulse beats madly against my lips. “As long as you know you’re mine.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Absolutely yours. Yes, please, Christopher.”
I kiss her lips, and they’re so damn soft under mine, it’s making me a little crazy. I push my tongue inside, her mouth unbelievably sweet. It makes me need to hurt her, to be inside her. I slip my hand under her shirt and take her warm, full breast in my palm, squeeze hard, making her sigh, then she gasps as I pinch her nipple tightly. My dick twitches, pressing against my jeans, making me flash back to the sensation of being encased in the latex.
Need to play her wearing tight leather pants…to open the fly and fuck her until she screams, my balls squeezed tight by the seam in the leather.
When I bite into her lip, she moans, and I’m fucking rigid as steel, my cock weeping pre-come already. Then there’s a knock at the door, and I have to let her luscious tit go to get up and answer the door with a hard-on—not that it’s anything new, and I don’t fucking care if the room service guy they’ve sent up here sees it. In fact, when he glances down and tries to suppress his reaction to my fat cock pressing against my jeans, it amuses me.
Taking the plates from the cart, I set them on the floor, sit down and spoon-feed my girl. There will be plenty of time for her to serve me once we get settled somewhere and the shock of the day has worn off. I give her little tastes of everything: tender bits of crab meat dipped in melted butter, fresh strawberries, torn pieces of the fragrant local sourdough bread. She takes each bite carefully, like a baby bird, and her delicacy makes me want to do terrible things to her. But tonight we need to rest.
After we eat, I pick her up and set her on the bed. I pull the thermal shirt over her head, cover her carefully, and after stripping out of my clothes, I curl up beside her. I really don’t intend to do more than sleep, but fuck it all, it’s me, and in about thirty seconds I’ve pulled her on top of me, and my arms are wrapped around her sleek little body, tight enough to hurt, while I pinch her soft flesh—her sides, her ass, her thighs, the backs of her arms. And she’s moaning and sighing against my neck. I’m hard as fuck, and her wet
pussy is rubbing my dick, so I press her hips tighter against me, digging my nails in, and shove her slender frame up and down, jacking off with her whole body on my stiff cock. Her nipples are two hard points against my chest. They feel fucking great, raking over the piercing on my left side, her lush flesh so damn soft. Goddamn delicious girl.
When she starts to shake, I tell her, “Come for me,” and she does, good girl that she is. And Jesus fuck, in moments I’m coming against her belly, then we’re slipping and sliding in my sticky jizz.
I go hard again, and this time I roll her over, bring her knees up to her shoulders and plow into her, watching her beautiful face. So beautiful, I have to hurt her. Have to. I start to slap her, and with each slap her eyes become more glazed, her body going loose beneath me as she yields to my command, to the pain. Her cheeks are burning, bright pink with my hand prints. Leaning down, I take one of her gorgeous, succulent tits into my mouth, sinking my teeth in, finding the marks I left on her before and scraping, sucking, marking her. Mine.
“Fuck, yeah,” I mutter, bending to kiss her hard, sucking on her lips, biting down until she whimpers, then cries out. Finding the pressure points on the back of one sleek thigh, I press, dig, until she’s coming and yelling, and I have to slap a hand over her mouth. Then she’s choking, still coming. I spill into her, pleasure wracking my body, spiraling into my gut, shooting up my spine and into my brain—mainlining pleasure like a fucking rocket in my veins.
Even when we’re both done coming, I’m still pinching her, twisting her nipples, biting her shoulders. I love the way she gives herself over to me, to whatever pain I want to bring her. To the pleasure. It’s like an exploration for me, new territory, feeling like this. Treating a woman’s body this way. Not the fucking or the pain, but the way I feel when I’m doing it. Like I have to devour her—her skin, her scent, her desire. I need to fill myself up with her, and I can’t get enough. I can’t stop until the way she smells is deeply embedded in my nostrils, until the flavor of her flesh is burned into my tongue. And even then, it’s barely enough to hold me for the night.