by Kitty Thomas
She stepped inside. “Holy shit,” she said. This room wasn’t tacky and overblown like Dmitri’s. Everything was nice and crisply clean and much more spacious than she’d expected. The room had a distinct masculine touch with simple lines and edges to everything. There was a private bathroom, and an attached balcony.
“You’ll get plenty of light in this room, but I want you to spend some time outside and make friends. I’m sure you’ll become friends with Mina and Annette. Let me show you something.” Gabe opened the balcony door and she followed him outside. The walls on either side of the room created a private nook outside, but the balcony expanded out farther into more open air where the only thing that finally stopped this sense of expansion was the railing. Next to the railing was a table and chairs with cushions. “I like to eat out here sometimes. It’s a nice place to think.”
“So this is your room?” Julie asked. Of course it was. Like they were giving all these girls luxury suites with private bathrooms. The anxiety moved up the back of her throat and formed a lump there. Like hell he wasn’t going to make her sleep with him. They were standing in his room. There was one bed. It was a big bed, but it was still one bed, and he was a man who clearly had strong appetites.
The idea that he wasn’t going to force himself on her... it was all a lie. Maybe he was so deluded he thought she could rewind time and go back to the innocence of her crush on him. Or that she’d be so grateful for the illusion of safety that she’d...
“Yes. This is my room. I’ll bring you some more clothes in the morning.” He went back into the house and toward the door like he was leaving.
Julie trailed him back inside and closed the balcony doors behind her. “Wait, where are you going?”
“To bed.”
But this was his room. If he was going to bed then where was he going?
“I’ll be sleeping in the room next door. Julie, I will never hurt you, but I’m no angel. I can’t share a room with you unless you were to come to me and truly give yourself to me.”
She didn’t need him to re-explain what all that meant. Her mind immediately went back to the conversation at the rest stop where she’d learned he wanted to be her master and for her to come to him happily of her own free will for this treatment.
Given these ugly facts, she didn’t know why she was arguing with him about room accommodations. The space from him would be a welcome relief, but still, she was taking his room. It felt like a worse idea than the two of them sharing it. What if he came to resent her?
“But this room is yours,” Julie said.
“This whole house is mine. Mine and the other partners’. I don’t always sleep in my own room anyway.”
“Oh.” Images of him surrounded by endless willing sexual partners flooded her mind. Maybe she did still have the crush. Maybe she did still impossibly want him—because the most prominent feeling she had suddenly was jealousy.
“Goodnight, Julie.”
“Gabe. wait. I really can’t take your room. For how long?” Maybe he imagined she’d quickly fall into his arms and then it wouldn’t matter because he’d be back in here in a few days or a week.
He moved back to her, and without meaning to, she took a few steps back. But he caught her and took her hands in his. “Try to understand. You aren’t some stray I picked up on the side of the road. Your happiness and health and safety matter to me more than anything else. I don’t need a fancy room. I need you to be well provided for and to feel safe, and not in a room with barely any light. If you need something, I’m next door. If you get hungry, you’ll find the kitchen downstairs. You can’t miss it. The other girls aren’t allowed in there after hours, but you can go where you want here. My home is your home. Okay?”
She nodded. Gabe bent and kissed the top of her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning. Try to sleep.”
Then he was gone.
But she couldn’t sleep because now that she was alone, she finally had time to review the events of the evening. Gabe was obviously sending someone in to kill Dmitri and his guys, but what did that mean for her friends? Would they be killed too? Would they be captured and brought here? Even if they were treated a little nicer and fed a little better, Gabe wouldn’t just keep them all and leave them unmolested. Would they sell them? The idea was so distressing that for the first time in months Julie couldn’t sleep.
Before, the fantasy of Gabe somehow magically rescuing her had kept her going. Now that it had actually happened, she couldn’t come up with a similarly nice mental ending for her friends—no matter how hard she tried.
34
Bright light startled Julie from a sleep it felt she’d only found mere moments ago, though the clock on the nightstand said differently. In that first brief second of wakefulness, before she opened her eyes, she was sure it was a guard shining a flashlight in her face. But the bed she was in was too comfortable—the mattress too firm and nice, the sheets too luxurious and soft. All at once the events of the previous night came flooding back.
It had been hard to sleep, but now that she was awake and the bedding had warmed and molded around her body like a big fluffy dog, it was difficult to get up. While she was afraid of what might happen with Gabe and was still trying to process a rescue that had arrived at the cost of any hope of future freedom—not that she’d really had that hope—the biggest fear overtaking all the circuits of her brain was for her friends and what would happen to them now.
For six months, those women had become her family. They’d comforted each other through difficult nights and after horrible clients. They fed each other the best they could when one among them—more often than not, Julie herself—was denied food. Umiko had been Dmitri’s favorite scapegoat until Julie had arrived, then it seemed like she couldn’t get a proper meal after that. Despite the big buffet at the mall, her stomach growled, as if broadcasting the anxiety that it might never be properly fed again.
Last night she’d been certain she couldn’t give Gabe the things he wanted, but in the daylight, things looked different, mainly because of her friends still locked away and the new dangers coming their way soon.
There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Gabe. Can I come in?”
“Okay.” Him knocking on his own door and asking his captive’s permission to come in the room was so weird, for a second Julie thought she might still be dreaming.
He dropped a pile of clothes on the bed. Brightly colored sweatpants and shorts, a lot of white T-shirts, socks, running shoes, and undergarments. “I’m sorry for the whole Workout Barbie thing. If you ever decide to be mine, we will definitely upgrade your wardrobe. There should be fresh towels in your bathroom. They’ll stop serving breakfast in the cafeteria in another hour, so you should hurry unless you want lunch instead. I need to get to work, but I’m sure I’ll see you later.”
He started to leave.
“Gabe, wait.”
He stopped and turned, a question in his eyes.
Suddenly the words didn’t want to come out of her mouth. She took a deep breath, in an attempt to steady her nerves. After a good rest, she believed Gabe wouldn’t share her or starve her, that he would protect her. After all, she’d known him—however casually—for a long time before last night. And upon reflection, his recent actions fit more closely with the man she’d thought he was, rather than the one she feared he was.
Her friends weren’t so lucky, however traumatic it might be to be Gabe’s slave.
“Julie?”
“I-I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“What you said you wanted. I’ll be your slave.”
His expression shuttered, suspicious. “Why?”
Julie’s gaze went to the pile of clothes on the bed. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I’m afraid for the other girls at Dmitri’s house. I-if you spare them, and don’t bring them back here... just let them go... I’ll do whatever you want me to do f-for as long as you want it
.” She chanced a look up at Gabe and was surprised to see he looked angry. Really? He couldn’t give her this one thing if she would give him everything?
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want a trade. I want you without reservation because you want the same things I want. I am not taking you as some unwilling payment to spare your friends.”
Julie’s anger came all at once to match his. The ferocity of it felt like a train surging through an endless dark tunnel. She’d been so scared for so long that anger felt like a barely real emotion, so wispy that when it would flow through her, it just as quickly flowed out again, and she could never grab hold of it before it moved outside her reach. But this time it felt unstoppable. It felt like it might light her on fire and burn her away.
“So you think if you kill or enslave women who became my friends... or have them killed or enslaved... that I will ever give myself to you willingly? Are you that out of touch?”
Gabe sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “You think I’m that big of a monster?”
“I don’t know what you are. I’m willing to offer you what you want for what I want. It seems mutually beneficial to me.”
“I don’t want your martyrdom. I can’t believe you think, after my discussion with Anton last night... I can’t believe you think that I would either have them killed or bring them here.”
“You brought me here.”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“I’m going to work.”
Work. Right. Fucking and being serviced by obedient captive women was work. What a fucking asshole.
“Wait,” she said.
“I said no, and I meant it.”
“No, I mean... what’s going to happen to them… my friends?”
“They’ll get to safety. If the mission is successful, Dmitri and his guys won’t be a threat to them anymore, and they won’t be a threat to the operation here because they don’t know about it. Don’t worry.” Gabe left the room and shut the door quietly behind him.
As soon as he was gone, she nearly started crying. For the first time the tears would have been relief—for the fate of her friends.
But once she moved past this sense of relief, she found herself agitated again. What was that? What was any of that? He acted like he didn’t want her. Was he regretting the decision to bring her here? What if he decided he wanted to sell her? That was their business model after all. She tried to keep reminding herself of the conversation she’d witnessed the previous night. It wasn’t in Gabe’s nature to do that to someone. Right? But why was he acting so weird and distant? And why wouldn’t he take her offer? It was what he wanted. Why the hell did he care how he got it?
If he expected her to roll over and become his slave for no other reason than some desperate desire to please and obey him... holy shit did he have a long wait. Like the rest of his natural lifetime. To save her friends? Yes. She’d do whatever she had to in order to free them from Dmitri’s hold and spare their lives, but just throwing herself at Gabe’s feet because she had some weird desperate urge to call him master and be his property? Never.
It was one thing to act out of fear for her survival or out of sacrifice for people she cared about. It was a whole other thing to expect her to do this just because she wanted to. Gabe couldn’t coerce her internal desires to play to his script.
Suddenly remembering what he’d said about breakfast, Julie hurried through a shower, and put on some clothes.
Finding the cafeteria wasn’t that difficult. She was, however, surprised to find an older lady serving food behind the counter. The woman glanced up at the wall where a giant clock hung. The clock read 10:55.
“You’re cutting it awfully close, my dear. Five minutes left for breakfast, unless you want to wait another hour for lunch.”
“No, breakfast is good.”
“Everything?”
Julie could barely believe the food options: pancakes with maple syrup, eggs, sausages. And everything looked freshly cooked, not like it had come out of a deep freezer. The woman behind the counter loaded up her tray.
“You could do with a bit of extra meat on your bones,” the woman said. “Beverages are at the end of the line. We have several juices today, milk, or water. We ran out of coffee half an hour ago. You’ve gotta get here early for the coffee.”
Julie took her tray. “Thanks, juice is fine.”
The tables were mostly empty, but there were a few women still having breakfast. They seemed to be sizing her up from a distance, and she wondered if they had seen her with Gabe the night before. Julie flinched when she noticed a few men posted at various points. Guards? But they didn’t have any guns.
“Hey Lola!” one woman shouted across a few tables. “I thought we were going to the pool at eleven.”
“I’ve got my suit on under this,” she said.
“You can’t swim after you ate that many pancakes. Girl, they are going to kick your ass in the gym and put you on a restricted diet.”
Lola didn’t look at all fat to Julie. Though, arguably, a daily diet of pancakes and no exercise might reverse that.
“I’ll sit by the pool until I digest, Mommy,” Lola said sarcastically. She got up and put her tray away and then the two of them went outside.
Outside! Julie could go outside here! Nobody was stopping them. And judging by their glowing tans, these girls spent a lot of time in the sun lounging beside pools.
Julie found an empty table out of the way of foot traffic and sat with her breakfast. She was halfway through the best breakfast she’d had in probably a year—even before Dmitri, mornings had mostly featured toaster pastries—when someone else joined her table. It was the woman from the night before, the one who belonged to Anton.
“Julie, is it?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’m Annette. Glad to have another lifer in here.”
Julie was about to be horrified and appalled, but Annette winked.
“I-I thought Anton called you Kiska last night?”
She laughed. “Oh, that’s his pet name for me. It means little cat.”
“Oh. How long have you been here?” Julie asked. How long did it take to become a Stepford Slave?
Annette seemed to be mentally counting in her head. “Hmmmm... about... eight years? Nine? I don’t know, a while.”
“That’s a long time to never get to go anywhere,” Julie said. Sure, it was a really nice house, mansion really. Lots of food. Lots of people. And apparently a pool and a gym. But it was still a fancy prison.
Annette laughed. “You’re adorable. I get to leave the house, for God’s sake. Anton takes me out somewhere nice at least once a week. And we occasionally get away to travel. Everybody needs vacation. Am I right?”
“But I thought you were his prisoner.”
If possible, Annette laughed harder. “I chose him. I wanted Anton, and this house and this life. And I’m not his prisoner. He’s my master.”
It seemed like a mere semantic difference to Julie. That word, master, still skeeved her out.
“So, if you wanted him to set you free, he would? You could go back to the real world?”
“Good God, why would I want that? I live like a pampered house cat here. Which is why he calls me Kiska.”
“Okay, but if you did want that? What then?” Julie pressed.
“I honestly don’t know. It’s never come up. I’m sure Gabe will take you out of the house plenty as well.”
“Gabe isn’t my master.”
Annette was taken aback by this declaration. “But he brought you here, and his intentions seemed pretty clear to me.”
Julie spent the rest of breakfast telling Annette the story of how she’d come to be with Gabe, starting all the way back with working at the bar and their one failed date.
Annette showed sympathy in all the right ways and at all the right points of the story, but there was one thing she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around.
“So...
you aren’t kinky... like... at all?” Annette asked like Julie was a circus freak. “I’m absolutely fascinated. Tell me more about this not being kinky thing.”
Julie wasn’t sure if Annette really wanted a play-by-play of what it was like to not be kinky, but she was spared having to try to explain it by a new development in the cafeteria.
Sometime during their meet and greet, the cafeteria had begun to fill up as women meandered about and formed in clusters, some standing, and some sitting at tables. The clock on the wall showed fifteen minutes until the lunch period started. Julie couldn’t believe she’d been sitting with Annette this long.
A hush fell over the room as two people dressed in all black walked in. One man, one woman. The man was terrifying and intimidating in all the ways Julie had come to fear, but the woman was a whole other thing. Outside of an action film, she’d never seen a woman look so scary and badass in her life. She had long dark hair and wore a black form-fitting corset over black leather pants with black boots that came just up to her knees.
“Who is that?” Julie asked.
“That’s Mina. Brian’s slave.” Annette said.
Julie’s eyes were drawn to the collar around Mina’s throat. At first, her mind had dismissed it as just jewelry. It was made of a white metal—silver, platinum, or white gold Julie couldn’t be sure—with black stones set in it. The metal had a lot of delicate filigree work in it. It looked like it could be an antique, but probably wasn’t.
While Annette certainly didn’t behave like a meek abuse victim, Mina came across to the casual observer as so dangerous that to think she was owned by another human being seemed too bizarre to seriously contemplate.
A woman at one of the tables made a snide remark about Mina thinking she was the shit around here and how they’d love to see Brian truly punish her to wipe that smirk off her face. Brian heard it.
“Oh, shit. She didn’t just say that,” Annette whispered.
Julie was riveted. Given the look of murderous rage on Brian’s face, she expected she was about to witness his reputation in action, but instead, Mina’s black high-heeled boots clicked ominously across the floor to the woman who’d spoken.