by Kitty Thomas
“Fine.” He moved back to her and held out a hand. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to the dungeon to punish you.”
Julie drew back—not that there was anywhere she could go with him looming over her that way, but she made a solid attempt. “I-I thought you said...”
“You want to know the full truth?”
“No.” She absolutely did not. She was ninety percent sure the less she knew about his plans and intentions the better.
A small smile crept across his face and then disappeared again, yet the amusement lingered in his eyes. “Tough. I’m telling you anyway. There is nothing I want more than to put a collar around your throat, force you to call me master, and start training you in the finer points of pleasing me. But I do care about you. Deeply. I have for months. And my feelings did not alter even a little bit when I saw you at Dmitri’s. The way I want things to be between us is not because of some shame you’re carrying around over what happened to you. I wanted these things on our first date. But I don’t want an unwilling victim. I want you to come to me on your own.”
“That’s not going to happen. I’m not like that. I don’t want the same things you want. If you want me in your chains you’ll have to take it because I will never...”
“Give it some time. You might change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“Be that as it may, you threw a dildo at my head. I may not be planning to enslave you against your will, but I sure as shit am going to punish you for what you did. You want to stay safe from my whip? Then don’t assault me.”
“I’m sorry. I promise, I won’t do it again.”
The smile on his face this time was grim. “I know you won’t. But you’re still not getting away with it this time.”
“But I thought you cared...”
“Julie, if you don’t get up out of that chair and come with me peacefully now, I will throw you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry you down. And then your punishment will be worse. Let’s go.”
She stood up and his fingers threaded through hers, then they walked quietly from the room, down the hall, through the foyer, and to another more narrow and darker hallway. Annette and a few others watched from the foyer. Julie couldn’t quite decipher the looks on their faces, but she was pretty sure that Pam girl had told everybody upstairs what she’d done. And now they had to all know what was about to happen to her. Julie’s face flamed.
After a few moments they were moving down the darker narrow hallway and out of the eavesdropping range of the other girls. “You don’t have to do this,” Julie whispered.
Gabe chuckled. “Oh, if you knew me at all, you would know that is not true. I’m known as the nice one around here, but that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover. Be glad I’m not Brian. I can’t imagine what he would do to someone who did what you just did.”
The hallway ended with a set of stairs. Gabe led her down them. The floor and walls down below were stone with several doors on either side with windows and bars on the windows. It definitely looked like what she imagined dungeons would look like. At the end of the hallway was a larger wooden door with no window. The door opened and Mina stepped out wearing jeans and a dark purple tank top, her feet bare. She looked much less like a spy now.
Mina looked from Gabe to Julie and then back to Gabe. “What could she have possibly done in this short a time?”
“You don’t want to know,” Gabe said.
“Oh, but I do,” Mina replied. “Given what you told me, what could she have possibly done to warrant… I mean… you know how I was when I came here… even Brian would never...”
“You didn’t throw a dildo at Brian’s head. You were too terrified to remotely defy him. That’s the difference.”
Mina muffled a laugh and slipped past them and up the stairs. From the top she said, “You can use cell A. It’s unlocked.”
“Thanks.”
“And Gabe?” she called down.
“Yeah?”
“Go easy on her. Different people react in different ways to trauma. You might not like the behavior, but do you really want to kill that fire?”
Julie didn’t exactly love the two of them discussing her like she wasn’t there, but at the moment she preferred Gabe forget she was there. And she’d take anything that might help smooth over the situation she’d gotten herself into.
“Mina, stay out of it. She will get the punishment that is warranted, and if she’s smart she won’t ever do it again.”
“Hey, I don’t care what you do. I just don’t want you to fuck this up. For your sake.” Then she was gone.
Gabe led Julie through the door marked A and locked it behind them. Inside the room were a couple of large boxes with mystery contents—but Julie had at least some idea by now. There was bondage furniture all throughout the room as well as a few large poles that went from ceiling to floor and had some sort of metal attachments on them.
Now that they were down here, scared didn’t begin to cover what was going through her head. Where was that stupid anger from before? As terrified as she’d been at Dmitri’s house, it was nothing compared to right now. As bad as all that had been, she’d learned pretty early on that nobody was going to beat her, and if she didn’t try to escape they wouldn’t kill her.
And as horrible as what she had to do was, she could play mental games in her head to make it sort of okay. Sometimes. And there were the other girls with her. But right now she didn’t know what Gabe was going to do to her… what he was capable of. And with the surroundings in this room, things didn’t look hopeful.
She took several steps back until she ran out of space. Oh good. Smart. Let’s stand in a corner like a dumbass where there’s nowhere left to run. Not that there was anywhere for her to run anyway. The door locked with a key, and that key was in Gabe’s pocket. And otherwise, besides the bondage equipment and big boxes of nightmare fuel, there were just four solid stone walls.
“Gabe, please. Be reasonable. Please don’t hurt me. I swear I’ll be good. I won’t do anything like that again, I promise. Please.”
He crossed the room to her, and now there really was nowhere to go. He pressed his thumbs gently against her face and wiped the tears away. “Breathe. I’m not going to do anything to you that you can’t take. I’m not going to do anything sexual to you so you can stop worrying about that. But there are consequences to behaviors in this house.”
“C-can’t I have a warning? Just this once? I swear I will never do anything like that again.”
“Arguing about your punishment will make it worse. You don’t have to accept my collar or sleep with me or anybody else in this house. You don’t have to call me master or submit to any kinky whims I have… unless, of course… you accept my collar. But there are rules, and you will be punished if you break them. The rules are: no physically or verbally abusive behavior toward me or anybody else in this house. And no disrespecting me.”
“What does no disrespecting you mean?”
“It means be polite. If you have a problem with me, keep it private between us. Don’t make our business other people’s business and don’t start fights or arguments in public. I might not have Brian’s reputation in this house, but I do have at least some reputation. You can’t undermine me in front of the other girls. You are being punished not just for what you did, but also for doing it in front of someone else. Our business is our business. It’s not a show for the other people in this house. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She half expected him to make her call him sir or something like that other girl had. But he made no comment on lack of address. She already knew what word he wanted her to use, and he could keep on dreaming. As if anything he did in this room was going to endear her to him.
“Gabe, I-I know you have the power here and can do what you want, but if you want me to do anything with you willingly ever, then you won’t do what you’re planning
because I promise you I will never willingly do anything you want if you do this.”
He laughed. “I see we’ve moved to the bargaining phase. I’ll take that as a challenge. Let me warn you now that negotiation is over. It’s time for acceptance.”
She’d started crying again as he pulled her away from the wall and led her to one of the poles. And now she was shaking again.
“Are you cold or scared?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I’m just checking. You’re about to be naked.”
“What?” By this point, Julie was sure this was all a bad dream. Maybe it was the tea. Could peppermint tea cause strange dreams? She was sure she was still upstairs napping and only thought she’d woken up. Maybe this was all part of the dream.
“Raise your arms.”
The stupid part of her brain that couldn’t ignore his demands caused her to raise her arms over her head. Gabe peeled the white T-shirt off, and she shivered.
“It is a little cold down here.” Gabe stepped over to the wall and raised the thermostat a couple of degrees. “Let me know if it gets too hot and I’ll turn it down.”
Why did he care about the temperature? He was about to hit her. What the fuck was wrong with this guy?
He opened one of the boxes and pulled out a long strip of black cloth. Julie flinched and took a step back but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her back to him. Then he used the cloth to blindfold her. He pushed the shorts down over her hips and removed her bra and panties. She just stood there. It was like that first night in the house with Dmitri when he’d wanted to ensure she hadn’t marked herself up with tattoos and piercings.
She remembered how she’d closed her eyes, as if it could shield her from his gaze. Was Gabe giving her space with the blindfold? No. She couldn’t let herself ascribe kind motives to him. Gabe wasn’t kind. He was no better than Dmitri. And possibly far worse. And to think she’d spent months praying and imagining Gabe somehow finding and rescuing her. Him finding her was the last thing she should have wished for.
He put soft leather cuffs around her wrists and ankles and then attached her to the pole.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this to you,” Gabe said. “Especially so early.”
“Nobody’s making you,” she said, not sure if that would rile him up more.
He sighed. “If you really knew and understood me you would know I can’t let something like this go. You don’t have to be my slave, but you have to show basic respect, and these kinds of power struggles are not okay with me.”
She could feel him getting inside her head. As if this was normal and okay. As if she somehow deserved what he was about to do. He’d started this shit. He’d spied on her. He could lie all he wanted, but he had plans for her, plans she’d told him repeatedly she wasn’t interested in participating in. And she was the bad one in need of punishment? He was in need of a jail cell, like all the men back at Dmitri’s house.
She jumped when Gabe’s large warm hand pressed gently against her back.
“This is going to hurt. There will be welts, but I won’t break your skin. And you will only get ten lashes. Count them. Let’s get this over with so we can enjoy the rest of our evening.”
She thought about arguing with him or saying something snide, but his tone was so utterly serious and… different… that all she could bring herself to say was, “Okay.”
There was nothing she could do to get out of this. All she could do was hope that he kept these promises. If he didn’t… what then? And if he did… what then? He said he liked to whip women, so if he liked it, why did he act like this pained him somehow?
A solid strip of leather snapped hard against her back, taking her breath away for a second.
“Count, Julie. Or I have to start over.”
Sure he did.
“O-one.”
“Good girl.”
Despite the shock and indignity of the pain he’d just caused, when he said good girl, something weird happened in her stomach. It was like a small glowing warmth… this weird sort of… pleasure. What the fuck? No! No. This was not who she was. She had managed to get through everything at Dmitri’s house. She hadn’t liked any of it and that was the part that somehow allowed her to keep herself together. She didn’t like this either, obviously, but why did hearing him call her a good girl cause that reaction?
She should hate him. She should murder him in his sleep, assuming he didn’t lock his door at night.
The second lash seemed to come out of nowhere. She was so lost in thought trying to process everything that she’d forgotten more were coming.
“T-two,” she stammered out.
Each time the whip came down, it seemed to sting a tiny bit more than the time before. She was sure he was going to break her skin. Or that he’d keep going. Or that he’d fuck her against his promise or do something else awful.
“Julie, I feel like you aren’t with me here. Does this need to be harder? I’m going easy on you for your first punishment.”
This was going easy? “N-no.”
“Number?”
“Seven.”
Her arms burned hanging as they were in the leather cuffs. She’d somehow lost track of her nudity. Officially, she was mortified, but… there were bigger issues.
The eighth lash came down much harder than the others. It pulled her out of her endless tangle of thoughts. Her mind went utterly and completely silent. There was nothing now but the sharp bright burn against her flesh, the sound of the heat purring gently through the vent, and Gabe’s unflinching presence that seemed to suck up all the air. It wasn’t that she heard him… she felt him, this energy that emanated from him and rolled out over her, covering her like a blanket.
“Julie!”
“Y-yes?” Tears had started to move down her cheeks again, but they weren’t the softly rolling tears of before. They’d morphed into pathetic convulsive sobs.
“What number?”
“E-eight.” I hate him.
“Good girl.”
And then that stupid horrible fucking flutter again, that glowing warmth in her stomach. It made her feel as though she’d become invisibly attached to him.
The last two lashes were slightly more tolerable. He’d gotten what he’d wanted from her. The tears. That little break in something that she couldn’t quite find and didn’t know how to patch up. At Dmitri’s all the other broken places she’d found a mental game or rationalization or just a way to cope. But this… there was no way to cope with that… that flutter. She hadn’t begged him to stop once he’d gotten started. What was wrong with her?
Gabe undid the blindfold and returned it and the whip to the box he’d gotten it from. Then he took something else from a second box. A black silk robe. He returned to her without a word and undid the cuffs around her ankles and wrists. She collapsed against him and he gently set her down on the ground while he put everything else back up.
He pulled her to her feet and helped her stand. He helped her into the robe, then he picked her up and carried her out of the room. He was careful not to press against the welts he’d left on her back. She laid her head on his shoulder as he carried her, up the stairs, down the narrow dark hallway, through the foyer. Julie was dimly aware of the milling about and whispering but she didn’t raise her head up off Gabe’s shoulder.
He carried her up the next flight of stairs and to her bedroom, then he locked the door, took her over to the bed, and laid her down.
“Take the robe off and lie down on your stomach. I’ll be right back.”
Again, that weird urge to do what he said had her obeying him. She wanted to say it was fear or survival, self-preservation, but she’d responded this way to him from the moment she’d met him. So fear alone couldn’t explain it. When she took the robe off the cool air pressed against the warmth of her back.
Gabe returned and sat on the edge of the bed. She flinched when something cold touched her skin.
“Relax. It’
s a salve to soothe the welts.”
He spent the next several minutes rubbing the cool cream gently into her back. “The welts will fade in a few days,” he said. “You might not want to wear a bra until they do.”
“Okay.”
“Are you ever going to do anything like what you did this afternoon again?” he asked.
“No.” Mainly because she was too confused by how she was feeling. What had happened in the dungeon had been painful, but it had been more like a controlled demolition than anything else. He hadn’t lost control, or been angry. Once he’d started, she wasn’t scared. How was she not scared?
Back at Dmitri’s she’d been convinced that somehow if she ever escaped she would be okay. The core of who she was would still be there. But she couldn’t believe that anymore. How could she? Something inside her must have broken beyond any ability to repair it. Why hadn’t she tried to fight Gabe? Why hadn’t she screamed or begged once he’d started?
It wouldn’t have done any good of course. Maybe it would have made things worse. She wanted more than anything to believe she’d just been too afraid. But she knew that was a lie. She’d been less scared once he’d started than she was on their first date when he’d pressed her against the wall to kiss her a little too aggressively. There was some impossible thing inside her that trusted him. Even with the surveillance and bringing her to the house. It wasn’t anything logical that she could lay out on a pro/con list. It was… this feeling.
Gabe finally got up and went to the drawer to get her some panties, shorts, and a T-shirt. He remained silent as he helped her get dressed, then he went back into the bathroom for a moment. When he came back out, he had a hairbrush. She actually cringed, like he was going to hit her with it or something, but he sat down behind her and started brushing her hair.
What the fuck was he doing? Rubbing cream on her back. Brushing her hair? This was so weird. She felt like this was some weird brainwashing technique. What was that thing she’d learned about in college… the Patty Hearst thing… some syndrome… Stock... something. Anyway, that had to be what he was doing.
As if reading her mind, Gabe said, “Typically, when people do this in a more consensual situation, this is called aftercare. This happens after heavy play, but I do it after punishment also to make sure you’re okay and that you feel safe. I know this is all very strange to you.”