by Chanel Ivy
I sauntered over, playfully, pretending to be on a catwalk. Emma giggled at my little show.
It felt astonishingly freeing to be this comfortable completely naked around someone else and not be apprehensive about how I looked. Emma didn’t care that I had stretchmarks on my stomach or my breasts from being pregnant. She didn’t mind that I had a small pouch of fat on my belly that no matter how much I exercised or dieted, I couldn’t get to go away. Emma accepted me for me. I hoped she felt the same even though she still seemed slightly anxious every time she turned her back for me to view. Her body always tensed ever so subtly. I only noticed because I watched her every move in fascination.
I squirted some of the oil on her breasts as they bounced in the water. Emma lifted her head, closing her eyes and rubbed the oil all over her chest and neck.
“Is this stuff edible like the other oil?” I asked, smiling. “Because I want to lick everywhere you just put your hands.”
“Unfortunately, no, my pet,” she replied, smiling back up at me.
“Well, then scoot up. I want to massage your back.” Emma hesitated but closed her eyes, gripped either side of the tub, and pulled her body forward. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me, Emma. Ever. I know it’s probably too soon, and I may have said it in a roundabout way already, but I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t want anything to get between us: no insecurities, no lies, no nothing. We have to be honest and comfortable with one another,” I said as I slipped into the hot water behind her.
“I feel the same, Mia.”
I was doing a happy dance in my head at the thought that Emma admitted she might be falling in love with me, but I didn’t want to show it. I feared that I might seem clingy and scare her off, so I played her comment off and tried to continue the conversation. “If we’re going to be honest about everything, I’ll start. When I was seven, I used a pocket knife my father had given me to cut out a bouncy ball from its packaging at a store while my mother was in another aisle shopping. I put the little yellow ball in my pocket, and it’s still in my jewelry box at home to this very day.”
“You little thief, you.” Emma joked. “That’s your big truth? That’s what you’re going to start with?”
I laughed. “We can start small, and work our way up to bigger stuff,” I replied as I squeezed some of the oil over her back and began rubbing it in slowly. Emma jerked at first but quickly settled comfortably into my touch.
“What if I don’t have anything small to tell like that?” she asked, her tone turning somber.
I kissed the back of her head through her dark hair, nuzzling my forehead into her. “Tell me whatever you want to. Talk about your last trip to England if you want, or the last thing you did for fun.”
“You’re sweet, Mia, but I think I’ve kept my secrets long enough, and if I’m going to tell them to anyone, it’s going to be you. Here goes nothing. When I was seven, I lived in Texas with my parents. They weren’t in a good place. They were both alcoholics and addicted to whatever drug they could get their hands on, but cocaine was their drug of choice. It was the early nineties, so coke was readily available, and everyone in my neighborhood was either on it or making a mint selling it. Even at the ripe old age of seven, I knew that.” Emma leaned back to rest her head on my shoulder, and I began running my fingers through her hair as she talked. “Having parents like that will make you grow up fast, so when I got sick, I walked myself to the pharmacy. When the guy who worked there said he couldn’t help me without a parent, I wandered around the store looking for an opportunity to steal some cough medicine, but I ended up finding a flyer for free healthcare to underprivileged or homeless children instead. Rather than get in trouble for stealing, like some of us were okay with doing at seven...”
“Hey, it was a five-cent bouncy ball, not medication,” I laughed.
Emma chuckled; her laughter sounded like music to me.
“Anyway, I took the flyer back to the trailer we were staying at, and I told my mom the brochure said we could both get a free checkup and that they’d give her pain medication for an old injury she had. She slipped down some stairs getting off a bus and broke her ankle when I was a baby, and she always complained that her leg still hurt. I knew she’d take me if they promised free meds for her.”
“But, didn’t she read the paper? Did it say anything about free medication for adults? I thought you said it was for children,” I asked puzzled.
“Yeah, well, neither of my parents could read, so I had one over on them. I learned to use every advantage I could and how to manipulate people at a very young age.”
“Wow, Emma. That’s terrible. I mean, well, you know what I mean.”
“I do. It was definitely a rough childhood, but that wasn’t the most turbulent part, unfortunately. When we went to the clinic, the doctors saw me separately, and I recounted to them what I told my mother to get her to bring me in. They said I did what I had to do and that they’d take care of everything for me. Before I knew it, my mother was signing away her parental rights to the clinic for a thousand dollars cash and some cocaine.”
“Oh my God, Emma. That’s disgusting. How could your mother do that?”
“I asked myself that very question every day for years. I eventually found out that the people that essentially bought me from my parents laced the drugs with something that ended up killing my mother and father as well as the three people they were sharing it with. The official report called their deaths an accidental overdose and a robbery since the entire trailer was ransacked.”
“So, what happened to you after the clinic people took you from your parents?” I asked, wiping the tears from my eyes. I was glad Emma wasn’t facing me. I wasn’t sure if I could hold it together if I were looking into her eyes as she recounted her traumatic childhood to me.
“They told me I was going to be adopted by a loving family and sent to school overseas. Now I know that they just wanted to get me out of the country as quickly as possible. They put dozens of children and me on a private yacht in Galveston Bay and took us down to an island somewhere. Then we boarded a container ship that took us to Ireland, and from there, we made it to Wales.”
“That sounds like an awful lot of crappy traveling for so many young children.”
“All in all, it wasn’t that bad. We weren’t inside a shipping container except for when we arrived in ports. The rest of the time, there were always adults with us, feeding and taking care of us. We were worth far too much money to risk having us injured or sick, so they took good care of all the children.”
I listened to every word Emma spoke, and my heart crumbled. Her parents were awful, but I couldn’t imagine being taken away from everything I knew and being shipped overseas, not knowing what was going to happen to me. When I was seven, I was worried about what Santa was going to bring me for Christmas or if the Tooth Fairy was going to forget to take my tooth again, not being trafficked across the ocean.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Emma.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t sell your only child for a thousand dollars and some coke. Anyway, the first family that bought me was a wealthy husband and wife. She wanted a child to love, and he wanted something to take his anger out on. That’s where most of the scars on my back came from. He liked to use a belt on me every time something happened that frustrated him. His business deal fell through; he’d come home and whip me with his belt. His wife didn’t pick out the right color suit for him; he’d beat me with the belt, and so on. The wife was at least nice. She tried to stop him from hitting me the first few months, but he beat her too. When the husband wasn’t around, she homeschooled me. I obviously couldn’t go to school with other children if I could barely wear a shirt without wincing at the pain or even stand up straight most days. She taught me how to cook and clean, and I ended up picking up the accent we all know and love from them.”
“What happened, though? You said they were the first family to buy you. There were more?” I
asked, anger unconsciously seeping into my voice.
“Yes, there were more. The Company that sold me had rules, and they would only sell children over the age of sixteen for sexual acts or brutality. Nice morals, right? So, when they showed up one day unannounced and saw that I had been beaten regularly, they interviewed me, and I told the truth. I was taken away, and the husband was found the next day dead in bed from an apparent heart attack. I know The Company did that, though.”
“What happened to the wife?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.
“She agreed to sign over half of the estate to The Company, signed an NDA, not unlike the one you signed, and she was allowed to live the rest of her life as she saw fit. I heard she remarried and had children with her new husband. I had investigators check in on the children, and apparently, she’s a good mother to them, and the kids are happy and healthy.”
“That was nice of you to check in on them.”
“I felt like I was obligated to make sure they were okay.”
“Then what happened?”
“I was sent back to the orphanage, which is what they called it, but it was really just where they housed the children they tricked parents into giving up or out and out kidnapped. I don’t really know how they got all of us. I only know my story was similar to a few of the other kids I met there. After a few weeks in the orphanage, I was sold to a family in Germany. This family already had another child, an older boy, who I thought was going to take me under his wing and help me, but he resented my being there, so he got me in trouble every chance he got. He was a vindictive little asshole. Elias was his name. He was sixteen, and by now, I was already nine.”
I interrupted her, “Wait a minute. You spent nearly two years with a man who beat you regularly?”
“Yep. That’s why I was so heartbroken when Elias turned out to make it his mission to make my life as miserable as possible. I was hoping this family would be better than the last, but it was almost worse in a way. Mind games can be so much more damaging than physical abuse, especially when you have absolutely no one in your corner to confide in or even talk to. With this family, more specifically with Elias, I never knew what to expect. I’d be responsible for doing the laundry, and I would make sure I did everything perfect, the exact way the mother, Ursula, liked it. But Elias would sneak in and put a red sock in with the white linens, and I would get screamed at and punished by being thrown in the basement and flogged as penance. This family were very old world, wrath of God type people. They believed in living strictly by the teachings of the bible and the old ways. A favorite saying of the father, Klaus, was, ‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell,’ it’s Proverbs 29:15. He used to say it all the time while beating me in the same place the first man did. At least they kept it consistent. I can still wear a one-piece bathing suit without people seeing what they did to me. Looking on the bright side of things, right?” Emma stifled a fake laugh. “That’s why I couldn’t show you my back before. The Company didn’t want anyone asking questions and digging around in my past. They fixed all the records, but there’s always something out there somewhere that could eventually surface. They didn’t want any possible exposure.”
“So, what the hell happened after all of this? How did we get here? How are you still covering for these people... this ‘Company’ as you call them?”
Emma seemed to be getting tired of recounting her story, but I was pressing on. As long as she was spilling, I was listening.
“After about two years with Klaus, Elias, and Ursula, The Company made another unannounced visit. Seeing fresh scars and new open lash marks on me, they interviewed me, and I told the truth again. This time I told them what Elias had done as well and that Ursula refused to help me when I begged her to as she watched Klaus beat me. They took me away, and that night their house burnt down with the three of them inside. The authorities blamed it on a gas leak this time.”
“I hate to say they deserved it, but holy shit, Emma. How are you still a functioning adult after all that you’ve been through?”
“I was young. You learn to adapt to your environment, I guess. Hey, the water’s getting cold. Do you mind if we get out and shower off?”
“Sure. I’m sorry I took up our bath time with all of this.”
“Hey, I did all the talking.”
“I know, but I pushed for it.”
“I didn’t tell you anything I didn’t want you to know. It feels good to get it off my chest too. I haven’t told anyone these things. Well, anyone that wasn’t part of The Company anyway.”
“I’m glad you did. You’re not finished, though, are you? If my math is correct, you were only eleven when they took you away from the crazy Germans, right?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I’m getting tired. If you wouldn’t mind, can we wash up and call it a night?”
“Sure, but only if you promise not to wait too long before you tell me the rest,” I said as I hugged her tightly from behind.
“Agreed.”
We stepped out of the bath, and when I hopped from the teak floor to the marble, I was expecting it to be as cold as ice, but it was warm to the touch. I guess the surprise was written all over my face since Emma laughed at me.
“Heated flooring.”
“Agh, nice touch.”
“Only the best for me and my pet,” she laughed again.
We showered quickly, and she was right. The rainfall showerhead was terrific. I was never going to be able to shower in my bathroom again without missing this. It was like showering in a warm rainstorm.
Emma must have been tired since washing each other wasn’t sexual at all. It was more of an intimate act. Bathing one another without physical tension made me respect her even more. It solidified that our relationship wasn’t just outrageous kinky sex, it was also about a unique connection the two of us shared with one another.
We were both too tired to make it all the way upstairs, so we stayed in her basement pleasure palace and curled up together beneath the silk sheets. I fell asleep in the arms of the astonishing Emma, who I knew for sure I was in love with.
Chapter 7
I woke the next morning amazed to find Emma still sleeping soundly next to me. Her soft breathing was as comforting as a cool summer breeze. I took in my surroundings, and I couldn’t believe everything that had happened over the last few weeks. If someone told me a month ago that I’d be in a lesbian relationship, I would have laughed them out of the room. Now I couldn’t imagine being with anyone but Emma.
She was strong, smart, willful, and caring behind her stone-faced facade and her captivating beauty. I was watching her sleep when her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled. The expression on her face warmed my heart more than anything, and I wished I could freeze time right at this moment and never let it go.
“I love you, Emma Cross,” I blurted out before my brain could stop my mouth from speaking.
Emma didn’t bat an eye before responding, “I love you too, Mia Blackburn.”
My heart skipped a beat before I rolled on top of Emma, kissing her deeply and passionately. Our mouths met in a dance of lust and exploration of one another. I couldn’t wait this time. I didn’t want to play games. I needed to have Emma right now, right at this very moment.
Our breasts pressed together, and the touch of her nipples against mine sent an electric pulse through me. A fire was brewing between the two of us, and only the sweet release of a shared climax would extinguish it.
I sat up, still straddling Emma while my hands wandered to her breasts. Her nipples were already taught with desire but perked up even more with my touch. I gently squeezed them as she moaned and moved slowly underneath me.
I leaned down, using my tongue and my lips to slither wet kisses from her mouth down her chest. Emma’s breath caught in her throat as I sat up once again and reached behind me between her legs and circled her swollen clit with my fingers.
Rocking my hips into hers with the motion of my fingers pleas
ing her, I was unexpectedly pulled out of the moment. A blaring phone on one of the dressers in the corner rang obnoxiously, and Emma looked at me with apologetic eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mia. They never ring me down here unless it’s an emergency. I really must answer it.”
I huffed, but lifted my leg from around her hips, freeing her, and she jumped up to answer the phone.
“Yes?”
“I understand. I’ll be up momentarily,” Emma said as she hung up the phone.
I didn’t ask. I just stared at her blankly. Watching her stand there naked, and completely frozen in thought. She finally broke her trance and turned to me. “We have to get dressed and go into the office.”
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Stuart’s mother has reported him missing, and the police would like to speak with you because of the incident that lead to his dismissal from Cross Financial.”
Emma was already making her way over to me as she said the words, but I freaked out anyway.
“I can’t talk to them! They’re going to see right through me. They’re going to know something happened and we’re going to get caught! I knew we should have called the police right away,” I sobbed as I crumpled into the sheets.
“My next phone call is going to be to our attorneys, they’ll be in the room with us, and you’ll barely have to say anything. We’ll discuss with the lawyers what our side of the story is, and they’ll provide the police with a written statement. You are not under arrest, and you’re not even a person of interest, so you don’t have to speak to the police. The only reason I’m agreeing to give them a statement from you is for the optics. If you refuse to give them anything, then they’ll become suspicious and start digging. We don’t want them to do that, so this is the best plan of action. You’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you, baby. I promise.” Emma hugged me tightly, rubbing my hair to comfort me.
I looked up at her, scared that not even Emma could save me from this. “What is our side of the story?”