A House of Cards: Deconstructing Ethan (2 page)

Then, I saw him.

My whole body got warm as I watched his soft blond hair blowing gently in the light breeze as he walked up the brick pathway. When I noticed his lean and muscular body under the t-shirt and jeans, I had the insane desire to run my hand over his chest, just to see if his heart was pounding like mine was. But, as cliché as it sounds, it was his eyes that I found the most captivating. They were the color of the ocean at midday, and just as warm, and I couldn’t help but smile as I opened the door.

I didn’t know then that I was opening that door to so much more than just my house.

* * *

I woke the next morning cramped and freezing. Looking around, I saw that I was still in Jayden’s…I was still in one of the spare bedrooms with the cold light of dawn filtering in through the still open blinds. Pushing myself upright against the cold wall, I had woken exactly the same way I had the day before, the same way I probably would every day going forward – naked and alone. The bottle next to me was empty and I barely spared it a glance as I slowly stood up on shaky legs. As I left the room and headed for the stairs, my eyes caught the door at the end of the hall. I wasn’t even able to think about going in my own playroom. I was completely alienated from the room in the house that meant the most to me. That frightened me in a way that I hadn’t thought possible, but the thought of collaring another sub turned my stomach (or perhaps that was the alcohol). I made it upstairs in time to make it to the bathroom to vomit. My stomach clenched with dry heaves almost as tightly as my chest was clenching around my shattered soul. Food was the last thing on my mind, but I did want to take a shower. I just didn’t think I could stand that long. If the room could just stop spinning long enough for me to think clearly, that would help immensely.

Making it to my dresser, I threw on the first t-shirt and sweats that I could find, even putting on socks to warm myself up. I was so cold from sleeping naked on the floor that my hands were shaking. I told myself it was from the cold. Crawling in bed, I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand and checked the display. It was still on silent, and I had forty missed calls – most of them from Jayden. Sighing, I realized I was going to have to call him; I had known since Nicole had come through my door. But what was I going to say?

Oh yeah, Jayden, hi, can you come back because I can barely function now that you and Lexi are gone.

Having a wonderful time…. Wish you were here….

Deciding to make the easier of the two phone calls first, I called the automated system at the hospital and patched into Dr. Thomas’s voice mail, leaving him a message indicating that he should pull me from the rotation until further notice. I was too much of a fucking coward to actually talk to him, so this was the best I could do. My absence would not be a hardship for the hospital, as they had been looking to layoff a doctor for some time, but Thomas didn’t have the heart to release the doctors with small children and I had the highest seniority.

When I had taken the job, I had needed something to fill my days and make the time pass. One more day gone would be one less day that I had to endure. Now, though, I felt like my life had no purpose, no reason to continue. Without any kind of purpose, any kind of grounding, I would be unable to care for other people. I couldn’t force myself to care about their welfare -I mean really, I could barely care for myself.

I considered getting another bottle of scotch before making the next call, but I didn’t want him to worry. Yeah, like that was going to fucking happen. Jayden was going to worry no matter what I said, he was just like that. Holding down the number five for speed dial, it rang only once before his voice was on the other end.

“Ethan! Jesus Christ, I was just about to store the truck and book a fucking flight back to Washington and I’m not even to Chicago yet!” He yelled into the phone before sighing, “Are you alright?”

“Yes, Jayden, I’m fine.” I lied.

“I know you better than that, Ethan. I remember what you were like after Lexi left; I can only imagine what you’re like….” He said softly.

“Yeah, fucking throw that in my face. That helps, Jayden, thanks.” I said sourly. “Look, I said I’m fine. I don’t know why you fucking care anyway.” Slamming down on the end button, I threw it toward the bed. It bounced once in the center and then hit the wall and came to rest on the pillows. Sliding down the wall, I banged my head against it hard.

It hurt.

Yes, it hurt.

That’s exactly what I needed. I needed pain. I started to get up to call Nicole and then stopped, realizing she wouldn’t do it for me. I just had this feeling that she would be opposed to my reasoning. I needed someone else, someone that would enjoy my bondage, my utter torment, my pain. Then it came to me in a bright flash of inspiration.

Dominique.

Dominique and her husband Claude were among the worst of our community. They found pleasure not only in the bondage and the pain, but also in taking risks. Careless, undisciplined, and ruthless, it was exactly their lack of ethics that would serve me by calling them.

It wouldn’t matter to them what my reasoning was for needing the pain, they would just strap me down and whip me without requiring any kind of explanation.

It would hurt like hell, but it would make me forget.

Chapter 2

“Fifteen…” “Sixteen…” “Seventeen…”

The knotted cord ripped into my back as the beating continued. Each new strike forced the next number from me with an almost inhuman cry. It was just what I needed, physical pain to make me forget about the emotional pain, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going. My endurance was starting to reach its limit as I tried to focus my mind on something other than the pain. Looking around their cheap and haphazardly equipped torture chamber, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d made a mistake in coming here.

It had taken nearly three weeks before I actually called Dominique. I think the catalyst had been the phone call with Jayden, listening as he received the collars I had made for him. I had planned to give them to him in my playroom before he ran off to Chicago. Probably would have invited one of the subs from his training back to play. Not Sean, but one of the women. I couldn’t stand seeing him play with Sean again for some reason, even the thought made my stomach hurt. It wasn’t too painful to listen to the excitement in Jayden’s voice when he opened the collars, but then Lexi had also decided to give him a little present….herself. Playing along, I tried not to let either of them to know the depth of my depression. I knew that’s what it was now, a bout of full blown depression. After what I’ve gone through in my life, I think I’m entitled to one.

It hurt so badly that they were together, and I was alone.

I felt something trickling down my back and I couldn’t decide if it was sweat or blood. The implement she used and the force behind it were certainly enough to draw blood, but I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t care. I was thankful she had me tied over a bench so I didn’t have to worry about holding myself up. The position was designed for humiliation as I lay naked along the top of the rough wood. Every so often, Dominique would run her hands over the welts on my widely spread legs, the excitement evident in her voice as she told me what a good boy I was.

I felt vaguely sick.

My shoulders and arms ached from my wrists being tethered to either end of the metal bar which was bound across my shoulders. The bar held my arms stretched out at my sides, perpendicular to my body. Even if I weren’t gagged, I wouldn’t have had any reply to her except the hot tears streaking down my cheeks and the small keening whimpers. Keeping my eyes closed, so I wouldn’t have to see them leering at my body, I just focused on the pain and let it help me to cry, to process my emotions. I couldn’t even force myself to think about how I was going to get home from their house, because I knew my legs wouldn’t support me after hours of being whipped.

Finally, it stopped, and all I could feel in my back, buttocks and legs was a cold, numb lack of sensation. I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the cool rough wood. It felt so cool because my face, my shoulders, my whole body was on fire. It was evident that Claude and Dominique were all about pain, they didn’t believe in padding their equipment; the more uncomfortable their subject was the better. That, more than anything, should have clued me in that coming here was a mistake.

I looked to my side as Dominique and Claude stood next to me, Dominique absently petting my hair like I was an obedient pet. Her face was flushed from the exertion of her calculated abuse of my body. Her breasts heaved over the red leather corset which topped off her red fishnet stockings and patent leather heels. She was almost a cliché. Wild red curls cascaded down her shoulders and I couldn’t help but compare her ensemble to a bad Halloween costume.

Claude stood next to her in nothing but cheap leather pants that you could pick up in the men’s department at any department store. As my mind reeled from the pain coursing through my body, I had the insane thought that he should’ve bought a size larger and maybe his hairy stomach wouldn’t bulge out over the top. Overweight and balding, stuffed into leather pants that were too small and having his cock sucked by his costumed wife, Claude was a perfect specimen of an angry fuck knee deep in a mid-life crisis.

My heart rate accelerated wildly as Claude walked around behind me, and I heard his voice low and excited near my ear. “The sight of you bare and whipped like this makes me so fucking hard.…” Then, I felt his fingers in me….preparing me….I didn’t have the strength to even try to stop him, to beg him to just let me go home. No matter how loudly I was screaming „no’ in my head...

* * *

“No one has heard from him in a month, Nicole. I don’t give a fuck if he took the key from under the porch. I need to know that he’s okay.”

The voice was distant, detached from my reality. I wondered briefly if it was a hallucination. It couldn’t be him, he was gone.

Looking around the mess and clutter of my immediate area, I tried not to think about the last week that I’d spent in bed after Dominique and Claude had dragged me, almost literally, from their playroom to my bedroom. My back and my legs were still bruised and covered in angry welts. A visual record of the abuse that I’d allowed Dominique to subject me to and one that I saw every time that I dragged myself out of bed and to the bathroom. There was no way I could make it down the stairs, so they had left me alone with a stack of power bars and a row of bottled water, the evidence of which was scattered on my bedside table and floor.

I had not heard from them again.

Slowly, my bedroom door creaked open and I heard several sets of footsteps approaching. I didn’t want to look, in case there was no one there.

“Oh my God,” I heard someone whisper from somewhere in my room. I didn’t move, I couldn’t move.

“Ethan, sweetheart, can you hear me?” A soft voice asked.
Lexi
. How was Lexi there? She was in Chicago playing house.

“Please go away,” I begged, keeping my face turned away into the pillow. Whether they were dreams or hallucinations, I didn’t want to be tortured by them.

“Like hell we will, who did this to you?” A harsher voice asked.

Jayden
.

“Please go away,” I repeated as firmly as I could, even if they were really here, I couldn’t face them knowing what I’d let happen to me; what I had let Dominique and her pathetic husband do to me. I had deserved every bit of it; I just didn’t want to talk about it.

“Look at these,” Jayden said in a low voice as I lay naked and vulnerable for their inspection. “They are so deep. Whoever did this could not have given him any aftercare.”

“I know, and look at the larger welts – they’re spaced at regular intervals….a knotted rope maybe?” Lexi asked. I assumed she was asking Nicole, Jayden wouldn’t have the experience. I didn’t answer, I couldn’t talk about it.

“No, the cuts are too smooth, more like an electrical cord. It had to be something smooth, like it was sheathed,” Nicole observed and I was unsurprised that she’d worked it out so quickly. After all, she’d been at the game longer than anyone in the room, including me.

“Whatever it was, I’d like to wrap it around their fucking necks. Who would do this to him?” Jayden growled, the threat in his voice unmistakable and, for whatever reason, warmed me a little…until I remembered why it was necessary.

“I have a feeling I might know. They were always jealous of Ethan, but I didn’t think they’d do this….” Nicole said in a bitter tone.

Then, I heard her dialing.
No
. They were going to find out. I tried to move, to stop her, but I couldn’t, I had no strength. I had been in bed for a week, trying my damnedest not to move. The pain tore through my back and legs. I whimpered softly, unable stop myself.

“Hello Dominique, its Nicole. Have you seen Ethan lately?” She asked in a tone of forced calm. A pause while she listened to the answer that I already knew. “What kind of a session?” Her voice was a little sharper. I heard her gasp, but I doubt it would have been audible over the phone. “What do you mean „then Claude had his fun’?” She half shrieked into the phone. “You know his hard limits,” another pause. “I don’t give a fuck if he didn’t safe word; Master Daniel is going to hear about this, you little bitch,” she said and then slammed her phone shut. She must have been furious. Master Daniel was the most respected member of our BDSM community and if she was going to complain about Dominique and Claude, it wasn’t something she’d do lightly.