Away (17 page)

Alex couldn’t make herself wet at will and couldn’t think about Devon and Jeff while Stephan was fondling her. She just wished they would stop him. Or even speak to her. Her hair was wound into a single strand and placed over her shoulder to rest on her breast. Her back was now totally unprotected.

Alex heard Stephan speak behind her and realized he was asking for a flogger. She began to recite childhood prayers in her head, anticipating the first blow. When it came, it was nothing like the playful hand of Jeff, or even the sneaky sting of Devon’s. This was no erotic pain to be blurred with pleasure. It burned and hurt as Stephan struck her across her shoulders, then her back, her buttocks, her thighs, over and over. Somehow she held herself against it and made no sound. She nearly had to bite through her bottom lip when he switched to a heavier flogger, but she stayed silent. It went on forever.

Her resistance must have infuriated Stephan, for he clamped her nipples next, and the pain was excruciating. These clamps had jagged teeth, she could feel them, and he kept pulling on the chain that connected them, ordering her to verbalize her ecstasy. Alex kept praying and trying to dissociate, but Stephan countered by using a huge dildo on her, forcing it high inside her. It tore her delicate tissues, as dry as she was, and Alex choked back sobs. She couldn’t stop the tears. She then felt it at her anus but it suddenly seemed to move to the side and she heard it hit the floor with a sodden thump.

Alex almost passed out when Stephan removed the clamps, the blood supply returning to them causing lights to flash in the back of her eyes. He flogged her nipples next, but Alex had ceased to feel.

She felt hands at her wrists and ankles and was lowered to the floor, forced to kneel. A hand fisted in her hair and dragged her head up. She felt a cock push at her lips and kept biting down on her lip. He’d shove himself in if she opened her mouth to protest, and she would vomit, disgracing her men. She already knew she could never do this again. She couldn’t even give Stephan a blowjob, though her men willed it. She had failed them, and her shame was intense, overwhelming.

Stephan pried his fingers into the corners of her mouth to force it open, and she despaired then all hell broke loose. She heard shouting, and Devon was there, pulling off the blindfold. There was an awful amount of light and sounds of people moving fast. Alex heard the word “emergency” repeated over and over.

She thought it was Jeff who tried to get her robe back on, but she hissed against the touch of the fabric on her skin. It was Devon’s scent she detected as he carefully lifted her into his arms. She kept her eyes shut, and she wouldn’t answer their whispered queries. She felt a pulse beating hard in her neck, and she couldn’t control her choppy breathing.

“Shit, Devon,” Jeff snapped. “We have to go, and right fucking now.”

“I know, I know,” complained Devon. “But what about Alex?”

Alex felt him lay her down on her side and squinted to see that she was back in the small bedroom.

“Alex, baby?” Jeff spoke quietly at her ear. “There’s been an emergency, and everyone has been called out. We have to go. Stay here, and we’ll get back as soon as we can, or we’ll get Alistair to take you home.”

“We haven’t got time to take care of you, sweetheart,” Devon apologized.

“I’ll be fine. Go,” she managed through stiff lips.

Through the haze of pain and emotional anguish Alex grasped the faint thought that this was an opportunity for her, an opportunity that she should not waste.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” a deep male voice said patiently from the hall, “and get her home once I clear the Club.”

Devon and Jeff cast one last frustrated glance at Alex, pressed kisses to her forehead, then turned and raced out of the Club.

Alex lay on the bed, covered in the soft blanket Devon had draped over her, her face to the wall, trying to slow her breathing and try and focus. She listened as the flurry of activity gradually waned from her hearing, and she sensed she was alone and unobserved. She rolled over and sat up wincing at the soreness of her body, cautiously watching the door. Satisfied there was no one nearby, Alex swung her legs to the floor and suffered through the pressure on her sore bottom until she got her bearings. She then moved as quickly as possible to the attached bathroom. She passed her red dress. The little beaded bag and shoes were where Jeff had left them after he had undressed her in readying her for the scene.

Alex tried not to look in the mirror as she washed the tears and sweat from her face and ran her fingers through her hair, but caught glimpses of her staring and shadowed eyes. It hit her suddenly, the feeling of nausea she’d been holding back all night, and she wretched miserably over the toilet, also bemoaning the time she was losing. She flushed the dregs of her belly away and turned again to the sink, rinsing her mouth and splashing her face. She sat down and tried to pee, the urine burning her vaginal entrance. She cleansed herself with the baby wipes set out in the bathroom and carefully touched her vagina. No blood, just soreness.

Holding her breath, she opened her purse and exhaled in relief when she found her driver’s licence, her bankcard, and a twenty-dollar bill inside the small wallet. Jeff, with his usual attention to her needs, had unwittingly aided her escape. Resolutely, she turned and pulled the hated dress over her head, carefully smoothing it down over her body as far as it would pull. No aftercare for her, so she pushed the pain to the back of her mind, locking it away. Next, she reached for her shoes and grimaced as the stilettos created the usual discomfort when she slipped her feet inside them.

Squaring her shoulders as best she could against the dull pain in her back, Alex stepped back into the bedroom and toward the door. She stopped, reaching up to her neck, and with a grimace as her heart shrank, undid the clasp of her collar. Alex looked at the white gold chain and the gems designed to hang in the hollow of her throat through blurred eyes. She carefully placed it on the pillow of the narrow bed and backed to the door.

Alex passed through the doorway and went right, toward the back of the house, toward the alley, away from the men she had previously come to believe were her soul mates and her destiny. She felt dead inside, but she knew this was a temporary illusion, that if they caught up to her, what had transpired tonight would be repeated until she became worse than dead inside. She couldn’t resist them.

Better she make her own way again in the world as the empty shell she felt she was right now than become an embittered, resentful, and further humiliated woman, one who would continue to disappoint her men, unable to meet their needs. They would come to despise her and no longer need her. She could not bear to think of the final humiliation when they put her aside in a parody of doing the right thing in order to find someone who could satisfy them.

Alex spied a black coat hanging just inside the back door, thankfully unmanned tonight as all the men had been drawn off to the site of the emergency. She had heard female voices earlier but had not seen anyone else involved in a scene, shuddering involuntarily as she realized
she
had been the main attraction tonight, fighting down the bile as it rose once again in her throat. The other women had probably gone home in groups, likely chattering about what they had seen tonight, comparing notes and speculating.

No, that wasn’t fair. Almost all of the women partnered with the men attending the Club tonight had been friendly and included her when they had met her casually. Like recognizes like, she thought, and they stick together. Except for Melissa, whom Alex could not bring herself to connect with, feeling something was off with the red-haired beauty despite how Melissa seemed to put herself out to connect with Alex. And after all, it was Melissa’s Dom who had been the other in the scene tonight, so Melissa must like her, enough to share, at any rate. Melissa had been good enough to bring Alex in on the idea and forewarn her.

God, what was she thinking? Normalizing it now. Trying to accept being shared, put on display, all for her men. Her men, who had never given any indication that their possessiveness would allow them to share her, to her eternal gratitude. Clearly she had already begun to bore them, to not fulfill them, not be enough for them. How else could she interpret what they had done? She had tried to offer her anxiety and resistance but in the end went along with what they needed. And failed. Christ, she thought she’d die of it, but instead, here she was fleeing, giving them space and the opportunity to replace her sooner than later.

The coat was a generic trench, and she shrugged into it, finding that it fit passably well, covering the dress and reaching to her calves. Alex could now add theft to her failings. She belted it loosely around her middle and quietly opened the door, sliding along the wall and hopefully out of range of the security camera she knew had to be there to capture the comings and goings. God, there was probably a video of her casting call tonight, she thought bitterly. Alex was grateful to gain some anonymity as she made her way out into the alley, reaching the cross street with no incident. A cab was cruising in the opposite direction and responded with alacrity to her flag. She clambered into the backseat, ignoring the pain, slamming the door behind her, and resolutely facing forward, away from her past.

“Where to, lady?” This from the grizzled-looking driver, bored and uninterested in her unprepossessing appearance.

Alex suppressed a sudden need to laugh, feeling shocky and overwhelmed. He should have witnessed her presentation an hour earlier. Now that would have jarred his sanguine reaction. Alex took hold of her emotions and directed him to nearest ATM. He motored on without comment, pulling up at a local bank. Alex asked him to wait, stepping quickly to the machine, and fumbled her card into the slot. Oh, God, her PIN. What was it? She tried to breathe through the sudden panic, despairing of keeping herself under control for even a few minutes at a time. She was so weak, so useless, and so needy.

Inspiration struck as Alex remembered her foster mother’s calming smile and entered that woman’s birth date, holding her breath as she waited for the cash. The ATM spit out the maximum amount allowed for the day, and Alex muttered a reminder to herself to try and hit another ATM right after midnight in order to capitalize on getting as much as she possibly could. The first thing Devon and Jeff would do after finding her gone would be to look at her bank records as part of a missing-persons investigation. She had no doubt they would look for her, at least for a short time, because it was the honourable thing, the expected protocol, the procedural thing to do in front of their Club associates and friends. And they would be angry, too, if she could allow herself to think of that. Her punishments would be severe if they caught her as she hadn’t followed their code, a code she hadn’t known about until recently. They had shown a side tonight when they had taken her together that helped stiffen her resolution to bolt. She couldn’t take any more sexual activity without the love and warmth that had always accompanied their behaviour before.

The hysteria bubbled up again as Alex teetered back to the cab on the damn shoes. The discomfort served to both settle and remind her of how her men had controlled her life and how she had allowed it, no, craved it. They had been overwhelming, but it had been what she had needed, alone in the world, drifting, with no experience of relationships. She had needed to be controlled without then being aware of her submissive nature. The sex had been phenomenal, the very attunement of Devon and Jeff supreme and intense. And now she was on her own again and somehow had to deal.

Alex directed the cab to the nearest Walmart, open twenty-four hours. She knew her way around the chain store, having shopped there all her life before meeting Devon and Jeff, who eschewed shopping for her there in favour of trendy boutiques and sex shops. She thought she probably looked like a whore when out with them on the town, though she had never felt anything other than being admired and cherished, but then her world had revolved around them. At home she was usually naked or attired in sexy lingerie. Walmart was going to be a grounding experience for her.

Alex paid the cabbie and tipped him well, not wanting any negative memory of her to remain with him and be passed on to his colleagues and perhaps pinpoint her drop-off spot. She made it through the sliding doors and grasped the handle of the nearest cart, leaning against it with relief as she headed straight to the shoe department. She found a comfortable pair of sneakers immediately and stuffed her stilettos into the box, continuing her shopping excursion on a pair of feet that weren’t hurting, unlike the rest of her body. Nothing like shopping to get a girl’s mind off her troubles, she thought with a giggle that erupted from her lips like lava. Alex looked around to see if others had noticed, but the other shoppers seemed intent on their own retail therapy. Still, she fought the hysteria back.