Eighty Days Blue (30 page)

Of course I wasn't happy, by a long way. I was confused, torn, but it was about Dominik and how he and I could coexist, find the right balance in our lives; it had nothing to do with Victor and his absurd parties.

‘Won't you even offer me a drink? No need to make coffee – just some water will do.'

‘No.'

I wouldn't do anything for this man, not even get him a glass of water.

‘So be it.'

He was standing on the edge of the kitchen area. I shouldn't have sat down, as he now towered over me, though he wasn't especially tall. He took a step forward and I hissed, ‘If you come any nearer, try and touch me, I'll scream, I swear.'

‘Don't be absurd. Firstly, no one around will hear you. These older buildings have such thick walls, and your windows are closed and, anyway, only overlook roofs.' He pointed in the direction of the back of the loft. ‘Secondly, do you think I have any ambition to fuck you again? No way. I found you too passive, you know.'

I blushed. It was the first time a man had ever said such a thing to me. I knew it was me being ridiculous, because the man was an arsehole, but nevertheless it hurt.

‘So what do you want?' I finally said.

‘To continue where we left off. Complete your training. Transform you, my dear pet. You have so much potential; it's a shame to waste it.'

‘I don't want to be owned.'

‘I realise that. I was wrong to assume it was your goal, but there are other ways, you know . . .' He smiled, a rictus so full of insincerity that I felt like slapping him in the face for his condescension.

‘Are there?'

‘Indeed.'

‘And if I keep on saying no?'

‘As I said, there are ways.'

For a brief moment, I was encouraged, as if by confronting him with a brick wall and refusing to play along with his intrigue, he might fade away or give up on his evil plans.

‘I still say no, Victor. I'm no longer interested. What I decide to do in the bedroom is none of your damn business, but I can assure you that your involvement in that part of my life is something I will never desire. Anyway, I'm now with Dominik for good, and he should be back any minute, so maybe it would be best if you left,' I lied.

‘Dominik is in London,' he calmly stated.

He now stood right in front of me. I nervously buttoned up the top of the shirt, concealing my cleavage from view.

Victor casually slipped a hand into the left-hand pocket of his grey suit jacket and dug out a BlackBerry. His fingers quickly played along its miniature keyboard and he handed it over to me.

‘You will say yes,' he said as I nervously took it from him.

‘Why?'

‘Just press play.'

I looked down at the small screen and the frozen image displayed on it.

It was me.

Standing naked in a room full of strangers, wearing a dog collar.

Taken at the auction Victor had organised the previous year.

I froze. Memories flooding back, and together with them a buzz of excitement I was unable to repress.

My finger hovered over the BlackBerry's keypad.

‘Enjoy,' Victor said.

Just a touch, no lighter than the breeze, and the picture grew animated and a whole gallery of photos unfolded.

There must have been another camera hidden in the room where the balding man with the glasses had taken me after he had won an hour with me at the auction. I hadn't noticed, had been in too much of a daze no doubt. It wasn't a video but rather a slideshow. Someone had set the camera to an automatic timer and taken photographs of the room spaced at regular intervals.

I watched the pictures on the screen flash by with terrible
fascination
, as if I was watching a horror film and could neither bear to keep my eyes open nor look away. This was the first time I had seen myself as others might see me. I had on occasion, when a teenager, taken a few nude pics of myself in front of the bathroom mirror, which I had quickly disposed of later, terrified my parents or brother and sister might come across them by accident, but this was so much more real.

I felt as though I was observing someone else on screen, a porno. I'd tried as hard as I could to forget everything that had happened with Victor. The pictures were even more shocking than my memory of the night. The man with his belt mid-air about to slap down on me and my face buried in the blankets. At the time, the pain had been a helpful way for me to lose myself in sensation, so I didn't have to think about what was happening, but in pictorial form it looked much worse than the vision that had remained in my head.

I hadn't even been able to summon up a memory of the man afterwards; he could have been anyone. I couldn't have described his face or the length or girth of his cock. I watched him on screen now, his mouth angry and his body shifting position as each picture flashed by. Had Victor even asked me at the time if I was OK with it? I couldn't recall if I had the option of giving my permission. The thought horrified me, even more so the idea that I hadn't tried to stop him.

The phone felt as threatening as a grenade in my hand, but I couldn't bring myself to look away or hurl it out of the window. The rhythm of the still images was insistent, and all of the pictures were rough, violent. The sheer obscenity of watching this man drilling in and out of me, and the way
I
moved to accommodate him was truly shocking, as were the continuing expressions on my face, beautiful and ugly in turns, frozen in time.

Finally, the gallery of images came to an end.

But it's not like that! I wanted to scream. This is what people would see if Victor published the pictures, which was no doubt what he had in mind. The times that I had with Dominik, the rope lessons with Cherry, the scenes I'd witnessed at the clubs that I had been to, none of them were like this. Those things had all been loving, fun, insanely sexy and pleasurable, but that's not how the world would view it if they saw Victor's awful slideshow, me wearing a collar, my face at times suffused with sadness and the man behind with his belt bearing down on me evidently full of rage. Those nights had been something else altogether, a nightmare that I had been manipulated into and had managed to almost forget until now. I wanted to choke Victor with the mobile phone, but that would only get me into more trouble.

‘Edifying, no?' I heard Victor's voice, a long way away.

Consumed by horror, I realised that I was wet, under the minimal curtain of Dominik's shirt obscuring my uncovered genitals. The intention was all wrong and Victor's motivations criminal, but the images themselves, the memory of the fucking, turned me on.

I remained silent, aware that whatever I could say in response, he would know how to turn it against me.

‘You pull some delightful faces when you're being fucked, Summer, don't you? You'd make a great hard-core silver-screen star, no? Pity we couldn't produce a talkie, all moving and singing! Both welcoming the pleasure you're being granted and fighting it with every sinew in your body.
Mind
against matter, eh?' He quietly laughed at his dubious wit.

‘You bastard!'

He walked over to the kitchen counter, took hold of a glass and poured himself some water. I was frozen to the spot.

Part of me wanted to throw the BlackBerry against the wall and see it shatter into a million pieces; the other begged to watch the succession of images over and over again. I guessed, though, that he had downloaded them to somewhere safe as insurance, and I'd just be acting in an overly melodramatic manner.

‘I don't think it would win you an Oscar, my dear,' Victor said, ‘but if it were leaked, I daresay your life as a classical musician might meet some unwelcome stumbling blocks, no? Sex tapes or variations thereof are for minor starlets or reality-show strumpets, not for serious artists. I'd say. And . . . ohhh . . . what if your wonderful Dominik, the amateur dom, were to see it? Would it make him happy?'

I was about to say yes to his final query, if only to provoke Victor, but he didn't allow me the time to do so.

Standing straight, he set down the now empty glass and said, ‘The choice is yours, dear Summer. I will require your services one last time. If you accept, the photographs will be destroyed. You have my word as a gentleman. This is my number in New York.' He set a small rectangular card down on the granite surface of the countertop.

‘What . . .?'

‘No questions asked. If you agree to attend the event, you will obey every single instruction and go through with it.
That's
all. You will not be hurt, damaged in any physical way. Again, you have my word.'

I remembered the register, opened my mouth.

He anticipated my question. ‘No marks. Nothing permanent.'

‘But—'

Again Victor interrupted me. ‘A day and a time. A place. You present yourself. I don't want you to know anything more. I want you nervous. You look so much more beautiful when you are vulnerable, my dear. So much more.'

I had run out of words.

‘Call me within the next forty-eight hours with your answer. I'll see myself out.'

He turned and walked out.

Between Victor's visit and Dominik's return to Manhattan, I fell into a deep depression, tossed around like a grain of sand in a bubbling sea of emotions.

It wasn't fair.

Just when I'd thought that Dominik and I could work things out, build a life together, unusual though it might be, I was faced with another of Victor's schemes, something that could ruin my career just as it was getting started. I could go to the police, but my heart sank at the prospect. What would I say? They would take one look at my lifestyle and laugh me all the way out of the building. Even if they were more open-minded than I imagined, it would be too late if Victor managed to leak even one photograph. I might lose everything. If it went viral, it could reach Te Aroha. If my parents read about it in the paper, I couldn't bear it.

I wanted to talk to someone about it, but Cherry seemed unavailable and there was no way that I could mention it to
Chris
, my best friend in London. He thought Dominik was bad news. He'd probably arrange a hit man to sort out Victor, knowing how protective he sometimes was.

Thoughts of Chris made me nostalgic. I missed him terribly. He'd been the only guy in my life besides my old violin teacher, Mr van der Vliet, who had never made a pass at me, and I missed the safety of his company and his conversation, knowing that we would never be more than friends and that his advice was not given with any desire to get me into bed with him. I'd given up on wondering why Chris and I had never physically fancied one another. He was certainly attractive to other women and had a crowd of would-be groupies trailing him after every gig. Maybe it was because we were both musicians, so I wasn't as impressed by him as his fans were.

Chris was sweet and quite old-fashioned at heart. We didn't talk about our sex lives, but the few times that he'd accidentally learned more about mine, he had made it clear that my sexual exploits worried him. He didn't understand the kick that I got out of some of the things I liked to do, and he presumed it dangerous. He didn't see it as something fun and safe in a controlled environment; he just thought that a dom was a control freak who might hurt me. I hoped I'd be able to change his mind about that one day, but for now I planned to take my time and ease him into it. More than anything I didn't want to lose him, so conversations about my problems with Victor would need to be had with a different friend. Not Chris.

I remembered Lauralynn, but didn't even have a number and had not seen or spoken to her in almost a year. She'd always been so full of self-assurance, she would undoubtedly have wise words to say on the matter. I realised how
lonely
and isolated I had become. Spending that brief time back home with friends and family had made me realise how few friends I had.

Dominik had become my port, my one fixed point, a harbour in the storm, but if I were to reveal the circumstances and what had provoked them, I knew I could lose him for ever.

I was fucked.

That evening, I got drunk, for the first time in as long as I remembered. I deliberately mixed beer and spirits, wandered up to the West Village and sampled half the bars around McDougall and Sullivan. I wasn't sure what I was seeking: solace in alcohol and or just the soft, warm shelter of passing out. I've never been a happy drunk; I usually end up morose and irritable, which is probably why I didn't attract any attention at the bar – a blessing, no doubt, as I was in no state to choose a bed partner wisely. Not that I was seeking anything or anyone in my current condition. Life was complicated enough as it was.

I dragged myself back to the loft just in time to make it to the toilet bowl, where I threw up in spectacular manner. Bone-tired and feeling hollow, I willed myself to crawl to the bedroom, where I collapsed on the bed and quickly passed out.

When I woke up the next morning, the sun hadn't yet risen and a splitting headache gripped my head in a vice. There was nothing in the bathroom cabinet for it: Dominik was not the sort of guy who self-medicated, and the only pills inside were my own birth-control strips. I peered at my
face
in the mirror: I looked awful, dark lines under my eyes, an unsightly blemish on my right cheek, hair like I'd been pulled through a hedge backwards. I sighed and tiptoed back to the bedroom to try and sleep again. The bed sheets stank of sweat and alcohol. I would have to get them washed and dried before Dominik returned.

I lingered in bed for hours, unable to switch off my mind. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the violin case at the far side of the living space, beckoning me, abandoned, but I couldn't summon enough energy to get up and practise even a little. Time went by ever so slowly. Every time I glanced at my watch, the progress of the day became slower and slower.