Gagged (22 page)

I look at the glass carafe. It’s shockingly unbroken.
 

“No. It didn’t break.”

“Did I surprise you?”
 

Yes. Of course. But I’m easy to shock right now, like a vial of nitroglycerin.

“Just a little.”

She says nothing more. Now that the potential crisis has been dealt with, Jasmine and I return to our recent state of non-discourse. I catch her movements from the corner of my eye as she avoids the kitchen, looking for somewhere in the living room to appear sufficiently casual without committing to any particular place. I don’t think she realized I was out here, despite my noise. Probably stumbled out of bed still half-asleep and incoherent, which is one of her more adorable habits. And now she’s fully awake and trapped, unwilling to enter the kitchen because I’m here.
 

“Do you have a job interview or something?”
 

I look over at Jasmine. She’s not precisely meeting my eyes but
is
looking in my direction, at my too-nice-for-class outfit.
 

“Yeah, sorta.”
 

Liar
. I don’t even hear it until the lie has passed my lips.
 

“I didn’t know you were even looking. I thought you were all settled.”
 

I am. Sort of. We’ve talked about this a lot — or rather, we did, back when conversation was natural. I’m an education major with a photography minor. Photography became a lot harder to crack into once everyone started carrying smartphones with many-megapixel cameras, so I didn’t even try that direction. Education, it turns out, is nebulous. I could become a teacher, but that’s never been my ambition. I wanted to effect change at a higher level, and that means administration, which probably means a doctorate or at least a master’s degree. I have no money and would be looking at delaying the earning phase of my life for a few more years so I can keep paying more for additional degrees. It’s not a vicious cycle so much as a downward spiral. I was planning to get a job at OfficeMax or something while taking classes at night. Let the good times roll.
 

“I have an opportunity,” I say. Digging in deeper. Telling more lies I’ll need to remember. But why am I lying to her? Jasmine of all people would understand the poor choices I seem to be making. Except that considering it’s Caspian, maybe she wouldn’t. And that makes me think of James. Has he called her since he came in her ass, or is that done with? Was it a farce? One more manipulation Caspian played to tug me into the appropriately trussed position?
 

I can’t bring myself to ask. Not now. Not considering the answer I suspect. Not with me actually planning an unknown rendezvous with James’s sadistic boss right in front of my best friend’s face, down to my underwear.
 

I’m suddenly aware of the satin against my most sensitive of places. I think,
Why did I wear these? Do I really expect to show them to him? I hate what he’s made me do so far, don’t I? I’m not about to give him the satisfaction — to grant him access to places on my body that no man has ever been —
am I
?

The thought makes my pussy wet. If Jasmine hadn’t left her room, I might slip my hand up my skirt, adjust things a bit, brush sensitive spots with my fingers.
 

“What kind of opportunity?”

Shit.
 

“I can’t tell you, Jas.”
 

“What, is it for the FBI or something?”
 

“You have a 9:30, don’t you?”
 

Jasmine reacts as if bitten. She reaches for her pajama pants pocket, probably for her absent phone, and comes up empty. Then her head swivels, and she’s staring at the clock above the TV.
 

Then she runs back into her room, our conversation over. I’m relieved, and sad.

I shouldn’t be lying to Jasmine.
 

She shouldn’t be avoiding me.

That little nothing was the most we’ve spoken in days, but instead of nurturing the tiny fire and coaxing it to grow, I snuffed it out. We were moving slowly closer to normal until I started hiding things. Until I stopped myself from asking about the man who probably used and left her — the man who was probably following Caspian’s orders.
 

And me, right here — the virgin in her sexy underwear — headed off to see that same man with anticipation in her nervous bones.
 

That was my first chance to heal things with Jasmine.
 

But something tells me that after whatever I’m about to experience, speaking honestly to my best friend won’t be getting any easier.

CHAPTER THIRTY

C
ASPIAN

S
HE
STANDS
IN
FRONT
OF
me in an outfit that I’m sure is meant to appear strong. But to me she looks like a delicate bloom — an innocent who’s put her trust in something dishonest.
 

She’s at the mouth of the private penthouse elevator, its doors now closed. I’ve taken a dozen steps into my place, but she’s barely taken a pair, and now as I look back she’s the picture of frailty.
 

Legs together, knees locked, balanced unsurely on modest black heels.
 

Arms hanging limp, clasped loosely together in front of her slight waist, fingers unsure exactly how to clasp, fidgeting.
 

Her eyes flitting from place to place.
 

And I don’t blame her.

There’s so much to see.
 

“It’s true,” she says in a soft voice. “What the rumors say.”

I move to the wall beside us. Like my office below, the top two floors composing my penthouse are entirely white, with all white furniture. But my first fetish was black. As is everything in the field that’s fascinated me most. And so the wall beside us, lined with leather and tools, is ebony. She’s barely looking at it, nor is she backing away.
 

“Every person has their fascinations.”
 

“What do you do with all of this?” Again her voice is soft, but deep down I can tell she wants to know. Maybe not to experience.
Probably
not to experience. But perhaps to understand.
 

“Nothing,” I say.
 

“Nothing?”
 

“Its presence excites me. But for me, it’s more like a collection.”
 

I turn and gesture. There are padded tables and chairs bedecked with restraints all over my hybrid home and dungeon. I have leather suits in glass cases the way some people have superhero suits or life-size stormtroopers. My whips and gags and paddles are hanging from the walls in open displays as neat as the workshop of a carpenter with OCD. What happens here, it must seem to Aurora, isn’t messy and carnal; it’s surgical and precise. There isn’t a speck of dust. I have a slave who keeps it clean. She doubles as a bookkeeper working on the thirteenth floor. Her name is Carla, and she’s the mother of three — and she’s very proper, very Christian. I’ve never touched her and don’t care to, but she heard the rumors and came to me, begging for a chance to be told what to do. It gets her off to do my bidding, to work for free in both penthouse and office. But she’s legal enough in both roles; she’s signed stacks of paperwork and can never come back to haunt me. My lawyers, like most lawyers I’ve met, understand sadism perfectly.
 

Aurora reaches out. Touches one of my whips. I’d never use that one. It has heavy metal balls on the ends and would split skin like meat. She touches it in just the right way. She’s curious while hesitant. Naive but not repulsed by my belongings. Or me.
 

“Why?”
 

“Today is my turn,” I say.
 

Her fingers move from the whip. Her head turns. We stopped in the office on the way up, so I’m dressed for business, wearing a pressed white shirt and a shiny cornflower-blue tie beneath my blazer. The tie cost almost four hundred dollars — right now I’m imagining using it to restrain her wrists.
 

“Showing me your kink doesn’t prove anything,” Aurora says.
 

“It proves plenty.”
 

“Not that your way of seeing the world is right. Maybe you’re into whips and gags, but most people aren’t. Your
collection
doesn’t convince me that the world is a dark place. Only that you have more issues than I realized.”
 

I smile. The point of today isn’t to teach her about me. The fact that she came here knowing what she’d probably find proves something. The fact that she hasn’t left or balked, anticipating what might come, proves everything to me.
 

Not about me.
 

About Aurora.
 

“Take a look around,” I tell her. “Not many people have ever seen this.”
 

“I might tell people. I might rat you out.”
 

“But you won’t,” I say.
 

“How do you know?”
 

“Because you’re complicit.”
 

“I’m not complicit. This is your kink, not mine.”
 

I sit on a padded bench. Once strapped in, a supplicant is exposed with their ass back, on their knees, legs parted. It’s called a spanking bench, but they come in all sorts and I have a few. You can DIY them out as a reinforced sawhorse, hands tied low on the far side, but some have holes to restrain both neck and wrists, like a pillory.
 

“Are you afraid, Aurora?”
 

She takes too long to reply. She says, “No,” but then corrects herself and says, “A little.”
 

“Why don’t you leave? There’s a staircase right there beside the elevator, and I promise it’s not locked.”
 

She looks back, and then at me.
 

A small smile touches my lips. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”
 

“What?”
 

“Fear.”
 

“Not really.”
 

“But it
does,”
I say, rising, coming toward her. Circling her. Whispering. “What if you were restrained? What if you couldn’t move, and I could do whatever I wanted?”
 

“I wouldn’t like that.”
 

“Maybe not. But you’re thinking about it right now, and your nipples are getting hard.”
 

Her hands jump from their positions and demurely cross her chest.
 

“I’m just freaked out.”
 

“Exactly. You’re
afraid
. You don’t even have to be aroused. Your body’s reaction is the same. If I were to slip a finger inside you right now, I’m sure you’d be wet.”
 

“It’s not the same thing.”
 

“Of course not,” I say, still slowly circling Aurora as she shivers in the middle, covering her breasts. “You can be afraid, and you can run. But instead you’re choosing to stay. And that, pretty girl, is the difference.”

“I’m not agreeing to anything.”
 

“Wrong. You’re agreeing to stay.”
 

“I could leave any time. And I will, if you go too far.”
 

Behind Aurora, I put my fingers into my collar and loosen my tie. She can hear the fabric moving but is refusing to turn. Gooseflesh forms on the back of her smooth white neck.
 

“Close your eyes,” I say.
 

“No.”
 

“Do it.”
 

She says nothing, so I slip the tie from my collar, making a sound like a snake through grass. I reach around her blonde mane and lay it over the bridge of her nose. Her breathing deepens, making her whole frame slowly rise and fall. I tie it behind her head. Then I stand in front of her as she stares blind.
 

“Why did you let me do that?” I ask.
 

“It’s your turn.”
 

“Are you sure I won’t hurt you? Are you sure I won’t do something you don’t want, and won’t see coming?”
 

Pulse in her throat. A swallow. A long, slow breath.
 

“No.”
 

“Then take it off, if you want out.”
 

Her lips are parted. Small, kissable, bright red. She has a tiny, button-cute mouth. I try to remember what those delicate lips looked like with my cock between them, with my come on her chin and chest.
 

“Put out your hands,” I say. “Wrists together.”
 

She obeys. I pull a pair of soft cuffs from the wall. I bind her wrists, making sure they’re tight. I look up at Aurora, resisting an urge to kiss those small, soft lips. Her little pink tongue emerges. Licks her lips to restore moisture.
 

“Raise your hands over your head.”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because if you do, I’ll tell you a story.”
 

“What kind of a story?”

“One that will interest you.”
 

She hesitates. Then, slowly, she raises her hands above her head. I don’t react right away. With Aurora’s shirt now stretched across her, I can clearly see nipples poking the fabric. The shirt comes untucked, and I can see her flat, smooth belly. I reach for my crotch and grip my cock through my pants, kneading, feeling its pleasant ache.

There’s a cable in the ceiling where she’s standing. I attach it to her cuffs then tighten it. She’s not pulled tight or hanging, but she’ll be uncomfortable.

“Are you going to gag me now?” Her voice is light, trying to joke. But I can hear the flutter betraying near-panic. She’s entirely vulnerable, given me control, like a good girl.

“I’d never gag you.”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because you’re already gagged. Because you’ve spent most of your life with a rag shoved in your mouth. You won’t say what you mean or ask for what you want. You won’t agree to something you’d enjoy without feeling forced. You won’t act unless you can blame it on drink. And you won’t let yourself enjoy what I know you will. I’ll never gag you, Aurora. The point of all of this isn’t to bind you. It’s to free you.”