Rough Play (22 page)

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Authors: Christina Crooks

BOOK: Rough Play
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The door swung open. He stood there, Gail’s phone to his ear. He slowly clicked it off. Tucked it into his pocket. His features had turned to an inscrutable mask of granite.
The nauseating panic that surged through her made her realize how much she’d been simply playing at fear. Even when she’d been at Cory’s mercy, she hadn’t felt this level of betrayal. That was mere toying with dominance and submission and pain, compared to what she’d been about to do with Martin.
Martin, Gail’s abductor.
He was the real deal, and it scared the shit out of her.
She leapt to her feet, her lips and her body numb. “You!”
“Charlotte. Sit down.”
“I’m leaving.”
“No, please. Not yet.”
She bolted. She half hoped it was some horrible misunderstanding, that he’d let her go.
Right up until he moved to block her at the last moment. She ran straight into him, but the soft floor didn’t give him the best leverage. She used his slight overbalancing to push him farther in that direction as she leapt the opposite way, out of his reach.
But he was quick, and as she jumped over him toward the door he grabbed her ankle, yanked.
She fell to the cushioned floor.
He threw the full weight of his body onto her. “Charlotte, stop. You don’t understand.”
She struggled. “You’re crushing me.”
He was. She had to fight for breath.
Easing up slightly, he began to speak.
She inhaled deeply, then shouted. “Red!” She struggled harder. “I said ‘red.’ Do you hear me?”
He nodded.
“Then get off me!”
“Not yet. Not until you understand—”
Her fears were true, all true. The Martin she thought she knew would’ve respected her safe word.
With tears in her eyes, she slumped ever so slightly, to lull him into raising his body off her a little more.
Just enough.
She brought her knee up, hard and vicious between his legs.
The wounded sound he made tore unexpectedly at her heart.
She still shoved him away, then crab-crawled out of his range as fast as she could force her limbs. She dug her nails into the soft wall to pull herself to her feet.
Then she ran.
22
A
s Amethyst ground her high heel into Richard Corvine’s wrinkled, flabby neck, she yawned.
She looked down at the fully clothed executive and decided she’d quit the pro-domme business after this session. Desperate older men, like Richard here—she pressed down until he whimpered—who paid her to spank and humiliate them, gave her less and less joy.
At first, of course, the easy dominance had been the whole point. After Kartane, she’d needed to reestablish her sense of feminine power. That bastard and his corrosive sexist philosophy had left her shaken.
What galled Amethyst in retrospect was her willingness to participate for as long as she had. A few more weeks of Kartane’s brainwashing about women having slave hearts, and she might’ve actually started to buy into it.
She placed her hands on her latex-clad hips as she posed before the kneeling man. She nudged his face with the toe of her boot. “I stepped in dog shit on the way here.” She reclined on the hotel room’s single chair, crossed her legs. Her boot stuck out. “Lick it off,” she commanded.
“Yes, Mistress.” Moaning with eagerness, Richard slobbered onto her thigh-high, lace-up stiletto boots. There wasn’t really any dog shit on them, but he didn’t know that. Or care about anything but his fantasy.
Amethyst pictured Martin’s face when she told him about Richard Corvine’s sexual predilections. It would be even better when she showed him the evidence of them. Martin had had too much bad luck lately, with his mom’s illness and now the blackmailer.
How nice she could help out her friend in her own modest way. How nice that helping Martin helped her, too.
Amethyst checked on her client. Generous with his spittle, he tongued the leather until it shined. He glanced up at her face from time to time.
She didn’t have to fake her look of contempt.
“I like your new mask, Mistress. It’s very sexy.”
“Did I ask what you thought? Lick.”
“Yes. Anything, Mistress.” He licked.
Once, she looked at the mirrored closet. The left slider door wasn’t completely shut. She gave a nod to the sliver of darkness.
Richard’s slurping sounds covered the faint hum of the video camera.
 
“You were right to come here.”
Kartane picked up one chair, nestled it one on top of another. He moved on to the next.
Charlotte paced back and forth in the large conference room. She avoided the furs. “I just didn’t know where else to go. It’s a good thing you’re so close to Subspace now, only a few blocks away. I’m glad to have a friend like you to trust with this sort of thing. It’s so unbelievable.”
She stopped against the wall, clutched at it for support. “He has her phone. He took her. He took Gail, and maybe others. He almost had me.” Her hand fisted against the wall. “He lied to me. He has her phone!”
“You’d mentioned that.”
She moved again, the tension within her making it impossible to remain still. “I trusted him.” This was the most appalling thing, to her. “I believed him. When Martin claimed you went off with Gail, I should’ve known better.”
From the far side of the room, she heard Kartane drop a chair.
She reached the end of the conference room, started back. “Sorry about all the walking back and forth, I’ve just got all this adrenaline.” The aftereffects of both Martin’s pleasuring then the shock he’d given her made her feel nauseated.
Kartane waved that away. He gave her a strange look. “Martin said I abducted Gail?”
She frowned. He’d left the chair where it had fallen. “Well, no. Not exactly. It was more what he implied. That you were crazy, a crazy Gorean, and therefore Gail had probably rejected you pretty quickly. I guess Martin figured I’d buy that you were the last one seen with Gail. Conveniently clearing him of being a suspect.” She smiled a little. “Of course, you were kind of a crazy, once upon a time. And you are a Gorean. But you’re not a crazy Gorean. You already got the woman-abducting out of your system.”
He stared coldly.
She blinked. “Um, it’s just a joke. At my expense, in a way. No offense.” The florescent light of the large conference room gave his familiar face an unhealthy pallor. She looked at him curiously. “Are you okay?” His blue eyes were narrowed with the kind of concentration she hadn’t seen since she’d lived with him. Since he’d tried to reach her libido via binding, torture, and branding.
She felt her flesh creep. She blamed it on Martin. If only he’d taken no for an answer. At least Kartane wasn’t like that anymore, even if he was staring at her strangely.
She approached him, touched the fallen chair with uncertainty. “Hey, Martin’s the bad guy. It’s just that you know you have certain ideas about women . . . well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. Martin despises you and Goreans both, which makes you a convenient target. He probably attacked Gail right away to subdue her. She doesn’t put up with much male high-handedness. I hope she’s okay.”
At his continued cold stare and his perfect stillness, she spoke, defensive. “What? She doesn’t. And I don’t blame her one bit for it. Maybe she’s difficult, but she doesn’t deserve that fate. Oh, God, I’m talking about her as if she’s dead. What if Martin actually killed her? She doesn’t have any friends or family who know where she went. I have to go to the police, make a report.”
His nostrils flared. “What? No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“They might search Subspace. And all around it, maybe.”
She stared at him. “Yes. That’s kind of the idea.” She fidgeted, impatient, ready to go make the police take her seriously this time. Then she’d put all this behind her and start over again.
“Can you give me a ride to the local station? The one near my apartment will do.”
He finally bent to the fallen chair. With slow, deliberate movements, he placed it with the others. Then he moved to the furs. He picked up a gilded velvet cord. Probably used on the evening’s entertainment, Charlotte thought with curiosity. It intrigued her how some women could accept such servitude as a way of life. For play, maybe. But as a lifestyle? It boggled her mind. But, to each their own.
Kartane made his way back, stepping carefully on the furs. He moved with a slowness that showed reluctance until he stood before her.
“If you don’t want to drive me, just say so,” she told him. “I’ll catch the light-rail. If they’re still running this late. You don’t happen to know the schedule . . . um, Kartane? What are you doing?”
With an economy of motion that spoke of long practice, he turned her while pulling both her arms behind her back. He wrapped her wrists together with a simple figure eight in the time it took her to realize she was trapped. “What the hell? Let me go!”
“I did, once. True masters don’t release their slaves, any more than they’d give away another valuable possession. You’ll probably be frightened and dismayed to learn I’m a true Gorean master now. But acceptance will come in time. I’ll make you my First Girl.” He sounded sorry.
Disbelief and confusion roiled her stomach. “Stop joking around.” The tremor in her voice betrayed her. She knew he wasn’t joking.
“I can’t let you go now.” He pulled her to the edge of the furs, scooped up another length of cord. He knotted it around her neck. “If you scream, I’ll choke you unconscious.”
She looked at her ex-husband. She saw the truth of his words.
But even so, when he led her to stairs leading below, she balked. “Please. Don’t. We made this mistake before. You and me. It didn’t work. I’m not cut out for the slave-girl role.”
“It’s not a role,” he explained. “It’s woman’s nature.”
“I know you believe that, but it’s not true. I’m unnatural,” she declared, inspired. “I’m a freak of nature, a free woman, a woman who wants to be like a man, no use to you at all.”
He laughed at her. “Charlotte. I was married to you, remember? What’s more, I saw your response to Talia’s chastisement. I know what your body craves.” He paused, shrugged. “It would be a shame to kill you.”
She gaped.
“A captured woman who refuses slavery may be disposed of in any way the captor wishes, so as not to be a burden to him.”
“Okay. Okay, honey? We’re in America. On Earth. I’m a burden to no one.” She remembered her current clientless state. “Even if I do have to work in fast food for a while. I can take care of myself.”
“You’d prefer a strong master.”
“Not at the expense of freedom.”
“Words. Your body speaks a higher truth.” He grasped a breast with easy familiarity.
She cringed away to the length of the rope. Her body was neutral to his touch. “We’re just friends. We’re friends,” she repeated, willing him to understand it. “I’m willing to be your friend.”
“I’m not willing to be yours. You have nobody to claim you now. No family, either.” He looped the cord attached to her neck around his fist. Then again, dragging her closer. “No one to miss you.”
Martin’s face flashed through her mind. Martin would miss her. Then realization hit her. “You took Gail!”
He smiled. “Come with me.”
“No!”
He stopped smiling. “Come with me, Charlotte. You’re mine. You wear my brand.”
“You said you were sorry for that! You cried!” She pulled back until her windpipe constricted. “It’s not a brand, it’s a blob of scar tissue. You let me go after you hurt me. Let me go now.”
“I regret it took me this long to learn my business. Oh, no, not the magazine business. That was a means to an end. The business of owning women, the way they need to be owned, is my calling. I’ll brand you properly, I promise. And then you’ll be used properly. You’ll come to love it. They all do.” He smiled coolly. “Eventually.”
“This is a nightmare,” she said, strangling on her own words. “Wake me up.” Between the lump in her throat and the tight rope, air couldn’t reach her lungs. The world floated.
He loosened the rope. “Don’t fight it this time, Charlotte. You won’t win.” She knew he didn’t mean the rope.
“But I don’t want you. I don’t want this.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She knew he was stronger than her, and on guard, and between her bound hands and the choking collar, she didn’t have a chance.
She could scream.
“Don’t, Charlotte.”
Her shoulders began to slump, obedient. He knew her too well. Yet not well enough. A lethal combination.
Lethal for her. He might do worse than brand her again. He might kill her.
She opened her mouth to scream, and his hand was there, sealing it shut, muting the sound.
“Bad girl,” he breathed, when she’d stopped. “Do that again and I promise you you’ll regret it.”
She knew he spoke the truth.
He led her downstairs, then unlocked a heavy metal door, pulling it open and thrusting her through. A tunnel. Charlotte looked around. The rough, unfinished combination of concrete, metal rods, dusty bare lightbulbs, and the scene of dirt reminded her of the room at Subspace. So these were the undertunnels Ratty had talked about.
“How’d you get Gail down here? Rope and brand her like a steer, too?”
“Submit, kajira. But not too much. A Gorean master commonly likes a spirited girl, one who fights the discipline and collar, resisting for weeks or months until she is overwhelmed and must acknowledge herself his. She comes to crave her master’s smallest attention, and fears only that he’ll tire of her and sell her to another.”
“Did you get that from those sci-fi novels? Dominant Weenies of Gor?”
“Insolence will be punished.”
“How about the truth? Is that punished?”
He yanked her forward, harder than necessary.
Suddenly they were at another door. He unlocked it with a different key. When he nudged it open to push her inside, her first impression was one of scent. Unwashed flesh. Tang of urine. Copper of blood. A whiff of bleach. Food, too, though it smelled oily, as if fried.
Then she heard the noise. Whips meeting flesh. Shrieks of complaint.
“Punishment,” Kartane explained helpfully.
“Great.” She kept her voice light and sarcastic, but inside she quivered with panic.
He led her to a metal enclosure, opened the simple padlock on the outside of the door. Inside she could see more hard-packed dirt, but not much else in the dim light. The scent of urine was stronger.
“Go in.”
“I’d prefer not to.”
In answer, he merely removed her rope collar and thrust her inside. The door clanged shut, locked.
She quaked, wrapping her arms around herself, listening to the shrieks of the woman being punished. The shrieks had grown hoarse, but the sharp impact of the whip meeting body didn’t lessen. Charlotte shuddered.
Minutes later, the door rattled, and she leapt back.

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