Yield (26 page)

He let me sleep on the top of the bed, some nights, only cuffed and tethered. I considered, fleetingly, kicking him or trying to strangle him in his sleep but both were stupid ideas.

I was allowed in the kitchen, to help him prepare food. I’d never been much of a cook and neither was he. My one restriction was not being allowed near anything dangerous like a knife. I could only eye them from across the kitchen. I could mix and stir and sit with him while we found something new to cook.

Alas, there was no concentrate of arsenic among the herb bottles.

The first day we cooked, I thought of throwing smoking hot cooking oil over him but decided it wouldn’t help me, unless I hit his face and eyes. Too much room for error. I feared failure.

Besides, I couldn’t face hurting him in that way. What he’d told me had come true. He hurt me but not terribly. He even made me like it. Burning off his face wouldn’t likely free me, in any case. If he knew my thoughts, he’d rethink my future qualifications as his slave.

University exams would hold no terror for me after this.
Haha.

Even in the face of my morbid internal jokes, I found I enjoyed learning. That was me, a learning slut, as much as my need to one day escape was a part of me.

Sometimes, I found myself smiling at the messes we managed to create. Stir fry goop earned a place in my memory. Both of us were notorious for burning things that weren’t supposed to burn.

Then there was the day he let me sit with him to watch movies. I could pick which we would watch. I used to love horror movies, but my taste for those had changed.

The first movie was one I’d seen before.
The Lord of the Rings
. In the middle, I jolted alert, realizing how ironic it was I was settled at
his
feet with him combing his fingers through my hair and that I was loving it and happy. My last boyfriend, before Glass, had refused to watch fantasy movies with me, declaring them stupid.

Fate had a way of playing jokes too.

All these rewards were his way of training me. He knew I knew that. One day, I bitterly told him so. That outburst earned me time on the spanking bench. Afterward he unstrapped me and put arnica on my throbbing, bright red ass. I knew precisely how red it was because I checked out the marks in a mirror in the bathroom.

As I smoothed my hand over my whealed and warmed skin, I caught sight of my face and the collar on my neck. I looked freaky, spaced out, spellbound.

The marks he put on my skin fascinated me. I wanted them to last for days, so I could feel them and see them, again and again.

Yet another
Twilight Zone
moment, brought to you by the letters S and M.

The next day, after I swam, he offered to get me a puppy.

Holy shit.

I was drying myself. To give myself time to think. I went to my knees and clutched his leg, wrapping my arms about it and getting water on him. Luckily he wore drip-dry surf shorts and was barefoot. The hairs on his legs were coarse and exciting under my fingers.

I looked toward the sofa, unfocused.

A puppy.

A puppy would be like allowing another prisoner into my world. Disconcerting, even if it brought me comfort.

“No, please Sir.” I craned my head back and searched his expression to see if this would be a dangerous time to say no to him. His eyes were clear of the hunter. “It would remind me of university and...” I wriggled, thinking. So true.

“And? Would it make you unhappy?”

“Yes.”

To my surprise, after only one long, calculating stare, he accepted my lame excuse. Perhaps it was all down to how well I clutched his leg. He liked that, same as I liked doing it.

I was going to Hell in a handbasket, express postage.

A few days later, he said he would mark my back, permanently, with a sign of his ownership.

By then I was good at hiding my emotions.

I couldn’t let him do this.

Not. At all. It brought me tears again, that night, in my cage beneath his bed.

A mark seemed irrevocable.

Where was
me
, if I was his?

Wren

On this day, he had me go into the large dungeon room where I’d slept for so many weeks. Nervous, I followed.

Was this to be a tattoo?

He stopped beside the spanking bench I’d been strapped to many times.

“You must not move during this. Understand?”

A machine of some sort was plugged in via an extension cord to a distant power socket. It didn’t look at all like a tattooing machine.

“Wren?”

I glanced up, shifting from foot to foot. Today he’d allowed me to wear underwear – red bra and panties. I’d been wondering if he had some color coding for my underwear and had mused that red could be for the days when he was super sadistic. I prayed I was wrong.

“Wren. Pay attention.”

Though accustomed to his attention, his gaze was greedier than ever, as if he found this especially exciting.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I understand.” I barely blinked in case I missed something. Running would be good. First, I needed to snap my steel leash.

“Up.” He patted the leather.

He meant to mark my skin.

Me. My skin.
Did this seem worse because it was different? I’d had him inside me. Why did some letters or a design on my skin mean so much? I tried to sort out my head while I crawled onto the bench and he strapped me down. Arms and hands to the front, then legs and ankles and waist were fastened down. On all fours but lying across a padded bench.

As the last strap was cinched in, he said, “This mark will mean you’re mine.”

Yes. That was why I feared this. Another step, another slide down the stairs. This was ownership.

Be strong.

“I thought, for a while, of using a knife to cut a scar on you. It would be satisfying but I’m not sure if it would scar enough.”

To cut a scar? My toes curled and I gripped the padding that my arms rested on, jittery, wishing I’d had the guts to do something other than lie down and let him immobilize me.

What knife?

From the corner of my eye, I watched him bring over a stool and a wheeled tray. I was struck by the absurdity of this as I hadn’t been for weeks.
My masked master, in a dungeon, about to torture me.

I almost giggled, though desperately unhappy. What else could I do? Fastened down, barely able to wiggle, it was like waiting to be sliced and diced. I was meat. A victim, yet again. A thing.

The familiar ache in the middle of my forehead bored in.

No way was I going to fucking cry for him, not today.

Now he’d gone behind me, where I couldn’t see what he was doing.

“I’ll try a small scratch with the knife. Just to test you,” he added dryly.

And that made so much sense. Not. We both knew he did it because hurting me made him happy.

A glint attracted me. There was a small, all-steel knife, waiting to be used, in the middle of the tray to my right. The clatter and scrape of metal when he retrieved that knife was replaced by silence.

I listened deeper.

His breathing, my breathing, then the padding dipped, as if he rested his elbow. Something made contact just above my ass and I tensed. Only a pen, from the coolness and soft scratching.

“Here is...perfect,” he murmured.

Then the scraping began. I’d rather cutting than this annoying, continuous scrape as the knife’s tip wore away my skin. Nausea coiled in my belly and I tried to squirm away. It awoke nasty feelings that made every part of my body feel wrong.

At last the scraping stopped and I let go of the fold of leather and padding I’d held onto to stop myself whining.

“No. I don’t like that. The other tool is an electrocautery handpiece. If you’re wondering, I’ve practiced.”

I gave a small grunt. I didn’t care to talk in case his concentration slipped. Electrocautery? I’d wondered at the familiarity of the device. He was going to burn me? Though I’d not used one, those were made for surgery, for cutting straight through skin. If he used the wrong setting, or the wrong pressure, I’d be sliced open and need stitches to fix it.

Worried, I tried to turn and look.

“Be still.” He slapped my butt.

Moving would only make the chance of a disaster higher. I bumped my chin into the leather and inhaled, long and slow. Sometimes, by doing that, I could make my pulse slow and my blood pressure stay low.

Not today.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
I’d probably blow up a sphygmomanometer.

“Good. It’ll start soon. The word I’m writing on you is
mine,
if you’re curious.”

And that was reassurance?

His voice went up and down in volume as he pottered about picking up the handpiece and fiddling with stuff back there, chatting as though this was the equivalent of a visit to the hairdresser or tattoo shop.

The first blistering tap of the point of the device shocked me. It burned then was gone. I could feel a traveling, continued burn, hear a faint sizzle, smell my own damn skin burning, but it was bearable, swiftly moving over the skin above my ass.

Mine
had only four letters. Thank god he hadn’t gone with something like
Master’s slave girl
. He’d need a bigger ass in that case. I shut my eyes and breathed through the pain. The heat spread, more like a bad sunburn than anything. As torture went, this was five on a scale of one to ten. My dentist did worse.

“Good. This is going really good.” Then a minute later. “Almost done.” Then, “Done.”

So quick. A minute of that and now I had this man’s word burned into me. This wasn’t like the mark of a belt or a whip. It was permanent and it would unsettle me to see it in a mirror.

Something cool, that stung for a moment, was wiped over the word on the small of my back.

He undid straps, methodically, moving around me. On the little three-foot-high table on wheels was the handpiece, a tube of ointment, some swabs stained with spots of blood, and the small knife.

A weapon. That was a weapon.

The thought flickered on and off in my brain like a faulty neon sign.

The last strap came off and he squatted before me, smiling. He was fucking
smiling
.

His mistake was a huge one. I ran through the ramifications, the pluses, the minuses.

Dare I?

Dare I not?

Really, did I? Last time still haunted me. What would he do this time if I failed? I’d told myself not to look in his eyes and here he was, a foot away.

I did not want to be his forever.

“Wren, I’m going to tell you my name and show you my face now.” His fingertips pressed up beneath my chin.

Ohhh crap.

This was that day. Now I knew, I had no choice.

“Why?” I grimaced and levered up onto my elbows, pretending I needed to stretch.

“Because, I guess, I trust you.”

Well, that was interesting. I’d never heard him vacillate like he just had in that sentence. He wasn’t sure if he should, but he was. I wasn’t the only one who made bad decisions.

I couldn’t do this with his brown eyes looking into mine. Staring at me. Just couldn’t. My hand found the knife, sneaking like some ninja disembodied hand, then found the handle.

Be silent. Don’t rattle it. Metal sounds will alert him.

I shut my eyes and I whispered, “Don’t tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re wrong.”

“What? Elaborate on that.”

I’d not said
Sir
. Oh well. Last time ever I’d have to.

Now or never.

I stopped my breathing and swung my hand in a vicious arc, across where his throat was.

The catch of skin and his gasp had me ripping open my eyes to see him clutching his throat. Blood on his fingers. Yes! The arc of the sweep with the knife ended with a
slap
as my wrist met his palm.

My reaction was half horror, half pleasure, half
what the fuck did I just do
, with a paltry,
ohmigod, I’m sorry
tacked on at the end.

I jerked to free my hand but his fingers closed on my wrist.

He glared and his hand left his throat. A nick, only. A leak of redness, barely that. A true wound there would spurt. Rickety trickles of blood branched into the creases of his neck.

“Fuck,” I whispered, horrified by my failure and the stark potential for death. I’d done that.

The features of his face deformed; his anger turned molten.

I’d done bad.

I’d never seen him angry before. My second attempt to free my hand and scramble backward brought me to the floor, flung there, spinning, my arm almost pulled from its socket. My wrist was caught in his hand, burning where my skin had twisted in his grip. The knife, he pried from my fingers, and sent it skipping and skidding across the floor. I watched it go, appalled, as if the loss of the weapon signified the end of my life, the universe, everything.

Maybe it did.

Wrestling with him was useless, but I tried. I’d lost all my reasons for being good.

Reasons meant zilch.

His strength obliterated my efforts to pull loose or kick or bite. Blood smeared my left hand when I tried to punch his face. I’d deflected into his throat instead and made him cough. Though both my arms were no longer mine and being dragged back as he swung behind me, I grinned that I’d gotten in one strike and I’d made him bleed.

“Little bitch,” he muttered evilly, his chin gouging my shoulder as he cursed me through his clenched teeth. “Bitch.”

“Fuck you too!” I spat, jackknifing onto my knees to rise, only to be kicked down. His technique of sitting on me was happening again. Terrifying and pitiful, but he outweighed me by two.

What was he going to do? Whip me? I could take it. He’d said he wouldn’t harm me. I’d curse him out as he did it, even though he lashed me a hundred times. I vowed I would, while I nearly tore muscles in a ferocious attempt to worm myself out from under him.

Our irregular pants and curses and the screw of my muscles and skin under his proved the final punctuation of the fight.

He straddled me, my arms bent back painfully. My face met the tiles and was smooshed there. The pain got to me. “Stop, stop, stop. My arms! Hurting!” Dislocating my shoulders scared me far more than any whip.