I grinned and captured that finger. “Careful. You might get that bitten off.”
“Sorry, Sir. But, may I ask if, if we ever make it into bed, that I be allowed to…” She faltered. “I don’t know how to say this.”
I waited. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this either. “Try me. Say what comes to mind.”
“I feel really awful when I think of submitting when she is around. Like I don’t want to be seen as on her level. I want to grab her and rub her nose in this
mess
we have to deal with. It’s… No, I’m tired.” She rubbed her face. “I’m tired and I’m not sure what I mean.”
Interesting. “I understand, I think.”
This had potential. I nibbled and nipped a few of her fingertips while I thought. Her gasps while she attempted to pull them from my grasp were sad reminders of what we were missing. I kissed her palm. “We can try this and see where it goes. We’ll make sure you’re above her in the pecking order. Just don’t forget who is charge of
you
.”
She hugged me. Her reply was muffled against my shirt. “I won’t, Sir.”
“Here. Take the scissors. Just follow my lead.”
We went back into the room and, as if we’d not left, I settled in beside Steph and put my hand to her neck.
“Jodie, I want you to cut off her dress. No slave of ours is going about dressed on her first night.”
“Slave, Sir?”
“For the time being. Yes. Cut from bottom to top to reach, here.” I tapped the top of Steph’s cleavage and smiled inside at her jump. “Then the shoulders so it slides off.”
“I’m not going naked!” Steph squirmed against my hold, and her shoulders shifted as if she tested the cuffs.
“Stop!” I tightened my grip on her neck a tiny amount, felt the tension in the cords of muscle there. I was leaving her panties on but I didn’t think that would win me any points. “You will do as you are told. It is our dress, and this is not your body anymore. You belong to her, and to me. Understand that?”
The stiffening of her body signaled the first defiance I’d seen since we’d arrived here. It was good to see feistiness being aired. Slapping it down was easier this way.
“Understand?” I asked in a growl that spiked more fear in her eyes.
I didn’t look away in the age-old challenge of one animal to another. The one who broke first lost. It was that simple.
She dropped her gaze. “Yes.”
“Cut the dress, Jodie.”
“Okay,” she answered quietly, and she began.
The central cut wasn’t really needed to get the dress off, but psychologically, when the dress parted, yes, I thought I’d like that. That revealing would be somehow more sexual. The mind was a big part of this process, of subduing Steph. For a second, just a second, I clamped down on my desires.
But, I sighed, damn it. This was a new part of my life. I couldn’t afford to be squeamish. We’d set our course for immorality to preserve what we had. I had to embrace this, or give up and go under. If I wanted Jodie to end up with a pair of scissors in her back, go down the
good
road.
No. Not me. I never gave up. I could be bad if I had to be. And if I was going to be bad, I would do it right.
“Good work, Jodie.” She had reached the waist and I could see a hint of the smooth tanned skin of Steph’s thighs. “Keep going.” I stroked Steph’s neck some more, this time as deliberately and slowly as I would the neck of a woman I owned in every way—body and soul. “I want to see all of you, Stephanie.”
After a moment, her lips seemed to part and the tiniest of shivers ran through her. I smiled. Maybe this was going to work.
Sometimes fear can be solid—it can be something that clogs your lungs and invades your blood vessels until you wonder if the next pump of your heart will see you dead.
I had to stand there while my dress was cut, dead center up my body, with those scissors heading toward my breasts while
he
held my neck and Jodie looked up at me with a strange smile. Yes, I was terrified. And sickeningly, I was aroused also. This was like some strange erotic dream. Was I half-awake, trapped in a nightmare?
His words, “I want to see all of you.”
Shudder.
His voice, a breath away, adjacent to my ear. He was still there. When he spoke, my hair stirred. Fuck. Go away. Leave me be. I just want to lie down and cry.
I let my head go back until it tapped onto the wall and I shut my eyes, trying to keep out what was happening. But her fingers kept touching me. My thighs, my stomach, her hand touched, light as air, and moved on as she steadied herself. Or was her touch deliberate? My clitoris arose, unbidden. Those cold metal scissors kept advancing, and the hold on my neck was unrelenting.
I was sick. I must be. Why else was my underwear dampening? Why else did I have to breathe in fits and starts while I prayed he was blind and didn’t notice?
His words had made this happen. They weren’t going to kill me, or torture me, and he wouldn’t rape me…and that, I had believed. Why would he bother to lie? And then, god friggin’ damn him to Hell, he’d said he wanted to see all of me.
There was no way I could escape the sexual context. I’d never before felt so helpless and yet also so very much the center of anyone’s attention.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Maybe it was the drugs? My legs were quivering from the prolonged tension. I needed him and her to go away, and leave me. I needed them to…
“Go away!” I whispered forcefully. “Please. Go away! Stop this, please!” I wasn’t sure why I was being polite, except that, really, I was still very afraid.
“No.” His hand tightened, a bar across my throat. “Do you really think we obey you?”
Jodie with her scissors, kept snip-snipping through the cloth of my dress, and reached just below my breasts. “No. We don’t.”
Her open hand slid up over my mons and I stiffened, my thighs tensing at the invasion, my mind stalling in place as silently I swore one word over and over. Then her hand came farther, and I could breathe again. She paused with her palm on my stomach before slipping higher.
Even a second before she reached my breast I anticipated the pressure of her warm fingers, cupping me there, gently. Was I dreaming this? People had died tonight, hadn’t they? Leon and Melissa? This could not be real.
As the blades snicked to within an inch of the neck hem, I choked out, “No. Please. Don’t.” I pulled at the wrist cuffs, testing them, though even if I were loose what would I do? Where could I go? I’d seen how strong and fast he was in the garage.
“Don’t?” Jodie straightened and faced me, almost nose to nose. Her brown hair swung across her face. Her hand came up, and settled on top of his. The two of them held me. Her body came in. Her soft breasts pressed against mine.
I could smell her, feel her. This was real. As if I could doubt. A chill cloaked me. Real. People were dead. This was real. Oh shit, oh shit. I sniffled.
“Don’t, Steph? Is that what you said earlier tonight? Did you say don’t? To stop him taking off
my
clothes?”
I’d been trying not to look at Jodie but some small variation in her tone made me look. Were those tears wetting her lashes? If so, they mirrored mine. Was that regret I saw? Fear even? Crazy as a circus clown on crack, my emotions swung about. I sorrowed for her, deeply. For that minute flicker of time I felt it for both of us, maybe even for Klaus.
“I think I did, Jodie,” I whispered. I thought it was true. “I did try.”
I think I’d hesitated, before I had let go of my inhibitions. I wasn’t completely sure what was true though, not anymore. The night had become so surreal and so wrong, and I doubted
everything
.
But this was now. They’d kidnapped me. My sympathy evaporated. Lifting on my toes and squirming, I struggled to go somewhere. Up, sideways, down—I tried them all, but his hand on my throat didn’t budge at all. I lifted one knee and bumped Jodie.
“Stop moving.” He shoved my chin higher. “Stop struggling. If you kick Jodie you will find out
now
how I punish.”
I crumpled.
“Fuck. Please, please stop? Please?” I went up on tiptoe again for all of a quarter of an inch before his hand prevented any farther movement.
“Uh-uh. No.” He smiled at me. Bastard.
Then Jodie moved back in and snipped away the last shred of cloth that parted my dress. It swung free to either side. The cold air brushed my skin a moment before she pressed her body again onto mine. “You need to understand that you are going to be ours. You gave up your rights tonight when you gave away mine.”
Her eyes were like little worlds before me. I could sink into them, and if I did, I had an inkling they might eat me up and spit me out in small pieces. What had happened to my old friend Jodie?
Fierce
was the word that sprang to mind when I saw how she looked at me. I’d never thought of her like this. I quailed, trying to shrink even farther back against the wall.
“I’m sorry.” And I was. “I’m so sorry. Let me go. I won’t do anything bad. I promise.” I curled my toes, suddenly aware I was barefoot. Where had my shoes gone?
“You’re sorry?”
Oh fuck she was ignoring the
let me go
part. “Yes.”
“Let you go because this has happened? Because we are stronger than you? Because we have the upper hand?”
“No,” I sobbed, looking aside at Klaus, as if he might help. Calm down, say what needs saying. Maybe there is hope. “I am truly sorry for everything. No one should have died. Or…or what happened to you. If we are careful, we can still do this the right way. We can go to the police. I
can
say what you need me to. I can.”
She stared with the scissors raised. I swallowed and felt the hardness of his grip on my neck. Her eyes squeezed shut a moment before opening to that light blue vista again.
Uncertainty? Maybe? I prayed hard.
“No, Steph. It shouldn’t have happened to me. They shouldn’t have died. But it has. They did. And we all have to pay. Think on that. Also,” she added, inserting the scissor blade under the middle of my bra, “This should go.”
Then she cut through my bra, as efficiently as if it were nothing, and next she snipped through the shoulders of the dress and the shoulder straps of my bra. Then she stripped me and tossed all the pieces of dress and underwear aside. I simply stood there, letting it happen. For the time being, my tears had run out. I was numb. Devastated even.
I was mostly naked in front of two people who hated me like no one else ever had.
So much had gone wrong tonight. I hadn’t really thought they would listen. I’d just hoped. While I was coming to terms with that, she put her whole hand over my breast and clawed her fingers in. The shock made me jerk.
“What now, Klaus?” she asked. Her fingertips seemed to screw in even more and my nipple, treacherous thing, bumped hard into her palm. I hissed at the pain.
“Now we leave her here, alone, for the night.”
I had shut my eyes again and I listened in that self-imposed darkness.
Thank God, they are leaving me.
“You can’t get out, Stephanie,” he added. “I’m leaving all the cuffs on and the collar. They will never come off again, unless I replace them with other restraints. Or unless we decide to trust you and set you free.”
Free? I clutched my aching breast after she let go. But I kept my eyes closed. Go a-fucking-way!
Once he’d locked on a small chain to join my ankle cuffs together, they did as he’d said. I stayed there at the wall, letting it hold me up. I opened my eyes to watch them leave.
He pointed out a camera, and a door that went to a toilet. Then he packed away the leash, some rope, and some sort of red ball, into a chest then locked it. They walked out and the room was blissfully drained of energy and empty.
The door shut. The light dimmed to a soft glow. Near the door, a camera light blinked green. They could watch me even in my sleep.
Ohmigod, I was alone.
When I summoned the energy, I dropped to my knees and crawled to the small mattress on the floor. There was no blanket or sheet but it was a warm night. It must be late. Time seemed irrelevant when my world was disintegrating.
After lying there a while, I realized I needed to pee and managed to rise and walk in small steps to the toilet, the ankle chain catching every few steps when I got the cadence wrong. I closed the door and checked for a camera light. None.
“Fuck.” I collapsed for several minutes, sitting there on the toilet, crying. They couldn’t see me in here. Afterward I stayed there crying some more. I didn’t want them to see my tears.
Only exhaustion made me leave. I rinsed my face and went back to the bed. Sleep claimed me, washing in and out like a tide before I succumbed completely.
I gasped awake, torn from a dream about someone sobbing in a dark shrinking room. The overhead fluorescent light flashed on and the door creaked. Jodie was framed in the doorway, bleary-eyed and dressed in a pink tank top and panties. She rubbed her hand across her face.
“See. She’s okay.” Klaus moved in behind her. The man was taller by a foot or so.
“No. She was crying for ages.”
He sighed. “You want this?”
“Just for tonight? Please?”
“Okay. For you.” He patted the top of her head.
“For her too.” Her mouth twisted. “I guess.”
To my burgeoning horror, Klaus strode toward me.
“What? What are you doing now?” I struggled backward and hit the wall behind me. I covered my breasts with my hands.
“Stop worrying.” He stopped to unlock the chest and collect the leash he’d used earlier then he came and stood before me. “You can come upstairs for the rest of the night.” His eyebrows rose. “Jodie wants to pamper you. She thinks you’ll feel safer in our bedroom.”
“Safer?” I gasped out, while still futilely protecting my assets, as if he’d not seen them earlier.
“That’s what
I
said when she suggested this.” His small smile seemed so wrong. “I told you, I don’t do rape. You will be on the floor, on a mat I have there for Jodie when she’s being bad. Or when I just feel like keeping her as my pet.”