Puppet On A String (8 page)

      
“Sit down,
Shelby
,” he motioned her to the soft leather couch.

      
Darcy made her a drink, and while he stood by the side of the bar, she sat primly on the edge of her seat, much too nervous to relax. Her mind kept wandering toward the bed behind her, but she didn’t dare look. Instead, she carefully sipped the drink, not liking its sour taste in the slightest – this might have been the first hard liquor she’d ever tasted. However, once she consumed half of the drink, she found her body warming and her nerves quelled. With the warm glow magically melting away her fear, she drank the rest more quickly, wanting to slip even deeper into this pleasantly altered state.

      
When she finished the first drink, he gave her another. He was still standing, downing his second glass of Scotch. She stared beyond him, mesmerized by the glittering array of liquor bottles. “
Shelby
,” he drew her attention back to him.

      
“Yes, sir.”

      
“You know, dear, being owned doesn’t mean that you have to live your life on pins and needles,” he spoke quite kindly now. “It’s all about satisfying each other’s needs. You take care of mine, I take care of yours. Simple as that.”

      
“Yes, sir, that seems reasonable.” She offered up a timid smile.

      
“I understand that what a starry-eyed young woman wants is romance, a little tenderness, even if she’s a born submissive masochist like yourself.”

      
“Is that what I am?” She stared at her drink, feeling the intoxication beginning to take hold. Her mind began to spin.

      
“You disagree?”

      
She wasn’t sure that she was thinking clearly, but what Mr. Darcy said sounded perfectly logical, considering her behavior of the last few weeks. He always sounded logical, always perfectly reasonable, even when he twisted her thoughts into knots. He always knew the right answers, while she fumbled around to understand things – fumbled like she did now. Sometimes her feelings were way beyond her, as they were that day, and he seemed to put everything in its proper perspective. She looked up, her head feeling strangely fuzzy.
Was this what it was like to be drunk?
“No, sir, I can’t disagree. But I think I’m very tired.”

      
“It’s been a big day for you. I’ve asked a lot from you, and you haven’t disappointed me.”

      
“No?”

      
“Not at all.” He smiled again. “Come here. Finish your drink and come here.” He held out his hand.

      
She stared into the glass and then nervously took another gulp, then abruptly downed what was left. The liquor burned all the way to her stomach, and yet it continued to warm her in a strangely pleasant way. When she moved to her feet, she nearly stumbled, but then blushingly righted herself before making up the distance between them. Standing inside his overwhelming aura, so close to his beating heart, hers jumped a few anxious beats. Her fear never greater than it was now. His hand gently pushed back her mussed up hair, then he affectionately laid a palm against her cheek. No warning at all, and his arm captured her inside its grasp, while his lips crushed against hers and his mouth opened. Furious and deep, the longed-for kiss made her melt against him and her body became his. He’d taken her mind and twisted it for his perverse purpose, leaving her mystified by his power to do that. But the kiss was more direct. And the way he led her to the bed, there was little mystery about what he planned to do. Nor was there any confusion about what she wanted. Her heart seemed to lead with her mind too drunk to think straight. He stripped her clothes away, his eyes clearly coveting her youthful body. The lovely roundness of her breasts was cause for his adoration. The taste of her skin as his mouth and lips devoured it made him groan with unpretentious lust. In the heat of their mutual desire, no commands were necessary to have her bending to his will. And when he hovered over her nakedness, his own naked body poised to strike, her fierce desire for him was unmistakable.

      
“Oh, sir, take me!”
she silently cried out.

      
He must have heard her beg; it took only a moment to react.

      
Mr. Darcy was quickly inside her, the experience quite unlike anything that had ever happened to her. His erection speared her deep, for the first time their bodies were skin to skin. While taking her with long, penetrating thrusts, she responded as an eager sex slave, pulling him into her body and holding him fiercely. She ached for him in a way that was unfamiliar and verboten in the world she’d come from, and yet this seemed so perfect. The two would never be more one than they were that night.

      
They slept together when their initial sex was over. They snuggled close like lovers at
midnight
, and woke at three for sex again.

      
And though Darcy was gone when she awakened the next morning, she found him in his office already working, freshly showered and immaculately dressed as usual. A check of the clock – it was nearly
nine o’clock
.

      
“You’re a mess, Shelby,” he said directly. “Perhaps you should go home and get yourself cleaned up.”

      
“Yes, sir,” she smiled, “I do feel rather…rather well-used.”

      
“Indeed you are.” He smiled back.

Giving up her apartment and her salary, and everything she owned seemed only to cement an arrangement she deeply cherished. Mr. Darcy’s property. She even loved the sound of that and what the thought of it did to her body. She was at his disposal any hour of the day or night. She belonged to him as much as his house, his clothes and his business belonged to him. She was an asset he’d acquired with great time and expense to him. She couldn’t have been more grateful to have found a man who so thoroughly understood her.

Chapter Five

“So, when does this end?”
Shelby
peered through the gloomy fog of the dark room, sensing Jessup’s presence. The fear and loathing that she’d felt since her incarceration began were morphing into something very different, but she was unable to name exactly what that was. Desire? No, too strong a word. Desire resided in her heart as much as in her sexually charged loins. To desire the man meant that she had some emotional bond with a known evil.

      
Maybe she was going soft on her captor? Was his abuse becoming as welcome as the sound of boots on concrete? Boots brought food and whatever comfort she was given. Boots bore her to sessions of masochistic pain. The sound of boots sent a shiver down her spine…

      
Obviously something was happening in her fractured psyche. She’d lost track of the days…in her mind she was living simultaneous to her time with Darcy. She could flip back and forth from one to the other easily, one consciousness as distinct and real as the other. At least she could still tell that the one was her past and the other her present.

      
In her present life as a captured criminal, she was regularly taken to the machines. Dildos were fitted into her vagina and ass, and her body was fucked by attached mechanical arms that trust the invaders deeply into her sexual spaces. The erratic rhythms seemed to go on for hours at a time. Although judging time was impossible in this place. What she might take as minutes, could be hours, hours could be reduced to minutes. Is this how insanity begins? she asked herself. But there was no one listening, no one to answer but the voices inside her head.

      
“And how is my favorite masochist?” Jessup taunted her when he came to watch the sexual torture.

      
Her body spoke when her voice refused to answer. She glanced down to see him staring at her, a foul and vulgar gleam in his eye. He was obviously enjoying the sight of her rapturous body forced to come and come again, having no control over her sexual responses.

      
“This is a natural state for you. I think you even know that,
Shelby
. When you’re gone from here, I’ll have the movies of you to play back any time I want.” He pointed to the eye of the video camera set in the far corner of the room.

      
Not that she hadn’t seen the camera before; she had confirmation…maybe a reason why she spent so much time on the hateful machines. Would they sell the tapes to some collector? Post them on the Internet? Her imagination rattled on with the possibilities – none of which was hers to control. She closed her eyes, closing out Jessup and his video camera, then turned her face away, giving the lens as little as possible to record – as little as possible for Jessup to gawk at on some future date.

      
When she opened her eyes again, the man was gone.

      
Long periods of bondage followed the sessions with the sex machines. Jessup fashioned himself an expert in shibari bondage. She hung suspended until her consciousness fell into deep, meditative states from which she could hardly be awakened. Sometimes, she dreamt of flying, sometimes of drowning in the ocean, or diving from the sky into a dark pool of loving hands.

      
On more lucid days, she wondered if her captors noticed her delirium. Did the sadist Jessup still get off to his choreographed sessions in torment? He ordered her abuse, which she took with few outward signs of suffering – pain was pain; and there were ways to escape pain. The mind just needed to figure out how to outsmart the attackers, and make its way through the intensity until those merciful endorphins kicked in.

      
On the other hand, it became more difficult to avoid reality and check out during the gang rapes. The men were real, so were their mouths, their hands and their penises, hungry for the satisfaction her body could give them. She relished their feral scent. She looked forward to their sweat, even to the odors that in her real life she would have shunned in disgust. They were alive and human, with beating hearts, and mouths that groaned and growled and panted in their quest for the physical satisfaction she would give them.

      
Funny, how deprivation changes the mind about a lot of things. Judgments cease. Longings take new forms. Any sort of touch can be welcome. And small favors – a bite of fresh baked bread, a stolen sip of wine, the scent of sweet perfume, a breath of fresh air – this was what she lived for.

Then one day…

      
Shelby
was marched from the cell by two guards and was taken to the shower room. She’d been there before when they blasted her with hoses, and laughed at the way she danced frenzied and screaming as alternating bursts of hot and cold water exploded against her skin. Just as before, one of the guards took pleasure in roughing her up with soap. Before, the scent of it had been foul and the smell lingered on her body for several days after. This time, the soap smelled of lilacs and honeysuckle. The heady scent seemed to tap an endorphin all its own and she smiled, cheered for the first time since her captivity began. This was a sensuous surprise to enjoy, though undoubtedly it was only meant to taunt her with a promise that would be left unfulfilled. Such scents were for lovers to savor and there was no lover to savor the sweet scent of her flesh.

      
Before, when she showered, she’d been left to drip dry in her cell. This time she was handed a large scratchy towel and told to dry herself. Then there was scented cream to rub into her skin and a comb to smooth the tangles from her hair. The soft wavy hair framed her face when she was finished and for the first time in days, she blushed as the guards gazed at her nude body. Was she even more appealing to them now?

      
“Here, put this on,” one of them handed her a dress: a bright print with a collage of colors vivid enough to shock her eyes. After so much gray in a long series of foggy days, she’d wondered if the world had turned black and white. She was thankful to see that it had not.

      
The dress was small, covering little of her flesh. Her breasts were pressed so tightly against the fabric that her nipples poked out like bullets, while the short hemline had her honeysuckle scented pussy peeking out from underneath.

      
“And these.” The same guard shoved a pair of red high heels into her hands. “He wants you wearing these. And you’d better walk like a whore.”

      
“Who wants me to walk like a whore?”
And how does a whore walk?

      
“Don’t ask questions. You’ll have your answers when you get there.”

      
“So Jessup’s prostituting me tonight. Is that it?” she sarcastically bit off. Buoyed by the normality of dressing in real clothes, she took a chance with her haughty retort. “I always figured it would wind up like this.”

      
“You’re wrong,” the guard answered curtly. “And don’t even talk, unless you want to get slapped around again, or you want to be gagged.”

      
“Sorry,” she replied, having been immediately reminded of her status in this house of horrors. She sheepishly bowed her head in shame, knowing this was exactly what they wanted to see, and it was easy enough to give them.

      
Then they marched her down the hall, the pretty prisoner with her fresh-washed hair and fancy flowered frock and tall high heels.
Walk like a whore.
She did her best, bouncing her hips back and forth, letting her lips part like a sexy runway model’s. They should have given her lipstick to paint her mouth and mascara for her eyes if they wanted her to be a whore. But maybe this was good enough.

      
A few corridors here and there, enough for her to lose her way, and she was shoved into a room, almost stumbling on a carpet so thick that her heels sunk in a good half inch. She righted herself and peered at the bewildering sight of a living room, chairs, a sofa, tables that looked like vintage 1950. Mid-century lamps were lit around the room, casting a yellow fog of light over everything inside the strange looking space.