Chapter 3
Chapter Three
I’ve never told anyone this story aside from Damon—there’s been no need to, and even then, I never told him all of it—but I need to tell it now.
And the calm Robert, whose mind is like a vault that holds the vast and dirty secrets of the kinky universe in which we live, is the perfect person to spill my guts to.
I stare into my empty glass as I let the memories flood in.
“I left home at seventeen. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I lived to regret it.” I have to pause, that knot winding up again, but I swallow it down.
“Anyway. I was living in Hoxton, hitting the London raves before I was eighteen, which led me, inevitably, to the kink clubs.
There were plenty in those days, really underground stuff, a mix of the rave scene and the drugs and sex.
They were totally undisciplined places. Anyone could go, no one was vetted—which is how I got in, a stupid fucking kid with a taste for dangers of all kinds.
But fuck, when I discovered dangerous sex, that was it for me.
“I went in search of the real dungeons, and it wasn’t hard to find them.
I was mentored by any number of really good Tops.
Wouldn’t call them all Dominants, necessarily, but they taught me the flogger and the whip, a little rope.
They taught me the meaning of power exchange, which was the more important part.
And they gave me permission to be the twisted fuck of a sadist I’ve always been.
I mean, I look at my father, and… Well, that’s a story for another day.
But yeah, I was an angry kid, an angrier teenager.
I’ve tempered it a hell of a lot as an adult, and kink helped me do it.
That’s the way with a lot of us, yeah? We work our shit out in the scene. ”
“And the sisters?” Robert prompts.
“Yeah, the sisters. I found them at this place called The Torture Gardens. You probably know of it?”
“In London? I do. It’s quite well known, I believe.”
“It’s maybe one of the best top-tier places before you hit the real slave markets, the most elite kink circles.
There, I met a woman who went by Madame Alice.
She’d been training the girls for a while, and she’d done a beautiful job.
Of course, they’re naturals, ain’t they?
The girls had left their home in a small French village when they were young—Sandrine at fifteen and Giselle at sixteen.
To this day they’ve never told me why. All I know is they went to Paris, to Pigalle, where Giselle stripped for a time to support them before they met Madame Alice.
She took them to her House in London, which is how I met them all.
Alice would often lend the two to me when she traveled, and Lord, I was in fucking heaven with those two!
I’d had plenty of subbie girls at that point, and had only started to delve into the real Master-and-slave world when Alice died in a car crash in Germany.
The Girls asked to stay on with me, and I couldn’t have denied them. But I never felt up to it, y’know?”
“Why not?” Robert asks, leaning forward, his hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees.
“I was staying at Madame Alice’s House at the time, but all I had to my name was a small apartment.
Not that they would have minded the lack of space, I don’t think.
Living high wasn’t what was important to them.
Still isn’t, despite living here. But I’ve always lacked that formality the Masters and Mistresses have, and it’s something those Girls needed.
Still need. I could always see it, how well they responded to that sort of structure and daily punishments and service.
But it’s just not in me, which is part of what’s made me wonder why the fuck Damon left his House in my charge. ”
“He would never have done so, especially with two of Clara’s slaves in residence, if he didn’t have utter confidence in you,” Robert insists.
“I don’t know. It’s an odd thing to be handed something most people in my position would kill for. It’s an honor. And a great responsibility, which doesn’t bother me. Except when it comes to Giselle.”
“Does she know you’re in love with her?”
I eye him warily, my heart working like a goddamn engine in my chest. “I’m that fucking transparent, eh? How long have you known? Nah, never mind. Don’t answer that.”
He barely suppresses a small smile. Can’t blame him for it.
“It’s my job to anticipate the needs of everyone in this House. I observe every detail. And I see everything.”
I nod. I get it, I do.
“So, does she know?” Robert presses, his tone low.
“Maybe. I’ve never said as much to anyone.”
“I wonder if that would have changed things? Before you brought them here, or even after?”
“That’s a question I’ve often asked myself, but I’ll never know, will I? I keep telling m’self it was for her own good, but maybe, in the end, I’m just a fucking coward.”
“Fear doesn’t necessarily make one a coward.”
“No,” I grind out between my clenched teeth. “But in my case, that’s the fucking truth of it. I acted on my fears, didn’t I? That’s what makes for a coward.”
“Let’s table that for now. Tell me how you came to bring the Girls here to Damon.”
“Eh, I met Damon when I worked as a chauffeur in London. I was employed by a service that exclusively served the folks in the kink scene, upper echelons and all that. Madame Alice had introduced me to her circle, got me the job. I’d known him a few years, driven for him dozens of times, but also served as a sort of bodyguard and anything else he needed.
One night I brought the Girls to his hotel suite, and they both fucking blossomed under his command.
And that’s when I knew exactly, unarguably, what they needed. ”
I have to stop for a moment to get up and get that damn drink—just another finger of gin over ice. I can’t sit, though—too many memories crowding my brain, fresh as yesterday—so I stand, glass in hand. Robert’s face is impassive, patient as always. I take a long swig before continuing.
“So. When Damon asked me to come to San Francisco and work for him, I jumped at it, but with the understanding that I’d come only if the Girls came with me.
Damon was only too happy to take them on.
And so we came. He put the Girls through a very rigorous training, which involved me often enough that I could see what a perfect fit they were here.
I knew I’d done the right thing. They needed more than a poor chauffeur and occasional henchman from the wrong side of London could ever give them, and this was it.
They need the mind-fuck, the ritual of service, as well as the sadist, and all I could give them was pain. ”
I stop to take another sip of the gin and think of the longing glances Giselle gives me at times, although they come less often these days. I’ve always had to ignore them. If I stopped to consider what they meant, it’d fucking kill me.
Robert is looking at me, blinking slowly.
“What’s going on in that gray head of yours?” I demand.
“Questions.” He gives a small shrug. “Questions only you and Giselle can answer. I have no objection to you coming to me with this, Gilby—you should know that. But I don’t believe I can help you with this, other than to ask the questions you’re perhaps too close to see that you need to ask yourself—and her.
Have you made an assumption about she wanted and needed?
Could that assumption have been incorrect?
If she knew how you felt for her, and she felt the same way, would she need this extremity of kink?
I do think you’re able to give quite a bit more than you feel you can—the mind-fuck, certainly.
And I have to say, I’ve made some assumptions in my life that I regret. I’d hate to see you do the same.”
I grind my jaw, turning the idea over.
“Food for thought, maybe,” I say, finally. Grudgingly.
“You’ll have to overcome some of your stubbornness, you know,” Robert says, the tiniest glimmer in his eye.
“And now I need to tell you to fuck off,” I say, although not without some good humor. The man is right, after all.
“Send for her,” Robert says. “Spend some time with her, see if she’ll talk to you. It won’t be easy, but neither is the alternative.”
“Ever the voice of goddamn reason, Robert.”
“That’s part of my job,” he answers, getting to his feet.
He tucks his glass into my hand. “I must get back upstairs. Thank you for confiding in me.”
“It won’t be a regular thing.”
“It’s perfectly alright if it is, Gilby.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say gruffly, but I give him a good, hard thump on the back before he leaves.
“Fucking food for thought, indeed,” I mutter to the empty room. “Enough to fuck my mind up for the rest of my damn life.”
But he’s right. I have to try to get Giselle to talk to me.
Sleep eluded me in the night after the all-too-illuminating talk with Robert, and I’m knackered and cranky as fuck this morning.
But I used those dark hours to formulate a plan, of sorts.
I’ll call for her today, talk to her, whatever it takes to get her to break her vow of silence.
I’ll even take her from the House, if I have to—something I’d never have dared before.
But it could be helpful removing her from this situation, maybe allowing her to remove herself from the dynamic here.
Maybe.
She’ll still have the House brand burned into her flesh, always and forever connecting her to her servitude here. How the fuck can I compete with that?
I pick up the House phone.
“Robert, please see that Giselle is well-fed and bathed, then send her to me in my quarters. No, let’s make it the study.”
“Right away, Sir,” he answers, as though last night’s discussion never happened. As though I’ve always been the Master of the House.
Robert, in his own way, understands human psychology as well as any proven Master or Mistress, doesn’t he?