Chapter 4 #2
“While I’m collared and leashed?” she asks quietly.
I nod, get up and go to my bedroom, bring back my own dark-green robe and drape it around her shoulders, then remove the collar from her slender neck.
I place the collar and lead on the big torture table in the center of the room and come back to sit next to her.
I don’t even know why I leave a good foot or two between us, but I do.
She’s gone stiff again. She looks like she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
“I haven’t…been anything but naked all these years,” she says, some wonder in her voice.
She runs her fingertips over the edge of the robe, like she’s not sure if it’s real. I can only imagine how strange this all is for her. And it’s my fault.
Stop.
Yeah, that line of thinking isn’t helping. Gotta get on with it.
“Giselle, look, we both know the way this all came down when I brought you here didn’t go the way you wanted. The way I wanted. But I did what was best for you and your sister. You know I did.”
Her eyes are firmly on her hands folded in her lap. “I…I do. And I don’t.”
“I had no resources. I could never give you what you’re getting here in the House. And if it didn’t suit you, you didn’t have to sign the contract. Damon would have sent you back to England or to France—anywhere you wanted to go.”
“I didn’t want to go anywhere.”
“He would have sent Sandrine with you.”
“I could have gone without her,” she says simply.
“Could you? You two have never been apart.”
“No,” is all she says in answer.
“We can’t do this dance all day. We have to get somewhere.”
She finally raises her face, her eyes a burning gold and green against the clear brown. “I don’t know what you want from me, Gilby.”
“I want to figure out where I went wrong with you. I want to know what you need—from me, from your service, from this House. I want to know how the fuck we ended up here, with you taking a vow of goddamn silence so you wouldn’t have to talk to me.”
It’s come out more harshly than I meant it to, and a fuck of a lot more self-centered. Hell, I didn’t even know this is what I was going to say. I’m running purely on instinct, and for all I know my instincts bloody well suck at the moment.
She’s still looking at me, her gaze burning into me. Burning with rage, I realize. Has she kept that inside all this time?
“You’re angry with me,” I say.
She nods slowly.
“I don’t blame you,” I tell her.
Her brows draw together. Clearly this is not the response she expected.
“I don’t, Giselle. I’ve fucked this all up, every step of the way, and every move I’ve ever made was to try to correct the previous fuck-up.
I thought I’d finally gotten it right.” I pause, watching her.
Her breathing is coming a little fast and shallow.
“Have you been happy here at the Training House?”
“I have been. You were right—it was what I needed.”
“Then why are you still angry with me?”
She’s quiet for a very long time while I pull in a breath, exhale, do it again. Maybe I don’t want to hear the answer.
She shakes her head, her gaze on her lap again. I’m about to scold her, but I realize how long it’s been since she’s had an actual conversation with anyone, never mind me. I imagine a person can sort of forget how.
“Giselle. I can take it, ya know. Whatever it is. Was it when Madame Alice died and I took you and Sandrine in? Should I have left you two to fend for yourselves? To learn how to get by in the world without a Dominant?”
“We’d been taking care of ourselves for a long time when we met you. So, no. We would have been fine on our own. But we were…bereft. Lost. She’d given us our first real home. Our first true formal service, and it fed us. You know it did. You’ve always seen us for who we are. We needed you. You.”
I run a hand through my hair, trying to think.
“Alright. Was it offering you to Master Damon, then? You both agreed to it at the time. Did you feel coerced?” I force myself to ask her, a knot in my stomach.
Coercion is something we do not ever do at this level of kink. We are very fucking careful, given what we do is so extreme. We have to be.
“No, no. We came quite willingly. We both trusted that you knew what would be good for us, and you know we loved the structure here right away. We loved Master Damon. We’ve loved Master Christopher, Master Victor, but not…”
“Not what?”
She shakes her head again, and I’m confused as hell.
“Not what, Giselle?” I demand.
“Please. Can we just…not talk about these things?” She raises her head, her eyes golden, like a lioness—fierce and elegant and powerful in some way.
“We came with you willingly, contracted with this House willingly. We have agreed to be handed over to any Master or Mistress as the House sees fit. We have been good slaves, have we not, my sister and I?”
“Yeah, the best. I’m not the only one who thinks so, or you’d never have been offered the House brand.”
“We…I…have done everything that has been asked of me. I have done my best to anticipate the needs and desires of any Master whose hands I have been under. I have found ways to quiet my mind no matter what is done to me. To accept any punishments, to glory in them, in the pain and subjugation. I have perfected my posture, my attitudes of sublimation. I have reveled in my service, striving for perfection. I have willingly, happily, been pierced and branded. I have willingly, happily, risked my physical well-being in every way. I’ve bled, been rendered unconscious, things most people would be horrified to consider.
And I have willingly, happily, served to the best of my ability, done every single thing anyone here has asked of me.
I wanted to do it, to serve in this way.
To be used and punished so severely. But please… this you cannot ask of me.”
I watch her for a long moment, my brain shorting out a bit.
Finally I say, “To be honest, I’m not even certain what it is I’m asking of you.”
“No,” she answers, which is not really an answer at all.
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. I don’t know what the hell to do here. I really don’t. I know what I want. Well, do I?
“If things were different, if we’d had any option open to us, how would you have wanted things to turn out?” I ask. “For you and your sister? For…us?”
She shakes her head and another tear spills, and it rips my fucking heart out.
“How can you ask me this now, Gilby? Now, after all these years?”
“Because I have to. Don’t you understand? How can you fail to understand?”
She casts her eyes down again. “I don’t believe I have failed in anything here.
I know…I know that determination is up to the Masters, and you have always been a Master more than a Handler, but I don’t…
” She pauses to draw a long breath. “I do not believe I have failed, Gilby.” She raises her chin, her gaze hard on mine.
“Have I? Have I, truly? Tell me how? When? Please.”
“What? Fuck. No, you’re right. It’s me. I’ve failed, and fucking miserably.
I know this is bizarre, this whole damn thing—me wanting to talk to you, to have this conversation after all the time that’s passed.
But Giselle, it’s time, finally. The opportunity is here.
Now, with no one to judge, or to penalize either of us.
And yeah, I’m taking advantage of the situation, I know that.
But it was presented to me, and I can’t fucking resist the chance to set this right, if I can. If we can.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I don’t fucking know, exactly, which I think you’re aware of.”
She nods.
“Right. So. I thought talking about what’s happened would be a good starting point. Or a starting point, anyway.”
She takes in another breath, no doubt doing one of the breathing exercises we teach the slaves very early on so that they can calm themselves.
“Alright, yes. Where are we to start?”
I shrug. “At the beginning, I guess.”
“And what is the beginning, Gilby? When we first came here to San Francisco? To this House?”
“Further back, to the time we met in London.”
She nods, bites her lower lip again, and despite the seriousness of this situation, my dick goes hard. Can’t fucking help it.
That pretty pink mouth of hers.
“What about that time do we need to discuss?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe we just need to go over it. Tell me something about that time from your perspective.”
“Ah.” She’s quiet for several long moments.
“Well, you know Sandrine and I were very taken with you from the start, when we met at the Torture Garden. So was Madame Alice. She’d often say how rough and dashing she found you.
Did you know she was considering asking you to officially join her House right before she died? ”
“What? No, had no idea.”
“She didn’t lend her slaves out to just anyone. There was a reason she so often left us in your care when she was traveling.”
“Huh. Alright, even so…”
“Yes,” she says simply. “And so, when she died, you were the only other Master we felt attached to. Safe with. No one else could have even entered us into the auctions, and we couldn’t have gone ourselves without a sponsor, without references, which I know you are aware of.
And I have always thought it was what she would have wanted, us being left in your hands, if she’d had the opportunity to choose. If she hadn’t gone so suddenly.”
Her eyes well up, but I leave her be, wary of interrupting her now that I’ve got her talking to me.
“I’m glad you two felt safe with me. That you wanted to stay with me, even though I was unable to offer what she did.”
“You keep saying that, but this life…it’s about more than wealth. More than living in a fine House.”
“Yes and no, Giselle. In these circles, at this level of kink, we have to be able to afford to offer the best medical care, private, discreet care by medical staff who won’t question the strangeness of your injuries, and that takes money.
Wealth. We need to provide you with good food, massages, exercise, all the things that keep the slaves in perfect health, as well as the money for your yearly salaries that are so quietly deposited into your bank accounts.
You know that. We can’t do what we do without that kind of care, and it would never have been possible in my apartment, on my driver’s salary. ”
“We were young and healthy, my sister and I.”
“Doesn’t matter. C’mon, Giselle, you know this. What we do is dangerous. How could I take on that charge knowing damn well if something bad happened to either one of you, I wouldn’t be able to properly care for you? Fucking irresponsible as hell.”
“And so you found another option,” she says with a small shake of her head.
“Should I not have done that? What would that have left me? I found the best damn home for you both that I could. You’d met Master Damon, adored him already, responded so fucking beautifully to his command.
He wanted you both. And you and Sandrine agreed to come here, after weeks of discussion and the time to consider your options. ”
“Yes, yes, of course. It was completely voluntary. It was what we wanted since we could not simply be with you in Europe. Sandrine agreed to come because of Master Damon, more than anything, and because she wanted nothing more than to serve at this level. The idea was intoxicating to her.”
“To her? But not to you?”
“Oh, of course,” she says a bit flippantly, in the way only the French can manage. “But only as the second choice.”
“Giselle—”
“No,” she interrupts. “No, Gilby. You will not question my choices.”
“But I bloody well have to! Don’t you see? I am solely responsible for this. And if this is not what you wanted, then what the fuck have I done to you?”
She reaches out and lays her small, soft hand on my arm. Her touch is like some sort of fire and sensual liquid all at the same time, and my skin feels fucking scorched by it.
“You have done everything you could for me. Not to me, for me. Nothing more could have been done. I understand. But I can’t help that I wanted…
not more, but something else. Something different.
Oh yes, I knew it was impossible, but has that ever stopped anyone’s heart from wanting what it wants?
Tell me, truly. Am I a stupid Girl to have yearned for anything else outside of this situation in which the deepest slave hearts are catered to and satisfied and worshipped, in the way only the formal Houses can offer?
Am I the silliest slave to have ever lived, asking for anything but what Master Damon and the other Masters of this House have given me here?
What you have given me, dear Gilby? Because as you said, you are responsible for all of this. ”
“Fucking hell,” is all I can answer with.
Because she’s right, in some twisted way. What she says makes sense as she throws my own words back at me but with a different meaning. MY mind is more fucked than ever, my heart hammering because we keep dancing around the core of this conversation. We keep avoiding the real issue, the both of us.
“No, not stupid,” I say. “Of course not. But there’s more to address here. And neither of us wants to say it.”
She stares at me, and I’m lost for long moments in her shining hazel eyes, lit with silver and gold over the green. I only break out of it when she blinks, her long, dark lashes falling on her high, flushed cheekbones a few times.
“Fuck it,” I say, feeling as if my body were full of fuel that has to be burned. “You stay here. I’ll be back.”
“What are you…?”
“No more questions now. Five minutes.”
I get up and leave the room before I can change my mind.