Chapter 8 #2
It’s all fucking sleek marble in there, and stainless appliances—everything very slick.
I can’t help but think as I move past the huge island covered in a single slab of white marble that I’ll need to use that surface at some point.
Lay her out naked on the cold stone and maybe put some kitchen implements to better use.
I find some Gatorade in the refrigerator, and I grab two bottles and head back to the bedroom, where my Giselle is just coming from the bathroom. She stops when she sees me, bows her head and clasps her hands behind her, automatically going into a submissive pose.
“None of that now, eh? Come back to bed with me.”
“I wasn’t sure…”
“What? What weren’t you sure about?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I don’t know when the roles will change, go back to me being the slave Girl, and you being my Master.”
I tuck the two cold bottles into the crook of one arm and hold out my free hand. “C’mere.”
I guide her until we’re both sitting in the bed again, leaning against the pile of down pillows.
“Here, take this and drink. The whole bottle,” I tell her, and she takes it from me and opens it, then sips. “Good. Good. So, here’s the thing. Right now, in this moment, it’s you and me, eh? Just two people.”
“I never don’t feel like a slave with you, Gilby. I don’t want that part to completely go way. Not ever.”
“’Course it’s always there. We know it. But right now, as long as we’re here, I just want to let it flow between us. I expect we’ll slip in and out of roles as we go. It’s what we have been doing here.”
“Yes, but…” She looks up at me and there are tears in her eyes. “But how long before we have to leave? How long before we go back to The Training House, to the ways things were before?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” is all the uncertainty I can admit to.
“Then as long as we’re here, as lovely as it is, I will exist in a sphere of not knowing, always expecting, always fearful of the end. And at some point very soon that will be too much mind-fuck, even for me.”
I can’t answer her for a bit, turning it all over in my head.
“Yeah, I get it. I do. And it’s a mind-fuck for me, as well, I can tell you that much. But it won’t be today. Today we’re here. We’ll stay the night, at the very least. It’s too fucking hard to predict beyond that, but right now we have…this.” I say, gesturing to the bed with us in it.
She nods slowly, then wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Okay. Yes, alright.”
“Good. Now drink up while I go get us some food.”
“Oh, but I can cook anything you’d…” She trails off as I give her another look.
To soften things I kiss her forehead before getting up again and grabbing a pair of pajama pants from my duffle.
Back in the kitchen I put the kettle on, and while I wait for it to boil I find some croissants on the counter next to a dish of butter, and in the refrigerator are some berries and cut-up melon.
I make two big cups of tea with milk, and remember she likes her tea with sugar—or she did when we were back in London.
I put it all on a tray and carry it to the bedroom, setting it on the end of the bed and handing her the tea.
“This’ll do for now, then we’ll have a real meal in a bit.”
“Thank you,” she says, holding the tea mug in both hands.
There’s something about her pale, bare skin against the white sheets, the way her hair is a cascade of loose brown curls over her shoulders, her pierced tits peeking from behind the silky strands, and her big hazel eyes.
She’s not quite sure of herself in these absurdly “normal” circumstances. Well fuck, neither am I.
I climb back into bed with my tea in my hand, turned toward her. “Feels a bit like playing house, eh?”
“Yes!” she says with a small laugh. “It’s all so strange to me. Are we nothing more than a happy couple on holiday?”
“We are, and we aren’t. Not in the way the average person is. But I’m happy. We’re together. We’re away from our usual life. So, yeah, I’d say so.”
“Yes, yes, but it’s all so bizarre—this being normal. Or, not quite ‘normal’, I suppose, in this multi-million-dollar penthouse, with all these incredible luxuries.”
I shrug. “This is the only kind of ‘normal’ we get, people like us. I’m not opposed, to be honest. Been living a spoiled life, I suppose.”
“Yes, we all do, don’t we? Those of us in this kink realm.
I don’t think I’ll ever truly know how to be a…
a regular person, even if this all ended today and I walked free of my contract, free of this whole life.
It’s as if I’m a lion kept in a zoo. I wouldn’t know how to care for myself, or how to be a lion, really, if I were let out to go back to the plains of Africa.
This life has become my natural habitat. ”
“Yeah, it has for me, too. We’ve been in this life for a long time.”
“But what was your life before, Gilby? I know that you grew up somewhere in London, yes?”
“Shoreditch, yeah, before I moved to Manchester.”
“And I know about you discovering the kink clubs, and how you came to meet Madame Alice, and eventually Master Damon. But what of your life before that? You didn’t ever talk about it before we came here, and, well, we haven’t really talked since we’ve been at The Training House.
I imagine you have good reason not to, so forgive me if I’m asking too much. ”
“Nah, it’s maybe time I told someone.”
My chest pulls tight even thinking of it, but damn it, I want to tell her. It’s as if I’m somehow cleansing my fucked-up, dirty soul in this girl’s soft hands, and it feels all wrong, but I’ve still got to do it. Come clean to her about my life.
She’s waiting, her expression all sweetness and patience. What did I ever do to deserve her? But she’s here, and she’s waiting for me.
“So, here it is in all its grit and unpleasantness. That’s what my life was.
No. That’s a vast underestimation. But you did ask, and it’s time I told someone all of it.
” I stop for a moment, rolling it over in my head, trying to make sense out of it.
But it’s never fucking made sense to me, so I’ll have to just tell it like it was.
“I grew up in Shoreditch, which you already know. It was a bad time, my childhood. My mum died when I was seven. I don’t even know what it was that took her to this day.
Dad wouldn’t talk about it, and we had no other close family, so there was no way for me to find out.
But my dad, he was a plumber, and a right fucker of a guy, so I’ve always had suspicions about what could’ve happened to her.
Maybe now if I got online and did a search, I could find out, but I’m not sure I really want to know, to be honest. And my brother, Gregory, he was a wee lad of four when she died.
My dad was out drinking a lot, so it was just us two boys most of the time.
And when Dad came home at night, well, it wasn’t pretty. ”
“You’ve never spoken of your family,” she says, her tone quiet, tentative.
“I don’t often. Hell, never. But I’m going to tell you now—all of it—because you asked, and I set my mind to it, and maybe it’ll do me some good.
” I stop to take a few swallows of my tea, turning over years of memories in my head.
What to tell? What to leave out? What could I tell?
Best to simply start talking and see what comes out of my mouth.
I set my tea down and blow out a long breath to steady myself.
“So, my dad was a drunk, through and through, and an evil one at that. He’d put a fist through the wall on a regular Saturday night, and sometimes he’d knock us around.
Mostly me. I’d get in between him and my brother.
He was mean as hell when he was hungover, too.
So damn mean sometimes I’d be off to the store to fetch him his ale just to take the edge off.
To try to keep my brother safe, mostly. I could take it, but he was so little.
“By the time we were teenagers, I’d started to stand up to the old bastard, and got the shit kicked out of me time and again, until one day I kicked his drunken ass.
Put him in hospital. I’m not fucking proud of it, no matter what he’d done to the two of us.
I knew I had to get the fuck out of there before he came home, but I was only fifteen, and I couldn’t leave my brother.
He was still just a kid. So I took what my dad gave me when he got out, but he was still recovering, so it wasn’t too bad.
I think he was a bit afraid of me by then.
But the day I turned seventeen he took all my belongings—my clothes and books and a few things left from my mum—and he built a fucking bonfire on the sidewalk out front while I was sleeping.
Woke up to smoke and sirens in the air. Old fucker told the cops I did it.
I got the fuck out that day. Had to. I didn’t want to leave Gregory behind, but he was too young for me to look after, with no idea how I’d even look after m’self. ”
“Oh my God, Gilby,” she says, her eyes wide.
I shrug, more out of habit than anything.
“It was what it was. I got a job in the trades through a friend, and it paid alright. I’d go to my brother’s school and tuck some money in his hand, made sure he was fed since our piece-of-shit father spent more time drunk on the floor than he did working to make a paycheck.
I made sure Gregory had clothes, that he ate.
But he was already getting into drugs. Not that I blame him.
He had a miserable fucking life. It started with weed, which didn’t concern me much, but then it was coke, then speed.
I could see he was getting more and more fucked up, but what could I do?
I was sharing a tiny flat with three other blokes.
I had no room for him. And I was out partying a bit m’self, so I was no shining example. ”
“You can’t feel guilty about that. You were so young yourself,” Gisella says, laying a hand on my arm.