Flogged Into Character (Collared #4)

Chapter 1

“Again from ‘you begged,’” Edith says from the house.

I reset my weight on the back foot. Jonas rolls his shoulders and settles onto his knees, chin down, the way he’s settled forty times today. The rehearsal corset creaks when I inhale.

“You begged for this.” My arm comes up, the riding crop tracing his earlobe and resting under his jaw. The arc is right. I know the arc—I drilled it in my kitchen with a spatula. “You wrote me letters, begging to be treated this way.”

Down. Hold. The look goes with the hold, the one that’s booked me every villainess since high school—jaw set, eyes flat. I imagine watching myself from the third row. I’m a cold, villainous bitch.

I exhale sharply. Edith isn’t pleased. I don’t know why.

“Try again from ‘you begged’ and remember he really did beg.” Edith crosses her legs. “You are giving him something precious and reminding him how precious it is.”

I have no idea what she means.

I swallow.

I hold my head at the right angle. I draw the riding crop down his ear, then his chin. He shudders. I lower my face to his ear. I can see Edith adjust herself in the front row. She likes that I’m trying something new.

“You begged.” I hit the second word, reminding the character how pathetic he is.

“No,” Edith says. A moment stretches before she continues, “We’re at time for today. Good work, everyone. Viv, let’s talk.”

Jonas is off his knees before Edith finishes the sentence, arms overhead, spine cracking. He’s got his phone out of his rehearsal blacks in under ten seconds, thumbing through something, already somewhere else.

I lower the crop and come down off the stance. The corset bites at the seventh rib, same spot it’s been chewing all week. I press two fingers against the boning and breathe into what room there is.

Anjali cuts across the stage with a coil of cable over her shoulder. “You looked great,” she says. “Whatever that’s worth.”

“Thanks.”

“The whisper was new. Very sexy.” She keeps walking.

Edith is still in the house, sliding her script into her bag like she has all night. Which she does. The talk is hers to schedule, and she knows I’m clocking every second of the delay.

I come down the steps into the house. Edith stays in her row, bag zipped.

“Do you have any experience with this?” she asks. “Any of it. Real rooms, real people.”

“None.”

She waits.

“I’ve done the research. I watched a lot of movies, R-rated and on Pornhub.” I thought that covered it.

“Why is Jonas’s character kneeling at your feet? Why does he want Maria to dominate him?” Edith asks.

“I think he … I don’t know,” I admit.

“There we go.” Edith looks through her purse then pulls out a black business card. “If you don’t understand why he wants this, then you don’t understand that your character is giving a gift.”

Edith hands me the card. It reads, “The Foundry” with an address down on 47th Street. I’ve never been there. It’s mostly warehouses, I think.

“What’s this?”

“A suggestion.” Edith stands. “Go look. Go talk to people. Nobody is going to touch or bother you if you don’t want them to.”

“How do you know this place?”

She smiles and puts her bag over her shoulder. “Thursdays are quieter,” she says then walks up the aisle.

The work lights hum. I stand between the rows and turn the card over.

Anjali is backstage coiling the last cable onto its hook when I find her. I hold the card out.

She reads it without taking it. “The Foundry. Edith sent you to the Foundry?”

“You know it?”

“I know of it.” She hangs the coil. “She wants you to see the real thing.”

“She said I’m supposed to be giving him a gift.”

“Same note.” Anjali picks up her clipboard, checks something off. “So, when are you going?”

“Thursday, apparently.” I turn the card over in my fingers. “Come with me?”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to walk in alone.”

She looks at me over the clipboard. “You want me to chaperone you at a dungeon?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. But I’m not holding your coat while you get spanked.” She clicks her pen and tucks it behind her ear. “Thursday. Wear something you can take off easily. Not the corset.”

“I’m not taking my clothes off!”

Anjali shrugs and walks off.