Chapter 8
Juniper
The timber-and-glass table before me at eye-level has a great spread of dips, crackers, fresh fruit, and buttery pastries, along with two glasses of iced tea. I peer at those. Am betting he has that made by a housekeeper, daily. This is another living room, on the ground floor below his bedroom.
I shift on my knees and look around at my surroundings.
Metal sculptures of a pelican and a heron on plinths, impressionist paintings, with some bright blues and golds here and there that add up to a beach theme.
Mostly white walls though, with thick gold threads weaving across the furniture fabric.
He probably has ten bedrooms in this mansion.
If this is where teaching math leads you to?
Wow. I regret not paying attention to algebra.
On my wrists are marks from the metal. My chain leash runs over the sofa and underneath his butt where he’s sat on it, but he has removed the cuffs and taken that plug out of me.
While I showered off the last bout of sex, he leaned on the glass and watched.
Then, after I toweled dry, he casually held me against the glass by my throat and fingered me—stuffed them in and smiled, with them stuck up there, while I tried to remain calm.
I think I failed the calm test. Difficult not to.
Am I in way past my depth? Yes. I’m drowning.
The red collar is an ever-present reminder of, well, everything about my situation. I touch it. Run a finger under it.
When his leg rubs on my arm, I glance at where he sits above me on the gunmetal-gray sofa. I tug down the hem of the flimsy white dress he’s given me with a bodice that lifts and exposes my breasts. The one plus with this is I can sit on the material and not get his rug stuck to my butt, much.
“You okay?” He pops up one eyebrow.
“Why are we here?” I’m so horny after everything he did. The fucker. The world has flipped upside-down.
He shows me my phone. “Find that video so I can see what it shows.”
“Can I sit up there? The floor is hard and, well, too fluffy.” I indicate the rug.
“No. Your place is down there.” Though I twist my mouth at that, he gestures at the big screen. “I’ll cast the video. Come closer.”
He tugs sideways on the leash to make me move over, then holds me between his legs and runs his hands through my hair, before sliding one hand lower to leave his thumb absentmindedly playing with my mouth.
The warmth of him envelops me and is strangely comforting. I tongue at his thumb, am tempted to place my teeth around it.
“Do what I ask of you, miss. You are so fucking distracting,” he murmurs and hands down the phone.
It’s a softer command than his usual, that shivers into me and has this disconcerting effect on me. I’ve no panties on. I’m probably soaking through the dress fabric.
I attempt to concentrate on the phone. It’s already open. How the hell. I frown and decide not to ask how. He’s the perfect asshole and apparently able to open a phone with biometric locking.
I prop the phone on my knees. He’s being annoying on purpose. I could find the video in two seconds, but… As I click through the vids, I take my time scrolling so I can think, so I can think past that thumb caressing my mouth, dipping inside, and doing things.
Finally, I bite down on him, just a little. He slips his other hand to my neck and whispers into my hair. “Take care, Miss.” He uses both hands to drag my hair into a ponytail at the back before releasing it a moment later.
I open my teeth, sigh, and keep scrolling.
I’d given up on finding a dominant man who matched my kinks, but I’d never wanted a sadistic Dom.
Mr. Loxland is definitely a sadist. FetLife had been a swamp of wannabes who hated being rejected.
I know in my heart of hearts, whatever that is, I should be screaming and using this phone to do something.
Something devious so I can get out from under his control.
And yet I cannot, for obvious reasons. That I’m not sure I want to is the crazy part. After one morning of barely consensual sex and sadistic holy crap things done to me, have I discovered a side of myself I’d be ashamed to tell, well…almost anyone?
I’m sore in all the wrong places, and I’ve never been fucked or sexually appraised or fingered, or been given so many incredible orgasms, in so short a time, ever, like ever before. Yet I don’t hate him. That he finds me distracting gives me joy? It’s a very sexy kind of maddening joy.
I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.
Here’s the video. I stare at it, at the first frame. An ache grows in my chest as the past grinds back in. I grimace. I do know. I rub my temple and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.
The pain from what Riley did to herself. The awful pain. The satisfaction I got from killing Nathan. It’s there inside me, lodged like a stone.
I’m being stupidly self-indulgent.
Abruptly, I tap the video then hand the phone to him.
I’m here for Riley.
Discovering my kinks can wait.
The large wall screen goes gray then starts showing the video. The part where her face is shoved underwater shows crookedly, tilting as it appears. There is no sound, and the silence makes it seem worse, to me. And Loxland?
He watches with not a single change of expression—a frozen man. Then he replays it, and his lip curls up. This hits him with disgust when it’s almost the same as what he has done to me?
The difference is I agreed to it.
Blackmail or not, I agreed and I began the chain of events by shovel-whacking Nathan. It’s an excuse for him but is it a moral one? And I’m just so hyped up on adrenalin, sex, grief, and who-knows-what that the sun could go out, and I’d not be sure where to run to.
One key point I can cling to, if he doesn’t follow through and help me find the other rapists, I’m gone. Even if I must do something violent to escape.
“I need to analyze this, break it down frame by frame. Feed it to an AI program on my air-gapped computer. Metadata might be there, but I assume it’s been scrubbed. Where did you get it?”
I open my mouth to reply.
“Wait.” He holds up a finger. “I remember. Riley sent it.”
I fiddle with the hem of the dress. “You have to tell me how you found out about this.”
“Do I? I suppose I should, just in case it’s relevant in some way.”
Relevant in some way. AI analysis and all that.
He really sounds invested in doing this.
I don’t understand him at all. I cannot remember anything much about him as a teacher except he was determined to drum math into us, and he was younger than some and a man, so several of us had crushes on him for a whole month.
Not me. Never me.
“After seeing that.” He nods at the screen. “I understand why you killed him.” His appraisal of me is more than that of a man looking at a woman he sees as a sex object. He takes my hand, squeezes it in his. “I’m sorry, though, I have to say this does not prove it was rape.”
“What?” I struggle to rise, but he’s crushing me with his legs and holding my hair.
He shakes his head, slowly. “It looks bad, but it could still be consensual.”
My face must be showing ferocious anger. I can’t help that. “I want to leave.”
“No, you don’t. Listen to me!” He firms his grip on my head and cranes it backward, so that we are staring at each other.
Upside-down Aaron says, with every word carefully enunciated, “Even if it was CNC, that video shows a reckless disregard for safety. She’s drugged or very drunk, and they hold her underwater?
I’m still helping you. Okay? You. Are not.
Leaving. Anyway. I’m keeping you. And I’m helping you. Say it.”
Keeping me. I harden my expression, stare at him some more. All my defiant genes are fired up, and my neck is starting to hurt, but I have heard what he said.
I have.
“If you’re helping me still…”
He nods.
“I guess I will stay.”
“Good. The deal is still on.”
I swallow, because now I am scared. He is helping, but he isn’t sure it was rape?
And he is keeping me. I haven’t forgotten his threat if I cancel the agreement.
Even so, he has a side to him that is nice.
Is nice the best description? A nice asshole?
I huff through my nose at that silliness.
The relief from the amusement as it wanders into my thoughts is exactly what I need.
He releases my head. My heart slows. My muscles relax.
However, this was simpler when I could see him as purely made of asshole and hot manbod.
“Uh. Thank you.” Did I make that a question? Almost?
Now he’s looking down at me as if I’ve turned into a flying saucer or something. Yeah, I made it a question.
“That was a terrible thank you. Now what can I do to you to get a better one from you?”
Oh fuck. I suck in a breath and find I’ve squeezed my thighs together. “Nothing? Thank you for the food, the dress with the holes. The mmph!” He’s slipped his hand over my mouth.
I don’t lick his palm. I’m not quite that suicidal.
He begins to list things while greedily kissing me in between then putting his hand over my face again.
“Clamps on your nipples then strings attached to the ceiling?”
“Mmph!”
Kiss.
“Cage you with your arms bound strappado while I fuck you through the wire?”
Kiss.
I can’t remember what strappado is and am frantically running through positions I’ve seen on FetLife. I’m panting from the kissing, though…my thoughts fall away…
“You, kneeling, with your clit clamped and tied to the floor, while I flog your tits?”
“Mmmph!” I shake my head, and he chuckles.
“None of those? All of them? Tomás is coming for dinner, so we might ask him for suggestions.”
Kiss.
Only this is a long, all-consuming kiss that has me closing my eyes so I can appreciate the feelings he’s provoking, and I keep them shut when he stops.
I’m hoping Tomás is less inventive with his punishments, but truthfully, I’m getting overwhelmed by how much attention Mr. Loxland is devoting to me. In all its forms. The good. The awful. The scary.
Though he is cruel, I’ve lost my true fear of what he might do. He isn’t going to kill me or dissect me in retribution for what I did. And that is freeing.
Too freeing?
I need to be free of fear to find out more about Riley’s assault.
If he reports me for the murder of Nathan, I can accept that.
He slips his large hands around my bared breasts, and my breath catches. “A tub of piranhas and you in there naked?”
I pop open an eye, then the other. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”
The seriousness I see in his eyes is sobering. What is he thinking?