Chapter 14 #2
I can almost hear the shrug in his voice. “Because it took the company that long to convince me to come out of retirement. I'll be dancing with you tomorrow night.”
Sebastian Trent and me, up on the big marquee in front of the theater for the entire run of the Firebird.
“Put the blindfold on,” he says.
“But, I've seen you.”
“This isn't a negotiation, Ms. Lane; put it on.”
“Yes, Master,” slips past my lips as I reach for the scrap of black fabric hanging over the barre. I can almost feel his smile from wherever he is. It permeates the air like a hot breath during a slow fuck.
A few minutes later, he's beside me. He takes my hand and slings my dance bag over my shoulder.
“Step down,” he says when we reach the stairs at the side of the stage. I tentatively feel my way down each step. “Where are we going?”
But he says nothing. He just leads me up the aisle and out through the concession area. I only know because of the way the sound of his shoes change when we go from carpet to hard floor. Then outside into the cold night.
My breathing is coming harder as unease winds its way through me. I hear a double beep on a car, and a door opens.
“Get in,” he says. He helps me into the car, then shuts and locks me inside. My hand reaches out instinctively for the door, but the child locks are on.
A moment later, the other door opens, the locks snap down again, and the car starts up. I reach to remove the blindfold, becoming increasingly panicked by this change in our pattern.
He grips my wrist, hard. “No.”
A moment later, a rope is being tied around my wrists and then looped and tied around my hands so I can't remove the blindfold. I'm crying now. I can't help it. I'm scared. I haven't been this scared of him in a long time.
Sebastian's identity is no longer a mystery, but somehow he seems wilder now. Because I've seen his face. What if he's decided I'm a threat? But if that were true, he would never have let me out of his sight. He wouldn't be talking like we're going to dance together.
I know I'm being crazy, but being bound and blindfolded in his car while he drives us to god knows where makes it hard to think rationally.
What if he just takes me out into the woods somewhere, kills me, and dumps my body?
It's not as though I'm the only person he can dance with in his big ballet comeback.
Even though I thought it was special between us, maybe he doesn't feel the same.
Maybe he's crazy. He's obviously crazy. He blackmailed me.
He's made me do all these things... for weeks.
.. blindfolded... How could I have allowed myself to trust this man even for a moment?
How could I have allowed myself to forget the way this all started?
This is not a man playing by the rules of society, so why do I think he wouldn't hurt me?
Conall hurt me! I lived with that and danced with that for three years.
So maybe he won't kill me... but that doesn't mean he won't hurt me.
“Please, tell me where you're taking me. I-I'm not going to say anything. I swear. Please, Master, I swear. I won't tell anyone about anything...” I trail off because I'm becoming increasingly afraid that the more I talk the more he may begin to see me as a bigger threat.
We drive for what seems like forever. He is silent. He doesn't try to calm me. He doesn't reassure me that I'm safe. Why won't he reassure me that I'm safe? Because I'm not!
They say don't let an attacker take you to a second location. Is he an attacker? Is that what he is to me? My body hasn't seemed to think so. In fact, until this exact moment, my body has treated him like a welcome lover, not a potential true threat.
And wasn't the opera house technically the second location? So are we going to the third location now? Is that worse? Where the fuck is he taking me?
“Master? H-how did you know about what I did to Conall?”
I can't believe I've never asked this question.
I've been so consumed with keeping my secret that I haven't pushed him for answers.
But now things feel so precarious. It feels like I'm about to die.
And if that's true, I need to know these things.
I wait in the dark silence of the car, thinking he won't answer, but finally he speaks.
“I saw him getting aggressive with you earlier that day outside the company. I pulled your file from the computer and went to your house that evening. I was about to ring the doorbell when I saw him stumbling to the bathroom through one of the front windows. I watched the rest and followed you from there.”
“W-what were you going to do when you came over?” I need him to keep talking.
But he doesn't answer me. Silence descends, and I start crying again. Why won't he talk to me? Why is he taking me off site?
I keep telling myself over and over that he's not going to take me somewhere and kill me. Why would he? He knows I won't report him. And wouldn't it look suspicious if I just disappeared?
“A-are you done with me?” I ask. “Please... you said if I did what you said... u-until you were done that you would let me go. You said you wouldn't report me and...” I'm rambling now. I'm so fucking terrified. I can't seem to rationalize my way out of this fear.
“No, cupcake. I'm far from done with you,” he says.
I hold onto this endearment even though I'm unsure if him not being done with me is a good thing or not.
Finally the car stops. I flinch when his car door slams. It has a sort of echo-y quality—like we're in a parking garage. This causes me to tense. Why would he bring me to an abandoned parking garage? Is it abandoned?
He opens my door, and before I can protest, he's scooped me up in his arms and is carrying me. I hear a ding and a metal door slide open.
“Service elevator,” he says.
Service elevator to what?? Are we at his house? What is going on?
“You're scaring me,” I whisper when the doors close, and the elevator begins its steady lurch upward.
He grips me tighter in his arms. “I know.”
All I can think is that he likes keeping me on edge.
He likes my fear. He likes forcing me into situations where I have no choice but to trust and rely on him.
And now that I've seen his face, he's finding new ways to raise the stakes.
Why? How far will he raise them, and will I come out of this alive?
My crying is louder, and I swear he doesn't seem to care. What happened to the man I was starting to trust even though I couldn't see him? The way he held me on stage, his shhh you're safe.
I realize suddenly that for the first time since we started this, tonight when he told me to put the blindfold on, I didn't have the normal excited reaction. Too much hung in the air. I had too many questions.
And now both my body and mind are finally in accord. They both see this man as a threat. Does he now see me the same way?
“Are you angry with me? Did I do something wrong? Master, please...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”
But that's all he says. Why is he doing this?
The elevator stops. The doors open. He carries me down a hallway, unlocks a door, and then takes me inside... wherever we are.
He sits me down in a hard chair and begins untying the ropes around my wrists and hands, still silent.
Finally, I can't help it. I have to know. “Are you going to kill me?”
He actually laughs at this. “Of course not. Why would I kill you?”
“You're being weird. I know who you are. You're scaring me. I don't understand...”
He presses a finger to my lips. “Do not speak. I still own you. You have lost all but the barest hint of etiquette between us. I want you back the way you were. I want you perfectly obedient. Just the way I like.”
This makes some small measure of sense, that he's trying to get us back to this state we were in before I saw his face.
He wipes tears off my cheeks, and my breathing starts to return to normal. I want to know where we are, why he took me somewhere else. Is this his place? But I'm afraid if I ask these questions, he'll be disappointed. I want to earn his shhh, you're safe. I need it.
He takes my hands in his, helps me to stand, and guides me through the room.
I suddenly have that eerie feeling again, like I'm being watched.
That feeling I got that day in the theater when he made me believe for the smallest moment that someone else was there with us, watching the things he did to me on that stage.
Music starts from a sound system across the room. A piano concerto. Sebastian stands behind me, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Take your clothes off for our guest.”
“Bastian, for fuck's sake. She's terrified.”
I freeze. I know that voice. It's Morgan.
“You said you wanted to see her cry, that you like her when she's a little afraid,” Sebastian says. “I aim to please.” He removes my blindfold, and Morgan is giving me that assessing stare, the same one from the day we met, the same one I've caught him giving me in rehearsals.
And now I know Sebastian wasn't just fucking with me that day when he said I had an audience. Morgan has been watching from the darkness of the theater. He's been watching everything. My brain is still struggling to catch up with this new revelation.
That look... it wasn't assessing. It was knowing. All this time I've thought Sebastian and I shared a secret, but there was a larger secret I wasn't in on.
“You wanted to go with him when he asked you out for lunch, didn't you?” Sebastian asks.
“N-no,” I protest, even though it might be a lie.
I'm not sure. I was caught off guard. Morgan is quite good-looking.
But Conall's jealousy is a hard thing to forget, and it feels too risky to give Sebastian honesty right now.
I'm still so afraid he'll hurt me. I'm afraid he's the same kind of monster I already killed.
“No, what?” Sebastian says, his finger hooking into the platinum band of my collar to remind me that he is not Sebastian to me. He isn't even Sir anymore.