Chapter Fifteen

 

Tamara

I spend the morning in the library, reading, eagerly devouring a science fiction adventure that lets me fly to the heavens, escaping my terrible earth-bound prison.

I eat lunch alone. But at dinner time, he joins me, and he actually smiles at me as I’m eating. There’s a twinkle in his eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time, an approval that warms my whole body.

“I loved eating your pussy this morning,” he says to me. The look he’s giving me is like a soft caress. How does he do that, seduce with just his eyes?

My face floods with heat, and my hands tremble so hard that food falls off my fork.

“Thank you, Master, I loved it too.”

“You can ask me one question,” he says.

I get the not-too-subtle message here. How could I not? He’s practically screaming the terms of my existence at me. This morning, I gave him something that he wanted. And today I wear a much smaller collar and longer chains, and tonight he’s interacting with me.

Punishment and reward. Treats for when I’m good. He’s training me like a pet.

But still…this is a win for me too, isn’t it? It was a decision I made that earned me these privileges, so doesn’t that mean I have some power over him?

Or is it all just an illusion? He’s got me so confused that I can’t think straight these days.

I consider what I should ask him. I settle on a question that I hope will please him. “What can I do so I won’t be punished, Master?”

His smile is gentle. “Nothing. I told you, I’m a sexual sadist. But the punishments will be much less painful once you give in completely. Often, they’ll be very pleasurable. Being whipped can be a truly erotic experience. Would you like me to show you right now?”

I flinch before I can stop myself, and he reaches out and strokes my hand with his thumb.

“I promise that you’ll love it. Trust me, Tamara.”

“Yes, Master,” I murmur. “Please show me.” I don’t trust him at all. What am I, crazy? But I don’t want to do anything to disappoint him. I don’t want to lose the kind, protective Joshua. I don’t want that horrible collar and the short chains to come back.

He places his hand on the small of my back as we walk down the hall, his fingers caressing me. Little thrills of pleasure radiate out from his fingertips. The sexual hold this man has on me is insane. I have no doubt that he could coax multiple orgasms from my aching flesh…if only I’d beg him for it.

And I fear that it’s only a matter of time before I do.

We go to the playroom, and he leads me to a restraint station. He has me strip off my shirt and bra, then fastens me hand and foot to a rack and leaves me for a minute.

When he returns, he says, “Ready, sweetheart?” When he calls me sweetheart, I want to melt. I want to cry with wrenching sorrow and overwhelming happiness.

“Yes, Master.” But I can’t stop my body from trembling.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Master.” It’s a shamed whisper. I don’t want to make him angry.

“But you’re doing it anyway, for me. Just to please me. I love that.” I know what he’s doing, there, manipulating me shamelessly, and yet his words of praise bring tears to my eyes.

I start when I feel the whip on my back, but in surprise rather than in pain. It’s a gentle caress.

I hear the whistle through the air, and I don’t know how he’s doing it, but there’s nothing but a light sting, and he’s right—it’s highly erotic. As the tendrils snap against my back, again and again, my skin slowly warms and softens, and I moan in pleasure. The spray of leather moves up and down my back, and I’m drifting away to a place that’s pure, raw sensation.

I squirm with pleasure at each stroke. I think I could orgasm from this alone, although maybe that’s because Joshua’s daily ritual of teasing me to the edge of madness has left me in a constant state of achy arousal.

Finally, he stops and sets the whip down.

“You see, Tamara?” His voice strokes me like a lover’s caress as he frees me from my cuffs. I drop my arms and shake them, rubbing my wrists. My back is ablaze with a pleasurably achy sensation.

“Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”

He spins me around to face him, and with his thumb, gently tilts my face up to look at him.

“Now I’m going to ask you a question. When you do the rituals, you aren’t talking anymore, just tapping. Why the change?”

It’s like a bucket of freezing water dumped on my head. The abrupt change in direction startles me, and I stammer, stalling for time. “Wh-what, Master?”

This is a private part of my life. I hate when he pries into my mind like this. I’ve come to love the morning bath, every last bit of it, even the parts that felt invasive when he first did it, but this is a different kind of invasion, and it makes me queasy.

“You heard me perfectly well, Tamara.” Disappointment frosts his gaze.

My stomach curdles, and I hesitate—too long.

“Oh, sweetheart. Oh, baby. You were doing so well today,” he says reproachfully. “Now I have to hurt you. Do I need to ask you again? Do you want me to punish you twice?”

Tears of anger and frustration burn in my eyes. Why? Why can’t I just have one good day? Even one good evening? “No, Master. I stopped doing the rituals because they don’t work anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re supposed to protect me from harm. They failed. They didn’t protect me from you, Master.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my tone, and I flinch, but he doesn’t react.

“No, they didn’t,” he agrees mildly. “Which should tell you what they are. Comforting lies. You need to be able to protect yourself, Tamara, not use made-up rituals that will always let you down. Why did you start using them in the first place?”

I answer, even though I’m furious at this invasion. He said he wouldn’t rape me? I’d rather he held me down and shoved his dick in me. This prying is almost as bad as when my stepfather slid his fingers between my legs.

It’s only my fear of the pain that he’ll inflict that forces me to open up this most secret part of myself. “Because of my stepfather.” I glare up at him, tears of humiliation burning my eyes. “He was a mean drunk. He used to whip me with a belt. One day, he was doing it, and I was so terrified that I just started chanting in my mind. I don’t even know where it came from. It was like I was going crazy, and he tripped and fell over backward and hit his head. I ran out of the house and slept in the bushes. Master.”

He nods, his brows drawing together.

“So I did it again, one night when he was coming in the door, and my mother came home early from work that night and interrupted him.” I frown. “But he beat her up. Was that lucky? She suffered instead of me. It was selfish and rotten of me to feel relieved that he was hurting my mother.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was selfish and rotten of her to stay with a man like that, to sacrifice your needs for hers.”

Anger flares in me, even though I know it’s true. She was drunk most of the time, in a dreamy haze, barely able to take care of herself, much less me, but she was my mother. Sometimes she told me she loved me and I was a good girl, and that was everything.

“What happened to him?”

My whole body tenses up. No. God, no, I can’t do this.

“You’re about to lie to me, so I’m going to give you a free gift.” He takes my hand in his and looks me in the eye. “Don’t, and I won’t double your punishment tonight.”

Tears flood my eyes. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Please, Master. I can’t talk about these things…Master. It’s…it’s private. It’s mine.”

He bends down and kisses the top of my head, squeezing my hand gently. “Haven’t you learned yet, Tamara? Nothing is yours. Your thoughts are mine. I own every last little part of you.”

“No, Master, no!” I scream. “Punish me till I pass out! I can’t, I can’t!”

He cups my chin in his hand, and an odd kind of strength flows from him to me. “You can. You will. You’re stronger than you know, Tamara. Fight for yourself. You’re worth it.”

I feel as if my mind is splitting in two. My vision swims, and I think I see two Joshuas standing in front of me, and then they merge again.

He’s telling me to fight to save myself from him.

He’s telling me I’m strong and worthwhile.

Nobody has ever told me that before. Ever.

“If you don’t tell me,” he continues, “I’m going to have to hurt you really, really badly. What I have in mind? You’ll pass out, I can promise you that, and then I’ll wake you up, and you’ll pass out again.” He sounds very concerned for me. “I’ll keep doing it for days and days. I have defibrillators. I have medical training. I can restart your heart if I have to. And you’ll still end up telling me. Shouldn’t you spare yourself that pain?”

Restart my heart? A wave of terror threatens to sweep me away and drown me. “You’re the one who can spare me, Master,” I plead. “You don’t have to hurt me.”

“Oh, but I do.” His voice is so soft. “It’s the core of my nature, Tamara. The need to cause pain, of one kind or another.”

This is the only person I’ll be with for the rest of my life.

All strength leaves my body. I fall to the ground and curl up in a ball, sobbing convulsively. He kneels next to me and strokes my back, his fingers trailing over the sensitive, punished flesh. After a minute, he grabs my arm, gently, and tugs me into a sitting position. I look at him pleadingly.

“Please, I’ll do anything for you, anything but this…”

He reaches out and wraps his hand around mine. “Come on, sweetheart. Baby. You can do it. I’m going to count now. Don’t let me get to zero. Five, four, three…”

It’s like there are two Joshuas. One of them is kind and sweet and supportive. And the other one… I don’t want the other one to come out to play. I can’t survive it.

“I killed him,” I whisper, cringing in on myself.

He nods with satisfaction, as if he knew it all along.

“How?” Joshua prods.

I twist my head away from him, closing my eyes as hard as I can. Joshua grabs my chin and forces me to turn my head to face him.

“Look at me.”

“He was drunk. I pushed him down the stairs, and he broke his neck.” I realize I’ve forgotten to say Master yet again, but he doesn’t call me out on it. He’s too intent on prying open the hard, closed oyster shell that I’ve clamped around my innermost secrets, and devouring the succulent flesh inside.

“What else? There’s more, I can tell.”

At that, I go rigid.

I curse myself for my cowardice.

He squeezes my hand supportively, and I close my eyes. I pretend I’m sitting there with a close friend, with somebody who cares about me. Somebody who wants to lift this heavy burden from my soul. Susan. I’m talking to Susan. Telling her the secrets that I’ve never told anyone.

“My mother always drank a lot before that, but when he died, it was like a light went out in her. She started drinking so much she lost her job, and our power got turned off, and the neighbors reported us…” My body is shaking with sobs. I must be crying. “…so I got taken away and sent to a group home.” I feel a flood of wetness on my cheeks. Deep, overwhelming sorrow sweeps over me and clings, like a suffocating fog. “She never tried to get me back. She never came to visit me. Why didn’t she come visit me? Why?”

His hand tightens around mine again. “Her problem was with herself, not you, Tamara.”

“I always wondered if she knew what I’d done, on some level. And she was dead from liver failure within the year. It’s my fault. I killed her too.”

The words spill out before I can stop them. Horror floods my body. Saying it out loud makes it real. I murdered my own mother.

I start clawing at my arms, trying to rend my flesh. “I killed her, Master, I killed her!”

He grabs my wrists and holds me still. “No, you didn’t. You had absolutely nothing to do with her death.”

I’m shaking like I’m having a seizure. Red spots swim in front of my vision. I said the words out loud. I talked about the Bad Thing. Am I going to die now?

He strokes the back of my hand with his thumb. “Those were choices she made, Tamara. They were terrible choices. It was never your fault. Any of it. You were the child, and you had no power at all. It was her job to keep you safe, and she failed at her job and left you with this miserable burden that you never should have had to carry. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“No, no, no…” I gulp for air. I’m getting dizzy.

“You will. It will get better and better, until it hardly hurts at all, until you rarely think of it,” he says calmly, and somehow, the panic starts to recede, because I believe him. I’ve told myself this a million times, but hearing it from him is different. The way he says things, with such utter conviction. His words have the power to make things true.

Telling him my terrible secret is like lancing a festering wound. I feel a violent wave of nausea sweep over me, and I vomit onto the floor.

“Come.” His voice drifts on a cloud over my head. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” He’s not angry with me for making a mess. He’s sweet, he’s kind, he’s understanding.

Master is comforting me. Master is gentle. All I have to do is obey him. I have to make sacrifices for him, give him pieces of myself. It’s worth it, isn’t it, to have him treat me so lovingly?

I’m crying wordlessly, sobs racking my body. He takes me to the sink and washes my face. Gently and lovingly. He has me rinse out my mouth with mouthwash. “You did so well tonight, baby. I love it when you let me in.”

So sweet. So kind.

He used the word “love”. I want him to love me. What would my life be like if he loved me?

“Now it’s time for your punishment,” he says, but I’m in a dream state as he leads me to the middle of the room.

I’m a million miles away. He’s smashed my mind like a mirror, and the shards are flying everywhere, flying and flying. I’ll never be whole again.

He scatters grains of rice on the floor and forces me to kneel on them. Then he pulls up a chair, and just sits there and watches me. It doesn’t hurt much at first, but over time, the pain grows until it feels like I’m kneeling on hundreds of tiny, sharp pieces of gravel.

From somewhere outside my body, I cry and cry. I don’t think it’s because of the pain. It’s because I’m saying goodbye to my mother, for real. The pain is welcome, it’s cathartic, it’s cleansing. It’s what I deserve. I rock into the rice, trying to drive it into my flesh.

When he’s done hurting me, he picks me up, brushes the rice from my knees, and cradles me tenderly in his arms as he carries me down to my cell. He kisses my head again and again and tells me how brave and good I am.