Zorie
If anything could ever be surreal, it would be being made to be still while a man watched me quietly, with his cock going into my mouth. Though he had coerced me. I could tell. I was growing ever more sensitive to the use of will.
But I’d enjoyed it.
I’d liked what Mister Black had done to me, and not just in that forced, artificial way.
Damn.
If I’d not felt a whore before entering the Hilton, now I did, walking out across that broad open foyer with my panties still wet and my sandals making that obvious clock clock noise. The taste of his cock was in my mouth. My bottom burned from the bites. My pussy hurt from being stretched beyond normal limits.
Mister Black.
Maybe I was a whore at heart.
Nothing was more truth inducing than being shown the darkest secrets you didn’t even know you had.
At least now I could see where I was in the scheme of things. Reuben would tire of me eventually. I wouldn’t be able to speak of it, but I would be free.
Thank god.
That Mister Black had made me doubt myself? Not good. Not exactly bad either. Was I truly that wicked? He could have been manipulating me. In fact... I halted for a second. Anything he’d said could’ve been a lie.
I was fairly sure he’d been truthful about the mesmers. There was no reason to lie, that I could think of. The other, my desires, when I’d admitted them, it’d seemed true.
The gun was still in my handbag. After the abuse I’d suffered, I was disappointed in myself for not being brave enough to use it, yet he was not the one I needed to use it on.
Instead, my perceptions had flipped. I and Mister Black had a connection.
The implication – he wanted to one day teach me to kill men like him.
That could be a lie too.
Damn.
****
I clutched my phone to my chest, looking out through the rain and dust-speckled windscreen of my car. Where to go? I should be a screaming mess and yet I couldn’t even call the police. The psychology of this defeated me. Somehow a layer of happiness existed that let me float above the terror that should be inside. I’d been abused, humiliated, made to take part in depraved sex acts, and I was, mostly, happy.
Happy but pissed off. Frightened of my predicament but unable to show it. As if they’d slipped some numbing drug into my blood. The logic was there but not most of the fear I should be feeling. When Reuben had me, the fear had risen closer to the surface.
Going home seemed daunting. Home was where Reuben would find me if he needed me. Or – I looked at my phone then dropped it into my handbag – or he might simply text me and say come. I would obey him too. I knew that.
Distressing.
I needed to do things that made the real world feel real before seeing my house.
Mister Black had dismissed me with a kiss on my cheek and said he wouldn’t see me again for a long time. I’d been weirdly disappointed as well as scared that he would ever want to ever see me again. If he came to my home, how would I feel?
Unsettled, I found a café and ate lunch then drove to the university. My office in the Faculty of Science building was a little haven of mundanity. I didn’t need to be here to organize my course but it made me normalize. The place where I went for coffee, my car park, the few staff here in the semester break, all these sank in, rebuilding what I needed – my self.
Except now and then, in the middle of the mundane, jagged memories popped into my head.
Being fucked in a cage. Thrown in a dumpster.
Shoving away that nastiness, breathing slowly, and moving on became a habit.
I checked my work emails and found a million, or to be precise, two hundred and three unread.
One from Cherie Wolfe popped up last and I smiled my first real smile for weeks. The girl had a rich family and could’ve lived a cushy life married to someone from her social circle but she was determined to do more than that with her life. After she gained a bachelor of science, she had ideas of narrowing down into medical research. It was possible with her current marks, just not likely.
I had to give her points for trying though. Through a common interest in swimming I’d gotten to know the girl outside the course. No apples on the desk, just an interest in the world as more than her private playing ground, and it’d made me notice her as a caring human being.
Cherie wanted to get started on studying early. Easy. I sent her a few links in my reply.
Now to get up to scratch on this new rule on assessment the faculty had decided on.
Two hours later I stretched and stood, my chair squeaking as it ran back on its wheels. I adjusted a small pile of paperwork. That never went away, even with the e-learning that propped up a lot of education nowadays.
Time to go home.
Lucky I didn’t have a cat. It would’ve starved to death while I was with Reuben. If only I’d not gone on that tour. The if onlys had gone around and around in my head before. Too late. It had happened. Take stock. Be glad I was alive.
Keep thinking.
Could I maybe practice resistance? Mister Black had given me that possibility. How, though? What would Reuben do if I succeeded? My nipples tightened as cold shivered in. He might do anything.
The drive home was routine, just Sydney traffic doing its worst to make me crazy, but I’d already been to crazy town these past few weeks. The garage door slid down after I pressed the remote’s button. My heart did what it always did, pumped blood. I was me. But I was no longer normal, no matter what routine stuff in which I immersed myself. Could I really function like this? Knowing he’d call me back anytime he wanted?
I had to.
Being away for a few days meant my mail box might be overflowing with letters and junk mail. I walked though my living room and out the front door to check. It was stuffed full and I retrieved it all, sorting it roughly as I stood there.
The petunias had wilted while I was away. At least the cosmos were happy. In the breeze, the white and pinky-purple flowers bobbed on their tall stalks. I gathered the mail catalogues and crap and turned to go back in. Some kids were playing further down the street, running around screaming.
“Hello.”
I shrieked, just a little, and dropped the junk mail.
Grimm Heller was here. In my front yard. Well, sort of. He stood on the footpath under the weeping willow and must have been concealed by the trunk until he stepped out.
Pretending he was inconsequential, I kneeled to gather the paper. “What are you doing here again?”
“Truth? I figured you needed a friend and I came past just in case you were home. I’m not staying here, in your yard. Too many strange things are happening.”
Yes, him, just happening to be here when I came home. Or was I being super-suspicious? No wonder. The men around me were making me that way.
Grimm was normal, nice, remember?
“Meet me down near that park down the road. Past that little lake.”
What?
Then he walked away. Stunned, I stared at the bright yellow catalogue for electrical goods in my hand. Why? Why was he bothering?
Why should I meet him?
Because, idiot, he wants to help.
Everyone was telling me what to do.
If I took the gun, I’d be fine. Fine. Ugh, that word I’d had to say so many times.
No. No fucking gun.
Guess I’d decided I would meet him.