Adventurous Me (20 page)

I go back to the living room, pull out my reader, and start reading an ebook I bought the week before. It’s pretty good, and I’m engrossed when I hear his car alarm. I drop the tablet and kneel in my spot.

The door opens and Clint comes in, looking kind of frazzled. I keep my eyes down and wait. He crosses to me and puts his hand on my head, and I can’t help but blurt out, “I’m sorry, Master, but I’m so concerned. Is everything all right?”

He sighs, sits down on the sofa, and motions for me to join him. When I start to sit down, once again he pulls me onto his lap and cuddles me to him. “Yeah. She’s fine. Just a sprain. Didn’t even want to come home. My mother promised the girls she’d take them to the zoo tomorrow, so she wants to stay there.”
Good. At least that worry’s gone
, I think. “Anything interesting happen around here while I was gone?”

I tremble a little as I start to tell him. “Well, this man called, Tom Norsworthy? He said he’s a client of yours.” Clint nods. “I asked if I could take a message, but he said no. He told me he was in a board meeting at that very minute and he couldn’t find the proposal you’d brought to him. He had to pitch it to the board to get it approved. I told him there was nothing I could do, but he insisted I go and look for it.” I keep my fingers crossed in my mind.

A look passes over Clint’s face, one I don’t recognize. “And what did you do?”

Now I’m scared. “He just insisted that he had to have it, so I went in and found it. He wanted it faxed to him, so I faxed it to him and printed a fax receipt for you.” The look that’s growing on his face is something that’s chilling me. “Then I put everything back and closed the door immediately. I didn’t look around or anything, really, just that. That’s all, Master, I swear.”

He doesn’t speak for about three minutes or so. Then he says, “I told you the office was off limits to you, did I not?”

Now I’m shaking. “Yes, Master, you did, but I didn’t want you to lose the deal. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I just thought . . .”

He pushes me off his lap and stands, then turns, his eyes burning into me. “I didn’t bring you here to think. I brought you here to serve me. And this is how you repay me?”

My eyes fly open wide. “I was doing you a favor, Master! I helped. I
am
serving you.”

His face goes dark and I shudder. “You openly defied me. And you will be punished.”

“But Master, I . . .”

“No buts. You broke protocol. And you broke my trust. As far as I’m concerned, that’s even worse. I can make you keep protocol, but I can’t make you trustworthy. And I obviously can’t trust you.” The fury in his voice makes my stomach quiver.

“Master, I didn’t do it to defy you. I did it to help. Please . . . I just wanted to do the right thing, so I had to think about it, what you would want me to do, and I thought you’d want me to, I don’t know, get something so . . .” I’m babbling now.

“Silence!” he yells, and I go quiet. I don’t know what’s going to happen. He paces back and forth for a minute, then he turns to me, or maybe I should say turns
on
me. “That was the only thing I was rigid about, the only thing. And you defied me.” I start to say something, but he barks, “I don’t care about the proposal or the fax machine or any of that. It wasn’t about the room. It was about whether or not I can trust you, and I obviously can’t.”

I whisper so low that I’m sure he can’t hear, “But he didn’t want to leave a message.” And that’s it. I can’t take it anymore. I feel a tear roll down one cheek, and another one tries to escape down the other. I can’t stop them. I feel sick, I’m exhausted, I hurt from kneeling so much, and I don’t know what to do to please him. I stare at the floor and wish I were anywhere else but here.

“I’m going out. I’ll be gone for thirty minutes. Have an early dinner ready when I come back. Then you’ll receive your punishment.” With that, he storms out the door and I’m left there alone.

I put water on to boil and then throw pasta into it. In a couple of minutes I realize that I should’ve waited until the sauce was hot, but I don’t care. I open the jar, pour it into the saucepan, add the veggies and mushrooms, and turn it on to heat.

As I stand there, I think about what just happened. He can’t trust me. Why? All I did was try to save his ass. Yes, I know he told me not to go in there, but he also told me to take messages for phone calls, and the man didn’t want to leave a message; the guy was in a jam, and I did what needed to be done. It could’ve been a situation where not finding that and faxing it cost Clint the whole deal. My main thought was to preserve his success. And I got yelled at for caring – yay me.

My back is turned to the door when he comes in, and I pretend I don’t hear him. I’m not going to the door and kneel only to get yelled at again. He doesn’t speak to me, just stalks off down the hallway. In a little while, he comes back into the kitchen. His voice is flat when he asks, “Is the food ready?”

“Yes, Sir. Shall I serve you, Sir?” I ask, and I wonder if he can see me shiver.

“Yes.” That’s all he says. I get a plate, put some pasta on it and spoon the sauce over it, then garnish it with some grated parmesan. I put a couple of slices of garlicky toasted French bread on the plate with it and carry it to the table. He moves his arms out of the way and I put the plate down in front of him, then move to stand about a foot behind him on his right.

“You should probably eat now. The rest of the afternoon and evening will be more unpleasant than the previous,” he says in a menacing tone. I don’t respond. “Well, eat, why don’t you?” he almost yells.

I just stand there, fighting to hold back the tears. Finally, I whisper, “I’m not hungry, Master.”

He shakes his head. “Suit yourself.” I watch him eating, and then he says, “It’s actually edible.”

And that’s when I know. This was his way of having a housekeeper, cook, and sex slave for two weeks. He’s not interested in me or anything about me. I feel sad and stupid at the same time. I’ve got three more days and I can get away from this, this feeling of being squashed and hated and degraded by someone who vacillates between wanting me with him and wishing me gone. I know Dave thought this was a good idea, and I respect Dave and his opinion, but this time he was just plain wrong.

He eats everything on the plate, and I take it to the sink, rinse it, and put it in the dishwasher. Then I busy myself putting away the leftovers. I can feel him watching me from behind, but I don’t turn around or say anything. He’s not interested in anything I’ve got to say anyway.

When all of the work is done, I let out an involuntary sigh. He must take that as a sign that I’m ready, because he simply says, “Sub, go and lie across your bed.” I go down the hall and do as he instructed. I need to pee, but I don’t bother. If I wet the bed, I’m the one who’ll have to lie in it for the night, so I don’t really care.

“On your stomach. Hands behind your back.” I do as he says, and he cuffs my wrists there, not with soft cuffs but with plain metal ones that bite into them. I don’t wonder anymore what he’s going to do; it doesn’t matter. “Head up,” he snarls, and then there’s a ball gag in my mouth. I can feel him working behind me, and he’s doing something with my feet. When he’s done, he just says, “If your feet take you where I’ve told you not to go, they should be punished. At least thirty minutes.” With that, he walks out.

I’m trying to figure out what he’s done when I start to feel the sensation: Ice. He’s bound something icy on the soles of my feet, then bound them together so I can’t move them. As I lie there, horrified, the pain starts to intensify as they get colder and colder. In eight minutes, it’s almost unbearable, and I’ve got twenty-two more to endure.

I don’t know if it’s the lack of food or my nerves, but the wave of nausea slams into me and I start to heave. There’s nothing in there, so it’s just dry heaves, my stomach trying to empty itself of something that’s not there because the pain is so intense. It’s good I didn’t eat anything or I would aspirate. Worse yet, I know he doesn’t care, and I can’t safeword with a gag in my mouth, so I just lie there as it goes on and on. Sometime during that period of time my bladder turns loose, and I feel the heat and wetness spreading underneath me, but I say nothing. Even if I could, there’s no point.

Nothing I could say would change his mind, make him like me, make him care. Nothing. He said in Dave’s office that day that he really does care about me, but it appears he said that solely for Dave’s benefit. I think about what Steffen said to me that first night I scened at the club, about a Dom’s responsibility being to take care of the sub and look out for her wellbeing, and I realize that Clint isn’t a very good Dom. He’s got some point to make, and I’m the pad he’s writing it on. And when he’s finished, he’ll just erase it all, then tear me off, wad me up, and throw me away like I was never here. Like I’m not important, like my feelings don’t matter. The pain in my feet is so bad that my mind has started to shut down, and I choke and sputter behind the gag as my stomach continues to heave. Through it all, he doesn’t even come to check on me.

I don’t know how long it’s been, but something happens to me. I feel weird, disoriented, disconnected, like something strange is happening to my body, and parts of it jerk and twist independent of my control. It’s a sort of floating feeling, and I’m no longer in any kind of pain. I hear what sounds like a door opening, but it sounds far, far away, and then someone is taking the cuffs off my wrists. I hear a voice, but it’s distant. Then there’s a loud buzzing sound like a billion cicadas in my head, and someone is saying, “Trish! Trish, are you okay? Trish?” My face is being slapped and I can’t make sense of anything. It gets quiet again, and then there’s a cool cloth on my face, wiping it, and when I can get my wits about me, I see Clint sitting on the bed beside me, a strange, frightened look on his face. “Trish? Talk to me! Trish?”

I’m trying to make words, but I can’t. There’s a funny feeling in my face, like it’s frozen or paralyzed, kind of tingly and tight. When I do manage, all I can think to say is, “You’re sitting in my pee.”

“Trish, you were supposed to tell me all of your medical history. You should’ve told me you have seizures.”

I shake my head. “I’ve never had a seizure in my life. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” In that instant, I’m overcome with exhaustion. I can’t even raise my head, and my mouth, dry as the Sahara, won’t work to say anything else. When my eyes close, I’m thankful, and I give in to the drowsiness.

The room is dark when I wake up, and I’m somewhere else – Clint’s bed? I can hear movement in the house, but I can’t tell what or from where. Then Clint walks past the door with the sheets from my bed all bundled up in his arms, so I guess he’s trying to get everything cleaned up. I’m fairly certain he won’t want me in his bed all night. Maybe he’s going to sleep in there. I really don’t care. I don’t have enough energy to do anything, so he can do whatever he wants. Besides, he’s going to anyway. He closes the door before he goes on up the hallway.

My mouth is so sticky and dry that I can hardly move my tongue. I guess he notices that my eyes were open before, because he opens the door, sticks his head in, and then comes in. The lamp snaps on, low beam, and he sits down on the side of the bed. I can’t read his expression. Maybe he’s worried; if he is, it’s just because he’ll be held responsible if something happens to me. He sure as hell doesn’t care about my welfare.

“Trish, are you okay? What happened? It looked like you were having a seizure. Do you remember what happened?”

All I can do is shake my head. My tongue is so swollen that I can’t talk. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asks again. I shake my head once more. He gets up, leaves, and comes back with a glass of water. “Sit up and drink some of this.” I just lie there. “Please?” I try, but I just can’t get up. He moves in, wraps his arm around me, and sits me up. “Here. Please?” He puts the glass to my lips and pours a little in, and I manage to swallow.

“Feel better?” I shake my head again. All I want is to lie down and go to sleep. That must be pretty plain, because he says, “You need some rest. I’ll be back in a few minutes after I lock up.”

I just lie there, wondering what to do next. In a few minutes he comes back, and I hear him moving around, probably getting undressed. The bed moves and I know he’s slipped in behind me. Then he moves closer and his arms encircle me.

And I scoot away. I can’t help it. I just can’t take it anymore. Tears spill out of my eyes and onto the pillow, and I can’t breathe. I hear him quietly say, “I failed you,” and then everything goes still.

When I wake up, it’s light outside. I can’t tell what time it is; everything is still very fuzzy. There’s a smell in the house, something cooking, and I hear someone moving around. I just lie there and try to go back to sleep.

“Trish? Trish, wake up. I made you some breakfast.” When I manage to pry one eye open, Clint’s sitting on the side of the bed. “I know you’ve got to be hungry. You’ll feel better if you eat. Come on, sit up.” I try to push myself up, but I can’t. There’s a look that passes across his face – alarm? – and he helps me sort of sit up. But everything starts to move and swim and I feel dizzy and sick again. “You’re getting sick because you haven’t eaten. You need to eat.” I shake my head. “No, really, you have to.”