Going Down (16 page)

He sat down in an overstuffed chair, his long legs splaying out as he rested on his spine. “Not like that, slave. On your hands and knees.”

“Don't call me a slave! Not after what—”

“What happened? I took advantage of what you've always given away. What man wouldn't?”

“There wasn't anything—”

“On your knees, now.”

Stopped from trying to ask if there was still something, anything, between them, she did as he'd ordered. Kneeling before Reeve was different from those times when such behavior had been part of a scene. Always before, she'd been secretly amused. Now she felt, what, less than human? Ashamed?

“Crawl to me.”

Doing so with limited use of her legs was awkward and ungraceful. She who knew how to present her body as something sensual for the camera was now inching forward like a worm. It might not have been that way if she could make herself believe the sight of her in all her subservient nudity was turning him on, but he'd only glanced at her before turning his attention to the wall behind her.

His expression, so complex, emotions determined to stay hidden but breaking through anyway. When she was so close she could rest her head on his knees, she stopped and settled onto her buttocks, waited. She continued to study his expression.

She'd sometimes seen that look in the eyes of would-be models. They'd come to The Dungeon full of curiosity about public sex and interest in the considerable paycheck only to discover they weren't cut out for S and M. Reality set in as soon as the first ropes went around them: they didn't want to be doing this, wanted out, now!

That's what she saw in Reeve, not the fear element but the reluctance and regret.

“You don't have to do this,” she said.

“The hell I don't.”

“You're serious? You truly believe you have no choice but to do what you are doing to me?”

For a moment she thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he rested his head on the back of the chair. His eyes closed to slits. “Lives are at stake. At least one has already been lost.”

Shocked, she rested her hands on his knee. Instead of responding to the touch, he rubbed his eyes. The wrong words and he'd slam a door between them that might never unlock, but if she didn't try to reach past his barriers, they'd never have anything. Even worse, she might never know freedom.

“You feel responsible for that life, do you?” she ventured. “Who is it? Can you at least tell me that?”

“Not her name because it'll mean either too much or nothing to you.”

“I might have known her?” A woman. At least she now knew that.

“Maybe.”

Maybe.
What deep pit of a nightmare had she fallen into? The world she'd always lived in didn't have room for the murder of someone she considered her friend. In the wake of her parents' death, her quota of bad things happening to good people had been met. “How did she die?”

“Beaten. Strangled.”

Appalled by the thought of so much violence, she snatched her hands from his knee so she could protect her vulnerable throat. She was still trying to put the pieces together when he opened his eyes, straightened, looked down at her as if he'd never seen her.

“What?” she asked.

“Don't speak, all right. There's—yeah, I don't have a goddamn choice. You have to view this.”

Had she ever seen anyone look as tortured as he did right now? Scared and hurting for him, she snagged his left hand and turned it so she could kiss the back. Briefly, the barest touch, and yet she'd always remember the way his just-kissed skin felt as he rubbed it against her cheek.

Then he reached into his pocket for the key, took hold of her hands, and freed them. Leaning over, he did the same to her ankles. And yet although something had once again changed in their relationship, she knew better than to tell herself they'd become equals. Taking that to heart, she followed him into the dining room where a laptop was set up on the table. He pulled up a chair next to the one already in front of the laptop. “Sit down.”

She did so, trying less than successfully not to think about how the sleek wood felt on her bare ass. Not trusting herself to keep her hands off him, she tucked them between her legs. After turning on the computer, he sat down and together they watched it power up. Another kind of power had taken up residence in her simply because he was sitting so close. If learning what he intended to show her wasn't so important, she'd, what, throw herself at him? Beg him to fuck her?

Probably.

“This was sent to me earlier today. I'm sure my colleagues never thought I'd show it to you, but they aren't here. I have to play it my way. If it backfires…”

Although she was accustomed to bondage videos, no way could she have prepared for what she was looking at; bottom line, this was no staged presentation. Not only didn't the
actors
know how to work with the camera, the faceless men were hardly worthy of what the word
dom
signified. They were all past their prime, their bodies mushy, muscles nearly nonexistent. They muttered instead of speaking clearly. One thing about them, however, was so real that just the thought made it nearly impossible for her to swallow. They were arrogant, filled with the confidence born of money.

In contrast, their slaves were young and beautiful women, especially the one engaged in servicing the men. The lack of makeup, unkempt hair, bruises, especially the S brands, said more clearly than any words that none of them had gone into this willingly.

Except for an occasional order or oath from one of the men, there was only silence. The poor creature moving from man to man had been crying, and on the few occasions when she looked at the camera, Saree was nearly undone by her air of defeat.

“You're going to take me there,” she made herself say. “That's what this is about, getting me ready to become one of them.”

“Pretty much.”

“Pretty much.” He should have left her hands tied because she wasn't sure she could keep from punching him. “Can't you do any better than that?”

He seemed to consider that. “The woman doing all the work? It might have been the last thing she ever did.”

What was it about momentous announcements that took them a while to sink in? It was like that now. Oh, she heard the words all right. She just couldn't put them together until she'd silently repeated them several times. Then more time passed while she tried to work saliva back into her mouth. “She's dead?”

“Yeah.”

“She was the one you were talking about, the one who'd been beaten—”

“Yeah.”

The video was still playing, and although she hated doing so, Saree returned her attention to it. If that tired, dirty, and scared woman had indeed been killed, the least Saree could do was acknowledge her as a living, breathing human being. Murdered. She'd been murdered. Probably by one of those men.

Much as she needed to ask how Reeve or more precisely his coworkers had gotten hold of the video, she couldn't bring herself to do so. Hating those damnable arrogant men as she couldn't remember having ever hated before, she ordered herself to study them. She had to understand how any so-called human being could—

“No!”

“No what?” Reeve insisted.

But she couldn't respond because she couldn't take her eyes off, not the men, but one of the silent and still women.

Reeve paused the video. “What are you seeing?”

Lifting a shaky finger, she pointed at a petite redhead with large, high, natural breasts. “Amber. Amber Green.”

“You know her?”

“Yes.” As horrified as she was by the sight of Amber with a brand and minus the mischievous sparkle in her eyes, she was also deeply impacted by the leather cuff circling her own wrist. “She, ah, she worked for The Dungeon. She left to—everyone thought she'd quit because she'd found a sugar daddy. Where is she? Damn it, where is she?”

“I don't know.”

Reeve's tone pulled her attention off Amber. He looked defeated and trapped, an expression that shouldn't have been on someone who wielded so much power over her. “Is she still alive? Please, can you tell me that?”

“No, I can't.” Standing, he stalked to the far end of the room only to whirl and stride back. “All right, all right, Amber lived—lives locally, does she? If the two of you worked together, she must be from the L.A. area.”

“Born and bred. She loved to go into the mountains for the skiing, and when she had enough free time, she'd fly to Vegas, but she said she'd never leave Southern California no matter how bad the air quality got.” The way Reeve kept staring at her made her even more self-conscious.

“When did you last see her?”

Think. This is important.
“Six weeks maybe. I don't think it's been two months. Why?”

“Because since then she's been incorporated into The Slavers.”

“The Slavers?”

He shook his head. “Doesn't matter.”

“The hell it doesn't! All the models, we joked about why did it have to be Amber who'd found someone to support her instead of one of us. But we were wrong, weren't we? She's in hell.” Saying the last exhausted her.

Instead of agreeing or telling her she was being melodramatic, he turned his attention back to the video. He didn't start it running again but brought his face close to the screen while he traced Amber's cowed outline. “Did she say anything before she disappeared?”

Think. Think.
“About who the man might have been, no. But before she left she talked a lot about this club she'd found.” At that, Reeve swung his attention to her, his intense gaze demanding she mine her memory for everything she could.

It wasn't much, at least she didn't think it was, but he hung onto every word as she told him about one of the last conversations she and Amber had. Although Amber hadn't told many people at The Dungeon this, she'd confided in Saree. Despite the all-American looks that had belied her strong sex drive and thus made her a favorite with members, beneath that pert nose, wide green eyes, and flawless flesh beat the heart of a submissive.

“She wanted an owner. Not games playing, but the real thing. She wanted to be owned by someone she didn't quite trust, if you know what I mean.”

“I'm trying.”

“All right.” Placing her feet on the chair, she hugged her knees. “Danger turned her on. At the same time, she wanted to be pampered. Scared and worshipped. That's what she said one time.”

“What about this club she talked about? What was it?”

“For BDSM play.”
Or had it been play after all?
“She wanted me to go to it with her, but I never did.”

“Why not?”

“It didn't sound like my thing. Besides it doesn't matter. Just finding Amber does.”

“If she's alive.”

Even with the air-conditioning going, the desert's impact had seeped into the rooms, but suddenly Saree felt cold. She nodded. Funny how quickly things could change. Oh, her body still responded to Reeve's, but sexual attraction was no longer predominant. Now she wanted to work with him toward a single goal, saving Amber and those other women from the death one of them had suffered.

No, not a death. Murder.

Think. Think.

“The club—I'm trying to remember if she told me what it was called. I know it was in Hollywood because I joked that I'd go there only if she threw in one of those maps of where the stars live.”

“Hollywood.” Going by his tone, she'd have thought she'd given him what he'd asked for for Christmas.

“Yes.” Needing to distance herself from Reeve's impact, she closed her eyes. In her mind she saw herself and Amber in the oversized shower that was part of The Dungeon complex. They'd worked together on some shoot and were getting rid of sweat and other body fluids, joking, discussing high heels and terrible traffic. At some point Amber had caressed Saree's breast. Then just as Saree was wondering if Amber was coming on to her, the younger woman had said that masters preferred their slaves to have real breasts.

“Maybe that's why I'm a hit at Segun, because of my natural boobs,” Amber had said.

Opening her eyes, Saree grabbed Reeve's forearm. “Segun. That's what it's called.”

“You're certain?”

“Positive. I asked about the name and she said it meant conqueror. It was her favorite place to go. In fact—why the hell didn't I think of this before—she said that if she had her way, she'd move there.”

“Shit.”

“I thought she was joking. Oh God, I thought she was joking.”

 

“Yeah,” Reeve admitted to the voice on the other end of his cell phone. “I showed her the video. That's how she was able to identify one of the slaves.”