Judgment II: Mercy (2 page)

"I've already called someone."

The officer patted her hand. They were the last ones to go, leaving her alone on the stairs, wooden, emotionless, wondering what had made her second best to the two women locked securely in their room.

She was still sitting there many hours later when she heard a car pull up in front of the house. The sun had long since set. The fire in the study had died, and the house was dark, but for the front porch light. It was also three am, but none of that swayed her visitors. Three men strolled up the 12

Judgment II: Mercy

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walk, one separating himself from the group. He climbed the porch steps alone and stood upon the welcome mat. But that was all he did. Mary watched the shadow of him, which darkened the lace window curtains beside the door. He didn't knock; he just waited.

After a moment, she stood up slowly. Her hours-long vigil on the stairs had left her body sore, although she hadn't felt it until she tried to move. Now, feeling suddenly older than her thirty-two years, she crossed the Grand Hall, cracking open the front door and peering out at him.

"I am Daymon Tane." He was tall, dark of hair, impeccably dressed in a three piece suit and grey overcoat to guard against the night's chill. When he spoke, she recognized his voice as the man she'd spoken to on the phone. "Where are they?"

Her eyes flicked from him to the two men who waited a respectful distance behind him, then back again. "Upstairs."

"Lead the way."

They stared at one another for a moment in silence before Mary finally stepped back and let them in the house.

One man stayed at the Grand Hall, the other two followed her slow ascent up the stairs and down the second story hallway. They passed the room she'd shared with her husband, the guest rooms, and the library. At the end of the hall in a small alcove, she opened a second door to reveal a narrow flight of wooden steps that led up to the Elite's secluded attic space.

"After you," he said, the barest ghost of a smile gracing his lips when she glanced back at him over her shoulder.

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Once more, Mary preceded him. She unlocked the door at the top of the stairs, opening it ahead of herself as she walked into the Elite's Spartan bedroom. She flicked the light on, the sudden illumination waking both girls where they slept, each to her own narrow cot of a bed.

They sat up, blinking blearily, but as Tane stepped into the room, they came awake with a notable shock. As one, they scrambled nude from their beds, hitting the floor on their knees, heads down, hands clasped behind their backs in utter abasement. Mary stared. Neither had ever moved that fast for Richard.

"Sloppy," Tane commented, his face mirroring the disapproval that weighted his tone.

The women quaked at his feet, not daring to look at him or speak.

"Present," he commanded, and they both sat up. Their knees snapped apart and they grabbed their ankles, bending over backwards even as they lifted their hips and offered their loins for his perusal.

Tane half-turned and held out his hand to his companion, who withdrew a coiled length of leather from his pocket and handed it over. Unraveling the strap, he stepped into the room and with a quick duck and slash of his arm, he cracked the length of it across the front of China's thighs.

China, the screamer, barely made a sound. But she snapped her knees wider apart, and though Mary didn't think it possible, bent backwards even farther than before.

Mahogany lifted her hips higher, as well, but the belated 14

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obedience didn't save her from receiving an equally sharp lash across her own legs.

"Damned sloppy," he said with disgust, and Mary stared at the Elites in shock. The muscles of their bellies and thighs began to quiver from the strain of holding such a pose, and Mary felt an answering quivering in her own belly. A fine sheen of sweat appeared over their skin, making their bodies glisten under the lights, and Mary stopped breathing. She looked at Tane in wide-eyed wonderment, though he had already turned from her and didn't notice.

"Tether them," he told his companion, lightly slapping the length of that leather strap against his own leg in a show of heightened irritation.

The companion slipped choke-collars around each Elite's throat, then fastened a leash to the metal clips. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he gave a sharp tug and both women rose gracefully to their feet. He led them from the room, and this time it was Mary's turn to be the follower. She stared at the strap that dangled from Tane's hand, her heart palpitating in her chest, for the first time in a long time completely unsure of herself.

Halfway down the stairs to the first floor, Mary finally found her voice and the courage to call out a shaky, "Please wait."

The companion men had already crossed the threshold, escorting the Elites on their leashes to the car. But Tane paused, his hand on the golden door latch. He deigned to look back at her, unsmiling, a dark man half-blanketed by shadow 15

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while the rest of him basked in the yellow glow of the front porch light.

"Why them?" Mary asked. Why not me, a trembling voice inside her begged to shout.

As if he heard that trembling voice anyway, a corner of his mouth drifted slightly upwards. Without a word to her, he walked out and shut the door.

Mary sank down on the steps, sitting with her hands in her lap, for the first time in her life, utterly alone.

* * * *

Mary Blackwell stood shivering outside the mammoth gate, staring through the iron portcullis into the empty courtyard, half buried in newly fallen snow. Judgment. It had to be. How many mountain fortresses could Italy have?

There was a mechanical whir and hum above her head and she looked up to see a black camera hidden under the stone arch of the gate, panning down to fix on her. She closed her eyes as a sudden gust of icy wind shoved her closer to the portcullis, whipping her blonde hair around her face. She grabbed the iron teeth to keep her balance. Squinting up at the camera, she then blinked rapidly, waving her hand in front of her eyes to dislodge blinding snowflakes from her lashes.

"I-I want to see Daymon Tane," she stammered. This had not been one of her best ideas. What if the Mountain Lord didn't want her? She would likely freeze to death before she 16

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ever got back to the village at the base of the mountain. God, it was cold! "Please may I see Daymon Tane?"

After a moment, an intercom set into the stone by the iron portcullis crackled and a man's voice said in heavily accented English, "One moment."

She waited, pulling her coat tight around her and hunching her shoulders as she stomped her feet to get the circulation moving again.

It seemed forever before she heard the box crackle again.

"Yes?"

She struggled to still her now chattering teeth, "I w-w-want t-to speak to Daymon T-Tane."

"Then speak to me. I am Daymon Tane."

That she felt suddenly cold inside had absolutely nothing to do with the freezing temperatures, ice and snow swirling all around her. She turned her head, lifting her face to the camera. "I'm M-Mary Blackwell. I—"

"I remember you. Wife to Richard Blackwell, owner of Mahogany and China, dead of a heart attack two weeks ago yesterday. You've come a long way. Whose loose lips allowed you to find me?"

"I promised not to say." She hugged herself, stomping her feet, the cold almost doubling her over. "I w-want ... I-I w-want..."

"I am not going to sell either girl back to you, if that's what you came for." And though she looked up at the camera, shaking her head, he continued, "My girls have been trained to companion the strongest of dominants anywhere.

And since I have yet to meet a female capable of becoming 17

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an adequate, much less, competent master, you by grace of your gender do not suit. Go back down the mountain before you freeze to death."

"I don't w-want to own them!" Mary protested. She flapped her arms, a gesture of hopelessness. "I w-want to be them!"

The intercom crackled again. "I beg your pardon. I don't think I heard you over the wind. Could you repeat that?"

But Mary had opened her coat and was frantically searching the inside pockets. She whipped out a fold of papers, hastily straightened them, batting the snowflakes from her face as she held the sheets up to the camera. The wind snapped the paper back and forth in her hands though she did her best to hold them straight.

"I know what Richard paid for your Product!" she cried over the wind howling through the courtyard. "Look at this! I have eighteen times that! I'll give it to you, all of it! Just—

please just—" her voice began to trail away as she realized the futility of her position. She wouldn't cry. She refused to cry. "I-I w-want to be one of them!"

The intercom box stayed quiet.

She flapped her arms again, her open coat snapping around her body as the wind tugged and pulled at it. Despite her determination not to, she felt the burn of tears. "Can you at least tell me why not? What's wrong with me? Am I too tall? Too short? Too skinny? Not skinny enough? What makes me second best?"

Across the courtyard, the door to Judgment opened. She'd forgotten how imposing Tane was. Tall. Dark in his long 18

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winter coat, his mammoth shoulders stretching so impossibly broad as to make him seem almost as immense as his fortress. He crunched his way through the snow to her, his dark eyes assessing and his mouth betraying only the slightest hint of amusement as he leaned one shoulder against the iron grate that separated them.

Burgeoning hope flowered within her. As Mary stepped up to grasp the metal grid with both hands, her face mere inches from him, he breathed a heavy sigh and steamed the air like a dragon.

"You are too old," he said, "Mary, wife of the now deceased supreme court justice, Judge Richard Blackwell. By a good ten years, you are too old. I don't like to sink money and time into training even so lovely a beast as yourself, when said beast will bring me nothing in return. You are, in short, a lost cause."

"I will be obedient," she begged. "Whatever you ask of me, I'll do it."

"No one will buy you. You will bring me nothing at Auction."

"Then give me away." But she could tell by the look on his face that she shouldn't get her hopes up.

"Why should I bother?" he asked, giving her another slight smile, another assessing look through the cold iron bars of the portcullis.

"B-because..." her words caught in her throat. "Because I want so much to be as they are. To be desired like that."

"What makes you think I care what you want?"

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Mary looked up at the camera, then back at him. Softly, she countered, "Why would you come out here, if you didn't care?"

His smile vanished abruptly and he turned as cold as the weather. "Don't second guess me, woman. I don't like it."

He turned to go.

"I'm sorry!" Mary said quickly. She slid along the grate to grasp the bars where he'd been standing only a moment before. "I'm sorry, Master Tane. Please!" Her voice broke.

When he paused, half-turning to look back at her through the falling snow, she fell to her knees on the ice and rocks. "I'm sorry."

He studied her, hard, expressionless.

She clasped her hands in supplication. "I'm sorry."

He slowly came back to her, grasping the grate in one powerful hand. "There is nothing as melodious as the sound of a woman's begging. I find it most pleasing to the ear."

"I c-could p-please you in many ways," she offered, her desperation making her bold.

He was unimpressed. "I have a mountain full of females who would do the same, or I would take a layer of skin off their backsides to teach them better obedience."

The snow beneath her knees was cold, melting into her pant legs, near freezing on her skin.

He leaned down to her, his voice the softest of caresses, his words steaming the air as they fell from his mouth and seeming like the devil's own. "All right, Mary Blackwell. I will school you in begging. No doubt you will excel at it before I grow weary of you."

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She shivered and shook. "Th-thank you, M-Master Tane."

His barest hint of a smile returned. "Take off your clothes.

Leave them in the snow. I would see the beauty to be had in my newest beast."

Mary looked up at the falling snow, but her trembling hands, after only the briefest of pauses, hastened to obey.

Her fingers already felt numb as it was, but she unbuttoned her shirt and dropped both it and her coat into the drifts of snow. Her bra followed, exposing her breasts to the frigid wind that pebbled her nipples in an instant. She gave in to the urge to rub her arms once before gritting her teeth and bending down, her smooth back a slender arch as she pulled off both shoes and socks and dropped them on the ground.

Her gasp was involuntary, a sound sucked from her as she shifted from foot to foot on the icy rocks. Her hands shook violently and she struggled with the fastenings of her pants, pushing both them and her underwear down her legs and stepping free of them. Teeth chattering, crossing her arms between her breasts, she hugged herself as she faced Tane without a shred of clothing to protect her from the freezing temperatures.

"Hands at your sides," he admonished, but he turned and walked off to the right of the portcullis. She heard the sound of a lock turning, then a previously unnoticed door creaked open to her. When Mary bent to gather her clothes, he said,

"I told you to leave them in the snow."

"It's freezing," she shivered.

"Have I given you leave to speak to me?"