Knight (An Impossible Novel) (3 page)

Burning tears slipped from the corners of my closed eyes, but I forced myself to stop struggling.  I didn’t want to anger him further.

“That’s a good girl.  Just breathe.”

His rumbling approval was jarring.  My former Master never offered words of praise.

I pushed back my confusion, focusing on his command to breathe.  He had finally given me an order I could follow.  Thinking for myself always led to trouble.  It was far easier to blindly obey without contemplating my reality too closely.

“Shouldn’t she be restrained?”  I didn’t recognize the voice of the new man.

“I made the nurse remove the restraints,” Master said angrily.  “Do you know how much they upset her?  I would expect you to understand, Vaughn.”

“And you holding her down
is better?”  The man – Vaughn – asked, disapproval evident in his tone.  “Do you really think that she wants any man to touch her right now?”

“She shouldn’t be alone,” Master ground out.

“She wouldn’t be,” Vaughn countered.  “The nurses could watch her twenty-four/seven if you hadn’t intimidated all of them into staying out of the room.”

Nurses?
 
What were they talking about?

Don’t think,
I reminded myself. 
Just accept what’s happening.

Breathe.
  I continued to comply with the one order he had given me.

“They don’t understand.  And neither do you,” Master said sharply.

“I understand that the staff members here are trained to deal with recovering addicts.  I understand that they’re medical professionals.  You’re a field agent with the FBI, Smith, not a nurse.”

“You’ve always been the perfect goddamn Boy Scout, Vaughn,” Master spat.  “Some of us aren’t as pure as the driven snow.  I know what withdrawals feel like; I know what she’s going through from firsthand experience.  I don’t need a fucking medical degree to understand the hell she’s in right now.”

“Okay,” Vaughn’s voice was softer now, placating.  “I get why you feel a connection to her.  But I’m worried about you, buddy.  You should go home and get some sleep.”

“I’m not leaving her alone.  I can’t.”  Master’s voice was strained.  “She’s been tortured. 
By someone like us.”

“I am nothing like the bastard who hurt her,” Vaughn said, fury bleeding into his calm tone.  “And neither are you.  It’s not on you to make amends for what he did.”

“You’ve seen the marks, but you weren’t there when I found her.”  Master said angrily.  “She moved like a trained submissive.  That fucker even collared her.  She called him ‘Master,’ but she was clearly terrified of him.”  He sounded disgusted.

There was a long pause before Vaughn spoke again.  “I think it might be best if you’re not on this case at all.  You obviously can’t approach it with any sort of objectivity.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to be objective when that asshole has used what we do and twisted it to destroy her?  We use pain and pleasure to bend submissives to our will, but he’s perverted those methods and fucking broken her, Vaughn.  Her eyes…  It’s like there’s nothing there, nothing left inside her.  She doesn’t even know her own goddamn name.  And it makes me sick that I know just how he did it.  The doctors here can’t understand that.  So no, I can’t be objective when it comes to this case.  And if you were a real Dom, you couldn’t be either.”

There was a pause.

“May I speak with you in the hall, James?”  Vaughn asked calmly, politely.

Master squeezed my wrists gently to reinforce his control.  “Don’t scratch at your arms, girl.  I’ll be right back.”

I swallowed hard.  This command would be much more difficult to follow than his order to breathe.

As soon as he released me from his restraining hold, the ants seemed to double in number, tormenting me, tempting me to disobey.  I clenched my fists, forcing myself to keep my arms pressed to my chest where Master had left them.

Don’t think.  Don’t think about it.

Breathe.  Don’t scratch your arms.

I allowed the commands to become a litany running in the background of my mind.  In order to distract myself from the horrible burning itch, I focused on my surroundings.  Since I was keeping my eyes resolutely closed, my sense of hearing was heightened, and I honed in on Master and Vaughn’s distant conversation.

Master’s voice was harsh, and the occasional expletive punctuated his muffled statements with sharp clarity.  He placed emphasis the curse words, making them discernable when the rest of what he was saying was garbled.

In contrast, Vaughn’s voice was quieter, softer.  He spoke in steady, even cadences.

Eventually, Master’s voice turned more subdued in the wake of Vaughn’s unrelenting calm.

I heard only one pair of footsteps returning to me, and I instantly recognized Master’s touch as he gripped my hands gently, rubbing soothing circles across my palms.

As much as I feared my new Master, I was suddenly glad that my former Master had given me to him.
  He offered words of praise and gentle, rewarding touches.

A chilling thought struck me.  Maybe I hadn’t been given to him; maybe he had taken me without permission.  If my former Master found me and discovered that I had been disloyal, he would hurt me.

Which punishment would be worse?  The retribution of my former Master or the cruelty of my new one?

But was he cruel?  He had tortured me by denying me my reward, but he certainly wasn’t being cruel to me now.

Yes, I preferred this treatment.  I had to ensure that my new Master would keep me.

I opened my eyes so I could meet his silver ones.  “I’ll be good for you, Master.  I promise.”

His expression twisted in fury.  “Don’t call me that,” he snapped.

I cringed away from him, squeezing my eyes shut again.  I had looked at him directly and spoken without permission.  I braced myself for pain, but I was shocked to feel his fingers running through my hair again in a soothing rhythm.

“It’s okay, girl,” he said more gently.  “You’re okay.  Just rest.”

I had made the right choice.  Although his ferocity terrified me, that same ferocity would protect me once I convinced him to accept me.  Master would keep m
e safe from His retribution if He returned for me.

I just hoped my new life wasn’t more painful than the last.

Obeying Master’s order, I fell into sleep.

*  *  *  *

I relived the day I came into being, the day the woman I had once been had finally given up.

She had been in the dark for so long.  The only time she was blessed with the light was when he came to hurt her, to violate her.  She dreaded that blessing.

And she dreaded the high of the heroin almost as much as she craved the sweet hours of release from her reality, from her pain.  Every time he hurt her, every time he fucked her, he forcibly gave her the drug as her “reward.”

She was terrified to realize
that she was coming to see it as just that: a reward for enduring what he gave her.  He wanted her to willingly accept what he did to her, to beg him to use her so she could attain that sweet release.

Even
she
didn’t understand how she was clinging on to her last vestiges of defiance.

She didn’t know how long she had been trapped in her prison, but she was beginning to fear that no one was coming to her rescue.  Her family hadn’t known where she was on the night she was taken; they would have been disgusted if they found out she was exploring the BDSM lifestyle.  And her slim hope that one of her friends from the club had witnessed her abduction was waning.  She had left the club fairly early, and no one else had been in the parking lot when she walked out to her car.  The last thing she remembered was retrieving her keys from her purse before something sharp pierced her neck and the world disappeared.

Even more upsetting was the realization that it would have been her family who reported her missing rather than her friends at the club.  No one from her “real life” knew about her forays into the world of BDSM, and it was unlikely anyone would trace her disappearance to the club.  Her friends in the lifestyle didn’t even know her last name.

Despite her fear that she wouldn’t escape her hellish new reality, she still resisted her captor.  He had mentioned others that he had tortured before her.  They had died.

Once, she had tried to die.  But he wouldn’t let her.

He allowed her to refuse food and water to the point that she was so weakened she could barely move.  Then he took advantage of her weakness, forcing sustenance down her throat.  Once he had revived her, he hurt her worse than ever.  It was one of the first times he had really damaged her, striking her with a cane until her skin broke and wept blood.

She ate and drank compliantly after that, but she still fought him every time he tried to take her, her battered body doing its best to resist him.  If she ever managed to land a blow on him, she would be returned to the cage when he was finished with her.  Otherwise, he kept her secure with a manacle around her ankle.  It was attached to the wall by a short chain, but it gave her the freedom of movement she needed to reach the toilet and the showerhead.  He insisted that she wash herself, and although she wanted to defy him, she hated the feel of grime on her skin.

She had abandoned the notion of privacy in her first few days of incarceration.  He had taken her clothes so that she never had the option of hiding her body from him.  She had never been shy about being naked; she used to be a bit of an exhibitionist.  But the sensation of his eyes studying her flesh made her skin crawl.  It was just one more of her pleasures he had corrupted.

He had taken so much from her, but he hadn’t taken her free will, her defiance.  Not until the day that he brought in his Mentor.

She heard the dreaded creak of the door opening at the top of the stairs, and she closed her eyes in anticipation of the light that would sear them.

“Keep your eyes closed, whore.  If you look at me, I’ll make sure you never see anything again.  And if I hear you utter one word without express permission, I’ll cut out your tongue.”

The man’s voice was unfamiliar to her, and although his timbre was warm and rich, his words chilled her to the core.

The insides of her eyelids flared red as the light was flipped on, but she kept them shuttered.  She already dreaded seeing the man who had made her life a living hell, so it wasn’t difficult to avoid the sight of him.  What was more difficult to resist was the impulse to identify the new man who was entering her prison.

“But Sir.
  She’s my property.  I like how she looks.  I don’t want her permanently damaged.”  She recognized the voice of her jailor, and she was shocked to realize he sounded almost petulant.

“Do you want a pretty whore or an obedient slave?”  The new man asked harshly.  “You’ve had her for nearly two months, and she has yet to call you ‘Master.’”  He sighed.  “I have to admit I’m disappointed in you.  I thought I had taught you better than this.”

“The others broke,” her tormentor said defensively.

The man who she would come to think of as “the Mentor” spoke disparagingly.  “Yes,
but the others didn’t survive, did they?  You chose this one because she was special.  I would say you’ve chosen well if it weren’t apparent that you have no idea how to truly master a woman.  You should have taken great pleasure in breaking this one, but instead you’ve allowed her to frustrate you and defy you at every turn.”

“Yes.  I know that.”  Her captor struggled to keep his tone deferential, but frustration bled into it.  “That’s why I’ve asked for your help.”

The Mentor’s voice was low and soft.  “If you don’t remember to speak to me with proper respect, I’ll take her for myself.  Then you can find another toy that breaks easily and wastes away in a matter of weeks.  If you keep going through them at the rate you have been, people are going to start taking notice.  And I won’t save you if they come for you.  I’ll put you down before they can even get to you.  I will
not
allow you to take me down with you.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sir.
  I’m sorry.”  His tone was so meek, she barely recognized the speaker as her jailor.

“Don’t make me regret my decision to teach you how to channel your urges.  You’ve only survived this long because of what I’ve given you.  I’ve never been known for benevolence, and I’ve already afforded you any scraps of it that I might possess.”  The Mentor’s voice was flat, devoid of any emotion.  It was more chilling than her captor’s cruel bark or enraged shouts.

“And I’m so grateful for that, Sir.  I won’t fuck up again.  That’s why I need your help.  Please.”  She was shocked to realize his words were ragged with fear.

Oh, god.  If he was frightened of the Mentor, what might the man do to her?

“I have to admit your attempts with the heroin were a good idea.  It will prove an effective way to ensure her loyalty.  But only once you break her.  You’ve demanded she call you ‘Master,’ but you stop giving her pain before she does so.  Why would she give in when you can’t follow through on your threats?”  The Mentor spoke disparagingly, and he sounded more than a little disappointed.