Bought (4 page)

My hands were pulled up and the ropes at my wrists were attached to the bar. “Now,” William ordered, “spread your legs. Wide.” My thighs whimpered in protest as I spread my legs in response to that command, but it was well within my capacity to bear. I was the product of many hours of combat training. I was in the best shape of my life.

“Good.” This was Karen. She knelt and buckled a cuff around my ankle, fastening it with a heavy chain to rings on the floor. William repeated the motion on the other side and they raised the bar holding my hands up until I was stretched tight.

I was wide open to anything they were going to do to me; I had no ability to stop it. It went against every hard-won survival instinct to allow them to bind me this way. I had to fight to control myself as they had tethered my hands; I shook with the effort of staying still as they locked my legs so I couldn’t move.
Think of Marc,
I said to myself fiercely.
Find lust in this.

William walked in front of me, his hands running over my body. My eyes were lowered, but the posture collar kept my head erect.
This is not Dylan,
I reminded myself.
Relax. These people are not going to hurt you.

Karen moved behind me, her delicate fingers tracing the curve of my spine, her small hands cupping the round cheeks of my butt. She kneaded them, alternately pushing them closed and pulling them apart. “So very aroused,” she muttered. “Have you ever had a woman, Jenny?”

No.
“Once,” I lied instead.

William’s fingers tweaked both my nipples, stretching them away from my body. I bit my lip as pain spiked through me, but at the same time, Karen’s hands stroked my pussy lips, tugging at my labia till I whimpered.

I didn’t know what to do, except I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t know what to make of this sea of sensation that was sweeping in tidal waves over my body. My pussy dripped, my nipples throbbed with longing. My body ached with need in a way that it hadn’t done since that night in Paris two years ago.

“Jenny.” William had a suede flogger in his hands. I breathed a little easier. Dylan had whipped me often. Floggers, I could deal with. It was the single-tail whip I was terrified of. “This flogger will warm you up.” His voice was steady. “When I hit you, I want you to call out where you are on the pain scale, one through ten.”

“Yes Sir.” I sounded nervous.

“Keep your eyes open.” This was Karen. I complied instantly. In this room, tied up and immobilized, obeying came instinctively. I had learned that severe punishment would follow if I weren’t sufficiently well-behaved.

The flogger scoured my breasts in a sharp slap. I inhaled automatically, waiting for the wave of pain to sweep over me, but as it came, I breathed easier. “
Four
,” I muttered. I could take more.

“Good.” Another precise hit on my abdomen.
Two.
A flick of his wrists and the tails of the flogger flew through the air towards my defenceless body.
Five.

The strokes came faster as William established, with my muttered input, how hard I could be whipped. The flogger kissed every inch of my front. My breasts. My abdomen. My lower stomach. The front of my thighs. I felt my entire body warm in response and throb in need. Karen’s hands ran all over me in between strokes of the flogger. Partly to keep me at the knife-edge of arousal, but partly to check that I wasn’t in more pain than I could handle.

There was a world of difference between this expert flogging and the torture that Dylan had put me through. When Dylan had hit me, it was all about watching me shudder and flinch. He didn’t care if I felt pain or pleasure. He was unconcerned that I was a weeping, twitching mess. He was indifferent to the way my body twisted away from him in helpless self-preservation. In fact, he preferred to watch me try to escape him. I would be hung by my arms but my legs would be free to try to back away from him. Except that there was never anywhere to go.

My terror had been an aphrodisiac for my Master. I’d shake my head desperately. I’d cry silently – I’d known better than to make a noise. I would cower in fear and Dylan would smile, that chilling, emotionless smile, and he would hit me harder.

But in this testing dungeon, Madame Lorraine’s two instructors showed me something else. They showed me why a submissive would welcome this treatment. They revealed that each stroke of the flogger could also bring pleasure. Their careful attention to my body demonstrated that it wasn’t just for the arousal of a Master that I might be whipped. My own desires mattered. These strokes were as much a gift for me as they were for my Master.

Karen flogged my back now as William flogged my front. I whimpered and I bit my lip and I called out numbers. One stroke was an eight – a sharp slice of flaming pain, but the strokes had been building up to it and my body, appropriately prepared for it, had welcomed that hot lance.

When they untied me, my skin was hot to the touch and decorated by blotches of red and deep pink. My legs trembled but Karen was behind me, holding me up, while William expertly massaged feeling into my arms and legs. Then I was led to another part of the dungeon and one word was spoken. “Kneel.”

The first part of my examination was over and I was sure I’d passed it with flying colours. Now it was time for the second test.

***

Do you know how I learned to get rid of my gag reflex? It wasn’t pretty. Like everything else with Dylan, it involved pain. Lots and lots of pain. Of course, like all of Dylan’s training methods, it was brutally effective.

William and Karen positioned me in front of a wooden pillar with a thick phallus sticking out of it at the perfect height for my mouth when I knelt. My hips were moved until I was poised over a large dildo that stood up from the floor. One sharp order and I lowered myself down onto it.

My pussy screamed in protest at the intrusion.
There had been no one since Marc.
But I was wet and the dildo wasn’t designed to hurt me, just to fill me completely. As before, the pain was bearable, maybe even pleasurable.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Karen lubricate a butt plug with an evil grin on her face. “I am going to enjoy this,” she said, anticipation in every syllable. “Hold your cheeks open for me.”

My face flaming at the lewd intimacy of this act, I obeyed. This was all new to me. I’d been taken so many times by so many men. But those had been acts of violence and my consent wasn’t required. Here however, I needed to offer myself to my master’s will. I was being measured on my active participation.

The butt plug was inserted in. A sharp pain greeted this act, but my response was born more of fear than anything else. It took every bit of will power I possessed to hold still. At least my pussy had the memory of Marc to assure me that sex could be pleasurable. My anal passage has no such reassurance. But Karen and William were clearly experienced at bringing their submissives to great heights of desire. When the muscles of my sphincter closed around the neck of the plug, I felt full. I felt hyper-aware of my pussy and my ass. I felt like a creature of sex, ready to fulfil my master’s desire. It made me feel sensual, not afraid.

“I want your hips to bounce up and down,” William ordered. “And I want you to mouth-fuck the other dildo. Take it as deep down your throat as possible. Don’t be distracted by anything we do to you. No teeth marks on the dildo. Understood?”

I nodded silently. “Yes Sir,” I added for good measure.

“Get going then, Jenny.”

As ordered, I started riding the dildo on the floor. Sparks of desire started to build in my body as I fucked myself while William and Karen watched. My mouth was open wide, and my head bobbed obediently on the dildo.

***

I ask Marc if I can suck his cock. For the first time in my life, I want to. My body is flushed with pleasure at the orgasm his talented mouth has given me and I want to reciprocate. I want to please him.

He shakes his head, though there’s a small smile playing about his lips. “Lie back, sweetness,” he tells me. He holds my hands above my head with his own and he positions his body over mine. As if in slow motion, I watch his head dip down to one needy nipple. I watch his lips fasten around that nub and I feel the shockwave of lust all through my body as his teeth graze at my skin.

I moan out aloud and my legs wind around his body, pulling him closer. “Fuck me,” I plead. I am going to combust from pleasure.

“All in good time, bright star,” he promises me. “All in good time.”

***

I could feel my memories lubricate my pussy. On autopilot, my mouth sucked the phallus.

There was more. There was a lot more. Nipple clamps were fastened to my nipples and the chain connecting them was wound around a pillar so that each time my head pulled back on the dildo, a sharp stab greeted my nipples. But though I wanted to call the feeling that radiated through my entire body pain, I was lying to myself. Somewhere, though I hadn’t thought I was capable of it, I found pleasure.

A vibrator was nestled among my folds and it was turned on. My ability to control my orgasms was tested and though sweat coated my skin at each denied peak, I obeyed William and Karen. I was in a tunnel. My mind had narrowed down to only one thought.
Do what they want you to do.

But unlike every single time in the past, when I obeyed, I didn’t do it out of fear.
This was a need to obey that I didn’t fully understand.
Thoughts of my revenge had receded to the background. In the foreground, the only thing that was left was this shaking feeling in my body. The endorphins took over and I did as they asked, addicted to their quiet words of encouragement and to their evenly voiced orders.

When I was finally allowed release, I moaned around the cock in my mouth, but my rhythm didn’t falter. Even in my release, I remembered a lesson that was so deeply etched into my soul – the most important thing was my master’s pleasure.

Ellie / Jenny:

I had passed my evaluation. I’d been allowed to dress and I rejoined Madame Lorraine in the small sitting room I’d been in earlier.

“Your auction is in two days,” she said.

Fear stabbed through me.
That soon?
But of course, I would want the auction to be as soon as possible, for the sake of my dying sister. “Thank you.” My voice trembled with nerves, though she took it to be relief. After all, I would be paid a quarter of my sale price immediately and that sum of money would be vital to start my imaginary sister’s more aggressive treatments for leukemia – the ones the insurance companies wouldn’t cover.

“Be here at ten in the morning,” she continued. “We will need to get you ready so you can look your best. That will help your purchase price. The auction itself will be at six in the evening.”

It would take eight hours to get me ready for auction?
But I bit off any protest. After all, what did I know of make-up and the art of pleasing men? I’d been taken when I was eighteen. I’d thrown myself into training when I was twenty. I was twenty-six now and painfully inexperienced and I had absolutely no knowledge of the things women did to attract men.

But I hadn’t needed any make-up to attract Marc. My brain, unbidden by me, once again started reliving details of that night two years ago.

***

I’ve run into a tiny neighborhood watering hole in the arrondissement of Saint-Denis in the north east corner of Paris. My blood pounds and my emotions churn. He’s seated at the bar and the only available seat is next to him. I grit my teeth – I’m not looking for company. I mutter a polite ‘Bonsoir’ and hope I’m left alone. No such luck. He turns to me with a smile. “American?” he asks in English.

I frown at him. “I speak pretty fluent French,” I say. “I hate when people listen to my French and switch to English. It’s rude.”

I am the one being rude, but his smile just widens. “D’accord.” Okay. I notice, at that precise moment when he smiles, that he’s really good looking. Two dimples dance in his cheeks. He has short dark hair, with just a hint of a wave in it. Stubble coats his chin. His shoulders are broad and his body, from what I can tell, is the definition of perfection. He is wearing a suit that makes him stand out in this poor corner of Paris.

I am very aware that I set off in a run after my altercation with Lucien. My hair is damp with sweat and sticks to my forehead. My shirt clings to me. I’m dishevelled and unkempt but he doesn’t seem to mind.

We chat in French. I have exaggerated a little. My French is very good, but I am not a native speaker. But he is, this stranger with eyes that are as blue as the ocean. His pronunciation is impeccable, his accent flawlessly Parisian.

His name is Marc, he tells me. He doesn’t offer a last name and I don’t ask. I tell him my name is Rachel. A lie, of course. My real name is not to be revealed. I’m on a mission and my cover is critical.

There is passion dancing between Marc and me. I feel something for him that I’ve never felt before for a man. Lust. Arousal. Flushed pleasure when his fingers caress mine, a certain blushing acquiescence when he insists on buying me a drink.  

His hands cup my jaw as the night goes on. “Come home with me?” he asks directly.

Lucien’s angry words are still on my mind. “Fix this. You are useless to me this way.” And though I am angry with him, I understand the truth of his words. I have always known that I might have to play the seductress, if the situation warrants it. I’d do anything to get Dylan McAllister. Yet I am terrified of sex and I recoil from a man’s touch, knowing from hard experience how close lust is to cruel violence.  

But I want Marc and this makes him a means to an end. I have never felt lust before. I should embrace this feeling and go home with this man. I will use this tight, pleasurable feeling in my lower belly, the heat in my cheeks and the painful ache in my erect nipples. I will fix my inability to enjoy sex. I will free myself of the fear in my heart when a man desires me.

***

The time I spend with him is the most incredible night in my life. It is a night in which I feel genuine pleasure from the act of sex for the first time.

I stay with him all night. In the morning, he drives me back to an apartment complex in Clichy sous Bois. He looks unhappy when he sees the badly maintained building, but he doesn’t harp on about it. Instead, his eyes rest on mine. “Can I see you again?” he asks.

My heart breaks. My life doesn’t have room for relationships. Not as long as Dylan McAlister is still alive.

But by this time, after four years of Lucien’s training, I’m skilled at lying. “I’d really like that,” I say. That part isn’t a lie. What follows is. “Let me give you my phone number?” I reel off a number to him, and he punches it into his cell phone and dials. The phone in my pocket rings, and I smile at him.

“Now you have my number too,” he says in explanation.

He kisses me goodbye. I let him. I stand and watch him drive off and then, I pull out the cheap burner phone, remove the SIM card and toss it in the trash. A swift twist of my hands, and the flip phone breaks into two. I toss each part of the phone in two different trash cans on my way back to Lucien.

I’ll never see Marc last-name-unknown again. I tell myself it is for the best.

***

“Are you listening to me, Jenny?” Madame Lorraine gave me a strange look and I realized I was zoning out on her again. I shook myself internally. I had to keep my head in the game. Truth be told, though I put a bold face on it for Lucien, I was petrified at the idea of this auction. I’d sworn I was done being someone’s sex slave. Yet this was the only way to get to Dylan.

This auction is for consensual sexual submissives,
I reminded myself in an effort to keep my fear at bay.
This will be nothing like what Dylan McAllister did to you.
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? I couldn’t know. After all, Alexander Hamilton was an associate of Dylan’s. Perhaps he too got his thrills from kidnapping and raping women.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I pasted a thoroughly fake, yet convincingly worried smile on my face. “I was just thinking about my sister.” Again, this excuse worked on Madame Lorraine, as I knew it would. After all, this entire elaborate auction she ran was her way of dealing with what had been done to her own sister so many years ago.

She was far more idealistic than I was. I wondered if she really believed that if there were enough consensual slave auctions, men wouldn’t need to kidnap young girls from their homes and torture and rape them. Me, I was more cynical. I’d seen the dark side up close and it wasn’t something you forgot.

I’d zoned out again. I took the address she gave me and I promised to be there at ten in the morning.

***

In keeping with my cover story of someone who was watching every penny, I was staying at a cheap hostel on Khao San Road. Lucien, always cautious that someone might be watching our every move, was staying at a different hostel a few doors away from mine. I called him from a burner phone when I reached my room.

“Well?” he asked me.

“What?”

“Are you all set? Are you ready?”

For a few seconds, I wondered if Lucien actually cared. If I told him how afraid I was that I was about to be trapped again, would he tell me not to worry? Would he hold me and promise to find another way to get to Dylan? Would he assure me that everything would be okay?

But I wasn’t naïve and I had no ability to delude myself.

We all had ghosts in our pasts. Like Madame Lorraine, Lucien had a sister to avenge. Claire. She’d been taken the same way I’d been taken, abducted from a crowded parking lot by Dylan McAllister’s henchmen. She had been sixteen though, too young for what had happened to her. In keeping with the pattern, two years after her abduction, Dylan lost interest in her and sold her to a brothel in Saudi Arabia.

She had killed herself the first chance she got and Lucien was forever haunted by her memory and his abject failure to save her.

Lucien would never rest as long as Dylan was alive. He would never give up. This was why we’d made common cause, why he’d taken me and trained me so that I would be able to kill with the same fluid ease as he did. Because his thirst for revenge was matched only by mine. I burned with a need to make sure that Dylan McAllister suffered for what he put me through. A flaming compulsion to kill him drove everything I did. All I ever wanted was to stand over him and hold a gun in my hands and to watch him plead and cry, like I had the first day.

Then I would offer him the same mercy he’d offered me.
None
. I would pull the trigger and he would be dead.

My shoulders straightened and my voice filled with resolve. What did my fears of a slave auction matter in the light of what I had to do? Dylan needed to die
and that was the only thing that was important.
“I’m ready.”

***

While Ellie Samuelson had travelled many times to Bangkok, Jenny Fullerton had never visited the city. Jenny Fullerton had never left the USA until she nervously boarded a plane to Bangkok to sell herself to the highest bidder in a consensual slave auction.

You are Jenny Fullerton,
I told myself sternly, looking in the small bathroom mirror, but the face of a stranger stared back at me. My hair was now the brunette hues that Alexander Hamilton was supposed to prefer, not the reddish-rust colour I’d been born with. It had also been straightened till it hung flat down my back. My eyes were still green, thank heavens. Changing their colour was out of the question – the surgery existed to do it, but it was risky and blindness wasn’t part of the Kill-Dylan-McAllister plan. And of course, coloured contact lenses were too easily detectable.

No gun, not in Thailand. Too complicated and risky. No knives. It hurt me to leave the Bowie knife taped to the underside of the toilet tank cover, but there was nowhere I could hide it on my person, not with the undoubtedly scanty clothing I’d be wearing at the auction. All I had was my body and it would have to be enough. I’d been taught to fight in the underground fighting halls around the world where men who aspired to rise to the MMA ranks trained. The many thousands of hours I’d spent learning kickboxing, Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, these would all have to suffice.

I tried to forget that the plan involved Alexander Hamilton buying me for sex. My body wasn’t a combat machine for the next three months. It was only meant to be an object of desire.

Once again, I looked in the mirror. I was dithering, avoiding the moment when I’d have to step out of the door, into the teeming crowds of Khao San and hail a cab to the more cosmopolitan district of Silom, where I’d be bathed, made up and auctioned like a piece of property.

The phone rang shrilly. It was Lucien. “Are you on your way?” His voice was tense. This was the moment of truth for both of us. If Alexander Hamilton didn’t buy me at today’s auction, we’d have no way of accessing Dylan McAllister’s Vietnamese fortress compound.

“Just leaving,” I told him, closing the door behind me. I ignored my shaking hands and thought instead of the knife I was leaving behind, taped to the toilet, where it wouldn’t be discovered until after I was gone. I would miss that knife.