Byron-4 (6 page)

“No, everything you say to me is confidential, unless it goes to trial. That would be up to you, though. If you wanted to press charges against the man who bit you, it is perfectly within your rights. It’s a bad bite, Taylor, and it could have been very serious if Damon hadn’t been there to treat you for it. I understand that you people have safe words. Did you want him to hurt you this bad?”

Cait watched Taylor for any reaction, anything, but the girl just sat there. Her eyes were still closed, but there were more tears on her cheeks. Cait was very good at reading people and she could get nothing from Taylor at all.

“He...I didn’t want him to bite me. When my sort of people go to a club, the first—”

“Taylor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say—” Cait wanted to take back what she had said; she never meant it the way Taylor had obviously taken it. But she cut her off before she could explain.

“When we first go to a club, we fill out a sheet telling them what we want, what can be used, and the amount of pain we think we can tolerate. And yes, I have a safe word.

That’s on the sheet as well. He wouldn’t...it didn’t matter to him. He wouldn’t stop.”

“Did he hear you say it? And how many times did you have to say it before he stopped?” Cait was complying a list of things to look up when she got back to the office.

Since Taylor had taken Byron out of the picture, she would have to get her answers elsewhere.

“I said my word eighteen times before I passed out from the pain. And he stopped, I was told, when he came. I’m very tired now, Detective. I’d like for you to leave.” Cait sat there, stunned. Taking advantage of someone, even in a club setting such as Taylor had been in, was rape. If what Taylor was telling her was true, and Cait had no doubt that it was, then Taylor had been raped as surely as if it had happened in a dark alley.

“Taylor, if you tell me where this occurred and who it was that did it, I’ll bring him in for questioning. I’m sure that Devin could take him to trial and have him up on rape charges so fast that his head would spin. What he did to you was wrong.” The laughter that spilled from Taylor’s mouth startled Cait. The sound, brittle and manic, made the hair on her arms stand up. And the fact that she hadn’t moved made it seem all the more eerie.

“No, Detective. I’m not pressing charges. Please go away. I’m very tired. Could you please tell Mr. Grant that I’m not up to speaking to him? I’d really appreciate it.” Taylor slowly got to her feet and shuffled her way to the bathroom and closed the door.

Cait stood as well and looked down at her notes. The word rape was there in the margin, as well as in her notes, but without dragging Taylor into the station and trying to get her to press charges; she would have nothing to hold the man on. Not yet anyway. Eighteen times she had said her safe word and then Taylor had passed out from pain. Shaking her head, Cait left the poor girl alone. But she did go to the two clubs in town to see if they would let her see the recording of the event if there was one.

She hit pay dirt on the first try with the “Flogger.”

~CHAPTER 6~

Taylor pulled the towel off the counter, put it over her mouth, and screamed into it.

Tears streamed down her face as she sobbed. Her heart ached and she didn’t think she could stand too much more. She sat there for a while, not really caring if Cait left or not.

She had taken her bag into the bath earlier, but when she heard the door open to the room, she stepped out to find Byron there and was glad that she hadn’t changed.

Pulling her bag out of the curtained tub, she began the process of putting on her jeans and t-shirt.

Taylor had called her friend Angel at six-thirty that morning and had made arrangements for her to pick her up this afternoon. Angel had gone by Jamie’s house and gotten Taylor’s bag of clothes for her and had given Jamie the key back. He hadn’t said a single word to her after she told him what she was there for. Angel had dropped off the clothes Taylor was putting on just before Byron came in. When Taylor was dressed, she hobbled back into the room and called Angel again.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, you can stay with me for a couple of days. At least until you can get around enough to walk without too much pain. I’ve already cleared it with my husband and he’s fine with it,” Angel asked when Taylor told her it was time.

“No thanks. I just need a ride to the Y and that’s all. I’ve already called them and they are holding a room for me. Betsey works there and she said that she’d hold it until noon. Besides, I need to go to work tomorrow. The Freedoms aren’t very happy with me already. And I can’t afford to miss any more work.” Angel tried for a few more minutes, but Taylor had her mind set. It wasn’t just the job or the room; she just didn’t want to see any more people right now, including the Grants. Fifteen minutes later, Angel walked in with the AMA papers that Taylor needed to leave without the doctor’s permission. “Against Medical Advice” meant that Taylor couldn’t sue the hospital if something happened to her after she left, but she really didn’t care one way or the other if it did.

The nurses put up a huge fuss and threatened Taylor with calling back in Detective Grant. When that failed, they said they would call Mrs. Parker and Doctor Damon Grant. In the end, Taylor walked out as the head nurse was dialing the phone to Damon’s office.

Her room at the Y was nice, small but clean. Taylor didn’t have a television, but then she seldom watched it. She loved music, but she had enough tunes on her computer that it was no problem hooking in the ear buds and listening to them for a while, so she didn’t miss the radio. There was a single bed and a dresser, and after putting her things in it, she laid down. She really was tired and her leg throbbed. She supposed she should eat, but wasn’t hungry. On her way home from work tomorrow, she decided that she would go to the store and pick up some fruit and a few snacks.

Taylor thought about what Cait had said. “You people,” she had said. As if she was a different sort of person than a human. Taylor wondered if that’s what Jamie thought, that she was a subhuman.

She had heard it before—sexual deviant, sadist, sick. She supposed in a way she was. She didn’t choose her sexual preference; it sort of chose her. Smiling, she thought that that wasn’t a true statement either, because Taylor had never had sex. She had gotten off, had some incredible climaxes, and had been responsible for a few of them, too, in her partners, but she had never allowed anyone to enter her. She wasn’t into this for the sex, but for the release, the sated feeling she got from it. But she was done with it. As soon as she was able, she was moving back to her home state of Florida and seeing about getting back into the club she had started at.

She had been a waitress there. She had just turned twenty-one and needed a part-time job. The owner, Josh Milligan, a Dom, told her that he would give her a trial run.

She had been working a month when he asked her if she wanted to work a party for him; he needed an extra waitress. She agreed. The money was great and she made great tips he said she could keep.

The party was in full swing when Josh came up behind her and took her tray. His body pressed over hers had made her wet and achy. She had been breathing hard all night, watching the others being tied down and whipped, and the need to join pressed on her hard.

“You like this don’t you, Ta? You like to watch the flogger hit their skin, leave a mark. Are you wet? Do you want to spank them?”

Taylor shook her head and watched as another woman was tied to the St. Andrews Cross. She had been naked except for the collar around her throat and the blindfold over her eyes. The first time the man smacked his partner’s bare bottom with his open hand, Josh ran his hand up under Taylor’s skirt and squeezed her ass, his cock pressed hard against her hip.

“You’re so wet, Ta, wet and hot. You want to be there? You want to be smacked like that, your ass all pink and burning? Answer me, Ta; don’t make me have to ask you a second time.”

“Yes, master. That’s what I want. I want to feel the pain burning through me.” The urge to call him “master” came naturally to Taylor, and Josh nipped at her neck as a reward.

“I want to do that to you. I want to tie you over that bench and beat your ass until you can’t stand it. Will you let me, Ta? Will you be my Sub tonight?” He started moving them toward the padded bench. As he spoke to her, he unsnapped her jeans and worked the zipper down. Her body ached for things she didn’t understand. She didn’t know all the rules, but knew enough to understand that she would belong to him this one night if she agreed.

“Yes, master. Tonight. I don’t...I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Josh pressed her down on the bench and strapped her hands to the straps on the floor. He grabbed her shirt, a tee with the bar’s name on it, and ripped if from her back, leaving her bra intact. Next, he pulled her pants and panties down to her ankles and opened her legs. He adjusted the height of the bench so that her feet were braced on the floor and then he had buckled her ankles against the legs of the bench too.

Taylor was on fire. She no longer cared that there were about thirty people in the room. All she could see, all she could feel, was Josh. And think about, anticipate, what he was going to do to her.

“You can’t come until I let you. If you do, then I will punish you. You can’t scream until you ask me if you can. If you do, then I will punish you.” He smacked her ass hard. “You will do what I tell you to do without question or I will punish you. The rest we will work out as we go. You need a safe word. Think about what you want it to be.

Once you say it, everything stops and you leave. Oh, and Taylor, I will never enter you.

I never have sex with my Subs. I will come on you and over you. I may even come down your throat, but never inside of you. Understand?” She was trying to figure out how that worked when he brought his hand down twice hard on her ass. “When I ask you something, you’ll answer me.”

“Yes, master.”

“Good.” And so her introduction to the world of pain and pleasure began. He had had to punish her only once in the two years they had been together. She had failed to make him come in less than two minutes once and he had denied her a climax for three days while they played. She never missed another deadline again.

When Josh had met Cybil, he didn’t want to play at the club anymore with anyone but Cybil. Taylor was fine with that. Josh and Cybil were so happy together, and she, Cybil and Josh all parted on good terms. She still heard from them on occasion, Christmas cards and the occasional email, and was happy to find out they had finally gotten married and had a baby.

Taylor moved to Ohio soon after for reasons she still couldn’t remember and had met Jamie a few days later. It made her hurt to think about him and she closed her eyes against the pain. She hoped him the best of luck in his life, she really did.

~~~

Byron was sitting in his hotel room, thinking about Taylor, and decided to call his brother Jamie. Even with thousands of miles separating him from her, Byron still wanted her.

“Hey, I just got back to the hotel room and wondered if you’ve seen Taylor today.

She seem okay? I had to leave quickly and didn’t explain. Cait was with her when I left.”

“No, I’ve been busy today. I...I have to go, Byr. Call Cait. I’ll see you.” And the phone went dead.

To say that Byron was shocked would have been an understatement. His brothers and he were close and to have one of them practically hang up on him hurt. He sat there for several minutes trying to figure out what he had done and decided that his brother was more in love with Taylor than he had said. Byron felt badly for his involvement with Taylor at the Charity Ball, but he wouldn’t change what he had done for anything.

He called Cait next, but he got Spencer instead.

“Taylor checked herself out of the hospital right after Cait left. The nurse said they couldn’t talk her into of staying no matter how much they threatened. Cait is taking it pretty bad. She seems to think she might have said something to her that might have hurt her. And before you ask, she won’t tell you. I’ve been trying all day. She’s lying down now.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around. Have you talked to Jamie? He practically hung up on me just now, told me that he was busy. What’s going on with him?”

“Christ, I don’t know. Mom called and said the same thing. She told me that she and Morgan had gone by the hospital to see Taylor and found out she was gone. They called Jamie and he told her Taylor wasn’t his responsibility and that he didn’t have any idea where she was nor did he care. Then he had the nerve to hang up on her. She was really pissed when she called here, then she started sobbing. Do you know how much it hurts to have your mom and your wife crying on your shoulder and there isn’t a damned thing you can do to fix it?”

Byron had made his mom cry once, but he didn’t have a wife anymore and never expected to get another one, so the other he didn’t know. After the brothers commiserated for several more minutes about their woes in life, they hung up. Byron got up and sat at his computer and did some business then went to bed. He just hoped it paid off.

The Grant brothers were very wealthy men. Their grandfather, a self-made millionaire, had left each of them a legacy and a promise. They needed to work their way through college, graduate in the top of their class, and make something of themselves. And they had, not only meeting his expectations, but exceeding them by leaps and bounds.

Spencer had become a teacher straight out of college. He loved what he did and had become one of the most sought after professors at Ohio State. Recently, he had been promoted to the head of his department, gotten married, and would soon be a father again.

Damon had been a great surgeon as an open heart specialist. About seven years ago, he had given it all up and become a general practitioner and opened his own practice. He, too, worked in the Grant building.

Nickolas was a wiz at finance, and had made him and all of them richer because of it. He had met his wife Morgan when she had come into the office for an interview. He now had a set of twin boys that were perfect in every way.