Captive Heart (2 page)

             
“Sorry, but I was with my ex-husband long enough to see that some of the myths about the city are true. If somebody in this building were up to something shady, it wouldn't be the first time. It wasn't such a nice place before it changed ownership. You got in at the right time. There's some great folks here, like the girls across the way and Mr. Podolski downstairs. But with the way the economy's been, some of the old elements have started to show back up in the neighborhood.”

             
Saskia leaned forward intently. “That just makes me more curious, though. What's a guy in tailored suits got going on that's so spooky he's got to do it in a tumbledown Bronx apartment building?”

             
Ruby smiled. “With an attitude like that I can see why Iowa wasn't big enough for you. I'd still tell you to steer clear though. I can't even guess what goes on up there. He must have some kind of day job because he comes and goes at a pretty standard time. But he's got people coming and going at all hours, and sometimes it gets pretty loud up there. Maybe it's nothing suspicious, but maybe it is. Either way, speaking purely for myself, I feel like I'm better off minding my own business where that guy's concerned.”

             
She got up and went to the living room to remind Darth Vader not to use his Force powers to jump off the couch. All the warnings were only giving Saskia more questions she was dying to ask. When Ruby returned, however, she had her laptop with her. “So, you keep telling me about this makeup blog of yours, but I haven't even gotten to see you all done up yet. Show me this new entry you posted.”

             
The thought of sharing her work with a real person in the same room flushed the questions from her mind. The shyness Saskia never felt when she was donning makeup for the camera nearly overwhelmed her when she nervously brought up the site for Ruby's perusal. The emotion quickly vanished, however, replaced by pride and excitement. The Youtube video had only been up for two hours and already had nearly two hundred hits with the number of shares on Facebook following close behind.

2

             
The clock had crept past ten o'clock again, and Saskia could not sleep. It was the eve of her big day. In the morning she would meet with reps from the Azul cosmetics company's advertising division, and she would find out once and for all whether ad space on her blog would be a good “fit” for their particular brand. From everything that had been said through e-mails and such, it seemed like she already had the sponsorship in the bag, the meeting being a mere formality. Her father, Stacey, and Ruby had all said as much. But it still felt too good to be true.

             
Lying in bed she told herself to be confidant at any cost. It wasn't like she didn't have nibbles from other potential sponsors. If Azul didn't want her ad space, someone else would. She grinned at the thought of sponsors fighting over her. Maybe the boys never had back home, but now she was becoming a hot property in other ways. It was an ambitious thought, a Saski-Blue thought. And it only increased the problem of her being too excited to sleep.

             
She was thinking about getting out of bed and firing up the DVD player – she had the most recent season of
Supernatural
that she had been saving for just such an occasion – when the sounds began. The door upstairs opened and closed, and two sets of footsteps crossed the apartment above. An unfamiliar style of music began to throb softly above her: edgy and dark, yet unmistakably sensual. Not something Saskia would pick for a date, but music you would pick for one, just the same. So the mystery man upstairs had a girlfriend, then? She hearkened back to Ruby's description of him: Mediterranean looks and tailored suits. Of course he had a girlfriend. Saskia found herself bewilderingly disappointed. Why did she care? She had never even seen the guy.

             
The music led to other sounds that led into and back out of its insistent throb. None of them brought to mind lighthearted romance. Saskia could hear the man's raised voice, intense and dark. Was the couple arguing? She thought she had her terrifying conformation of this when she heard a loud thump followed by a woman's moan of pain.

             
That sound got Saskia sitting upright in her bed and groping for her phone in the dark to call the police. She wasn't quite sure what to do. She had never had to call the police over anything before, let alone in New York City. What would happen? Would they even come? Her new Bronx neighborhood wasn't a bad one, but it certainly didn't appear to be law enforcement's top priority either.

             
Another thud, another moan. Saskia found her phone in the darkness but was unable to complete her heroic rescue call as she had planned. What stopped her was a woman's voice from upstairs. The woman's voice rose high enough that Saskia distinctly heard her moan the words,
“Oh yes...”

             
The man's voice rose too, both in response and challenge.
“You were not given permission to speak, my dear. You must be whipped for this. To the cross with you. If you're not there in five seconds, I will become truly angry...”

             
Saskia knew the next thudding noises to be the woman's scampering feet as she carried out the instructions. Saskia's fear turned to a mixture of emotions: embarrassment, astonishment, disgust. She let the phone fall to her lap. The couple upstairs wasn't fighting, just really kinky. And, unknown to them, their downstairs neighbor could hear the whole thing.

             
Saskia lay back down, as still as she could, not wanting to listen, yet unable to stop herself. Not daring to breathe lest they hear her too. The man was delivering on his threat. The cracks of the whip were barely audible, but the cries of the woman that carried both pleasure and pain were easy to hear. Saskia knew things like this went on in the world, and the idea had always sickened her somewhat. But now that she was hearing it, a thrill of forbidden excitement was worming its way into her, not letting her do anything that might tune it out.

             
When the whipping ended she heard the man, the dominator, giving his partner instructions and commands. Saskia could not make out the individual words, but his voice was as dark and as rich as the first time she had overheard it, a voice used to being obeyed. She could understand how the woman with him would want to obey. If it were Saskia in that situation, she feared she would obey without thinking and be glad for the opportunity to do so.

             
Was that the thrill that people found when they did this?

             
Saskia had never thought herself a voyeur, or remotely interested in kink. Being confronted with such things now, when sleep was elusive and her mind was already wound up, had a narcotic effect. She strained to listen to the debauchery going on above her, eager for whatever detail she could find. The man did not go easy on his captive companion, and she apparently did not want him to. Saskia's imagination ran fast and hot, supplying pictures that must surely outstrip the reality in terms of decadence and perversion. The more she did so, the easier it got to imagine herself as the woman at the center of it all.

             
The sexual arousal was inevitable. Running her hands over her own soft and curvy body was the only way to keep herself focused enough to listen. Otherwise her own sexual frustration would demand satisfaction too loudly and draw her attention away. She ended up being glad that she waited. She heard the man give a grandiose command that she knew must be the centerpiece the evening had been working toward.

             
“You know what to do now,”
he told the woman in answer to some unheard plea.
“Touch yourself. Play with yourself. I will tell you what to do and when to stop. Do not finish before I tell you that you can.”

             
Saskia knew the command had not been for her, knew it was ridiculous to interpret it as such. But the heart wants what it wants, and the flesh needs what it needs. Stacey's gift had not crossed her mind in two days, but Saskia found it immediately. She was so ready by the time she laid back down on the bed with it that she didn't even take her panties off. She let the tip of it rest against the hood of her clit through the wet cotton of her underwear and began to gently slide it back and forth. The anxiety about the coming day and the fantasy formed from the pain and sweat of strangers merged into one.

             
The corporate meeting room she imagined for herself was intimidating and sterile. Saskia bravely wore her finest business suit, but she knew, deep down, she did not belong there. She was just a silly girl from Iowa, and the two reps from Azul's advertising department knew it. But these two stunningly handsome, worldly men were aware of her other assets. Indeed, they had looked at them throughout the entire meeting. Saskia's body responded to that attention in ways she could not control.

             
“Our company would love to sponsor you, Ms. Bergen,” said one of the men. “But I am afraid we cannot commit based on the strength of your readership numbers alone.”

             
“Yes, for us to associate our brand with yours, I'm afraid you're going to have to give us just a little bit extra...” The second man had drawn Saskia's attention with his voice. He held her in thrall with his intense blue eyes. She did not resist when he cupped her face in one strong hand, drew her near, and kissed her hard. The other man stood behind her and helped her shrug out of jacket. They meant to have her right there on the conference table. What made it so exquisitely humiliating was that even if they did not give her their company's business, she still would have let them...

             
Lying on her bed, Saskia loved the feeling of her wet panties clinging to her skin as she pressed the dildo against her sex. They were going to be soaked if she didn't take them off soon. From the depths of her fantasy she heard the man upstairs speak to his captive.

             
“Spread wider for me, darling. Let me see your pussy. Yes, that's it. Show it to me.”

             
Saskia's big, cheerful voice came out as a submissive squeak.
“Yes sir...”
She wiggled out of her underwear, which she kicked wetly to the floor. Unencumbered, she spread her legs very wide and let the dildo tease the inside of her sticky pussy just a little.

             
In her fantasy, the corporate execs had gotten her out of most of her clothing, and not gently. Saskia was going to walk out of here with some very disheveled dry cleaning. Everyone on the streets of Manhattan was going to know what she had done. Meanwhile, her lovers had the best bodies that corporate gym memberships could provide. The blue-eyed man was lying on the conference table with a fist full of her sandy blonde hair, making her lick and suck his big, thick cock. Meanwhile his colleague fucked her doggy-style. She did not even know these men's names, yet they could cum in any of her openings, for all she cared. She wanted them to...

             
Saskia was pulled out of her fantasy temporarily by the crack of a whip against flesh.
“I had to do that, darling. You were getting too close. You will cum when I tell you too. Not before.”

             
Saskia herself had been quite close to cumming before the distraction. Of course he couldn't have known. He didn't even know she was listening. But the perfect timing of it was such a thrill. It got her well on the way to cumming again, but, oh, she had to be careful, had to show some restraint...

             
The two nasty corporate men had succeeded in making Saskia's body betray. Both had fucked her and gotten her to cum. Now it was their turn. She lay nude upon the table, on her back and utterly helpless. One man made her take his cum in her mouth and on her face. She had barely finished swallowing the last salty drop when the second man let loose, spilling his seed across her big, soft breasts: a humiliating end to a debasing act she would never have done in her real life. Then the door to the room opened and she heard the voice of the man who lived upstairs.

             
“You've done well, gentlemen. You really know how to manage a potential advertiser. You'll see my appreciation on your bonus checks. Now, I'll finish closing this deal myself.”

             
His rich, mahogany voice, his swarthy, dashing looks... Saskia's lust spun out of control all over again. The other two men's bodies had been perfect. His was beyond that, as was the hungry look in his eyes when he bent over her and filled her body with his manhood...

             
“You've done so well, darling. Yes, you've done very, very well. Cum for me now. Cum for me!”

             
Anything else he might have said vanished in the other woman's cries as she found the release she had so desperately sought and which her master had so cruelly withheld. Oblivious to all risk, Saskia let herself cry out too, knowing that the sound would be drowned out in the other woman's rapture.

             
She lay quivering on the meeting room table. The polished wood was so cold, but she was so very warm, especially deep inside where her master had spilled his seed. “Yes, Ms. Bergen, I think you are going to enjoy your relationship with Azul Cosmetics for quite some time to come...”