Comfort Object (21 page)

Oh Jesus, that one sneaked up on me. The sharp, quick orgasm. My walls contracted, but it was just response, just physiology. I felt no pleasure at all, only relief that it was over, that Jeremy wouldn't want more than three. And that fantasy! What kind of sick pervert was I, to get off on a scene like that? You're a
bad
, sick pervert, I thought. A terrible submissive, who needs to be punished.

And I felt punished. I had the orgasms, but they weren't fun, and they certainly didn't feel sexy. They felt like work. Maybe that's the lesson he was trying to teach me. That I had a job to do, and that job was pleasing him, not doing what I liked. I looked up at Jeremy again and said, “I'm sorry.”

Again I was ignored. Without words, he cuffed my free hand back to the bed. He sat beside me to do it but didn't once look down at my face. He took the clips off me, none too gently. I moaned and writhed against the cuffs. The pain of having clamps taken off was almost more excruciating than having them put on. It lingered longer, anyway.

“As we discussed,” he said to Kyle as he handed him the clamps, “put them on her every hour and don't take them off her until she comes. Three times.”

Every hour?
Jesus.

“Let her go to the bathroom and eat lunch around noon, but the rest of the time, she lies right there with her hands tied. Otherwise God knows what she'll do to herself.”

Kyle smirked down at me, jingling the evil metal devices in his palm. God, I hated his guts. Then Jeremy finally looked at me, but only to frown.

“As I said, if you have such a desire to jerk yourself off, be my guest. At four o'clock, you'll be untied and your punishment will be over.”

I looked at the clock. It wasn't even eight in the morning.

“Have a good day, Nell,” he said, then left without a backward glance.

* * *

I was a submissive. I had been for years, but this all-day-punishment thing was totally novel to me. I'd been humiliated, clamped, made to masturbate on hundreds of occasions, but never for eight hours in a row. Eight hours times three plus the three he'd already forced on me was twenty-seven orgasms, not to mention some sore, tender tits. Every time Kyle came in the room, I glared daggers at him, but he only looked back indifferently and produced the wicked clips.

Still the tit man, he took his time toying with my nipples, getting them nice and hard before he applied the clamps. The first time he came in to do it, I said, “Don't you want me to look you in the eyes?”

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't said it, because it brought that night back. The night we spent together, when he was an amazingly hot guy and I was still Little Nell, with my own simple life.

Kyle didn't react to my question. He clamped the first tit. I gritted my teeth to hold in the whine. He sighed, moving on to the other tit. “Nell, I was just doing my job. If you're still angry about that, you're stupid.”

I pursed my lips in annoyance and looked away. I wasn't still angry. Was I?

“Anyway, you enjoyed that night,” he added. “So what the hell do you care?”

“I don't care.” We looked at each other. It felt like a mournful moment to me. How did he feel about what he'd done? He looked a little guilty.

“Nell—” He started to speak, but his voice cut off.

“What?” I finally asked.

“Just start fucking masturbating,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You're going to stand there and watch me?”

“Boss's orders. He doesn't trust you to do what you're supposed to when you're on your own.”

I sighed and closed my eyes all three times in a row, and every time after that. I didn't want to see him watching me, and honestly, I don't think he wanted to watch. Now if Jeremy had been here, I thought to myself. With each passing hour I grew more and more despondent. I thought I could handle this sadistic little punishment, but at some point, I started to hurt. Not hurt in my clamped nipples or hurt in my chafed clit, but hurt in my soul. I was tired of being tied up, tired of masturbating, tired of my nipples throbbing while I reached between my legs. Most of all, I was tired of feeling like shit.

“You did this to yourself,” Kyle reminded me. Horrible fucking man, gorgeous or not.

At four o'clock I managed three last orgasms. I felt too bleak by that time to even feel glad. “Do me a favor, Nell,” Kyle said as he untied me. “Don't jack yourself off anymore unless he tells you to. I don't feel like doing this again.”

“Fuck you,” I replied. With a snicker, he left the room.

I rubbed my wrists and ankles and limped to the bathroom, where I soaked in the tub for an hour. I didn't want to think about how I'd spent my day. And what had I learned? I suppose I learned that Jeremy was not fucking around when he gave me rules to obey. Perhaps I learned too that he was not the romantic hero I'd imagined. He was just my Dom.

No, he was my
employer
. Fine.
I get it now.

Now I wanted to move on, move past it. I wanted to shut my mind off. I sat at the table in the silence, then turned on the TV just to hear some noise. There was nothing to watch, only Thai channels, a few international channels, but nothing I really wanted to see. I didn't want to look out the window and freak myself out again, and I definitely felt too restless to sit and read. It had been two days, and already I was about to lose my mind.

Finally I grabbed my coat and headed down to the lobby. I didn't know if I was allowed to wander around on my own, but Jeremy wasn't there to ask. I thought about the contract rules, but it hadn't said anything about my private time, only that I had to be available to him. But he was at work. He would be working until seven or eight o'clock.

I walked through the lobby, waiting subconsciously for someone to stop me, to leap out and say,
Did Jeremy tell you that you could go?

But no one paid attention or stopped me, so I nodded to the doorman and walked outside. It was crowded on the sidewalk, the local Bangkok citizens going about their business, pushing past me impatiently, but I didn't care. I felt like I'd been sprung from prison, and I just wanted to walk. I just wanted to enjoy the feeling of being free. I wished I blended in more. My bright red hair stood out like a siren among the sea of blue-black hair. I noticed heads starting to turn as I continued along.

I should have worn a hat.

I ducked my head and kept walking, taking in the sights, but the only sights were really more people and tall buildings. The city streets were crowded with honking cars and frenetic activity. After twenty minutes or so I turned back, having barely made my way down two blocks. I was worried about losing my bearings and not being able to get back to the hotel.

Even worse, people were starting to follow me, to grab me and speak to me in broken English. I heard “Jer-my Gray, Jer-my Gray, girl-friend, Jer-my Gray!”

I didn't answer. I didn't like the way they were pulling at me, and the barrage of camera flashes clouded my vision. Soon they surrounded me, and even when I tried to walk, I couldn't move forward through the crowd without touching someone, without having to push someone out of my way.

“Excuse me.” My voice sounded panicky and shrill. “Excuse me. I'm trying to go…go over there.”

I pointed to the hotel; it was a block away, but I was sure I'd never get there. I'd never get out of this crowd.

“Jer-my. Jer-my. Where your boy-friend?”

“I don't know. I don't know.”

A policeman or security guard of some sort began to disperse the crowd with shouts and rude gesticulations. I'd never been so relieved to see anyone in my life. I ducked through the crowds to meet him. He took my elbow and attempted to shelter me from the pursuing paparazzi. He led me toward his squad car, but I pointed at the hotel.

“I have to go there. I'm staying there.” All I wanted was to run up to the eighty-fifth floor and stay there forever.

He pushed through the crowds, blowing his whistle. It shrilled next to my ear and set my teeth on edge. He smelled bad, and his hands were hurting my forearm as he dragged me along behind him. We finally reached the hotel. The policeman accompanied me into the lobby, where Jeremy waited just inside the door, his face a pale, set mask.

He nodded to the officer and thanked him in Thai before pulling me into the elevator and mashing the button with enough force to break it.

I stood beside him, not knowing what to say. I was still shaking. My stomach was still in knots from the experience outside, and now I had to face him and his ire.
Jeremy, please forgive me. Please just look at me without that frown.

“Did you have a nice walk?” he finally asked just before we reached our floor.

I leaned against the wall of the elevator and burst into tears. It was enough. It was enough for me. I just wanted to go to bed, go to sleep, go home, go back to Eden, to Buona Italia, go anywhere but here.

“Okay.” He sighed and turned to me. He took me in his arms. “Okay. It's okay; you're okay now. I know. It's been a hard day.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” I sobbed over and over. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…”

“Shhh, shh, enough.” He led me out of the elevator at the eighty-fifth floor, and down the hall to our room. Inside, he held me a long time by the door. He squeezed me tighter and tighter until the cold, shivery shaking started to go away.

“What did they want?” I finally whispered into the side of his neck. “What did they want?”

“Me,” he said in a tight voice. “They want me. If they can't have me, they go after you, or anyone else connected to me. You can't just go walking around, not here. I'm sorry. I should have told you. I didn't think you'd want to go out today.” He released me. “If you want to go out and sightsee around Bangkok, I have to make arrangements with Kyle for a security detail. And I will, if that's what you want.”

“No, I don't want to go back out there. Not ever again.”

“You don't now, but you might another time,” he said, tipping my face up and caressing my cheek. “I know this feeling is scary. It will go away. You'll get used to it.”

“I'll never get used to it,” I said, shaking my head.

“You will. You'll find ways to avoid the worst of it, find ways to minimize it. You'll learn how to hide.”