Masters at Arms (7 page)

“I didn’t…”

“Just shut up. If you mess up this deal for
us…”

Damián felt himself doing a slow burn. What
the hell gave the jerk the right to talk to her that way? And why
didn’t she tell him to fuck himself up the ass? Hell, Damián had
needed no encouragement to stare at her. She was freakin’
perfection. But she’d kept her eyes down the entire time he’d
ogled
her, until right at the end anyway.

Stay out of it, man. You can’t get into
trouble again.

Damián went out to the patio and found their
server schmoozing with some exec from a modeling agency. They’d
approached Damián to model for them, too, but he wasn’t interested.
All the other restaurant staff were looking for a way out of
poverty. He was just happy to have a steady job with predictable
hours—and to be out of juvie.

He glanced out at the ocean and breathed in
the salty air. The cool evening breeze felt good against his skin.
He’d been cooped up in juvie so long, he’d thought his soul had
rotted. Now he spent his days cooped up in the restaurant. He was
long overdue for a drive up the coast. Laguna Beach always settled
him when he got restless.

After getting the server back inside, Damián
followed. The dark wood paneling closed in around him again in an
instant. While the white tablecloths, fresh flowers, and glowing
hurricane-lamps on each of the tables and booths helped to lighten
the room some, he couldn’t figure out why someone would choose to
dine inside on such a beautiful Southern California evening. He’d
be out on the patio waiting for the sun to set—if he could afford
to eat in a place like this.

Damián picked up the dish bin and glanced at
the Barbie doll. A tear ran down her jaw as she fiddled with her
fork. His gut churned as he turned toward the kitchen. That man had
made her cry. His sister Rosa had been verbally humiliated that way
by her now ex-husband. Then the man had become violent.

Rosa had come close to being put in her grave
before Damián had forced her to move into his apartment. When Julio
had come after her, Damián had punched his teeth out—and earned
himself two years in juvie for his effort. But he’d do it again. No
woman should ever be disrespected like that.

“
Keep a low profile and mind your own
business, if you know what’s good for you.”
The words of his
social worker focused his mind where it belonged. He walked into
the kitchen and loaded the dirty dishes into the racks. He sure as
hell wasn’t going to interfere for a total stranger. Even if her
shithead date deserved to be pummeled for his remarks, he knew the
man’s money would get Damián’s ass locked up so fast, his head
would spin. At nineteen, the key would be conveniently thrown down
a sewer hole this time.

No way could he afford to get fired, either.
He still hadn’t made rent money for next month. So, he’d just avoid
the jerk-off and his perfect-but-miserable date. He hoped she’d
wise up soon and dump him before it was too late. But that wasn’t
his concern. Just bus the tables.

Rich people sure were fucked up. Damián had
grown up in a tiny ranch-style tenant house with too many mouths to
feed and too little money. Growing up, he’d thought being rich
would solve all their problems. From what he could tell, though,
money just brought on a whole new set of them.

He looked at the clock. Three more hours
before he got off work. He decided he needed to ride his Harley up
the coast. The beach at Laguna called to him. Away from everyone.
Just him. The ocean. And his cave.

* * *

Savannah Gentry tried to swallow past the
lump closing up her throat. Despite nearly a year of Master’s
pimping out her body to his high-class business clients, she’d
tried to learn to dissociate from scenes with clients as fully as
she’d been able to do when only having to anticipate her Master’s
behavior. But there were too many clients to learn to predict
them.

For the majority of her cognizant life, He
had owned and controlled her—mind, body, and spirit. As far as she
could recall—and large blocks of her life already had been blocked
out of her memory—the rape and abuse began soon after her mother
left. She was eight. She’d prayed every night for months for her
Maman to come back and rescue her, but she never heard from her
again.

At first, she’d been more angry at her mother
than her father. How could she leave her there with such a monster?
Although, Savannah didn’t remember him being a monster until that
night….

She shuddered. Escape had never been an
option. Becoming self-sufficient was a pipe dream. Her Master had
too much power in southern California for her to be able to escape
Him. And He’d threatened to sell her to a pimp on the streets if
she disobeyed. A shiver of fear coursed down her spine. At least
with Him she was being tortured by a higher class of clientele,
and, when she wasn’t being pimped out, she was fed, clothed, even
schooled in a fashion.

She watched the bus boy clear another table.
She felt badly about the way Lyle, her Master’s puppet, had treated
him. Of course, she had been intensely aware of the bus boy’s eyes
on her. How could she not? He reminded her of the hero in her
fantasies, Orlando Bloom. Just yesterday, in her Master’s screening
room, she’d seen a preview for Orlando’s upcoming movie,
Pirates
of the Caribbean.
Last night, she’d dreamed he had swung into
her bedroom window on a rope tied to who knows what and whisked her
away from her private Hell.

Was that why she couldn’t take her eyes off
the Orlando look-alike across the room? The bus boy’s
shoulder-length hair was pulled into a queue at the nape of his
neck. He sported the same goatee and moustache Bloom had had in the
movie trailer.

Savannah wondered what his moustache would
feel like against her face. Her lips. Her breasts. She was
surprised to find she wasn’t fantasizing about Orlando now, but the
bus boy. The way he had clenched and unclenched his fists as Lyle
tried to humiliate him, he looked as if he were ready to punch Lyle
in his asinine mouth for his ridiculous accusations.

Someone willing to defend her honor.
Well,
that would be a first
.

Out of the corner of her eye, Savannah
watched as the bus boy lifted the heavy bin of dishes. The muscles
in his forearms corded and his biceps bulged under his polo shirt.
Judging by the front of his pants, they weren’t the only things
bulging.

And there the fantasy ended. Typical man.

From the first time her father had raped her,
sex had equaled pain, control, torture. Until she’d turned eighteen
and He’d lost interest in raping her. But she hadn’t gained her
freedom. Instead, He and His junior partner, Lyle, had prostituted
her as their pain slut for the past year, using her well-trained
masochist’s body to solicit new clients for their firm.

For whatever twisted reason, her father had
prohibited clients—or even Lyle, for that matter—from penetrating
her. They could torture her as much as they pleased. But no
intercourse.
Thank God for small favors
.

Why anyone would engage willingly in the sex
act was beyond her. She preferred her romantic dream lover, Bloom,
over the bus boy or any real man. The bus boy was like all the
rest, ogling her body and becoming aroused without knowing anything
about her other than what she looked like. He didn’t care if she
had a brain in her head. No different from all the men she’d ever
known.

All were sadists, getting off on a woman’s
pain. Ah, and into the restaurant just walked her next two clients.
Lyle puffed himself up.

“Here they come.”

Savannah quaked to her core to think how much
Lyle reminded her of her father. She wouldn’t be surprised if Lyle
was slated to inherit her body after her father died. No, there
wouldn’t be a “slave clause” in His public will. But she was
certain her father would never release His hold over her, even from
beyond the grave.

Her lungs clenched,
squeezing out the meager amount of air in them. Some days, she
actually welcomed death over continuing to exist this way. Ah, the
ultimate betrayal of the obedient slave—to execute the body the
Master thought He owned. Her only regret would be that she wouldn’t
have the pleasure of seeing the look on her father’s and Lyle’s
faces as she reclaimed control over her body.

Razor blades? No, too messy. Pills? She’d
read that as few as a dozen Tylenol would shut down a person’s
liver. What would a whole bottle do? Would death be fast? Painless?
Well, it couldn’t hurt more than what she’d experienced the last
eleven years. Yes, when she got home tonight, she would put an end
to this miserable existence.

A sense of peace came over her. The time for
the ultimate release had come. She smiled, her lips quivering.

“That’s good, baby. Smile. You know, I
prepared you for these guys a month ago. They’re going to love
finding your secret. They love shit like that.”

When Lyle’s words registered, bile rose in
her throat. If she’d eaten today, she’d have vomited. Last month,
Lyle had restrained her face down on her father’s desk in the home
that should have been her haven. Her legs had been spread open and
secured, while her father’s weight held her down so she would
remain still enough.

Her stomach clenched into knots as memories
of her shrill screams bouncing off the walls in her Master’s office
resurfaced in her psyche. No one but her Master and Lyle could have
heard her. The waves of pain had come so fast, so intensely, she
hadn’t been able to escape to her safe place. When the pain became
too unbearable, she’d fainted. Her father revived her by pouring
ice water on her face. Gasping, she’d returned to consciousness
just as the fire began again on the inside of her labia.

Her heart pounded as she remembered returning
to her room that night. The raw pain hadn’t receded. She’d taken a
hand mirror and, lying on her back on the bed, discovered her
latest degradation.

Branded with her father’s initials.

The branding had healed with much care. But
Lyle’s sadistic appetites began to frighten her more than her
father’s. Would she survive having her father’s protégé become her
Master? Throat suddenly parched, she reached for her water goblet,
trying to quell the shaking in her hand.

A heavy weight settled in her stomach as Lyle
stood to greet the two Asian men in their matching black-silk suits
and starched white shirts—twin-like right down to their black-silk
ties. Savannah didn’t attempt to stand, because she’d been
strategically placed at the enclosed side of the round table. No
escape.

The men bowed in sync to Lyle. He ate up
their deference to him with a simpering grin. The three exchanged
terse introductions. Then, as one, all three turned their attention
toward her, the gazes of the clients creeping slowly over what they
could see of her body, lingering too long on her breasts. She
swallowed down the rising bile and forced a smile to her face.

Lyle motioned for each man to enter the booth
from a different side. The short, wiry men slid along the circular
leather seat to besiege her, closing in. Smothering. She tried to
fill her compressed lungs with slow, deep breaths, but the men
reeked of garlic and body odor. She fought the reflex to gag.

As if in synchronized motion again, their
hands snaked out to clamp over her knees, then moved upward, under
the short skirt of her tight dress. The sadist on her left pinched
her inner thigh, forcing a gasp from her.

Savannah needed to prepare herself for
whatever these two men had planned for her. Focus. Separate her
mind from the scene. Soon she would put this last scene behind her
and go home. Then the slave would suffer no more.

She knew the routine. A quick meal, prolonged
only if they got off on feeding the slave, then they would take her
to the Master’s penthouse suite—His because He owned this hotel,
just as He owned the slave. Her screams would fall on deaf ears in
that isolated wing of the historic hotel. The scene would be
videotaped to use as blackmail with the clients later, if
necessary.

Just another routine SM scene for the
well-used slave. Lyle, who would wait in the next room, would never
come to intervene. The slave would hold off screaming as long as
she could, because no amount of screaming would put an end to the
slave’s suffering. Besides, the slave knew sadists got off on her
screams and didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of believing
they had broken her.

Even after they ejaculated on her, as they
always did, she knew the torture would end only when the allotted
time had run out. No sense rushing them. Sometimes they became even
more sadistic after they’d come. She prayed they’d only paid for an
hour, but something told her they’d been able to afford to abuse
the slave even longer.

Just be nice to the gentlemen, Savi, and
they’ll be nice to you.
Only the “gentlemen” were never nice to
her. Savannah took a deep breath.

The curtain rose on Act Three—the final
act.

* * *

Damián stuck his head through the open
elevator doors and saw a tray of dirty dishes on the floor outside
the penthouse suite. He pushed the cart into the hallway, wheeling
it toward the room. He started to bend down to retrieve the tray of
dishes when he heard a woman scream in pain from inside the
suite.

“Acccchhhhh, God, no!”

Damn. He didn’t have a key to the room.

“Lyle! Make them stop!”

Were they screams of passion? Or did she need
help? This floor was isolated from the others. He should at least
check on her. But he had no way of gaining access to the suite.

“Accccchhhhhh! Rape!”

Mierda
. Was this for real or a
role-playing thing some
chicas
got into? Sure didn’t sound
like she was having fun. Damián dropped the dishes into the cart,
breaking a wine glass. He pounded on the door.