The Life of Anna, Part 1: Enslaved (3 page)

“Don’t call me Devin,” he snarled.
Snarled
.

Incredulity flooded her as she looked up at him, jaw trembling. The tears that had stung her eyes moments before now cascaded down her cheeks, irritating the rapidly forming abrasions.

Anna didn’t know what to do. Neither of the two men had ever so much as raised their voice at her, and here she was, on the floor, having been hit in the face by her beloved Devin. Twice. Her mouth gaped wordlessly as she stared at them. Were these the same men with whom she had cuddled so recently?

Jack reached for her arms and pulled her to her knees, her rear resting on her heels.
“You will sit like this with your hands like this,” he brought her palms together under her chin in a prayer-like position, “whenever we are around. You will only stand if given permission. Do you understand me?” His voice was harsh. He’d never spoken to her like that. He spoke to...he spoke to Tabitha and Zoe like that, not to her.

“Do you understand me?” he repeated, his voice slightly louder and demanding.

“Y-y-yes....” Anna wasn’t sure what to call him. Devin had hit her when she addressed him as she always did. “Yes, Jack,” she said quickly and winced as she braced for another hit. And it came. A moment later she was on her hip again, this time having been hit by her beloved Jack. She stared up at him for a moment as he looked at her through narrowed eyes.

“You will call me Master, as all my trainees do.”

She continued to stare at him, trying to grasp what he’d said. Trainee? He must be joking. But one look in his eyes and she knew there was no humor in his words.

“You will refer to me as Master as well,” Devin instructed. “Do you understand?”

“Y-y-yes, Dev—” She stopped herself before the offending word escaped her mouth. “Yes, Master.” The term felt foreign and uncomfortable. Where was her loving Devin? Her heart was broken and she wanted to sob and scream at the same time, but something inside told her it would be better to remain silent. She bit her lip instead.

“Things will be different from now on,” Devin continued. “You will not look us in the eye unless given permission.
Nor any other man. You will submit yourself to Jack’s authority, and mine, obeying without question everything we tell you to do. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” she said in a shaky voice.

There was a pause and then Jack spoke. “You will continue to live with me, but your room is now the downstairs room, as it has been vacated by the other girls.” His voice was cold and frightening.

The downstairs room?
Anna never stepped foot down there, but the cries and screams that had travelled upstairs made her never to want to go there. Now she would be living down there? Oh, what horrors awaited her down those stairs?

“You are finished with school. You’ve had plenty of education and won’t need any more to succeed in the future. You will continue to take your two ballet classes a week, however.”

Anna wondered at the concession of dancing. When her parents had died and she’d gone to live with Jack, he had cut back her dancing to just two classes per week and forbidden any performances. She’d not been able to talk to old friends, or anybody for that matter, and had been forced to change schools. But his loving manner had made up for it for the most part. He kept her mind and body busy with other things.

Without thinking, she looked up into his face and began to ask why when he reached down and hit her across the cheek again.

“Did I give you permission to look at me?” Jack shouted at her. She jumped at the harshness of his voice.

She quickly looked back down at the floor, tears now flowing freely though she remained silent. The tears fell onto her lap where they made dark spots on her white robe.

Jack continued. “As I said, you will continue to dance. Those classes are to keep you...shall we say, healthy? But you will be too busy for more than that. There are other skills that are more important for you than dancing.”

“Yes, Master.” She stared at the floor.

“You will not leave the house without my permission. Your life will revolve around Devin and myself. If, on the rare occasion you are out of the house and you see someone you know, you will ignore them. You will not speak to them or look at them. If they approach you, you will turn and walk away.”

“Yes, Master.”

What was left of the normal part of Anna’s life had just turned upside down. She didn’t know what to think, what to feel. She didn’t know what “lessons” Jack was talking about, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t like them. She’d not seen the lessons that Tabitha and Zoe had taken, but she had heard many of them. She’d seen them bruised and hurting. She’d watched Jack yell and scream at them for the smallest thing.

Anna had gone to Devin after she
’d lived with Jack for a few weeks, upset over the abuse Jack was inflicting on the girls, but Devin had said that the girls were being trained for something special and that they’d be okay. Somehow, he had made Anna believe what Jack was doing was okay... at least at the time. Anna had learned to ignore it as much as possible because it hurt her heart to see it.

Men came to Jack
’s place frequently to utilize the services of Tabitha and Zoe. Jack had Anna stay in his bedroom on those nights watching TV with the volume up high, though she could still hear sounds that frightened her. When he saw that she was upset, Jack, and sometimes Devin, would visit her in the bedroom, distracting her from the sounds by teaching her the pleasures of being touched by a man.

After about a year of
being kept in the bedroom, she was allowed to be out in the living room when men visited. They were always very nice to her and sometimes Jack would let them touch her, with the promise that they wouldn’t hurt her. They were rough with Tabitha and Zoe and made them cry or scream in pain.

More recently, though, Tabitha and Zoe presented themselves to Jack
’s friends and spent the evening quietly pleasing them. Anna was fascinated at what they could do with a man’s body, obviously pleasing them and making them moan. The men were still rough sometimes, but the girls didn’t seem to get as upset as they did before.

*****

Devin contemplated Anna’s tears as he stepped closer. His other girls, including the girls that Jack trained for him, were just property. They had no birth certificates or social security numbers. They had no need for a 401(k) and the government did not know they existed. At least not officially; plenty of elected officials knew his girls personally. Anyone born in the Manor was kept off the radar, and many generations of girls had been born and died in this place, unbeknownst to most of the city. Yes, they had names, and he knew them all, but they were just sexual objects to be used to keep the men happy and compliant.

Anna wasn
’t like that. She’d been born to loving parents, raised in a loving home until Devin decided it was time for her to become his. She was special. She had qualities only a handful of females in the entire world possessed, but she didn’t need to know that. He had rights to her; it was not an issue of legality. The will of the Brotherhood was what counted, and no one would deny his right to her. She was born in his region and he claimed her at her birth. But his plans for her were different from the others who kept similar women. His Brothers didn’t need to know that, though. Not for now anyway. They’d find out eventually, but by then it would be too late.

Devin gave Jack a satisfied smile. Everything was coming together as expected. This was good. This was very good.

Four Years Later

“Sit.”

I dropped into my submissive position without having to think about it. After years of sexual lessons from my Master Jack, there were many things I didn
’t have to think about anymore; I just did as I was told. It was less painful that way.

Sometimes.

“Good girl.”

I could hear him walking to the side of the room where he kept the whips, pause, and then walk back towards me.

He stopped behind me and trailed a black braided leather whip on the floor in a circle around me. I shuddered as he trailed it up my back and then slowly wrapped it around my neck once, twice, three times. I held my breath. I knew what he’d do next, just not when he would do it. The longer he waited, the harder it was to time my breathing.

He didn
’t move. I didn’t move.

I could hear him breathing, slow and steady. I used to be able to anticipate his moves by listening to the changes in his breathing, but not anymore. I think he must have realized what I had been doing and changed his tactics.

  Abruptly, he pulled the whip up and back, yanking my body back onto the painted cement floor. Instinctively, I moved my hands up to my neck under the whip to keep it from choking me as he dragged my naked body across the floor to the archway where he disciplined me.

He yanked the whip upwards to make me stand.

“Up,” he commanded.

I obeyed, carefully keeping my eyes focused on the floor in front of me.

“Hands up.”

I put my hands above my head and he cuffed them into place. I was careful to keep my face impassive, but internally I shuddered. No matter how many times he
’d whipped me, it always felt like the first time. Perhaps it was because my body always healed itself quickly, not allowing my skin to toughen up. Or perhaps it was just the nature of the whip.

Almost four years had passed since Master Devin took my virginity. Four lonely years since my beloved Devin and Jack became Master Devin and Master Jack. Four years since I
’d been held in a manner that didn’t involve sex. Four years since I’d heard the words, “I love you.”

I couldn
’t even begin to count the number of times I cried myself to sleep, wondering if I would ever wake up from this nightmare that my life had become. Why? Why did my guardian hate me so much? He used to love me. Master Devin, too. What did I do to make them despise me? Maybe if I were better, if I did everything the way Master Jack wanted me to, then he would stop hitting me. That if I was good enough, the Jack I knew as a child would return and love me again.

But no matter how much I strived to be good enough, I failed. As soon as I started getting better at something, Master Jack would change how it was supposed to
be done so that I failed again. Then he would chain me to the archway and whip me until I passed out, which didn’t take that long.

Despite all the cruelty in my life the last few years, I never got used to
being hit; every time felt like the first time. For reasons unknown, I healed faster than normal people and calluses didn’t grow anywhere on my body. They didn’t grow on my heart, either, leaving it unprotected from the verbal abuse of my Master Jack and his friends. Oh, how their words stung, sometimes more than their fists.

A few months after my lessons began, I tried to kill myself by cutting open my wrists. I bled a lot and passed out. Master Jack saw what I
’d done and was beyond furious. He wrapped my wrists and then took me to see Master Devin.

I didn
’t want to think about what Master Devin had done to me that night. But I never attempted suicide again. My body healed too quickly to succeed and I never, ever, wanted Master Devin to be that angry with me again.

I didn
’t see Master Devin very often; he was a busy, important man. Whenever he did come for a visit, he and Master Jack spoke of things I never completely understood. Like how a senator wasn’t listening properly, or how the mayor was ignoring him. Master Devin did not like being ignored. He would look at me with his cold eyes and give me a cold smile, but didn’t touch me. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Once she’s trained, that won’t be an issue anymore,” Master Devin said one time after a discussion with Master Jack about the governor. “She’ll be able to convince them.”

Me? How could I convince the governor to do something that he didn’t want to do? I never finished high school and knew very little of the political system.

But there had been a few times when I had accidently convinced Master Jack
’s friends to stop doing something that was hurting me. Master Jack had left the room and I felt a peculiar sensation rush over me. I looked at the man and told him to stop and he did. I don’t know if Master Jack noticed the slightly dazed look in the man’s eyes afterwards.

Since the beginning of my training, Master Jack had brought out every possible physical sensation, good and bad, that my body possessed. I knew how to move my body during sex to give the man intense pleasure. I knew that my orgasm pushed his orgasm to a higher level, and I
was punished if I didn’t achieve climax. Master Jack trained me to orgasm during painful sex, to please my attacker. I could suck cock like nobody’s business and take any size man down my throat.

I knew my art. I was confident I could please any man that crossed my path. It wasn
’t pride; it just was the truth.

“Do you know what tomorrow is?” Master Jack asked as he brought the whip down across my back.

I sucked in a breath at the stinging pain. “Monday?” I responded through clenched teeth.