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"Come upstairs. Meet people. Talk to people. See the sun in real life, not through a skylight. Talk to your therapist. Meet your friends. Start working out more. Go outside. Get a tan. Get sunburned. We'll worry about getting you enrolled this summer."
"What if I miss enrollment?" she asked, for the first time sounding stressed.
I laughed. "Then you go to my alma mater. They never say no to alumni cash."
She made a sound of contentment and stood before I was ready. Hands on her hips, she surveyed the room she'd occupied for years, never wanting to venture farther out of it than to a treadmill down the hall and then only with me or one of the guards or her therapist accompanying her.
"Shall we go?"
I smiled. "Not. Quite. So. Fast."
She was standing and looking at the door and now she looked back at me, first in question, and then smiling somewhat ruefully. "Got ahead of myself?"
"Not too terribly. But I think tradition and all. I'd like to say goodbye to that beautiful butt."
She blushed. "Does it have to be goodbye?" There was a quaver in her voice I shouldn't have liked hearing but I was kind of glad she couldn't just recover from me that quickly.
"Not until you leave the compound. And then I'll be here if you need me. But you'll be better off putting this..." I paused, then laughed.
She looked at me inquiringly.
"Behind you," I said, and patted my lap. "If you wouldn't mind."
39
Annie
Claude stood in the doorway. Chloe knelt again, her knees on the marble, her face contorted. It was as though by asking what she wanted, by asking whether or not she could leave and make things better for herself if this was no longer what she wanted, that she had ended up with what she had being intolerable.
That might be my fault. Or not. Probably some time ago she'd awakened to her own fear and the fact that she'd trapped herself. All I was doing was reminding her.
"Chloe."
She stood, as if him saying her name had been a command. I watched, heart thundering, because I wanted to know what I was facing. Her name made her rise. She moved across the space between them to stand before him. She didn't kneel again.
He stood beside a spanking bench, the kind with two padded arms on which to kneel. The bench itself caught her at the hips, pretty much perfectly. Obviously it had been designed for her. When she lay her torso on it, her ass was high in the air and her upper body sloped down. Her hands were tied together and the leather leash fixed to an O ring set into the floor. Claude walked around her and adjusted her hips more to his liking, then used the restraints on the bench arms to bind her at the ankles to it, and also just behind her knees, above the swell of calf. Finally he cinched a restraint around her waist.
It looked like overkill to me. It also looked like he was making a point. She'd never be free. I thought that point had set in pretty thoroughly. I also thought I'd like to argue about it. She could be free.
Whatever it was he picked up, it was nothing I had ever seen before. About eighteen inches long, swathed in what looked like a rubbery, velvety cover. It had a handle and when he moved it, I could see it was round and thick, maybe an inch thick.
He held it in front of Chloe's eyes and she began to scream.
Everything that happened next was fractured, too fast and too slow to track, too loud and too horrible. Everything I'd seen on the job and everything that had been done to me since I started down whatever this inane path I was following was, all of it came down to these moments.
Chloe thrashed, unable to move more than her head. Her face was wet with tears. Her hands grabbed at the air, fisting and releasing, looking for something to hold on to.
I stood frozen, ready to dart over to her, to take her hands as I had the other night when Claude punished her. I must have made some minute movement, because he stopped and pointed the thing at me and said, "Don't move. Don't you fucking move."
The stick, whatever it was, rattled and hissed on the downward strike, making Chloe wail before it hit. Her backside grew a deep shade of red by the fourth blow and Claude showed no signs of wearing down.
Cole couldn't know that Claude intended to do this. Could he?
I moved again, and Claude pointed the stick at me. Chloe was breathing in whooping gasps.
"You come over here, I start over on her."
"Sir." My voice trembled. He was no one I would show deference to but I didn't want her further abused. "How many?"
