October was always my favorite month as a kid. My mother would go all out for Halloween, sewing me whatever costume I wanted. She’d take me house to house, collecting candy, and help me sort through it all when we got home, taking out the crappy things like toothpaste and hand sanitizer that the shitty houses would give out and the gross candies like those liquid filled strawberry things, until all I had was a perfect pile of candy that I’d nibble at for days. Halloween seemed like a magical night, a night when everyone could be someone other than themselves for a little while. While I’d been pretty happy with my life as a kid, it felt good to become someone else. Someone who didn’t hear her parents worrying about bills or having to eat chicken and rice for the fifth night in a row.
Of course, the irony is that now, I’d give anything to go back to overdue electric bills and chicken and rice. Even the security that I thought I’d had in exchange for being a pet has been shattered, and I don’t feel safe anymore. I haven’t felt safe in weeks, and there’s only been one thought in my head all that time, as I rested and recovered and healed.
Getting back to the gym, back to training, back to getting stronger, so that this doesn’t happen again. Figuring out who did this, so that I can get my revenge. And on top of that?
Winning this fucking game, sonoone can claim to own me anymore.
Although, to be fair, no one has so much as laid a finger on me in the past month. Even when it was clear I was starting to feel better, neither Cayde nor Dean made any move to touch me, punish me, force some kind of sexual favors from me. They’ve been completely hands-off, which is every bit as startling as their comfort that first morning that I woke up after the assault.
They gave my mind and emotions space to heal—or start to, anyway—along with my body, and while I suppose that’s the bare fucking minimum any man should be expected to do after their—girlfriend? Pet? Fucktoy?—endures something like I did. It still came as a surprise after everything they put me through.
And it’s confused me, too. I haven’t had much space to sort through the feelings that I know are there for Cayde and Dean, much less Jaxon, but their careful treatment of me over the last month has only made it harder to deny that they’re there.
I’m about to be confronted with my feelings for Jaxon face to face, though.
He’s made himself remarkably scarce over the last month, and part of me—a part that I don’t want to examine too closely—is deeply hurt at how he’s behaved. Not once did he step into my room to see how I was. He’s only spoken to me briefly in passing walking down the hall, and when I finally felt well enough to eat in the dining room again these past two weeks, he won’t meet my eyes. In short, he’s done every possible thing he can to ignore me completely, and while I can’t pretend to not suspect the reason for it…it hurts.
Iknowit hurt him to watch me with Cayde. But surely he knew why? Surely he knew that it was his own fucking fault that it was happening at all, that if he’d just said yes when I came to him the night I decided to lose my virginity, so many things would be different. I’m not angry at him, or at least not as angry as he seems to be at me, so why is he acting like I fucking cheated on him?
I was never his. But I wanted to be. And he fucked it all up.
So I’m not just looking forward to getting back into the gym today. I’m looking forward to taking out every bit of my frustration on Jaxon himself in the ring.
He’s not there yet when I walk in. I go straight for the weights, and that in and of itself is frustrating, since I can’t lift nearly what I could before. I know I won’t be as good in the ring, either, and I just hope that Jaxon’s own frustrations with me means that he won’t pull his punches. I don’t want him to go easy on me. I want a release.
That’s something else. Over the past months in Blackmoor House, I’ve learned things about myself that I never knew. I realized that I liked punishment and discipline, even when I wanted to pretend that I didn’t. I learned that I craved all kinds of things during sex, would say and do all sorts of things that I’d never imagined doing before. And now that I haven’t been so much as touched for a month?
I’m craving a different kind of release altogether.
A lot of women, I know, wouldn’t want punishment or even sex after what I went through. But I want it more than ever. I want to replace all of those awful memories, all of the pain and unwanted touches and unwanted flesh with discipline that I enjoy, with hands and mouths and cocks that I want, even if I used to fight them. I want Dean and Cayde to wipe away all of those bad memories, the assault that still lingers on my skin and in my nightmares like a bad stench, and remind me of what it feels like for sex to begood.
The past weeks, the way Dean and Cayde have acted has made me question if I want to leave Blackmoor at all. Right now, I do, but if we could find who it was that kidnapped me, bring this stupid game to an end and have a more equitable relationship? That might make me want to stick around to see where things could go.
It’s a lot of “ifs,” though. And right now, I feel as if I can barely manage to get through even one day at a time.
I have to go back to class tomorrow, for one thing. One of the benefits of being the personal fucktoy of the potential heirs to Blackmoor is that my grades haven’t suffered from me spending a month basically in bed. I’ve been catching up on homework this past week. However, I haven’t been expected to makeeverythingup, and mysteriously I still have A’s in all of my classes. I feel terribly guilty about it—after all, other students don’t have the ability to take a month off to recover from an illness and have their grades remain exactly the same—so I’ve been working as hard as I can to get whatever work I can possibly manage finished and turned in—essays, math problems, etcetera. It’s been a good distraction, particularly because for all of that advisor’s insistence that I don’t actually need my degree, Iwantit. If I escape Blackmoor, if there’s no future for me here with Cayde and Dean without being their subservient pet, then I’ll need something to rely on.
I close my eyes, taking a deep breath. This past month has tested me in ways I’d never expected, but I’m determined to not let it break me. Being back in the gym is the first step towards normalcy, and it feels good. So good, in fact, that I can’t stop myself from ignoring the instructions the guys gave me before I left to limit myself to fifteen pounds and below on the free weights. Jaxon isn’t here yet, and I doubt he’d tell on me anyway.
He doesn’t seem to particularly care about anything I do these days.
The rhythm of working out and the familiar strain of my muscles lulls me into my own world, to the point where I’m so zoned out that I don’t even hear the two sets of footsteps walking up behind me until Cayde’s deep voice startles me out of it.
“Those weights look a little heavier than you’re allowed, little Saint,” he says, and despite the irritation, I can hear thetiniestbit of amusement in his voice, something I’m not used to with Cayde. “Did you miss being punished? Because I think you’re just asking for it, now.”
A tingle runs through my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers and toes, at that. I don’tthinkthat I picked up the too-heavy weights with the hope that I’d get caught, but I can’t be sure. Maybe I was hoping that one of them would see me and give me what my body is craving despite myself.
Sometimes I can’t help but think that I’ve grown to love my captivity a little too much.
“I’m sorry,” I say, sitting up and turning around, and the meekness in my voice surprises even me. It surprises Cayde, too, I can see from the twitch of his eyebrow. On the other hand, standing next to him, Jaxon is completely expressionless. I can’t read anything on his face, and for some reason, that makes me angry.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” I continue, dropping my voice slightly as I look at Cayde from underneath my eyelashes. “It was very bad of me.”Oh my god, what am I doing?I’ve never played along like this before, but it feelsgood. I’ve always fought off the pleasure until I couldn’t anymore, kicked and screamed and fought them every step of the way, but somehow, taking part feels even better. It doesn’t feel like being punished; it feels like a game.
I know a lot about games by now. But this feels like the kind I’d actually want to play.
“I think the full punishment will have to wait until we get home,” Cayde says dryly, his mouth twitching at the corners. “But for now—” He pauses. “Can you bend over?”
My heart skips a beat in my chest, and I feel the warm tingle between my legs that I’ve come to recognize so well. “I think so,” I say softly.