The man who calls himself my master smiles through the bars. I am too tired to give voice to what is left of my outrage, and what is the point? In the end, he will pay for this. In the meantime I may as well… enjoy it? Submit to it? Whatever you call it, it sounds perverse, but I have no intention of wasting my energy on battles I can’t win.
I sit down on the cushions he was kind enough to provide. I know he thinks they’re a kindness. I know he’s a twisted, bitter fuck of a man. He is a good fuck though.
* * *
Darko
This isn’t going as I thought it would. I expected a lot more resistance, many more signs and shows of weakness. I thought I would break her almost instantly, the first moment my cock met her cunt. I was wrong then. And I am wrong again now.
The smile fades from my lips as she sits there, naked and so beautifully, regally defiant. This was not my plan. I thought I’d be a necessary monster, breaking through the layers of her complacency. Instead, I feel simply like a monster with little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
“What? You want me to cry? You want me to beg you to let me go? I know you’re not going to, so what’s the point?” She cocks her head to the side and those pretty lips quirk into a smirk.
The point is supposed to be that she has lost control and can’t help her reaction. But apparently, she can.
She curls up on those cushions and she looks almost satisfied, her eyes closing, catlike as she gets comfortable. I almost regret putting her in there. This first night isn’t supposed to be pleasant. It’s supposed to be one she never forgets. I thought she’d cry and whine in there. I thought I might have to comfort her a little, teach her she needs to stay quiet in there, but she’s already perfectly quiet.
I watch her, wondering what will come next. What is it I’m doing here, if I am not making the kind of impression that will forever warn her against men of my kind?
I’m trying to ruin her, that’s at the core of it, I remind myself. I’m trying to break her to my will.
“I can take anything you do to me,” she says, barely opening her eyes. “I’m stronger than you think.”
“Obviously,” I drawl. “Goodnight, Chloe.”
Chapter Three
Chloe
The day turns to dark.
I am alone in the cage, and I don’t like it, but I have to tolerate it. Darko doesn’t realize, but I know precisely how to deal with this. I have been in cages my whole life. I’ve grown up in one. Maybe it wasn’t physical, but it was mental. It was in the way the world treated me, and in the expectations placed on me. I have never had the freedom people imagined money gave me. I was always controlled in how I dressed, what I ate, the words that came out of my mouth. Even when I was very small, I was not permitted to play in the dirt, because nice girls don’t do that. Every natural impulse I had was stifled, twisted, and contained until I became the thing my family wanted me to be.
Now I am all that is left, and in some perverted way, being locked up in this metal box might actually be the freest I’ve ever been. In here I am nothing but what I let myself be. I’m his captive, but I can shrug that off far more easily than I’ve ever been able to shrug off the weight of being Chloe Parker-Baskerville. Sitting here naked and contained, that woman seems a stranger to the one I am right now.
I feel an ache of grief as I let exhaustion do its work. I am a twisted kind of free, but it was not worth the cost. This is all happening because my father died. The old Chloe Parker-Baskerville was a puppet, but a happy one. I don’t want to have to remake myself. I don’t want to have to become a new person, one who knows how to live without her father’s guidance. I don’t want to be behind these bars either, but they at least delay that inevitable moment where I will have to step up as he always intended for me to do, and take control of the Parker-Baskerville empire.
Finally, sleep draws over me and I am taken down to the blissful depths of unconsciousness, free to dream of the life I used to have just a week ago, one where my father was alive and I was his princess, safe from everything that can go wrong in the world.
It feels like only a moment passes and my eyes are opening to a new day. The curtains are still drawn so I cannot tell what the time is, but I get the feeling it’s close to midday. I’ve slept a long time in this cage, property to a man I do not know or understand.