Twenty-One Read online

  “Help!” she shrieked. “Help me, somebody, please!”

  Her pleas dissolved into animal-like cries. She kicked and kicked against the bars.

  “That cage is bolted to a concrete wall,” came a voice that stopped Chloe dead in her struggle. “I’m afraid all the adrenaline in the world couldn’t help you.”

  Chloe looked beyond the cage for the first time. She was in a bedroom with dark wood floors, grey walls, and sleek black furniture. It was a bedroom that belonged in a designer’s portfolio. Demetrius looked out of place leaning against the bed’s footboard in his ripped and faded black jeans. He wore a black denim vest, open to reveal a thin strip of bare flesh underneath. His body, from his thick hair to his boots, was speckled with what looked like talcum powder. It gave him an eerie dusty look, as if he had just crawled out of a tomb. At a club or a bar, Chloe might have found the look strange and intriguing. But here, naked and caged, this man she had found so enticing the night before was monstrous and terrifying.

  The attack in Chloe’s living room sprung from the back of her mind, and her screams returned. She gripped the bars of the cage and tried to use them as an anchor to force her wrists apart. When that failed, she kicked at the cage door. She knew she couldn’t open it, but she could not control herself. Every ounce of her screamed fight! Her thoughts were frenzied and primal, “Get me out, get me out, fight, get me out of here!”

  “You struggle beautifully. Fluidly, like a dance,” said Demetrius. He crossed the room with slow, casual steps. Chloe shielded her nude body and shoved herself into the furthest corner of the cage against the concrete wall. Her breath came ragged and gasping. She was going to die. She was going to follow her mother to her grave, at the hands of a psychopath like the ones her mother worked with in prison.

  “Oh, God,” she cried, her voice raw from screaming. “God, please...”

  “Sh, sh, sh,” Demetrius chided, as if soothing a crying child. “Choose your words carefully, ma chère, because this will be the last time you’re allowed to speak without permission.”

  He paced back and forth before the cage. Chloe sprang back from its edges and wrapped her arms around herself, but there was no security in such a miniscule space. She twisted and turned to keep her eye on him, to never have him at her back. She thought fast, thought back to those terrible stories her mother had told her about people like him. Her mother used to say that they saw their victims as objects, not people, so they could act out their violent fantasies without guilt.

  “My name is Chloe,” she said, looking up at him as he circled her. “My name is Chloe. I’m twenty-two. I’m a student at Hollington University.” She didn’t know what to say, what information would trigger a shred of compassion. Demetrius stopped at the cage door and she panicked, throwing out anything about her that came to mind, no matter how mundane. “I paint watercolors sometimes, and I like to go stargazing in the summer. Please, I’m an only child. My family-”

  “I know who you are,” Demetrius murmured. He crouched in front of the cage door and met her eyes. “Chloe Madeleine Leroux, senior of Hollington University, an art history major. Your father is a cardiologist in Beachwood and your mother just died of breast cancer.” He curled his fingers around the bars of the cage door. “I know exactly who you are, cherí. And I don’t care.”

  Chloe froze, dumbstruck. Words failed her. She stared at her captor face-to-face in clear light for the first time. She could think of nothing else to do. He wore another mask of simple and unadorned leather that looked dusty and worn like the rest of his clothes. His hidden face made any expression unreadable, and that blankness frightened her. His eyes were the cool, nearly colourless grey of the winter sky. They were light pinpoints surrounded by black kohl, and they were devoid of compassion or shame. She felt she was looking into the eye of a storm, empty but for the promise of destruction. He had no eyebrows, Chloe realized, a detail that made him look almost inhuman. His gaze travelled down her body, as it had at the Oryx, the same consuming stare. Chloe pressed her back hard against the bars bolted to the wall, curling her legs beneath her.

  “Please...” she whispered. Any more warnings from her mother’s work stories melted into cold, prickling panic. “Please. I want to go home.”

  Demetrius chuckled under his breath. “This is your home, my little Chloe. Bienvenue à la maison.”

  French. He had been speaking it here and there. It was her father’s native language, normally a source of comfort for her. Coming from him...tears rolled down her cheeks. Panic infected her, filled her chest until she was certain it would burst, that she would die of fear. Her mouth moved, spilling out words that she knew were useless.

  “Please let me go. What do you want? God, please. My dad is all alone, he can’t lose…he will pay whatever you want-”

  “Ah,” Demetrius looked up, nodding. “Yes, he probably would, wouldn’t he?”

  He was listening. Chloe felt heart would burst. No human heart could beat this fast for this long. Her nudity forgotten, she dropped her arms and crawled to the door of the cage, toward the bizarre and frightening man on the other side of the bars. If it was money he wanted, her father wouldn’t hesitate to pay for her return. Her nightmare could be over in a phone call. She gripped the bars close to Demetrius’ hand, so dangerously close to him.

  “Call him. Call my dad and he’ll pay anything. Please, I know his number, we can end this right now.” She felt heat emanating from Demetrius, heat that she could feel even through the cage. “Just tell him how much and let me go. Please...”

  Demetrius tilted his head to the side. His eyes crinkled at the corners, the only evidence of a smile behind the mask.

  “Oh, but I don’t want his money,” he said. He wrapped his hand over Chloe’s and leaned in close to the bars. “I want his baby girl.”

  The look in his eyes turned Chloe’s blood to ice. She jerked back and scrambled to the back of the cage. Demetrius laughed and shook his head. He pulled a key from his pocket and slipped it into the padlock on the cage door.

  “No!” Chloe cried. She clutched the cage bars and curled as tightly into herself as possible. “Stay away!”

  Demetrius made chiding tsk sounds with his tongue. He opened the cage door and reached in. Chloe screamed, kicking at his hands, but he dodged her blows easily and caught her legs. Chloe held fast to the bars, but all it took was a single good pull for her grip to fail her. Demetrius was as strong as she remembered from the struggle in her living room. He dragged her out of the cage with ease and pinned her on her side with his body, trapping her bound wrists with one hand. He bore down on her, his hair cast like a net over her face, until she stopped struggling.

  “Sh, sh, sh,” he whispered again, his mask brushing Chloe’s ear. “It’s over, ma chère. The life you had is over. You have no father, you have no friends. You are a slave, and you only have your Master. I am your life now.”

  Chloe began to sob. “I don’t understand.”

  Her strength had failed her. Even in her terror, she couldn’t struggle anymore. Demetrius’ weight trapped her so completely. She had never felt so helpless. His words echoed in her head like a bell ringing in a tower. More than that, he invaded every one of her senses. The heat of his body seeped from his clothes and penetrated her skin, and she felt the same warm spark she had when he had touched her at the club.

  “Don’t you?” his voice, so close to her ear, reverberated through her bones. “Listen to your body. Yes, you felt it at the Oryx and you feel it now, don’t you? The way our bodies speak to each other.”

  He ran a hand along her back, an infuriating caress that reminded Chloe of how naked she was, how weak. She thrashed beneath him, yet the brush of his fingers made her spine bow reflexively, as if he had flipped a switch in her body.

  “Get off of me,” she growled, a flicker of anger spurring her into one last struggle. She threw her head back hoping to strike his face, but he had been ready for it.

  “Sh, sh,” h
e purred, stroking her hair, mocking her helplessness. “Don’t fight it. You were meant for me, oh, yes, and you know it. The way you looked at me, the way you searched for me as you danced…”

  Chloe squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would drown out his voice. “No. No, no, no,” she muttered over and over, but Demetrius’ voice carried over her own.

  “And how you melted in my hands,” he sneered, “responded to every little touch, well, well...I couldn’t let you go, now, could I? No, no, you were relentless.”

  Anger bled into Chloe’s fear and brought no strength.

  “No,” she snapped. “No, I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t fucking ask for this.”

  Demetrius shushed her again. He brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear and leaned in close.

  “No, ma chère, you didn’t ask for this,” he whispered. “But you were meant for this.”

  He sat up and flipped Chloe onto her back with an ease that stoked her anger, straddling her hips. She was forced to look at him as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin black switchblade. The colour drained from Chloe’s face. She did not dare struggle.

  “After this night,” said Demetrius, flicking open the switchblade with a sickening click, “you are Twenty-One, and you are my slave.”

  Demetrius traced the tip of the blade up her stomach, too light to cut. Chloe couldn’t command her body to move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. One flick of Demetrius’ wrist and she would bleed. He caught her gaze and held it, trapped like the rest of her. There was something in his eyes that terrified her, a sinister light that revealed just how much pleasure her fear gave him. That light was like an injection of adrenaline into her heart. Chloe screamed wordlessly and forced her useless limbs to struggle. She clenched her fists and threw them at Demetrius’ chest, bucking her hips to throw him off balance. Demetrius’ laughter was infuriating. He crushed her own arms against her chest, thrust his weight onto her, and leaked the air from her lungs. Spots flooded her vision. She gasped for air.

  “Ah, there’s the second wind,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh, Chloe, Chloe, you are exquisite. Don’t you understand? It’s already over.” He lifted himself off her chest just enough for her to catch a breath. She gasped in air as he tilted up her chin with his cool, strong fingers. “You were mine the moment our eyes met.”

  She had to get out from underneath him. She felt every coil of muscle in his torso, the strength of his arms.

  “I will break you,” he said, bringing his face close to hers. She felt the knife blade slide between her wrists against the zip tie. “And I will shape you into a perfect slave. And in time, I will sell you. But for now, cherí, you’re mine.”

  Break. Slave. Sell. Chloe couldn’t wrap her mind around his words. The press of his body was too much. She felt him hard against her bare sex as if his clothing weren’t even there. Her body grew numb and heavy.

  “You have a choice now, Chloe.” The way he said her name, as if it was some sweet little secret he had discovered. She couldn’t bear it. “We can begin today and you’ll be rewarded with food. Or you can continue this little tantrum.”

  The knife bit through the zip tie around Chloe’s wrists. Blood rushed back to her fingertips. Demetrius was still, watching her. Chloe didn’t know what to do. Those grey eyes ensnared her, lit with a heat that didn’t match his cold words. His fingers softened on her chin, slid down the stiff collar around her neck. Her skin tingled when he traced her collarbone, brushed the mound of her left breast. She rose to meet his touch, to feel that cool hand encase her breast, without thought. Something snapped in her in that moment. What had she just done? Did she just encourage the man who kidnapped her to touch her? No. No, she couldn’t crave his touch. She flushed with shame. It was self-loathing that spurred her to strike out at him. She threw her fist at the side of his head.

  Demetrius’ head snapped to the side, his eyes widening a fraction of an inch. He caught her free hands, digging his nails into the bruises from the zip tie. Chloe cried out, unable to free herself from his grip. Her death was in his eyes when he stared down at her. Tears came, but she met his fierce gaze.

  “Have it your way,” Demetrius snarled.

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair. Chloe cried out, her scalp ablaze with screaming nerve endings. Her captor rolled off her and dragged her back toward the cage. There was no lascivity in his touch now, nothing but calculated violence.

  “No!” Chloe shrieked, scratching at the brutal fingers in her hair. “Help! Somebody!”

  Demetrius threw open the cage door and clutched Chloe’s face.

  “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?” he shouted over her cries. “Oh, Chloe, Chloe, you just made things much harder for yourself.”

  He hurled Chloe into the cage, slamming the door so fast that it nearly struck her ankles. Chloe sobbed over the sound of keys locking her in. Demetrius lingered for a moment, watching her through the bars. She felt his eyes taking in her nude body like pinpoints of heat traveling down her skin.

  “So beautiful.” He took in a breath through his teeth, sharp and shivering, and Chloe couldn’t tell if the fire in his eyes was rage or desire. His voice came in a seething whisper.

  “Bonne nuit, chéri.”

  He rose and headed for a black door at the other end of the room. It closed with a mechanical beeping sound. Chloe drew her knees into her chest and wept against the cold cage floor.

  Chapter 4

  September 25, 2011

  9/20/11

  Ms. Dia Belaire

  2717 Straeleni Street

  New Orleans, LA, 70130

  My Dear Demetrius,

  I know it’s about to be your busy time and it might be a few weeks before I hear from you again, but I just have to tell you this. I have amazing news…

  Demetrius hovered over Seven, keeping a careful watch for signs that she was close to orgasm. She lay sprawled on her back on the high oak table, bound at the wrists and ankles in leather cuffs, legs dangling off the table. Her attendant, Nick, stood between her legs, pressing a vibrator against her clitoris. Her tattoo-spattered skin was flushed, her face as red as her short neon mohawk. Demetrius stroked her small, high breasts and found her nipples diamond-hard. She was ready.

  “You have to wait until the slave has reached a state of extreme arousal for this,” said Demetrius to the nineteen attendants observing around the table, their nude and collared charges kneeling at their feet. He turned on the stun gun in his hand and approached the table. Seven’s small brown eyes snapped open at the electric whine of the stun gun warming up. She looked up at him with a silent plea on her face. Demetrius tugged on the D ring of her steel collar.

  “Eyes down, slave,” he ordered. Seven’s face twisted into a grimace somewhere between fear and need, but she obeyed. Demetrius looked at Nick. “What have I told you about her eye contact?”

  Nick flashed him an anxious smile, “Nah, D, she’s gotten a lot better, we’ve been working on it. She just gets nervous sometimes.”

  Demetrius stared at him until the attendant broke and looked away.

  “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Seven flung her head back. Her thighs quivered with every circle of the vibrator around the apex of her sex. It was time. Demetrius leaned down to Seven’s ear and gave the command.

  “Come for me.”

  Seven screamed, her back arching off the table. Demetrius struck her in the ribs with the stun gun. The slave’s scream intensified, her hips bucking against the vibrator so hard that Nick had to steady her thighs to keep her from sliding into him. The attendants applauded, many of them grinning. This was usually their favourite group training session of the year.

  Demetrius switched off the stun gun and handed it to Nick.

  “Bring your slave to a high state of arousal, give the command, and incorporate the stimulus. Soon you’ll begin using the stimuli and the command simultaneously, and eventually you will use the stimuli
alone to induce orgasm.” He took a step back, tossing his hair from his face. “Pain eroticism in slaves is tricky. Many of the leather slaves will resist it. Fear of the pain is your biggest hurdle. That’s why you need to make sure the state of arousal is just on the brink of orgasm. Obviously, Seven already has strong masochistic tendencies, so Nick has it easy this year.”

  Demetrius gestured over his shoulder for the twins, who stood behind him with crops and vibrators in their arms.

  “Leather slaves get the leather crops,” he instructed. “Steel slaves have the studded ones.”

  The basement buzzed with activity. Attendants strapped their charges to the row of tables and soon the cement walls echoed with mechanical buzzing and soft moans. Demetrius observed, giving direction as it was needed, but the attendants did well enough on their own. Most of them had been working for him since the beginning. With six years of experience they could probably train an adequate slave without his frequent supervision. His thoughts wandered to the frail girl locked in the third floor suite. Chloe. What a perfect name for such a delicate creature. The vision of her nude body loomed in his mind, flushed with terror and shame, her milky skin suffused with pink. Oh, she was exquisite.

  For six years, Demetrius had broken young women into the most sought after slaves on the market. He had seen the most beautiful women naked before him, season after season. In June, they fought, begged, struggled, each one of them, and by September, he broke them and shaped them into the docile, obedient creatures he saw before him now, submitting to whatever he wished, desperate to please their attendants and their Master.

  But it was September now. He had never had a new slave so late in the season. And her background…oh, his heart had sunk when he discovered just whom he had stolen away. The only child of a celebrated cardiologist was a far cry from his own “low risk” rule. This was the most dangerous risk he had taken in all these years by far. But what could he do? He couldn’t have let her slip through his fingers, no, no, not the sweet little newcomer who had stared at him with such awe, his wide-eyed little Capulet locking eyes with him across a crowded room. Chloe…Chloe was a slave by her very nature, he knew that from the moment he thrust her into the theatrical “virgin wall” at the Oryx. A single touch had stripped her of any inhibition and she had surrendered to pure sensation. He, a total stranger, could have fucked her against that blood-drenched wall and she would have submitted, as she had submitted to the vaguest of requests: Say yes. The very thought made him swell hard against his pale jeans. Oh, yes, breaking her would be heaven. But at what cost?