by Kitty Thomas
But she couldn’t find the will.
She didn’t want to escape him. There was something inside her that she didn’t fully understand, but needed to. There was a strange sense of comfort in giving up control. She’d worked so hard to help her sister achieve her dreams, but that had meant keeping a vice-like grip on control at all times. Control of every situation. Control of the finances. Control. Control. Control. It was exhausting.
She wanted to fall into Anton’s world and the sudden lack of responsibility or struggle—a world where everything was easy and taken care of. It was a dangerous craving.
And it was why it was absolutely vital that she only pretend to give him everything because she knew how deeply in trouble she was. This was the man who could break her. And not because he had whips and chains and a secret estate in the middle of nowhere and probably more money than God himself, but because Anton was the cliff she couldn’t escape falling off the edge of.
Tonight, seeing him so casually with Katya, she’d felt… jealous. Such a stupid emotion considering everything, but there it was. And here she was, left unattended yet again. Didn’t he want her?
She could have run, but she didn’t. Again. Even now. Instead she went downstairs to the concession area and stood in the short line clutching the twenty dollar bill he’d given her as if the piece of green paper was life itself.
When her turn came, there were any number of treats or confections she could have chosen. Alcohol—she probably needed it. A soft drink. Cake. They even inexplicably had fancy-looking hamburgers and gourmet fries. And yet, when the man behind the counter asked her what she wanted, she ordered a bottle of water and a bar of Godiva chocolate.
If she ate and drank whatever she got here in this lobby, Anton would never know what she ordered. And if he asked, she could just lie. Despite the dungeon, she was still stupidly convinced she was good enough at lying that she could find a way to fool Anton just like all the others. But he’d told her to get water and chocolate, and she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, bring herself to order anything else.
Once she’d paid her money and put the change in a donation jar, she took the snack and went to sit on a cushioned, hand-carved bench fancy enough to be in a museum where she proceeded to brood and eat her chocolate.
She didn’t hear the footsteps moving across the polished marble floor until they’d stopped right in front of her. She looked up to find Anton’s friend, the one who’d watched as Anton had teased her and then made her come. She tried to block out how wanton and shameless she’d been.
She wanted to blame the arousal cream. It was like some hard illicit drug—as if it had been shot directly into her vein instead of rubbed carefully into her most private flesh by expert hands. What the hell was in that cream? There was definitely no craving for it. Not like a drug. In fact, the last thing she wanted was that cream on her because it sent her spiraling into a madness that she couldn’t find her way out of. She was just lost in the dark and the sensations between her legs and the aching need to come at any cost in front of any audience. Damn any consequence.
“Annette?” It was another Russian accent, much like Anton’s, though slightly different in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
She couldn’t believe she’d just spent the past minute, knowing Sergio was standing there, yet still trapped in her hysterical mental zoo. She felt her face flame. She’d finished the chocolate and took a long, steadying gulp from the water bottle before finally looking up at him.
“Sergio.”
He smiled, no, beamed. “Yes. I am Sergio!” As if they had planned to meet all along, and he was relieved to have found her.
Annette braced against the arm rest of the bench to stand and eased out of Sergio’s personal bubble to drop the water bottle and chocolate wrapper in a trash bin nearby. Sergio followed.
“Annette.” He looked at her like he wanted to eat her or like he had X-ray vision and could still see her breasts on display.
She moved quickly toward the stairs. “I need to get back.”
But Sergio wasn’t the kind of guy who took hints. Or if he took them, he threw them right back—like a too-small fish—as if these hints didn’t really apply to him. They were for other less sophisticated, less attractive, and less suave men. Because of course, a woman would not say no to him. Ever. He gripped her arm and pulled her into the alcove under the stairs, pressing her up against the wall. His lips found the curvature of her neck, that curvature that lips were meant to live in, and he set upon her to devour her.
She shoved ineffectually at his shoulders. He was like a boulder underneath that pressed crisp suit. “Get off me.”
Sergio backed up, wounded confusion on his face as if there were somehow something wrong with her for denying him the right to maul her—a complete stranger—under a staircase at the ballet.
“I’m sorry. I thought it would be all right. I thought you would want...”
“I’m with Anton,” she said.
Finally some version of recognition seemed to light his features. “Oh. Such a good and loyal pet,” he said.
Those words seemed like they should be mocking. A cruel joke. But they were uttered with the most solemn sincerity that she couldn’t be angry at him. In another set of circumstances, she might have welcomed his advances. He was beautiful and smoldering. And his warm energy pressed against her had felt like sunlight for the moment it took her to weakly struggle against his onslaught.
Another set of footsteps joined them. And just like before, she’d been so caught up with the chattering chimps in her mind that she hadn’t noticed until he was right upon them. Anton.
“And what mischief are we getting into here? I thought I told you to get water and chocolate, collect yourself, and return to me?” This was the same tone he’d used when he’d dismissed Katya from the box earlier.
“I did. I was trying. I...”
“It’s not her fault,” Sergio said. “As always, you have managed to find the perfect pet. She doesn’t perform a trick until her master orders it. You must have been hiding her away from us for a long time to train her so well.”
Annette didn’t like being talked about like she was some coiffed poodle about to prance around in the show ring.
“Not as long as you would think,” Anton said. He pulled up a chair from just around the corner and sat down, his arms crossed over his chest. “Continue with what you were doing, Sergio. I want to watch.”
Annette couldn’t have heard what she thought she just heard. Anton couldn’t mean for Sergio to take her right here under the stairs where just anyone could happen by. This was far more exposed than the box. And how much longer did the ballet have? How long until all the elegant moneyed people began to pour out of the theater?
Sergio’s eyes darkened in a wild primal hunger as he pressed Annette back against the wall where he’d had her previously pinned. He didn’t ask her permission, either with his eyes or his voice. Because Anton said it was okay, so everything was right in the world again.
Though, in truth, with Anton permitting—no, demanding—this, Annette couldn’t find the will to resist his warm, wet kisses at her throat that soon turned into needy little bites, or the way his hands groped at her flesh, stroking under her dress and bra to touch the skin Anton had teased him with not so long before.
Sergio was on a mission. He wasn’t here for the slow, building tease of earlier in the box. He’d been teased for that long period, and now he needed release. With little fanfare, he undid his pants and shoved the strips of fabric—those easy access strips of her dress—out of his way. A moment later he’d pushed inside her, his girth stealing her breath for a moment as she gripped his shoulders and let out an indelicate grunt like some rutting animal.
She tried to think of all the reasons she should resist him. He didn’t care about her pleasure. He seemed to have no interest in getting her off right now—after all, she’d had her orgasm already… her mind numbing, soul shattering
orgasm. It was Sergio’s turn. Though if anyone should be getting a carnal reward right now, it was Anton. Stoic Anton, who watched her with as much concentration as he’d watched the dancers on stage. Each movement, each sigh. It was as though she were performing choreography he’d created, and he wanted to make damn sure she performed it to his satisfaction.
Her previous phone sex job seemed distant years in her past, even though she’d been talking dirty to strangers less than forty-eight hours before. All those filthy fantasies were being brought to life—fantasies she hadn’t thought were really hers, just a service she had been performing for men with the money to pay for such idle talk. Now there was no talk, only action, as if it were now time to pay for all the teasing she’d done on the phone for years.
Despite her work, giving your actual physical body to random men was a much different prospect. With phone sex, you could hang up the phone and remain unchanged because it was all just acting—sweet little lies that got them off and put money in your bank account. But this was different. First Anton and now Sergio. Sergio who was here only to take from her—to use her body as his own personal masturbatory toy.
The thought should have made her angry or indignant, but instead, for some inexplicable reason, it turned her on. Maybe it was the intensity with which Anton watched them. Maybe it was the helpless vulnerability of the moment and the excitement and fear they might get caught. She was quickly learning that fear was its own kind of arousal, and sometimes the brain got confused about the whole thing. Sometimes fear that wasn’t supposed to excite you between your legs… did.
Discovering this strange feature of her body should have made her panic, but if she panicked now, she knew her body would just keep betraying her, delivering arousal instead of the ability and desire to flee.
And if they were caught in this not-so-private corner under the stairs? She would be the one who carried the shame and disgust in the eyes of strangers. Not Sergio. He was just a guy. Boys will be boys after all. She was supposed to exercise restraint, say no, have some higher virtue instead of a filthy animal impulse. She should worry and concern herself about pregnancy and diseases—things men, for some reason, rarely trifled with even though their risk profile was exactly the same… a child of their blood or a disease of their partner’s.
Again, these thoughts should have made her angry, but they only excited her more as Sergio drove into her in rhythm to the building music she could hear and even feel through the wall. He held her in place as he fucked her with one hand around her throat while he braced his other against the wall. He wasn’t squeezing, but he wanted her to know that he could.
She should have felt threatened by this raw display of power. But all she felt was wet and aroused. If only she could blame the cream which had long worn off by now. No, this was her and her own traitorous body giving truth to Anton’s claim of ownership because it was only his direct order that had caused her legs to fall open as Sergio had found his way inside her.
She’d come to a point in her mind where she’d decided to pretend this was all a dream with no consequences and just go with it. It was all so uncharacteristic of who she thought she was and what she thought she wanted and what she thought she had no interest in, that it was the only way not to have an entire identity crisis meltdown under the stairs with two practical strangers.
Thunderous applause rose up from some distant place that Annette was vaguely aware existed somewhere beyond the stairs. The ballet was over. People would be filling the lobby at any moment. But Sergio didn’t care. Neither did Anton. Anton at least seemed excited and amused by the prospect of hundreds of people stopping by to watch her get fucked against the wall.
Sergio neither sped nor slowed his pace. He kept that maddening tempo that teased her and took her to the edge of a cliff she knew she wouldn’t fall over this time. Doors burst open and voices could be heard on the stairs and in the hallways. Anton’s chair wasn’t even discreetly hidden behind the stairs. His obvious presence out in the open made him seem like an invitation to come see what was happening back here that had him more riveted than the dancers on stage.
A moment later, Sergio came and then seemed to crumble against her, wrapping her inside an embrace that was at once both comforting and suffocating. At least he fully covered her, shielding her from any prying eyes. When there was a lull in the foot traffic, he pulled away and put himself back together. Annette quickly pulled her own skirt down and straightened her straps. When the next group came by and peered underneath the stairs with suspicion in their eyes at this strange tableau, there was nothing to catch. But somehow Annette thought they knew.
49
Anton guided Annette into the after party. The festivities were being held in a private kink club that had been rented out for the night. Some of the dancers in the company arranged these gatherings, planning weeks in advance of their tour schedule. Each city had its own underworld and sexual depravity, and over the years a network of contacts had been formed so there was always a fully-equipped place to play and let off steam after a performance.
It wasn’t the whole ballet company at the party. Just the kinky ones. Though to be fair, there was a lot of kink in the ballet world. Perhaps it was the punishing and grueling practices and performances. Maybe it was the term “ballet master”. It could have been the absolute expectation of obedience from dancers when they stood at the barre. Whatever it was, it seemed to attract a greater than average number of masochists and subs and inexplicably a few who swung on the other side of that continuum of power and control. Also in attendance were a few outside friends of the dancers, which included Anton and Sergio. One might call them ballet groupies. Though the fact that most of them were doms and sadists made the label seem wrong.
Also in attendance was one of the company’s ballet masters.
This last addition to the party was, of course, entirely inappropriate, but he had an active sub in the company. It was a poorly kept secret, and everyone was consenting adults. Or almost everyone, he thought as his eyes lingered on his complicated new pet. Then again, Annette had responded to him and hadn’t appeared troubled by Sergio fucking her.
At the memory, Anton took in a sharp breath. Watching his friend take her under the stairs had been worth any risk of bringing her out into the world so soon. It was moments like that that made him believe this arrangement could actually somehow work. He’d wanted to see how she would respond to more strangers touching her, before subjecting her to the party.
Once he’d given permission, she’d melted into Sergio’s embrace and opened her legs to invite him inside. She was turning out to be so right that he’d stopped being sorry for kidnapping her sister. How could he be sorry given the outcome?
“Anton!”
He turned at the sound of his name to see Ivan Petrovsky, the company’s head ballet master, coming his way. Ivan was in his early fifties with the energy of a twenty year old. He’d been a dancer in his younger years and had somehow escaped the stage unscathed by injuries.
Ivan’s eyes landed immediately on Annette, drinking her in. “New pet, finally?” he asked as he appraised her as only Ivan could. “I had been starting to worry about you, my friend and most generous patron of the arts.”
“Yes,” Anton said, ignoring the lavish attention Ivan always laid on him for his financial support. “This is Annette.”
“You’ll let me play with her, I hope? Or are you still keeping this one to yourself?”
“No, I’m in a very sharing and giving mood tonight,” Anton said.
“That is, if it is all right with your pet,” Ivan added, almost as an afterthought.
Anton had yet to decide how loose he would be keeping Annette’s leash. Despite how he fought with himself over the sordid reality, it was what he wanted. Someone who belonged truly to him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to start breaking that wall down by giving her the illusion of choice and freedom. Still, at this party, it would look odd to them if she seemed anything le
ss than fully in control and in possession of a safe word.
Annette had gone shy, suddenly—not an unusual reaction to Ivan. She glanced quickly at Anton as if trying to figure out what he wanted from her.
“You can play with him or not play with him,” Anton said, trying to sound as casual about the whole thing as possible. “It’s up to you. Would you like to play with him?”
“Yes, Master,” she said. She didn’t seem to struggle to get the title out. Probably because she was surrounded by other people using the same types of titles. Mistress, Master, Sir, Ma’am. As well as other more personal pet names between more intimate lovers.
The club was full of dancers from the company wearing collars and little else, engaged in various power games around the large open space. When Anton had first told her how he wanted her to address him in front of his friends, she must have imagined she would be the only one. She seemed to have relaxed into the truth that she was not.
Ivan stroked the side of Annette’s throat and turned her this way and that, inspecting her. “Not as waifish as my girls, but this one almost could have been a dancer. Maybe in a more contemporary company?”
Ivan was always trying to cast people. Anyone who could have at any point in their life been some kind of dancer, he could spot their missed calling.
“I took classes when I was younger. Just for a few years.” Annette said.
“Ah ha! I knew it! I can always spot it. You must have, too, subconsciously, Anton.”
Anton shrugged noncommittally, wondering if he’d been played yet again. “I thought you’d never been to the ballet, pet.”
A shadow of fear fell over her features; no doubt she was thinking about the last time she’d lied to him.
“Just because I took ballet when I was a kid doesn’t mean I’ve been to the ballet.”
A few eyebrows raised at her tone and lack of address, but Anton decided to let this one go. She was right, of course. Plenty of little girls took ballet and never went on to understand the art form more deeply.