Into The Dark Wilds

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

“Chloe, get your ass in here!” Ginnis barked across the city room over the telly conversations that made the room a din of aggravated sound.

I looked up over the top of my rimless glasses seeing my editor looking like a fat devil as he stood flushed faced in front of the foreman’s office. There was a new administrator. Damn! What a moment for introductions.

Five minutes later—five minutes too late as far as Ginnis was concerned—I was settling into the leather office chair in front of a wide wood desk I’d viewed from my side a dozen times in my stint on the paper.

“Max Gatov,” an official looking sort of guy stood to shake my hand. I rose just enough to accommodate his need for this formality.

“Gatov? Humm. The name’s familiar,” I said, thinking it odd that he shared his name with the proprietor of my favorite antiquities shop. “So you’re the new magistrate.”

He looked almost as if he was going to laugh at me, calling him magistrate.

“Administrator,” he corrected me.

“Yeah, I know the routine,” I said.

“Cockiness makes for good reporters,” he stated. He was complimenting me and commenting on my lack of formality. Max Gatov was a sure of himself know-it-all. Having him pegged from the outset, I knew all I needed to know about him to figure how I’d treat him. Though he did have supreme power over me as a lowly beat reporter and copy editor, I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of my personal schemes. The paper was one place where a slightly offbeat woman like me had a lot of latitude. There was so much rough stuff on the streets we reported, no one expected me to be prim and polite the way good women are suppose to be.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Let me inform you, Chloe, is it?”

“Chloe Duchet, yes.”

“I’m a hands-on administrator. Which means, I’ll be looking over your shoulder much more than you probably want me to. Don’t be hassled by it, because I’m not going to change the way I work. I have a reputation of getting loose organizations like this one running smoothly.”

“I didn’t realize that we didn’t run smoothly,” I added to the conversation, showing off my flippant frame of mind.

“I don’t think that anyone around here knows what smooth is,” he said.

My god, he was breathtakingly stern. He had professorial arrogance: brown close cropped hair, a burrowing pair of eyes, the appearance as black to me as the bottle of new ink on his desk, and a sculptured face so handsome that it was hard to look at and not feel a little embarrassed—much the way you feel embarrassed when you’re caught looking at someone with a disfigured body. I tried keeping my eyes from looking too fixed. The saving grace was his elegant cool, which would keep me and everyone else perpetually distant. He said “hands-on” but I knew what he really meant. He’d be as hands-off as all the other administrators until something didn’t go his way. Then he’d barge in with fear flying to the four corners of the city room and blame the mess on the peons like me who do the lion’s share of work with little guidance and lots of freedom because we’re used to having to make our own decisions.

“I’m game for whatever you have in mind, Gatov, or is it Max? Be straight with me.”

“Either one’s fine. You’ll be calling me a lot less complimentary things before our association is over.”

“Hey, we’ve hardly met and you’re speaking of endings?”

“I only meant that to make a point.”

I challenged him as much as I could. I wanted him to think I was a challenge, not readily won over, a woman he’d have to either coddle, or out and out fight for control. Though I can be very easy, I refused to lose ground with any man. Still, I wouldn’t go too far, since I suspect he had the authority to fire anyone who he thought would be too difficult for his plans.

“Do you always walk in the door and warn people away from you?” I asked him.

“I walk in the door and take control,” he replied. “I know newspaper people, trained observers. You’re casing me out as much as I’m figuring you out. You’re stubborn, willful and hardheaded, with a sad streak of vulnerability and inherent kindness to people you like. Don’t think you’ll get away with anything on me, Ms. Duchet.”

That information hit me square in eye so I’m sure he saw how startled I was. I recovered easily. I left his office not knowing if I wanted to screw the man out of his job, or get screwed by him in bed. I had the feeling that either act would be one hell of a good ride.

***

I came home to “Logan the Morose” that night. Seeing his moodiness, I went to the bedroom to get off by myself while furtively perusing the pages of Rowena’s journal. Letting my hand dip between my thighs I was happily in other worlds, just that first sight of the journal making my belly spasm.

10/23 - Boheme’s nothing like Charlie. He told me right off he wants me for a personal slave not to give away. I take it he’s wealthy, the diamonds he wears. I’d never seen diamonds until I saw his, but my intuition told me that they’d look like stars if they were close enough to really see. He held my hand so tightly in the car that I could feel the jewelry press against it, a ring digging into my flesh. I told him I wanted a closer look, thinking my curiosity might interest him. He said he’d be giving me my own.

My quarters here are plush. The house is ancient, built some time at the turn of the 20th century. I’m not surprised it survived the fires. Some fore-thinking individual crept even further back in time to design this place like a truly ancient fortress. While the stone walls are cold, Boheme keeps fires burning in all the rooms. My suite consists of a bedroom, which has been fully fitted for a number of activities I’m sure he has in mind for me, as well as a bath and a closet of clothes that I’m not yet allowed to see. My bed looks like a lavish oasis, though there are reminders all around me of the harsh realities that I’ll face. A whipping post is central in the room, with a dozen rings and eyehooks at different heights. A small seat on one side suggests the variety of ways in which the post can be used. There are also many hooks and chains hanging from the rafters and embedded in one stone wall. A second major apparatus is in the corner, a wide leather bolster implies some highly submissive positions draped over the comfort of the horsehide cushion. A locked cabinet with glass doors displays cuffs and crops and whips that will soon move my body in the ways my master designs.

I couldn’t sleep last night for the ghosts and nightmares that appeared before my eyes when I closed them, and even when they were open. Feeling the anxiety in my stomach so rich, I would have rather had Boheme use me to the limits before I tried some sound slumber. He told me we’d begin today. But the morning has already dawned and he’s not yet arrived. There’s nothing here to clock the time, but I imagine that it’s nearly mid-morning by the look of the day outside my window. I was relieved that Boheme would allow me my journal. Actually, I think he was fascinated by the fact that I’d want to chronicle my life as a slave. For me it’s more of a diversion than anything, a way to put my thoughts at peace in a place where I have no one to share my soul with.

10/24 - Ah, how twenty-four hours changes things. My first session with Boheme and his bag of tricks began yesterday afternoon and did not end until daybreak today. He began by giving me an odd liquor, which I was required to drink quickly even though it burned my throat. Bending me over the edge of the bed, I took a shot of Devil’s Spice in my ass. This pellet was a large one, so I was clued that the session would be long. Charlie’s thugs would give them to me regularly, but theirs were a poor quality. I knew Boheme’s would not be.

After my master was sure that the drug had taken, he had me straddle the seat at the whipping post so I could rest my ass, while my legs were wrapped around the post and fastened in cuffs to a low eyehook. My arms, lifted above my head, were attached high so I was stretched taut. A wide leather strap around my back pulled me tight to the post, the thick wood rod separating my breasts. Boheme, having left me there, did not return until the liquor and drugs had their full effect. Then, with a few changes in my position, I was stretched taut standing against the post to take the first flogging. That beating was rich. I couldn’t see the implement, but I imagined a many taloned cat. Boheme was efficient with his stroke against my skin, so there was no place save my head not rewarded with a vicious sting.

When he was finished, his hand fondled the roughed up skin, and like that master years before, his whispers filled my ears with desire. “I’ll whip the other side soon, my darling, those breasts, the swell of your belly and all that is below them to your knees. It’ll feel as though you’ve been struck by lightning. Of course such love happens only when you’ve earned the privilege of that pain, only then.”

I desired it then. In my youth I might have begged for the favor. But more seasoned now with submission, I know how futile it is for a submissive to beg a master for anything when it is the master’s whims and the submissive’s desires that keep the union alive. I had to be satisfied with having my rear channeled cleaned. Filled full of fluid in my bowels, I was refastened to the post, required to stay there for what seemed like an hour. Boheme gave me two tall glasses of ale before he left me so that soon, not just my rear, but my belly was in agony awaiting release. So humbled. So depraved. Tears ran down my cheeks as each minute passed and the ache became more complete, more all consuming. When he came to release me, I should have figured that he wouldn’t be content to let the waters pass without another painful treatment. This one was a spanking to my bottom alone, delivered swiftly with a wooden paddle until I was sure all my bodily fluids would suddenly gush forth. Perhaps my master was telling me of my power to endure. I did hold on to the body waters and passed them only when I was ordered to, releasing them into the shiny brass pot that sat waiting nearby.

Boheme watched the whole time, making the humiliation more real. There was no emotion in his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or displeased with my efforts to obey him. Once I finished, he brought me back to the post again and planted a thick rod in my ass. This time he tied my hands around the post, my feet below, and there I was to remain alone in the dark.

While I was still cognizant I thought of my position as this man’s slave, wondering if my days would all be filled with this kind of reviling treatment. If he was intent on submerging my identity, he was already succeeding in that effort. Layers of my being seemed lost, falling away one by one. Thinking I might be reaching that bare core of my being, I wasn’t sure whether to rejoice or despair. At some unknown hour I fell asleep, drifting into endless dreams with pictures of one horror after another. They blended into a montage of images, so I believed that they would never stop but keep repeating over and over until I went mad.

I fell asleep as Rowena had, lost in her thoughts and nightmares making them my own. I jerked awake, realizing that Logan hovered over me. Having taken the journal from the bed where it lay opened, he read, his response chilling.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

I snatched the forbidden book from his hands and clutched it tight to me. “None of your business.”

“Why do you have it, Chloe?” You would have thought someone died by the morose look of his dark features. There was no handsomeness left, just anger and judgment pouring from his eyes, heaped on me.