Her last words made me rewind the film, turn up the volume, and lean in.

She was kneeling as always, perfect position, but looking at the floor, then she looked up directly at the camera. Her light blue eyes were wide, unblinking.

"I've lost track of time, Klaus. I need to know how much longer before our time is up. I want to talk about us, about weaning ourselves away from..." She gestured vaguely. "From all this. You know we have to? Yes?"

Hell. I sat back, paused the film, and stared at her in freeze frame.

What could I do?

I'd been all set to talk but this showed me she was already on the wrong side of the equation. And I knew from the past all about talking with Jodie. I'd talked to her about her drinking, and about toning down her stage persona so she wasn't feeling compelled to spew forth everything that went wrong in her life. I'd talked about how she related to me and about how looking after one another went both ways. She hadn't changed. Talking didn't work so well.

Communication was the very bedrock of BDSM according to Moghul, but there were other ways of communicating. If I talked, she would likely reject my ideas. The funny thing about saying no was that it set up a barrier in the mind so that a yes became much harder to say.

We'd been doing this a while. Weeks.

Stockholm Syndrome. Where was that when you needed it?

And those other ways of communicating?

Showing, doing, was far superior to talking. You could always talk later, when she knew what it was like to experience it for real. After all, a wish to try out what she'd read in books had led Jodie to this.

Two and a half weeks left. I found myself with the remote in hand, turning it like a pig on a spit. I wasn't some serial killer murderer, kidnapper sort, but there was nothing about weaning in our agreement. Technically, I had that time to do what I wanted to.

I had that time to convince her to keep going. In whatever way I could imagine. I'd barely scratched the surface of what was possible.

Those other ideas materialized. I could do them. She wanted to see what it was like to be a slave. I could show her.

Really? I stared at the remote, then stared at the TV some more. I really wanted to do this?

My certainty faltered. I wanted to. But I suspected it was wrong. But I was going to.

Maybe if I was another man, I'd have been thinking about how to talk her into a relationship after the documentary ended. I would have been talking with her, full stop. But the opposite course of action drew me like gravity on a man falling from the sky. I was going down, down, down.

I'd never thought of myself as the obsessive sort, yet I knew all the way down to my toenails that I could not back away from this without trying to the utmost. I wanted this so deeply it hurt. I wanted to own her. Not in some mock BDSM scene way. I really wanted her as mine. To do with as I pleased. Crack had nothing on this.

Moghul was hosting a party in about two weeks, on the Sunday-the last day of this so-called documentary. The temptation was too much. Train her. Take her to the play party and show her how suitable she was to be my pet. Jodie already had the collar; all she needed was the right moves, and the right attitude.

Chapter Seventeen.

Jodie *

I heard his words as he strode into the room, but they were so outrageous, so unexpected, after what I'd just requested on camera, that I had to replay them in my head.

Right now, you're my captive and time does not exist.

I focused on him again and stiffened-the leather straps, the spider gag, and the cane in his hand. He looked so formidable.

My thoughts were...seriously, my first thoughts were laced with fear.

What had I done? I shifted on my knees.

Clearly, to him, I'd done wrong.

He squatted beside me. His trousers were tight across his thighs, his hands rested there with the cane and that nasty spider gag. I hated it and couldn't help eyeing it, as if it were some venomous creature.

"This is how it will be. Obeisance when I enter a room." He pulled my head forward until I overbalanced and slapped my hands to the floor. "Down. Forehead on the floor. Hands way out in front with your arms outstretched. Don't speak."

I knew what an obeisance was. A slave did it for their Master.

His commanding growl had me obeying and lying in a sort of flat bow with my knees tucked under me. Worrying about the documentary could wait. I'd reacted as always. I'd warmed down below. Traitorous clit. It must be an ingrained response from wanking to all those fantasy books. Precisely this scenario would have had me flipping the ebook pages one-handed.

Not speaking had become easy. So it startled me when he set the spider gag in my mouth and buckled it on. Using the same hand-in-hair grip he dragged my head up. Instinctively, whining at the pain, I put my hands up.

"Hands at your back!" he snapped.

Chastised, I put them there, lacing my fingers together to give me pause in case I forgot.

"From now on, for whatever length of time I choose, you are my pet. No words. No getting on furniture. No getting up on your feet. Not unless I say you can."

He didn't ask for an answer but I grunted once, blinking watery-eyed, because of the sting from the pull on my hair.

"First lesson. You are available when I say. Don't move anything." One-handed he unzipped, took out his erect cock and put it to my mouth, then slowly thrust inside past the metal of the gag. He tasted of the sea and I felt grains of sand rub on my lips. As he fucked my mouth, I wondered, strangely, if he'd been swimming while I'd been stuck in this room. Then, after a few thrusts, he pushed my forehead to the floor again and went behind me. Within seconds his cock was sliding into me there.

Oh God. Used. Taken. Something about the casual assumption of my body being his, my mouth or any other part of me, resonated inside my soul.

Those first few seconds of entry, especially when I could do little to stop him, it scattered me, all I could feel was him in there, his flesh opening up mine as he pushed inward.

"You can brace your hands on the floor," he ground out, having paused at the bottom of the stroke, imbedded in me all the way.

I groaned and wriggled a little, but did as he said, flopping my arms out and curling my fingers against the floor as if I could grab onto it. This time he plowed me for longer than he had my mouth, but before he came, he pulled out and zipped up. I was head to the floor with my butt in the air and screaming inside for him to continue. You could have handed me to a football team and I would have welcomed them. I was that turned on. He rode rough shod over me. He callously, with no regard for my opinion, had decided what should be done with my body. I was hot as hell. Incandescent maybe.

Guess I liked being objectified.

"Up. Off the floor." He smacked me damn hard, once, on my rear.

I let out a soft moan before shuffling to my knees and looking at him wistfully. Whatever plans he had, so far I liked them. I remembered that I trusted him. So, therefore, he knew the time left for our documentary, but wasn't telling me. Okay, I could roll with that.

Though his next actions perplexed me. Leaving me where I was in the middle of the room, he went and turned off the camera. Then he came to me and taped my hands up so my fingers were together like mittens.

"Every day I'll do that until special mittens arrive. You no longer have hands to use. Pets don't need them." He bent and kissed me hard enough to hurt my lips, then he went down on his knees and bit and sucked my ass hard enough to make me try to get away. I couldn't, of course. Laughing, he held me down and finished what he meant to. Now I had a new circular bruise. I glared. Drool from the gag dribbled to the floor.

"Marked. Good." He poked the bruise once and casually fingered me between my legs. "I might get you tattooed somehow in the future. Something that makes you mine."

Shit, shit, shit. Not in my book. No way.

"Don't glare at your Master."

Master?

Then he tipped me and rolled me onto my belly.

"Hands at your back. Fast!" The grating harshness of his words told me how close he was to taking me again.

I would've begged if I could have. Lust choked me, made me so aware of my vulnerability, of the moisture slicking my folds, and of how easy it would be for him to thrust his cock or fingers into me without me being able to do anything much to stop him.

"Good." Like the inspector of some animal, he put his splayed hands either side on the cheeks of my ass then used his thumbs to stretch my lower lips, opening me to his gaze.

I moaned softly. Fuck me, please. My wrists were against each other, my eyes were closed, and I waited, heating up more and more with each passing moment. I knew where he was looking.

I heard the rip of tape being peeled from a roll and then a second later he taped my wrists together. While I was testing the inescapability of those bonds, the cane smacked down on my butt. With no warm-up the pain bit hard. Squealing and screaming only made him hit me again. Eventually I stayed silent and trembled, and took the last few blows only shuddering and gasping wetly into the floor.

Something had changed. I could sense an edgier purpose in what he did.

Fear crept into my bones and whispered to me, dark things.

"Count the stairs," he said, as he hauled me up the stairs with a hand under my arm and the leash at my collar. "I will test you."

Count?

I counted. Apparently I got it wrong, because after he went back and counted them too, he came up the stairs and caned me, again. The lines on my butt were lines of fire. Then he fucked my mouth again until I gagged, untaped my hands, then got me to do the dishes while my head was whirling. I was to count the dishes too, as I went, even when he put a vibe to my clit and got me off, gasping, crouched over the sink.

After that he lubed a small butt plug and inserted it. He came inside me while I sluiced out a cup. I wasn't to move, or break anything. That cup got washed well. Round and round the sponge went for at least five minutes until I gave in and just held on tight. Dishwater sloshed out of the sink. I was punished, for grabbing the tap to keep myself still. Gasping sounds odd when you have a spider gag in.

The mess that dripped down my leg as I went back to washing and drying, I had to clean up after, and I had to count the tiles on the floor under the mop. Ever so dirty. Ever so wrong. Strange. And yet the times when I had the gag off, it hadn't occurred to me to say no or stop.

I got good at counting over the next few days. From the tick of the second-hand on the clock at my back, to the timber floor boards I washed, to the teeth on the zipper of his pants. I counted them all, got some wrong. I mean really, teeth on a zipper?

Sometimes he used the cane, sometimes it was clothes pins on my nipples or labia, or my tongue. I hurt everywhere. I had orgasms by the dozen some days. The vibe used up all our batteries and he went away to get more. Then the package arrived with my new leather mittens he could buckle on instead of tape and take off if he needed to. In the same package was a huge massager that he commenced using to bring me to orgasm faster than anyone should orgasm. I found out my clit could go numb.

My clit and mouth and pussy were well used. Numbers ran through my head all day. The exercise bike I had tucked away in a storage cupboard was dragged out and I was allotted times to exercise. Klaus alternated so that every second day I was deprived of sight, of sound, and of normality.

Ear plugs, black goggles, mittens, I began to feel ever more disconnected from reality. I could hear, but sound was muted. I couldn't see at all. I could only feel the insides of the leather mittens and rub my fingers against one another.

On those days the only time I was alone was in the toilet. Sometimes I wondered if I was sleeping at night or in the day. After one occasion when he caught me peeking from beneath the goggles and punished me with the cane, I gave in. Besides, the world was simpler behind them. I only had to breathe, and count, be fed delicacies by Klaus, and be fucked and have orgasms.

No money worries, no traffic, no stupid lame conversations with people you never wanted to meet again. No worry, at all. Even my existence seemed up to him. If some disaster happened, I'd have to rely on him to get us out alive.

But the thing that seeped into my consciousness above all was what I valued most on the days when I could see, and that was being able to serve him. We exchanged smiles, he bestowed on me loving caresses and kisses, and I knew I was the focus of his world as much as he was of mine. If I had to put my finger on it, I guess I'd grown to like giving of myself to him.

When I knelt and offered him a meal I'd prepared, and saw pleasure in his eyes, that was fulfillment. When he let me up on the lounge to be petted while he watched TV, I was grateful. Yet when I had to curl up on a pillow at his feet, I was just as happy. I'd changed so much. I knew the how and the why behind this change, and I didn't care. I could see so much more in selflessness than I could ever have imagined as the woman I once was. I came to wonder if this was a form of love.

On some days, everything faded and I merely was. I existed. When I came to think about it, I knew that he'd aimed for this-I was his, nothing more.

I pined for things of course. Sometimes I wanted to choose. I wanted the variety of life beyond this. But it was still there. When I was ready, when Klaus was ready, we would return to it. I knew this. What I had now was unique. The pain he liked, it had less hold on me too. I'd learnt to bear it, and even, sometimes, to ride it into the realm of pleasure.

But one day I had an idea. A bad one. I thought of a way to escape. With Klaus away at the shop, I realized I'd not heard the usual click of the door. He'd left me in the basement room with the goggles on and ear plugs in. Knocking the goggles awry with my mittened hands was easy. I blinked and looked about, dizzy for a second as my balance mechanism reasserted itself. It always happened to me after long periods blind.

The ear plugs could wait until I got the mittens off. And wow, the door was ajar by an inch and not locked. On the floor I spied a splinter of timber caught between the door and the door frame, stopping the door closing. Glee possessed me at the danger of what I was doing. He could only beat me if he caught me. I nudged through the door with my shoulder and padded up the stairs, half-naked, in a bikini top and one of the skirts he liked. No panties.

Curious, I checked-polka dot blue and white this time. Huh. I had a notion he got these second-hand. It explained why he discarded them so easily.

The back kitchen door was deadlocked. Perhaps the front door? Or the garage door? That one would do. I couldn't use a key but I could press the garage door button, surely?

Almost giggling with delirium, I went down the other short flight of steps into the garage. The button was on the center column. I approached it and stopped, thinking. Unused brain cells chugged back to life.

Crap. How clueless had I become? I couldn't go out as I was. I needed underwear. I needed, I held my mittened hands before my eyes, to get these off. My heart pitter-pattered double time. Where was I going? What would I do out there? Was this the end of our experiment? The anxiety that arose was so stupendously ridiculous that more amusement bubbled up. I was worried about being normal? But, do I really want to stop?

Because I liked where I was.

I hadn't made a choice, a decision, in days, weeks. I hadn't needed to think ahead. I swallowed, shifted from one bare foot to the other.

The ear plugs didn't block out everything, they just made things quieter.

The grinding hum of the door motor made me jump. The door bottom lifted, showing a widening sliver of bright sunlight. Gravel clacked as the jeep drew up. I could see tires, then the face of the driver, of Klaus. Frozen in place, I stayed where I was as he drove in, opened the door and stepped out.

Big. He was big, muscular, and cross. I swallowed.

The garage floor was concrete with chips of rock and grit. I didn't hesitate a second longer. I dropped and prostrated myself in obeisance, and I waited, shaking.

Did I shake from fear or some sort of adrenalin high? Even I wasn't sure.

He knelt on one knee beside me and gently, with his hand under my chin, encouraged me to raise my head. "Been bad, pet?"

His gray-green eyes looked somehow puzzled, yet the longer I met his gaze the more it changed to that familiar sadistic and evil one. The one that he wore when he walked about marking me with the crop or the cane.

On cue, the tingles of arousal trickled straight to my clit.

"Yes-s." I was a mouse. A mouse with goosebumps prickling cold down her arms, and with heat gathering in her groin. Whip me, beat me, I've been bad. "I'm sorry."

"You will be."

The promise in those words made me inhale sharply and bite my lip.

Chapter Eighteen.