My choices were narrowing. Time was running out. Soon, I would be tied down, unable to move, unable to cry out. Where was Alexander?
My cheek was still throbbing from the impact of her blow as she buckled the gag around my face and pumped the ball a few times. The penis inflated and the taste of rubber filled my mouth. I fought not to retch. “If you throw up,” she warned. “That’ll be the only thing you’ll eat for the next forty-eight hours.”
Forty-eight hours? What did she mean? Was Alexander away?
“Get on the bench,” she ordered me.
I inhaled deeply. This was it. Decision point.
But the answer was always the same. For six years, getting to Dylan had been my only dream. She could beat me black and blue, but that yearning wasn’t going to change. Hanoi mattered. Killing Dylan McAllister mattered. What if she caned me? I had endured before. I had the scars to prove it.
I shuffled onto the bench, kneeling on the low, padded rest and bending my body over the raised middle section. I felt her hands at my ankles, binding my legs in place. My hands were restrained in front of me with cold metal handcuffs that would chafe my wrists if I pulled.
I shut my eyes and fought not to panic. Breathe in, Jenny, he’d said to me in Provence, with a note of worry in his voice. Breathe out. I closed my eyes and I willed my memories to transport me back under that tree, where he had fed me grapes and had made me ride him with the sunlight on my back. I had buckled in pleasure against him.
I clung tight to that feeling as I heard the cane swish in the air and it descended on my bare, exposed, unprotected ass in a line of burning fire.
***
Alexander:
It was a quarter to six and I was in the house in Saint Denis. I had been sitting in the backyard for over an hour, drinking a chilled glass of wine. Perhaps it was foolish of me, but in a week, Jenny wouldn’t want to ever look at me again. This was the place where we’d spent our first night together and I came here to mourn.
Her name is Ellie, I reminded myself, as if it were something that could be forgotten. As if what Dylan had done to her could have been erased.
My phone rang. I muttered a curse and looked at the screen. It was Jean-Luc, but I wasn’t in a mood to be interrupted. I hit ‘mute’ and looked at the flowers in the garden morosely.
It wasn’t often I railed against my lot in life. When I was eighteen, I’d impulsively set myself on the path I had. In my twenties, as I began to realize that life was about more than the casual fuck, I started to resent that I could never have something deeper. Then we found Pamela, and faced with the magnitude of what Dylan had done to that poor woman, all of my own concerns had faded to the background.
But in the last few weeks, the portion of my heart that I tried to wall off had cracked a little. It was my own fault. I could have kept her at arm’s length. I didn’t have to show her Paris; I didn’t have to take her to Provence and share the farmhouse with her. I could have been cold and unkind.
But I couldn’t find it in me to do that. I might have lied to her, but I could never conceal my emotions. Not that first day two years ago and not in that time since.
The phone rang again. Jean-Luc. I ground my teeth in frustration, but picked up the call. “If I wanted to talk to you,” I growled, thoroughly and unfairly bad-tempered, “I would have answered the first time.”
“Get back to your home now,” he ordered. His voice was strained. “Sylvia Anliker walked in a few moments ago and Ellie’s just entered the front door.”
Fuck. This was bad. This was very bad. Sylvia had an unreasoning grudge against Lori and I knew she was itching to take it out on Jenny. She would believe that though I would be angry at her, I would forgive her, because I’d given her every reason to believe that I was so much in love with her that she could get away with anything.
My feet were already moving towards my car as Jean-Luc continued. “It’s worse. Your girl has cane marks, yes? On the back of her thighs?”
“Yes.”
“I saw the video where Dylan caused it. Sylvia was there. She watched it happen. She was bleeding and they didn’t do anything to tend to her. Instead, they...”
“Stop.” I couldn’t hear any more. My sweet Jenny. Ellie. I’d seen her panic in Provence when she thought I meant to share her with Sylvia. I now understood why, but I couldn’t listen to Jean-Luc’s words. I couldn’t. It was too visceral. The wounds cut too close.