I curled tighter and thought about crying. I could hide my face. Nobody would know. It could help relief my stress if I allowed myself to mourn.
But when I tried to cry, Marco’s face filled my mind, and the tears wouldn’t come. Even my tear ducts were afraid of Marco. I was his now. Really and truly.
Mia couldn’t have been more of my opposite, but we took to one another right away. I loved listening to her talk. She spoke Spanish with a European accent, an exotic sound. She sat me down one morning at our small table and said, “I teach you Espa?ol.” It wasn’t a question, or even an offer, it was a command. And being the submissive I was, I complied.
I felt guilty that she was going to waste her time teaching me something I already knew. Mia was nice and I didn’t want to lie to her, but the cameras were always watching and listening. I expected her to start with the basics—the items around us like “table” and “chair,” but she didn’t.
“Culo is ass.” She stared at me, matter-of-fact, as if she wanted me to repeat after her.
“Oh. Um, okay. Culo.”
She nodded, then proceeded to teach me every dirty Spanish word and phrase in the book. She taught me a ton of words I didn’t know, all the things patrons might say to me, or I could say to them. It was very helpful.
“You are fast learner, yes?”
I blushed. “Yeah...thank you. I mean, gracias.”
“Ah, bueno mi putita hermosa.” She called me her beautiful little whore, but she said it so nicely. Words ceased to offend me the way they did when I first met Fernando. Actions were all that mattered now.
Time was a funny thing. Small changes over a long course of time could go easily unnoticed, until one day you look up and realize you’re not the same person anymore. At all. And all those small changes added up to something big.
After six months in the villa I had changed. Others might call it “giving in” or “caving,” but I called it adaptation. Survival. In my early weeks I mourned every small change I noticed in myself. It started with my body. For months I’d been hungry all the time. I longed for food almost obsessively.
Without pizza and fast food, eating only fruits, vegetables, and whatever small morsels fed to me at the table, I lost weight quickly. My stomach, thighs, and arms tightened. My hair grew. I looked different. Felt different. In my old life I would have loved to have this body, but the physical transformation was not my doing. It was Marco’s, for his purposes, and so it was hard to love it.
And then there were the bigger changes—the mental changes. Like how comfortable I began to feel in my own skin, walking or crawling around naked. But it was worse than just feeling comfortable…I began to feel sexy, and I craved eyes on me. Marco was right when he said some patrons would treat me like a goddess. I still hated having sex with the strange men, and I hadn’t had an orgasm since that first time, but I was aware of my body in a way I’d never been before. Every breeze that blew in from the veranda was a caress across my skin.
My clit was overly sensitive. I found myself in an almost constant state of arousal, until it was time to have sex, and then my body felt cold and stiff all over. I’d gotten good at faking enjoyment. The other slaves often gave me pointers about what certain patrons liked, so I played it up. Even Jin was helpful. She’d warmed to me slightly after realizing Josef and I weren’t after one another. I still hated my life there, but I kept going.
I had no freedom. I hadn’t left the inside of the villa since I’d been there. I wasn’t allowed near the windows, and I was the only slave not permitted at the outdoor pool. I took this to mean people were still searching for me. Anyone traveling by on a boat could zoom in with their cameras on certain parts of the villa. That aspect gnawed at me daily as I longed for the outdoors.
But as far as slavery went, I knew I had it good. Besides the obvious creature comforts, Marco seemed to treat my differently. Like his favorite puppy. Maybe he felt guilty still for Fernando’s actions against me, leading to my acquisition. Whatever the reason, he generally only allowed his more docile patrons to have me. That’s not to say they weren’t freaks. I’d seen, done, and had done to me more strange things than I’d ever thought possible—there was no end to the fetishes—but I knew there were worst patrons, the sadists, who were handled by the others. And while anal sex seemed to be a hot commodity at the villa, Marco never allowed it for me. I’d been fingered there, but never fucked. Perhaps he knew how scared I was, or that all things regarding asses was sort of a taboo phobia of mine.