Deep Control (Dark Dominance 2)

There was something disingenuous about our conversation, something that felt like a lie, because we were together in bed, and he’d used a nickname for me, and his cum was leaking out of me from unprotected sex. Who fluid-bonded in two days? Who did any of the things we’d done in two days? I glanced over at him but he was looking away, his lips curved, his pale blue eyes fixed on some spot in the distance.

Two days, in terms of relativity, could be a lifetime, or it could be no time at all.

Chapter Ten: Devin

As promised, I gave my relationship-phobic, flight-phobic archgenius hell for the next three days. Beltings, spankings, hair pulling, crawling, kneeling, rough sex, and bawling blowjobs where I jammed my cock in the back of her throat.

Whenever she begged for a break to put on her owlish glasses and do science stuff on her laptop, I granted her requests, and used the time to plan what I’d do to her next. I was stymied by the fact that we were thousands of miles from my home dungeon, where I kept all the things I needed to hurt her.

So I had to improvise, using the hotel’s Portuguese bible for a paddle, and stealing a stake from a lobby flowerpot to use as a cane. I bought plastic hair clips from the corner store to use as nipple clamps, because a pain slut like Ella needed them. Between her intense scientific reading and email sessions, I threatened her with science-themed taunts. Time has no meaning, does it? Then it won’t matter how long I leave these hair-clip nipple clamps on you. For hours a day, I was an asshole to her, and she lapped it up like cream.

But there were other hours too, hours we spent walking around the town of Ponta Delgada, and the green expanses surrounding it. The more we talked, the more I realized how quirky she was. Even when she wasn’t doing science, even when she took off her glasses and lay back on the ground to relax in the sun, she would talk to me about deep, existential thoughts.

It bothered me at first, then I realized I liked it more than the simpering flirtation I got from my submissives back home. Ella didn’t flirt. She was the anti-flirt, taking care not to create any romantic tension between us. When I tried to steal a kiss, she turned away. When I caressed her, she stiffened under my fingers. If she had her choice, I wouldn’t have been allowed to touch her in any romantic way, but I touched her as much as I wanted, because it was her fault I was stuck here. I made her sleep beside me because I liked the feel of her body—one of the perks of being the one in charge.

It amused me that she worried so much about the two of us falling in love. I was the original take-it-easy relationship guy. It had nothing to do with the “slippability” of life or the pointlessness of time, just my basic low-stress attitude. Relationships were complicated, and I didn’t like to think about things as much as she did.

At the same time, I enjoyed decoding her wacky thoughts and analyzing her neuroses. The anti-relationship thing was easy—she was laser-focused on her career. As for the masochism, pain was her escape, her way of quieting her spinning, theorizing brain for precious moments. Torment was her drug, and I was happy to give it to her. Now I just had to figure out how to get her on that plane.

Pain would have done it, but I doubted the Azorean air authorities would allow me to herd her onto the airplane with a whip. There were hidden types of discomfort I could use—tacks in her bra, or capsaicin cream rubbed into her freshly spanked ass cheeks, but if she had a phobic breakdown, those things would definitely make it worse.

There were sedatives that might help with her anxiety, available in any drug store, but she’d had a bad reaction the last time she took them before a flight. Then again, she’d been alone and scared. This time I’d be with her, and able to exert authority if she started to freak out. And if I kept her up most of the night before the flight, doing hurtful, depraved things to her various orifices, it would only take a low dose to knock her out.

I decided that was the best plan, and confirmed our tickets for Friday’s direct-to-New York flight. Whenever I fucked Ella, whenever I hurt her, I told her You’re going to New York with me. You don’t have a choice. I stared into her deep blue eyes, watching fear war with the desire to obey.

Her fear thrilled me, but I felt bad for her, too. I wanted to hold her and tell her I’d take care of her, that everything would be okay, but she’d bring up infinite possibilities, or slippabilities. She’d tremble and look past me, trying to weasel out of my embrace.

Chapter Eleven: Ella

The day of our flight arrived, as much as I didn’t want it to. While time as a concept was flexible, airport schedules were not. Devin kept me up most of our last night on the island, pinching me, choking me, fucking me hard, then holding me afterward, calming my racing heart and licking away tears of agonized orgasms.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he said, whenever I sagged against him. “I’m not done with you yet.”

I understood he was doing this on purpose, exhausting me with sex so I’d be too tired to freak out about our flight, because I had to get on that airplane. Leo had sent me a threatening email, telling me he’d needed me in New York days ago, and Devin still had to be interviewed by the NTSB about the plane he’d crash-landed. I wondered if he’d get in trouble. He wasn’t supposed to be part of the crew that day, but with Captain Ross mid-heart attack…

Everyone else was already back in the states: Ross, who was healing after heart surgery, Ayal, and the flight attendants who’d sat behind me during our crash landing. I had to go back too, so Devin could go back. I understood that he wasn’t going to leave without me, and the longer we stayed…

Well, the longer we stayed, the more danger I’d get tangled up in something I couldn’t untangle myself from. My sadistic lover was a force of nature, a giver of pleasure that could so easily become an addiction. The fact that he enjoyed hurting me as much as I enjoyed being hurt was both wonderful and dangerous. I was entering a pivotal growth phase of my career. I needed to prove myself to the point that I’d be untouchable, that Leo’s blackmail photos couldn’t ruin me. I couldn’t allow him to derail my life—and he so easily could.

So I went to the airport and waited at the gate with Devin, shifting in my seat because of the welts he’d left on my ass over the last few days. “Time to take this,” he said, holding out a pill. “It’s going to make you sleepy, but I’ll be with you the whole time. I don’t want you to worry about anything.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Take the fucking pill.”

He handed me a bottle of water and I swallowed the small blue capsule. “Just one?” I asked. “Last time I took three.”

“That explains a lot. Are you ready to board?”

His manner was polite, but no-nonsense. He was going to make me get on the plane. My heart thudded faster as we walked down the jet way. None of the people around us knew we’d almost died in a plane crash earlier this week.

Well, we hadn’t almost died. Devin had handled things, and that’s probably the only reason I was able to put one foot in front of the other in the midst of my terror—because he was holding my hand.

When we reached the end of the jet way, he led me onto the plane. No introductions to the captain or co-pilot this time, no smiling flight attendants who were aware I was afraid. This wasn’t my special charter flight from Europe, but a hop across the ocean for wealthy New Yorkers who vacationed in the Azores.

We sat in coach, over the wings, in the row with the emergency door. Dev

in told me that was the safest place to be on a plane, but that was probably made-up. I was too tired to argue. The sedative was having an effect.

“Wow,” I said, settling into my middle seat. “I feel weird. Spacy.”

Devin sat by the window. “You haven’t slept in a while, and you just took a sedative. Don’t fight it, Ella. Close your eyes.”

I did, but then some hiss started up in the cabin, and they popped open again.

“Pressurization,” he said. “Totally normal.”

His eyes looked red, because we both lacked sleep, but his expression was also unusually strained. “Are you afraid too?” I blurted out, too tired to be delicate about it.

“I’m a pilot,” he replied, like I was ridiculous. “Flying doesn’t scare me. I’m more worried about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. And don’t like me,” I said, because he was looking at me like he liked me. I had to force the words out, because the sedative made it hard to talk.

“You’re being a little loud, Ella.”

“I don’t care. I might die in this plane crash anyway.”

He looked around when some heads turned. “Can you lower your voice, please? Close your eyes.”

“Don’t want to close my eyes.” I remembered this feeling from the last time I took the sedatives. Anger, annoyance, the need to tell someone off.

“Talk to me about your research,” he said, his voice calming and quiet. “Teach me everything you know. That way if I survive this flight and you don’t, I can carry on your work.”

I shifted closer to him. “There’s a lot to tell.”

“Then you’d better get started.”

“The basis of my work is…” I took a deep breath. “I study space and time. Time moves both ways. Isn’t that interesting? Time is relative and flexible. Or, it’s more accurate to say, the line between past and future is an illusion. When we talk about how large the universe is, we’re naming numbers because of our human needs for constructs, but right now, on the edges of another galaxy, it’s a thousand years ago right now.”