“I’ll take the lead.” He pulled me by the wrist until I was on my knees and I mimicked him, started pulling mud toward the mound.
“That gardener is getting me some tools. Let’s see what we can do.” He gave me another little smile. He had bright white straight teeth, gorgeous full lips.
I wondered what it’d be like to kiss him. Some patrons loved to kiss. Some had been quite skilled at it. Some, not so much. Some were downright sloppy and gross. But until right now I’d never looked forward to a kiss since being here. I was hoping my Master was a kisser and hoping he was good at it. This might be the only man I’d ever kiss again.
Dare
I needed to do something with my hands. I wasn’t the type to sit around idle and there wasn’t anything to do in this place, this place of excess, sick and twisted fuckin’ hedonism. The resort had activities but most of it was either sex-centered or at least stomach-turning from what I’d seen on my tour because guests had women in collars on the floor beside them or whatever while on the treadmill or playing cards or whatever. I didn’t want around those sick fucks and I didn’t want her alone in that room, why I don’t know, but I just didn’t. I felt protective of her, that it wasn’t just my mission to come here and suss things out but that it’d become my mission to get her away from them, get her and I outta here without a hitch.
The tour had turned my stomach and I couldn’t let it show. I didn’t. I wanted to go for a run but not on the treadmill, on the beach. The property was fenced so that wasn’t much of an option other than running back and forth on the limited amount of fenced property so instead I poured my energy into building a sandcastle with my hands. Because if I didn’t find something to busy myself I was afraid I was gonna snap.
The tour had shown all the things the guests see. The spa, the movie theatre, the performance theatre, dining room, games areas, lounges, bowling alley and arcade. It was early but there were guests mulling about. Some slaves were nude, some were leashed, there was nothing sexual going on in public areas. But as a new partner in the company I was also shown behind the scenes. Gan Chen and Rafe Ruiz showed me their intake rooms and there was training in progress. I saw that Asian woman backhand that tiny blonde nude girl who was in the office last night with them for incorrect posture as part of the training process was explained to me. The Asian woman didn’t know we were watching so I wasn’t getting a show, this was how she handled trainees. The idea of her backhanding Felicia that way? I was furious at that idea.
I’d seen tables and benches outfitted with shackles and cuffs. I’d seen St. Andrews crosses. I’d seen dungeon rooms that looked like filthy shower stalls with a rusty drain on the floor where they kept slaves being punished or during their ‘breaking’. The Hole from prison movies where people were held in solitary confinement for misbehaving consisted of better digs than that. When I saw those things I saw them hurting her in my mind and it made me boiling fucking mad.
I also saw lavish suites that were designed to hold entire harems, suites that had themes, some of them pretty kinky and some of them pretty fucking sick. I could see that their girls could see that they could live in a filthy moldy shower stall with no light or in a palatial suite if they did what they were told and pretended their Master was a Sheikh or assumed roles as little girls with lollipops and pigtails and diapers being given a spanking by their “Daddy”. I was all for people having the right to own their sexuality and had dabbled with some kink myself but consensually. This wasn’t consensual. Collectively, it was all making me sick.
I was told that the club had a couple thousand members, around a dozen of them were higher profile celebrities and the others were very wealthy men and women from around the globe. Members paid exorbitant membership fees and then additional fees when they visited. Some members spent months here at a time. Some came a few weeks every year. There were 200 on-site slaves, fifteen of them men, the rest women, and three currently in various stages of their training. A new one would be brought in to replace Felicia and I didn’t like that one fucking bit but kept my mouth shut. It had been a few years since anyone had requested marriage material. Then when it was revealed to me who the last customer of a ‘wife’ was it took everything in me to guard my reaction.
I didn’t let them see any reactions. I held a cool and standoffish entitled tone with them, as if nothing surprised me, as if I had every right to be a part of this, as if the very idea of everything they stood for was not absolutely abhorrent to me.
Stan Smith had said that some of their women opted for this lifestyle, applied to join, joined up so that they could be looked after. And he told me that most were drafted via dubious methods. To me that meant they were abducted or that they were traded in, much like my brother’s Tia had been drafted into my family as a flesh payment for a debt.
Before my flight our PI told me he couldn’t find a thing about them. He had to search carefully so he wouldn’t raise any red flags but Kruna did not exist as far as he could tell so far. He gave me a verbal list of things he needed intel on from my trip for him to start investigating. The resort wasn’t even visible on maps online as anything other than vacant wooded waterfront property, which didn’t even jive with the whole private timeshare thing. That told me they had friends in high places.
Oh it existed alright. But I didn’t ask any questions. It was arranged that the following morning Felicia and I would depart. In a little over a month they invited my brother and I here for their annual stakeholder’s meeting. They called it their Partner Summit. The meeting was optional but they wanted one or both of us to attend, if possible.
As far as anyone knew Tommy was on his honeymoon. I didn’t pick up on any suspicions but was being cautious. In the weeks before Pop’s death we were at odds over the direction of the business and due to the reveal of secrets, and I didn’t know if Pop had made any of his associates aware of that rift. It was unlikely because it would make Pop look weak as a man, a father, and head of a company, but we had to be cautious nonetheless and because of a few legal actions Pop had taken I knew there were records that would look like there was family trouble if someone looked close enough. There was extended family there for a showdown between Tommy & Pop the day he died and while we didn’t doubt loyalty of anyone who’d been present it was possible that word had leaked that there was a rift and if so, there might be suspicion.
Felicia had no clue how to build a sandcastle but she tried to help. The gardener dropped off a pail filled with gardening tools. We didn’t talk, she just watched and tried to help when I was gathering up more sand, tried to mimic my actions. We worked at it for quite a while and then after I couldn’t fuss with it any longer due to lack of better tools I said, “How about a swim?”
She nodded, staring at the castle with a weird expression on her face. But then pulled her tank top over her head revealing the white bikini halter top. When she got out of her shorts I averted my eyes so I didn’t look at her body too closely. It was hard not to look at her tiny barely there bikini bottoms with ties on the sides. Her tits looked luscious in that halter. Her tiny ass was almost fucking perfect but would be better if she were allowed to eat whatever the fuck she wanted with carbonara sauce on it every day for a few weeks to mean a little more to grab onto. I shook that thought off as I grabbed my shirt from the scruff and pulled it over my head and threw it beside the castle and then sprinted for the water, diving in as soon as it was deep enough. I swam underneath the crystal clear water for a good long while, just using up unused energy and taking the minute I needed to let myself feel the rage I’d been hiding.
Felicia
Tension had built in every single cell of my body. This man was an enigma. I didn’t know what to make of him. I didn’t know what was next for me. I was frightened… I had this horrible sinking feeling that wouldn’t go away.
I didn’t do well with the unknown. I mean, this past almost 2 years of my life had been a lot of unknown but it was formulaic. I never knew what a new assignment would bring but I knew what I had to do to get through it. A to B. It worked.
All that back to back A to B business had brought me to my C. Dario Ferrano was C.
My C.
Eyes like the sea, a beautiful body. He seemed perpetually pissed off but he had been nothing but kind to me since yesterday. Feeding me like I was a starved child that needed nourishment and not taking from my body, even when I begged for it. Waking up in his arms that morning I felt safer than I could ever remember feeling. Even before I got here. He got between me and them and said they weren’t allowed to fuck with me because I was his. His.
I didn’t know how to reconcile all of this and I knew it could all change in a heartbeat. It could be yanked away from me because he changed his mind or he could reveal his true nature and it could be a mask that, when it slipped, would reveal that he could be even more cruel and heartless than anyone had so far.
But we’d just built a sandcastle together, the best sandcastle I’d ever seen. It had several turrets, a moat, he’d done it all carving and molding the sand with his fingers and palms and small gardening hand tools and it was so attractive to watch him do that with strong fingers and a focused and determined look on his face. Now he was in the gulf, he’d disappeared for a long time under the water. I stood in water up to my waist and felt something swish by me. He was there. He emerged from the water and took my hands and pulled me forward, deeper into the water with him.
“I, I don’t swim very well, Master,” I warned, feeling panic rise.
“No?” he asked and lifted me, a bit of a devilish smile on his face. I jolted at the feeling of being in his arms and my panicked face made his mischief disappear. He pushed off with his feet and now we were in water too deep to stand in. “I’ve got you. Hold my neck,” he said and let go of me and I started to sink but grabbed on and he was treading water, holding us both up. I was freaked.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he said, “I told you I’ve got you.” I held tighter and then wrapped my legs around his waist and his words vibrated in every cell. He was holding me up, my only safety from drowning, he was my Master, my savior. I wanted to faint. He became erect against me and suddenly I wanted him inside me with a fervor I hadn’t felt about a man, ever.
I tightened my legs around him, leaned in, closed my eyes, and parted my lips, wanting him to kiss me. Nothing happened.
I opened my eyes. He was staring with an angry look on his face. I pulled in a breath and held it.