Woman In Chains (16 page)

When she turned back to him, he still didn’t know what to say to her. Why had she done what she did? Why hadn’t she turned him in if she truly didn’t want to be there? Why had she made up that story about them being a couple? What about that kiss?

Rebekah slipped out of his grip. “Master Dak, please let me know when lunch is ready. I’ll be in position for you until then.”

She sauntered through the kitchen and down the stairs to the back room. Once there, he heard the metal door slam shut.

Fuck. What the hell had Dak gotten himself into now?

Chapter Ten

Probably in an effort to get to know Rebekah better, Dak moved a little table into her cell along with two chairs. The whole time, Rebekah remained on the floor in her subservient position until Dak requested that she get up and sit with him at the table.

“Master Dak, you don’t want me on the floor by your side until after you have eaten?” Master Blade had wanted her that way during meals. Rebekah had gotten used to cold food in the time she had been with him.

“Not today. Right now, I want you to sit, and I want us to talk.” He pointed to her chair.

She sat and kept her gaze on her food. Today he’d prepared turkey-and-cheese sandwiches, along with chicken noodle soup.

“Do you want me naked?” She peered up at him. “I had a twenty-four-seven relationship with Master Blade, and he wanted me—”

“I’m not Blade,” Dak said, interrupting her. “I’m nothing like him.”

“I’ve noticed.” She smiled.

For many reasons, she thanked God that Dak resembled nothing of Blade. Although being in a jail cell hadn’t been easy, she could deal with that much better than a dog bed or a drawer.

Dak hadn’t once been disrespectful to her, or called her a bitch or a whore. The one time he’d disciplined her, even that had been more humane than how Master Blade had treated her.

“Speaking of Blade,” Dak began, “I saw him today.”

Rebekah held her spoon full of soup in midair.

“He was at Wal-Mart.” Dak took a bite of his sandwich. With a full mouth, he said, “Actually that’s who I thought had called the cops on me today. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Oh.” Rebekah submerged her spoon back into the soup. “Did he, um, ask about me?”

“Do you care?”

She caught the anger and jealousy in Dak’s voice. The dormant butterflies in her belly flapped off the cobwebs and started a fluttering feeling at catching Dak’s envy.

Master Blade had her in his home for over a year, had fed her, trained her, had made her serve him. She wanted to know if he’d thought about her even once.

“Rebekah, if it’s the last thing I do for you, I’m going to teach you that Master Blade was not a good Dom. He mistreated you and didn’t respect you.”

“So he didn’t ask about me.” She stole little glances at Dak, who now looked very confused.

Dak wiped his mouth. “He was concerned about his property, wanted to know if I knew where
it
was.”

Dak stressed the word “it,” and the aim hit its intended target. Rebekah felt like a knife cut through her gut. Master Blade didn’t care about her, and she didn’t know if Dak could care enough about her in the short time he would have her.

She nodded again. “When it’s all you know, you just hope—I don’t know—”

“That’s one sign of problems in a Dom/sub relationship. If you question your Dom’s actions, if you don’t believe him, your relationship is bound to fail.” Dak shook his head. “Don’t worry. I didn’t say a word about you, although he tried to get me to talk.” He ate a couple of hearty spoonfuls of soup full of meat and noodles. “So your art, are you trained in it?”

Rebekah glanced to the side where she had two pictures of a bear and an owl sitting up against the wall. With only brown to work with, she couldn’t come up with a lot.

“No, not really. I learned some in high school, but I didn’t go any further with it.” She took a small nibble of her sandwich.

“You’re very talented. I’m surprised Blade didn’t encourage you.”

“He didn’t know. It wasn’t like I had any opportunities to show him what I could do.” She shrugged. “So is what that police officer said true? You want to be an officer, too?”

The glare in Dak’s eyes chilled her to the bone.

“Like you and your art, I didn’t go any further with that plan.” With a hard stare, he kept Rebekah cemented to her chair. “I’m a little too, um, intense for the police department.”

Rebekah blinked. “They told you that?”

Dak leaned back in his chair. “They didn’t have to. I know what I’m capable of doing.” Then he cleared his throat. “Do you mind telling me what a typical day with Blade was like?”

Rebekah stared at Dak, wondering if he wanted to know out of morbid curiosity or if he thought her talking about him would make her feel better.

Dak must have noticed her hesitation. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I understand.”

They sat in silence for a while before Rebekah finally said, “I got up every morning at five to make him his breakfast.”

To give her his full attention, Dak stopped eating and sat back as she spoke.

“He liked eggs over medium, white toast slightly burnt, strong coffee, and fried bologna. If I don’t smell that stuff for the rest of my life, I can die happy.”

Dak laughed.

Rebekah cleared her throat. “He liked for me to, um, give him manual stimulation in the mornings.” She rubbed the back of her neck and ate more of her soup, hoping it would give her the strength to keep going.

“That’s enough.”

“I’m fine.” She smiled. “He’s impotent. He couldn’t get a hard-on if he had twenty naked virgins around him.”

Dak covered his mouth and did his level best not to laugh. “How absolutely embarrassing. Please keep going.”

Rebekah laughed so hard she had to stop eating. When she composed herself, she continued. “He was a hard Dom.”

“Not entirely.” This time Dak did burst into laughter.

“He liked order and discipline. If he felt I did anything out of order, he was very rough with me.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t imagine what he would do to me if he knew what I told you.”

“Hence why you’re here today.”

Out of habit, she opened her mouth to defend Master Blade, but she couldn’t defend the man’s actions. Someone at a play party saw how rough Master Blade had been with her and had intervened. That person had jumped the gun, didn’t know her or her background. She could take care of herself.

“So how do you know Master Blade?” She took a sip of her tea. So good. She’d never known a man who could make such good tea.

“We used to travel around the same circles.”

Every time Dak talked to her, he stared her in the eyes. When he answered her question this time, he didn’t. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.

“How did you get into being a Dom?” She finished off her soup and wiped her mouth.

“I’ve always been curious about the Lifestyle, but I really got into it and started training when I was in the service.” Dak finished off his sandwich in about three large bites.

“What branch?”

“Navy.”

Rebekah raised her hand. “Army brat here.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Hard to make friends when you move around so much, huh?”

Rebekah fixed her gaze on him, wondering if he had a gift of telepathy along with his ability of creating delicious tea.

Again, like he had read her mind, he said, “When I asked you your name and asked if your friends from school had a nickname for you, you said you had no friends.”

“Good memory.” She gazed at him. “You’re very, very good.” If she didn’t know any better, she could have sworn Dak growled at her assessment.

“So why don’t you have a submissive or slave now?” she asked.

“My last one decided my dominating style wasn’t for her. She preferred a Dom who only thinks of himself.”

“Aren’t all Doms and Dommes like that? It is all about you. I serve you.”

Dak stopped stirring in his tea at her statement. “A good Dom or Domme listens to his or her submissive. Yes, you’re serving our needs. But if we don’t know what it is you want to push you, then we’re not doing you any favors. There has to be a give and take.”

“I like that description of a good Dom/sub relationship.” She liked it almost as much as she liked kissing him.

Recalling how his firm lips had captured hers accelerated her pulse, which scared her. Then she recalled his hard body, the way his thick, corded muscles in his arms captured her when he held her. When she coasted her hand down his body and over that impressive package, she wanted to strip off the shirt she wore and have him take her right there and then.

Since when do submissives have romantic thoughts about their masters?

She expected to have sexual thoughts. Maybe she needed to let down her guard and let Dak help her figure that out.

Dak picked up his bowl and plate and took them to the kitchen. When he came back, he stood at the doorway. “Why did you do what you did for me when the officer was here? You got out of the cell. You could have turned me in, had me arrested, had your freedom. Why?”

Rebekah stood. “I heard the way he talked to you, how he said he no longer believed you could be something you wanted to be. I’ve been there.” She picked up her bowl and plate, and sauntered to the door to Dak. “The trick is being strong…like me.”

He accepted the dishes from her. “You? Strong? When I first saw you, you were petrified in a drawer.”

“But—”

“You want strength, I can give that to you.”

“Through training?”

“
My
training.”

In total obedience, she took a couple of steps back and knelt down before him. Dak closed and locked the door. After she’d managed to escape and come back to him, he still didn’t trust her.

“I’ll be back at dinnertime. We’ll do a lesson then.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“By the way, I hope Walton doesn’t talk to my primary care physician any time soon. He would find out quick that I had a vasectomy about ten years ago.”

“Oh.”

“But I appreciate your quick thinking.”

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Dak had managed to make her change her perception of the BDSM lifestyle and him. Now she wondered if she could even leave him after this training session ended…and would he let her go?

****

Dak paced in his bedroom as he waited for Gordon to pick up. “Come on. Pick up the damn phone.”

The manager at Gordon’s hardware store said her boss had been gone for almost a week, and she had no idea when he would be back. She did offer a tiny glimmer of hope in the fact that, in a crisis, she’d been able to reach him by his cell phone.

Dak qualified his situation as being in crisis mode. He hadn’t expected to be back into the SAFE business again. He hadn’t thought he would be asked to snatch the slave of a man who had retrained and apparently severely injured Dak’s last sub. He had not expected the feelings that started to bubble inside of him to surface.

As much as Dak wanted to blame it on the kiss she’d put on him in front of the officer, he had started to feel something way before that.

Her eyes. Those damn eyes got him every time. One minute she could look so sad like she didn’t have a friend in the world. Then the next minute, she had a sexy, wanton look. Other times she looked like she wanted to rip off his head.

Even if she became his full-time submissive, sleeping with her would be so detrimental since they hadn’t fully established a trusting relationship.

He should have told her the truth about his last submissive, that Master Blade had had her, and that Dak’s whole reason for wanting to save Rebekah had been to take something from him. He didn’t want to come off looking as sorry as Blade. Once Dak got Rebekah to really see that could be so much better for her than Blade, he could tell her the truth.

At the third attempt at calling Gordon, and the third time his voicemail kicked on, Dak didn’t disconnect the call. He would leave his thoughts on the message.

“You are a piece of work, Gordon. You had better call me about Rebekah, shit, I mean This Slave. I don’t know how much longer I can take her.” Dak let out a long sigh. “And if your disappearance is about Scott, then call me. Just call me now.” He disconnected the call.

Hours after dinner, Dak decided now would be the time to give Rebekah her first hands-on training session. Working with Cress the other night had been a wonderful way to jumpstart Dak’s old technique. He couldn’t push himself too far. No whips or fire play…at least not today.

After stripping down to just a shirt, jeans, and his work boots, Dak strolled down to the back room where he found Rebekah in bed, on her side with her back to him. To get her attention before he opened the cage door, he cleared his throat.

In a sultry move that had Dak staring at Rebekah like a lover and not as submissive to train, she extended her leg and planted her foot onto the floor. Then she combed her fingers through her curly hair. When she stood, Dak couldn’t help but scan her body. Even hidden under her bulky clothing, she captured his attention.

She lowered herself onto her knees, but stared directly into his eyes, never breaking contact.

“Up.” Pivoting on his heel, he marched to the controls for the vertical bar.

Dak had thought about what to do for Rebekah all day. Although he’d gone at it hard with Cressida, he would take a note from Moira and actually take it easy on Rebekah so as not to further traumatize her. Rebekah needed to feel cherished, like no one else in the world could be in the spot she stood right now but her.

When he turned to her, Dak stared at Rebekah for a moment. As a Dom, he couldn’t sugarcoat what he wanted her to do. “Take off your clothes.”

She balled her hands into fists. Then she curled her toes into the carpeted floor.

When she hesitated disrobing, Dak gave her a stare that he hoped screamed that he should not have to repeat himself. It took Dak taking a step toward her to prompt her to undress.