Flashback (7 page)

He takes the bus to work and walks, a man who
stands out from the crowd because he is tall and because he moves
with such grace. He’s like a panther or a cheetah, powerful and
lean and graceful. A predator. He dresses well, even if he wears
the same suit each day and it’s not as expensive as it should be.
It fits him perfectly. His ties are beautifully knotted, he always
wears a silk scarf with his overcoat and he owns expensive leather
gloves.

Those gloves fascinate Athena. They are dark
and glossy, smooth over his hands but not hiding his strength. He
has perfect hands, masculine and strong, elegant. She likes the
sight of them gripping an umbrella or the handle of his
briefcase.

She imagines them touching her and finds the
idea thrilling.

He never speaks to her outside of class.

And there, he is stern about her errors,
regardless of how minor they are.

She stares at the ceiling in her bed each
night, locked into her room, surrounded by spies who report
everything to her grandmother, and knows that only her thoughts are
really her own. She thinks of Mr. Rossini, of his wonderful eyes
and the minute cleft in his chin, and wonders how it would feel to
be kissed by him. She touches herself as she imagines his devotion
to her, that his attention is because he wants to ensure that she
is good enough for him when she becomes a woman. The idea makes her
sex pulse with a strange hunger.

She wants him to be the one who touches
her.

In fact, she steals a pair of leather gloves
from her grandmother and hides them diligently. She wears them to
bed each night, thrilling at the feel of them. She likes how the
leather slides over her skin, how it encasing her hands. They’re
supple but restrictive, soft yet tough. Forbidden. As the hour
grows late, she reaches beneath the sheets. She lets her gloved
hands slide over her thighs. She caresses herself and imagines that
it is Mr. Rossini who fondles her wet puss.

Athena awakened in her bedroom - or at least,
in the replica of her room in her grandmother’s house. That room
had been her haven, her only sanctuary after her parents’ deaths.
Her feelings about her grandmother had been so conflicted. She
hadn’t know the older woman at all, although it soon became clear
that there was a reason for that.

Her grandmother ran a private bordello out of
her house, one that specialized in servicing unusual the tastes of
discerning gentlemen. In hindsight, Athena could understand why her
grandmother hadn’t been thrilled to have a young girl become her
ward and her responsibility.

And she supposed it had been inevitable that
she would unravel her grandmother’s secrets, given her curiosity
and her resentment of her situation.

Had it been inevitable that the Count had
become her Italian teacher at her new school? Had the spark between
them, the undeniable awareness, been inevitable? It certainly
hadn’t been inevitable that he knew of her grandmother, given his
tastes, or that he had tried to buy what he wanted in that
house.

Her grandmother had tried to stall him,
Athena knew. If she hadn’t been investigating the secret passages
of the house, determined to discover what was going on, if she
hadn’t been watching the Count and her grandmother, things might
have worked out differently.

If she hadn’t gasped when he’d said he had
come for a redhead.

If her grandmother hadn’t been angry enough
to think she deserved some discipline.

Athena frowned and rolled over to survey the
room. Maybe her grandmother had thought she wouldn’t like it. Maybe
her grandmother had thought that a taste would eliminate Athena’s
curiosity. Instead she had loved it. Instead she had stalked the
Count and insisted upon more.

Instead, she had created a life that was an
echo of her grandmother’s.

Maybe it was in her blood.

The walls of the room were toffee with a
black swirling design that had always reminded her of wrought iron
scrollwork. The drapes were heavy, made of cream upholstery velvet
and lined so that the room felt soundproofed. There was a wooden
dresser, painted a deep gold with black glass knobs, with a mirror
over it in a black frame. The light fixture that hung from the
center of the ceiling was a small chandelier, the frame painted
black and its arms hung with glass fruit. Three pears and two
apples.

Athena smiled that one apple was missing,
just as it had been in her room. But then, the Count had visited
her there frequently.

The bed was an iron bedstead, a small
four-poster with gold balls at the tops of each corner post. There
was a chenille spread on it in a vanilla hue, some of the tufts
missing.

No toys. No posters. There never had been. It
wasn’t a child’s room and had only been put to use as one under
duress. There was a stack of books on the small wooden desk that
had been shoved into the one corner. Athena knew she shouldn’t have
been surprised that they were the textbooks she’d used in her
Italian and Classics classes.

She opened one book, vaguely remembering the
lessons.

Mostly she remembered the teacher.

With his piercing dark eyes, his striking
good looks, and authoritative manner. He hadn’t been much older
than her - not even ten years - but his presence had been electric.
Every girl had fantasized about him.

But Athena had been trained by him. She
flicked open the textbook, closed her eyes, then reached down and
pinched one of her new welts. It was just as he’d commanded her to
do then. A forbidden pleasure. A naughty secret. A delight. Even
now, delicious pain shot through her body and she felt her sex get
wet.

How many times would the Count discipline her
before he possessed her again? It had been months of assignations
and stolen moments the first time. Athena didn’t think she could
stand the tease now. The Count’s attention to detail and his love
of the hunt, though, made her think that this could last a long
long time.

She couldn’t decide whether to be
disappointed or excited by the prospect.

The door opened behind her and Athena spun,
almost expecting her grandmother.

“Oh, I’m sorry, my lady.” The maid in the
doorway dropped into a curtsey.

The uniforms were one thing that was
different. The maids in the Count’s house had very very short
skirts, the ruffles of white lace around their hips not covering
the pubis. When they bent over in the course of their duties -
which they did more often than seemed necessary - their sexes were
displayed, like the red center of a flower surrounded by white
petals.

Athena considered the maid and thought about
tipping her over the desk. She wondered how she would be punished
if she sampled the staff.

“I thought you would be downstairs for
breakfast already, my lady.”

It was only then that Athena realized this
was the same maid she’d spoken to the night before. “You came to
clean the room?” The maid nodded and curtseyed again, flashing her
puss. “What’s your name?”

“Anna, my lady.”

“You said you’d been at the Plume. I remember
you from there.”

The other woman nodded and flushed a bit.

Athena sensed that there was something she
wasn’t being told. “Why did you leave there? What could the Count
offer you that was an improvement on the Plume?”

Anna blushed a little. “The closed house, my
lady. It’s an old fantasy of mine.”

“And?”

“The maids’ quarters.”

Athena smiled. She crossed the room and
reached out to tug back the frill that covered Anna’s breasts. She
displayed the nipples, which were red and taut, even as Anna caught
her breath. Athena held the maid’s gaze as she fondled the nipple,
teasing it to a tight peak.

“The Count wouldn’t like this, my lady.” But
Anna did like it, her body couldn’t lie. And her response fed
Athena’s own.

“No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed easily. “But he
does like me being bad.” Athena caught the maid’s face in her hands
and kissed her, loving how Anna’s tongue immediately tangled with
her own. She backed the maid into the wall, claiming her, closing
one hand around her breast.

Anna moaned. Athena wedged one knee between
the maid’s thighs and drove it upward, moving it steadily against
the younger woman’s sex. It was hot and forbidden, sweet the way
unions with women tended to be.

Anna pinched one of Athena’s welts, making
Athena catch her breath. She pressed the maid into the wall,
fondling her breasts and moving her knee. Anna cupped Athena’s
buttocks in her hands, kneading them and squeezing numerous
welts.

It was intoxicating.

“You’re going to come to me, early in the
morning,” Athena whispered. “You’re going to come and do
service.”

“Yes, my lady.” Anna swallowed and averted
her gaze.

“We’ll pretend it’s a secret, but one day,
you’ll confess to the Count.”

Understanding dawned in the maid’s eyes. “And
he’ll punish you.”

Athena smiled. “Maybe he’ll let you punish
me.”

The maid blushed and caught her breath. She
averted her gaze, apparently overwhelmed.

Athena caught her chin in her hand, and
forced the maid to look at her. “What is it?”

“Don’t you know, my lady?”

“Know what?”

Anna swallowed. “The Plume is gone, my lady.
It burned to the ground last night.”

Athena stepped back, her desire killed.
“What?”

“It’s true. There was a fire, and it burned
to ashes.”

“No!”

Anna nodded.

Athena spun away, sickened and shocked by
this news. “It can’t be true!” she said, but Anna’s expression told
her that it was. She paced the room, incredulous that she’d been
here, enjoying herself, when her life’s work was destroyed.

“But how? But why?”

“Rex did it,” the Count said. He’d appeared
in the doorway and was carrying a cup. Its contents steamed and
Athena smelled hot chocolate. He dismissed the maid with a gesture.
Anna curtseyed quickly and scurried down the hall, glancing back
once before she disappeared.

“Rex?” Athena was incredulous. “Rex would
never destroy the Plume. He had as much invested in it as I did.
More, maybe.”

The Count pulled his other hand from behind
his back, revealing the newspaper he carried. “I wasn’t certain
you’d want this reality to intrude, but maybe you need to see
it.”

He placed the cup of chocolate on the
nightstand, the newspaper beside it, his posture protective. Athena
crossed the room immediately, needing to know. She picked up the
newspaper and stared at the lead story, shaking her head of the
picture of the Plume.

In flames.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach and she
sat down hard on the bed. The police had staged a raid on the
Plume, based on a tip from someone named Rex. Before they could
enter the building, it erupted in flames, and members had streamed
into the streets. There were some additional images of members
rounded up into paddy wagons, some of them in fetish gear, and
others fleeing into the night.

Athena placed her finger over Rex’s name. “He
wouldn’t,” she whispered, no longer as certain of that as she
wanted to be. It was too reminiscent of their argument, when she
had accused him of putting his own needs ahead of his
responsibilities.

And what exactly had she been doing here with
the Count?

“He did,” the Count said with a confidence
Athena didn’t share. “Maybe it’s publicity for his gallery
show.”

“No!” Athena protested, though she had to
admit it was possible.

The Count sat down beside her, offering her
the chocolate as he lifted the newspaper out of her limp hands. “He
took care of himself, though, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently his deal with the police included
a warning call to him, so he could get out before the raid. They’re
still looking for him. He wasn’t arrested. It was on the television
news.” The Count shrugged. “They don’t have a photograph of him,
but everyone from the Plume is too loyal to share one.”

Athena could believe that. No matter what the
members feared Rex had done, they wouldn’t betray him. Athena could
believe that most, like her, couldn’t accept the official story.
“But what about the others? What about Rafe and Leya and Tony and
Amanda and...”

The Count placed a fingertip over her lips,
even as her voice rose in consternation. “It’s not up to you
anymore,” he said gently. “They have made their choices. You made
your choice and so you’re safe.”

“No!” Athena said, getting to her feet. “I
can’t just pretend this isn’t happening. I know these people.
They’re my partners, my customers, my friends. I have to find out
what happened to them. I have to help them.” She began to walk
across the room, but the Count grabbed her elbow and pulled her to
halt.

“You can’t go!”

“I have no choice!”

“Which is why I’m making the choice for you.”
He spoke with force and she wondered whether he was even aware that
he was acting the way he did when he dominated. He was
dispassionate and authoritative, as if he alone had the right to
tell her what to do. Rebellion flared within Athena. “You are mine
and you will stay where you are safe. I command it.”

“This isn’t a game,” Athena said, pulling her
arm from his grip. “This is
life
. This is my responsibility
and this is serious.”

“Which is precisely why I won’t let you
involve yourself.”

“It’s not up to you!”

“I won’t lose you again!” The Count shouted,
as she had never heard him shout before. They glared at each other
for a potent moment, then Athena headed for the door.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“No, you’re not.”

“You can’t keep me here like a captive
slave.”

The Count folded his arms across his chest
and lifted an eyebrow. He could be stubborn and Athena knew it. If
she defied him, she played along with the script he loved so well.
He would chase her and capture her and discipline her. She didn’t
have time for that game, or any patience with it.