Knowing the Ropes Read online

  She snorted, trying to ignore the sinking feeling around her heart as she thought about just how much Nick was doing for this particular ex—this exceptionally hot, slender, flexible, experienced-sub ex. “I can’t say I’d go rescue any of my exes like this. Then again, I can’t imagine any of them ending up in such a bad situation. Their mistakes are more of the point-and-laugh variety, not the…”

  She bit her lip to shut herself up. She didn’t want to say not the life-threatening variety. Maybe Natalie was exaggerating. A relationship could be miserable and not, strictly speaking, abusive or dangerous.

  Maybe this was all part of a clever plan to win Nick back.

  Oh, Natalie probably had started dating the Guy from Hell after Nick dumped her. Rebounds could be a bitch like that. First guy out of the gate who talks a halfway good game and suddenly you find yourself in bed with someone who likes NASCAR when you like opera or vice versa, or who still lives in his mom’s basement and conveniently forgot to tell you. And sometimes when you’re on the rebound, you’re even crazy enough to move in with Mr. Not-So-Right and then realize you’re stuck living with his unwashed dishes, stinky unneutered ferrets and unresolved Oedipus complex.

  But come on, would any woman really move in with someone who’d made it clear he planned to throw out her wardrobe, including her shoes? Hell no. That was a level of weird that would push its way past any amount of good-looking-and-fun-in-bed and scream at you to run, do not walk, and don’t look back whatever you do. She must be exaggerating, either to get Nick back or simply to get a hand out of an awkward situation.

  Selene mentally shook herself and called on her training as a domestic violence counselor. She wasn’t being fair to Natalie, and she knew it. Smart women got into stupid relationships all the time—God knows she’d had her share—and sometimes they turned ugly instead of merely embarrassing. There was no reason to think it hadn’t happened to Natalie, especially when she’d been looking for a hardcore Master/slave relationship and an overeager would-be slave would probably find it easier than the average woman to wind up with a man who crossed the line between consensual non-consent and dangerous abuse.

  Selene understood this. If she doubted, she was reacting to the regret in Nick’s voice and that was just borrowing trouble. Of course he’d have some second thoughts about breaking up with someone who then got into a disastrous new relationship. Guilt, maybe regret, possibly wishing that things had gone differently.

  But that didn’t mean he’d want to get back together with someone who’d been so clearly wrong for him.

  At least not if Selene had anything to say about it.

  Selene’s mental picture of the Domly Dick’s home had alternated between a dark, brooding Gothic manor and a crazy mountain man’s log cabin, complete with a half-starved hound tied on the front porch, probably next to Natalie. She’d known either one was unrealistic, a cartoon drawn by her brain to distract her from more important and scarier subjects, but the sheer normality of the house threw her for a loop. In the dark, it looked no different from the basic cookie-cutter house you’d see anywhere: white with dark shutters, two-story, probably built in the past few years. The only odd thing about it was that it was several miles from its nearest neighbor, set in a clearing in the woods, when it would have looked more at home in a suburb with a picket fence around it.

  At the moment, much to their relief, the driveway was empty. Still, they approached the house cautiously, going around to the back door as Natalie had instructed.

  Selene’s only mental image of Natalie came from nude photos, so it wasn’t such a shock having her open the door naked. And for someone in a Master/slave relationship, bruises, a stainless-steel collar and matching manacles might be a sign things were going great. But the bruises on Natalie’s rib cage and face, and especially the black eye, didn’t look like the result of anything fun or consensual.

  As Natalie hurried them in, Selene saw more disturbing signs. In all the pictures she’d seen, Natalie had been slim and muscular—healthy-looking. Now she was gaunt and flabby at the same time, and her skin tone reminded Selene of mushrooms. The long, fair hair from the photographs was gone, replaced by a badly shaved head with a few haphazard longer chunks. Her scalp looked scarred.

  How had such a beautiful woman gone to hell so quickly?

  Nick stepped in the door and folded Natalie into his arms, and Selene found she had to look away. Too much pain on both faces, too much confusion.

  She closed the door behind them, not sure what to say.

  After a silence that seemed to last for several months, though, she was the first to speak. “Do you have your things together?”

  Natalie nodded and pointed to one pathetically small messenger bag. “Everything else is Master’s. Derrick’s. I have to get used to calling him that. I never have, not even to myself.”

  “The cuffs and collar?”

  “It’s an Allen key. I know where it is, but I can’t manage the collar myself, and I was too scared that Derrick might…” Natalie took a deep breath and then made the oddest face Selene had ever seen. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Selene couldn’t help thinking that if Natalie had been a cartoon character, she’d have been hit by something labeled “Clue by Four”.

  “No,” Natalie admitted. “I couldn’t do it. I know it’s not working and that what he wants from me is hurting me. I need to leave, and I tried to tell him that and do it all like normal people, but he wasn’t having any of it, so I know it has to be like this. But taking the cuffs off myself… I’ve worn them almost constantly since Master claimed…since Derrick and I first got involved, and when they’ve needed to come off, he’s been the one to do it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even though I can’t exactly leave with them on.”

  She started to look teary-eyed. Selene reminded herself that Natalie was entitled to be weird under the circumstances, and that if Nick were to believed, she’d been a little weird all along. Calling upon reserves of patience she didn’t know she had, she asked, “Where’s the key, honey?”

  “Derrick’s bedroom, in the bedside table. Top of the stairs to the right. I’m not allowed… Oh, the hell with it! I have to get past that.”

  They followed behind Natalie as she stomped up the stairs and into a large but rather grim bedroom with one mirrored wall and a beige carpet that was several years past due for replacement. “Derrick’s room?” Nick asked. “You didn’t sleep with him?”

  “I slept in the closet. Once or twice he let me sleep at the foot of the bed, as a treat.”

  “Guy’s a fool,” was all Nick had to say as he got to work on taking off the collar and manacles.

  Selene had to look away so she didn’t start crying.

  What was the point of being with someone if you couldn’t snuggle at night?

  And would she sink to that point if she weren’t careful, that point where she’d sleep in the closet because someone told her to?

  Nick seemed to know what she was thinking. He turned around, shook his head at Selene and said, “Don’t worry. No closets or floors. I like being able to reach out and touch you.”

  “Besides, I’d kick your ass from here to Chicago if you suggested it. Closets are for clothes. And repressed people, but most of them are trying to get out.”

  Natalie looked from Nick to Selene, her expression scandalized but reluctantly entertained.

  “Clothes,” Selene said, handing over what Alison had grabbed in those frantic fifteen minutes. “I remember you saying you didn’t have much anymore.”

  Natalie looked at the little bundle of clothes and the pair of flip-flops. Her lower lip began to quiver. “Alison… Does Alison know how badly I’ve fucked up?”

  “No, hon,” Nick reassured her. “She knows how badly Derrick did.”

  “We were at her house when you called.”

  “You were at Master Garth’s? So he knows too?” She began to cry in earnest. “I’m a failure as a slave, and no one will ever speak
to me again because I betrayed my master. Maybe I’m better off staying with Master and trying harder to be what he wants. I…”

  “Oh, snap out of it! I’d slap your face like they do to hysterical women in old movies, but you might like it.”

  Natalie blinked away her tears and stared first at Selene, and then at Nick. “Are you sure she’s a slave?” she asked her former lover.

  “I’m not a slave,” Selene said blithely, sounding rather more sure than she was on that complex question. “Bottom definitely, submissive with Nick, but not a slave. But even if I was one, I’d be tempted to slap you silly right now, which isn’t fair to you. It’s natural to have doubts and fears when you leave an abusive relationship. Probably more when you’d voluntarily put a lot of your choices into his hands before things got ugly. But it’s after midnight and we have a three-hour drive ahead of us. Put some clothes on, and let’s get you the hell out of Dodge before Derrick gets home. Once you’re away from here and have a few days in a bed, wearing clothes and generally acting like a human being again, you’ll start thinking more clearly, and then you can start working through things. For now, we need to move.”

  Natalie blinked twice, owl-like, and obediently began putting on the shorts and T-shirt that Alison had provided. Petite though Alison was, they hung on Natalie’s skinny frame.

  Once the clothes were on, her expression changed subtly. She still looked as lost and confused and sad as Selene would expect under the circumstances. But she looked like a lost, sad, confused woman, not a kicked puppy who was likely to wag her tail at the one who’d kicked her.

  They were walking out the door when they heard the sound of a truck coming up the road. Natalie cursed. “Quick! That’s got to be him! He said he was going to be out most of the night, but sometimes he’d lie just to get me to screw up. What are we…”

  Nick grinned. “Selene, you grew up in the country. Ever do any off-roading?”

  At the grin and at the teenage memories it unleashed, the heart-pounding panic changed into an endorphin rush. “Sure did. Buckle up, Natalie. Things may get exciting.”

  With their lights off, they backed out of the driveway and sped up the quiet side road, away from the approaching truck—and from the main road that would take them back to Boston. By the light of the full moon, it was possible to see the road winding ahead of them, its twists and turns through the mountains. But where trees blocked the moonlight, it was the kind of dark that brought out primitive fears of monsters and things with saber teeth. That just made it more fun.

  By the dim dashboard light, Selene tried to make out the map. “Right turn, just a ways ahead.” Nick switched on fog lights long enough to make the turn, careening from low-grade pavement to what seemed to be dirt in a way that made Selene wince for the Denali.

  Natalie, huddled in the big backseat, was silent except for the occasional yelp. When Selene glanced back, all she could see of the other woman were the whites of her wide, frightened eyes.

  Selene was biting back on the urge to whoop with glee.

  This was dangerous and crazy and potentially even more dangerous and crazy if Derrick caught them. Sure, this looked like a dead-quiet road, but you never knew who might be heading home from working the late shift. And out in the boonies, there were always deer and other critters—possibly moose or bear this far north—not to mention that the narrow dirt road itself was risky when lit only by moonlight.

  Still, her heart raced more with excitement than fear.

  She remembered doing this kind of stupid shit when she was a teenager, racing around on the twisting, narrow back roads between Seneca and Keuka Lakes, cutting along the even smaller and bumpier roads through tracts of state land. It wasn’t something she’d admit to most people she’d met since leaving Lodi. But she glanced over at Nick and saw he too was having a teenage flashback.

  “I thought you grew up in Nashua,” she said.

  “I did. But you don’t have to go very far out of Nashua to be in the middle of nowhere.” He hit a bump, and the SUV became momentarily airborne. “Yee-haw!”

  “Is he behind us?” Natalie asked. “I can’t look!”

  Selene looked in the rearview and saw headlights coming over the rise. “Natalie, where does this road go?”

  “I don’t know. But it looks like there’s a place up ahead for hikers to pull off and park. If we go in there and keep the lights off and wait, he’ll miss us. Figure we headed straight for town and go that way.”

  Nick grunted his agreement and pulled off into the rutted little spot marked with a trailhead sign. “Looks like we’re on the edge of a state park or something.”

  A vehicle sped past them, going too fast on the dirt road, its lights low, though not entirely off.

  “That’s his truck,” Natalie confirmed, her voice quivering.

  By the dim dashboard light, Selene studied the map. “If we turn around and go back to the road we just left and keep heading away from the house, there’ll be a left coming up that’s an actual road, not a glorified logging trail. If we take that, then a right, then another left onto…it looks like Bear Creek Road…we should be able to get back to what passes for a highway without running into Derrick. I hope.”

  At that moment, Natalie’s phone rang. She apparently hit Ignore, because it stopped, but it started again immediately as if whoever was on the other end—it had to be Derrick—was determined to keep calling until she picked up. She switched it to silent or maybe turned it off, because the ringing stopped. Still she kept staring at it as if it might bite her, trembling, looking like she wanted to answer it but had just enough sense not to.

  Finally, she asked them, “Tell me it’s okay to litter in a good cause.”

  Selene, understanding instantly, said, “It’s okay. Isn’t it, Nick?”

  “Sure is. Go for it.”

  The phone went flying out the window at seventy miles per hour. “Waste of a nice phone,” Natalie said, “but I was going to wear down. I know as soon as I talked to him I’d find myself agreeing to anything he said, even if I knew it was the worst thing on earth for me.”

  “Phones are easy to replace,” Nick said. The implied and you’re not was clear.

  After a series of twists and turns on the back roads, they finally felt safe they’d lost Derrick. They hadn’t seen headlights behind them for a while. Selene couldn’t help half hoping that the moose they’d seen ambling into one dark road behind them had done a public service by having a close encounter with Derrick’s truck, though it would be a shame about the moose.

  Two hours or so later, after making their way to a state route with an actual number they could find on a map, they passed through a town with an all-night diner. Selene and Nick looked at each other, and groaned, “Coffee.”

  Nick pulled into the parking lot and he and Selene climbed out. Natalie stayed in the backseat just long enough for Selene to think she’d fallen asleep. Then Nick said, “Come on, Natalie,” and she hopped out as if she’d been waiting for permission.

  Natalie, looking very small, almost childlike, huddled in the slick red booth, shivering in the air-conditioned chill. She stared at the specials list written on a distant whiteboard without saying a word until Nick said, “Do you want something?”

  “May I? Please?”

  He took her hand as gently as he would treat the child she resembled. “You don’t have to ask, Nats.”

  She took a deep breath. “It seems like it’s been years since I could go into a restaurant and order what I wanted to eat. I know it hasn’t been, but it feels weird.”

  “Good, though, I bet,” Selene said.

  Natalie shook her head. “Yes and no. Mas…Derrick has some strong opinions about food. Like, he’s allergic to tomatoes and potatoes, so they must be bad for everyone. I wasn’t allowed to eat sugar because he thought I was getting fat, and slaves can have red meat only from Master’s hand. I got used to it, but I tell you, I’ve dreamed of a burger and fries, and I was always more o
f a fish and veggies girl before. I could sit here all day just trying to choose between the steak and eggs and a piece of pie.”

  Selene looked at Natalie’s sticklike figure. “That’s easy. Both, with hash browns. Not like you can’t afford the calories. And tonight’s dinner’s got to be prime rib and ice cream. Girlfriend, you’ve got months of deprivation to make up for.”

  The eastern sky was turning pale with predawn light by the time they finally limped back to Boston, the navy blue SUV grayed out with dust and mud from unpaved roads and badly in need of a trip through a car wash.

  “We’ll worry about that in the morning. The real morning,” Nick declared, and they staggered up the stairs into his condo.

  Selene, fighting sleep, went to pull out the sofa bed in the living room for Natalie, but she waved her off. “Just a pillow’s fine,” she insisted, and both Nick and Selene were too tired to argue. They managed to get her to take a light blanket as well.

  Selene figured she planned to crash on the couch, which looked like it would be a comfy bed for someone as small as Natalie. But the last she saw of her, she was curling up on the floor like a dog, nested in the blanket. “Nick, we can’t just…”

  Nick put his hand on Selene’s arm. “It’s what she’s gotten used to. Maybe what she’s comfortable with. Some people feel it’s a slave’s place.” Nick’s tone made it pretty clear he didn’t agree.

  “But she’s not…”

  Selene stopped herself, suddenly understanding. One of her mom’s friends was a painter who’d developed arthritis in her hands. She couldn’t hold a brush long anymore, but she painted when she could and did whatever she could to remind herself that she was still an artist. It was who she was, Lila always said, and if she let it go completely, she’d just fade away.

  Everyone had something too precious to let go. For Lila, it was painting. For her, it was her work with battered women. For Natalie, it was being a slave. That was her core identity, and she was clinging to it to help her through a rocky time.