Take Me (Enslaved #1)

CHAPTER 7

“Come with me,” Mikhail says one day after lunch.

I only get out of the cell two times a day. To spend half an hour in a small fitness room with artificial sunlight and to get hosed down. I’ve already worked out today, and the cleaning usually happens after dinner, so I’m a bit tentative as I get up from the mattress.

Two weeks have passed. At least, so I think. My count got muddy somewhere after the first week, and it gets harder by the day to keep track in this static blur of gray walls and humiliations.

He waves a hand at me, silently urging me on, and I pad across the cold stone floor. Instinctively, I step close to him like he’s my shelter that will protect me from whatever is outside the green metal door, and I scold myself inwardly and take a step away.

I’ve grown more pliant during the last few days, willingly giving him my hands when he puts the mittens back on, and my begging for orgasms comes more readily.

I tell myself it’s because I’m depleted and don’t have the energy to fight, but really, I think it’s because his training is working. I can tell by the way his order to come usually pushes me over the edge even before I’m at the precipice. It scares me to the core, and I tell myself I’ll be more aware of his conditioning and fight it the next time. But it never works. He always shuts my brain off expertly, so I never realize what’s happening before it’s too late.

Instead of grabbing me by the arm and hauling me along, he simply presses a hand to the small of my back. And that’s all he needs. I compliantly go along as he guides me through the barren halls.

But when he opens the door to Dax’s room of hell, I freeze in place. Cold fear washes over me as I click my tongue piercing against my teeth and remember the horrible sensation of having my stomach pumped full of water.

“Get on the table.” Mikhail pushes me inside, and I’m not sure if he actually expects me to obey or just leaves the problem up to Dax. Either way, I don’t move as he turns to Dax. “I’ll be back in a minute. Start without me.”

Then he’s gone, leaving the door half ajar, me standing frozen in place as I watch Dax go about preparing whatever degradation he has in store for me.

At first, I only catch a few glimpses of his rolling table behind his broad frame. But when he steps aside to fill a bowl with water, I get the full view.

Lube, latex gloves, and the huge syringe with the long plastic tip that went in my ass.

Panic takes me in a chokehold. Everything within me freezes like it’s a sedative and not adrenaline that has invaded my veins. All I can move are my eyes, and I dart them across the space like it could alleviate the icy fear. But all it does is aggravate the paralyzing powerlessness as I see the many straps on the table, the stirrups, and the metal collar jutting out from the wall by the toilet. And finally, my own leather-bound hands.

Dax places the bowl on the tray and turns to me, retrieving a key from his pocket. Without granting me the humanity of eye contact, he starts working on the mittens. He unlocks the padlock, frees my hands, and removes the collar, leaving me stark naked.

Then he turns to put it all aside and rolls the table up beside the gynecologist’s chair. “Hop on.” He pats the smooth leather surface, still not bothering to look at me.

I stare down at my free hands, flicker my gaze to the table, then back to the open door. Being free from the gloves is like a rush of fresh air—a breath of hope. It knocks me from my paralysis and into action.

What I do next is not a conscious choice or a thought-through plan. It just happens. Instinct kicking in.

Three careful steps are all it takes to bring me out of the room without Dax noticing.

And then I bolt.

I dart down the empty corridor, driven by a sharp burst of adrenaline. I barely even feel the hard stone beneath my feet or the strain in my legs. I just run.

I’m almost at the end, where the hall splits in a T, when I hear Dax’s angry voice behind me. His words don’t register; I only hear the boom of his voice rip through the tunnel-like space. Then the thudding sound of hastened steps. When I veer around the corner and glance back, I’m stunned to find he’s not running.

Fear pulses through my veins as I realize there might not be a way out. Still, I keep going, my bare feet pounding against rough stone as my pulse becomes a jackhammer in my ears. Panic is a violent kick in my beating heart when I reach a closed metal door, more solid than the green cell doors, at the end of the hall. I frantically try the handle. Locked. My eyes dart up and down to assess what I know in my gut is an exit. There’s not even a lock under the handle, only a digital plate beside the door, and that small plate shoots more terror through my veins.

I shove my hand against it. A finger. Bang on it.

Nothing.

Panic spurs me on—down a new corridor full of green doors like the one on my cell. I grab the first handle I see and the next. But they’re all locked. I keep yanking at handles, glancing over my shoulder. Still no Dax.

A shrill scream somewhere jolts my feet back into action. I bolt toward the end and down a new corridor. I keep running, trying handles. Steps echo somewhere in the distance, another scream, then steps from a different direction.

I veer to the left, then right, right then left. I have no idea whether I’m moving in circles. I just try to get away from the sounds.

Everything looks the same until it doesn’t.

I veer around a new corner, and everything changes in an instant. A gust of chilly air sends shivers down my spine, and my feet ache against the gravelly floor as I stare into thick darkness.

My eyes dart around, trying to gauge my surroundings.

A tendril of fear slithers down my spine when I catch a glimpse of old bars instead of a door, and I gasp in shock when my feet hit something hard and long. With my heart pounding in my throat, I stop running and continue at a more careful speed.

With two more turns, the darkness becomes so thick I can’t see my own hands. I halt and turn around, searching for something—anything to guide my way. But there’s no flicker of light. I’m caught in stifling blackness.

I reach out for the wall, hoping it will guide me back. But I can’t reach it.

Fear bands around my lungs as I keep whirling around without seeing or touching anything.

Shudders take over my body—a violent mix of fear, exhaustion, and waning adrenaline. I sink to the ground and curl my knees up to my chest as tears start dripping from my eyes. I turn my head every other second, thinking I hear something, and flicker my eyes back and forth, thinking I see a shadow.

But the darkness remains dead-still and empty.

I’m alone. All on my own and more scared than I’ve ever been in my whole life. More scared than when Mikhail propped pillows around me and shut me into the darkness of the trunk. At least then I knew where I was—I could feel my surroundings. They were small and comprehensible. Here, I have no clue what lurks in the corners or even where the corners are. I feel like I’m drowning in dead darkness.

All I have are my own bated breaths and my tiny whimpers that become ominous sounds that barely sound like my own as they blend into the nothingness.

I rub my arms, my legs, and my feet to abate the cold. But eventually, it seeps through my skin, into my bones, where it shakes me to the core.

It feels like I sit there forever, but I’m not sure it’s even an hour.

When I finally do hear steps echoing through the empty halls nearby, I’m more relieved than scared. Right now, I don’t care about who finds me or what the consequences will be; I just want to get out of this black, cold hole.

Light flashes, and I squint as I gaze up at the tall figure approaching me. When I make out Mikhail’s straight and low brows, I’m so grateful I crawl toward him.

“I’m sorry.” I feel godawful pathetic as I sniffle and lean into his leg. But I’m unable to stop myself.

Mikhail grabs me by the hair and yanks me up, and I don’t even protest at the pain exploding at the back of my head. I just want to feel him close—know that I’m not alone.

The full weight of my captivity must have caught up to me, snapped around my neck like an iron manacle, and made me into this person who seeks her captor’s touch out of want for better.

I take it without a modicum of self-respect.

I curl my hand around his shirt as I weep, desperately trying to draw closer—to burrow my head in his chest and seek his comfort.

But he doesn’t offer me any, and the rejection hurts more than any other thing he’s done to me.

He tightens his grip on my neck and shoves me forward, through the blackness and back into the long corridors. Somehow, the light restores some of my strength, and I manage to get enough of a hold on myself to stop the tears and let go of Mikhail. But the pain of his cold distance remains.

“It’s time for the chair,” he announces when Dax approaches us from the other end of a hall.

Dax’s mouth curves up in a wide, wicked smile—the type of smile that belongs to a charming surfer guy on the beach in summer.

But it looks cruel down here, and when Mikhail shoves me into a new room, I know why.

In the middle of it all, a large wooden structure that looks terribly much like a death chair rises on a small platform.

I push back against Mikhail’s arm, shaking my head with the full force of my desperation.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s not what it looks like,” Dax says, stepping up to the chair and tapping the back like it’s an old friend. “I’ve built this one for a whole other purpose.”

“Sit.” Mikhail’s voice booms through the room, shocking me into action.

I scurry across the cold floor and scamper onto the chair. It’s so tall I have to use my arms to hoist myself up. It’s not until I’m seated on the wood, feeling like a child in a grown-up’s chair, that I realize there’s a hole in the middle of the seat. But my attention quickly snaps back to Mikhail.

“Use the hood,” he says, staring me down as he talks to Dax. “If she wants to be alone, she’ll goddamn get to be alone. The ear muffs too.”

I shake my head wildly. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Mikhail doesn’t react, and I’m about to jump out of the chair to go beg him when Dax drags a leather strap over my stomach, through a vertical slit in the chair’s back, and pulls.

The leather forces me back against the wooden surface as he buckles it in place. Panic sends me into frantic motions, tugging at the strap, wriggling my hips, and throwing my hands back in search of the buckle. But the wooden back is too wide, the slit too narrow to get my fingers through. There’s no way for me to reach it.

I’m trapped, well and good, by one simple belt.

But Dax doesn’t do simple. He proceeds to strap my arms and legs down in several places, forcing my legs wide open and pinning my arms to the armrests, my torso to the back.

When he tightens a final strap over my waist, I can’t move anything but my head. But I don’t think that’s going to last long either as I catch a glimpse of leather straps appearing through slits on either side of my neck.

I cast Mikhail a final pleading look, but he just stands there with his hands folded in front of him, legs wide, as he watches me with a cold expression. Like an executioner.

A bag comes over my head and shuts me into claustrophobic darkness. I whip my head from side to side, clutching my hands around the edges of the armrests.

“I’m sorry,” I whimper, and the worst part is that I truly am. “Please, Mikhail—please, Sir. Don’t do this.”

Leather closes over my neck, pulling the bag close around my head.

“No!” I wail as another strap comes over my forehead.

But no one hears my pleas. No one cares.

And then my world becomes a narrow tunnel of despairing wails and whimpers as ear muffs shut out every sound but my own.

***

Panic slithers through me. A thousand tiny snakes coiling around my lungs and creeping under my skin.

I’ve stopped begging, unable to stand the sound of my own desperation. Now it’s just my frantic breaths sounding in my head like a scene from a horror movie where the girl steals through the woods, not knowing the monster is right behind her.

It’s even worse than the harrowing blackness of the old halls I got myself trapped in.

I startle when something or someone brushes against my thigh, and my yelp resounds in my ears as loud as the scream when the monster catches the girl. Then something is at my pussy—at the hole in the seat of the chair. Fingers smear something sticky between my folds. Lube. The quick, effective motion tells me it’s Dax. He doesn’t see me—never does. No lingering glances on my breasts or lingering touches on my private parts. To him, I’m a machine getting oiled and ready for use.

With the darkness of the old halls having sucked out my strength, I can’t uphold my sense of worth. I slump in the restraints and whimper as my mind wipes out my dignity. A painful jerk tears at my body as another touch startles me. This time, it’s inanimate. A toy of some sort prodding against my opening, sending me deeper into the dehumanized state. I’m not even worth human touch anymore.

My inner muscles contract to reject the object, but the slick lube allows free entrance, and what appears to be a thick dildo sinks into me, spearing me with the knowledge that my body is no longer mine. The toy just sits there, horrible and obtrusive, as Dax proceeds to smear more lube onto my clit and press a new object against it, which he seems to attach to the chair.

I sense him step away, and I give a slight jerk of my hips, hoping to dislodge the unwelcome thing. But I barely have an inch of leeway, and even so, the thing doesn’t budge the slightest. All I achieve is to press myself a smidgen farther into it.

A sudden buzzing against my clit sends a painful shock through me, and my yelp is a loud sound in the hollow void. Another shrill sound rings in my ears as the dildo starts moving inside me. It drags along my inner walls, almost all the way out, then slides back in to hit the bottom of my pelvis. Then it goes back out and in again at the same measured speed. It’s a machine, I realize; not a man controlling it.

I squeeze my eyes shut with the effort of trying to drown out the sensations. But my mind doesn’t have the strength to take me someplace else, and my body reacts without need for permission. Tingling sensations erupt in my sensitive skin as the buzzing keeps going, and my inner walls twitch around the vile intrusion, wanting to grab onto it and welcome it in.

Somehow, I must not be broken entirely because I muster just enough strength to hold it together—hold back the moans and the urge to let the buzzing sensation drag my body into lustful need. But my stamina only lasts so long.

The dildo keeps going, in and out, in and out, and the vibrator keeps buzzing. It seems to go on forever, and finally, my last sliver of mental strength wanes, and my body takes over.

At first, it’s tiny mewls that fill the empty space inside my head, and the tingling sensations spread through my lower body. Then the mewls turn into tiny moans as the tingles become little bolts of electricity that have me jerking against the straps. And finally, the sensations take over my whole system. Long, desperate moans fill the lonely silence, and cold sweat breaks out over my skin as I clench my muscles around the maddening intrusion and spasm under the constant buzzing.

My entire body convulses with the need for release, but the humming vibrations and languid movements of the dildo don’t cut it. It’s not enough to send me over. But it’s too much to allow me to forget.

It keeps going at the same torturous pace in one cruel loop—in and out, in and out, buzzing at a constant low—until I’m teetering on the edge of insanity.

“Please, I ca—I can’t… take anymore.” My voice sounds shaky and frail to my ears, and I hardly recognize it. I don’t recognize myself.

No one answers, and I try again a little louder.

“Please, stop. I—I’m sorry. I won’t ever run off again. I promise.” My voice breaks on the last words. No one but myself hears, and I can’t bear the broken sound. I can’t bear to be in this body that’s not mine anymore. I can’t bear the cold, empty loneliness.

Tears break from my eyes, and hoarse whimpers erupt from my throat. I try to stop it, but this is just another thing I have no control over. The whimpers turn into sobs, and my world becomes steeped in agony as my grief is the only thing I hear, the painful pulsations in my body the only thing I feel.

Sniffling, I try to keep control over one last thing, but it’s no use. Soon, my nose is running, and snot and tears wet the enclosed confines of the bag, draping me in more lonely humiliation.

I can’t take it. I just can’t. Desperation builds inside my head, threatening to explode. I jerk against the restraints, fueled by blinding panic.

“Let me go!” I wail, only for my own ears to hear. But I can’t stop even though the desperation drives me deeper into the panic. “Let me go. I can’t take it. Stop!”

My world blurs as I teeter on the edge of something. A breaking point? Unconsciousness? I don’t know. I just know that something’s about to snap.

And then it all ends.

The vibrations cease, and the dildo goes still inside me.

My screams die, leaving my breaths an echoing sound in the stillness as I wait for something to happen. But nothing does. I just sit there, breathing hard and reeling as my entire body aches from the intensity of everything .

At some point, I let go of the fear and let the stillness claim me into some sort of warped rest. Everything is hollow and empty, and my body becomes a dull weight that is there yet not quite mine to feel as I sink into the darkness.

My breathing is calm and my mind the same when my world is suddenly thrust back into a state of alarm.

The buzzing begins with a force that shoots an overload of sensation into my sensitive nub, and the dildo begins at a hazardous pace that has a screech like a demon’s wail clawing up my throat.

I jerk and strain against the straps, the wood, and the buzzing toy, but there’s nothing I can do to escape the onslaught of sensation. Nothing but scream and claw my fingers against the wooden armrests.

The sensations are like fireworks gone wrong in my nerves, and the jolts are painful as they rip through my body. But slowly, they coalesce. My core starts humming, drawing the energy toward my center. It all gathers low in my belly, pulsing and contracting with an intensity that nearly has me fainting. My moans deepen, and my toes curl. I’m just about to come when it all ends.

Just like that.

The buzzing stops and the dildo draws out completely.

Cold, aching emptiness slithers through my veins, and I wail like a child.

I can’t take it anymore. Not the loneliness, the aching desire, or the strain in my body. There’s simply no energy left.

Yet somehow, I go through the same violent turbulence of cruel sensation and terrible emptiness three more times.

When the dildo draws out and the buzzing stops for the last time, I don’t even scream. Not a sound moves past my lips, and it feels like a miracle that my lungs will work to take in air.

My skin is damp and sticky, my mouth dry and scratchy. All my joints and muscles hurt, and pins and needles stab against my skull.

A gust of air has my breath catching from the shock. I haven’t felt anyone’s presence for a very long time, and knowing someone is close is as unsettling as it’s reassuring.

The ear muffs disappear, and the relief of hearing something beyond my own wails and whimpers is so great that I start weeping again. I barely make any sounds, but the tears keep trickling down my face behind the bag.

Someone leans close, and a hot breath seeps through the fabric against my ear. “Are you gonna be a good girl tomorrow and get on Dax’s table so he can clean out your ass?”

The constriction around my lungs eases at the sound of Mikhail’s voice, and I feel like I can breathe again for the first time since Dax put the bag over my head.

“Yes,” I say without hesitance, though there’s barely any sound in my voice.

“What’s that?” Long fingers trail along my collarbone, and I ache to reach out and touch him—to feel that he’s truly there and it’s not just an illusion my burned-out brain conjures. I need to find out if he’s mad or he has forgiven me for running off.

“Yes, Sir,” I manage with more clarity.

He moves away, and the loss is as painful as the denial of the last orgasm.

“Take her out,” Mikhail says, and a minute later, rough hands are working on the straps.

Mikhail is gone when I finally get the hood off. It’s just Dax and me.

My muscles are so weak I don’t think I can stand, and I sag against the wood when he loosens the strap around my neck, not even making an effort to get up when he releases the final one around my chest.

Dax hoists me over his shoulder and carries me to the washing room, where he makes quick work of soaping me up and hosing me down. Then he takes me back to my cell, where he dumps me on the mattress and puts manacles on my hands and legs before leaving me alone in the darkness.