Take Me (Enslaved #1)

CHAPTER 12

The sound of the heavy door in my cell wakes me. I groan as I blink against the artificial lights and see a pair of sleek leather shoes step inside. It takes me a moment to realize they’re not the same brown ones with perforations and a round toe that Mikhail wears. These are smooth and black with a square toe. Less flashy, more elegant.

But the realization holds little meaning to me. I just want to rest my weary body and go back to sleep, so I turn my back to whoever is there and hug my teddy tight.

“Time to go home,” a smooth baritone says.

The voice doesn’t belong to Mikhail either.

It belongs to someone I’ve been dreaming about since the day they took me—the man I always think about when hugging the teddy.

But it can’t be. My mind is playing yet another trick on me, crueler than any of the previous as the hallucination takes on vivid form, more clear and real than ever before.

He sinks to his haunches behind me, and when a big, smooth hand touches my shoulder, tears slip from my eyes.

I shake my head, feeling utterly broken. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t keep hoping and imagining. It hurts too much when the illusion fades.

The hand gently pulls at me, turning me onto my back, and when I stare into a familiar face that doesn’t belong down here, I shake my head more ardently. “It’s not you,” I murmur, closing my eyes again.

He leans down, and the scent of pine and wet moss swamps me with such clarity that I break into tears.

“It is me,” the voice says softly against my ear. “I’ve been here all week, and now I’m taking you home.”

A hand comes to my cheek, caressing softly. Genuinely. Mikhail’s touch is never this genuine. Nothing down here is.

So I allow myself to look again, and this time, I know it’s not a dream. The touch, the scent, his voice. His eyes. It really is him.

I stare at him, tears brimming in my eyes, and for the first time down here, I don’t want to hide.

We watch each other for several minutes, me baring my soul and all my innermost private emotions to him as he traces the lines of my face and wipes away the tears that roll down my cheeks.

“Why?” I finally ask, needing to know why he had me kidnapped and stuck in hell for two months when I was already like putty in his hands.

Nikolai wraps his hand around my chin and strokes his thumb along my jaw. “I have very specific needs and a busy schedule. Letting you go meant risking you’d get caught in your head. And then it would have been a real hassle to fix the mess.”

“Couldn’t you just have taken me with you?”

He lifts an incredulous brow. “And risk having you run off while I was busy or go to the police after I had chained you up?”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll do that after...” I bite my lip, not knowing what to call it. So I gesture to the space around me. “This.”

Nikolai gathers my wrists in one big hand, curling the other around my neck. My breathing instantly deepens as I melt beneath him, staring into his eyes in utter surrender.

A smile curves his lips. “Not really. Mikhail has trained you well.”

Hard heels click behind us, and Mikhail’s smug voice breaks the moment. “Indeed I have. Though, it wasn’t a very hard job with this one.”

Without releasing my throat, Nikolai turns to Mikhail. “So, maybe I should demand half my money back?”

Mikhail scoffs. “You should just be grateful that I didn’t sell her to someone else for double the price. Or keep her for myself. It was quite tempting.”

Nikolai turns back to me, expression crackling with something cold and dark as he spears me with his intense gaze while speaking to Mikhail. “Good thing you refrained, or she would have been the last girl you sold.”

Something stirs inside me, beneath the fear and confusion. Something deep and instinctive. I shrink back at the sight of the smoldering cruelty in his eyes even as I lean my neck up into the collar of his hand.

“See what I mean?” Nikolai says, this time talking to me. “You’re mine.”

I nod against his hand, not grasping what’s happening to me, but feeling the full brunt of it as a potent force swooshes through my body and fills every little cell of my being. At this very moment, I know he’s right. I won’t go to the police no matter what he does to me. He may drag me through another two months of hell. It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s ultimately the one in control.

I trust him. It’s not rational, but rational became a void concept to me long ago. And I don’t trust him in a normal sense, but in the only way that counts. I trust him not to break me.

So I draw my chin toward my chest in deep-felt reverence as he releases my neck.

“Is the harness ready?” Nikolai asks.

“Dax will be in with it in a minute,” Mikhail replies.

“Let me see your tongue.” Nikolai holds two fingers in front of my mouth, grabs my tongue when I open up, and pulls it out to inspect the piercing. “Very pretty. I can’t wait to use it.”

I don’t know what he means and I can’t imagine what it might be. How would someone use a tongue piercing? Even after two months, I’m still baffled by the small thing, unable to see how it could serve as another means to put me in my place.

“Close your mouth.” Nikolai releases my tongue and pats my cheek.

More steps enter the room, this time heavy thuds of boots.

Nikolai gets up to see the harness Dax has brought, and I push up to sit on my knees.

“I haven’t tried it on yet—figured you should be the one to do it—but I’ve measured her head, so the fit should be just right,” Dax says.

Nikolai sinks to his haunches before me again, and I watch the brown leather straps in his hands that are connected in various places to form some kind of structure I can’t quite make out. “You’ll look very pretty in this one.” He swipes his thumb across my cheek. “Very helpless.”

My thighs clench. All I crave is to be helpless beneath this man.

He pulls the straps over my head, adjusts a few ones, and buckles them in several places. When he grabs my chin to inspect the result, my head is strapped into a tight net of thin leather straps that go down over my forehead, past each side of my nose, and around each side of my head. They don’t restrict anything—I can still see, hear, breathe normally, and open my mouth to speak. But I have a feeling that won’t last. The straps close to my mouth and the ones under my chin still hang loose, and I have a feeling it has something to do with the piercing.

Nikolai confirms this when he tells me to stick my tongue out again and removes the top ring on the barbel.

Dax hands him a piece of thick leather with a flat plate about an inch long protruding from the center. The plate feels like metal covered in silicone as Nikolai places it on top of my tongue, sliding the small hole in the middle over the barbel. He attaches the ring on top, trapping my tongue against the plate, and my heart speeds up as the restrictive feeling intrudes upon my senses.

The small plate goes inside my mouth, pushing my tongue with it, as Nikolai presses the leather over my mouth and buckles it in place. A panel gag, I realize. He finishes by buckling the strap under my chin, forcing my mouth closed over the plate.

I try to wriggle my tongue, but the plate presses it down, flattening it at the bottom of my mouth. I can’t even move my jaw. The feeling is obtrusive unlike anything else. I’ve been tied to a chair, head and limbs immobilized as my body was forced to take orgasm after orgasm. Now, my arms and legs are free, yet the feeling of having my head, even my tongue, strapped in place is even more restrictive than the chair.

I whimper as a floaty sort of sensation descends upon my mind. I stare at Nikolai with aching vulnerability, feeling the meager remains of my autonomy rattle to the floor before him. There’s no wanting or not wanting this. This is who I am now. His. Through and through.

“She should be able to move the sides of her tongue just enough to swallow, so you’ll avoid excessive drooling,” Dax explains. “But if you want a different effect, I have a ring gag too with a plate for the piercing.” He hands Nikolai a small item. “And this one. My personal favorite.”

Nikolai’s expression lights up as he looks the small thing over. It’s similar to the silicone-covered metal plate depressing my tongue, only this one is wider and double. Two plates meld together at the end to form a sort of U with holes in each plate.

My eyes go round as I realize that my tongue is supposed to go between the two plates.

“For public?” Nikolai asks with a bright smile as he holds the thing up and looks at Dax. “Without the harness?”

“No one will be able to see it,” Dax explains. “Of course, she’ll be able to open her mouth, but she won’t be able to speak.”

Nikolai grabs my jaw and aims all his sharp attention at me. “I don’t think you’ll want to open your mouth when I’m taking you into the public with this thing on your tongue, will you?”

I shake my head, drawing a shuddery breath through my nose as I imagine being among other people with my tongue stuck in the small device, a constant reminder of Nikolai’s inescapable ownership.

“Say something,” Mikhail orders.

I try, but my words come out as muffled strings of aaas and iiis , and mortification washes over me, making my head fall forward with the urge to hide. I’ve taken so many humiliations at the hands of Mikhail and Dax, and even Dorin, but somehow, having my tongue immobilized and my ability to communicate stolen away affects me the most. And maybe even more so because it’s in front of the man I’ve dreamed of—the man I eagerly want to please.

“So pretty,” Nikolai says as he lifts my chin and studies the handiwork.

I want to crumble at his feet. The harness has snuffed out whatever resistance I had left and reduced me to something that’s not my own anymore.

But when he wraps a firm hand around my nape and pulls my forehead to his chest, it’s not the devastating loss I feel. It’s the deep peace of belonging.

“Mine,” he says, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. And that’s it. Like a switch, his word shuts off the rest of the world, wrapping me in a cocoon of floaty submission.

“I suggest you let her use the toilet while we go get the last things,” Dax says when Nikolai pulls back and lets me sit up straight again.

Dax and Mikhail leave the cell, closing the door behind them, and Nikolai orders me to use the toilet, standing in front of me with arms crossed over his wide chest as I relieve myself.

A few minutes later, Mikhail and Dax return, carrying a large wooden cargo box long enough to fit a person.

I gulp as I watch them set it down in the middle of the cell.

“On your knees, your back to the room,” Dax orders, pointing at the mattress.

I gingerly sink into position, breathing heavily at the sound of metallic rattling as he comes up behind me. He starts by wrapping a wide leather belt around my waist. Reaching his arms around me, he closes the belt on my stomach, making me gasp each time he yanks at one of the two straps to close it. His touch is mechanical and practical like he’s preparing a package for send-off. To him, I’m an object without a voice—without the right to an opinion.

And that’s exactly how I feel. But instead of tearing at me and tensing my muscles, the thought frees me. There’s no need to struggle, consider what I should feel, or what they think about me. So I give up all thought and all self, swaying along with Dax’s ministrations, pliant in mind and body as he shoves me forward and places me on all fours.

“Spread her ass,” Dax says, and Mikhail steps in to spread my cheeks apart while Dax drips cold lube onto my narrow opening and slips the tip of a small dildo inside. He turns it a little and moves the tip in and out a few times, but it’s not to tease or titillate. He’s simply taking care not to break me in the process. The moment my muscles loosen, he pushes past my sphincter and all the way inside with one smooth motion.

I whimper as my nerves flare alive, and when he spreads my pussy open and presses a wide dildo against my other opening, I start jerking and making small involuntary wriggles as electricity sparks in my overly sensitive folds.

“Be still.” Dax smacks my ass, and I dig my fingers into the mattress as he shoves the toy in. He doesn’t even need to pry or use lube. I’m so wet and ready that the wide toy slides right in despite the dildo in my ass narrowing the space.

I groan and moan behind the leather as I struggle to rein in the flaring need bursting through my body. The need only grows when Dax pulls a strap between my legs, making me realize that the toys are attached to it as he pulls it tight and the dildos sink deeper into me. Helplessness becomes an intoxicating drug on my mind as he attaches the strap to the waist belt, locking the toys in place deep inside me.

Tears spring to my eyes when Dax and Mikhail pull me up on my knees and help me turn around on the mattress to face them. The explosion of sensation is simply too much as the toys move inside me, rubbing against each other and sending sparks of electricity into my overly sensitive folds.

I stare up at Nikolai, shaking my head as the oppressive feeling of the dildos expands and pounds through my abdomen, shooting bolts of lightning that make me spasm with a painful need for release.

Dax and Mikhail proceed to put leather mittens on my hands and strap them to the waist belt. All the while, I keep staring at Nikolai with tears streaming down my cheeks, my nostrils flaring as my breaths come in staggered drags.

He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t twitch a muscle. He’s impassive and uncompromising until Dax and Mikhail step aside. Only then does he approach and sink to his haunches before me, grabbing my chin in a hard grip that matches his stern expression.

“You’re mine. Mine to use, mine to hurt, and mine to torment. I’ll take care of you too, but right now I want you to feel my power through and through. I’m your master, and you’ll take whatever I give you, whenever I give it. Are we clear?”

I nod in his hand, sniffling as the tears run faster. But it’s not because his words scare me; it’s because I can’t contain the emotions swelling inside me.

Mikhail breaks the trance. “Sure I can’t get you another girl? I have great ones who have just finished their training, and I can give you a good price.”

Nikolai watches me like he can see into the very depths of my soul as he answers Mikhail. “I only need this one.” He picks something off the mattress, and then rough jute material dulls my senses as he pulls a small sack over my head and tightens it around my throat, fastening it with a knot.

“Put her in the box,” he says, and Mikhail and Dax hoist me up by the arms and carry me across the room.

Whatever little light the sack offers fades as they lay me in the box, between four solid walls. I’m grateful to feel that the insides are padded, so my skin won’t scrape against the rough wood as I jostle about in the crate. It reminds me of the trunk on the night they took me—the pillows Mikhail used to pad the confined space and the uncertainty. I know as little about where I’m going and what’s going to happen to me as I did back then. But there’s one big difference. This time, I’m not being taken away from Nikolai; I’m being brought to him, wherever that may be.

Nikolai’s scent drifts past the jute as he leans down and pushes the fox under my arm—the same teddy he gave me when he sent me off to be kidnapped and trained for his pleasure.

Then he’s gone, and the darkness becomes complete as the lid is placed on the box. Sharp sounds of nails and hammers fill the space as they seal it closed.

“See you soon, my sweet Lisichka, ” Nikolai says just before the box lifts off the ground and I’m carried away.