Ray Ch. 03: Charade

She stood on the outside of the expresso colored door holding her key in her hand. She had often thought about installing a keypad instead, but delayed egress was against the regulations that held the camouflage house hostage. Other than the soft breeze blowing a few stray leaves down the center of the road all appeared to be at peace. No sound of breaking glass. No screams. No thudding from bodies being thrown into walls or down the stairs. According to her staff, Ben had been well behaved since his return.

She walked inside, prepared to do what she always did. The men were all seated at the table, waiting for her as they always were on Tuesdays. Group counseling was part of the treatment program, and also part of what kept her numb.

"Good morning," Ben said as she took the seat at the head of the table.

Her body tensed at his smile. "Good morning." She glanced around at the other men, patiently waiting with hands folded in front of them. "Today we're going to work on an empathy exercise. You're all going to write a letter of apology to your victim. If you have multiple victims, choose one—"

"Letter of apology?" Ben interrupted her.

She ignored him and continued. "This letter isn't meant to be sent and it never will be. I don't want to see any letters that just say, "I'm sorry." The letter should focus on how what you did made your victim feel both in the moment and in the aftermath."

"What if I don't know how it made them feel?" James asked, chewing on the end of his pen.

"Try thinking of how it would make you feel if someone did it to you," she replied. Empathy could not be taught, and the letters had stopped piquing her morbid curiosity long ago. Regardless, she had to have documentation of her attempts to rehabilitate the damned.

"My big brother used to do it to me a long time ago. Didn't bother me much," James said with a shrug, then looked back down at his paper.

She maintained her neutral composure while the image of every man who had made a similar comment during one of the groups tormented her head.

"Done." Ben finished scribbling his signature across the bottom of his paper then handed it to her.

She scanned the few words scrawled across the page, holding the sheet up in front of her face to mask her reaction. There was no room for weakness here, no matter how much her heart and stomach were screaming at her to run.

"I'm not shy," his voice came through the thin paper. "I don't mind if you want to read it to the other men so they have an example to use."

She folded the paper in half and handed it back to him. "This is very inappr—"

"Oh, you want me to present it?" he said, taking it from her and standing up.

"Ben—"

"Dear Victim," he cut her off. He leaned towards her and lowered his voice. "I didn't put her name on it because I'm assuming it's supposed to be confidential—"

"Ben, that's enough..." she started, though she doubted he cared about the warning in her tone.

He straightened up again, his loud voice easily overtaking her own. "Dear Victim, You're welcome. Love, Alias."

*****************************

"Be good to them and do what they tell you to do, Officer Ray. They're all extensions of me, and you need to treat them as such." The words she had spoken to him almost three years ago calmed his mind. He swayed gently in the ropes, their bite causing just enough discomfort to keep him aware. The movement soothed away the images from his day. No more panic, no more blood, no more screams for help he didn't know if he could provide. No sound of sirens, no flashing lights, no crying. Now he just hung, suspended in existence.

They circled him, the sound of their heels harsh against the calm of the sway. Even if he was still in a position to make a decision, he would beg them to make it for him. Plead with them to take the control, take away his power. He didn't want it anymore. He wanted an emotionless, thought free, sensation focused oblivion.

Hands ran over his body, over the ropes holding him suspended a few feet from the floor. Over his arms, fastened tightly behind his back. Down his legs, his calves pressing into the backs of his thighs, his thighs pressing into his stomach, his prisoner locked and ignored, hanging between them. Then through his hair and down his cheek, his neck muscles relaxing to the sensation. Straps crisscrossing over his face held up his skull's precious cargo, leaving his body nothing to concern itself with but the sway.

"Open," Mistress Mia directed, putting the metal ring in his mouth then buckling the leather behind his head.

He instinctively bit down against the gag but it remained firmly placed, holding his mouth open into a wide circle. He relaxed his jaw, giving back in to the methodical sway.

Lubed fingers pushed into him. First one, then two. His breath came out hot through his held open mouth, the drool starting to drip down his chin.

"Relax," Mistress Carmen's voice came from behind him. The tip of her strap-on pressed against his entrance, quickly sliding through it as his muscles gave up their attempt to keep it out.

He grunted as he rocked, weightless in his bounds, helplessly impaling himself. Mistress Carmen remained still, allowing the momentum of the sway to take the control. The burn overtook the thoughts from his head, the stretch silencing them into nothing. His length throbbed in its cage, the only part of his body still fighting the absolute submission being forced upon it.

A hand roughly grasped his hair. Mistress Mia's hot pink appendage shoved through the ring on the gag, stifling the sounds coming from his mouth. It slid over his tongue unimpeded before reaching the back of his throat.

The air rushed desperately through his nostrils, inhaling then exhaling in sharp bursts. His owners stood motionless, the impact of him bouncing off their bodies the only encouragement the ropes needed to maintain the sway. The need building inside him was beginning to overflow, leaking from his cage and leaving a trail of drops on the floor beneath him.

"I have an idea..." Mistress Mia released her grasp on his hair to tap her finger against her chin.

"What?" Mistress Carmen asked, her length continuing to violate him.

The pink silicone pulled out of his mouth. He watched her ginger hair brush against the black lace of her garter belt as she walked away from him. Her black stilettos tapped against the wood floor as she dug through several of the cabinets.

"Found one!" She victoriously held up a gag with a realistically sculpted appendage protruding out one end and a thinner, beaded attachment above it.

She unbuckled the ring gag, letting it fall to the floor. He quickly closed his mouth, allowing his jaw a brief reprieve before she shoved the ball side of the new gag inside it. She went over to one of the leather armchairs, pushing it to where he hung. He watched as she smeared lube over both parts of the gag, then bent over the armrest on the chair. Her hand guided the larger appendage between her folds, leaving the smaller one perfectly aligned between her cheeks.

His sac throbbed when they slid into her, then clenched hard when the sway brought them back out before making them disappear back inside her.

"He must like the view," Mistress Carmen said, a small laugh sounding behind his head. "He's going to have a lot to clean up off the floor after this."

Her words only worsened his predicament. He watched Mistress Mia's body stretching open to accept each bead, immediately tightening around it before reopening as another pushed its way in. There was no greater sight he could imagine, the stretching and tightening as hypnotic as the sway.

"Harder," Mistress Mia demanded, but he knew she wasn't speaking to him. There were no expectations for a bound slave. They were there to be used.

Mistress Carmen began to thrust, propelling him forward with each impact, breaking the trance of the sway. Arousal covered the flesh colored toy slipping in and out of Mistress Mia's folds, tormenting him as it glistened over her smooth shaven skin. He wondered how warm she was, how she would taste, how it would feel to have her stretching over himself as he pushed inside her.

"Harder!" This time the demand was more a plea screaming from Mistress Mia's lips. Her hand reached between her legs, caressing her swollen skin in soft circles and strokes.

Mistress Carmen began thrusting harder. He swayed furiously between them, penetrating then penetrated then back again. The few inches he was actually moving felt like hundreds of feet before he was slammed into another body.

Mistress Mia's moans faded into hollow breaths, her fingers maintaining perfect rhythm over herself. He held his eyes open wide, not wanting to miss the sight of her body clamping down. Her arousal covered the insides of her thighs, making him long for the opportunity to clean it off once her body was over its peak.

His sac clenched along with her openings, a tortured reaction to the sight and sound of her fall from the edge. He had never been able to climax while in his prison, but was certain if Mistress Carmen hadn't already milked the ache away he would have been doomed.

Mistress Mia remained still, her muscles relaxing after their exertion. She continued to whimper as he slammed into her a few more times before finally moving out of the parameters of the sway. She sat up, rubbing her face, then grinned.

"You gotta try it," she said, her smile beaming over his head to Mistress Carmen.

***********************

She leaned forward in the chair, trying to hide her escalating panic from the man on the other side of the table. "I understand the court order says he's to be remanded to the treatment facility, but there has to be a way we can have him re-incarcerated without having to wait for a court date. He's not amenable to treatment."

"Look, Natalie, I want to help you, but there's nothing I can do," he said, rolling his pen back and forth over his desk. "Unfortunately, all he did was run away. That isn't even a misdemeanor."

Her hands tightened against the wooden armrests. "He attacked me and my staff in the process."

His hand reached forward, adjusting the name plate on his desk that read 'Donovan Mitchell, Avalon County Social Worker.' "He claims you and your staff assaulted him before he even attempted to exit the facility."

"He shattered the window in his room then came out and tried to run down the stairs," she replied, shocked at the allegation.

"But was he still inside the facility when you attempted to restrain him?"

"Of course he was." She sat back, stifling the unprofessional tone she knew wanted to escape her mouth. "Why would we wait until he had already escaped to attempt to keep him inside the facility?"

The tips of his fingers pressed together, his grey eyes staring at her from over the top of his glasses. "He stated he only ran because he was scared. He had no intent to run until you and your staff put hands on him."

She tilted her head to the side. "You're telling me I need to wait until the sexual predator has already exited the facility, so I'm absolutely certain he's attempting to AWOL, and then what? Try and restrain him on the lawn or in the street? In front of the neighbors?"

His hand smoothed down his white button-up shirt before sifting through several papers in front of him and giving her one. "You're aware he had marks on his neck, right?"

She set the report down on the desk, ignoring its contents. "If you want to compare marks, I have plenty to show you as well as my staff."

"Last time I checked, headlocks weren't a part of Pro-ACT crisis intervention."

She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope, handing it across the desk to him. "This is a three day Notice of Eviction. I'll let you review it on your own time, but I'm sure you'll find it thoroughly outlines the safety issues surrounding him remaining in my treatment program." Her right hand pressed down on her left to release the tension building in her fingers. "You have three days to get a judge to sign whatever you need them to sign and get him out of my facility, or the next letter you receive will be from my attorney."

**********************

The grey walls of the château matched the grey of the sky above her head. The door swung open at her approach, the slave on the other side taking her coat from her as she walked inside. All was routine as much as routine could exist in a house of darkness. How many times had she been here? Maybe too many. Maybe too few.

In the nine years she had been walking up these steps she had changed. Sometimes for the better, other times for the worse. But the only difference she chose to acknowledge was the person she had been before she first stepped into the large foyer with the giant chandelier to the person she now was when she walked back out the front door.

She had been drowning. Drowning in the infinite ocean of requirements for the doctoral program she was in. Drowning in the infinite demands of the relationships she tried to maintain. And, most suffocatingly, drowning in the infinite trauma the men she was trying to cure at her internship inflicted upon her every time she stepped inside the camouflage house. She had always told herself she was strong, stronger than it all, but it was a lie. And a lie would always eventually show itself for what it was.

She could still remember racing up the beige stairs, trying to make it to the closet in the office before the tears started to fall. It was okay to cry, the staff there cried all the time, but it wasn't okay for the men to see it. She slammed the door shut, sat down in the darkness and buried her head in her hands. But there was no hiding in the devil's house, and the door soon opened, the light defeating her peaceful darkness.

Her mentor, the one who had talked her into interning at the camouflage house, the one she now wished she had never met, stepped inside the closet and sat down next to her.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, wiping the tears away with the backs of her hands. "I can't—"

"The next time you feel lost and out of control," Professor Holland had told her, shoving a black business card into her palm with nothing on it but a phone number, "call the number on this card and give him the address of wherever you are."

The noise from behind the double doors in the foyer brought her back to the present. Talking and laughing seeped through the wood, filling the empty space she was standing in. She took a deep breath, letting the last pieces of the outside world run from her mind to wherever inside her they chose to hide when she allowed the beast to take over. Her eyes ran down the long hall to the left. Follow the red carpet as they had said the first time she had come here, to where the larger dungeons often awaited her presence.

"Yes, Mistress?" The word "Mistress" had sounded so odd coming through the phone when she had finally called the number.

Her voice had broken when she tried to respond, her tears unwilling to continue being suppressed. She called back twice before she was able to speak. "Um, hi. Professor Holland told me to call this number if I needed anything?" She didn't know why she called it. She didn't even know what she needed. She only knew she needed to get away from where she was.

"Where are you, Mistress?" the man asked, his voice calm.

The limousine had picked her up on that night nine years ago as it had picked her up many nights since, including tonight. She had stood in this same entryway, then walked through the same set of double doors she was waiting outside of now.

"I'm so glad you decided to call," Professor Holland had said from the red throne at the head of the room.

"What is this place?" she had asked as she timidly approached the woman she thought she knew.

"Utopia," Professor Holland answered with a laugh.

The doors to the meeting room opened, interrupting her quiet reverie. Professor Holland wasn't seated at her throne, and hadn't been for almost two years. It was Lexa's place now, and she held it well.

All the seats had already been filled, but she walked to where she wished to sit then waited. A slave quickly made his way from his place standing against the wall to where she stood, then got to his hands and knees behind her. She lowered herself onto his back, running her hand down his naked backside until she found his sac. She caressed it briefly, a reward for his attentive behavior, before crossing her legs and waiting for the meeting to begin.

"Thank you everyone for coming," Lexa said, her voice silencing the others in the room. "We only have a few days left to get everything together for Monday Funday, so I wanted to start tonight's meeting off with those details. I've received seventy-eight RSVPs from dommes from other châteaux..."

Her mind began to wander as Lexa went over details of no interest to her. She participated in her château's Monday Funday festivities, but she declined being responsible for any of them. For as lighthearted as the name sounded, Monday Funday was an important monthly tradition. It was one of the only times dommes from different châteaux came to Château de Fierté, and was therefore one of the only times dommes of Château de Fierté could show off their slaves. When she had been the head trainer, Monday Funday had been one of the most stressful times of the month for her. Since stepping down and giving the prestigious title to Brynn four years ago, she no longer took on extra responsibilities.

Brynn, known to the slaves as Mistress Brianne, was seated on the couch, listening intently to Lexa's words. Her brown eyes were wide, her head nodding along with Lexa's mouth. Morgan was seated next to her, her hand reaching down to run through Finn's sand colored hair. Finn's eyes closed with the caress, the tension in the jeans his mistress allowed him to wear obvious.

When her eyes moved to the other couch she noticed Elise's quickly averted their attention away, trying to pretend they had been focused on Lexa's speech. Rachel was seated next to her, whispering something into Carleen's ear. Carleen laughed under her breath, a quieter version of the laugh she employed as her alter ego, Mistress Carmen, when using a cattle prod to entertain slaves.

"The following slaves will be rotating through Bed One on the Wall..." Lexa started.

She felt the slave beneath her tense. It was considered an honor to be chosen to serve on the Wall during Monday Funday, but she imagined it was similar to the way the Aztecs considered it an honor to be chosen as a sacrifice.

"...Roland, Wes, Dominic and Carlos." Lexa read the names off the paper in front of her then glanced around the room. "I expect all four of you to be here every night through Sunday from six to eight then Monday morning at nine to be prepped."

The slave she was seated on let out a breath of relief. There were still two more beds to be chosen for, but she doubted either were as feared as the first.

"The following slaves will be rotated through Bed Two on The Wall," Lexa said, lifting up the paper again, "Tony, Nathan and Alex. No prep needed."

She glanced over her shoulder at Alex, his smile reminding her he was always happy to be of service.

"Bed Three will be Brad, Ray and Jordan. I expect all three of you to be here Saturday night at seven for prepping."

Her eyes hunted for Ray among the other slaves scattered throughout the room. He was always chosen for Bed Three, and there was always a line for his services once the other dommes saw what he could provide. When he finally appeared in her line of sight he was smiling. She watched as his lips puckered into a kiss, aiming towards Miranda, known better behind these walls as Mistress Mia. Miranda grinned from her seat across the room and tossed her long red hair back over her shoulder, then began dramatically fanning herself with her hand.