Sold to Master Jay

~~~

Water splashed over my body and I screamed through my gag, sputtered against the onslaught of cold water. The mud that had covered half my body washed off into the grass around me, leaving my freezing and dripping wet body clean. I cried then, suddenly. I strained to move and found the chain attached to the cuff on my ankle had been wrapped twice around my legs. The man standing above me tossed the hose aside and looked at the two men standing sheepishly beside him, covered in dirt and leaves.

Jake and the other man.

My new owner folded his arms. "You understand I'm not going to pay you for the delivery." The two men nodded like scolded children.

"Good," my owner looked at me, no pity or emotion in his eyes at all, just scanning my body. "I have half a mind to go to Kyle and get the both of you fired. But I won't." His black hair covered his ears in an almost boyish fashion, but neatly. Almost punk-ish. He reached into his pocket and began to count out hundreds. "I owed Jake half of her original price." He held up the money. "You get seventy-five of that." He handed it to them.

"What about the other twenty-five?"

"I'm not paying the full half-price for damaged goods," my owner put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "Hope you have the difference in your bank accounts. Now go." Jake and the other man looked ready to argue, but once meeting those cool blue eyes they muttered to each other, got in the car, and pulled away. And I watched as two years of my life vanished around a corner.

My new owner seemed to contemplate the scenery around us, then reached into his pocket and counted the leftover money. I hissed my displeasure at him. He completely ignored me. The fight drained out of me momentarily. Finally, he pocketed the money, sighed dreadfully and turned to look down at me on the grass. Again, no emotion, just an evaluating look. It made fresh tears well up in my eyes.

"Get up," his voice left no room for disobedience. Every motion, every flick of his eyes was almost lazy. He was a man used to getting what he wanted. I bared my teeth at him through my gag, but otherwise made no motion to move. He sighed and checked his watch, then opened his phone, turned it sideways, and began to play what looked like a video game from the way his eyes moved. I felt infuriated. Heat and anger welled up inside of me. I thrashed in my chains, bit down on my gag, and screamed as loud as I could.

He didn't even flinch. "That's childish." He continued playing his game. I hissed at him viciously. His eyes slid to mine, cold and uncaring.

"Get. Up." His voice scared me, but though I trembled a little, I refused to move. We stared each other down.

"You're stuck with me for the rest of your life," he said very slowly, like he was talking to someone who didn't understand English. "You really want to start like this?"

I bared my teeth. He shrugged, tapped his phone, closed it, and tucked it in his pocket. "Fine." He reached into another pocket and pulled out a long thin chain, like you might put on a dog collar. I thrashed in my chains as he walked the few paces to where I was chained on the grass. I struggled away from him, rolling onto my stomach. His foot smashed onto the middle of my back and I felt the click of the chain onto my collar.

He started walking and after a few seconds my chain went taut. I started choking as he continued without stopping, dragging me across the grass lawn. I arched my back and cried, as my air started running out. He looked back at my shuddering body. "Ready to get up now?"

Glaring at him with all the force I possessed, I pull my knees under me and roll back onto my feet. My feet were chained so I could barely take a step. He waited while I did, legs trembling.

I took another step, then another, stopping a body length away from him. When he started walking, chain loosely gripped in his left hand, not even looking behind him, I followed, a bitter taste in my mouth. He took his phone out and swiped, put it to his ear.

"This is Flint," he said and my ears sharpened. Masters never let their slaves hear their first names. Every name I had been given was a middle or last name. Had he so callously given away his name to me?

"Call Will. He'll take care of it." He hung up.

We reached the steps. The leash was long enough that he reached the top of the stairs before I started. I struggled up the steps, using my knees when I tripped, all the way up until I was standing less than a foot from him. Our eyes meet. I cower slightly from the strength of his gaze, the unyielding patience.

The men in the facility had had sixty or more resilient hateful girls trying to escape. Their patience had run thin. This man had one girl, and he didn't look like the sort of man who'd snap.

He looked like he was considering saying something, but just walked in the house, pulling me after him. The door closed behind me. I heard a deadbolt slide across the door.

It was beautiful inside. A huge open floor plan, with spiraling staircases in the middle of the room surrounded by windows. A huge kitchen to my right connected seamlessly to the dining room placed below a balcony on the second floor, looking out over the living room.

My eyes darted back to him as he walked straight up to me. I try to take a step back and he curls his fingers around my collar, scanning my body. He was a good five inches taller than me, at least, and broad-shouldered.

He unclipped the leash from my collar and stared at the heavy metal collar around my neck. His lips twisted in disdain. His hands reached around it, found the latch that held it closed, and slowly, staring into my eyes, snapped it open and let the collar fall onto the wooden floor.

Tears instantly fell from my eyes. My entire body felt lighter. He ignored my tears and circled around to my back, undoing my handcuffs.

I was too stunned to even think about fighting back against him. He kneeled and unwrapped the chain from around my ankles, then snapped the cuff off, letting it land on the floor too.

He came back around to the front of me and put a finger on the side of my face, pushing it left and right as he stared at me.

"Come," he turned around and walked away, not even checking to see if I was following. I glanced behind me at the deadbolted door, and followed. The first time I had obeyed without a fit. He turned right into his kitchen and pointed to a chair at the marble-topped island counter. I sat. He rummaged through a drawer on the opposite side of me, and pulled out a protein bar. He tossed it to me. I caught it, fumbling a little. From the look he gave me, I knew it was intended for me to eat.

I unwrapped it with trembling fingers and took a bite. A second later, I spit it all over the counter. Even the food the men at the institution had fed me hadn't tasted as bad as this.

He tossed me a towel, but I scowled at him and leaned back in my chair, throwing the food onto the counter. His nose flared dangerously.

"Eat."

"It tastes like garbage."

"And you look like garbage," he snapped back. "Eat, or starve." My stomach growled as he finished his sentence and a slight smirk appeared on his face, then vanished just as quickly. He grabbed a cup out of a different cupboard and filled it with ice, then water. Every movement he made was unnervingly precise, unnervingly deliberate.

I snatched it up and looked at the labels. My lip curled. It was a weight-gaining bar. Of course. I take a vicious bite out of it and resist throwing up as he slid me the cup of water. I stared at it. It was glass. A rather poor decision to give to someone prone to destruction and rebellion.

"Throw that, and I will replace your teeth with the broken shards," he growled, seeming to read my thoughts. My body went cold at the idea. I had no idea who he was, didn't know anything about him except his name might be Flint. I knew sadists made good on even their most violent threats.

I aired on the safe side, and drank out of it as calmly as I could.

It tasted like actual water, not metal. In under a minute it was gone. He opened his hand and I slowly slid it back to him. He refilled it and leaned against the counter, watching me eat.

His entire persona made me uneasy. He looked constantly bored, but every motion indicated he was completely aware and attentive to the moment he was in. I finished the bar. He took the wrapper and the empty glass, wiped down the counter with the towel, and turned back to me. We stared at each other a little longer.

"My name is Jay Flint," he said. My heart jolted. A full name? First and last? I keep my expression as calm as I could. He crossed his arms. "You will call me Sir or Master Jay."

"Yes Master Flint," I said sweetly. His fingers drummed on his arm, his eyes growing dark. I smirked. I knew how to get past everyone's patience. It was a speciality of mine.

"Call me anything except for one of the two names I have permitted you," he continued. "And I will gag you for the remainder of the day. Luckily for you, I dislike punishing slaves the instant they enter my house, so this will go unpunished, for now."

"How kind," I hiss.

"Everything in this house is monitored by electronic scanning. Move one thing out of place, and I will know. The windows are bulletproof and locked with a password. The house does not open for any hand except mine. However, should you manage to escape, know that this house is surrounded by three acres of woods on either side of the hill," he said, his eyes glinting wickedly. "And the woods are surrounded by a nine foot high electric fence that is routinely checked. The only way in or out of this estate is through the gate house, which is manned twenty-four seven by a man who knows exactly what you are. Should you try to escape, he will gun you down without question. I strongly suggest you refrain from committing suicide."

Unfortunately, I knew this speech well. It was a speech of someone confident enough in his securities to tell me every detail, knowing that even knowing everything would not help my escape. The Grandmaster had done it when me and the other girls had arrived at that facility and in every room we entered he had repeated his speech, daring us to try to escape.

When someone made that speech, I knew I was doomed. My shoulders slumped involuntarily.

"However," Jay examined his fingernails. "Should you earn my trust-" the look he gave me indicated how unlikely that was "- you would be allowed to roam around the property, granted you stayed within a reasonable distance of the house and away from the driveway." Sunlight. For earning his trust. I stared down at my hands in my lap. Escaping could only be done if I was allowed outside. I wondered if I could squash my fighter tendencies long enough to earn my escape route.

"There are other rules of course," he did sound bored now, as though he had said this speech a hundred times. "But I don't explain those in the kitchen." I looked up at him. He rolled his massive shoulders and walked around the island counter toward me. I cowered a little.

He leaned against the counter and reached out to touch my face. I snapped my teeth at him. He stopped his fingers and tilted his head at me. "I should have known I'd have to break my own rule with you."

He slapped me, hard. My head snapped to the side and I raised my hand to touch my face. He grasped my wrist with one hand and my chin with the other and forced me to look at him, my eyes watering.

I remembered, suddenly, that he was the same as the men in the facility. He was a dominant, maybe a sadist, and had no problem punishing me just the same and just as viciously. His eyes were cold, expressionless. My chin quivered in his grasp as I fought not to cry. I was too tired to be handling all this in one day. He slowly released my wrist and my chin and laid his hand against my cheek. His hands were callused, but soft. He pinched a strand of my hair between his fingers and stared at it.

"Your name is Malacia. It means calm," he tells me. I scowl, but resist the urge to bit or hit him.

"My name is Cataegis."

"If you want that name back I suggest you earn it," he snapped back shortly. He released my hair and stepped back. "Come." He turned and began walking, shoving his hands back in his pockets. I closed my eyes for a second and wished for death, then followed, jogging a little to catch up with him. As we walked across the simply decorated living room, I admired the simplistic beauty in this man's house.

Too bad I would probably be spending most of my time in some cage in the deepest part of the basement. He paused at the spiral staircase, a continuous piece of art flowing from upstairs to the basement in one beautiful spiral. To my great surprise, he goes upstairs and I ascend the stairs with him, my legs shaking a little with effort. I felt a bit better now that I had eaten and drank some unpolluted water, but still weak, certainly in no shape to fight off a man like Jay, or run three acres to the fence.

We reached the upstairs. The railing to my right was made of metal and glass. It looked out over the entire living room, including the modern fireplace and the windows on either side fixated so I could see the green lawn in the light of the setting sun from here. I moved my eyes back to Jay to see him walking down the hall casually. I scrambled to catch up. We walk down a hall leading toward the back of the house. At the end of it, a glass door, presumably leading out to a patio. He turned at the last door on our right, opened it by pressing his hand against a panel on the wall, and entered. I followed.

My eyes widened.

The room was painted dark blue, a large four-poster king bed pressed against the wall facing the large windows. A closet was directly across from me on the other side of the bed, and a door to a presumably large bathroom was to the left of it. A built-into-the-wall-dresser was on my direct left, defined by handles on the wall. The door closed behind me on its own accord. I heard it lock and winced.

I stood by the door as he walked to the closet and vanished inside. When he didn't come back out, I walked around the bed and entered behind him. The pit of worry and suspicion was growing larger in my stomach by the second.

It was spacious and soft-carpeted, for a closet, but not exceptional by any standards. I saw a dog bed near the door and winced. I had a good idea on where this was going, but he strode straight to the back of the closet and slid apart a panel I wouldn't have known was there.

He motioned me through. I had to pass uncomfortably close to him as I did so and edged by, apprehension building in my stomach as I eased myself into the darkness. I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped, as Jay slid in behind me and the door closed. My heart pounding and my breath was shaky in the darkness. I tried to focus on something other than his hand on me. I could tell it was a good size room, maybe a little larger than the closet. Suddenly, a few lights flickered on and I cowered backward, straight into his chest.

It was barely short of a torture chamber. There was a huge cage built into the wall in the corner, the open door the only thing about it taking up space in the room. It was barely large enough for me to stand up and walk a few paces in. A small cot was pressed against one wall and a shabby toilet was in the corner. Another cell. Far from the sunlight, far from the prettiest part of the house. It was worse than a basement somehow, because it was upstairs.

Next to the cell, a little bit away from the wall, was another four-poster king bed.

Crops, handcuffs, every device they had had in the facility was hung neatly on the walls. I could see where panels slid across to hide the instruments and as I trembled, I prayed he would slide them across at night so at least if I was going to be trapped in a cell, I wouldn't have to feel those things looking down at me. Jay lowered his head and his breath touched my ear.

"This is where I give the rest of the rules."

I shuddered and his fingers tightened on my shoulders. "Kneel." I shook my head violently. His knees kicked into the back of mine and I collapsed onto the carpet, my body barking painfully. "Stay." He pushed on my head for emphasis and I trembled even more as he walked around the room, gazing at the instruments like lovers, with more affection than he had ever looked at me. I tried to summon the courage to move and lost it. I was surrounded by things made to hurt me, wielded by a man who could knock me out with a blink of his eyes, and behind more locked doors than there had been in the facility.

I bit back tears and took a deep, defiant breath. I would not be broken here. I would not be.

He stopped and took something off the wall, studied it, replaced it, and grabbed something else. He walked back to me and my throat tightened. It was a collar. Another cell, another collar, another Master, another torturer. I resisted the tears again as he stopped in front of me. We stared at each other. I knew I was supposed to be looking at the ground, no matter what, but I stared defiantly up at him.

"Lean your head back," he commanded.

"You will not put that on me," I spat.

"I'll do as I please," he growled. "Be dignified about it or I'll smear your face into the floor while I put it on you." Swallowing every bit of pride I had, I tilted my head back. It made me nauseous to watch him stare me in the eyes as he locked it on me, twisting the collar's lock in a way so I no doubt couldn't take it off by myself. It was lighter, slimmer, and prettier than my neck-thick institution collar, but I still hated it. He crouched in front of me and I blinked back tears.

He touched my face and I resisted snapping at him again.

"I've trained slaves before," he said. "But never owned one. It'll be a new experience for both of us." He sounded almost gentle, almost hopeful. I felt like crying more.

"I've been a captive for two years," I said, my voice shaking. "What's another fifty?" His slightly hopeful expression vanished into coldness. I almost regretted it. He was back to cold, uncaring Jay. His hand cupped my cheek and suddenly, he kissed me.

I hated it, hated every part of it. Hated how his mouth pressed lightly and gently on my mouth like that would somehow make it better, how he tenderly held my face like my boyfriend had back before all of this. I hated how soft his lips were, how when his tongue darted into my mouth for an instant he made me want to moan. I hated how I had to clench my hands in my lap to keep me from touching him, how I had to make myself stiff as a board to stop myself from responding.

He pulled away after only a few seconds and stood, towering over me once more. "When you are in here, you will be silent unless I say you can speak or ask you a question." He walked to the opposite side of the room the collars had been on, his fingers trailing over a row of crops. "You will follow my every command. You will kneel if you are ever in doubt on what to do, you will never wear anything but what I request, and you will never purposely disobey me." As his fingers pause on a ruthless-looking paddle, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder at me. "Are we clear?"

I wanted to hiss, to glare, to spit, and throw a temper tantrum like I had in the facility, but I swallowed all of that and just bowed my head submissively. "Yes Sir." I don't know if I'd ever be able to force 'Master Jay' from my mouth without throwing up. Even saying 'Sir' felt like I was stabbing myself in the stomach, and it was a word I had said everyday for the past two years.

"I wonder if you could say it with any more contempt," he growled and I heard his footsteps come back toward me. I flinched as I heard the rattling of a chain, but he simply reached down and clipped another very thin chain to my collar, like the one he had used earlier. He tugged me to my feet and we exited the room, to my great relief. He led me back to the bedroom, then to the bathroom. It was absolutely massive. Made of tile and what might have been marble, with a separate room for the toilet and a tub big enough for three people. The adjacent shower looked more like a steam room, with places to sit and a large shelf going all the way around it.