Page 1 of Fearless
Chapter 1
Ethen O’Dowell had been her contracted dom for more than a year now and she’d never been more terrified of him than she was right now. Of course, she was such a mousy thing, Kitty-girl couldn’t remember when last she hadn’t been afraid. Like when traffic made her late coming home at nights, or when she stepped on the scale for morning weigh-ins to find she’d gained a few ounces—at five and a half feet tall, 115.2 was the weight he’d assigned her, that was her magic number—but this… this was different.
This fear was colder, sharper. It cut in through her fingers, tightly clasped as they were in her lap, because this was the proper way for Kitty-girls to ride in the car. Straight and tall, and not shaking, because showing one’s fear only invited punishment. Only the guilty need be afraid of anything, as Ethen so often liked to say, but Kitty couldn’t help it. She shook, and shook, and couldn’t make herself stop. Every breath was a struggle; a shuddering inhale that her too-tight chest strangled back out on the exhale. The drumbeat pounding of her heart was so loud she was sure even he could hear it. Maybe that was why he kept glancing back at her as he drove them home. His eyes in the rearview mirror were every bit as cold as she was and, unless they happened to pass beneath an amber-lit streetlamp, they were black as the shadows that covered his lean, chiseled face.
Pony-girl wasn’t shaking. As regal as ever, she sat on the front passenger seat, naked but for her harness and pony boots, and the tan trench coat they were allowed to cover themselves with only when they were out in public. Not that play nights at Black Light counted as ‘public,’ but the brief walk from the secret entrance through the psychic shop and down the street to the parking garage where Ethen had left his car, did. Usually they were allowed to take their headgear off for those walks, but not tonight. Tonight, Pony-girl sat with her white-blonde hair still pulled up tight in its ponytail mane and her black leather bridle and blinders still on. Her high pointed ears touched the cloth roof of the car. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t show it. She knew better.
Behind Pony-girl on the seat to Kitty’s right, Puppy-girl was practicing slow, deep breathing behind the stifling black leather of her puppy mask. Her hands still encased in glove paws were on her knees, palms turned obediently upwards. Not once did she glance in Kitty’s direction, because to look anywhere but straight ahead was forbidden. Talking was forbidden, fidgeting was forbidden. The rule was eyes forward, attention fixed on the only one in this car whose comfort mattered: that was Ethen.
Taking the highway out of D.C., they passed under another streetlamp. Again, Ethen’s cold stare found her in the mirror. What parts of his face that she could see were a mask of absolute calm, but she wasn’t fooled. No one in this car was. The silence was suffocating. The metallic bitter taste of bile kept creeping up the back of her throat. Her knee refused to stop jiggling up and down, despite the no fidgeting rule, and her hands squeezed at her own fingers, wringing and pulling at them in her nervousness. Her nipple rings under her trench coat were jingling. Could he hear that traitorous vibration over the hum of the engine and the rush of heated air blowing through the dash vents? God, she hoped not. She was in enough trouble as it was, and this wasn’t even her fault.
How could it be? It wasn’t like Piggy-girl had told Kitty she was going to run away. Kitty hadn’t known, no one had. And for sure, she hadn’t kept Piggy hidden out of Ethen’s reach these last six months, either. She’d been as surprised as anyone else that Piggy-girl—Hadlee now, since she’d taken back her birth name—had shown up at Black Light to play in tonight’s Valentine Roulette challenge. From the moment Piggy—Hadlee—had ascended the stage to accept the dom who had spun her name on that wheel of chance, Kitty had known someone was going to pay for Hadlee’s new-found freedom. She’d known Ethen’s temper would be pricked by the time they left. She’d known he would choose a victim.
She’d known then that, unless Hadlee took this same long and terrifying ride home with them, that the victim would be her. Because she had once dared to be Hadlee’s friend.
Tapping the turn signal, Ethen took the next highway exit onto a rural backroad that would eventually wind them to the remote farmstead that he called home, and she called hell. As the car slowed enough to turn, he looked at her again. There were no lights here, just the neon glow of the driver’s dashboard illuminating the hard lines of his face. She didn’t need anything brighter to read the dark promise etched in the chiseled tightness of his jaw. He was going hurt her tonight, and it was going to be bad.
The drive took twenty of the longest minutes of her life and yet was over way too soon when Ethen finally turned off the main road onto his unpaved driveway, sheltered on both sides by the naked branches of the Yoshino Cherry trees that led all the way to the farmhouse yard. He pulled into a graveled circular area and parked the car not far from the front porch steps.
Both knees were jiggling now. Kitty was sure she shook the car. Her breathing was too loud inside the kitty mask that clung to her face, damp from her breath and the cold sweat beading her skin. She had to get a grip on this. She had to stop, because if he didn’t intend to hurt her before this, he absolutely would the second he saw her. Hands on her knees, she pushed down, willing the shaking to stop. Please, stop.
He shut off the engine, the click as he unlatched his seatbelt in the stifling silence of the car almost as loud as her breathing. Like a good little Menagerie should, none of his pets moved—except for Kitty, who couldn’t stop shaking or jiggling, no matter how hard she pushed at her knees.
Without looking at her again, Ethen got out of his car. He walked around the front to open Pony-girl’s door, offering her a steadying hand.
“Step out,” he commanded, granting her permission to unfasten her seatbelt.
The horse-shoes on her black pony boots ground against the gravel as she carefully stood before him, straight and almost as tall as he was, waiting while he divested her of her trench coat.
“Tea,” he said. “With cream and honey. You know how I like it.” Giving her bottom a pat, he sent her into the house ahead of him.
Stepping carefully on the rocks, Pony-girl obeyed.
Ethen took the time to fold her coat before dropping it back on the front passenger seat. Shutting that door, he continued on to Puppy-girl, offering her a hand out, taking her coat, sending her into the house with a pat upon her bottom and the coveted words, “You did well tonight. Go on, I’ll be in momentarily.”
Puppy-girl scampered into the house while he took the time to fold her coat, left it resting on Puppy’s assigned seat, and shut that door too. In measured steps, Ethen rounded the back of the car.
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe. And yet if she didn’t control her breathing right now, she would be hyperventilating before he reached her side.
Too late. With a soft click, the door yawned open and a rush of icy cold that had nothing to do with the frozen temperatures outside swept in over her. Kitty stared in dread at the hand Ethen offered.
“Step out,” he said, as calm as could be.
She had the most absurd urge to bolt, but inside the back of his car, surrounded by woods and the remoteness of his farm, in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, dressed in only a harness and the thin cover of her trench coat—honestly, where could she go?
Trembling, Kitty took the hand he offered. She felt sick. Her legs barely held her as she stepped from the car. Was it her imagination or did he really stand there for a few seconds too long, staring at her with that cold, unreadable stare of his before stripping her out of her coat? He said nothing as he bared her to the merciless February cold. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but two inches of icy drift covered the ground. Her nipples pebbled around the rapidly chilling rings that pierced her. The studs and attachment rings that linked the thin black-leather straps of her uniform harness over her shoulders, around her ribs and her breasts, turned to ice against her skin. She was already shivering, but that didn’t help.
Rather than releasing her as he had done with the others, Ethen took his time folding her coat, laying it back in the car, and finally, drawing her aside far enough for him to close the door. Thin ice and snow crunched dryly under her bare feet. Her knees all but knocking, Kitty stood where he put her, staring up at him in dread. This man who had once promised to guide her with love and care through the labyrinthine world of BDSM.
Taking a moment to adjust his coat, at last he clasped his hands before him and said, “You seem quite frightened, my little pussycat. And that confuses me, you see, because only the guilty have reason to fear anything from me.”
It was going to be bad. Hot stinging tears rushed her eyes, slipping through her lashes and turning cold halfway down her cheeks. She didn’t dare take her eyes from him, not even to blink them back.
“I’ve often wondered these last few months what role you might have played in our dear Piggy-girl’s premeditated leaving, but I wanted to believe the best of you. Now, however…” He dropped his gaze, letting it travel slowly back up her and noting every twitch and quiver with growing disdain. “Now, I begin to think I may have put my faith in the wrong place. Did I do that, little pussy?”
“No,” Kitty whispered, but he was a dragon—too big, too strong, his teeth too white and his breath steaming the air. Her throat choked her, killing all sound before it could reach her trembling lips.
Only the guilty need fear him and his stare did not warm. Nor did he react at first, although when at last his smile did come, it came gently. The smile of a lover.
