“I need to know more about Sophie.”

       “Her letter to you wasn’t clear enough?”

       “It was very clear—as was her phone call that has me worried.” She could feel the same frustration growing that she’d felt every day since Sophie disappeared. “It wasn’t enough for me. I don’t understand picking up your life like that, tearing up roots and throwing everything away.”

       “You don’t understand because you don’t know her.”

       “I do know her!”

       “Not the Sophie who’s come to life the last few weeks.”

       “Then tell me about that Sophie. Make me understand.”

       He didn’t move on her passionate plea because the waiter was taking the order for dinner. She hadn’t bothered with the menu, and to fill in the gap Jon ordered for her. Maureen didn’t care about eating.

       Once they were alone again, she said it more clearly, leaning across the table, her dark eyes piercing him through. “I need to understand. I need to see it.”

       “Why so important?”

       “She’s like a sister. You know she lost her fiancé in a car wreck, practically got killed herself—and it was likely her fault. Thankfully, the police never pressed charges. Her mother died at the same time. The whole year was a disaster. But the past few months, things were getting better, much better. Now just a year later she takes off, disappears, walks away from a damn good life. She hasn’t healed. I don’t know what she’s involved with but it’s not right, not now.”

       “You’re so sure,” he stated with a savvy smile.

       “Yes. I’m sure.”

       “I think it’s impossible for anyone to presume they know what’s right for another person. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean that this can’t be the best thing in the world for Sophie Russo.”

       “What about me?”

       “You?”

       “What if I wanted to make application to your private gentlemen’s club, or whatever it is she’s gotten involved with?”

       He laughed. “You’re not the type.”

       “The type for what?”

       “For the kind of sexual life that Sophie leads.”

       “She’s a prostitute?”

       “Oh, far from it. But it’s not explainable in so many words.”

       “I don’t care how many words it takes. Explain it to me. I want to see it for myself. I want to know what’s happened to her.”

       “You can’t know without traveling a very dark road, Maureen.”

       “Then you show me that road.”

       “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

       “Show me,” she replied determinedly. “You show me everything.”

       He shrugged, looking both weary and amused. “Are you always so obstinate?”

       “When my friend’s life is at stake.”

       “Your friend’s life is quite safe.”

       “But I don’t really know that, do I? You can take me where she is and show me what it is that has made her give up everything she loves—especially me! I want to know what’s so right about this new life.”

       He toyed with the ensuing silence stringing her along like a dancing puppet. “All right,” he said. It was a pronouncement, as though he was doing it against his better judgment. “I want to know where you live and I’ll be there tomorrow night at ten.”

       “And you’ll take me to see her?”

       “No. I won’t take you to see her tomorrow night. I doubt if you’ll ever be taken that far. But I can show you a piece of her life.”

       “Then do that.” She was adamant.

       “What you’ll have to go through won’t be easy. You’ll need to put yourself in my hands. You’ll surrender to me. You’ll understand what is sexual terrorizing, and hopefully for you, find the pleasure in that terror. If you surrender yourself, you might find what you’re looking for. If you can’t…”

       “I don’t see that as a possibility, Mr. Rush. I can handle sex, I can handle terror; but I cannot handle not knowing why my best friend made this choice.”

       His smile was mesmerizingly vile; and her physical response to it seemed to have her gut, her crotch, and her mind completely tied in knots. She was horny on top of all that. Although, she feared less for Sophie knowing she’d made at least a small inroad into the mystery of her disappearance.

***

Jon Rush didn’t ring the bell but knocked firmly on the hardwood door. Maureen answered. 

       Moving past her without bothering to be formally greeted, he swiftly perused her apartment, opening doors, peeking in closets with the air of a detective used to inspecting property for significant clues. Apparently, he wanted to know her better, but he refused to explain his purpose. Maureen stood shivering and nervous in the center of the carpet next to the sofa—where she could reach out and support herself. 

       “Turn out the lights,” Jon ordered when he returned to her living room, moving with the same adroit speed he used for his investigation. After dousing the lights, she was left in the dark—forced to get used to the black around her while there were still glaring circles of light before her stunned eyes.

       He was behind her with his hand clamped over her mouth.

       “Close your eyes.”

       She felt his chest at her back—warm, intimately caressing her with its heat.

       “Listen to everything I tell you and don’t make a sound. For the next hour, you are mine. If you want to hear from your friend again, you’ll give yourself to me—you don’t obey and Sophie Russo will be no more than a fond memory.”

       Maureen’s heart was beating fast and her stomach clenched, but more important than those anxious responses was the sexual one between her thighs. There was a pressing, passionate hunger there. She drew in a breath of air and smelled his cologne—something expensive he’d purchased in a men’s boutique—and the aroma of his sweat and the smell of mint and coffee on his breath. The mystique of the man could not be countered by her fear of what he’d done to Sophie, or her determination not to be taken in by his schemes. With every breath, she felt the force of him working through her as though she was becoming part of him.

       He pulled her hands behind her, clasping them in his large and steady grip, and then whispered in her ear. His words bombarded her brain, leaving her unable to think.

       “You’re not the kind of woman who trusts easily, Maureen Duvall, but you will trust me. I’m going to hurt you tonight in a very special way. I’m going to take you into a pain you’ve never felt and then bring you back. You are safe, but you are mine. You will feel, and cry, and wish you were anywhere but here; but once I’m gone you will enjoy the ecstasy of having been freed of everything except the physical sensation of carnal lust.”

       Reaching around her hips, he grabbed her pubis mound in his firm palm and held on tightly, letting his ruthless massage become painful. “Your crotch will be hotter than you’ve ever felt it—and wet with your juices streaming from your cunt. You’ll beg to be entered, but left with the sad and sorry emptiness that comes with being only half-satiated.” He shook her crotch in his tight-fisted grasp and then let it go. The constriction had been so severe she could feel her blood rushing back to fill the empty veins. Shoving her through the familiar spaces of her living room, she was so turned around she couldn’t tell where she was with eyes closed—not until he thrust her over the back of the couch. He tugged her arms wide, wrapping her wrists with rope. Then pulling the rope taut, he bound them to the forward legs of the couch so she could hardly move. Her head dropped loosely downward, the cotton fabric feeling cool against her hot cheek.

       Behind her now, Jon Rush stretched her legs as widely as her arms were stretched, tying her ankles accordingly to the feet of the couch. She lay immobile, eyes closed, her ass vulnerable, but for her clothes.

       “Open your eyes now and let me see your face,” he ordered as he moved to the front of the couch.

       She turned toward him and gazed upward into his eyes, though her eyes snapped shut momentarily seeing the glint of the knife he held in his hand. “No! Please.”

       He laughed. “It’s too late not to trust me, Maureen. Much too late for that.” His menacing smile made her throat constrict as though she was squelching a scream. “Are you sure your worries over your friend are worth this kind of fear? Or maybe you are secretly interested in this treatment for yourself? Maybe even now you’re wet. Let’s see.”

       He strolled around behind her one more time where his hand moved between her widespread legs, reaching underneath.

       She gasped breathlessly.

       “Oh, my, you are scared now.” He chuckled darkly and moved to her ass, slipping the knife inside her jeans and drawing it up so the fabric ripped revealing a gaping gash. She jumped in terror—expecting her skin to tear as easily as her jeans.

       “I wouldn’t try to twist away,” he advised. “This knife is sharp.”

       She felt the knife slip in again, deeper inside her pants and down her left thigh. He pulled up with another hearty slice, the blade ripping her pant leg wide open. In brusque fashion, he continued stripping her jeans away, pulling the fabric, cutting with sharp fast slashes. She could only see his shadows in the darkness against the wall, moving with amazing speed while her body jerked and snapped inside the ropes. She held her breath and tensed as he was about to rip another pathway in her jeans, then breathed more easily when the blade was drawn back.

       Without a stitch on her bare backside, he felt her crotch again and sought its warmth with his hand, feeling its wetness with fingers probing the doorway of her vagina. She trembled, knowing what her body was giving away in perfume and sweat and signs of arousal.

       “What a fine slut you are, Miss Duvall,” he mocked her. “What a fine slut. To find your fears arouse you is a very good sign. Let’s see how long it takes to make you cum like this.”

       He continued his playful movements, coating her labia with her own cream, then tenderly running a finger along the slit against her clitoris, until she breathed in, clenching and bearing down into an orgasmic swell. His fingers were like lips, so adroitly bringing her to the edge of really getting off. She could feel the end like a bitter thirst inside her mouth about to be quenched.

       When he suddenly stopped, she cried, “Nooooo, please.”

       “Ah, your silence has been so sweet, let’s not ruin the mood with lots of jabbering.”

       She moaned as though that would change his mind about her orgasm. But he had other things in mind and was not about to let her climax. Anything short of that seemed to be in his plans.

       With his hand on her ass, he began playfully slapping the skin, warming the surface without causing a hint of pain. The sensations increased with the pleasure unfolding in her anxious groin, until he picked up speed, spanking her with sharp mean slaps, one over the top of the last. Her flesh began to sting, but she didn’t revolt.

       “You like abuse?” he asked when he paused.

       “You have me, please, I want to cum.”

       “Ooo, for a woman of your steel it must be difficult to be so vulnerable.” He seemed amused. Strolling around her, he finally dropped down in a chair a few feet away—so close that when she opened her eyes, she could see his body as a dark shadow in the chair before her. When he moved just right, his face caught the light from some outside source seeping through the window. She could note his expression and the variance between a smug look and one that was wholly sinister. The startling reality of her predicament seemed to her an absurd dream—as though she skipped through several scenes in her life that might have built to this moment of utter exposure.

       Maureen said nothing, knowing that any attempt to reason with the man was useless. She had agreed to this treatment and could do nothing but survive—then too, what was there to survive? Though the heat in her crotch had subsided, it left an ache in her belly that went all the way to her knees, and climbed toward her breasts, toward her thighs and her toes and shoulders, making everything burn inside and out. She desired to be touched, even slapped and whipped if that was what it took. She couldn’t have been more aroused. Each second of waiting only made the wild sensations fly more freely seeking something—whatever that something was. Orgasm, yes. But it was more than that.

       “Is this what you want for your life? Is this the vision you have of yourself? A submissive one, one that gives, and knows that in such giving there is pleasure to be gained? It’s a cosmic sort of thing. The demands are great, and so too are the rewards. But are they right for you?”

       Was she to answer?

       “You realize that you’re quite beautiful like this. And even more beautiful from the rear, your pussy splayed like a whore’s. I’d like you to shave it clean of any hair, for you to wear skirts so I can get to your crotch whenever I want. Nothing should hamper my use of your body, not your clothes, your rules, your feelings about me, or your inbred haughtiness. I told Sophie that it is best not to think. I give you the same advice. If you struggle to make sense of it, you’re wasting your time because it won’t ever be a rational thing. Sex isn’t rational, nor is pleasure, or desire or sensation. But it breathes with life and that is its virtue. It defies all measures to make it noble or moral. Sensation cannot be contained so easily. It has its own will—truly a mind of its own, if it has a mind at all. Pleasure is a formless thing, something subjective. It seems illusory, but you know it when you feel it—like you know it now, Maureen Duvall. Then it is very real, the most alive, real thing there is.”

       He stopped and snickered. She could just barely make out the subtle line of his lips as they curled on the ends into his devious smile. “Is that what you’re feeling now? Is that what you’re fighting perhaps? Do you hate me? Do you want me back? Can you be honest about this ordeal?” He shot off the questions so fast she couldn’t think of the answers that quickly. Her mind was spinning and her body began to ache from the position. Her crotch was turning cold. She could feel the uncomfortable strain of the ropes cutting into her ankles and wrists.

       Jon Rush rose from his seat and returned to her ass; and what had seemed to fall away in sensation instantly reappeared with the caress of his fingers against her skin. She shimmied under that exquisite gentleness. “You want this badly, don’t you?”

       “Yes,” she whispered.

       “Call me, sir,” he said haughtily.

       “I want this, sir,” she relented though her mind was screaming no.

       “Not easy for you, is it?”

       “No,” she said, adding, “sir” a second later as an afterthought.

       “But it’s what it takes to please me and earn your ticket to my world—Sophie’s world. You’ll have to compromise yourself, Maureen, and do it convincingly, so convincingly that everyone who sees you understands that you are burning with the desire to be sexually used.”

       He placed a finger in her cunt, and moved it around as if he were stirring a cup of lukewarm coffee with his finger—though this was not lukewarm but hot. He pinched her clit and her body jumped.

       “Nice move, Duvall,” he purred wryly. “Now, if you want to see Sophie, if you want to get off this way, you’ll be at my beck and call. Then, we’ll see if you’ve earned the right to have what you want.”

       He moved swiftly to undo the ropes on her ankles and wrists. The blood seemed to move inside her body again. As he pulled her to her feet, she could sense it flood her system, warming everything that had turned cold.