Bought
By: Tara CrescentWe had only one lead. Two years in a row, Alexander Hamilton had attended Madam Lorraine’s consensual slave auction. Twice he had bid on women and won. Twice he had failed to bid at all.
So I was in Bangkok. My appearance had been altered to resemble the two girls he had bid on in the hopes that I would better appeal to him. My red hair had been dyed a dark brown. I’d lost weight, a lot of it, so that I’d look more like the emaciated waifs he was drawn to.
Though my heart thudded in my chest like a trapped butterfly seeking desperately to fly free, I found myself agreeing to participate in a slave auction, exposing myself to leering gazes, hoping to be bid on by a man Dylan McAllister trusted.
One day, I will hold up a gun to Dylan McAllister’s face. One day, I will kill him. One day, I will have my revenge for every bit of cruelty and pain.
I would kill Dylan McAllister. But there was an order to things. First, I needed to pass this evaluation with Madam Lorraine. Second, I needed to be so beautiful and alluring that Alexander Hamilton would bid on me at the auction. Third, he needed to be so entranced with me that he took me on the trip that he made three times a year to that otherwise impenetrable fortress-like compound outside of Hanoi. He had never yet taken anyone on that trip.
There I would find my former Master, the man who had enslaved me when I was eighteen.
I would kill my former Master. Then and only then would I be fully free.
Chapter 2
Ellie / Jenny:
My nerves were at a fever pitch when Madame Lorraine escorted me to the dungeon. Though Dylan hadn’t bothered with BDSM equipment very often, he sometimes found it arousing to tie me down for my beatings. Sometimes he would blindfold me so I couldn’t see where the pain was coming from.
What had I been thinking? Everything in this room was a giant trigger for me. I had no good memories of dungeons. All I remembered were waves and waves of blinding pain.
One day, I will hold up a gun to Dylan McAllister’s face. One day I will kill him. One day I will have my revenge for every bit of cruelty and pain. I used those words as a meditative chant, trying to soothe my emotions as best as I could.
“Stay here,” Madame Lorraine told me. She’d evidently noticed nothing amiss. No surprise there - I was adept at hiding my emotions. I had to be. I’d learned to control myself in the harshest way possible.
“Yes, Madame Lorraine,” I replied. I kept my eyes on the floor. My voice was soft and submissive. In this space, the lessons of the past were returning one by one. I existed only to serve my Master. I had no other purpose.
“My trainers will be here presently,” she said. “Please get naked and wait on your knees for them.”
I nodded silently. “Yes, Madame Lorraine,” I repeated. My Master had liked his instructions acknowledged verbally. Several strokes of the cane had punctuated his desire the first time. Another lesson I‘d never forgotten again.
She smiled at me and left the room. I waited for her trainers in silence.
***
Whenever I read a book about a woman falling in love with her captor, it made me scream out aloud in anger and disbelief. It’s just a book, one part of me would insist. But I’d been imprisoned for two years. I’d lived through my captor’s mood swings. When I least expected it, I would be rewarded with a pretty dress, with a piece of chocolate or best of all, with a new book. But the flip side was also true. When I least expected it I would be punished. Beaten. Caned. Given to his guards so I could be gang raped.
All of it was to instill one belief into me. Everything depended on Dylan. My life and my death. My happiness and my sorrow. Everything was his to control, and if I wanted to survive, I needed to learn to please him as well as I could.
Waiting in Madame Lorraine’s dungeon, my skin felt cold and clammy. I was on the verge of a panic attack. I’d had these, off and on, a few times in the last six years. I’d had one the first time I’d killed a man. I’d woken up with nightmares of being trapped in my cell in Abeokuta, waiting to be summoned by Dylan. I’d been startled awake, time after time, screaming for the guards to please stop hurting me.
Lucien had looked at me eight weeks ago when this plan had been hatched, my panic attacks on his mind. He had asked me if I was going to be okay.
