Something Has to Give Read online

  “Lords and ladies,” Mrs. Hardwick dipped her head in a respectful bow, bidding them farewell. “Welcome to the Castle.”

  Kaylee’s chest felt so tight she had to remind herself to breathe as she watched them file from the courtyard, vanishing into the shadows of the castle. Even knowing it was completely pointless, she tried to guess which man she might be matched to before the line of them disappeared from sight.

  “Where are my green bracelets?” Mrs. Hardwick asked, becoming imperceptibly just a little bit stiffer, just a little more austere. Three women stood up (among them, a very attractive Japanese woman with bright pink and blonde highlights in her very long hair). “Mr. Brody.”

  A second man, stepped forward, separating himself from the female servants and what looked to be two Victorian-era policemen. Dressed simply, Mr. Brody’s tan trousers and plain white shirt said plainly he was not a butler. He also wore both green and white bracelets.

  “Stable master,” Mrs. Hardwick announced, “please take possession of your ponies.”

  Kaylee and Selena looked at one another, startled. The Japanese "pony" gave her head a very imperious toss, and beside her, Selena struggled to stifle a giggle. It was a sound Kaylee had a hard time not echoing. It wasn’t mocking, just sheer nervousness. The group was being very quickly and expertly whittled down.

  “Blue bracelets.” The head housekeeper’s tone gentled, and a handful of women and the last remaining man among them stood. “Nannies Bess and Rosa will take you to the nursery.”

  Kaylee shot Selena a look, but her new friend was watching the Blue Bracelets go. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were sparkling. Kaylee could feel her trembling with hard-suppressed anticipation.

  “Pink bracelets,” Mrs. Hardwick announced, and Selena jumped to her feet. She gave Kaylee a grin and one last squeeze, and then she let go. Her hands wiped nervously at the legs of her jeans as she quickly made her way out of the cluster of mostly empty chairs. “There are our little princesses.” She watched as nine young women—and getting younger by the minute—hurried to assemble before her. “Governesses Victoria and Odelette will take you upstairs. A word of warning, girls. You’ll have to work very hard to impress our new schoolmaster, especially since you are already late for classes.”

  Selena had never looked so happy or so thrilled. Admittedly, Kaylee hadn’t known her very long, but she still felt a tiny pang of separation anxiety as she watched the "princesses" fall obediently into line between the two governesses. Off they went, disappearing into the castle like all the rest.

  Kaylee watched until she couldn’t see them anymore. Suddenly, her tiny pang of anxiety became a heart-jolting thump as she realized she was the only guest left in the chair. Mrs. Hardwick was looking right at her, a very small smile twitching on her lips. The two Victorian-era police officers were looking at her too, except they weren’t smiling.

  “Come here, girl,” Mrs. Hardwick said. A deer, frozen in the headlight, Kaylee couldn’t make herself move. At least, not until the head housekeeper inquired, “Black bracelet?”

  Feeling silly, her palms sweating now, Kaylee stood up. She came out of the rows of empty chairs, making her way to the dais and showing her bracelet as if there were any doubt that she might simply have missed hearing a previously called color. The two policemen were coming toward her, both very formidable-looking with their night sticks tucked into their belts, black top hats and shiny copper buttons running all down the front of their coats. Yellow bracelets peeked out from under their sleeves.

  “Welcome to the Castle.” Mrs. Hardwick stepped down off the dais, but it didn’t help much. She was still quite formidable looking herself, very tall, almost a full head taller than Kaylee. “Normally, we don’t issue black bracelets to guests on their first visit here. However, considering your application, we felt this was the best fit we could offer. So, before the constables take you into custody and your fantasy vacation begins, I just wanted to let you know that great care was taken in selecting your Dom. Ultimately, we decided on our very own Master Gaoler instead of a guest. He is very experienced, trustworthy and competent, with a soft touch at times and a stern hand at others.” She touched Kaylee’s shoulder. “I am telling you this only because you are new to us, and I want you to know you’ll be well taken care of.”

  All Kaylee could feel was the wild jumble of knots where her stomach used to be. Since Mrs. Hardwick seemed to expect a response, she swallowed hard to muster one. “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Hardwick slipped her hands into her pockets, hidden in the folds of her full-length skirt. “Nervous?”

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “That’s to be expected. Still, I have something that should help you make the transition from reality into fantasy.” Stepping in close, Mrs. Hardwick swept Kaylee’s hair back from her neck.

  Kaylee saw it coming. She felt the scrape of dark leather as it settled around her neck, heard the faint clink of the buckle as the housekeeper fastened it in place. Her smile even broadened when she stepped back again, leaving Kaylee touching the collar she now wore as if it were a necklace made with dynamite. “Wha—” Kaylee tried to laugh, but she couldn’t quite manage it. “What is this?”

  “Your costume. Are you ready to play?”

  The knots in her stomach tightened. She nodded. “Yes,” she breathed.

  That sparkle of mirth in the housekeeper’s eyes played at complete opposites to the stark authority that abruptly filled her voice when she snapped out, “So, you like to run away, do you, girl? Well, we know how to deal with that. Constables!”

  Kaylee jumped, stiffening with a gasp when her arms were physically seized.

  “Take this disobedient wretch to the dungeon. We’ll see if a few days in the Master Gaoler’s care won’t teach her how to behave.” Mrs. Hardwick turned her back on Kaylee’s involuntary squeak as the constables dragged her from the courtyard. All of a sudden, just like that, it all became shockingly real.

  Onions. It sprang right to the tip of her tongue as she stumbled, quickly falling into step between the two guards. Somehow, Kaylee kept from saying it. This was a fantasy, after all. Just a fantasy. She’d saved up for two years, flown halfway across the country, and then bussed for two hours just to get here, and really, it wasn’t real. She knew that—never mind how scary it all looked or (even scarier) how it unexpectedly felt.

  Though she hadn’t struggled, the constables held tightly to both her wrists and her arms as they bustled her, not up the steps and through the front door like everyone else, but around the side of the castle into a shadowed alcove where a pair of cellar doors had been levered open to receive her.

  The closer they pulled her to them, the more the doors began to resemble a giant gaping maw set into the ground. Steep stone-block steps led down into ill-lit darkness. With one guard walking ahead of her and the other prodding from behind, Kaylee was led down the long, narrow passage that run beneath the Castle.

  It was like descending into a cave. Cool stone blocks surrounded her. There were no windows and only a few doors—large wood-plank and iron bolt varieties, sunk into dense stone archways to either side of her. The massive cellar doors at the top of the steps behind her had been left standing open, but the sunlight seemed loathe to accompany her. The constables pulled and shadow swallowed her, the cold raising gooseflesh up both arms. Torches lined both walls, but still the hall grew darker, until the only illumination became small pockets of flickering torchlight interspersed amongst the shadows. The air smelled smoky and dank. Water dripped from the ceiling, making the flames dim even more. Some sputtered and hissed, and the sounds intermingled with other much more frightening noises.

  Somewhere beyond her sight, a heavy door bumped closed. Chains rattled and clanked. A groan echoed up the passage, bringing every fine hair on Kaylee’s tense body to standing on end. She heard a distant smack and then (every bit as distant) the responding cry. In the cell right next to her, the low grunting groans of a man i
n pain were abruptly silenced with a hard slap and a woman’s snarling, “Take it, bitch!”

  This wasn’t real, Kaylee struggled to remind herself, but right now she just could not make herself believe it. She forgot to breathe, remembering only when the tightness deep in her chest turned into a dull head-pounding ache. And then the constables pulled her into the alcove of a doorway, and suddenly, they were standing at her apparent destination.

  Taking a torch down off the wall, one constable pushed the massive door open. He walked into the utter blackness ahead of her, making a slow circuit around the chamber while he lit the torches inside.

  It was a prison cell, probably no larger than her living room back home, but filled with contraptions that made her stop breathing all over again. She saw the shine of iron manacles on the floor and dangling from the walls. There were stocks, a rack, a cage only large enough for her to occupy on hands and knees, and a wooden horse with a sharply triangular peak. Restraints suspended from the ceiling showed that particular device was not meant to be bent over, but rather to hold its victim perched upon a most uncomfortable seat.

  Kaylee shivered. Her legs locked, but the remaining constable dragged her inside, ruthlessly providing her with a much closer inspection of ropes and pulleys, a spreader bar affixed to the floor with an adjustable impaling bar rising out of the center, and a series of shelves lined with its eye-popping assortment of dildos and anal plugs, the sizes and dimensions of some of which were truly horrific. There were even hooks, bulbous on the penetrating end instead of sharp.

  And the implements—oh God, Kaylee shuddered all over again. Opposite of the door she had entered through was a second, the small barred window of which let in just enough dancing torchlight to cast a ghoulish glow over every imaginable contrivance a Dom could ever desire. Hanging upon the broad wall were a wide variety of whips, tawses, paddles and canes. A steel bucket stood off to one side, fully stocked with leather-wrapped birches and slender bark-stripped switches, still soaking in the briny water that guaranteed to keep them both willowy and sturdy for extended use.

  Her knees tried to buckle, but the constables kept her upright and brought her to the pièce de résistance. It stood in the center of the room: a steel bondage bench, thinly padded at the knee rests, with bars and restraints for every part of her body, including her waist and her neck. From the moment she was affixed to it, it would leave no room for her to wiggle, struggle or kick.

  Kaylee’s gaze snapped from one horrible corner to the next, unable to believe what she was seeing. She couldn’t count the number of times she had fantasized about being in a place like this, and yet Kaylee could not find one shred of eroticism in any part of this.

  She couldn’t breathe…she couldn’t breathe…

  “At this point,” one constable told her, “you have two options.”

  Kaylee looked at him, her eyes huge.

  “Runaways are never treated gently.” Dear God, he was smiling as if he were enjoying this. It made him look positively demonic in the flickering light of the torches. “If you want to make this as easy and as painless as possible—”

  “Which will not be entirely painless, no matter what you do,” the second added.

  “—I suggest you strip down to your costume and assume a penitent pose before your gaoler gets here.”

  Everyone stopped when the rattle of keys clanked into the lock in the second door.

  “Too late,” the constables said in unison, all too cheerfully, and Kaylee shrank from everyone as the Gaoler entered the dungeon.

  Kaylee had always been an avid reader. In her mind, there was nothing better than curling up late at night with a cup of hot chocolate and good book. She had often read of heroines who took one look at a man only to feel their hearts skip a beat. Well, Kaylee had seen many a fine specimen of manliness in her life, and that had never once happened to her. She'd always believed it a cliché…until now.

  The gaoler came into the room clad entirely in black: leather pants and boots, leather cuffs and a pair of black and white wrist bands on his arms, and a hood over his head that revealed only his unsmiling mouth and the dark intensity of his eyes. He wore no shirt, showing thickly muscled arms and a ripped six-pack the lines of which she hadn’t known existed outside a Bowflex commercial.

  Kaylee took one look at him and her heart didn’t just skip a beat. It stopped entirely. And fell, all the way down into the pit of her stomach, where it lingered, cowering for a place to hide and shaking, pretty much like all the rest of her was doing.

  “You,” the Gaoler stated to both constables. His voice grew ominous and soft. “Leave.” They did, and once the door had closed behind them, his dark eyes returned to her. A corner of his mouth curled. “How are you doing? Enjoying your vacation?”

  She was so unnerved, she just stood there, staring at him.

  “I just got back from mine. Today, in fact. About forty minutes ago. I’m not even scheduled to work today, but when they brought me your file and asked if I wanted to, I thought, what the hell. I spent four hours this morning trapped on a plane next to a screaming six-month-old. Guess whose ass is about to pay that price? The word for stop is red. The word for slow—” his dark mouth twisted into an even darker smile, “—is airplane. You have five seconds to take off all your clothes and get on your knees. And don’t even think about not swallowing, or we aren’t just going to end with the bullwhip, we’re going to start with it too.” He flexed the fingers on his right hand and Kaylee heard his knuckles crack. “One…” he counted, a corner of his mouth lifting into a predatory smile. “Two…”

  Kaylee bolted.

  She didn’t remember hitting the door or throwing it open so hard that it sent a rain of paddles falling off the wall. She didn’t remember running back down the hall, either. Or shoving past both startled constables, or jerking sideways when one tried to grab after her, or ripping her arms out of their reach. They ran after her, calling for her to stop, but Kaylee didn’t stop and she didn’t say anything beyond onions—that she pretty much shrieked all the way up the dungeon steps and back out into the full bright whiteness of the shadow-banishing sun.

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