Chapter One

 

There was something angry about the tangle of vines in the surrounding yard. Remnants of winter at the approach of spring are exceedingly ugly until new shoots and new green surfaces to cover the briars. She thought this the worse time of year-the weeks before the earth gave up the cold in a fresh burst of untamed lust.

And still, her crotch was miserably stirred. The night before, her lover-her husband-had teased her, feeding her apricots and chocolate while she stood in repose, bound at the four corners, face forward on the Georgian cross. The blindfold closed out the sight of him, while the operatic arias of Madame Butterfly swam buoyantly inside her brain removing even a speck of thought. She'd become nothing but taste buds and emptiness.

The twisted evening ended prematurely with a brusque knock on the upstairs door. As she hung waiting, while the notes from the aria slipped pleasantly aside, her return to consciousness transformed the pleasant subspace she'd realized over the last hour.

Kurt hurriedly untied her when he returned. Though letting her down easily and covering his slave with a blanket as her body restored itself, his urgent business left her alone to put back the pieces of sanity before she resurfaced to reality.

Seeing the tangled briars in front of the sprawling pale house, she remembered the agitation of excitement left unquenched by the night and her busy master.

Regan smiled seeing the vine dawdling up the post beside the door, a tiny tendril of brown supporting new growth and miniscule green leaves, ready to burst with color. The handsome door was polished, the wood stained dark with deep grooves. It exuded raw sensuality, which seemed to foretell something about her entry. She laid her white hand on the textured wood, letting the mystery shrouding her visit seep into her bones, as precognitive pictures made her entire physical being shudder. Her fingernails were painted pink, her hair a long mane of muddled colors-brown streaked with white into a tawny golden blond-and her eyes curiously green, waiting and expectant as she let the clapper fall against the massive timbers.

She pictured ruin and disaster, while neither seemed at all plausible. This was just another job, this house just another among many for her to remodel. She stood tall and proud in a pair of purple high heels, letting them set the tone for her posture-one that was both regal and submissive. Something gallantly elegant, but demure. Knowing, but expectant. She wore the lavender suit Kurt had pulled from the closet that morning. The slim skirt hugged her hips and her pleasantly rounded ass, while the short jacket skimmed her waist. Underneath, her matching blouse was so transparent that with the coat unbuttoned, her lacy black bra with its sumptuous contents was evident every time she moved. To make her appear more serious, Regan wore small, wire rim glasses, not her contacts. It seemed to her a practical move. After all, Tennyson Hallock would respect the professionalism the glasses would imply. In fact, everything she wore was handpicked to please a fussy man-which was all that Kurt would tell her about this client.

The knocking caused the door to open. Had it been left unlatched? And was that a sign for her to enter?

She peered inside, thinking she should say something, though there was no one there and nothing but vast empty spaces before her eyes. She could hear her voice echoing back to her without having even said a word.

Her poise led her forward, "Mr. Hallock?" she started quietly, then repeated herself in a louder voice, "Mr. Hallock?"

There was no answer.

Regan moved from the front steps into the bright, white open space, thinking for a moment that she'd entered heaven. Circled by daylight, the air jumped lively in this resplendent expanse. She almost believed she could see atoms dancing on the rays of sun, which streamed through the celestory windows across the back of the house. Two full stories worth of glass shone brightly, even with a thin layer of dusty haze coating the exterior.

What possibilities!

The remaining walls looked whitewashed, having been recently replastered. The terra-cotta tiles that covered the floor were white with plaster dust; though appearing through the white was a pattern of green ivy that embellished them. To her left, an enormous stairway cut a half circle in the wall, rising as graciously as the elegant women who would walk with confidence and breeding down the marble steps. She could hear the click of their heels, the swish of their long dresses, and the sounds of a string quartet to accompany their descent.

To her right were two sets of doors, as massive, but more intricately carved than the ones she entered, standing open invitingly; between them tapestries now covered with sheets to protect them from workman's dust.

"Mr. Hallock?" she tried again, though her voice seemed dwarfed by the immensity around her.

She moved gingerly to inspect her surroundings, while at the same time she sensed someone's approach. Any moment, she expected to see a face pop out of nowhere and shake her silly.

Should she go back to the front door and knock?

Her mind swam in wonder, and just as she was about to retreat, she heard the voice she'd been waiting for.

"You are Kurt Kingsley's slave?"

The voice jarred loose her fear, and her legs turned into jelly. But she recouped quickly. Regan swiveled on her back heel and turned to the source of the sound seeing a man staring at her from the doors at the back of the foyer, under the stairs. Even these doors were nearly ten feet high. The man beneath them casually appraised his guest, while a lock of his blond hair fell over his eyes, which he combed back with his hand. He had a stocky build, fair features, blue haunting eyes, and a disarming presence, which seemed to reach out and grab her the way the end of a whip would wrap her waist. His effect on her was surprisingly sexual.

"Sir?"

"Regan Kingsley?" he asked.

"I am Regan, the interior designer you hired." She paused seeing a perplexed look on the man's face. "That is if you're Tennyson Hallock."

"In the flesh, young lady, in the flesh."

He moved forward, dispensing a shower of dominant imagery as he walked, as if every master in Regan's past were suddenly appearing before her in the face and body of this man. Perhaps, it was because she was so taken off guard by his unexpected aura of command.

"You're flushed," he observed.

"I suppose I am." She could feel the hot burn on her cheeks rising rapidly.

"And why's that?" He remained disarmingly direct.

"You called me 'slave.'"

"Yes, I did. Are you not?"

"That is not information generally known," she spoke nervously with her sweating hand glued to the side of her lavender skirt.

He smiled, backing off, warming his expression and his posture so much that she felt her body flood with relief-though the relief only seemed to be replaced by the ceaseless throb of her sexual self.

"Kurt Kingsley and I are old friends."

"I didn't know."

"I'm sure you don't know everything about your master."

"No, I wouldn't," Regan agreed.

"Then, of course, none of that matters now," Tennyson Hallock announced, "you're here to redecorate my house."

"Yes, that is the point."

"Come in," he gestured her toward the double doors at the back of the foyer to her right.

Following at his heels, she moved with him through the formal dining room, the butler's pantry, into the kitchen-a bright, sunny room, which had been remodeled several years before. She'd change little here. The room was warm and welcoming, smelling of fresh baked bread.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"Not unless it's decaffeinated."

"This isn't." He poured himself a cup and sat down at the kitchen table, while motioning her to take a seat.

Regan liked the rough-hewn look of the antique table. Running her hand along its surface, she let its substantial feel settle her. This was something she could hang on to. At least there was some circumscribed distance between she and Tennyson Hallock. He sat a yard away, across a mountain of oak.

"I could make you tea?" he offered.

"No, thank you."

"Then let's get on with my plans."

"Certainly."

He stared around the room, brushed his stray hair back with his hand again then settled on her with his blue haunting eyes looking quite calm and seductive. If he'd not made the comment about her slavery, he might be any ordinary client. But having said that simple word, she'd been propelled into her other, sexual world where she lived at least half her life, where intimacies were clutched secrets, and the truth about her was hidden in ordinary, everyday mannerisms. The world outside her secret one would never guess the facts. But Tennyson Hallock knew.

Why hadn't Kurt told her? Her gut clenched angrily.

Regan had been born in the twentieth century, destined by desire to be a slave, to be owned property. Her psyche begged for it, grasping the vision of herself at a master's feet quite early in her teenage years. She's studied the Dark Ages, Shakespeare and the Renaissance until she passionately lived in that other world. Her friends thought her grim. She thought herself romantic.

She waited for sex because she wanted it right, under the right circumstances, under the right moon and stars, with the right words and the right feeling of surrender transporting her to an imagined freedom.

She told her first lover in a letter what she wanted-they'd been corresponding for several months after having met on-line-and he was happy to oblige her pressing need. Regan was lucky he wasn't a rapist since she gave him every opportunity to take advantage of her naïveté, but he proved harmless. He was a good man with a healthy streak of sexual perversity. And for her initiation into the fantasy, he knew enough about the craft of sexual masters to satisfy her hungering appetite for bondage and deliverance.

They met in a tiny park, overshadowed by great brick buildings, which crawled with ivy and years of respectful neglect. A hazy fog shrouded the afternoon in a thick layer of gloom-yet it was peaceful, burgeoning with the expectation of realized desire.

She knew him from the picture he'd sent in his last letter. He was a college professor, a bit scruffy, but authoritative as he clamped her left wrist in a handcuff and led her from the park to a borrowed room on the third floor of the Arbor Terrace Apartments. Regan will always remember the name of the building, as it became etched in her mind's eyes as clearly as the letters were etched in the cement frieze above the front door.

The carpet was old and threadbare and the woodwork in need of polishing, but the ambience of Old World decadence teamed through every atom in the mellow, sagging building. The floors creaked as the two walked down the entry hallway to the stairs.

For just an instant, Regan caught the musty aroma from the basement below.

Her body lurched forward, stumbling into her silent companion as she started her ascent to the third floor. She smiled nervously, as he looked back to see if she had righted herself.

"I'm so sorry."

"It's okay to be nervous on a first time."

She'd turned eighteen the day before, and now felt like a debutante going to a ball.

Though Regan masterminded the scene, that fact took nothing from her enjoyment of her first pleasure. (It would be erroneous to say this was her first physical experience of sex. She'd been getting off to fantasy since she was eleven, masturbating to the rhythms that beat through her crotch and pictures that ran like movies in her head. She called it survival. But what she did in her bedroom at night or on the fire escape in the afternoon or by the window when she was exquisitely horny could never be enough to last more than a few hours.)

The upstairs room of the Arbor Terrace was lit with a cozy darkness. The professor lighted the only candle and blew the matchstick out with a puff of breath. She smelled cinnamon from the cappuccino he'd downed just before he spotted her waiting for him in the park.

Regan's crotch spasmed hard when she saw the bed, the four posts and the canopy above. She'd seen such things in movies, but not real life.