Page 7 of Dozer (Rolling Thunder MC #14)

Chapter 7

Daisy

He pulled his shirt off over my head, and I was suddenly completely naked. The fire was warm, so I wasn’t cold, but I was so vulnerable. My tiny breasts on display with no way to cover them. At least my knees were together, to cover my no-no place a little.

I tried to figure out how to stand, but there was no way. If my hands were in front of me, I might manage to lean forward and get my toes under me, and if I had enough time I might fall to my side and somehow leverage myself up onto my feet, but for the time being, I was stuck on my knees.

I met his gaze. “This isn’t the way to get them.”

“You could be right, but let’s go with it anyway. I won’t use my fists, but that doesn’t mean I won’t belt your ass, and you already know your nipples are fair game.”

I leaned to one side and then the other, pulling my knees closer to each other. Not that the quarter inch I moved them made a difference, but it made me feel better.

I stared at his knees and told him, “You’re bigger and stronger than me, and you’ve tied me up. If you want to rape me, I can’t stop you. This isn’t a date. I’m sorry I stole your car. If you need to belt me before you can release me, maybe you should do that.”

“You’ve been belted before?”

I was still staring at his knees, and he put a finger under my chin. I had no choice but to meet his gaze again, so I did, but I gave him nothing with my expression.

“Just as using my fists on women isn’t my thing, neither is outright rape. With that being said, if I decide to train you as a sex slave, that’s probably how we’ll have to start if you aren’t amenable to an agreement.”

“An agreement?” It came out more incredulous than I meant for it to, but what the fuck?

“Hey, I get it. I once tried to choose being whipped over being raped, so while I might not’ve understood that choice a few years ago, I’m not at all surprised you might offer your ass up for the belt before you’d spread your legs and ask to be fucked.”

He caressed my cheek, and I leaned away from his hand. His half-smile told me he was letting me get away with that for now, but not much longer.

“If you lost your virginity at eighteen, and I’m guessing you lost it to Dray, and that’s how he managed to talk you into running away from your life and going on the run with him, then the other logical—”

He broke off, put his finger under my chin again, and took a deep breath, as if he were smelling for something.

“I’m guessing Christian boarding school, maybe even Catholic. Two weeks at home over Christmas, and maybe you went home for spring break and maybe you went on some educational trip your parents spent megabucks for. Same thing in the summer — a two-month break, and you likely spent six weeks of it on some expedition related to whatever they thought you should go to college for.”

Every bit of it was right, and terror knifed through my gut.

“I could snap a picture of you and send it to a hacker friend. He’d have your name for me in under five minutes, if I was interested in ransoming you to your parents, and my guess is they’d pay. So, what do you think? I’m not filthy rich, but I’m comfortable enough. Everyone has their price point, though. What would they pay for you? A million? Five million?”

My dad was worth around ninety million, last I knew, and my mom was worth triple that on paper, but I knew there were even more assets in numbered accounts. What would they pay for me? I had no idea, but the idea of having to face them after the way I left terrified me.

“Do you have a trust fund waiting for you to reach a certain age?”

I shook my head, but he made a tsking sound and my left nipple exploded in pain.

“I have to graduate college in a field they approve of to get it!” I shouted, and he let my nipple go.

“I wasn’t lying. It isn’t waiting for me because I don’t want to be an attorney, a politician, an engineer, or any of the other things on their list.”

“Fair enough. The hacker friend I mentioned made the same decision, but the difference is that he found a way to support himself. If you have no marketable skills in the usual job markets, that means you have to resort to either selling your body or doing something else illegal. So what have you been up to?”

I tried to move my face and discovered I couldn’t, so I closed my eyes.

“Have you had to hide from law enforcement? How hard are your parents trying to find you?”

I opened my eyes and met his gaze again. The smart thing would be to tell him I’d been running from their private investigators and it was a huge pain in the ass, but my instincts told me not to lie to him again. “I said horrible things to them before I left. I was eighteen when I left though, so they didn’t have to report me as a runaway. I can’t find any record of them having me listed as a missing person, and they never mention me on social media. When someone at an event asked where I was, mom evaded the question.” She’s a politician, and she excels at only answering the questions she wants to provide answers for.

“Ah, the truth. Thank you for that. You’ll soon learn that if you work with me, I’ll work with you.”

He let go of my chin and backed up a few inches. Still in my face, but it gave me some breathing room.

“So, I want a sex slave, and you need someone to pay your way, yes? It’s the beginnings of a negotiation, and we could certainly do worse. Ideally, when your term with me is up, you’ll have a way to support yourself. Is there a profession you want to do? Something mum and dad don’t approve of?”

I could see no harm in answering his question. I wasn’t negotiating to be a fucking sex slave, but I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’m not a total loser. “I’d love to be able to make money with my art. Originally, I thought I’d have my artwork hanging in galleries, or maybe I’d make famous murals, or…” I sighed. “But now, I think I’d be happy as a tattoo artist. Helping people express themselves, working with them to get just the right image on just the right body part.”

He seemed genuinely interested in me in a way no one had since I’d first met Dray, and it occurred to me this was probably the equivalent of a great big flashing neon warning sign, but I kept talking anyway.

“When I was fifteen, my guidance counselor helped me get accepted to a summer intensive at the Royal College of Art in London, and I made a deal with my parents — that if they’d let me do that as my summer learning, I’d buckle down on my SAT and LSAT tutoring, and I’d do my best to situate myself so Yale or Stanford would accept me. I’d been letting my grades slip. I mean, I hadn’t actually made a B, but I was really close, and it was making them nervous. I promised to get high As again if they’d let me do the summer in London, focusing on my art.”

“And where were you accepted?”

“Both, which means they chose Yale for me. Both of them passed the bar. Mom’s the politician, dad worked in corporate law until he was made CEO of—” I cut myself off before I told him too much.

“Okay. I’ll let you keep a little privacy for now. I’m going to assume you understand enough about contract law to know any agreement the two of us reach won’t be legally binding, but that won’t be the point.”

He pulled a few more inches away, gave me a little more space, and it felt like he wanted me to tell him the point.

“A sexual slavery contract? I agree to be your sex slave, and you agree to keep a roof over my head, food in my belly, and a way to support myself once the term ends? Is that it?”

“Something like that. You need to understand that being my sex slave will mean being available to me every minute of every day, and not just for sex. You’ll cook for me, clean for me, and suck my cock on command. You’ll have an exercise schedule, you’ll eat what I tell you to eat, and if you’re being punished, it’s doubtful you’ll enjoy the taste of what’s provided. Do as you’re told, and food you like will be one of the rewards. Same goes for showers. Warm water will be a privilege you earn.”

I felt relief at his words because I’d worried about that damned belt. I don’t mind working out, and I suck at cooking, but something told me he’d provide instructions before he punished me for not getting it right.

But I should probably double-check that.

“I never had much of an opportunity to cook. The cafeteria fed us at school, and there was staff when I was home. I’ve learned some basics — scrambled eggs, hamburger patties. I can boil pasta and dump a jar of spaghetti sauce on it.”

“You seem teachable to me. Why were you relieved when I told you warm water is a privilege?”

I didn’t realize my gaze moved to his belt until after it did, and then I felt my face and ears flame hot again.

“Ah. I threatened you with my belt earlier, and you were relieved there were other ways to punish you?”

I looked down, and he leaned forward and lifted my chin again, holding it between his thumb and pointer finger, so I couldn’t move my head again.

“Total honesty — I can’t tell you how I’ll punish you, because I don’t yet know what will get my point across the fastest. Maybe it will be the belt, perhaps it will be cold showers, or having a huge butt plug locked in your ass until your attitude improves. Maybe you’ll have to kneel on uncooked rice facing a corner, or maybe you’ll get nothing but your most hated food for a week. I have no idea, but I can guarantee you won’t like it, whatever it ends up being.”

He leaned forward and kissed my nose. I tried to jerk back, but he was holding my chin too tightly.

“I can’t say what your rewards will be, either. If you enjoy reading, it might be a book from a favorite author soon after it releases. Maybe I’ll give you a massage, or have your favorite meal delivered so you don’t even have to cook it, or perhaps I’ll allow a long, hot bath. At first, your rewards will be pretty basic, things most people take for granted that you’ll have to earn, but eventually, you’ll be able to earn luxuries.”

“If you’re to allow me in public, there’ll have to be blackmail you’re holding over my head.”

“Indeed.”

His response told me he already knew what that would be, and that he wasn’t going to tell me up front.

“And if I want the details of that before I’ll negotiate?”

“Then that tells me you aren’t planning to negotiate a contract you intend to fulfill, in which case I’ll belt and whip you every day for two weeks, and then I’ll put you out in the middle of downtown, naked, so it’ll be impossible to keep your resurfacing hidden from your parents.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Or your tattoos. Pictures will be up of you naked all over the internet. And sure, your family will have the ones from the big sites taken down, but the foreign sites won’t give a fuck about all their legal wrangling. Even if they pay a team of lawyers around the clock, pics will go up faster than they can force them to be taken down or have the site blacklisted from those accessing the web from the U.S.”

He was right, and we both knew it. Especially if he had his hacker friend take pics and upload them to foreign sites right off the bat. My mom’s big enough in politics, most people recognize the name even if they can’t put a face to it, and my name is a hyphenated form of hers and dad’s.

I have no idea why I told him one of my deepest, darkest secrets, but it just spilled out.

“When I was in seventh grade, my best friend and I made a suicide pact. We researched what to take, and how much, to stop our hearts. We stole the ingredients from the science lab, and came up with a concoction that didn’t taste terribly awful when mixed into apple juice with a few extra packets of sugar.”

“You’re alive,” he noted.

“We were in the common room, the only place we could hang out together, since my parents had signed that I wasn’t allowed in anyone else’s dorm room, and no one was allowed in mine. She downed the whole thing at once. I drank half and thought I was going to throw up. I was working on getting the rest of it down when she started shaking. A seizure. One of the teachers who lived on-site was an EMT, though we didn’t know it at the time. She went to work on my friend and told one of the other teachers to stick her finger down my throat and make me puke. I guess I looked sick? I still don’t know how she knew.”

“I’m guessing you’ve had mandatory therapy ever since?”

“I went into a psych ward for a while, and then to a different boarding school for high school, so no one would know my history. I asked if I could be a psychologist, or maybe a therapist, instead of going into law school, but they wouldn’t even discuss it.”

“The thing is, if you had an undergrad degree, even if it leaned towards law, I might be able to get you into a post-grad therapy program, but…”

I shook my head. “No. If I get to choose, art is my first choice, and I’d be thrilled to be a tattoo artist. I’ve lived with practically nothing at times these past three months. I don’t want to live a life of extreme privilege, nor do I want to scrounge for the basics. I just need a job that gives me the basics and maybe a little more. Will I make enough as a tattoo artist for that?”

“I honestly don’t know how much the middle-of-the-line ones make, but we can certainly look that up when we get back to a place where I can turn my phone on. I expect the ones just starting out probably don’t make enough for a decent living, but once you build your own clientele and have people telling their friends how good you are, it’s likely you’d make more than enough for a decent living. How much more would depend on how good you are, and how well you market yourself.”

“Can I have a few minutes to think, please?”

He nodded and sat back, and I stared at his feet while I considered my predicament.

Dray was going to sell me, like a whore. And the truth is, once the few hundred dollars I’d managed to get away with were gone, I’d had no idea how to get more money. I’d been telling myself I was going to knock on Aunt Clementine’s door and ask for help, but I doubt I’d have actually done it. I’d have probably found a homeless encampment and tried to survive there first, and only gone to my aunt’s house if I was starving and freezing.

In the back of my mind, I had the idea I could find an attractive young woman I could teach to scam people out of their money, the way Dray had taught me.

Was this better? Give him sex anytime he asked in exchange for him setting me up as a tattoo artist somewhere?

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind he’d set it up so my world would implode if I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain, so it was important I could truly agree to whatever he wanted.