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“You’re not yourself today. Care to tell me what’s going on?” Jack says, throwing his feet up on my desk, cocking his dark eyebrow at me.

“Just distracted is all.” I answer him sharply, keeping my eyes on the images of Lily and Magnolia on the screen in front of me.

I didn’t want to come to the office today, but there’s a meeting with investors that I just can’t avoid, and I do need to keep up appearances of normalcy. I can’t have people wondering where I’ve gotten to and start poking around. Having a woman captive in my basement is not really good for my image, even the fake one I personify daily.

“Seems like that’s been happening a lot for you lately. You’ve barely been here all week.”

“Yeah, I kind of liked working from home lately. It’s cozy, and I can do it in my underwear.” I joke with him, softening my features, giving him a fake little smile.

I’m annoyed. I want him out of my office so I can focus on my girls. Lily has been restless all morning, and if she continues to pace the way she is, she’s going to wear a rut in the cement with her chain, not to mention put pressure sores on her pretty little ankle again.

She’s been restless the past few days, not eating much unless I force her to, and not talking to me unless I demand she answer me. It’s like the light is fading from her eyes.

Maybe captivity is killing the wildness in her, like an animal in a zoo.

“Are you listening to me?” Jack says, waving his hand in front of my face, leaning over my laptop trying to sneak a peek at what has my attention.

“Huh? What? Hey asshole, leave it.” I snap at him, slamming the screen down before he sees the beautiful pet locked in my basement.

“You doing something I should know about?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He snorts, and flops back in his chair across from me. “Just don’t go getting arrested or shit. WE need you here.”

“You could always just bail me out.” I say shrugging my shoulders, leaning back in my oversized chair, resting my hands behind my head.

“I have a feeling whatever you’re doing isn’t a bailable offense.” He laughs.

“Get out.”

“As you wish H. Meeting is at three, don’t be late.”

“When have I ever been late?” I ask sarcastically to his back as he strolls from my office, slamming the door behind him hard enough that the opaque glass rattles.

“Fucker.”

~~~

“Honey, I’m home!” I exclaim as chipper as can be as I jog down the steps into my basement playroom, excited to see my girls.

It’s odd coming home in the evenings from the office and not having my best bitch leading the pack following my bike, but I’d rather she be down here doing her new job, watching and accompanying Lily while I’m gone.

“Where’s my best girls?” I ask, rounding the corner from the stairwell, stopping in my tracks when I see the bed and the room empty. “Lily?”

Following the chain from her bedpost to the bathroom, I knock on the door that’s ajar just enough for the bind to fit through. Just because she’s my captive, and I own her, doesn’t mean she can’t have her privacy when needed. I’m not that much of a dick.

“Lily?” I ask again, rapping my knuckle in the wooden door. “Princess?”

The sound of sniffling and the tags on Magnolia’s collar jingling waft through the opening. She’s crying.

“I’m coming in.”

“No. Don’t.” She calls out, her voice strained and shaky.

“Why?”

“Because. I don’t want you to.”

“There has to be a reason, and a damn good one too to keep me from you.” I say, hardening my voice, reminding her who is really in charge here, even if it is all just an illusion of power.

She’s the one who holds the power, but I can’t let her know that. She has me so enraptured that I would do anything for her, well, almost anything. Letting her go is the only thing I refuse to do. She is mine, forever, whether she likes it or not.

Waiting in the silence that’s only broken by the occasional sniffle has me itching to bust in there, and after a couple minutes my decorum flies right out the proverbial window, and the door slams against the tile wall behind it.

Sitting on the toilet, naked, with her arms wrapped around Magnolia’s neck, she weeps into the dog’s cheek. There’s blood trickling down her ankle from under the metal cuff, pooling on the floor under her feet. Her hair is a mess, and the room smells like old sex and body odor. For most men it would be repulsive, but for me, and my fucked-up-ness, it’s pretty, except her tears.

She’s broken, her spirit has finally cracked and spilled, and she looks up at me with red rimmed eyes and a blotchy face that tells me just how shattered she is.

“H. Let me go.” She weeps, holding tightly to the dog, resting her chin on her head.

I take a step forward, and something I never imagined would happen, happens. Magnolia stiffens, her ears perk up, and when I reach out for Lily, she snaps at me, raising her lips at me, baring her large teeth. Her body language is defensive, and it’s a wake-up call that she’s defending Lily from me. Her, the dog who kills with an excited wag of her nubby tail at my command is standing her ground and telling me, her master, no.

“Whoa.Easy girl.”

Am I afraid of my own dog? Never. I’ve trained her good enough that I doubt she would ever truly rip into me like she does her prey, but she’s an animal and animals follow thousands of years of evolution more than any conditioning from a human. I would hate to have to destroy her for her lack of obedience.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I say to the dog more than to Lily.

I would hope that they both would understand that, but with the amount of time they are spending together, I may have set it up for issues. I never thought my girl would become attached to another human besides me. It’s almost heartwarming though, almost. I’m not sure if I have enough niceness in me for that to really happen, maybe one day though.

“Lily. Princess, call off the dog. You know I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Aren’t you though?” She cries out, her words shrill and pained. “I’m a prisoner here, in this dank room, chained to a fucking bed like I’m not better than my only companion. A fucking dog.”

Seeing her so upset does things in my chest that are foreign to me, raising feelings that I haven’t felt since my mother was alive. It’s the same way I would feel when my father was beating her, hurting her, making her into just an empty shell as he killed the angel inside of her.

“Let’s go for a ride. Some fresh air will do you some good.” I say before I can stop myself.

“A what?”

“A ride. When I’m not feeling good, I ride the bike. It’s the most freeing thing in the world.”

“Yet I won’t be free. I’ll still be your prisoner.” She wails, grabbing the dog tighter, pulling her between her legs, making her chain jingle and the blood flow freely again.

“Trust me.”

“I did trust you. I trusted that you would let me go once you had your fill of me.”

“You trusted something you dreamed up baby. That’s not real. I never told you I would let you go.” I say, slowly inching towards her, keeping my voice soft and low and as unthreatening as possible. “You’re mine, and that’s the truth you can trust.”

“You’re fucked up.”

“You already know this.”

The closer I get to her the more she tenses, like she’s afraid of me. I would have hoped that by now she wouldn’t be. The ways I touched her, made her cry out in passion, made her cum all over me the past week and a half should have proved to her by now that albeit she is my captive, but I would never hurt her.

“Come on princess, let’s get you cleaned up and get you some fresh air. It’ll do you some good.”