IN HIS KEEPING: TAKEN
: Chapter 17

Life with Connor had settled into a regular routine. One that often left her sleep deprived!

Most mornings, Connor was up at the crack of dawn and in the gym by 6:30 AM. He worked out with a personal trainer named Malik, an amateur triathlete hoping to train for the Biathlon at the US Winter Olympic Training Center at Lake Placid. Much to her chagrin, Connor expected Sylvie to join them. Connor didn’t require much sleep, but she did. Especially after he kept her up all night, every night, making love till the wee hours of the morning. Sylvie thought she should be allowed to sleep in, but Connor wouldn’t allow it. When he got up, she had to get up too. Those were the rules. Any hesitation on her part to ‘get up and at ’em’ earned her a swift smack on the rear end. The man was insufferable! He insisted she needed to ‘work out and get in shape.’ His reasons were selfish. Only someone with physical stamina could keep up with Connor in the bedroom. No wimps or weaklings need apply. Sex with him was like running a marathon. Fucking and sucking, writhing and rubbing, required exertion and endurance. Especially if you coupled and uncoupled two, three, and four times a night. He wanted someone physically fit and limber. Whose body could be splayed and contorted for his pleasure. Who was capable of fucking him every hour on the hour when necessary without collapsing from exhaustion. Who was also vigorous enough to participate in his outdoor pursuits. And work the long hours necessary to assist him with the book.

What he couldn’t seem to understand was that exercise wasn’t her thing! She viewed the cardio routines, weight training, treadmill, elliptical, and stationary bikes as forms of torture. She had no interest in building up her biceps, toning her abs, tightening her thighs, or firming her gluts. She was already skinny; she didn’t want to be lumpy and bumpy too. Sylvie grumbled and groused, but hauled her ass down to the gym every morning. She didn’t have a choice in the matter.

Connor also made her take a self-defense class once a week, even though there were security staff all over the place to protect her. ‘You’ll thank me someday,’ he told her. She had no illusions about her abilities in that regard. Her chances of disabling an attacker were nil. She was little. She’d have a hard time reaching half the places her instructor told her to target. Sylvie was supposed to punch her assailant in the throat, gouge his eyes, break his nose. Easier said than done when you’re vertically challenged! She could always stomp on his foot or kick him in the knee. But as scrawny as she was, Sylvie couldn’t inflict much damage. Not enough to hold an attacker at bay for long anyway. She’d probably just piss him off. Her only real option was kneeing him in the balls and hoping the pain would incapacitate him long enough for her to get away. Barring that she was screwed.

Connor had given her the run of the house. ‘If there’s something you don’t like or can’t abide,’ he told her, ‘feel free to change it. This is your home now too.’ But what was not to like? The place was magnificent!

The house was built into a slope, rising 2 stories in front and 3 in back. The glass and log prow-front main section contained areas for entertaining. There was a formal dining room and an enormous living room. They shared a massive brown marble fireplace that had recessed sliding glass doors and spark screens on both sides of the fire chamber. You could enjoy the flickering flames and warm glow from a briskly burning blaze in both rooms. Beyond them was a state of the art gourmet kitchen complete with a 4-stool breakfast bar and a table that could seat 10 comfortably, and 12 in a pinch. An expansive family room, with a raised hearth floor to ceiling stone fireplace and a ginormous TV, opened onto a huge deck with a built-in 8 person hot tub. There were 3 ½ bathrooms in this area so no one had to walk far to answer nature’s call. A wooden staircase in the family room led up to the loft where an overflow of guests could bed down, though most preferred the privacy of the guest cottages Connor maintained elsewhere on the property.

The house and furnishings reflected its owner’s personality: comfortable not fussy; simple rather than opulent; classic instead of trendy. Everything was masculine and utilitarian. Made of natural materials: leather, wood, and stone. No lace, brocades, or tapestries. Nothing fancy or ornate. The place had a definite rustic Americana look. Well-made, heavy wooden furniture, in distinctive designs, and overstuffed leather couches and chairs filled every room. Paintings of wildlife and mountain scenes covered the walls. Interspersed with western art depicting cowboys, Indians, cattle drives, and herds of wild horses. It suited him.

The main section also contained Brady’s office. That was where the security staff monitored and safeguarded the estate. TV screens hung from the walls, showing live feeds from cameras surveilling the property. There was a huge console covered with blinking, multi-colored lights, switches, and buttons that controlled the alarm system, motion sensors, flood lights, and cameras. The lights indicated which buildings were empty and which were occupied. Which gates had been opened and when. Which doors and windows were locked and which weren’t. Which vehicles had been signed out and their current location. Every vehicle had a GPS tracking device. As did all the expensive electronic equipment: laptops, tablets, iPhones, Androids, and God knows what else. It was kind of off-putting to know that at any given moment, whether you were on the grounds or in a car, someone in that little room was spying on you.

Extending out from either side of the main section of the house were what appeared to be one-story wings. Sort of like a giant chevron. The front walls were log with clerestory windows at the very top. Each long, lean-to style, sloping roof contained eight skylights. The back walls were lined with French doors and huge glass windows that stretched from the peak of the roof to the deck and then down to the lowest floor.

One wing was strictly workspace. It contained Connor’s spacious ‘public’ office, where he conducted business and managed his various holdings. There was also a second, smaller, ‘private’ office down the hall. It was in this austere, windowless, soundproof room, that he wrote his books, free from any distractions or interruptions. Adjoining his ‘public’ office was an extensive library housing his prized first editions and treasured collection of rare old books. Beyond that was an enormous conference room where he presided over meetings with business partners, colleagues, and clients. Or held court with the executives and managers responsible for the day to day operation of his various companies and corporations. There was also a room with wall-mounted monitors, computers, printers and other electronic equipment used by visiting corporate staffers when they came up to work the meetings, mergers, etc. There were 4 bathrooms in this wing too. Everything a publishing giant and corporate titan needed to conduct business was right here.

Sylvie’s office was small compared to the other rooms in the wing. There was barely space to maneuver around her large L-shaped desk. It was crammed with file cabinets, bookshelves, a credenza, work table, and stacks of boxes filled with BDSM paraphernalia. The clutter nearly blocked the doors to the two adjoining rooms. The smaller of the two contained floor to ceiling shelves holding various office supplies. The problem was that you had to clamber over and around cardboard boxes containing reams of paper, cartons filled with toner and ink cartridges, crates of file folders, envelopes, and mailers just to get to the shelves. She took her life in her hands every time she opened the door! The other room, though larger, was just as bad. It held equipment: four wireless printers, each on their own stand, two commercial copy machines, two dedicated fax machines, a heavy duty document shredder, a report binding machine, a scanner, and a postage meter and scale. It was so cramped you could hardly turn around in there.

Neither room could hold the overflow from her office. She was running out of space. Every flat surface was piled high with her research: printouts, folders, books, magazines, and catalogues. Manuscript pages with notes scrawled in the margins and penciled in corrections covered her desk. The landline phone and intercom systems were nearly buried under the litter. Sylvie would have preferred doing all the editing directly on the computer, but Connor was resistant. He had a system! He composed on the computer, but insisted on seeing all her edits and suggestions handwritten in pencil on a hard copy. Once he approved the changes, she typed them into the computer and printed out a clean copy for him to read before he began his revisions. When he finished the rewrite, she’d print it out and the process would begin all over again. It was time-consuming and produced an avalanche of paper. But he was the boss so she did things his way.

She’d been at her wit’s end trying to keep things organized. Fearing a breeze might be her undoing, she decided to repurpose some of the heavier dildos and butt plugs. Much to Mrs. Cosgrove’s horror, Sylvie was using the glass and silicone sex toys as paperweights. There was a bright orange dick with big balls holding down chapter 11, the newest chapter of the book. A double penetrator, with two lifelike flesh-colored penises, sat atop the pages she’d just finished editing. A superhuman-sized purple schlong covered Connor’s revisions. Pricks in various shades of black, blue, red, and brown stood erect over chapters in various states of completion. The smaller and more artfully crafted glass butt plugs and anal massagers kept smaller piles of paper in order. They were actually quite pretty if you didn’t dwell on how they were used. Her favorite was a bump-covered rod of hand blown clear glass topped by a pretty red heart. There was also a thick ribbed shaft of brilliant crystal blue she liked. To the uneducated eye, they looked innocuous, like objets d’art you’d buy in a gift shop. That, however, was not the case for the ones that resembled plump mushrooms and chunky cones. There was no disguising their intended purpose. Sylvie cringed every time she looked at them. Evidently, so did the cleaning ladies. These God-fearing, church-going, Christian women vacuumed, swept, and dusted the work areas every morning at 6 AM. They didn’t like being exposed to penises, even the fake variety. To their way of thinking, it was ‘downright indecent’ to have such things on display. Thankfully, they’d never been in the offices during regular working hours and seen Connor wandering around with his manhood on display. They’d have freaked!

Mrs. Cosgrove was the only female staff member who ever ventured into the work wing while Connor was ‘in character.’ The woman was used to his eccentricities. She paid little attention to what he was or wasn’t wearing. She carried on regardless. On the rare occasion now that he was naked, she’d just roll her eyes, complete her task, and leave the area as quickly as possible. Sylvie didn’t have that luxury. Mrs. Cosgrove didn’t get flustered at the sight of his hard-muscled body or handsome face, but Sylvie certainly did. Thank God he kept his clothes on most days now or they’d never get any work done!

The other wing contained bedrooms. There were three of them. Each was the size of a small apartment. The first bedroom suite, decorated in heirloom white and shades of blue, was kept at the ready for Connor’s Aunt Leticia, Lettie for short. His father’s older sister and Connor’s only living relative. She lived in Palm Beach, Florida and visited every three or four months. Usually in the fall to see the Adirondacks in their colorful autumn splendor. At Christmas to spend the holidays with Connor. And then again in summer to escape the oppressive Florida heat. But not this summer. She’d called Connor to express her regrets. She’d be otherwise engaged this year. Spending the month of August on a yacht plying the waters of the Caribbean with her new beau, Warren, a lovely gentleman of 71. Lettie had buried three husbands, but undeterred and ever the romantic, she’d decided to try for number four. She was sure War, as she called him, was going to propose on their trip. Connor loved the ‘old girl.’ The thought of her being alone on a boat for a whole month with some aging lothario made him apoplectic. He worried the man would take advantage of her innocence and trusting nature. Compromise her virtue. Sylvie had to laugh. The woman had been married three times…how innocent could she be? Connor fretted over her like she was a scatterbrained, dim-witted teenager rather than an aged aunt. ‘What if she drank too much?’ ‘What if the old lecher seduced her?’ ‘What if they actually had…?’ Connor couldn’t even say the word. Sylvie was at a loss to understand his reaction. Hell’s bells! What was he afraid of? It wasn’t like she could get pregnant or anything! So they might have sex, big frigging deal! Be happy for them! Connor didn’t see it that way. If she weren’t 40 years older than him, Connor would have demanded she come home immediately and then grounded her! He believed the ‘sleazy old fart’ was trolling for a ‘nurse and a purse.’ Someone to support and take care of him in his old age. Sylvie thought Connor was worrying for nothing. Yes, his aunt was very wealthy. But War owned a 90-foot yacht with a three-man crew: a captain, first mate, and steward. Not too shabby! He lived in a mansion on the beach in Boca Raton. Had a vineyard in Chile and another in California. And interests in several South American mines. That didn’t sound like he needed Lettie’s money. But Connor preferred to think the worst. He was sure the guy was an unscrupulous fortune hunter, an elderly gigolo. Certain the man was up to no good, Connor couldn’t be dissuaded from hiring a private investigator to look into his background. And hopefully replace something bad enough to convince his aunt to send the septuagenarian Casanova packing. Connor would replace out what War was like soon enough. His aunt was bringing him up to see the leaves and meet her nephew in late September. Connor wasn’t the least bit happy about it, but he couldn’t very well tell his aunt not to bring him. He vowed, however, that they wouldn’t be allowed to share a room. ‘Not in my house!’ What a prude! But that was Connor. He tried to protect those he loved even to the point of being interfering, overbearing, and unreasonable. From what Sylvie knew about his aunt, the lady was no shrinking violet. Lady Leticia Phillipa James, widow of the late Viscount of Bliden, formerly the Countess de Serrano, and currently the doyenne of Palm Beach society, could handle her nephew. Lettie had been around the block a few times. If their phone conversations were any indication, she wouldn’t let Connor run roughshod over her or tell her how to live her life. Lettie would tell him in no uncertain terms to mind his own business and butt out. Sylvie couldn’t wait to meet her.

Then there was Sylvie’s bedroom. It was done in shades of khaki and wine with an attached sitting room, private bath, and an enormous walk-in closet. It sat empty most of the time now that she shared Connor’s room. The only time she ever went in there was to get some privacy…to talk on the phone, write letters, answer emails, or work on her journal. Connor was in her face 24/7. Always trying to control everything she did, micromanaging every aspect of her life. Sometimes she just had to get away from him. He couldn’t comprehend why she needed to put space between them. He felt that she could just as easily use his room. It had an enormous sitting area, much larger than hers, with comfortable furniture and an oversize desk. Surely she could make her calls, write her letters, or answer emails there? Or if that wasn’t good enough, she could stay connected while lounging on the private sunbathing deck or soaking in the two-person hot tub right off his bedroom. There was no reason why she needed privacy he told her; or why she should try to keep things from him. He didn’t like secrets!

Connor didn’t get it. His control was overwhelming. It smothered her. Sucked all the air out of the room. If she talked on the phone, he wanted to know whom she was speaking to. Then he’d hover nearby listening to everything she said. Texting was even more of a problem. Connor positioned himself right behind her when she texted so he could read what she wrote. If she tried to block his view he simply took the phone away from her and read it. She couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It was, after all, his phone! He’d bought and paid for it. He therefore had the right to read her texts and monitor her phone calls, even if they weren’t work-related. If Connor didn’t recognize a number, he demanded to know who it was and what they wanted. Since her desktop and laptop were owned by him too and were part of his internal network, every private email she sent or received, every website she visited, every Tweet she tweeted, every Facebook post she made was tracked by him. She hadn’t realized he was doing it until he let slip about Zoey, her five-year-old niece, having poison ivy. She hadn’t told him. It was in her sister Sara’s email. When she protested his spying, he insisted that she shouldn’t worry about his keeping tabs on her. ‘Unless, of course, you have something to hide.’ She wasn’t sure if he was just the penultimate control freak, irrationally jealous, emotionally insecure, or certifiably paranoid. Whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

She’d kept a journal since before her mother died. It was where she wrote down the events of her day, expressing her fears, anger, sadness, loneliness, regrets…all her innermost thoughts and feelings. At first she used spiral notebooks kept hidden under her mattress at home. At college she wrote on her laptop. After it died, she used Meagan’s on occasion, keeping her musings on a thumb drive. She’d done that here until she realized that everything she wrote on her laptop could be retrieved and read even if she hadn’t saved it to the hard drive. It was automatically saved to a cloud somewhere out in cyberspace. She bore her soul when she wrote. The words she used were plain and unvarnished, free of any contrivance or correctness…free of bullshit. Her journal was supposed to be private. For her eyes only. She wrote about her life: the people she knew, the places she went, the things that happened to her. Sometimes what she wrote was bitchy and derogatory. But since they were her feelings she could say whatever she damn well pleased…even about Connor. Lately the entries were focused almost entirely on him. His dark moods. How sullen and surly he was. How testy and arrogant. She wrote about his fucking rules and unreasonable demands. Her misgivings about the dominant submissive lifestyle he insisted she accept. Interspersed amid all the angst was page after page of the most lurid descriptions of the various sex acts they engaged in. It was not something she wanted anyone else to read, especially not Connor.

She decided to put an end to his prying and purchased her own laptop, cell phone, and ebook reader. Then proceeded to password protect each one of them. Now he couldn’t snoop into her personal phone calls, private emails, or see what books she was reading. At least not without hacking into them he couldn’t! Boy was he pissed when he found out what she’d done. He viewed it as an open act of rebellion. Too bad! He couldn’t tell her what to buy or how to spend her money. She hadn’t broken any of his precious rules. There was nothing he could do about it!

Connor didn’t want her keeping secrets. Her life was supposed to be an open book to him. He insisted on knowing everything about her family, neighbors, relatives, and friends. What were her parents like? Her sister and brothers? He wanted to know about her childhood. Did she like growing up on a farm? Living in a small town? Did she miss Wyoming? What was she like when she was little? Was she shy and retiring or boisterous and outgoing? A tomboy or a girly girl? Did she like school? Play sports? Sing in the chorus? Act in school plays? Attend dances? What were her college years like? Had she enjoyed living in the city? What the hell was he doing…writing a frigging book about her? An unauthorized biography? His interest in what she’d done before coming to live with him bordered on obsessive. He demanded to know the minutest details of her prior life…names, dates, places. The questions were endless. Sylvie didn’t understand. Why the third degree? It was more than just idle curiosity. He was fixated on compiling every bit of information about her he could. She suspected he kept a confidential dossier on her. It was creepy! Whatever his reason, it made her uneasy. She had the distinct feeling he already knew the answers to many of the questions he asked. That he was just testing her to see if she’d tell him the truth. It wouldn’t surprise Sylvie to replace that he’d hired a private detective to check her out. He was always having someone investigated. Why not her? It was his nature to be suspicious and mistrustful of others. Connor was obsessed with research and security. He could never get enough of either.

Connor, however, wasn’t nearly so forthcoming about his own past. He kept secrets. He was closemouthed about his parents, childhood, college years, and previous relationships. Those topics were off-limits. She could understand why talking about his parents might be painful. Losing them must have been traumatic. But why couldn’t he tell her about the rest? Most everything she knew about him came second-hand, from conversations she’d overheard when his friends were around and what little Mrs. Cosgrove had let slip.

Sylvie was the only one living in the house with Connor. The rest of the staff was quartered in the outbuildings. It took her a while to get used to the place. She’d been overwhelmed at first…in a constant state of confusion. There were so many rooms, so many doors she couldn’t keep them all straight. And there were nooks and crannies everywhere. The man who designed the place had thought of everything. The lowest level of the bedroom wing contained a fully equipped gym with a small lap pool, a steam room, sauna, and Jacuzzi. A game room with an old-fashioned polished mahogany bar, antique pool table, jukebox, dartboard, ping-pong table, and an assortment of arcade games and slot machines was below the main section of the house. Next to it was a man cave/gun and trophy room with mounted fish and game from Connor’s various hunting and fishing expeditions. They opened onto a stone patio with barbecue grill and outdoor kitchen. Under the work wing was a twenty-seat screening room with a working, 1950’s-vintage popcorn cart. This wing also housed the utility areas and laundry facilities.

Connor didn’t need to ever leave the house if he didn’t want to. Whatever he needed was right here at his fingertips.

He got defensive when she called the property an estate or referred to the house as his mansion or manse. He preferred to call it a camp.

Connor was born and raised in the city, but he took to the Adirondacks like a duck to water. The house he’d built was tastefully rustic. But it wasn’t the woodsy cabin he made it out to be. It was a modern-day ‘Great Camp’ only larger, more elegant, and much more expensive. Most of the furniture and decorations were one of a kind pieces made by mountain artists and artisans. They were expensive and unique. Not something you’d see in a Park Avenue penthouse.

Living with Connor was more trying than she thought it would be. The man was high maintenance! She was forced to deal with his dark moods, his temper, his arrogance, and his endless demands that everything be done his way…all day…every day. Her opinions were irrelevant. At least to him they were. He told her when to get up, what time to eat, and when to go to bed. He monitored her clothing and use of makeup. He wanted her fresh-faced and innocent and under his thumb. She’d have told him to fuck off if it weren’t for the mind-blowing sex. It was astounding! Stupendous! Spectacular! The way he touched her, the way he kissed her, his tongue, his fingers, the feel of his skin rubbing against hers. And that cock, that big, beautiful cock. She couldn’t get enough of him. Connor did things to her that she’d never imagined possible. He’d given her indescribable pleasure, violent passion, excruciating ecstasy. He was like a drug. So enticing, so addictive. She knew the relationship was toxic, but was incapable of ending it, saving herself. Just like a crackhead who craves the pipe. Who wants just one more hit before he gives it up. Sylvie was enslaved by her own desires. She’d leave tomorrow she repeatedly told herself. All she needed was one more night with him then she’d go. But tomorrow never came.

She approached each day with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Darth Vader was a pussycat compared to Connor on a bad day. The man could be a cold-hearted prick when he wanted to be! But for all his faults, he was a consummate lover. Skillful. Adept. He monitored her every reaction in the bedroom, making adjustments to increase or decrease her pleasure or pain. He was cognizant of the friction his cock caused inside her. Her moans and groans music to his ears. He liked to shift his weight from side to side and gyrate his hips to maximize the sensation. Stretching her tight little passage till she whimpered with need. He adjusted the depth or shallowness of his strokes to control her arousal. Ramming all the way into her then withdrawing, then plunging into her again and again. Sometimes their lovemaking was slow, tender, and romantic, but most times their fucking was ferocious and frenzied, a brutal act of aggression. Connor enjoyed dominating her, forcing her to submit to his care and keeping. But even at his worst, he prided himself on giving her the most intense, earth-shattering orgasms.

She had no problems with the sex or work part of her life. She was turned on by his take-charge, fuck your brains out dominance in the bedroom. And Connor had always been a demanding boss. That hadn’t changed. He ordered her around, but he also respected her opinions. She was smart, capable, and intelligent so for the most part he treated her as a peer or a colleague. It was all the rest that she found so perplexing.

Connor was a dominant, aggressive male. That was his nature. You could see it in his eyes. The cold disapproving looks. The icy glares. In the authoritative way he spoke. The high-handed way he treated people. Always expecting to be obeyed and kowtowed to. Sylvie could accept his being overbearing in the bedroom and in the office. But she wasn’t about to let him run roughshod over her everywhere else, overseeing and controlling all aspects of her life like she was a small child in need of constant supervision. But that was precisely what he wanted to do. Connor often appeared distant, unobservant, and unaware of things, but it was just a ruse to throw her off guard. She was convinced the man had eyes in the back of his head. Or had x-ray vision and could see through walls. There was no hiding from him. He knew every little thing she did wrong. Sometimes she wondered if he could read her mind. He seemed to know she’d misbehave even before she did. Connor enjoyed ‘chastising her’ as he called it. He took great pleasure in giving longwinded lectures about her myriad of sins. He’d tsk, tsk, tsk, clucking his tongue and lecturing her, and then impose ‘corrective measures,’ his special brand of discipline. Fortunately, these were not as bad as the punishment he’d inflicted that first night. The flogger, the crop, and the wooden paddle were consigned to the back of his closet. They’d been replaced by a small leather paddle emblazoned with the words ‘Naughty Girl.’ It stung like crazy, but not nearly so bad as the wooden one did. Most times he just used his hand. But that was no picnic either. On occasion, if she really did something very bad, he spanked her with an antique wooden hairbrush. She wasn’t sure where it had come from. The rest of the implements she’d bought over the Internet in the course of researching the book. But the hairbrush had magically appeared one day on top of his dresser. It was very ornate and decidedly feminine, probably from the Victorian era. A bouquet of flowers was carved into the oval shaped back. Each delicate leaf and flower was tinted with just the barest hint of color. Then lacquered until the surface was smooth. She wondered if it had been his mother’s. A keepsake? The thought made her cringe. How kinky was that…using your mother’s hairbrush to paddle your lover’s ass? Sylvie was sure Freud would have had something to say on the matter. She wanted to ask Connor whose it was and where it came from, but she didn’t dare. He didn’t like it when she pried. Even worse, he might take offense if she intimated that he was a pervert for using his mother’s brush in such a way. He was prickly about such things.

Maybe it was her imagination but it seemed as though he’d morphed somehow from being a harsh, hard-hearted dom into a stern, very strict daddy. She wasn’t particularly fond of either persona, but if she had to choose, she’d take ‘daddy disciplinarian’ any day! The spankings he administered were not nearly as long or as hard. And he didn’t tie her up or blindfold her. She didn’t think he’d use nipple clamps or butt plugs either. Thank God!

But just like a leopard can’t change his spots, Connor was still a rigid, dogmatic, inflexible, no-nonsense pain in the ass, both literally and figuratively. As if the spankings weren’t humiliating enough, he’d found new ways to punish her. He routinely took away her computer and phone when he felt she was sassy or pouting. That pissed her off no end! They were her personal property! He had no right! But her protests fell on deaf ears. He took away the car and her driving privileges every time he deemed her willful or argumentative. Which was just about every other day. Swearing got her mouth washed out with soap. A ghastly, mouth burning, stomach-churning, experience that left her gagging for hours. Disobedience, defiance, or outright disrespect earned her not only a spanking, but an early bedtime as well. One day, when he’d really gotten under her skin, she let loose the F-bomb and a few other choice words too. She got a mouthful of soap and 12 whacks with the leather paddle for her trouble, followed by another 6 with the dreaded hairbrush. Connor had made her go right to bed after the punishment, even though she hadn’t had dinner yet and it wasn’t even 7 o’clock. When she was still wide-awake and whining at 8:30, he relented somewhat and brought her a sandwich and a soda; but as soon as she was done, he’d turned off the lights, ordered her to sleep, and left. She wanted to hate him for the way he treated her, but she couldn’t. When he’d come to bed that night, sometime after midnight, they’d had the most amazing sex. They always did.

Sylvie couldn’t understand why she had to be punished in order to prove her devotion. She loved him. Wasn’t that enough for him? Apparently not! He repeatedly told her he didn’t want love; he wanted her submission! Connor expected her to obey his every word, whim, and desire without question. She was to defer to him in all things. Yeah, well, I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one if I were you Connor! For such a smart man, he was woefully ignorant regarding women’s rights and gender equality. When she tried to enlighten him, he got downright testy.

‘I don’t know where in hell you got the idea we’re equals. We’re not! Far from it! I run the show. I lead. You follow. Got that! And if you don’t…I have ways of getting my point across!’ he’d warn her.

She’d about had it with his threats and bluster. Some days she couldn’t decide, was she his lover or his prisoner, a captive with a nice salary and a generous clothing allowance? She didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight when it came to Connor. This sicko dominant submissive game they played was his thing not hers. But if she hated it so much, why was she still here? That was a question she seemed incapable of answering.