Page 21 of Truth or Dare

I opened my mouth and wasn’t sure how to answer from my heart because I hadn’t allowed myself the luxury of digging in there in a long, long time and didn’t dare go there now for fear doing that would screw this up for me, so I said, “If I get to leave with you at the end of it, I’d do it again.”

He frowned at me and then shook his head. His eyes were the color of the sea. He had a handsome, strong jawline, a perfect nose. His shoulders were large and muscular. And his hair looked soft; it was in his eyes a little. I ached to touch it, to brush it away from his eyes with my fingers. I couldn’t cross that line, though. I looked away, needing to guard my emotions, so I stared out at the water. I felt his eyes stay on me.

“Build a sandcastle with me,” he said after a few minutes of silence.

I was speechless.

“C’mon.” He gave me a little smile and plopped his sunglasses on and then got onto his knees and started pulling wet sand toward us into a mound.

I was like a deer in the headlights.

“You gonna help or what?” He flashed a big smile and I think my heart stopped.

“I… I don’t know how.”

“I’ll be back. Wait here,” he said and took off jogging toward the grounds where he stopped one of the gardeners. I sat, flabbergasted. I was still in his sight, but we were far apart. It was weird to be sitting here in the sand alone. I’d never been so far away from a handler or patron. It felt weird and not in a good way. I felt vulnerable, at risk. I felt like I was gonna climb out of my own skin.

His shoes were in the sand beside me. I stared at them, focusing, his shoes are here so he’ll be back. He’ll come back. I clutched my bare throat and took slow breath after slow breath.

Thankfully a minute later he was back.

“I’ll take the lead.” He pulled me by the wrist until I was on my knees and I mimicked him, piling mud into the mound.

“That gardener is getting me some tools. Let’s see what we can do.” He gave me another little smile. He had bright, white straight teeth, gorgeous full lips.

I wondered what it’d be like to kiss him. Some patrons loved to kiss. Some had been quite skilled at it. Some, not so much. Some were downright sloppy and gross. But until right now I’d never looked forward to a kiss since being here. I was hoping my Master was a kisser and hoping he was good at it. This might be the only man I’d ever kiss again.

I needed to do something with my hands. I wasn’t the type to sit around idle and there wasn’t anything for me to do in this place, this place of excessive sick and twisted fuckin’ hedonism. The resort had activities but most of it was either sex-centered or at least stomach-turning from what I’d seen on my tour because guests had women in collars on the floor beside them while on the treadmill or playing cards or whatever they were doing.

I didn’t want her around those sick fucks and I didn’t want her alone in that room. Why? I didn’t know, but I felt protective of her, that it wasn’t just my mission to come here and suss things out, but that it’d also become part of my mission to get her away from them, get her and I out of here without a hitch.

The tour had turned my stomach, though I didn’t let it show. I didn’t. I wanted to go for a run but not on the treadmill, on the beach. The property was fenced so that wasn’t much of an option other than running back and forth on the limited amount of fenced property so instead I poured my energy into building a sandcastle with my hands. Because if I didn’t find something to busy myself, I was afraid I’d snap.

The tour had shown all the things the guests see. The spa, the movie theatre, the performance theatre, dining room, games areas, lounges, bowling alley and arcade. It was early but there were guests mulling about. Some slaves were nude, some were leashed, there was nothing sexual going on in public areas. But as a new partner in the company I was also shown behind the scenes.

Gan Chen and Rafe Ruiz showed me their intake rooms and there was training in progress. I saw that Asian woman backhand that tiny blonde nude girl who was in the office last night with them for incorrect posture as part of the training process was explained to me. The Asian woman didn’t know we were watching so I wasn’t getting a show, this was how she handled trainees. The idea of her backhanding Felicia that way? I was furious at that idea.

I’d seen tables and benches outfitted with shackles and cuffs. I’d seen St. Andrews crosses. I’d seen dungeon rooms that looked like filthy shower stalls with a rusty drain on the floor where they kept slaves being punished or during their ‘breaking’. The Hole from prison movies where people were held in solitary confinement for misbehaving consisted of better digs than that. When I saw those things, I saw them hurting her in my mind and it made me boiling fucking mad.

I also saw lavish suites that were designed to hold entire harems. There were suites with themes, some of them pretty kinky and some of them pretty fucking sick. I could see that their girls could see that they could live in a filthy moldy shower stall with no light or in a palatial suite if they did what they were told and pretended their Master was a Sheikh or assumed roles as little girls with lollipops and pigtails and diapers being given a spanking by their “Daddy”. I was all for people having the right to own their sexuality and had dabbled with some kink myself, but consensually. This wasn’t consensual. Collectively, it was all making me sick.

I was told that the club had a couple thousand members, around a dozen of them were higher profile celebrities and the others were very wealthy men and women from around the globe. Members paid exorbitant membership fees and then additional fees when they visited.

Some members spent months here at a time. Some came a few weeks every year. There were 200 on-site slaves, fifteen of them men, the rest women, and three currently in various stages of their training. A new one would be brought in to replace Felicia and I didn’t like that one fucking bit but kept my mouth shut. It had been a few years since anyone had requested marriage material.

Then when it was revealed to me who the last customer of a ‘wife’ was… it took everything in me to guard my reaction.

I didn’t let them see emotion. I held a cool and standoffish entitled tone with them, as if nothing surprised me, as if I had every right to be a part of this, as if the very idea of everything they stood for was not absolutely abhorrent to me.

Stan Smith had said that some of their women opted for this lifestyle, applied to join, joined up so that they could be looked after. And he told me that most were drafted via dubious methods. To me that meant they were abducted or that they were traded in, much like my brother’s Tia had been drafted into my family as a flesh payment for a debt.

Before my flight, Zack Jacobs the private eye we use told me he couldn’t find a thing about them. He had to search carefully so he wouldn’t raise any red flags, but Kruna did not exist as far as he could tell so far. He gave me a verbal list of things he needed intel on from my trip for him to start investigating. The resort wasn’t even visible on maps online as anything other than vacant wooded waterfront property, which didn’t even jive with the whole private timeshare thing. That told me they had friends in high places.

Oh, it existed all right. But I didn’t ask any questions.

It was arranged that the following morning Felicia and I would depart. They invited my brother and I here for their upcoming annual stakeholder’s meeting. They called it their Partner Summit. The meeting was optional, but they urged one or both of us to attend, if possible.

As far as anyone knew, Tommy was on his honeymoon. I didn’t pick up on any suspicions but was being cautious. In the weeks before Pop’s death we were at odds over the direction of the business and due to the reveal of secrets, and I didn’t know if Pop had made any of his associates aware of that rift. It was unlikely because it would make Pop look weak as a man, a father, and head of a company, but we had to be cautious nonetheless and because of a few legal actions Pop had taken. I knew there were records that would look like there was family trouble if someone looked close enough.

---