Page 10 of Blue Velvet

His question baffles me. What am I supposed to say to this? Now that I’m finally here, in his hands, in this cage, as his possession, I finally begin to realize the scope of my commitment. With previous clients, it’s always been simple. We usually met up at a bar or hotel, and as soon as I was alone with them, they started barking commands at me. They never cared much for conversation or tested my skills as an actress. I just reacted to whatever they did to me.

This is harder than I thought it would be.

“Sir, I’m-”

“Don’t call me that,” he snarls, cutting me off. He reaches for my throat and closes his hand around it, choking me just enough to send a rush vibrating through my core. “I’m not your fucking Sir.”

I want to respond, but he’s making it impossible for me to breathe, let alone speak. A croak is all I can produce.

I’ve almost always been told to address my clients as Sir. I don’t know if it gave them a sense of class or legitimacy or if they just lacked the creativity to come up with an alternative, but it was always the one word they wanted, if they chose a title to begin with. And I just went with it.

“Now, you’ll just listen to me for a while, little girl, do you understand?”

He lets go of my throat, leaving me coughing and gasping for air.

“Do you understand?” he repeats his question, and this time I find myself able to give him a proper response.

“Yes, s-” I start, stopping myself just in time. “Yes. I understand.”

“This is how things will go from now on,” he continues. “You’re mine now. You’ll stay in here, in this room, and you’ll do whatever I ask of you. There won’t be any back-talk, and you won’t try to get out of this, because I can guarantee you, you’ll regret it.”

He stops, observing my expression as I listen to him.

I nod. “Yes.”

He furls his eyebrows.

“Yes?” he mirrors my response. “That’s all you have to say?”

He snorts and straightens up. I watch in confusion as he begins pacing up and down the room, rubbing his temples and shaking his head. I lift my head so my eyes can follow his movement, and this time my body doesn’t betray me. The drug he injected is slowly wearing off.

“You really don’t understand, do you?” he asks, adding a snide chuckle. “You really don’t understand your fucking situation, do you?”

He comes back to me, positioning himself right next to my head, again captivating me with his marvelous physique.

“Up here, slut,” he barks, and I yelp when he surprises me with a pinch to my cheek. “You’re too busy lusting after someone you should be afraid of.”

I bite my lower lip.

“I am afraid,” I whimper. “Please... let me go.”

He looks at me with disgust. I can’t even blame him. My words lack conviction. Even I don’t believe them.

I yank at my restraints because I don’t know what else to do, what else to say.

“You’ll understand soon enough,” he says, and before I can even begin to contemplate a response, he turns away from me, switching off the light and leaving me alone and in complete darkness as he leaves the room.

This is when it truly starts to feel real.

7

Loran

I don’t knowif she started screaming once I left the room, but I doubt that she did. She’s not a screamer, at least not yet.

Hell, I don’t know what she is. So far, she’s nothing but confusing, not at all acting the way I expected her to. Her extravagant appearance let me believe that she’d be one ofthosegirls. One of the most obnoxious girls at the club, one of the loudest, maybe one of the brattiest. One that’s used to having men lie at their feet, adoring their beauty and craving their bodies, and thus obtaining an attitude to match. Her whole get-up screamed bitch, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she tried to scratch my eyes out the moment I came close to her. Or if she spit at me, yelled at me, showered me with nasty insults. All of that, I would have accepted as a natural response to what I’m doing to her.

But she’s done none of it. In stead, she just lays there, nodding and saying ‘okay’, as if I’d just asked a simple favor of her.

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