Page 1 of Ravaged
CHAPTER 1
Teagen
The club member cinched the restraint tight, then sniffled, slicing through the silence. He hadn’t wanted any music; he preferred to hear me breathe. To drown in the rustle of the restraints against skin, the sharp intake of air when he pulled the straps too tight. And that quiet made me focus on every other sense. The sweat between my fingers, my palms flat against my thighs. The single white hair growing in the middle of his head, a beacon calling to be plucked. The taste of tangerine juice, still lingering on my tongue from breakfast that afternoon. He smelled like the inside of my car after Iris and I binged on fast food. Had he visited a drive-thru restaurant before coming to the Dahlia District? Billionaire businessmen publically preferred gourmet cuisine, but everyone had their guilty pleasures.
“Is this okay?” he asked, sticking a finger in between the strap and my wrists.
“It’s tight, but in a good way,” I said, winking. He grinned in response.
The club wasn’t open yet, but the three-star restaurant was, and Dahlia was always willing to make exceptions for visits to the Terrariums for the ‘right’ club members, as long as they had deep pockets. This club member and his associates were here for work. He was curious about the kink, and since he was being courted for a large business deal, his time with me one-on-one in the private rooms of the Terrariums was paid for by the others. Lucky him, and lucky me.
“Not too tight?” he asked again.
Did he want it to be too tight? I shook my head and gave him a big smile.
“You’re doing great.”
Maybe he had chosen me because I looked normal, like the girl next door you might corrupt. The kind of woman that would be shocked to learn about crops and whips. Maybe he wanted me to react more? But instead of being wide-eyed, I studied the patterns of moles on his bald, shiny head, trying to see if there were any constellations. A shooting star I could wish on. A nebula. A black hole. Being tied up like this wasn’t new to me.
A dark shadow hovered over the frosted window in the door. Then a knock interrupted us.
I bit my lip. I knew, before we even opened the door, that he was here. Call it a premonition. A gut instinct. Or that I had realized that morning that it had been a few months of silence, which meant he was due for a visit.
The club member gave me a questioning look. I nodded towards the door. I couldn’t get it with my hands belted to my sides.
“They’d only interrupt if it’s an emergency,” I said.
He opened the door, and Iris, clad in a slinky black dress and buckled platform boots, towered over the club member. She acknowledged him. “Hi,” she said. He opened his mouth, about to grunt his greeting, when she turned to me, ignoring him. “Your dad is here.”
“Thanks,” I said. She closed the door behind her and I gave the most earnest eyes I could manage. Doe-eyes. Pleading eyes. “I’m sorry about this,” I paused, to give my tone more effect, “but we’ll have to postpone. We can pick up after I meet with my father. Maybe in an hour?” I shifted my shoulders, pressing my breasts forward. “That gives you time to finish dinner with your friends. More energy means more play.”
“I understand,” he said. He unbuckled the first lock. “Family first. Always family first.”
Once I was out of the restraints, I went to the Greenhouse, the attached building that housed the dressing rooms for the off-site servers and the dorm rooms for those of us who lived on-site. I grabbed the oversized shirt and pajama bottoms lying on my twin bed, then threw them over my lingerie. I fingered the harp necklace on my chest for good luck, then went to the kitchen.
Dad sat at the round table, the window paned flower field poster above him. His hair was thin and wiry, like dried grass in a sun-beaten meadow. His shoulders were slumped, his elbow resting on the table. Dirt smudged the white table where he had been. The wrinkles on his forehead rippled when he saw me. It was like he had aged decades in the span of months. He looked seventy when he should have been in his early fifties. What would happen when he had no more years left to skip?
His eyes lit up as they fell on me, gaining back some of that youth instantly. There he was. My dad.
“You look wonderful, Tea. Better than wonderful.”
How I looked, and how I truly felt, never quite matched, but I smiled anyway. “How about some lunch?” I asked. It was almost six o’clock in the evening, but that didn’t matter. Dad never lived by regular hours, nor did I.
“Please. Anything you’ve got.”
In the refrigerator, I took the rest of the head of broccoli, some butter, and leftover grilled chicken from my shelf. I took out the box of linguine and a can of mushroom soup out of Iris’s shelf in the pantry. Luckily, no one else was in the kitchen, especially not with a man, my father, taking up space, which meant I had my pick of the pots and pans. Add a bunch of parmesan and freshly ground pepper to those ingredients, and you’d never know that it was basically repurposed leftovers. The most important part was that Dad would have an actual meal inside of him. I never knew what he was surviving on these days.
A server with blond crimped tendrils poked her head into the kitchen, then wrinkled her nose when she saw Dad. She disappeared. He sucked in a cough, then rubbed his forehead. I served him a heaping bowl and sat at the table across from him.
“You’re not eating,” he said.
“I’ll eat later.”
He grunted. “You better not be starving yourself, Tea.”
I blinked. The concern was almost flattering, especially from him. I shrugged. “I’ll eat later,” I said again. It was better to get this over with. The less time we spent sitting around eating, the closer we were to business, when we could both move on with our lives.
“It’s good to see you.” He shoveled a spoonful into his mouth. “You must be—” He stared at me, then ate another bite, pretending like he wouldn’t talk right through it.
