Page 29 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

“Good, very good. Can I talk to her?”

“Uh, she’s... a little tied up at the moment.”

“I’m hoping you mean figuratively, since bondage is a hard limit for her.”

“Of course,” he laughed. But he sounded nervous.

I grabbed my wallet and my travel kit and got in my car. “What’s she tied up with, then?”

“Oh, she’s entertaining for my party. Like I said, I have some friends over.”

“Well, I’ll stay on the line until she’s free.”

A hesitation, and then he said, “Oh, of course. Uh, let me just see if she’s... done. Hold on.”

This is not good, I thought.This could be devastating.I climbed into my car as fast as I could.Please let me be wrong about this. Please let this be a false alarm, or a prank text, or me reading too much into Pete’s behavior...

I couldn’t hear anything on the line; either he muted himself, or he left the phone in the other room. I was in my car and speeding over to Pete’s house as fast as I could. Finally, Rachel’s breathless voice came on the line.

“H-hello?”

“Hi Rachel. How are you?”

She cleared her throat. “Oh, hi Mister Weston. I’m okay,” she said. Either I was on speaker phone, or someone was there with her. Or I was reading too much into this whole situation, and someone was fucking with me.

“Pete told me you were helping with the party.”

“Yes,” she said. “Uh, he has some people over. And I’m... um, taking care of whatever they need. I mean, food and snacks, and drinks, and stuff. They’re playing some games...”

I could hear her safeword on the tip of her tongue. But she couldn’t say it, because someone was standing beside her, and she was afraid.

“What does he have you doing? Cleaning the kitchen?”

“Yeah. Dishes, laundry... trash andgarbage...”

She’d told me about how her former owner had called her garbage.It was a trigger word for her. If Rachel was speaking her own trigger words out loud, this wasn’t a joke.

“Well,” I said, “I’m making my rounds, and I’m only in DC for the rest of the evening, and I have your Christmas gift. I’d like to touch base with you and get it to you.”

“I’d love that,” she said a little too desperately.

“I’ll be over in about twenty minutes, okay?”

“Yes sir. Thank you.”

I did everything I could to keep her on the line, but Pete grabbed the phone and told me he’d see me soon and hung up. I accelerated faster.

I had lied to Pete and Rachel; I was only five minutes away.

I’d been to Pete’shouse plenty of times, especially recently, since I tried to get a good feel for the current mindset of a Dom I was placing a sub with. The living room was well kept and modern, and a hallway and a stairwell led to a basement downstairs. Today, those rooms were disheveled and covered with plates, spilled food, and bottles.

I entered his house without knocking and went straight down the stairs, holding my closed knife in one hand. The door to his playroom was cracked open, and I peeked inside... and I saw red.

Rachel was naked on her knees, her ankles buckled into a spreader bar, her arms cuffed behind her back. She had red marks on her skin and her hair was matted. They were hosing her off, as if to hide whatever evidence was left on her skin. She was shaking, her eyes squinted closed against the cold water.

There were three other men besides Pete who I didn’t know, and they were wiping down equipment. One of them was buttoning his pants and griping about how he never got his turn.

I kicked the door open and barely resisted killing Pete. The other guys scrambled away from the room and ran up the stairs, knowing that as soon as I got Rachel out, they would be in huge trouble.

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