Page 14 of Bought

There’s more to Ethan Keller than meets the eye. I never expected him to do something like this. I never expected him to take such highly personal interest in me. He doesn’t have to do any of this. It’s actually somewhat stupid of him to be doing this. He could have paid for someone to make me disappear, or just to get me out of the way. He could have set me up with the cops, and left me with a real sentence to serve, but instead he proved his twisted point and took me home.

I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know why he’s doing these things. It could just be for his entertainment. It could be for some other reason I don’t understand yet. In fact I’m sure it’s for a reason I don’t understand.

Ethan is twisted, and he’s dark and he’s dangerous. But that’s not all he is. He runs a multinational company that has revolutionized the way data is handled. He is a revolutionary. If he hadn’t been such an asshole tonight, I’d be spending this evening pinching myself to believe that I’d actually met him.

I get out of the shower and dry myself off on the softest, most comfortable towel I’ve ever used. I’ve met Ethan Keller. I’ve fucked Ethan Keller. And now I’m being held captive by the man. There are so many conflicting emotions chasing through my body, especially in his absence.

The shower washed away his semen, but the tenderness remains. He fucks like a god. I’d never admit it to his face, but that was the best sex of my existence.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I lecture myself. “Don’t you dare start liking him.”

This is not a grand romance. This is a fucked up, twisted series of events and I cannot let myself turn it into something it isn’t. Tomorrow, I’m getting out of here, and I’m getting my own back. He will pay for every welt and mark he left on my body.

The shower has gotten me clean, but there’s nothing to change into. I guess I’m sleeping naked. It feels vulnerable to slip into the bed without anything on, but the cool sheets feel good on my ass, and when I lie down, I find myself much more sleepy than I had imagined I would be. I figured I’d be up all night fretting, but the moment my head hits the pillow, I am fast asleep.

Chapter Four

It’s past midday when I wake up, exhausted from the long night before. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up in the afternoon, so having light streaming gently into the room at the particular angle that heralds dawn for wastrels and artists and programmers alike doesn’t immediately remind me how strange everything has become.

It’s the pain that does that.

Where the hell am I? Why does my ass hurt… oh. It all comes flooding back as I wake up. Yesterday was a hell of a day, and it has taken its toll on me. The skin of my ass feels tight and when I put any kind of pressure on it whatsoever, it aches and throbs until I roll off it again.

Fucking Ethan Keller. Took me. Beat me. Fucked me. And put me in this room like… it really doesn’t bear thinking about. I am not a morning person, so waking up fills me with a native aggression that gives me all the impetus I need to make an escape.

I pick my jeans and sweater up off the floor. My underwear is ruined. Filled with my juices and his cum, it’s crusty past the point of being wearable again. I leave it where it is and set about getting the hell out of here.

I’m half expecting to find myself locked into the room, but when I go to the door, it’s open. I can’t quite believe it. Does he really expect me to just… stay? If so, he’s severely overestimating his charm.

The place is huge, but I can retrace my steps easily enough. Back down the hall, left turn down the stairs and into the grandiose foyer. I don’t know if Ethan is in the house. It doesn’t really matter. Unless he materializes directly in front of me he can’t stop me from leaving.

The guards are still present, strolling about in predetermined patterns like sprites in a video game. I could try to slip past them, but this is real life and I want to know what happens when I try to leave anyway.

I walk down the long drive and find my way toward the gates. On my way down I meet a two-man patrol. They’re dressed in suits, far too formal for a midmorning stroll, but I guess Ethan likes his goons to look tidy.

As soon as I approach the gates, the security men move in and shake their heads. The message is clear. I am not allowed off the property. Except they’re not actually stopping me. They’re not even speaking. They’re miming disapproval. I think I can deal with that.

Ignoring them, I walk straight for the gate. As I suspected, nobody stops me. I simply leave.

I walk down the manicured grass verge outside Ethan’s home, feeling nervousness course through me to the point that I feel like I’m escaping prison or something. To the casual observer’s eyes, I’m just a woman walking down the road.

It’s a long walk back to the city, but that’s okay. Gives me time to think. I’m going to get out of town before I blow the whistle. I don’t want him coming and picking me up again once he realizes his secrets are out and there’s nobody to blame but me.

Before I leave, I need to go and get some stuff. My car has probably been towed, but that’s okay. I have a backup phone and laptop at home. Ethan can keep the stuff he took from me. It’s all secondhand, and it requires extensive logins to find what he’s looking for, none of which are stored on the hardware, all of which are in the cloud.

I’ll go grab that stuff, a few clothes, a bag, and get the hell out of Dodge. It’s a bit of a walk to anywhere I can hail a cab, but that’s okay. It’s a nice day and as my nerves settle, a feeling of freedom and glee begins to sink through me. That fucking asshole thought he could keep me locked up like an elephant at the end of a rope leash. He thought he could condition me into helplessness. He forgot that I’m an engineer. I test systems. Rigorously.

It takes me well over an hour to get back to my place, a little apartment in the middle of a bunch of other little apartments. I’m half worried someone has already been inside it, and I don’t have my keys either thanks to Ethan Keller. What I do have is a spare, in the middle of the fourth garden bed, beneath a small rock shaped like a toad.

I let myself in and I’m quickly reassured nobody has been in there. I keep my place kind of messy. Not that I like the mess, but when you’re working all day and night, totally absorbed by a screen, you kind of let the world around you slide.

If anyone had been in here looking for anything, the mess would be more disturbed than this. As it is, it seems to be pretty much as I left it. Good.

I grab an old laptop and an older phone, pull some clothes into a backpack, lock up and head out. The rent is paid up for another couple of months and hopefully by that time Ethan Keller has moved on to harassing someone else.

The quickest way to get out of state would be to fly, but I hate flying and I suspect someone like Ethan is probably tapped into airline records, or could be pretty quickly. I need a less upmarket form of travel: bus.

I figure I don’t need to get that far away. I just need to get somewhere rural. Somewhere the cops aren’t likely paid off. Idaho fits the bill perfectly. I have enough cash to hole up in some little town and stay well off his radar. I doubt he’ll put the effort into finding me.

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