Kirsty smiled as she watched Monika swing on her play set. The day was chilly and a bit grey. Those dark clouds over head were just another reminder of him...and last night. She dropped her head and toyed with a blade of tall brown grass. Even that would be gone soon, hidden under the white of snow, she mused.
Breakfast this morning had been tense to say the least. Unlike the café yesterday or dinner last night, everyone was not talking all at once. In fact, no one talked at all really. She caught Bjorn looking at her across the table a couple of times. She tried to smile reassuringly at him, but it did not seem to work. Those dark circles were still present beneath his green eyes too.
Sven too did not have much to say, only answering his uncle's questions a couple of times. Or she assumed they were questions. She would talk to Petrine when she came out of the greenhouse. Maybe she could order an online language course. She was certainly tired of not knowing what the people around her were saying.
Of course, he was the most silent. Although that was not all that unusual. He sat directly across the table from her. Never once did he look up though. Damn, the man. She had woken up alone in that damned monstrosity that passed for her bed. Torture device was more like it. Hell, her whole fucking bedroom was.
The bed with its four huge posters and metal rings all around it. She remembered photos on that site of women suspended with rope in mid-air. She bet they could do that there. So why did that idea excite her as much as it frightened her?
She had explored the room a bit after she finally found the energy to get out of bed...and forced her shaky legs to work. The wardrobe she had come to realize could double as a St. Andrew's Cross with three of those rings across the top as anchors for roping. To make it worse the ancient mirrors on the doors would reflect everything back to her. She would see every blow before it even hit...if her eyes were open anyway.
And that damned chair...the one that she had thought at first was some oversized captain's one. It was more like a fucking throne. She had shivered as she ran her hands across its ancient wood. It too had three rings. On at the very top of the high back, through a laughing Loki's nose. The other two at the ends of the arms through the snouts of dogs, or she thought they were supposed to be dogs anyway.
Of course, the one thing she had wanted to explore the most: that damned trunk, which she supposed was their 'toy box' only larger than the one on the boat. It had been locked when she woke up. So besides the rope and that horrid tawse she had no idea what else might be in store for her.
She had jumped up from the floor and wrapped the quilt tighter about her when the door to her room opened. It was only Petrine though. Only her mother-in-law. Kirsty looked once more towards the closed doors of the greenhouse. The woman had disappeared in there over an hour ago and she had no idea what she was doing. She thought about knocking, making certain that everything was all right. But she was in charge of Monika just then.
Thinking about that room...that was now hers...but it had been this woman's before. Mikael's words from last night about the things his parents might have done in there, well, maybe disturbing Petrine was not the best idea after all. Talking about her marriage and how it worked with the woman had been bad enough yesterday, that was most definitely one conversation she was not ready for.
BDSM? Bondage. Domination. Submission. Masochism. She had checked all the boxes last night in that room with him. She shifted on the hard, cold ground where she sat. She was still sore this morning. Walking was not easy. Then again neither was sitting. Was it from the stiff leather of the tawse that he had used, not on her bottom, but on her...front? Or was it from his fingers and tongue stuffing her fuller and fuller, more than most cocks ever could?
Pain slut. His words tormented her. She had had enough trouble trying to come to terms with her need to submit to a man in this feminist world in which she lived. But she had never for once thought that final M masochist would apply to her. She would have sworn that pain did nothing for her. Until last night...
She fought back tears as she looked around her. Monika had moved on to her sandbox that was protected from the elements beneath a play house that rose a good five feet above it. The whole thing showed such careful planning and construction. She would have loved to have had such a thing with 'her kids.'
'Her kids,' her clients she should say. Her hand rested on her coat just over her lower abdomen as she watched the little girl play. They had never been hers. All of them had merely been borrowed for an hour once a week or so. Calling them that was just her way of making her life seem like it meant something, like she had some purpose.
But today another therapist would simply step in and take over where she left off. Some of them would not even notice. For others, of course, the transition would be much harder, but she knew that they too would adjust eventually. She was so easily replaceable. She always had been. The email from her supervisor authorizing her sabbatical just proved that.
Now there really was nothing tying her to that old life. Her flat mates had confirmed that they would be happy to look after Little Miss. Actually they had begged and pleaded if they could keep her. Kirsty still was not sure about that though. Even though Petrine had a couple of cats, mousers as she called them, this place was more than large even for Little Miss to join the family.
This place...the Holding. It truly was breath-taking. Petrine, Monika and she had wondered around a bit more after they had cleared up the breakfast things. It was acres and acres, one of the larger islands in this area. Most of it remained fully wooded though there were a couple of good sized fields like this one which housed Petrine's greenhouse and Monika's play area. Another housed Olaf's cabin and a wood working shop. A third was simply blanketed with late autumn wildflowers.
This place was so beautiful and peaceful. Peaceful in a way that she had craved her whole life. While she knew that she was not on the autistic spectrum, Kirsty had always wondered if something was not wrong with her. Sensory processing disorder perhaps? London had just always been too much. Too loud. Too many people. All rushing around, most with no real place to go or be. She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment as she leaned her head back and inhaled the fresh clean scent of pine and sea. It reminded her of them.
She forced her eyes open again though they seemed so fucking heavy right now. She had no idea how much sleep she had gotten last night. But this felt unlike any exhaustion she had ever known. Not even after her rare all night binge in uni with her girlfriends had she felt this...She frowned as she tried to find the words to describe it. Tired? Yes, more like exhausted, knackered.
But at the same time her whole body thrummed with some weird energy. She supposed it must be something like what her kids with ADHD, hyperactivity, felt like. Nervous energy. She just could not sit still or force her mind to focus, not for even a moment. The two were at complete odds and it felt like they were warring inside of her, like they might even tear her body apart in this battle.
She felt like her whole skin just did not fit...like it was itchy and scratchy all over. To make it worse, one minute she was freezing cold and the next she was too hot. She reached up and felt her forehead. She did not feel feverish, but still perhaps that was it. Perhaps she was coming down with something. She had after all just been through an ordeal that would weaken most people's immune system. Kidnapped and taken hundreds...a thousand miles from home?
Home? Just that word made her want to burst into tears. What was it anyway? Certainly not the damned one bedroom in a flat she shared with two other women to whom she barely spoke. Not the boarding schools that she had been sent to from the time she was seven, so that her parents could concentrate upon what was truly important...their careers as consultants, doctors in the vast National Health Service. Hell, not even the large brick home in one of the better neighborhoods in north London where she had lived on school holidays, where her earliest memories of nannies and housekeepers were formed.
She shook herself. What was wrong with her? She had thought after speaking with Bjorn and Petrine yesterday that she was coming to terms with everything. Every? Thing? Kidnapping? Being married...to three men? Hot sex unlike any she had ever had...with not one partner...but three. She supposed she could count Mikael...even if it was not intercourse as such. And kinky bondage, domination, submission and now even masochism.
Fuck her ex-boyfriend Raj for giving her that damned tablet as his final present on Valentine's Day...just a couple of weeks before informing her that he was going to marry his cousin from India. Fuck those damned e-books that had gotten her so worked up about BDSM. Fuck Captive Brides most of all. And especially fuck Raquel Graffen and her sick imagination about Dom brothers who captured women to seduce and marry them. And fuck, her new reality where that was no longer just fiction.
She shivered. But it was from more than just the cold that seemed suddenly to be overwhelming. But this time it was not a single one, she was actually shaking. Her whole body trembling as if she had a high fever and chills.
"Kirsty?" she heard the soft voice and looked up. Her mind clouded even more just then. The older woman with the long silver hair and kind green eyes looked down at her. She knew that she should recognize her. That she knew this woman, but her name escaped her. "Look at me, Kirsty," the woman commanded. Commands? She was good at those...wasn't she? It seemed that something else was missing.
But right then she did not care, she was floating...just floating. She remembered this. Remembered him. Then it was not so fun anymore. She was falling. Falling so fucking fast. Everything around her was spinning so fucking fast like that ride at the fun fair.
Green eyes? Someone else had green eyes like that too? But she could not remember who just then. But it did not matter. "I think I maybe sick...have caught something," she tried to whisper though she was not certain any sound came out of her throat that was so dry at the moment.
Warm arms wrapped about her then. She gave up and just leaned into them, closed her eyes.
***
