Liberated

Chapter Four: The Trappings of Choice

Note: This story references events from Enslaved by the Pen that would otherwise be decontextualized if read independently and requires the reader to be familiar with the general chronology of events from that series. It is recommended that this be read following Enslaved by the Pen. Please note that the stories contained within both series are non-con fiction, and should be read at the reader's own discretion.

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Gabe's words echoed hollowly in my ears. It was as if he was uttering a foreign tongue, unrecognizable in its cadence and articulation. He repeated his query to me as if re-stating his proposition would prompt a quicker resolution to what clearly was an untenable choice.

"What is it you desire Amelia, accountability or liberation?"

Gabe's hand never ceased caressing down the length of my hair, his palm skirting the silky tresses as if a reassuring gesture, but assuredly more unnerving in its execution than its intention. A sudden tremor overtook my limbs as I pondered the absurdity of Gabe's ultimatum. Rather than simply releasing me, his solution was to offer me enslavement with the potential of his imprisonment, or enslavement with the certainty of being imprisoned by him. The latter was particularly repugnant. I couldn't exist under the yoke of his keep, perpetually kowtowing to the capriciousness of his every sexual whim. To do so voluntarily was an unforgiveable treachery of self, a betrayal to everything that I had battled and suffered through at the mansion, and within the bowels of the earth. It mattered little that he was fulfilling my deeply submerged fantasies, or that I admitted I loved him. I couldn't be the submissive of a man who refused a measure of accountability, and who couldn't reflexively introspect on his own monstrosity.

Gabe was appallingly correct in his assessment, however. My body had capitulated to him willingly in the conservation area. It had danced in jubilation under his seemingly coercive command, presenting and twisting itself into sensual curves for his visual satisfaction, wrenching itself into positions of vulnerability that he nurtured with an appropriately rapacious hunger. His initial winsome smile as he observed me convulsing took on a menacing look of predation. He knew then that possession of my body was inevitable.

The realization had eluded me in the moment as my stamina compelled itself solely with pursuing and delivering pleasure; but I had bestowed upon him the power to control me, to possess me in that subservient sense of place and space that both of us revelled in, and that our bodies hungered to entwine in. The thought of disobeying his directive had not even factored into my mind as my body vaulted itself increasingly towards sexual yearning. Within the span of mere hours, Gabe had mentally transported me back to the mansion, captive to his dominance, permanently a prisoner to his passion and my own.

It was an unsettling revelation that Gabe insisted I confront. His influence was all illusion, yet his power was ever potent and omnipresent. He may have bound my hands, but he did so loosely. He may have gagged me, but my legs were free to tread my own path. The realization humbled me outside as I stood on the balcony, paralyzed by the cloak of self-loathing that refused to lift in reprieve from my hunched stance of defeat. I had fallen in love with my interlocutor, my interrogator, my incarcerator. The intensity of his stare bore into my back as he lurked beyond the door. The briny wetness slipped down my cheeks as I registered that I had permitted myself to become a pawn in his game yet again. I could only move forwards; I couldn't rewrite the past.

I was as much a complicit partner in his fantasy, as he was a duplicitous fiend in my delusion. But somehow, I had persuaded myself that my participation reflected the efforts of coercion. What Gabe requested from me with his proposition was an open and voluntary surrendering to his dominance, freely given out of vengeance, or bequeathed to him out of love. He wanted me to indenture myself to him regardless of my determination.

I had endeavoured so diligently to rid his hold over me. When the detective had not been able to deliver results in the furtherance of justice, I had elected to forge ahead, casting off the entanglements of the past. Through my months of captivity, my memories were overwhelmed with the alienating reality of Gabe's depravity. Yet, I had also observed Gabe to be of honour. Punishment was never arbitrary. His compassion for me held no bounds. I was his captive and his sexual slave, but his humanity still flourished and graced upon my body and soul. His refusal to abandon his dreams of me being his submissive seemed illogically inconsistent with the rational person I knew him to be.

That afternoon in his office, he had seemed angry, but resigned after my confrontation with him, weary from the burden of truth that suddenly was magnified under duress. I wasn't his. He finally understood that. Yet, we found ourselves back again. I despised that Gabe had evaded the responsibility for his actions, but I had abandoned such negativity. If justice wasn't to be meted out for him, I refused to stand as the arbiter of his fate. Rather, I wished to disentangle myself from the strands of his life entirely. I loved him, but I wouldn't permit myself the indignity to dream of happiness or consign myself to the oblivion of forgotten truth.

My fingers drifted back to the leather collar, and then skimmed across the table to its knitted counterpart. Rather than make a declarative statement that illustrated my tenacity and my refusal to engage, I felt the first wet tear slide down my cheek. I refused to be a party to my own enslavement again. My shoulders buckled forwards and I soundlessly wept, until silence no longer afforded me solace.

"I have nothing left to give," I howled repeatedly as if some mantra that would provide salvation.

The rupture of my squeal of anguish through the eerie stillness of the room surprised even Gabe, who immediately gathered me upwards in his arms and rocked me for reassurance.

"Little one, please don't fret. This wasn't meant to be a challenging decision. It was intended to furnish you with your ultimate desire, punishing me, or provisioning your pleasure."

Despite epitomizing the face of every atrocity committed upon my body, I sank into the protective solidity of Gabe's chest, floundering at first in his tight embrace, until I accepted the affection he imparted, consenting to feel a kernel of his misplaced compassion. I had no other companion in my capture beyond Mittens. Gabe was both my accomplice and my antagonist. How do you escape the clutches of your conspirator when you willingly contribute to your own subjugation? Gabe only continued sweeping down my hair in reassurance, emitting inconsequential shushing sounds, as his other arm pinned me tight against his torso, strangling me close as if I would suddenly disintegrate from his hold.

"Please Amelia, I adore you like no one I've ever loved before. I never wanted you to wallow in such despair and become this distraught. Today was an illustration of how powerful our connection continues to be, and how much power you ultimately retain. Since your release, I've fretted about your mental health and your persisting feelings of powerlessness. I wanted to ameliorate that for you."

Gabe's words contained a trace of sincerity, as if the educational benefits of this morning's exercise merited my apprehension again. He operated under the delusion that assuaging his own guilt adequately compensated for the psychological and emotional trauma he inflicted on me through my continuing confinement. My attempted departure from his hold proved ineffectual as his grip tightened. I remained on his lap until tears could no longer be shed.

"I neither want nor need the decision Gabe." The timbre of my voice was solemn. "I want you to leave me alone. Please. I've nothing left to give you. You've wrenched everything from me already, my sanity, my dignity, my sexuality. What more is there I can surrender to you at the alter of your insatiable appetite?"

I was exhausted of the artifice, of the manipulations, of the entirety of our deviousness and the repertoire of our conniving through months of my abduction.

My body wracked in silent upheaval again. Gabe tilted my head upwards so that I could meet his scrutiny. He wanted assurance that his intended actions hadn't irrevocably shattered me. He held my chin between his two fingers so gently, yet the threat of force remained. My eyes closed, unwilling to provide him the answers he so desperately sought. Gentleness ceded to more pressure and my eyes fluttered open from the piercing pain as his fingertips dug into my chin.

"Amelia, if my words bore little resemblance to the truth, you would not be sitting on my lap, inviting my touch, and still retaining the anal toy within you. You've been unrestrained for some time now, and not once has your inclination been to challenge my decision to keep you filled and full. If I wasn't your Master, wouldn't you have removed the stack of beads by now instead of sitting here like a good little girl waiting for her owner to grant her permission to do so? You perpetually cede your power to me. It's your body's natural inclination to do so."

My eyes narrowed at his presumptuous words. I jerked my chin away from his grasp, seething with an indignance that I had repressed in habit. It mattered naught that what he said bore affinity with reality. My body was eternally his, conditioned to be, catering to his every whim, craving for his every command, electrified by his every touch. I reached between my thighs, grasping the base of the anal toy, pulling to dislodge it. Gabe only pinned a solitary wrist, preventing further action and shoved the toy back into my orifice with a grunt.

"No little one. The toy stays in your ass. You've not permission to remove it."

I didn't dignify his response with an acknowledgement. I acted solely on impulse; my limbs no longer frozen in petrification, I jostled slightly, rearranging myself in preparation as I brought the full weight of my bent knee to impact Gabe's groin. He groaned in pain, his hands covering his crotch, as I snatched the key from the coffee table and sprinted to the door. As Gabe lay doubled over, I frantically inserted the key, but it refused to yield, as if the notches and ridges were mismatched with the barrel of the lock. Though ineffective as my actions were, I yanked at the handle hoping to jostle the key's crenellations into compatibility.

I sensed Gabe's encroaching aura of anger before I felt his large hand cup my shoulder, gripping into my flesh. My body rotated slowly. My back pressed to the door; my flesh prickled at the sudden frigidity of the metal against the sheer fabric of my dress. My eyes lifted to meet Gabe's. No movements were made, no words were exchanged as our eyes contested in confrontation.

My cellphone remained on the ground where it had been discarded. I dived for it, but Gabe's strong grip wrestled it from me before he pocketed it in his own pants. He yanked the landline's phone cord from the jack before I could even enact the next part of my flight from his hold. From my place on the ground, I was dwarfed by Gabe's looming figure, his body radiating the immanence of his power in our arrangement. For long moments, only his hitched breaths matched my own struggling gasps and laboured exhalations.

"Guess it's a fine time for you to develop your appreciation for masochism huh Gabe?" My words finally sliced through the silence, as my mind secretly rejoiced that he experienced a modicum of pain. Gabe's wry smile cast in my direction was disconcerting, immediately unseating the smug satisfaction I harboured.

"Had your fun little one?"

"Isn't this what we unfailingly do Gabe?" I only retorted with disdain on the dance we tangoed to, the steps we took to reinforce the legitimacy of our subject positions. Struggle and control, captor and captive, Master and submissive. We returned to the beginning, again. The exhausting predictability of redux.

Gabe's grip on my upper arm was startingly tight as he half-walked, half-dragged my uncooperating body to the bedroom, manoeuvring past my flailing limbs with ease as his arm wrapped around my waist and carried me the remainder of the distance. Gabe's only weapon in his arsenal was punishment. It always had been, even back at the mansion and my ersatz apartment. I vowed to thwart whatever discipline he meted as he placed me upright before him. However, with a flutter, he yanked my dress off, discarding it on the bed before my objection could be voiced. The panties were torn off next.

I felt the duct tape constrict around my wrists before I saw the roll of adhesive in his hand. Wide strips were wrapped around my ankles and Gabe pushed me down until my knees thudded against the sterile flooring below. I was already effectively immobilized. Duct tape was applied across my body at even intervals. Wide strips across my shoulders pulled them backwards. The tape under my breasts secured my arms to my torso, pinning them behind me. Thick bands were wrapped around each parted thigh and lower legs, further restraining me. Finally, the strips across my waist and wrists ensured lateral or forwards movement would be an ambitious feat.

My makeshift armbinder barely yielded behind my back as I struggled against the bonds that I found myself secured in. To my nipples he attached the clamps, their teeth as tight a vise on my sensitive nubs of flesh, as they had been earlier in the day. My clitoral hood felt the jagged sharp teeth of the clamp affixed to it and I yowled in pain from its sudden application. To my neck he affixed the collar I had purchased for myself, connecting a length of chain from its O-ring to loop and then lock around the bed post.

"Gabe please," I pleaded with him. "This isn't what I want. This isn't what you want. What happened to the kinder, gentl.."

The tape that was unceremoniously affixed over my mouth interrupted any vocalizations objecting to my predicament. His set-up was maniacal. The chain adjoining my nipples and clitoris clamps were connected and then joined to the leash harnessing me to the bed. Any lateral motion I could enact would force gravity's pull to uncomfortably tug on the clamps fastened to my sensitive flesh. That was their purpose I soon discovered as Gabe re-engaged the stack of anal beads still inserted deeply within me. The pleasurable trembling was palpable, as was the tenderness on my nipples and clitoris when my body would thrum and vibrate in furtherance of compelled desire. Suspending pleasure's call to avert the pain of movement was impossible. I could only remain on my knees, restrained as Gabe dictated, tethered to my sense of submission that wound around me in tight constriction.

"Quiet, reflective time little one. I want you to take this time to introspect, really think about what it is you want."

The bloom of cerise blushed my cheeks as I implored Gabe with the wideness of my eyes, and the strangled modulation of my breathing. He patted me on my head then, ignoring the defiance reflected in my pupils that narrowed in increasing resentment of his hold over me. Initially after he departed my presence, I attempted to escape the surprisingly durable bonds that restrained me, and when my own hopeless struggles failed to produce perceptible results, except amplified pressure on my clitoris and nipples, I resigned myself to being leashed to the bed as if I was a disobedient dog being disciplined for misbehaving against its Master's instruction.

Evading this infernal predicament wasn't promising, but I wasn't going to contemplate Gabe's inane proposition either. Concentrated rage welled within me as I could no longer sublimate the oppression of inadequacy that flourished in silence's stead. Time and again Gabe had treated me as if I was already his submissive requiring corrective action. No matter my attempts to escape his clutches, I found myself invariably reduced to my knees before him, via violence or volition.

Knees that now untenably bore the ache of time and isolation and involuntarily penance.

I sensed the glacial intensity of Gabe's vigilance as he leaned against the door observing my bound form from behind, watching my juddering flesh spasm in response to the toy's insistent stimulation. The scent of his distinctive brand of soap permeated the air, wafting towards me. The crispness of his shirt as he snapped his cuffs focused my attention. I refused to dignify his presence with a wayward glance backwards. I only straightened my back, huffing past the adhesive gag, and gritting my teeth in determined rebellion. If he wanted to punish me on my knees, I'd suffer his punishment for as long as my stubbornness would permit. Gabe only shortened the length of chain joining my collar to the bed, forcing my head and then posture punishingly upright, as the drastically decreased slack insisted on a gruelling feat of endurance from my body. His hand remained warm on my back, massaging my flesh, as if coaxing me to thresholds of tolerance I hadn't the reserves to withstand.

Soft footsteps departed, and I was abandoned again, to toil in insufferable silence. I inwardly intoned that Gabe was mistaken if he thought he was going to break me. What I hadn't anticipated is that my seething anger would yield to self-reflection as time intolerably crawled. Through Gabe's actions and my manipulations, we were irreparably entwined in a dialectic of which neither of us could circumvent our destined roles.

My body and its responses to pleasure would continuously heed his call to desire and control. Every curve of my flesh was attuned to Gabe in a manner that Adam could never instigate nor replicate. The softness of Gabe's touches, the lightness as his fingers skimmed over my skin, the way the head of his cock teased my ass open and ratcheted in as if it was made specifically for every deepening and lengthy stroke he thrust into me. Ashamedly, my pussy would forever soak at the barest of his touch and clutch wantonly at the entry and ecstasy of the generosity of his fingers. My hips would continuously convulse towards the firmness of his thighs. My mouth would metamorphosize into the ultimate receptable to the girth that he presented, and I accepted down my throat in supplication. My body was the perfect complement to his dominance.

If Gabe knew the state of mind that introspection would generate within me, he made no indication, other than to increase the vibration of the anal beads, as if a rejoinder to our previous conversation and our ever-deepening connection. I reminisced of the many nights I had pined for Gabe after he released me, yearning for his authority, hungering to be called little one again, and how my own fingers had graced my body in proxy of his, masturbating furiously in pursuit of pandered pleasure. But I also steeled my resolve reminding myself on the unforgiveable reality of Gabe's abduction of me, how he repeatedly refused my release until I feigned madness and suffered mental deterioration that I could only convince myself was artificial in its presentation.

Though I couldn't cast my head downwards, the brush of fur against my bound thighs proved Mittens was nearby. Her softness ever reassuring, a touchstone to ground my thoughts, as I remained abandoned, trussed up, silenced, for an interminable period. As my knees ached from the solitude, the more inconsolable I became in my predicament. I was imprisoned forever under his hold, in the place of subservience he intended to keep me, in the position of acquiescence I consigned myself to, regardless of what I did, irrespective of what I didn't do. There was no path out of the cycle of co-dependence we levelled on one another. Our destinies were implacably linked, habitually colluding in a conspiracy of complacency and constraint.