ONE
She waited until Maria had left for the evening before leaving her wine glass on the kitchen countertop and heading upstairs; with her husband overseas (again) on business, and the household staff all departed for the evening, she was completely alone, which was, she decided, the perfect time to take a bath. Maria had correctly guessed as much, and there was a large towel and her terry cloth robe, freshly laundered, waiting for her next to the enormous clawfoot tub in the master bathroom, along with a heaping scoop of bath salts and a full glass of her favorite red. Madelyn turned on the bath, dumping the salts in, and helped herself to the wine. Maria was a model employee, and the Salingers had been lucky to have found her; Madelyn just wished, with a little bit of shame, that Maria could have been a rotund woman in her fifties, preferably with a large facial scar, instead of an intimidatingly beautiful one in her twenties.
It was not a case of spousal jealousy; she had learned enough about her husband's mistresses over the years to know that Maria, as lovely as she was, was not his type, nor was he impulsive enough to make himself vulnerable to the kind of scandal that could cost his shareholders quite a bit of money by sleeping with an employee. He kept his indiscretions discreet, and Madelyn tolerated them in exchange for her own indiscretions. Maria, with her long shiny black hair and her olive skin and impossibly slim figure, made Madelyn feel like the evil stepsister in a fairy tale, a lesser character whose primary characteristic was petty jealousy. It was a foolish little thing, she told herself, one that wine, a hot bath, and maybe a self-induced orgasm would help her forget about.
Self-induced because she was too tired, and perhaps too drunk to travel to the city alone, reserve a room, and arrange something. Another night, though, and soon, she thought, mentally cycling through her options as she undressed. The middle-aged woman in the mirror, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, smiling tipsily back at her, still had the air of debutante, but over the years, she had filled out, becoming, fortunately, hourglass-shaped, or, as one of her younger friends, Marcus, liked to call her, "thick." He was too, in his own way, she thought to herself, giggling as she remembered the first time she'd seen his member, how he'd so arrogantly drawn it out of his pants in front of her, how frantically she'd taken it into her mouth, and later, inside herself.
She lowered herself into the tub and let out a long sigh. This would do for this evening, she thought lazily, letting her fingernails trail down her collarbone and draw circles around one of her nipples, feeling it firm up under her touch. Her other hand moved downwards, palm gliding lightly along her belly, fingers parting around her engorged hood and slipping down along her labia, then curling and snaking inside of her.
She quickly found her rhythm, her fingers alternating between inside and outside, as she worked herself to the brink over and over, stopping just short of climaxing, each time penetrating herself a little more deeply, massaging herself a little more firmly. She thought of Marcus, again, his disrespectful tone as he ordered her around, the force of his hand on the top of her head, firm and insistent, as she bore down, fighting against her gag reflex as she bottomed out on him, chin resting on the saliva-covered flesh of his scrotum, tongue fervently slathering his frenulum.
The memory pushed her over the edge; she convulsed and cried out, riding the waves of her climax until they had subsided, and she was left gasping in the lukewarm water of the tub, her crotch sensitive and tingling. She would have to call on Marcus soon, she thought, gingerly climbing out of the tub and drying off. Maria had left Madelyn's favorite set of silk pajamas underneath her towel; Madelyn decided she would have to get Maria a gift of some kind soon, although she was unsure if her motivation was to show her appreciation or assuage her guilt.
TWO
Madelyn dreamt of hands on her body, grasping her wrists and ankles, taking her by the chin, not gently, but not roughly either; the touch was indifferent, and she felt herself being manipulated, moved around like a marionette being untangled from its strings. She woke from the dream to the moonlit semi-darkness of her bedroom, wondering when she had turned off the lights. How much wine had she drunk?
She tried to close her mouth and realized she could not; when she tried to speak, to vocalize her surprise, she could only manage a muffled moan, and she realized it was a ball gag, the thick strap running around her head, the smooth, soft surface of the gag unyielding as she tried and failed to push it aside with her tongue. There were, she discovered as she tried to sit up, zip ties that had been cinched closed around her wrists and ankles; they were secured through the looped ends of braided metal cables that ran to the corners of the bed, taut enough to keep her spread-eagled across the center of the mattress.
The panic welled up in her throat, slowly but steadily, and she began to shake uncontrollably, an animal cry of distress reverberating against the ball gag as she struggled, involuntarily and ineffectually, against the restraints until she was exhausted, and could only lay limply and sob quietly in the silence of the bedroom.
She craned her head to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table and found it dark, nothing visible on its screen. The exterior lights outside the windows, which she had complained about repeatedly to her husband, were dark, as well, and none of the standby lights on the television or any of the other electronics on the console beyond the foot of the bed were visible. The power was out.
And then she heard the footsteps, in the foyer. Not the staccato clicks of heels or hard-soled formal shoes, but something softer, quieter, and numerous; there were multiple people in the house with her, Madelyn realized. They had cut the power. They had put the gag and restraints on her, hands all over her body as she had slept.
She could hear footsteps on the stairs, growing closer; the door opened smoothly, and a masked figure in black stepped into the room, and locked eyes with her, closing the door quietly behind him and taking up a spot at the foot of the bed.
"Would you like me to remove the gag, Mrs. Salinger?"
She tried her best to nod slowly, her heart pounding in her chest.
"You realize," he said as he moved around the side of the bed, "that there's nobody within miles of us. That means no matter how loudly you scream, nobody is going to hear you. Nobody is going to come. You follow?"
Something about the man's relaxed tone, the hint of condescension, made her blood boil. She'd always been bad at concealing her anger, past a certain point, and she had no doubt he could read it in her eyes as she nodded again in response.
"I can tell you're angry, Mrs. Salinger, and that's fair. But angry people aren't always rational, and I don't feel like being screamed at, or having to stuff that thing back into your mouth right after taking it out. So," he paused and withdrew a small but fearsome-looking blade from somewhere on his waist, "I'm going to need to impress upon you the need for you to be on your very best behavior." And he leaned in, deftly maneuvering the blade so that the point was very lightly bearing against her throat. "You're going to behave, now, aren't you?"
She felt herself trying to shrink, trying to withdraw from the blade; her anger unraveled into terror, and she could feel tears well up in her eyes. There was a horrible synergy between his demeanor and his handling of the blade, a kind of understatement that made Madelyn certain he would, without hesitation, butcher her with that horrible little piece of steel if she disobeyed him. She blinked back tears and nodded slowly, her eyes downcast.
"All right then." He reached around her head and unfastened the gag, a long strand of her saliva trailing from it as he drew it away from her and casually dropped it on the floor with a thud while she worked her jaw and swallowed several times, trying to avoid eye contact with him. "Would you like some water?"
