Right to Life

To push his limits as well as hers. That was what the strangling was about and heat-lamp and the studded whip.

He'd promised Kath he wouldn't fuck her but he didn't say anything about her using her mouth. No promises there. Even so she'd been angry about the blowjob and he thought that telling her was probably a mistake. But for some reason he couldn't help but tell her. He needed her to know. It was part of being Kath's master as well as Sara's. So was having her sit on Sara's face. She hadn't wanted to do it. He'd had to threaten a whipping.

Escalate.

It was actually a little scary. On the twelfth day he had her on the X-frame and inside the headbox and he'd taken a Swiss Army knife off his worktable. His idea was to use the corkscrew on her clit. See what it did to her. But instead he automatically opened to the long blade. He always kept it sharp. He thought, fine, I'll use that first on her nipples and then the corkscrew on her clit but when he approached her with the knife in hand he started to shake. He started circling the areola which seemed to be darkening as the pregnancy advanced but the shaking got worse. He had to stop.

You're afraid you're going to kill her, he thought.

You really could some day, you know that? You could go too far much too soon if let yourself.

Which made him a little afraid of her.

Not that she'd get away somehow because that was damned unlikely and besides, the Organization stories were working, he could tell. No, you're afraid of her because she might just make you want to kill her one of these days just by being available for the killing and that would be very spontaneous and very much an escalation, wouldn't it?

Then he thought about the baby. It would be terrible to harm the baby. She was just beginning to show.

He felt sure she'd have made a good mother.

In some ways he actually admired her. She had guts and will and stamina. The will he'd have to break, was already breaking but he wanted to let her hold onto the stamina. She'd need it for what they had in mind.

He folded the sharp blade back into the Swiss Army knife and pulled out the corkscrew and when the shaking stopped finally he went to work on her the way he'd planned to.

***

Kath wished she could call Gail. Her best and oldest friend. They'd met way back in nursing school and stayed friends even though these days Gail lived in the City working at Bellevue. But Stephen was always afraid of somebody dropping by unexpectedly. She wasn't going to be allowed to encourage friendships for the duration. The duration was turning into a damned long time.

It wasn't fair.

She hated the isolation.

She thought that Sara wasn't the only one imprisoned here.

Sure she had work at the hospital to get her out of the house five days a week but she didn't really have any friends among the staff there. He wouldn't let her go to any meetings or rallies either. He didn't want them to be seen, he said, till it was over. So she was stuck with the house and the basement and the television and that was it.

He'd almost completely stopped fucking her. That was another thing.

On the sixth day she drove home from work in a blinding summer rainstorm and ran directly upstairs to run a good hot shower and change out of her drenched clothes and when she came back down toweling her hair, wanting to get a coke from the fridge, she saw that the door to the cellar was open. She felt a moment's panic thinking that somehow she'd managed to get out of the Long Box, to get free. Until she looked out the window and saw that Stephen's pickup was parked behind her own car in the driveway.

She walked downstairs and saw that he hadn't even bothered to change out of his work clothes which were just as wet as hers had been. Wet sawdust caked the legs and knees of his jeans.

He already had her out of the box and up on the X-frame and was beating her ass with a paddle. He had the paddle in one hand and his cock in the other and she turned and went upstairs. Grossed-out and furious at both of them.

She knew perfectly well why she was mad and disgusted with Stephen.

Her feelings for Sara were more complex.

On the one hand it was as though Sara were a kind of rival. He sure as hell had never run home to have sex with her five minutes after walking through the door.

But she was also aware that Sara was her savior too in a way. That if it weren't for Sara up there on the X-frame it would be her. And if her sex life was practically non-existent these days so were the kinky games he always needed to play.

So why was she so mad at her? Why so disgusted?