Ari woke to the sound of Claire's moaning as she brought herself to orgasm. He smiled. It had been two weeks of that lovely morning alarm. After the first day where he'd had to coax her and give her the images to help her get off, she'd followed his orders on her own. He wondered what she thought about. Did she think of Ari and the way he touched her or had she returned to older fantasies? Either option must carry its own set of difficulties, but she pushed through until the delicious sounds of her moans and whimpers filled the room.
When she'd finished, he got up, took a quick shower, and went to the kitchen to make their breakfast.
Arnold stood at the glass door, peering into the house. The snow had finally stopped three days ago, but it hadn't fully melted. Patches of grass showed through where the sun's rays had melted some of it the previous day. The fox stood in one of those patches watching him cautiously.
Ari took down a box of soft gourmet dog treats from the top of the fridge. They were hidden behind the boxes of cereal. He couldn't say exactly why he'd hidden them, why he didn't want Claire to know he didn't just feed the fox scraps. He'd practically domesticated him. Though he would never keep him indoors.
He'd briefly entertained the idea of keeping Arnold as a full-fledged pet once his leg was healed, but a few videos about foxes as pets immediately cured him of that idea. Foxes were dogs on the outside and cats on the inside and twice as destructive as both. No, Arnold belonged in the wild, even if they'd developed a relationship of sorts.
Ari opened the sliding door and sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor. He dropped a treat onto the patch of nearby snow. Arnold warily approached it. It was the first time the fox had come back since that first morning with Claire in the kitchen.
“Did you miss me?” Ari asked the fox.
The fox stared back. Ari imagined he could see a cross between fear and betrayal in the canine's eyes. Arnold was already going wild again. Not that he'd ever been truly tamed. He just trusted Ari. At least he had before this break in their routine. The fox let out a shrill demanding whine.
“Okay, buddy, calm down. You can have a couple more.”
Ari laid another treat down, and this time the fox moved closer.
Arnold had visited every few days for the past year since he'd recovered. Ari was surprised the fox had returned after three weeks of nothing. The scraps and dog treats couldn't be that good.
With the third treat, the fox was curled up in his lap letting him scratch him behind the ears.
“Don't worry, I won't tell the other wildlife about this,” Ari said.
The fox made a vocalization that sounded almost like a laugh before leaping up off his lap and darting down the hill. Ari could just make out a fluffy tail squeezing through the bars of the gate at the south end of the property.
He shut the door and returned the treats to their hiding spot. After he'd scrubbed up and made breakfast, he took care of Claire. The fox may need to be free, but Claire needed to be contained. In the last week he'd gotten his security system set up to accommodate her wandering. He'd even set the same security on the outside gate system with a remote option to open the gate from inside the house. Soon he'd let her off the chain to wander but not today.
He moved her through their morning routine. Bathroom, bathing, feeding, blindfold, and finally down to the dungeon. She knelt. She crawled. She said “Yes, Master,” and “No, Master.” In two weeks she was nearly perfectly trained. He still hadn't allowed her clothes. She seemed to have become strangely comfortable with her nudity in his presence. Good.
She didn't fight or cry or beg when he positioned her straddled over the spanking horse and strapped her down. He left her blindfold on. Ari crossed to a chair to retrieve the sleek black box he'd picked up from the jeweler the day before while she'd been napping.
He opened the box to admire the gold collar. There were intricate angular knotwork engravings around the outside of the band. A few days ago Ari had held his hands around her throat to estimate a measurement while she'd held her breath unsure of what he was about to do. He hadn't mentioned the collar.
He didn't want it too tight. He wanted it to rest lightly against the edge of her collarbone so he could still kiss and suck at the skin on her neck above it.
He hadn't fucked her yet. Not in any way. He couldn't bring himself to cross that line with her until he was sure she needed it. It wasn't enough that she just wouldn't be traumatized or that she could tolerate it. She had to need it.
He'd given her pleasure each day, but denied himself outside his own self-care in the shower. And each day she'd become more perplexed and frustrated by the lack of completion. Good.
He bent next to her ear. “Are you ready to be fucked, little one?”
Her breath seemed to lurch from her chest. “Y-yes, Master.” She squirmed on the bench.
“But you just came, moaning like a wanton slut,” Ari said, teasing her.
“Master, please... please...”
That sweet begging. He would never get enough of it.
He left her and crossed to the wall, taking a paddle off a hook. When he returned he smacked her ass with it. She jumped and yelped, not expecting the sting. A beautiful flush of red warmth bloomed out over her ass. He rubbed the sting out.
“M-master did I do something wrong?”
“No. I'm just testing a theory.” The paddle landed again with a loud crack against her flesh. And then again and again until her skin was heated and bright red. Tears slipped from under the blindfold.
“Master, please...” she whimpered.
“Shhhhh.” He trailed the edge of the paddle over her back. Then he set it down on the ground and dipped a hand between her legs.
“I knew this would make you wet,” he said. “Now, you're ready to be fucked.”
Another whimper left her, but this one was desire. As he stroked between her legs, the whimper turned into a low moan.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Master?”
“From this point on, things are changing. I won't just give. I will also take my own pleasure from you. However I want, whenever I want. When I take you in any way, you will say 'thank you, Master', when I'm finished. Do you understand, little one?”
When she spoke, Claire's voice came out breathy. “Y-yes, Master.” She squirmed again.
Ari smacked her ass, and she stilled. “Good girl.”
Then he took her. No more words passed between them. Her tight little cunt gripped him as if for survival as he moved inside her. Her breathy moans filled the spaces of the room, practically bouncing off the walls in their excitement. Her hips rose eagerly to meet his thrusts.
“Please, please, please...” she whimpered.
“I love how you beg.”
Her pussy clenched around him as she screamed out her pleasure. Ari followed with his own climax, emptying himself into her. He collapsed on top of her, his body curling possessively around hers, the relief of the moment overwhelming.
“Thank you, Master,” she whispered.
Ari kissed her cheek and smiled.
Claire lay on her stomach on the spanking horse, trying to get her breathing to return to its normal cadence. Every day for the past two weeks, she'd been sure this was the day he would take her, but every day it wasn't. He'd restrained himself even as she could see the evidence of how much he wanted her tightening his jeans with the hard rigid outline of his impressive cock. Instead he'd only given her pleasure without making any demands in return. Even as she'd wanted him, she'd been afraid of what might happen when he fucked her.
For years she'd lived in almost perpetual fear of even a random flashback hitting her. They'd been frequent the first year, but after that they'd seemed to come out of nowhere, like panic attacks. Everything would be fine, and then it would come like a crippling blow, putting her back in that basement again.
So surely actual sex with someone in such a confusing captive situation would trigger a full-blown terror-filled flashback. But nothing happened. Nothing bad anyway. She'd felt the tight ball of fear unclench when he'd finally pushed himself inside her. And despite every lingering fear, both her mind and body had been on board when he'd finally fully claimed her.
After her orgasm had washed over her, the strongest feeling left in its wake was relief.
Ari had curled around her as if they could be “big spoon” and “little spoon” somehow on a spanking horse. He got up now, put his jeans back on, and untied her. He helped her up, and then he pulled her into his arms and just held her for the longest time. So much strange domesticity with a man who'd decided she should be his slave.
“Are you okay?” he murmured into her hair.
“Yes, Master. I'm okay.”
After a few minutes of holding her in an embrace that shouldn't feel so safe, he led her across the room to a plush round pillow on the floor.
“Kneel,” he said softly.
Claire knelt on the pillow and waited. Her gaze had fallen quite naturally to the floor again. Maybe it was because it was painful to crane her neck up to watch his every move. Maybe it was a natural submission that bubbled out of her in his presence. He barely even needed to tell her to kneel.
If he wasn't holding her upright, it sometimes felt almost impossible to stand in his presence. He was just so overwhelmingly dominant and powerful as though he could take control of any space he occupied or anyone he encountered on a whim. That kind of power should terrify her, but she'd quickly learned he had no plans to use it against her.
Ari stepped away for a moment. When he returned, he placed a black velvet box in her hands.
“Open it.”
Claire opened the box and gasped at the contents. Inside was the prettiest collar she'd ever seen. Someone else might look at it and just see a piece of jewelry, but Claire understood what he was giving her.
It was a solid gleaming gold band that had a hidden groove on the underside that allowed it to be opened. On the outside, the evidence of where the collar opened was hidden amongst intricate engraved knotwork that wrapped around the band giving it the illusion of a complete, unbroken circle.
There had been a time in the distant past when kidnapping had been considered a legitimate form of marriage. It seemed Ari had decided to revive his own version of this tradition.
He didn't have to give her this beautiful piece of jewelry. If he had a thing for collars, he could use a cheap dog collar, or one of those leather BDSM collars. There was no need to spend an extravagant amount of money to give her something this beautiful.
She looked up to find him studying her reaction.
“Thank you, Master.”
Surprise flitted across his features. Had he expected her to be upset about it? They'd established a two weeks ago that he was never releasing her, and somehow as the days had worn on that promise had felt more like safety and security and less like a threat. Or had he thought she wouldn't understand what a collar meant to someone like him?
She remembered what he'd said about the nook and the chain and his last pet occupying that space, and an unfamiliar feeling passed through her.
“Is this the same collar that...”
“No,” he said before she could finish her thought. “Holly had a different collar. I had this one made specifically for you.”
She shouldn't feel so fucking warm and happy about this revelation, but she did. And as Ari took the collar from the box and put it around her throat, the finality of this thing between them sunk in. Instead of the million negative feelings she thought such a realization might elicit, all she felt was calm acceptance.