Kajirus of Gor Chapter Twenty Three

 

I sat in the reception room on one of the sofas, feeling tired and pissed off as Dexter paced about the room shouting his mouth off again. If he was angry before, after I’d punched him and walked out into the gardens, he was the picture of rage now that I had been apprehended in what appeared to be a romantic assignment with Felicity, his fiancé, in the quiet solitude of the garden grounds. His rage wasn’t just directed at me, of course, but also at Felicity, who sat in tears on the other sofa as Dexter walked back and forth jabbing with his hand in her direction as he vented his anger.

 

Felicity clutched a blanket around her shoulders, covering the fact that she wore little more than her corset and underwear. The ranch hands had simply frog marched us to the house, not caring to give Felicity time to get dressed.

 

Over in the corner, Granny watched proceedings with a stern gaze. Hawkins guarded the door to the hallway. He still held his rifle, but in the rest position.

 

And then Chelsea returned and entered the room.

 

“I’ve been and spoken to Cindy,” she said to me. I watched her smooth the back of her long skirt as she sat down next to me on the sofa, making sure to leave a cushion seat between the two of us for appearance’s sake.

 

“And?” I glanced round at Hawkins who fixed me with a cold stare. “Have you called the police?”

 

“That’s not going to be necessary,” said Chelsea. “Neither Cindy nor myself want to cause a fuss and make this sort of thing public.”

 

“What?” I pointed my hand at Hawkins. “He fucking chained her to a pulley system and cut her clothes from her body with a knife.”

 

If looks could kill, Hawkins was ready to kill me.

 

“We’ve had a long conversation,” explained Chelsea. “Tensions are high all around. Cindy is angry; of course she is. She has every right to be angry. But she is also aware she trespassed with intent, and around these parts that’s a serious matter. Yes, Mr Hawkins probably overstepped his authority.”

 

“You think?!” I said, feeling incredulous now.

 

“My uncle will deal with that side of things when he gets back from his business trip. But Cindy was in the wrong, too. I’ve written her a generous cheque, and we’ve both agreed to put tonight behind us.”

 

“That’s it? You just write a cheque and pretend nothing happened?”

 

Chelsea sighed as she combed back some stray locks of hair that had fallen to the side of her face. “No one likes publicity, Roland. Not around these parts. There is a way of doing things.”

 

“Unbelievable. It must have been a big number on the cheque?”

 

“It wasn’t small,” said Chelsea. She looked at me. “I appreciate you coming to me like you did. Mr Hawkins assures me they were just trying to spook Cindy. They weren’t going to go any further.”

 

“They say that now.”

 

“Mr Hawkins has been with the Frick family for many years. He’s very loyal and we know he gets very angry when outsiders intrude onto our property.” Chelsea moved on the sofa, feeling the restrictive nature of her tight, boned corset, perhaps. I noticed how stiffly she had to sit, with her back perfectly straight at all times. 

 

“Where is Cindy now?”

 

“Well, she’s had quite the fright. Understandably she’s still a little bit traumatised. I think Mr Hawkins forgets just how scary he can be when he’s defending our fences. I gave her some good strong coffee and then spoke to the kitchen staff. They’ll ensure she’s well fed. It’s a bit late now, so Cindy will stay the night in our comfortable guest quarters, and then tomorrow I’ll see she’s driven safely into town after breakfast.”

 

“Okay. And she’s happy not to take things further, in exchange for your cheque?”

 

“Absolutely.” Chelsea gave me a reassuring smile. “She knows she was in the wrong, too. Stones and glass houses on both sides.”

 

“She said something about seeing something?”

 

“I’m sure she probably said all manner of things. Mr Hawkins puts the fear of God into trespassers so they don’t come sneaking back. Maybe what she saw was you and Felicity getting rather personal with one another?” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to talk about that?”

 

“That wasn’t what happened,” I said.

 

“Well it fucking looks like it!” screamed Dexter. “That’s my fucking fiancé, Roland!” 

 

Felicity began to cry again, with her head buried in her hands.

 

“I was loosening her corset.” I glanced round at a disapproving Granny. “She could hardly breathe, it was so tight. She was extremely uncomfortable.”

 

“Tch. The girl is soft and spoilt,” said Granny Mowbray. “She isn’t used to wearing the essential support that a Lady requires at a formal dinner.”

 

“It’s true, Dex,” sobbed Felicity as she gazed up at him. “I was close to fainting. Roland had to take my dress off to get to the laces. That’s all it was.”

 

Granny did not like hearing that one bit. She had tied those laces and quite obviously did not approve of me loosening them, or Felicity asking me to do so.

 

“Do you think I’m stupid?” raged Dexter. “You were in each other’s arms, and you’re telling me you just happened to have taken your dress off for a moment because your corset was uncomfortable!”

 

Chelsea directed her gaze to Felicity. “It does sound a little unlikely, Fliss. You can hardly blame Dexter for thinking the worst.”

 

I was growing tired of this and was willing Felicity to just lay her cards on the table and end this farce. She didn’t want to be with Dexter – she’d been pushed into seeing him by her father, and now she knew I still had feelings for her, she might as well just tell him. I was tempted to tell him myself, except it wouldn’t be right to speak for Felicity. She had to tell him in her own time.

 

But just tell him.

 

Fliss. I hadn’t heard anyone call her that before. But then I remembered they had been at the same school. Was ‘Fliss’ Felicity’s nickname at school? Possibly. I quite liked it, actually. Fliss. 

 

Felicity sounded grand and Lady like. Fliss was more… well… down to earth and real. A girl I could touch and relate to.

 

I thought of Cindy, and how close she’d come to being violated, for I didn’t believe a word of what Hawkins had said when he claimed he was simply trying to spook the girl, and he wouldn’t have taken things any further. But if Cindy wasn’t going to call the police, then I could hardly expedite matters myself. 

 

“I obviously can’t trust you,” said Dexter as he gazed down at Felicity. “Does that ring on your finger mean nothing to you?”

 

Just tell him, I thought. I tried to will those words to her head. Don’t play this out. Just tell him. Tell him there’s no future, and there won’t be a wedding. 

 

“Dexter, please,” she sobbed. “I didn’t do anything!”

 

“Because Hawkins interrupted you both! For fuck’s sake, Felicity! Perhaps we should just call the engagement off? Huh? Perhaps you should just give me the ring back. Forget about us.”

“What?! NO! Please, Dexter, no!” She seemed genuinely startled that he’d suggested that.

 

“Yeah, that’s right, Felicity. You can have him.” He pointed at me. “Give me the engagement ring back, because I’m not going to play second fiddle to Roland Martell.”

 

Felicity sprang to her feet and put her hands on Dexter’s hands, begging him to reconsider.

 

Now I was surprised. What the hell was this? She didn’t want to be with him. She had feelings for me!

 

“Please, Dex, don’t do this! I love you! I want to be your wife! Please! Please! I’m so sorry. Don’t give up on me. I’ll do anything to prove myself. Please.”

 

“Really?” Dexter was also taken aback by this sudden outburst from Felicity, perhaps even more so than me. While I stared, incredulous, not understanding what was happening, Felicity embraced Dexter and placed her face against his chest. “I want to be with you. I love you. Please, Dex.”

 

Now Dexter looked like the cat with all the cream as he gazed over Felicity’s shoulder, straight into my shocked face. He could tell I wasn’t expecting this, that I’d been expecting something very different. And I could tell this was the sweetest of triumphs for him. Felicity wanted him, not me.

 

But why?

 

I was struck dumb. I couldn’t process this.

 

“Are you all right, Roland?” asked Chelsea. She reached out and touched my arm with her right hand. 

 

But I wasn’t all right. How could I be all right? The things Felicity had said to me in the garden! What was going on? 

 

“I want to be Mrs Dexter Bannon. That’s all I want. And I’ll be a good wife to you, I will. Please, Dex. I’ll honour, love and obey you.”

 

“Well… all right, then.” 

 

God, he looked smug.

 

“But you know…” he held Felicity by her upper arms. The blanket had slid down her body and he could clearly see the swell of her uplift bosom in the stiff corset. “if you’re wearing my ring, then you can’t expect your usual freedoms to act as you want. You know that, don’t you Felicity?”

 

She nodded quickly, with hope in her eyes that Dexter wouldn’t abandon her.

 

“Okay. Well, um, I have to deal with this, you know? I mean, you’ve gone and made me look stupid, Felicity. A man has rights. His girl has to toe the line. I have to... I have to do something. You can’t just… you know… go unpunished.” He licked his lips and gazed at her as if waiting for permission to punish her. “I’m a Bannon. We have traditions in the way we… discipline our women.”

 

I narrowed my eyes at Dexter as he said that. Just try, mate, I thought to myself. See what happens. 

 

“Discipline?” Felicity’s eyes were wide and doe like. She trembled slightly, and this, combined with her lack of resistance, seemed to fuel Dexter’s tastes for corporal punishment. It seemed to give life to whatever dominant fantasies he had. 

 

“You wear my ring now. That engagement ring has been in the family for generations. It means something. You can’t just go about doing what you want now, Felicity. If you do, you can expect to be punished.” Dexter obviously had some fantasy in mind, for he didn’t waste time in then saying: “you know how the North American families deal with things like this. I’m going to have to spank you.”

 

Felicity’s lovely eyes widened even further in shock.

 

“Bend over and grip the edge of the sofa,” he said as he began to unbuckle his leather belt to use on her.

 

“Do you want another fucking slap, Dexter?” I said as I shot out from my sofa. “Because that’s what’s going to fucking happen if you start whipping Felicity with your leather belt.”

 

Dexter seemed shocked, and, remembering how I’d laid him out before, he instinctively backed away a couple of steps, turning to Chelsea for support, for God’s sake.

 

What sort of man turns to a woman for support when he’s about to be punched?

 

I stalked toward him and balled my fists. “I mean it. Lay that belt on Felicity, now, or after I’ve gone to bed, and you won’t be walking for days.”

 

“Roland, don’t!” said Chelsea as she, too, jumped up from the sofa. “And Dexter, this isn’t the time or place. Both of you, stand down, NOW!”

 

“Your father would turn in his grave, Chelsea if he could see how you disrespect our ways,” said Dexter, but he lowered his belt. “She wears my ring! I have every right! There are family traditions! I have every right!”

 

“Listen, you snivelling little shit, if Felicity wants to marry you - and I don’t understand why any woman would want that - then it’s none of my business, but if you don’t put that fucking belt away, I’m going to take yourtrousers down and fucking whip you with it. Comprende?”

 

Dexter’s face was bright red with anger and humiliation, because the truth is, he was afraid of me in any direct physical confrontation. Afraid of me, because he knew I didn’t care who his family was, and I didn’t play by their society rules.

 

I turned and walked towards the far door, intending to have nothing more to do with this mad house. I caught sight of Felicity for a moment, and I simply said to her, “don’t bother inviting me to the wedding.”

 

And then I brushed past Hawkins and left the house to get some fresh air. 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

“I’m leaving tomorrow, Chelsea.”

 

“Oh?” She sat down on the seat beside me on the outside veranda, smoothing back her long skirt, twenty minutes after the scene in the living room. I was still clearing my head and processing everything that had happened tonight and before tonight. And I suppose I had a hunch she was going to come out and speak to me. 

 

“No offence, but your family are mad. I can see you must have had a traumatic childhood as a girl, and I’m sorry about that, but I’m not going to be part of the madness.”

 

She rested her hand on the back of my hand and smiled. “All childhoods are troubled to some degree or other.”

 

“Not like this.” I glanced at her hand. It felt nice, actually, so I didn’t object. “Can you arrange a car for me in the morning, or will I have to book a taxi?”

 

“Do you have any idea what a taxi would cost?”

 

“That’s why I’m hoping you’ll give me a lift into town.”

 

“If that’s what you want, Roland. Are we going to see one another again?”

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Chelsea, but no. I don’t think we should.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“It’s all a bit…” I gazed at her. “You’re a beautiful woman. There’s no doubting that. But I want a simple life.”

 

“I could give you a simple life if that’s what you truly want.” She smiled at the thought. 

 

“I want to go back to New York and put all this behind me. Forget about Felicity. You’re too close to her. You’d remind me of her. Hell, I’d probably keep seeing her every now and then, as Mrs Dexter Bannon.”

 

“You’ve read her wrong,” said Chelsea. “She doesn’t love Dexter Bannon.”

 

“Well she’s dead set on marrying him. What is it? His money?”

 

Chelsea laughed softly. “Felicity doesn’t need his money. She isn’t poor.”

 

“Then what? What does she see in him?”

 

“Women will always be a mystery to your sex, Roland, no matter how much you try to understand our ways. You will never know what we truly want.” Chelsea rose from the garden seat. “I do find you handsome, you know. In a sort of clumsy, bullish, uncouth way.”

 

“Thanks, I think. Another time and another life, who knows.”

 

“Who knows,” she said as she blew me a kiss and walked away.

 

And that, I think, would have been it. I would have been driven into town in the morning, and I would never have seen the inside of a Kurii slaver ship, except that I had to linger outside for a while longer, just long enough to see Felicity again.

 

“Can we talk?” she said, softly. She had appeared without warning at the edge of the garden. I was in no mood to speak to her, but as soon as I saw her vulnerable features, and the pain behind her eyes, my sensible approach softened. She wore a simple dress now, that hung just past her knees. Gone was the corset for formal dinner. No doubt she had insisted she wanted to change. What Granny made of that, I don’t know, but Felicity was not a Frick, she was her own woman, and Granny had no formal authority over her, the way I suppose she did over Chelsea.

 

“Do we have anything to talk about?” I said. In the darkness I imagine getting up dramatically and saying whatever the modern day equivalent of “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” was. But Felicity looked so hurt, so vulnerable.

 

And damn it all, I still cared for her.

 

How had she gotten so deep under my skin?

 

“I haven’t long. Dex is talking on the phone. He thinks I’ve gone to bed.”

 

“Why haven’t you?”

 

“I had to speak to you. I had to! You’re leaving! Chelsea tells me you’re leaving in the morning?”

 

“I’d leave now, only that’s not an option.”

 

“I want to tell you everything. I will tell you everything. I’m not going to marry Dexter Bannon.”

 

“Really? Well, you scored a D+ when you tried to put him straight on that point earlier on.”

 

“I had to say that! You don’t understand!” Her voice rose a bit, though she was trying to be quiet.

 

“You’re right, I don’t understand. I really don’t  know what you want. You say one thing, then say another thing, and it goes back and forth, and I’m tired of it, Felicity. I’m just so damned tired.”

 

“I’m going to run away. I want to be with you, Roland. Only, it’s complicated. If I leave Dexter, will you promise to be there for me? I can’t do this without you.”

 

“How do I know you even mean this? Earlier on in the living room, it was like a punch to the gut.”

 

“He wanted to spank me, Roland! Do you honestly think I’d marry a man who would be willing to spank a woman?!”

 

“Well, I’d hope you wouldn’t. But why didn’t you just tell him?”

 

“Because… look, you just have to trust me. I’ll tell you everything. Everything, tomorrow night. And we’ll be together. I promise you. Just you and me. We’ll start a new life together. Don’t you want that?”

 

Despite everything she’d said and done, I knew I did want that.

 

“Don’t you have any feelings for me, Roland? Because I have such strong feelings for you.”

 

“It’s precisely because I have feelings for you that I can’t keep doing this. It hurts, Felicity. It really hurts.”

 

“Just one more day,” she said. “Let me make some final arrangements. And then it’ll be you and me. Meet me tomorrow night away from the Frick ranch.”

 

“Where?” I felt stupid even asking, even holding out some sliver of hope that she really meant this.

 

“There’s a hiking trail out past the ranch. I know a camping spot. I’ll text you the location. Meet me there tomorrow night. I’ll slip away and find you. And then no more Dexter Bannon. No more Fricks. Just you and me. A new life, Roland. Please tell me you still want to be with me?”

 

“I do. I’m a fool, for even thinking that, but I do. Felicity, don’t fuck around with my feelings again.”

 

“I won’t.” She glanced behind her as if expecting to be found out at any moment. “Tomorrow night at Stockton Ridge. It’s quiet and secluded. Hikers use it as a camping spot. I will be there.”

 

“If you’re not, don’t bother contacting me again.”

 

“Have faith in me, Roland. Tomorrow night everything changes for us. Everything.”