The Shadow in the Dark Chapter Thirty Four

 

The woman with the whip stepped forward, her presence suddenly overwhelming in the chamber. With a flick of her wrist, the coil of the whip unravelled, until the end trailed across the floor. I felt a shiver travel down my spine as her shadow fell across me. Her dark eyes appraised me coolly, and I understood, instinctively, that what she said next was not a request.

 

“Kneel,” she commanded. “Nadu. Let us see how your muscle memory is.” I sank to my knees on the polished mosaic floor, the red silk tunic sliding slightly against my bare legs, the steel collar pressing uncomfortably at my throat. My hands rested lightly on my thighs, though every instinct in me bristled against the submission I was being forced into. To my surprise my posture seemed instinctive, as if I had knelt like this many times before. I felt my knees close tightly together as I was in the vicinity of a woman. A curious thought at the back of my mind made me think the posture might be very different if I knelt before a man.

 

“It’s strangely instinctive, isn’t it, Ashlee? The way your body understands a word you couldn’t define to me.”

 

I suddenly realised I didn’t know what nadu meant – though there was a vague sensation I’d come across the word before - but I was kneeling instinctively on my heels, my back straight, hands on my thighs, my head up, and my knees pressed tightly together. 

 

She circled me slowly, heels clicking softly against the stone, the whip trailing loosely from her right hand. Her gaze was meticulous, taking in every detail - the way I held myself, the curve of my shoulders, the line of my neck, even the nervous tremor of my hands.

 

“You are a curvaceous thing,” she said finally, almost to herself, as though cataloguing me in her mind. “Eyes alert, hair full, skin soft… posture promising.” Her voice was cold, clinical, as though she were appraising an object rather than a person. “No wonder he lusts after you. You filthy little slut.”

 

“Where am I?

 

“Home,” she said. 

 

“I know you,” I said. 

 

“So you should. I am a mistress within this house, after all.” She regarded the Roman surroundings. 

 

“You were… I saw you that night… Christmas Eve… the wine bar… you knew Michael. How did you know Michael?”

 

“Enough,” she said. The whip cracked once against the mosaic floor in warning. “You wear a collar. I do not. You understand the distinction?”

 

My fingers touched the steel ring about my throat again. “It’s locked,” I said.

 

“Of course.” The woman smiled in a cruel fashion. “It belongs on you. Filthy little slut.” 

 

I thought back to that book that had been passed around at Mount Holyoke college. This collar, this silk I wore… it seemed vaguely reminiscent of that erotic story. Women wore collars in that book. Well, some of them did.

 

“I despise you, Ashlee. He loves me. We’re perfect for one another, but when you’re here in your collar and your slutty silks, he seems to lose his mind.” The woman paced around me as I knelt. Her whip trailed across the floor as she moved. “He’s a great man. And he needs me. Do you understand, you slutty little bitch?” The woman turned swiftly on the balls of her feet and raised her whip hand in menace. I shrank back on the mosaic floor. “Everything has been so good these past few weeks. It’s been perfect. But only because you haven’t been here.” Her face scowled at me. 

 

“I didn’t ask to come here,’ I said.

 

“LIAR! I know your type, you shameless slut. Striving so hard to be found needy by a master. Men are easily distracted. It’s hardly their fault. They are men after all. They need Free Women to protect them from girls like you.” She rounded on me and thrust her coiled whip under my chin, lifting my face so she could look directly down at me. “Why did you have to have auburn hair!” she snarled. “How is any Free Woman supposed to compete with a slave with auburn hair! I should shave your head, burn your hair, and see what he thinks of you then!” she snarled. “Yes – I’ll shave your head, and…”

 

“You will not do that, Lady,” said a man who emerged from behind one of the distant pillars.

 

“Janus!” The woman seemed surprised. She moved her whip hand away and regarded the newcomer. “What are you doing here, skulking about.”

 

I was still on my knees when the argument began, my pulse roaring in my ears. The woman with the whip had drawn close enough that I could smell the leather, her hand lifting as if she meant to gather my hair. I felt a sharp, irrational panic at the thought of my auburn hair being cut away and burned - some final erasure of who I had been.

That was when he stepped out from behind one of the marble pillars.

 

For a second I thought the villa itself had exhaled him into the room.

 

He was tall - taller than anyone else I’d seen here - and built with the kind of rugged solidity that made him look less like a man and more like a statue that had decided to walk. His shoulders were broad beneath a draped, dark Roman-style tunic, and his chest was powerfully muscled in a way that suggested long habit rather than vanity. There was nothing soft about him. Even standing still, he gave the impression of weight, of gravity.

 

His face was what held me. Strong jaw, a straight, slightly hooked nose, cheekbones that caught the light sharply. His skin was sun-warmed bronze, weathered, as though he belonged more to open air and stone than to enclosed rooms. A short, neatly kept beard framed his mouth and chin, dark with faint threads of silver, and his hair was cut close at the sides, longer on top, falling back in a disciplined sweep. His eyes - dark, steady, unsettlingly calm - moved first to the woman with the whip, then to me, and I felt as though I had been measured in that single glance.

 

“Enough,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “You are not allowed to do that.”

 

The woman spun toward him, fury flashing across her face. “Do not tell me what I am allowed to do, Janus,” she snapped. “I am a mistress of this house.”

 

Janus didn’t even raise his voice. He simply looked at her, as if her anger were an inconvenience rather than a threat. “Mistress,” he repeated, almost thoughtfully. “Yes. But not the Master. And you know that distinction matters.”

 

Something in the air shifted. The woman’s grip on the whip tightened, but she did not move toward me again. For the first time since I’d woken in this place, I felt a strange, fragile thread of relief - thin as silk, but real - because whatever this man was, and whoever he served, he had just drawn a line between me and something far worse.

 

And I could not stop staring at him, at Janus, the way the light cut across the hard planes of his face, the way he stood like a gate that would not be easily forced.

 

“You are undermining my authority, Janus,” said the woman, tersely. “She is a slave. I have rights over the household slaves.”

 

Janus seemed to ignore her. “Two of the house kajirae are to prepare her for meeting her master. She will need cosmetics and perfume, and perhaps be reminded how to move sensuously.”

 

I noticed the woman’s knuckles grow white as she gripped the handle of her whip. She didn’t seem to like the idea of me meeting my so-called master.

 

“Has he sent for me?” she asked Janus. “Has he enquired after me?”

 

“No. You will not be needed today.”

 

“I see.” Her voice was bitter. “And tonight?”

 

“You will not be needed tonight, ether.”

 

A look of complete hatred was evident on the woman’s face as she glared at me. “I suppose he will be with her.”

 

“You ask too many questions, Lady. Remember your place.” Janus walked towards me with a leash in his hand.

 

“I am a Free Woman,” said the woman. “My place is by his side. I have been loyal to him for many years.”

 

“You are a woman in this house who happens to be free,” said Janus. “Such things are never final. Be careful how you speak to me. I was not born here.”

 

“I know that.” The woman stepped aside, suddenly fearing his authority, which was the authority of a man confident in the role given to him by nature.

 

I didn’t move as he clipped the end of the leash to my collar ring and, then, with a slight leading pressure on the leash, I stood up and permitted myself to follow him. 

 

“Thank you,” I said as the huge man led me through the passageways of this ancient looking property. “She was going to…”

 

“You auburn hair enhances your value.” The way he said it made me sound like I was a commodity that could be bought or sold. I tossed my hair as I walked beside him, the leash held loosely in his hand. “It is interesting that the woman is jealous of a slave. She feels herself in competition with you, it seems. I am losing what small patience I ever had for her.”

 

“I know her,” I said. “Why do I know her?” I paused and added, “Do you know me?”

 

“Yes.” There was something in the way the man said that. 

 

“How? Who am I to you?”

 

He stopped for a moment and then regarded me again. There was something about his eyes. “You do know me, don’t you? But I don’t know you?”

 

And then to my utter surprise, he pressed me against a wall and ravished my lips with his own. My body was on fire by the time he released me, and I leaned against the wall gasping for breath. I squeezed my thighs together, imagining that he did far more to me than simply master me with his kisses.

 

“Does that answer your question, kajira?”

 

He tugged the leash again and I was made to follow him, stumbling at first, but now I had a thousand questions clamouring inside my head. Many of them began with the words who, what and why. 

 

To my embarrassment I realised his kisses had aroused me. How was that possible? I felt the difference in my body right away. My skin was tingling, my breath came faster, deeper. I felt a sensitivity between my thighs that was incredibly new to me. My body was telling me – no, screaming at me – that I wanted to be penetrated. It was an incredible feeling to be clearly and unambiguously ready for sex, without any doubts or insecurities in the way. I touched the smooth steel of my collar and tried to comprehend what had changed. I had never felt this way before. Never.

 

I was delivered to them like an object being handed over.

 

Janus brought me through a narrow archway and into a softly lit chamber where two young women were already waiting. Both of them were barefoot on the warm stone, both of them wearing the same red silk tunics and the same smooth steel collars that marked me as something owned rather than someone free.

 

One was blonde. The other had medium-brown hair that fell in gentle waves around her shoulders.

 

My heart jolted painfully as I recognised them.

 

“Julia?” I breathed. “And Shelley…?”

 

Julia was the girl from the police cell in South Hadley, from that cold Christmas Eve so many years ago when I’d been molested in a strip search and then locked up, terrified and confused and certain my life had already gone wrong in some fundamental way. Shelley was the hiker I had seen in the Massachusetts woods, the woman who had seemed to vanish into trouble and fear before my eyes.

 

And here they were, alive and calm and smiling at me as if nothing about this was strange.

 

They stepped forward together, their movements fluid and practiced, like dancers who already knew the choreography.

 

“Well, look who finally came back to us,” Julia said lightly, circling me. Her eyes flicked over the collar at my throat and the bare skin revealed by my tunic with unmistakable satisfaction. “We wondered how long it would take.”

 

Shelley reached out and touched my arm, not unkindly but not asking permission either. “You always do take the scenic route, Ashlee,” she added, a faint smile playing at her lips.

 

“I - I don’t understand,” I said, turning from one to the other. “You were in South Hadley. You were in the woods. How can you be here?”

 

They exchanged a look that felt loaded with private amusement. Shelley (with two e’s) laughed softly. 

 

“Come on, Ashlee,” Julia said, taking hold of my leash. “You’re home now. That’s what matters.”

 

Together they began to guide me deeper into the villa, past columns and painted walls and sun-warmed tiles that made the whole place feel impossibly alive. Shelley took my other arm, steering me gently but firmly, as if there were no question that I was going where they wanted me to go.

 

“We’re going to make you beautiful before you see your Master,” Shelley said brightly.

 

“I don’t have a Master,” I said, dread blooming in my chest. Where am I? What is going on? Why am I wearing a…”

 

“Slave collar,” said Shelley. She touched my arm softly. “Because you’re a slave, Ashlee. Like us.”

 

“No.” This was madness. Where was I? Where was Martin, come to that!

 

“Where is Martin?” I demanded. “I was with Martin in the woods, and…”

 

“Our Master has been looking forward to seeing you,” Julia replied, glancing back at me over her shoulder. There was something in her expression that made my stomach tighten.

 

“It’s going to be a wonderful evening,” Shelley added, as if she were talking about a dinner party instead of… whatever this was.

 

I tried to pull my arms back, to slow them down, to make them look at me properly. “Where is this place? What is happening to me? You both know me - don’t you? You know I wouldn’t just…”

 

“Tuck your chin up,” Julia interrupted sharply. She stopped and lifted my jaw with two fingers, adjusting my posture as if I were a mannequin. “You don’t want to look so slouched. Grace matters in a kajira. You have auburn hair. That means there are standards.”

 

“She’s so lucky to have that hair,” added Shelley. “I would kill for auburn hair.”

 

“And soften your steps,” Julia said, nudging my foot into a more delicate position. “You walk like you’re bracing for a fight. That’s not very… inviting.”

 

My frustration flared hot and bright. “I don’t care about being inviting! I just want answers!”

 

They started walking again, ignoring the protest in my voice.

 

“Relax your shoulders,” Julia said.

 

“Let your hips move,” Shelley added. “You’re meant to be seen. Men will watch you.”

 

Every question I tried to ask was swallowed up by another correction, another small humiliation dressed up as guidance. My fear twisted into anger, and I could feel tears stinging at the backs of my eyes.

 

“Please,” I said, my voice breaking. “Just tell me where I am.”

 

Julia finally sighed, as if indulging a child.

 

“Tuscany,” she said. “You’re in Tuscany, of course.”

 

The word landed with a surreal thud. “That’s impossible. I was in Massachusetts. It was cold. It was raining.”

 

Julia stopped and turned to face me fully, her gaze suddenly hard. “Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” she said. “You’d do well to remember that.”

 

Shelley reached forward, put her arms about my body and suddenly kissed me full on the lips. I struggled, taken by surprise, alarmed, but again I felt my body seemingly ripen. What was happening to me? Then, Julia came behind me and also began kissing me, and I felt even more aroused, as if my body was trained to respond to any such contact. 

 

“No! What are you doing!” Despite myself, I pulled free, and heard the two girls laughing.

 

“Perhaps later, when we are alone in our pens,” said Julia. “When she feels cold and alone.” 

 

“I’m not a lesbian,” I said. 

 

“Oh, listen to her protest - I’m not a lesbian – I’m not - I really haven’t been trained to please women as well as men - I don’t do that!”

 

“I’m not trained!” I snarled. “What is going on?!”

 

They led me through a long colonnade where the sunlight fell in pale stripes across the mosaic floor. Julia and Shelley flanked me on either side, their hands light but insistent on my arms, guiding my pace as though I were something fragile and improperly balanced.

 

“Slow down,” Julia said. “You rush everywhere. It’s not elegant.”

 

“And lift your chin,” Shelley added. “Men notice posture. You don’t want to look like you’re apologizing for existing.”

 

“I’m not here to be noticed by men,” I snapped, but they barely reacted.

 

Julia gave a small, pitying laugh. “Oh, Ashlee. That’s exactly what you’re here for.”

 

They stopped in a smaller antechamber where bronze mirrors lined the walls. My reflection startled me - loose red hair, bare feet, the red silk tunic clinging to me in a way that made me feel exposed and unreal, and the steel collar glinting at my throat. But most of all, I had the look of a woman who was flushed with desperate sexual need. A fire was burning between my thighs and it didn’t seem to extinguish easily. 

 

Shelley moved behind me and gently rearranged my hair, smoothing it over my shoulders. “You let it tangle too easily. You should treat it as something precious. Soft things attract attention.”

 

“Stand straighter,” Julia said from the front, lightly pressing my shoulders back. “You’re always collapsing inward. That makes you look small and defensive. You should look… open.”

 

“Open to what?” I asked bitterly.

 

“To being admired,” Shelley said simply. “To being taken. To being used.”

 

They walked me forward a few steps, adjusting me as they went - my stance, the way I placed my feet, the angle of my shoulders. I felt ‘rusty’ to begin with, but then to my amazement some form of muscle memory began to reassert itself and I began to move with elegance and sensuality. 

 

“Better. Much better. You were walking, at first, like you’re trying to disappear,” Julia said. “That’s not how someone wears a collar.”

 

I froze. “What does that even mean?”

 

“It means,” Shelley said gently, “that when you’re claimed, you don’t shrink. You present yourself. You let people see what belongs to them. Your relish their touch. You long to be had.”

 

Anger surged in my chest. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

 

Julia met my gaze coolly. “You wouldn’t be wearing that collar if that were true.”

 

They began leading me again, deeper into the villa, past painted walls that seemed to watch us as we moved.

 

“You have so much potential,” Shelley said. “But you fight it. You hold everything tight, like you’re afraid to be wanted.”

 

“That fear makes you stiff,” Julia added. “It makes you awkward. You need to learn how to be graceful.”

 

I shook my head. “You’re not making any sense. Please, just tell me what this place is. Why you’re doing this.”

 

“Tuscany,” Julia said again, almost absently. “That’s all you need to know.”

 

“And what about me?” I demanded. “What am I supposed to be here?”

 

They exchanged another look—one that felt far too knowing.

 

“Beautiful,” Shelley said.

 

“Composed,” Julia added.

 

“And quiet,” Shelley finished.

 

I stopped walking. “I won’t be quiet.”

 

Julia turned slowly toward me. Her voice dropped, still calm, but edged with something that made my stomach knot.

 

“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” she said. “And neither is defiance.”

 

The collar felt suddenly very tight.

 

They settled me onto a low cushioned stool in front of one of the bronze mirrors, the air in the chamber warm and faintly scented with oils and incense. Julia knelt to my left, Shelley to my right, moving with the quiet confidence of people who had done this many times before. I felt strangely exposed sitting there in the red silk tunic and steel collar, my bare feet tucked beneath me, my reflection staring back with wide, uncertain eyes.

 

“Hold still,” Julia murmured, already lifting a small lacquered tray covered in little pots and brushes. “You fidget when you’re nervous. That makes everything harder.”

 

Shelley smiled faintly as she picked up a wide, soft brush and dipped it into a pale powder. “We’re going to give you a proper face,” she said, almost cheerfully. “None of that half-washed, half-natural look you always insist on.”

 

I opened my mouth to protest, but Shelley was already brushing the powder across my cheeks and forehead, light and rhythmic. The texture was soft, almost velvety, but the layer it left behind felt thick, as though I were being covered in something that wasn’t really mine.

 

“This evens out your skin,” she explained. “Men like smoothness. It makes you look calm, untroubled.”

 

Julia uncapped a small vial and dabbed a darker cream beneath my eyes, blending it carefully with her fingertips. “And this brings out the shape of your eyes,” she said. “You have very expressive eyes, Ashlee. You should use them.”

 

Her touch was gentle but impersonal, as if I were a doll being dressed rather than a person being prepared. I watched them in the mirror as they worked, the two of them so close, their faces focused and intent.

 

Shelley switched to a fine brush and began sweeping dark pigment along my lashes and lids. “Look up,” she instructed. “No, not like that. Softer. Like you’re waiting for someone.”

 

I tried to follow her direction, feeling ridiculous and powerless all at once. My eyelids grew heavy under the layers of shadow and liner.

 

“This will make them seem larger,” Julia added, selecting a deep red pigment for my lips. “More inviting.”

 

She traced the colour carefully along my mouth, the brush cool and precise. I could smell the faint sweetness of the cosmetic as it touched my skin.

 

“You always hide your mouth,” Shelley said, brushing my hair out over my shoulders. “You press your lips together like you’re afraid someone might read you. That won’t do. Men will want to taste you.”

 

She ran a comb through my loose hair, slow and deliberate, smoothing out every knot. Each stroke was accompanied by quiet commentary.

 

“Let it fall,” she murmured. “Long hair frames the face. It makes you look soft.”

 

Julia finished my lips, stepping back to examine her work. “There. See? Already you look more… inviting.”

 

I barely recognized the girl in the mirror anymore. Her eyes were dark and dramatic, her skin pale and perfect, her lips a vivid red that made the rest of her face seem almost porcelain. The steel collar at her throat gleamed against the silk of her tunic, turning her into something both ornamental and trapped.

 

Shelley gathered my hair and brushed it again, slower now. “You should learn to enjoy this,” she said quietly. “Being cared for. Being shaped.”

 

I swallowed, my throat tight beneath the collar. “I don’t want to be shaped,” I whispered.

 

Julia and Shelley exchanged a small, knowing look as they finished their work, and for the first time I felt a chilling certainty that what I wanted had very little to do with what was about to happen.

 

“There,” said Julia with a degree of satisfaction. “Look at you, Ashlee, pretty as a picture, and ready at last to meet your Master…”

 

TO BE CONCLUDED.