She’d been someone else, once.

Once upon a time she’d been a daughter, a granddaughter.  A student, a friend, an effervescent teenager with girlish dreams and schoolgirl crushes, with plans of having a career one day, a family.

Now, she was just his.

       In dreams, sometimes, she’d catch little flashes of the life she’d had before him.  A pale green bedspread and soft cotton sheets, a closet of clothes and a drawer of tangled jewelry.  A bathroom with the counter littered with makeup and brushes and bottles, pretty suncatchers in the window.

Every now and then, in the hazy world between sleep and wakefulness, she remembered the scent she used to spray on.  Light and flowery, flirty and fruity. Youthful and carefree, as she’d once been.  On rare occasions, deep in sleep, she’d catch a glimpse of faces that, if she let herself recognize them, she would know as the faces of her former family. 

She didn’t remember much about that anymore.

He, and the life he gave her, was all she knew.

She was just his.

Her eyes lifted from the floor to his face, briefly, and her lips curved quietly in a smile.  She shifted against the floor, pressing her cheek against the outside of his knee and let her eyes drift closed.

Blake glanced down at her, noted the smile.  He responded in kind, though she wouldn’t see, and his fingers absently drifted through the mane of her hair.  She was going to need another haircut, he noted.  It had been a while, and the ends were looking straggly.  He would see that it was taken care of next week.

Absently his hand drifted down the nape of her neck and over her shoulder to her upper arm, where a bruise rode her bicep.  Ugly and mottled, faded to a sickly yellow and green with the faintest trace of purple, he pressed his fingertips against it and watched her reaction, pleased when she didn’t wince.  She’d toughened, his good little fucktoy, from the untested thing she’d been at age sixteen.  She was still soft and malleable now, seven years later, retaining some of the innocence she’d had when he’d first acquired her, though she was a good student, and learned quickly.  He enjoyed that about her, just as he enjoyed the way she’d been molded and shaped by his lessons, by his hands.   Some toys, he knew, would shatter when broken.  Only the best would heal and grow in a new direction.

She hadn't broken; he'd been right about that.  As she'd grown, she'd been a delight to him, every step of the way. 

He’d known from the beginning that she would be worth the time, his time, and had been willing to invest in it.  He had been patient as he’d watched her, following her day in and day out until he knew her routines, her habits, her patterns,  patiently tracking her for weeks.  He’d  known her life, the ins and outs of it.  He knew the days she’d stayed after school, the friends she’d hung out with. The volatile fights with her grandmother, the selfish, self-centered actions of her parents. He’d bided his time, he'd waited, he'd bypassed more than one opportunity where the timing hadn’t been exactly perfect.  Instead he’d strategized, he’d prepared.

He’d wanted younger, originally.  He’d craved the barely-blooming femininity, the first hint of curves, the faintest puffy, budding of breasts.   He hadn’t anticipated the subtle little zip along his skin when he’d first seen her, his Elizabeth, hadn't expected the interest that had piqued when she’d noticed the book in his hands, had commented on it.  Faintly surprised that she’d read it, that she could speak so confident and knowledgeably about it when he'd pressed with questions, asked her impressions, he'd nodded, thanked her with his mind a jumble and electricity zipping under his skin.  Had watched the sway of her hips under her jacket as she rejoined her friends.  Had noted the name of her school and it’s mascot emblazoned across the back, had eased his way towards her friends at the front of the bookstore, enough to catch her first name. And had spent the next week unable to shake her from his mind, until he’d found himself first on the internet for the first leg of his research.  Handy thing, technology.  After the initial information hunt, he'd spent countless hours following, observing, recording, gathering anything and everything he could about Elizabeth MacBride.  It had taken innumerable hours to plan, and to prepare, and to watch, and to bide his time.

He’d waited, and now she was his.

He knew she wouldn’t think of the day he’d taken her.  Not now, with so many years gone by.  But he did, often.  The open friendliness on her face when he’d first approached, the breezy little way she’d tossed her hair back when he’d flirted, mildly.  The pleasure had shone in her eyes, then, naive and young and ripe with excitement at the male attention.  God, the way she’d flirted right back.  It still made him hard thinking about it.  She’d leaned over, just slightly, the innocent youth mimicking a siren’s knowing moves, inviting his glance down her shirt at the rounded little mounds of her breasts.  Her hip had cocked to the side, her knee turning out, one hand lifting to toy with her earring.  Her pink tongue had slid out to moisten the curves of her lips, and the knowing that he was about to claim her, to finally make her his had set his heart racing madly, had a hut surge of adrenaline, slicked with icy fear, churning through his blood.

Blake slid his palm back up to cup her cheek, cradling her face against his leg gently.  She’d fought him, his little Elizabeth, and fought him hard.  He’d underestimated her in the soft, plump innocence of youth; she’d very nearly unmanned him with a knee to the groin, and if he hadn’t read the intention under the terror in her eyes a split second beforehand she likely would have left him gasping in pain with empty hands.  They’d grappled, fought for long, sweaty moments in the dark hot of the summer night, and she'd given him quite a challenge to keep her from being able to alert someone before he’d gotten her secured in his car.  She’d screamed, God, had she ever screamed around the gag, endlessly.  End over end, gasping in great sobbing breaths, with terror rattling in her lungs, only to start anew.  His body already pumping with adrenaline, he'd jerked to the side of the road, tumbled out and scrambled on the soft shoulder to get to her when she’d choked and gurgled alarmingly, then started hollering again around the cloth in her mouth.  The sour smell of her vomit, coupled with the way she was throwing herself around in the backseat against the safety restraints had made his lips twist in a smile as he'd merged back onto the road.  She was a fighter.

The first week, after he’d taken her had been the most rawly, horrifically thrilling.  Chained in the windowless room, blindfolded, she had screamed until she was hoarse, clawed her hands emptily at the air, jerked against her bonds and the posts until her flesh was worn raw.  Tears and mucus had stained her face; her legs, skirt, panties were stained and crusted from the urine and feces she’d been unable to hold.  Her hair had gone matted and greasy, her skin holding a light sheen of sweat and oil under a layer of grime.  He'd spent most of every waking moment, and more than a few in sleep terrified of...anything.  Of someone hearing her, despite all his precautions.  Of someone having seen..something that linked him to the sensational case of the missing Elizabeth MacBride.  Three times a day he'd watched the news, scoured the papers and magazines, followed the case on the internet.  He made phone calls, carefully rehearsed ones.  He'd kept his finger on the pulse of the investigation in every way he could, for exactly one hour three times a day.  Then, with great care, he'd fold the magazines for the recycling, he'd flip off the television, clear his browser history, and he would go to her.

He was a creature of routine.  She would hear his footsteps first; he'd make sure of it, purposely changing into a pair of heavy boots that would echo down the hall. The click of the lock, the slight squeak of the hinges as the door would open, the quiet click of it closing.  He wouldn't said a word, never needed to.  The sounds of his approach said it all.   He would stand out of view, waiting silently as she fought and strained and shouted and pleaded and broke down crying, slumping against the bonds in desperation and heartbreak, begging for him to let her go.

Sometimes he masturbated, watching her as she wept.

       Five times a day he followed his routine and entered the room to feed her, shoving the food in her mouth when she’d started refusing to eat it, forcing the water down her throat before and after.  He allowed himself two additional visits, at night and first thing in the morning for water and adjust the restraints so she could lie down on the pallet he’d provided.  By the end of the sixth day, when he’d nearly lost his stomach at the stench before he’d even opened the door, he had broken the pattern and dragged the hose in and had washed the bare floors, then scrubbed them down with industrial strength cleaner and a scrubbing broom, and replaced her pallet.

He hadn’t touched her, hadn't spoken, in all those days.  He wouldn't, though he longed to speak to her, to touch her.  His prize.

It had taken longer than he’d expected, over a week before she’s stopped the screaming and crying and pleading when he entered.  As a reward, he’d cut away her clothes, leaving her bare to his gaze and frantically crying and pleading again at the ignominy.  He'd had to endure the stench of her unwashed body for almost another full week before she’d settled again and stopped her fits every time he entered the room.

He liked a girl with spirit; Elizabeth had it in spades.

The first time he’d spoken to her after bringing her home, she had jerked and recoiled as though he'd branded her as he informed her, conversationally, that he would be washing her, tending her wounds.

She’d trembled; he'd throbbed.

       Carefully leading her, mindful of her shaky legs to the large shower stall in the room, he re-secured her to the safety rails, then set about washing her, cleaning her gently, thoroughly with the soap and hair care items he’d carefully selected.   He’d used a soft, clean toilet mop to wash her, careful not to touch her with his own hands, aching to have that skin on skin contact, to feel the dewy softness of her, just once.  She’d cried, softly, tears mingling with the water dripping over her head as he’d repeated the washing, the shampooing three separate times to get her clean.  He’d dried her with a towel briskly, worked a comb through her the wild tangles of her hair, then led her back to the posts, this time adjusting the cuffs around her upper arms and thighs and her waist, carefully tending the raw wounds of her wrists and ankles.  He’d taken off her blindfold in the shower for the first time; as he tended her abraded skin he watched her as she took in her surroundings, saw her bewildered face crumple with dismay when she looked around for the first time.  The walls, painted a soft shade of grey, were to his mind almost pretty, and trimmed with crisp white molding.  The floor was concrete, stained in the current trend to produce an  intriguing artistic effect, all dark and light patterns that shifted and swirled across the smooth surface. He’d known it would be a sharper slap to the senses to have the soft and faintly elegant here.  A cage, no matter how pretty, was still a cage...and the prettier the cage, the more shocking to the senses the things that transpired within. 

       The shower and toilet stood against one wall, the door that led to the rest of the house on another, her chains coiled around the posts in the center of the room and nearby lay a clean pallet on the floor.  She’d looked at him then; he knew he would never forget the punch of her gray-blue gaze as her eyes met his for the first time, then filled and spilled over with tears.  Her body had slumped against the chains as she’d wept.

The adjusted cuffs gave her a little more freedom of movement, allowed her to squat to use the bucket he placed between her spread legs.  After another few days, he’d lengthened the chain to allow her to move to the pallet on her own whenever she wished.  And he’d waited; he was very, very good at waiting. Had it been three days?  Four?  She’d looked up at him, her eyes dry and pleading, and she’d asked, her voice rusty and polite, if she could speak.  There had been fire in her then, Blake thought now with a reminiscent smile.  Burning, banked.  Nerves and confusion had poured off of her, hatred and fear had still pumped off of her in waves.  Even then, Blake had known her better than she'd known herself, had anticipated her words.  He hadn’t expected them to be so eloquent, so rational and controlled.  Powerful, really, for one so young.  He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t made skin to skin contact with her since he’d dragged her into the house that very first night, after he’d secured the shackles, but when she’d made her argument for her release, he’d cupped her cheek, ignoring the way she’d flinched, and he smiled with regret.  And informed her that she was not going anywhere, ever.

She’d raged.  Lunged, kicked, lashed out.  She’d screamed, spit, knocked the makeshift toilet over.  She’d rattled the posts, the chains clanking against them as she strained and snapped.  He’d simply moved behind her and tightened the chains again, locked them down so she lost her freedom and movement, and had stood behind her, and stroked his cock to the glory of her shrieks, her begging, her body jiggling and rolling and jerking fiercely.   At long last, the storm of emotion subsided and when she was spent and sobbing quietly, he moved back around to her, studied her with cool eyes, purposely looking at the tears dripping off her chin and breasts, the mucus tracking out of her nostrils, the swollen eyes and red nose.  He gauged the look in her eyes, and knew they had long roads ahead of them both.  And he'd relished the journey.

Now, unseeingly, Blake stared down at his fingers tangled in the shining red gold curls as he threaded them back from her face, lost in the memories.  It had taken almost two years to fully break her.  He’d watched her, day after day, watched the fight leave her, the acceptance swim in.  Slowly, slowly, the hope died away.  In those two years he never clothed her, he hardly spoke to her, and never her name.  He bathed her daily, shaved her legs, armpits, and pussy every other day.  The fact that even after seven years with him she still blushed hotly when he decided to take the task over now and then made him chuckle. 

He’d seen the signs of change after the first full year; the slow metamorphosis.  The melancholy and despair in her eyes had come and gone.  The vacant, blank withdrawal that had lasted for months had been slowly replaced with a cautious watchfulness.  She’d jumped, lightly, the first time his finger had slid along her skin, testing, as he’d adjusted her cuffs after being bathed. Her eyes had met his, briefly, with no trace of fear, and his cock had throbbed, hard and insistent when she hadn’t recoiled, hadn’t flinched.  He’d wanted, right then and there, to take her.  Shove her to her knees, toss her to her back, fill her mouth, her body with him and pound out his desire for her, spill inside of her instead of in his own hand.  Sweating, fumbling, he’d finally gotten her secured and had nearly run form the room.  He’d leaned against her closed door, yanked his pants down and in a handful of quick jerks had splattered his climax on the opposite wall of the hallway, groaning in sharp pleasure. 

       His training of her had taken a new turn; starting with brief touches, he’d begun connecting himself to pleasure. Little by little, associating the simple pleasure of human contact in her mind with him, he allowed himself more time to touch her, to test them both.  He had ached to grab, to fill his hands with her.  His palms had tingled with the need to slap against her skin, his fingers had cramped with the desperate want to dig into her soft, full flesh, but he held himself back, keeping his control tightly leashed.  Her every response was closely measured.  The beading of her nipples when he stepped close and his body heat registered on her skin, the trembling of her thighs when he drew the razor over her tender, intimate flesh.  The flare of her nostrils when she caught his scent, the catch of her breath when his hand stroked over her the water-soft skin of her breasts, the taut curve of her ass.  Time after  time, day after day, week after week, month after month.  Little touches, little pleasures, for both of them.  His off-again, on-again girlfriend had complained, more than once, about his violent fucks and vicious orgasms, his rough and tumble use of her body; he’d had his little redheaded slave in his head, anticipation of using her churning in his gut.  The month before Elizabeth's birthday, his plan fully developed, he’d called it off with the girlfriend for good, and had ruthlessly refused to jack off to beat back the growling need that ripped at him. 
       It was all for her.

She’d been given more freedoms.  He had increased the amount of room she had to move around, so she could freely move between the bucket-toilet and her pallet.  He’d reduced the number of restraints until just an arm or leg was cuffed.  Those first days when he'd removed them, she’d stared at the cuffs lying on the floor with a blank expression; he’d been enormously pleased to find she had slipped them back on her own body sometime during the night to be able to sleep.

She was given small tasks and concessions when he was with her, and had extended the amount of time he was with her at each visit.  She had become very skilled at crawling across the floor with the handle of her bucket in her mouth to the small toilet near the shower, emptying it and bringing it back, the chains restricting her a foot away from being able to actually use the toilet in the room, leaving her with just the humiliation of her bucket routine.  He’d given her toilet paper sometime in the first months, and for all other cleaning in between the showers he granted her daily she was able to reach a washcloth and bowl near the shower, so that she could clean herself when necessary.  She had the privilege of combing her own hair, of brushing her own teeth.  He’d placed a small table and chair near the door, where he often sat and ate his meals.  She was allowed to sit at his feet and ate as he did, unless he was feeding her by hand.  He found that he enjoyed doing so. 

He’d also found, to his surprise, that he liked when they conversed.  He’d given her books, and she could discuss them with intelligence.  Over the years he'd taken it upon himself to introduce her to classic literature, open her to new thoughts and ideas with tomes on science and philosophy, to keep her mind sharp with studies of mathematics, with logic puzzles. He encouraged her to discuss her thoughts, to voice her opinions.   The first time she’d raised her voice in argument, she’d been as surprised as he, and moreso when he'd laughed, loudly.  He knew some would discourage allowing their slave to talk out of turn, much less argue and debate with enthusiasm.  He, however, enjoyed her spirit, enjoyed watching her come out of the shell she had retracted into.  She was passionate and she was feisty, and he nurtured that in her.  As she had progressed, the more she'd tested and pushed, the more he'd enjoyed it.  It had made her punishments and training that much more delicious.

He’d given her a mattress and box spring around the dawning of the eighteenth month after he'd taken her.

For her eighteenth birthday, he raped her. 

He’d ached for her before then.  He’d thought she was ready, that they both were ready, but he’d found, somehow, that the waiting was imperative.  There would be others that would be younger, and he would have them another time.  For her, with her, it had been an imperative that they wait.  Shifting in the chair now, Blake cupped a hand under her chin and lifted her face to his, stroking a thumb across her lips, feeling his cock stir against his fly as he remembered.  She’d been broken, and she’d been mending.  And the time had been right. 

By that point, just a few months shy of two years with him, she was sexually responsive to him, almost instantly so.  More often than not, when his hands had slipped over her wet and soapy body, the scent of her would rise with the steam and he could hear her quiet catch of breath.  When he'd rubbed her down after a shower, his knuckles dragging against her slit as he toweled off her thighs, they would come away with a fragrant wetness that drove him insane.  Her nipples would contract so tightly he could literally see them throb, her skin would erupt in goosebumps, her pale skin would flush pink with heat and she would strain towards him if he lingered.  More than once, he'd almost broken down and sucked his knuckles clean; more than once, he'd almost tossed it all aside and taken her where she stood.  She would smile in greeting when he opened the door, she would frown, slightly, and sometimes pout when he took his leave.  She'd made feeding her a near-erotic experience, her tongue flicking the bits of food from his fingers.  When she sucked them lightly, with that expression that let him know she was exploring his reaction, he had to fight to keep from ramming his fingers down her throat to test her gag reflex. 

On that particular day, with the disquieting gray and blue of her gaze studying him, shining with the tinges of pleasure at his arrival, he'd stood, watching her, until the smile had slipped off her face, until she'd shifted on her knees on the hard floor and the faintest edge of confusion had shown.  And he'd unleashed the control he'd held tightly to for so long. 

There was a growl, animal-like and feral, that he didn't recognize as his own.  In three long strides her was on her, his belt whipped out of its loops and snapping around her neck.  He didn't miss the surprise in her eyes, the flicker of fear- it only spurred him on.  The belt fastened around her neck, he flipped her with a hard shove, tumbling her backwards on the mattress, on her before she'd even bounced on the springs. His hands gripped her wrists, yanking the roughly above her head without finesse, his hips lifting to wrestle his cock free.  She writhed, squirmed, twisted.  She panted, staring up at him, grunting as she tried to squirm free, her eyes wide with alarm and darkening with a heat that drove him higher. Her mouth moved in words he couldn't hear over the rush of blood in his head.  Mindless, beyond thought,  he slapped a hand over her mouth, reared back and drove into her.   

       She shrieked against his hand, her eyes wheeling and shocky with the lance of pain, arching up and away, yanking on her wrists.  He pushed through the barrier of her innocence in a heartbeat, groaning as he speared into her body and forced her to open.  He didn't wait, he couldn't wait.  His hips jerked back and plunged again, and again, and again.  His mouth was on her breasts, biting, suckling, tasting the salt of her struggle and the sweet of her skin. Her scent filled his head, youthful and wild, hinting of musk and panic.  He gasped it in, grunted it out, and exploded his climax inside her with an intensity that had his eyes rolling back in his head and his body convulsing on hers for long moments as he poured into her, jet after jet of it flooding her, filling her.

       Blake looked at her now, the light streaming through the window as she sat at his feet, her cheek rubbing absently against his thigh just above his knee as she watched him.  Her hand crept up along the inside of his leg, fingertips dancing against the fabric as she inched them higher.  Her eyes had darkened, he could feel the anticipation simmering between them.  She picked up on him so easily, was so attuned to him.         

       He slid his hand to the back of her head and grabbed a handful of her hair, jerking her head back with a light yank that pleased them both, waiting until the light and heat flashed in her eyes.  "To your room, slut." 

       Satisfied, he watched as she turned on her knees, her body moving fluidly as she pushed to standing and strode across the room without a backward glance, her hair streaming past her shoulders, her hips swaying as she moved.  His cock gave a twitch and throbbed again, and he pulled himself out of the chair and followed her.

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