The Love Of Money - S02 E168

Story 2 months ago

The Love Of Money - S02 E168

Read Story; SEASON 2 EPISODE 168

“That would be mine,” Helen said. I detected a hint of smugness in her voice. Over the months I’d gotten to know Helen, I’d discovered that she could be quite proud of her imagination when it came to breaking women.

I started to look over at her, but Chloe caught my eye. She was sitting in an armchair, arms crossed over her chest and legs crossed at her ankles as she watched us in silence. She met my eyes with a sort of challenge in them, and I tried my best to hide an amused smile at seeing her here as some sort of spectator.

“I thought she might benefit from seeing some of our handiwork as well,” Helen said, drawing my attention back to her. She’d rested one arm lightly against Bobbi’s shoulder, adding a touch of weight, which probably made it much more difficult to maintain her position on the Aframe. Helen lowered the hand dangling from Bobbi’s shoulder to her modest breast, her fingertips tracing over the angry red lines etched into Bobbi’s pale skin.

Bobbi’s nostrils flared as her legs clung to the sides of the Aframe for dear life, but the look in her eyes could have cut diamond.

Only, it wasn’t directed at me or her beloved mistress. She was staring daggers at Carla, who whimpered beside me.

Turning my attention back to the guest of the hour, I noticed trails of tears on cheeks that had been prepared with blush and foundation. She’d freshened up for me.

“Does she have any idea where she is or who’s here right now?” I asked, circling the bound woman.

“No, sir,” Helen said, her tone more subservient to match where we were. “I made sure she could hear the kitten while I made her scream. That’s the only hint she’s received of where she might be.”

I shook my head, finishing my circuit around the pillory, pausing beside it to look at Helen in wonder. I hadn’t asked for any of that, and yet Helen had taken the initiative to really drive home the situation to our guest.

Reaching down, I ran my finger across Carla’s lips, collecting some of the drool that had slipped around the black ball gag in her mouth. I wiped it off on the bound woman’s cheek, eliciting a protest from her.

“Good girl,” I muttered to Helen, my gaze fixed on Tanaka’s wife. “Shall we begin?”

I reached out with one finger and slid a damp lock of hair off her forehead, tucking it into the high-quality earmuffs she was wearing. The first kiss of my fingers against her temple made her flinch, attempting to pull away from my touch. A small whimper escaped her.

Never, in all the time I’d known Carla, would I have pictured her like this—afraid… trembling. Her fingers shook, and her breath came out in shallow stutters. I wondered if she’d ever been this scared in her life.

“What are you going to do to her?” Erin’s voice was tense.

Things like this excited my little assistant, but she didn’t share Helen’s enthusiasm for these darker pleasures. She was like a child dancing around the edges of the forbidden, but afraid she might be caught.

I glanced up at her, and sure enough, she watched—transfixed. The tip of her tongue darted across her lips. She was excited, but that excitement was tinged with nervousness.

“I’m only going to scare her a little,” I said. “We’ll see where that gets her. If that doesn’t work…”

I looked back down at the beauty in the stocks. “Well. We’ll cross that bridge.”

I slid my fingers under one side of the earmuffs and slipped them off her head. She groaned in relief as the subtle sounds she’d been deprived of met her ears.

Dropping to one knee so that my face was level with hers, I took her chin between my forefinger and thumb.

“Evening, Carla.”

My voice came out low—little more than a growl. She probably almost felt it as much as heard it. “Did you miss me?”

She tried to turn her head slightly toward me, attempting to mumble something lost behind the ball gag still secured in her mouth.

I slid my hand from her chin to cup her cheek, keeping her ear close to my mouth.

“I’ve been thinking about your offer. I’m still not sure about it. You made some interesting… claims.”

Pressing a soft kiss to her ear, I murmured, “I decided to put them to a test. My way. If you amuse me, then maybe I won’t deliver you back to your husband.”

My hand on the other side of her face slid up into her hair, fingers curling around her bottle-blonde locks. I tightened my grasp.

“But you’ll have to prove yourself.”

I released her, stood up, and pulled the blindfold off her head. It left her hair disheveled. That, combined with her wide-eyed, rapidly blinking stare, made her look about as far from the well-put-together courtesan I’d come to know as one could get.

The first thing she saw was Bobbi—her breasts and stomach striped, her eyes mad as she balanced precariously on the sawhorse.

Carla’s breathing ratcheted, and I was briefly worried she might hyperventilate and pass out.

Leaning against the stocks beside her, I draped a hand over her face and placed two fingers beneath her chin, nudging her to look up and away from my kitten.

“Hey. Hey, Carla. Look at me.”

Carla cast her eyes up as she tilted her head back as much as she could. Her big brown eyes stared at me through her fringe of blond bangs, blinking rapidly to keep them out of her vision.

“You don’t have to worry about her,” I said. “Do what you’re told, and you don’t have to worry about anything. Understand?”

She simply stared up at me, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, streaking them with faded black lines.

“Nod if you understand,” I said.

She did—small, jerky movements that could barely be described as an affirmative.

Helen wanted to touch herself. I could see it painted all over her face. Her eyes were blazing with lust. Erin was equally turned on, but it was accompanied by a fascination tinged with fear, and I could never quite tell if she was more aroused by the idea of being in Helen’s shoes… or Carla’s.

And then there was Chloe—still watching casually from the armchair. For all I could tell, she was watching some boring documentary on Netflix. She could have been hiding how she felt, but it was also just as likely that this was child’s play to someone who had spent years in clandestine operations.

I crouched back down in front of Carla, blocking her view of Bobbi. Her eyes followed me as I dropped to her level and reached up to unfasten the gag around her head. “Now… before we run you through any audition, I have a few questions for you. I’m going to remove this, but if I hear any bullshit from you, we’re done. You burned through any second, third, or fourth chances when you tricked me, then tried to extort me.”

The fastener came loose, and I pulled the gag from her mouth, her dry lips briefly clinging to the rubber surface as I pulled it free.

There was a hitch in her breathing as she sucked in a lungful of air through her mouth and wet her lips. Then she parted them as if to say something. I placed my thumb over them.

“Remember. You only get one shot at this.”

I was treating her so differently than my words… something I’d picked up from Helen. I always found the way she treated Bobbi—like a tender mother while punishing her—highly erotic, but also a little disturbing.

I only hoped I did it justice.

My thumb slid across her lips and brushed away some tears from her cheek.

A beat of silence passed between us; you could hear the whisper of the air conditioning from somewhere in the distance.

“What,” she whispered. “What do you…”

Her face crumpled, and she began to weep openly, her head dropping and causing her blonde hair to fall around her like a shimmering curtain.

I heard Erin gasp in pity and glared at her. This woman didn’t deserve anyone’s empathy.

Carla Tanaka was likely responsible for the war between me and her husband—a war that had nearly cost the lives of me, Chloe, and Shea. It could have cost Erin hers if the assassin they found at lunch had been successful.

Hell… it had cost us the lives of Astrid’s pilot—the one Ryo had shot.

I turned my attention back to Carla, and even though I was mostly happy to see her so upset, there was a small part of me that felt a little sick that I’d taken someone who seemed so strong and in control of herself and broken them so easily. This wasn’t the Carla Tanka I remembered. I’d expected iron under that velvet. Instead, all I found were tears and panic.

 “Hey,” I said, looking for something to distract me from that thought. “Look at me.”

She did.

All I could say was that as stunning as Carla was… she had a hell of an ugly cry face.

“I’ve got questions,” I said.

“P-please!” Carla said and then sobbed again. “Please… I’ll… I’ll tell you whatever you want. You don’t have to do this!”

The hell I didn’t! Just a few short hours ago, the woman had threatened to be a veritable Fort Knox if I didn’t become her new sugar daddy!

“I do have to do this,” I said. “You made sure of that this morning. Then I found this.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out Ryo’s phone, unlocking it as I said, “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you when you’re smiling, so you’ll have to forgive me for making you cry.”

I opened one of the images of Carla and Amber and showed it to her. “What is this?” I asked.

The screen illuminated Carla’s face, highlighting the worry lines and blotchiness from her crying. Her eyes darted around the image, and I watched every single shift in her demeanor… every microexpression.

She tried to take a breath and hiccuped as she looked up at me. “I—I don’t get it. I think that was… Atlantic City? Like, a year ago?”

“I don’t care where it was! I want to know why the fuck you were there with her!”

She blinked up at me. “What?”

“Jesus, Carla! Amber! Why the fuck were you with Amber!?”

Carla looked around the room at the others as if they would be able to fill in whatever gaps were missing in her understanding. “I thought this was about Hiro…”

I grabbed her face and forced her to look at me. “Right now, I want to know why you were hanging out with Amber.”

Holding her chin firmly in my grip caused her lips to partially pucker. She pressed them together, her eyes narrowing as tears began to stream out of them. I high-pitched whine escaped her throat.

“Please, Marcus… I don’t know what you want!”

“Amber!” I shouted.

Carla flinched. So did Helen and Erin.

“We’re just friends!” Carla wailed. “We started hanging out a couple of years ago!”

“What else?” I prodded. “When did you last hang out? Like in that photo?”

“A month ago?” Carla said, sounding unsure.

“When, exactly!” I probably looked as unhinged as I sounded to myself.

“I-I-I… I don’t know! I think maybe around the beginning of August?”

Around the time when I was in Vegas. Fucking goddamn Amber… she was there. She was the one questioning me, and having Carla as an alibi wasn’t going to persuade me otherwise.

“What did you guys talk about?”

“Why do you—”

“What did you talk about?” I repeated, trying really hard not to lose my cool.