Highest Bidder Collection - Lauren Landish Page 0,117

ago. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

I close my eyes, whispering the poem I’ve memorized and letting the calming cadence block out all other thoughts until my heart has settled and the rush of adrenaline has waned. I just need to try to get some sleep.

Sighing, I crawl off my small bed, and it groans as I place my bare feet on the cold floor and go over to the chair in the corner where my heavy blanket lies neatly folded. It’s weighted and not meant for this use, but it works. With it under my arm, I walk back over to the bed, climbing in and then laying the familiar throw across my left ankle.

I need it. I need to feel the weight as though it’s the shackle. Without it there, sometimes I wake up late at night, feeling just how I felt before. Right after I stabbed him to death and took the keys from his pocket, frantically searching for the one that fit the lock on the cast iron shackle that had been on my ankle for four years. The deepest scars I have are on the thin skin covering the knobby bone of my ankle. Whenever he’d drag me, replacing the other end of the chain with a weighted ball, the metal would cut into me. He didn’t care.

To tell the truth, I learned to take that pain and focus on it rather than what he’d do to me.

I didn’t fear much, but that night, when he told me he was giving me to Javier and that I should be good for him, I was terrified. He warned me that I had better not be bad and make him break my arm again. He said I was getting old, and he’d have no use for a Slave with a bum arm. I couldn’t take it anymore. Something inside of me finally snapped.

The fear wasn't fully realized until the lock came off and the weight was lifted from my ankle. I had the fear that I’d never get out. That they’d catch me and slowly torture me. That fear was so strong it nearly crippled me. If I failed to find my freedom, I knew I was dead.

Without the weight on my ankle at night, I tend to wake up feeling the same racing pulse through my blood and fear of death that nearly suffocates me.

I lie back and go still, waiting for the sleep to take me and the memories to fade. It’s this position that I learned to sleep in years ago. Images of Master O and Master C continue to haunt me, causing me to want to toss and turn. But just like all those years ago, I don’t move with the weight on my ankle, holding me in place.

Finally, I close my eyes and try to concentrate on Isaac. His calm, commanding presence. His piercing green eyes. His massive, throbbing cock. My body relaxes as the vision of my possible new Master pushes the other two from my mind. My breathing becomes more stable, and the sweats leave my body as I’m finally able to drift off into a deep sleep.

Chapter 9

Isaac

The thrum of excitement is pulsing through the club as the pounding of the bass makes everything come alive with the need to sway to the beat. The lights flicker in time with the sultry music, and the women hanging from the swings in the center of the room and dancing in the cages on the stage sway their hips and flip their hair, their hands traveling along their bodies seductively.

Strips of their hair are decorated with a glow-in-the-dark paint in different neon colors. The dining hall is no longer a restaurant. The tables have been removed, and the dance floor and up lighting have created what’s needed for the themed night. And this side of the club is dark.

It’s meant to allow for some particular kinks tonight. Voyeurism being clearly evident.

Several couples are on the dance floor, and although at first it may seem that they’re grinding in beat to the music and dancing like the others, they aren’t. A woman on the outskirts of the crowd has her lips parted as her Dom thrusts from behind her. Her dress is only slightly raised in front, but I can see that it’s lifted from behind. A rough laugh rises up my chest as he pumps in time with the music, holding her small frame to