flighty_dreams | A Scotch for the Road

TITLE: A Scotch for the Road - Part 5
AUTHOR:

flighty_dreams
WARNINGS: Slavefic. NC-17 just in case, tho not yet needed. M/m, F/m, Femdom.
WORD COUNT: 5K
SUMMARY: A slave enduring a party encounters more than he bargained for.
NOTES: Based on a weekly prompt made in

orig_slavefic. I blame Mara. I can't believe I haven't finished the next chapter of Spliced b/c of this. Also can't believe this chapter ended up so long...
FEEDBACK: Always welcome! Sorry for any typos.

She spoke gently into his ear. “I’ve been miserable since I lost you. I’ve spent four years searching for you. Why would I ever give you up?”

Brett trembled, her warm body and her familiar perfume surrounding him, stirring old memories. He ached with the desire to surrender, to believe her words and return her embrace as if they had never separated. But there was a gulf of four painful years between his naive, trusting past self and who he was now. Had she really looked for him all this time? He wanted so badly to believe it, that she'd never stopped caring about him, but life had taught him that nobody really wanted him. Not forever.

Born to privilege, she was beautiful and she was rich. What could she need him for? There was no way she could still love him after all these years. He’d believed her before, but they’d both been young and stupid back then. In the past he’d known why she valued him, but they were both older and different now, and she’d had four years to forget him. After all he'd been through in the intervening years, he felt ten years older now, not four, and he could no longer take her words at face value. He’d spent too long believing she’d abandoned him.

If she’d really been looking for him, she would have rescued him from Donovan. With her family's money and connections, it shouldn’t have been hard at all. He let the doubt show in his voice. “If you were searching for me, couldn't you have tracked me down from the auction your cousin took me to?”

“I did. That asshole Donovan refused to sell you to me.”

His heart froze. She really had gone to Donovan. “What?”

She explained the whole story, how she hadn't been careful enough with Donovan, and the spiteful bastard wouldn't sell Brett to her at any price. Donovan had a close partnership with the Cassidy family, rich industrialists and archrivals of the Vanlean-Warrens. He'd never sell Brett to any Vanlean-Warren, especially not a young family member in love with his slave. For him it was too amusing to maliciously deny her requests. He hadn't even let her see Brett, much less buy him.

It explained a lot of other things to Brett, things he'd never tell her. Donovan hadn't treated him badly at first, but he’d suddenly turned cruel, treating him much worse than his other two slaves. The only explanation he’d gotten was that his master had decided Brett was too proud and needed to learn his place. The man had used Brett as a punching bag on a regular basis, and the days when he hadn't been sore from one punishment or another had been few and far between. He never treated his other slaves as harshly, and at the time Brett could only wonder if Donovan had noticed how depressed Brett was from being abandoned by Jenna and had decided to make him even more miserable. Now he knew Donovan had singled him out because he'd found out Jenna loved him.

“How do you like it here, slut?” Donovan would often ask him smugly, a sinister light in his eyes. The man knew Brett hated him and this place.

Brett quickly found out there was no good response to that question. An honest negative answer would get him a beating and a rough fucking, and an affirmative lie would end in the same result. And he'd get curses and insults flung at him accordingly either for what Donovan called his bad attitude or for being a liar. Afterwards he’d be chained up in the dark basement again, until the next round of torture began.

Terrified and depressed, Brett eventually stopped wishing Jenna would come and save him again. He'd never really believed she would, not after she let Master Derrick take him away without protest, but for a while he let himself hope that it had just been a big mistake, anything to get him away from Donovan. But months passed and she never came, and as the abuse continued his hope died. He didn’t even hope for Donovan to sell him one day; he just wanted to die. Jenna had betrayed him, breaking his heart, and Donovan made him so miserable he just wanted it all to end. Sometimes he wished that Donovan or one of the man’s friends who ‘borrowed’ him would go a little too far when he beat or whipped or fucked him, and accidentally kill him.

Unfortunately his master was obsessively careful not to scar or damage him permanently, much less kill him. The man didn't want him to lose any of his value. And once Donovan realized Brett was suicidal, he'd taken extra glee in inflicting maximum pain while still making sure he wouldn’t die. All Brett could do was wait for his master to eventually get bored with him, and hold onto some of his good memories with Jenna to resist Donovan’s constant attempts to prove that he was a worthless slut.

Over time he did notice his master getting more and more frustrated, his temper even shorter than usual. Cursing all the while, he sold his other slaves, then his fancy cars, and then one day he finally took Brett to a black market. In the end Donovan hadn't sold him out of boredom though; his master’s severe displeasure had made it obvious he hadn't wanted to part with any of his possessions. If Brett had still been capable of feeling any joy, he would've cheered when Donovan left him at the market. Instead all he'd felt were relief and exhaustion.

Master Yorkfield certainly hadn’t been the kindest of men—the man considered affection a sign of weakness—but he was nowhere near Donovan’s level of cruelty. Maybe it was partly that after Donovan, nobody was that bad, but more than anything else, Yorkfield was just plain contrary. He’d like something a certain way for months, but then one day complain and change it around. And so he’d follow the man’s new instructions, but Yorkfield was just as likely to turn around a few days later and demand it done the old way, or a completely new way. The man was fair at least; he never punished him for following the previous orders, but it felt like his master was constantly testing him to see if he’d trip up, which did happen occasionally. For a slave who’d decided he wanted to be left alone as much as possible and just live on autopilot these days, these erratic and frequent changes were a frustrating nightmare. He knew it was the man’s sadistic streak coming out, because his master had realized he liked following a predictable routine. Yorkfield was intentionally trying to confuse him, and he hated it.

But other than that unpredictability, the man had been stern but fair, and he knew there were far worse owners. Yorkfield he'd at least been able to think of as a proper Master; he'd always hated Donovan far too much to respect him. He'd feared him as much as he hated him, but it still wasn't true respect. Brett had learned what real respect was with Jenna; he'd admired and loved her—until she betrayed him. With Yorkfield, as long as he followed his orders—ever-changing as they might be—he could usually avoid punishment. And that was all Brett had come to care about these days: avoiding punishment so he could remain numb.

Until Jenna returned tonight, bringing all these feelings rushing back. Part of him hated her for doing this to him, for driving all these emotions to the surface. Especially hope. He’d left hope behind back at Donovan's years ago, and he didn't want her resurrecting it.

But it was hard to maintain that resolve with her hugging him, his head lying against her shoulder, her soft breasts pushing against his chest, her hand brushing gently through his hair, and his face buried against her neck. The familiar scent of her, the scent of the only home he'd ever known, was drawn into his body as he breathed deeply. But with determination he tried to ignore the effect she still had on him, focusing on the explanation she was giving him.

The knowledge that she had come for him after all... He started to believe, if only a little bit, that maybe she hadn't really abandoned him. But shouldn't she have been able to find him later? She'd had four years to do it. At least she'd admitted she messed up, that she should've spoken up to Derrick when he came for him. Surely the fact that she felt the need to explain and apologize to him meant that she still valued him; he wasn’t worthless, as Donovan had tried to convince him he was. The awareness that Donovan had known about Jenna’s feelings for him put a new spin on the man’s constant need to push him down.

But her apologies didn't erase all the pain her bad decisions had caused him over the years, starting with Donovan. He kept his arms at his sides, still not returning her embrace. And the promise he'd made to himself in the car on the way here burned within him. Despite how much the word wanted to slip out at times, he wouldn't call her Mistress again until he felt she deserved it. She could order him to, but he was pretty sure she wouldn't force the issue, not under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, she continued her story. She told him that she'd later ensured Donovan’s financial demise, hoping it would prod him into selling Brett. Chances were she’d more likely be able to buy him from someone else. Instead she'd never found out what happened to Brett; he'd just disappeared. She'd hired three different private investigators, and none of them could find him.

“The black market,” Brett whispered, finally knowing why his master had been willing to sell him there, even if for a lower price. To Donovan, despite his financial difficulties, it would’ve been worth it to score a victory over a Vanlean-Warren. Marcus Donovan was monstrously ruthless; Brett had learned that personally. He shuddered at the memories of Donovan's abuses towards him.

“That’s what the PIs told me,” she said, responding to his murmured words. “They tracked you there, but despite tapping all their black market connections, they never discovered where you went. Too many brown haired, brown-eyed slaves that nobody bothered to look at close enough to recognize your picture. And while you were there your registration was changed, so I couldn’t track you that way.” Her arms tightened around him. “I'm so sorry, Brett. He took you there on purpose, so I wouldn't find you.”

Sighing, he closed his eyes. “I know that now.” It was standard procedure at the black market to have slaves’ registration changed, for obvious reasons, since most of the slaves there were stolen.

Her arms tightened around him. “I kept checking all the slave markets in the area. I put up photos of you in all of them, in case you went through there and I missed you. I even went to some of the large ones further out and talked them into putting up your picture and contacting me if they found you.”

He leaned back away from her, needing to see her face. She released him and he frowned, looking at her pensively. “I’ve been through the regular markets three times since then.” Living by the coast for the past year with Yorkfield, near where they were now, he'd ended up a few hundred miles away from where he’d started four years ago, but he still should've been within the range of her search.

She sighed, and she looked tired then. “I could put up as many pictures as I wanted, but I couldn’t make them keep an eye out for you.” She hesitated here before adding, “After I tried to bribe Donovan into selling you, it drew my family's attention. I'd never asked any of our accountants for such a large sum of money before, and the employee told my father about it. When they found out why, they all thought I was crazy.”

She described the revulsion she'd faced from all her family members. They were disgusted that she'd fallen in love with a mere slave, and had reacted accordingly, from lectures to outrage and much more. Her parents had threatened to cut off her funds if she continued to pursue Brett.

“I'd known they'd be opposed to us, but I wasn’t prepared for that,” she told him.

The thought that her parents' threats would be enough motivation to stop her wasn't really surprising, but it still hurt. He bowed his head, his eyes shifting away from her. He knew he wasn’t worth losing her trust fund over.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” she said softly, one hand reaching out to clasp his shoulder. “If I had to I would've run off with you and said to hell with their money. But to persuade someone like Donovan to sell you to me or to offer a reward for info on you, I needed money, honey. And I didn't have any of my own, not back then.”

He turned back to her, frowning. “But you do now?” Her explanation made sense, but he hadn’t understood what she meant by that.

“Yes. Let me explain.” Her hand rubbed his arm, making the skin there tingle distractingly. She'd always done that to him. Then she paused, meeting his gaze as her expression softened. “Let's get off this hard floor first though. My knees are killing me.”

Dismay flooded through him, an automatic response to not attending to or realizing her discomfort. Regardless of whether he trusted her or not at this point, a lifetime of training couldn’t be easily overcome. He stood quickly, his own legs accustomed to rising from a kneeling position, and offered a hand out to assist her. She took it and he held his other arm out, which she grasped for balance as she rose from the hardwood floor.

One hand still entwined with his, she tugged him towards the couch. Despite his discomfort with more intimate contact with her right now, he regarded it as an unspoken order and followed her there.

She sat down in the middle of the sofa, leaving room for him next to her. He hesitated; it had been so long since he'd been allowed to sit side by side with a free citizen, he felt uncomfortable doing so now. Although at one time he’d been used to doing that with her, it had only been permitted a couple of times in the past four years.

“Brett,” she murmured then, her fingers squeezing his hand comfortingly. “It’s okay.”

Meeting her eyes, he wondered anxiously if anything would ever be okay again. Yes, he was back with Jenna, the Mistress part of him still loved—even if he would only admit that to himself now and not to her, never again—but for how long? How long before she changed her mind, or her family changed it for her? What was the use of all this, when it would only end in pain?

“Brett,” she said again, her voice firmer now, the Mistress in her rising closer to the surface. His attention directed back towards her, he bowed his head in acknowledgment and she tugged at his hand again. This time he followed the movement, sliding onto the couch as he let his worried thoughts fade into the background, focusing on obeying her for the moment.

Her fingers loosened around his hand as she gave him time to settle on the couch, and then he crossed his arms in front of his bare chest, feeling awkward. He kept his head turned slightly away, but he felt her burning gaze studying him as the silence lengthened, and it only added to his discomfort. Biting his tip, he shifted, adjusting his position so his head lay sideways in her lap with his folded arms, his legs curled up on the couch.

“Is that better?” she asked, and he could hear fond amusement in her voice.

“Yes,” he huffed out softly, which was the truth. It felt wrong to lie in her lap like nothing was different and no time had passed, but at least it was a better alternative. Sitting face to face and having to look at her as she told him more tales and platitudes was much worse.

Her hands lowered, one stroking his hair again while the other caressed his arm. He marveled that even four years later, she still had that same need to touch him frequently. During those eight months, even when she was focused on something else she'd often reached out to idly caress him. Back then he’d loved the constant reassurance that she wanted him around, but later he’d cursed it. It had spoiled him, making him ache for that affectionate physical contact ever since.

Those months with her had changed him in more ways than he'd realized at the time. Masters like Yorkfield—sadistic but mostly fair—would have seemed acceptable, if he hadn't known her, and known that there could be more to life.

Being used for sex would’ve always seemed normal, if he hadn’t learned the difference between sex he was forced into, and sex he actually wanted for himself. Unlike some slaves, he’d never gone down the risky path of getting intimately involved with another slave behind their master or mistress’s back. So she’d been his introduction to sex that he chose to have, rather than was pressured into. Not that Jenna was the only person he’d ever felt pleasure with, but she’d allowed him the option of saying no, something no one else had ever done. Even so, it had taken a while with her for him to truly understand that she was giving him that freedom to refuse, because he’d never had it before.

And he’d never had it again since. Yorkfield would at least make sure he came each time, but he would never have allowed Brett to refuse the use of his body. As for Donovan… the more he could hurt Brett while fucking him, the better it was for him. Brett’s pleasure had only mattered when Donovan was in the mood to humiliate him further; he loved forcing Brett into coming as proof of what a weak, useless slut he was. One of his few ways of defying the bastard had been not giving him that last satisfaction.

Jenna's fingers shifting to part his hair away from his neck brought his attention back on the present. She rubbed his bare skin gently before moving down to touch the collar around his neck. She turned it a bit and tapped the lock. “I'll have to get the key from him tomorrow,” she murmured, referring to her meeting with Yorkfield the next day.

He wondered suddenly if she would replace it with her own collar. His chest tightened at the thought; when they were together before he'd still been wearing Derrick's collar. He'd never worn hers before, and he speculated whether it would be a sign that things were different this time, or just an illusion that would torment him.

His fists clenched at the thought of the second possibility, and he hated the uncertainty of the situation. Her hand reached over to clasp his fist, her thumb stroking his hand. He knew she was trying to comfort him, but no amount of petting was going to soothe away his fears.

She seemed to realize it too. Brushing her other hand through his hair again, she asked, “Do you want me to continue? Or are you feeling tired? Do you want to wait til tomorrow?”

He shook his head, which rubbed his cheek against her thigh through the silken dress, reminding him of how close to her center he was. A rush of memories of pleasuring her flooded through him for a long moment, before he shoved them away with the reminder of her betrayal. He cleared his throat and said, “I'd rather hear it all tonight.” Better to get it all over with, get the whole picture, and let it all sink in.

“All right,” she acquiesced, her tone heavy. This wasn't a story she was eager to tell, he observed.

But she kept going. “I was talking about my family’s outrage. Well, the only ones who didn't condemn me for it were my younger sister—who is an idiot and thought it all very romantic—and surprisingly, Derrick.”

“Derrick?” he asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. He wouldn't have expected Derrick's support at all.

“Well, he didn't pretend to understand it, but he didn't think it was the family's business to interfere. To him, if I wanted you, why couldn't I buy you? He didn't care.

“But everyone else did. And after the fiasco with Donovan, they didn't want me obsessing over you anymore. They were watching me like a hawk to see if I did anything else crazy, like steal you from Donovan. So I started working in the family business, devoting myself to the job. I knew I had to convince them I was ‘cured’ or whatever they wanted to call it. But I was able to push for ways to undermine Donovan's investments. I let them think it was simple revenge against him and the Cassidys—for other things they'd done—and they went along with it, because they hated them too.

“But after we ruined Donovan, I knew they were waiting to see what I did about you. When you vanished, at first they thought I'd done it, but they quickly made sure I wasn't hiding you anywhere. And they were ecstatic that Donovan had thwarted any plans I'd had,” she told him bitterly, her loathing for her family's interference clear in her voice.

“I secretly hired those investigators to search for you, but they turned up nothing. As for those pictures and inquiries I made at the slave markets, I learned later that my father had gone to those places after me and paid off the owners to not give me any information on you. They were only too happy to take the money for doing nothing.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and her next words were said harshly. “I was so naïve. When I first found out Derrick had sold you, I thought that with my family's money and power, it would be so easy to find you. I never considered that that power could and would be turned against me to sabotage my search.”

He clasped his other hand on top of hers. “I never thought of that either.” It was true, he hadn't, but it made sense. He'd always been afraid of what her parents would think if they found out how close they were. Brett believed now that she really had tried to find him, and been impeded. He squeezed her hand once gently before letting go.

Continuing her story, she said, “After the attempt to bribe Donovan with my family's money and their reaction to it, I realized I needed to gain independence from my family. If I didn't need them anymore, they couldn't control me. So when I started working for the company, besides getting revenge on Donovan, I planned out what I wanted to do.”

She described her plan, telling him how she'd shown her business sense to her family, proving herself trustworthy with investments and contracts. After finding out what her father had done at the markets, she'd thrown herself fully into work, giving up the search for a while. Creating a good reputation for herself along with her family name had opened many doors to her, and she'd made investments and deals on the side. All in all, in the past four years she'd made enough money to be able to break away from her family whenever she found Brett and survive on her own. As she put it, it was easy to make money when you had a lot of money to work with.

It didn’t sound so easy to him, but the scope of her plan impressed him. She'd known it would take a long time, but had planned accordingly, and in the process convinced her family she was over her infatuation with Brett. But he wondered how much she'd bothered to search for him while she was making all this money.

“It sounds like you've been very busy,” he said carefully, the closest he would come to asking her his real question.

He felt her eyes study him for a long moment. When she spoke, she gave him the answer he was looking for. “Busy working, but once my family thought I was over you I started looking for you again. I didn't trust the market owners not to run back to my father again for more money, so I didn't try that again. But I checked with the slave registrars regularly, looking through their files to find you. Unfortunately, they don't bother entering photos for the listings, or it would've made my search much easier. All I had were descriptions to go by, and I checked out a lot of slaves with your coloring and that were about your age. But it was never you. I went to the slave markets on big auction days, hoping I might see you. That never worked either.”

There was rising frustration in her voice as she spoke, and he turned to look up at her. Her head was bowed, and a tear dropped onto his face as she continued, “I tried everything I could, but none of it ever worked.” She choked out a laugh. “And then tonight you appeared like magic. As if I shouldn't have even bothered with all the other stuff, because I wasn't meant to find you until now.”

He shared her frustration; he wished she'd been able to save him from Donovan four years earlier. If she had, it would've been so much easier to forgive her for not telling Derrick the truth.

Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand she continued, “It's funny, I believe in making your own destiny. For example, that if I worked hard enough I could take control of my life and alter it, make it into what I wanted. I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. But maybe with this, with us, it does. I worked so hard to find you and failed every time. And suddenly when I wasn't looking, there you were.”

“I don't know,” he told her honestly. A slave had no control over his own fate; he'd never had the luxury of being able to direct anything in his life. For a moment his chest tightened as he wondered what his life might've been like, if he hadn't been born a slave. What might he have been instead? But slaves knew not to waste time on senseless what ifs, and he focused back on the present.

His mouth curving into a soft smile, he added, “But it makes me feel better that you tried.”

She sighed heavily, but smiled down at him in return. “Then it was all worth it.” She disentangled her hand from his, and ran it along his upper arm and shoulder.

Jenna looked up and away from him, staring out at the rest of the living room. Her voice turned musing as she said, “Maybe it was a good thing that it took me all this time to find you.”

“What?” he gasped out, stiffening beneath her. Anger rushed into him just as he'd started to forgive her.

She seemed to realize how her words had sounded and hastily explained, “Of course I wish we'd never been separated in the first place. But these four years have given me time to plan everything out. It's all different now. Nobody can interfere with us. So maybe it all played out as it should, because it was better this way.”

He moved away from her, rising to a sitting position. Memories of the torture and abuse he'd suffered during the past four years flashed through his mind and he scowled, looking away from her as he said bitterly, “Better for you maybe.”

Eyes widening, she apologized. “Oh God, I'm sorry.” Her hand moved towards him and he got up, shifting out of reach. He couldn't handle her touching him right now, not when he was so furious.

“Brett,” she pleaded, “I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.”

He swallowed thickly, unsure of what to say and still feeling outraged. He knew what she'd meant, and he knew she didn't know what he'd gone through all this time. But it didn't make him any less aggrieved at the fact that she could have avoided it all if she'd acted more wisely four years ago. And for her to dismiss her mistakes and the past four years like that, to say that it was better it had turned out this way...

The careless selfishness of it offended him deeply. If she really had never stopped loving him as she was claiming, how could she even think that? Unable to look at her at the moment, he said roughly, “I know.”

He glanced at her stricken face for a moment before turning away and walking to the doorway.

“Brett, wait,” she called, and he halted automatically, even as his teeth gritted angrily. Furious and hurt as he was, he still couldn't disobey her.

But he didn't have to turn and face her, just stop. Not wanting to hear any more hasty apologies, he spoke again before she could. “I know,” he repeated. “You didn't mean it like that.” Using her name aloud for the first time that night, he added softly yet firmly, “But I can't talk to you anymore right now, Jenna.”

This time she let him go.

Part Six