When I kicked my way out of the rug, she put a gun to my head and asked me would I please stand up and walk very slowly.
“Oh.” She laughed—a giggle, from a pretty, fair-skinned face. “You can’t use your hands, can you, sweeting? All tied up. That’s what you are.”
The gun is how she got me to walk to my room. Through the foyer and the hallway with its creepy, flaming torches. She held the gun to my head as she showed me several huge windows along a hall with a green rug. She showed me a statue of a naked man—David, I think it’s called—and explained how, due to Ben’s death, she had a lot of money to buy things like that, and to support “her” children.
After the first time she led me to my room, she stabbed me with a needle. When I woke up, the door was shut. The nightmare had begun.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lucas
The process of finding another sub is always tedious. Looking over the notecards Raymond makes for me is damn near pointless. I don’t want to know their backgrounds or their interests. Just height, weight, build, and hair and eye color.
Raymond does most of the vetting on his own, one of the many tasks that he and he alone can be entrusted with. He’s been working with me since the year after I returned to Vegas, and by now, he knows exactly how I like things done.
How many subs has he found for me, I wonder as I lean back in my massive leather office chair. I tap my fingertips against my laptop, but it’s difficult to count them when they don’t have names.
If there were robots advanced enough to serve my needs, I’d happily invest in one of them. I’m not looking for an emotional connection. I don’t “need” the physical connection either, not for anything beyond the demands of my dick. It’s a business arrangement, and I’m glad that’s all it is. I don’t warm up to people easily, and that’s never going to change.
The phone on my desk rings—my secretary, Leda, putting a call through from the head of the casino’s board of directors. I agree to the date and time of our next meeting and transfer him back to Leda so she can put it in on the schedule.
Then I grab the stack of flash cards off the corner of my desk and thumb through them. Raymond knows by now what height I like, so all these girls seem to be between five-foot-one and five-foot-five. Wide hips and an ass I can sink my hands into. Blonde hair—pale, honey, and dark. I usually stick to pale blonde, but occasionally I deviate. If the only short girl in the pack with an ass, hips, and a Midwestern accent comes with dark blonde hair, I’ll take her.
I quickly thumb through the fifteen cards, pick four, and buzz Raymond in.
I reach across the desk and hand them to him. “Contact these.”
He looks down at them, then nods thoughtfully. “It’ll have to be today.”
“Today?”
He nods again. “You’re flying to Boston tomorrow. Homes for Heroes, board of directors?”
“Right.” I shrug. “That’s good. See who can be here in the next hour. You can call a few more if you want. Stick to light blondes this round. They’re all the right body type. I’ll meet you in the executive guests’ suite in two hours sharp. Have them separated, dressed and, obviously, masked. Tell me about the nine-thirty show, with Jones and Freeman?”
I listen to Raymond explain that Laura Freeman, one of our performers, is nine weeks pregnant and doesn’t feel comfortable with the whipping portion of the show. Something about getting an infection.
“Give her leave.”
He blinks. “Leave?”
I drum my fingers on my knee and sigh. “Maternity leave, Raymond?”
“But, sir…she hasn’t had the child.”
“So what? I don’t expect pregnant women fucking in my House.” Anger heats my neck. “How often does this happen, Raymond?”
“Maybe…every other year.”
“What do you normally do with them?” I ask.
I glare at him without meaning to at first, because my cock is hard, my suite is empty, and my back hurts.
“Well…sir, we let them go. Pregnancy and this career are incompatible. Remember? You wrote it into the standard contract years ago.”
I wave my hand. “Change it.”
“You said pregnant women—”
“Change it,” I growl.
“Yes sir.”
I exhale slowly, stand up, and wave toward the door. “Get it handled for me. I’ve got a call in five with the vodka guy. After that, there’s something else. I’ll see you in the executive suite. Have them ready for me.”
Raymond nods and leaves my office. I spend the next half-hour on the phone with our largest vodka supplier.