One Night in a Dungeon Read online

  I have to admit, I feel absolutely giddy, and I know it’s not just a post-coital reaction. Rocco is completely relaxed against me without any sign of anxiety over his performance or nervousness about laying his head on my boobs.

  The latter he’s definitely enjoying. I have the feeling that boob pillows were going to become the very best reward system for my Rocco. And that means maybe—just maybe—he’s starting to trust me, and trust is the most important thing I can ask for from him.

  “You had a good time too, right?” Rocco asks.

  “Yes, Rocco. I came like a freaking elephant in heat.”

  Rocco furrows his brow.

  “I’m joking. I mean, about the elephant, not the orgasm.”

  “I’m not sure elephants really, um...I’m not sure they...”

  “I don’t really want to know.”

  Rocco nods, and I shake my head, laughing quietly.

  “So, I don’t want to make any assumptions,” I say, “but I’m really hoping we can do this again sometime.”

  “Sometime?”

  “Well, I’ve been known to be a bit demanding.” I shrug. “I just want to be clear about what I want.”

  “You mean, you want to come back here again? With me?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I think about it for a moment. “Not just here, Roc. I mean, we could do this anywhere. I came here because I know it’s familiar to you, so I figured you’d be more comfortable.”

  “We could do this somewhere else?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Where?”

  “My place.” I run my hand over his hair again. “Your place, too, if you’d rather. Switch it up a little, right?”

  “Switch?”

  “I don’t mean switch like that.” I snicker. “I’m always going to be the Domme here. I just meant we could go to your place if that’s better.”

  “My place.” Rocco takes a long breath and looks away.

  “Um...what does that mean?” I ask. “Yes to your place, or no?”

  “I...I don’t know about that.”

  “Is there something wrong with your place?”

  “No one...no one ever comes over. I mean, no girl ever has.”

  “You don’t want me there.” For a moment, my chest tightens, and I have to fight back that feeling of rejection.

  “It’s just...different,” Rocco whispers.

  “And different is hard. I understand that, and it’s okay. We can use my place.”

  “That’s different, too.”

  “Hmm...” I think about it for a minute. “Is it hard because you don’t know the place or something else?”

  “Everything.” He shrugs, and something else occurs to me.

  “What if I just said I’m coming to your place, and you’re going to deal with it?”

  Rocco tenses but only for a second.

  “That’s...better,” he says. “A little, anyway.”

  “How about we deal with that when the time comes.”

  Rocco nods, relieved.

  “I don’t know where this will go,” I say, “but I’d like to at least give it a chance. You aren’t the only one with issues, Rocco. I told you that before. But I also think if we’re really going to try this, we need to be more open.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know you don’t want to tell me about what happened to you,” I say, “but how about if I tell you a little about me? Would that be okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Rocco’s voice sounds distant.

  “Are you positive?” I ask. “It’s as fucked up as a story gets.”

  “Do you want to tell me?” he asks.

  “I don’t mind telling you. I can’t say that I want to do it because that means reliving it to some degree, but I’ve told this story before, so I can handle it.”

  “All right.” Rocco shifts slightly, rubbing his cheek against my breasts as he settles down.

  “I’ll start by telling you why I like to be the dominant one in a relationship.” I wait until Rocco looks up at me. “I’m not sure how many dominants you know. Most of them are just regular people who just happen to like that kind of control. Just like subs, most of them like to let go sometimes. For other people, like me, there’s a deeper reason, a...well...a darker reason. I’m like that. I’m a Domme because I had a shit childhood. Everyone’s got something, but mine was particularly shitty. That’s what happens to little girls whose daddies are pedophiles.”

  I feel his body stiffen as I say the words. I steel myself a little before taking a long breath to get me through the next few sentences.

  “My mom was never in the picture. My father always said she died of cancer when I was a baby, but I’m not sure if I believe that or not. The truth wasn’t a concept that concerned him, and there’s really no way of knowing. All I know about her is that her name was Karen Summers and that no one can figure out exactly what happened to her. Maybe she left him. Maybe he did something to her. Maybe he told the truth. I don’t know. I’ll get back to that later.”

  I feel Rocco shift against my chest again as I lean back and stare up at the ceiling. He moves his hand down my arm until he gets to my wrist, then slowly laces his fingers with mine. I sigh a little. I doubt it’s the sort of thing he would do with just anyone, and I’m glad he took a little initiative. I would focus on it more, but I have to get through the rest of the story.

  “My father started raping me when I was really young. I’m not one of those who uses the word ‘molested.’ I call it what it was, and it was rape. I don’t remember the first time, so I’m not really sure how old I was. He used it as a form of punishment, and that was normal, as far as I knew. He’d make up infractions, of course. I couldn’t do anything right, and that’s how I was disciplined. When I hit puberty, it was clear I was too old to be appealing to him. I was just glad it stopped, but that didn’t last long. He couldn’t hold down a job, and we never had enough money for necessities. Eventually, he started renting me out to random men when he needed money for booze.”

  I feel Rocco tighten his grip on my hand.

  “One day, he walked into the house with a little girl. He told me that her name was Marcy and that she was my new sister. He ordered us a pizza for dinner that night, but Marcy kept crying for her mom, and that pissed him off. He smacked her hard enough to knock her off the kitchen chair and then hauled her into the back room. I could hear her crying, but I was just a kid, you know? I didn’t know what to do.

  “Really early the next morning, I heard cars outside my bedroom window. A minute later, the police broke down the front door. I watched through the window as Marcy was taken away in an ambulance, and my dad was taken away in handcuffs. I remember the officer who came into my room. I screamed because he had a gun in his hand, and I thought he was going to shoot me. He told me he wasn’t going to hurt me, talked into his radio, and another officer came in. She said her name was Shannon and that everything was going to be all right, but that wasn’t true.”

  I pause for a moment, waiting for the questions that usually come during this point of the story, but Rocco doesn’t ask any. I center myself and continue.

  “He’d taken her from a nearby park. Someone saw him and had a decent description of my dad and his car. The FBI was called in and all that. I guess it didn’t take them very long to track him down and find out where we lived.

  “Before the week was out, the police dug up the back yard of the house, looking for other girls who had gone missing, but they never found anything. For a while, the police questioned me about my mother. They did a thorough investigation, but they couldn’t find any sign of Karen Summers either alive or dead, so they presumed dead. They wanted to put my father up on murder charges, but there wasn’t enough evidence. As it turns out, they didn’t need a murder conviction.

  “Short version of the next few months is that they charged him with kidnapping, multiple counts of rape, child endangerment, and a bunch of other related stuff. My dad went to prison for l
ife, no parole, and I became a ward of the state. No one wants to adopt a twelve-year-old with my kind of baggage, so I was relegated to group homes. They suck, by the way.”

  “Yeah,” Rocco says softly, “they do.”

  I glance down at him, waiting to see if he’ll say more. He doesn’t, of course, but I’m sure he didn’t make that statement based on secondhand knowledge. It gives me my first real piece of the Rocco puzzle—he was a foster kid, too.

  “I got in a lot of trouble trying to adjust,” I say. “It’s not that the counselors there weren’t any good, but I wasn’t ready to deal with my trauma. When I eventually ran away, I was just shy of fifteen. I didn’t trust anyone, so I had to figure out a lot of shit really fast.”

  “You never went back?”

  “Never.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “The streets, mostly. Sometimes in a shelter if it got cold at night, but it’s always decently warm here, which was a bonus at the time. I had a lot of...opportunities to make money, but I wasn’t willing to be a prostitute and could never bring myself to actually steal from people. I panhandled a lot. Sometimes someone would take pity on me and give me money or food. I finally got lucky when an older couple saw me on the street and took me for a real meal. They got me into one of the better shelters north of town, and after two years on the street, I was finally ready for some help. I was nearly seventeen, so the social workers helped make me a legal adult and helped me get an apartment and get on some assistance. I took GED classes, got my diploma, and the social worker helped me get a full scholarship here.”

  “You’re smart.”

  “Well, I do work-study to supplement the book fees and such, but yeah. I have to keep my grade point up.”

  We both go quiet as I give Rocco a little time to digest what I’ve told him. I can hear my pulse in my ears, and my hands are sweating a bit. I’ve been through this before, and I know people need time to process, but this time it’s important. I don’t want this information to make Rocco go running for the hills. I know he needs more time than most, so I keep quiet until I can’t stand it anymore.

  “You okay?” I ask him.

  He nods.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in. If you have any questions, I don’t mind talking about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  “Why don’t you mind talking about it?”

  “Why should I?”

  Rocco’s face scrunches up, and he shakes his head a bit.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say. I try not to sound too defensive, but it comes out anyway. I don’t think Rocco fits into the category of “those people”—the ones who blame the victim—but I can’t be sure. “I was a kid.”

  “I know. I don’t think you did. I just...”

  “What?”

  “I’m surprised you want to...to do it at all.”

  I let out a short laugh.

  “You can use the word ‘sex,’ Roc,” I say. “It’s not dirty.”

  He smiles, and I reach down to make him look at me again.

  “My first year on campus,” I tell him, “I met Lynn, and she brought me here—to Power Exchange. It took a while to figure out where I fit in, but I found out that I like sex. I like it a lot. It just has to be on my terms.”

  “It doesn’t make you...I mean, make you think...remember...?”

  “No,” I say definitively, “it does not. It’s not the same—not even a little bit. It comes back to what I meant about being a dominant. Everything is within my control, which is nothing like my childhood when all the power and control was taken from me.”

  “But the act...what you’re doing is still similar, isn’t it?”

  “I know some people who have had similar experiences feel that it is—and I’d never begrudge them the methods they use to handle their own trauma—but that’s not how I see it.”

  Rocco shakes his head again.

  “I once had a pizza with anchovies on it,” I tell him. “I thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted. When someone told me what they were, I actually puked right there in the trashcan. I’ll never willingly eat an anchovy pizza again, but I still like pizza with green peppers and extra cheese. Pizza on my terms. Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose so.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

  “At some point,” I say, “I had to decide if my past was going to run my life or not. I decided it wasn’t. It took a lot of talking and a lot of reflection, but I’m good with where I am, and even though my childhood was awful, I’m not in that situation now. Sometimes it still causes me issues, but I learn to work through them all.”

  “That sounds hard.”

  “It can be, but the more I do it, the easier it becomes.” I wait to see how he will respond, but Rocco says nothing. “Do you ever talk about it?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “The first time I told anyone—well, the first time as an adult, anyway—it took hours to get the whole story out. I kept having to stop to cry or be sick or just leave the room. I pushed through it, and the next time it wasn’t as hard. Now, I can get through it in a few minutes.”

  Again, I wait, and again I get no verbal response from Rocco at all.

  “I want to know what happened to you, Roc. Will you tell me—at least, give me some idea?”

  The silence lasts so long, I begin to think I’ve pushed too hard and that it is time to pack up and go home for the night. As I’m just about to suggest that, Rocco finally speaks.

  “Yes,” he says softly, “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all of it.”

  Chapter 7—Rocco

  It is the least I can do, right?

  Casey had just shared something horrible about her past. In fact, it’s so horrific, I feel like maybe my history pales by comparison. If she can speak so freely about what happened to her, why can’t I even manage to form a single syllable?

  Because I can’t even think about it, let alone talk about it. That’s why.

  I chew on my lip, open my mouth to speak, then close it again. I shuffle around a little, inhaling deeply. I try opening my mouth once more, but the results are the same. I sigh heavily, annoyed with myself.

  “Let’s try something,” Casey says as she gives my shoulders a little push.

  My cheek goes cold as it loses contact with her breasts, and I feel a little disheartened by this. Lying that way was quite comfortable, and I didn’t really want to move.

  Casey gets up on her knees and shuffles the cushions around a little until she can sit upright. She leans her back against the pile and spreads her legs, beckoning me to sit between them. I shuffle up to her, back against her chest, and she wraps her arms around my waist.

  “Lean your head back,” she says. “Good. Now scoot down just a bit so you can still have your head on my tits, boob man.”

  I feel heat rise to my face, but she just chuckles and hugs me to her. I lean back as she instructed. The position is still comfortable though not quite as good as having my cheek on her soft flesh.

  “Cross your wrists at your chest.”

  I comply, and Casey moves her hands up to wrap her fingers around my wrists, holding me as securely as rope.

  “Maybe this position will help,” Casey says softly. She tightens her grip on me. “I’m the ropes this time, and you’re as bound in my arms as you were with the ropes.”

  Her grip is tight, and it’s similar to being bound though not exactly the same. I glance down at my still naked body and see the crisscross pattern of rope marks up and down my legs. The sight comforts me, and combined with her embrace, I do get the same general sense of peace I crave. At least, I do until I realize I have to start talking.

  I close my eyes and try to form words in my mind. I go back to the first counselors I saw after I was found, but that’s too far and too deep. I shake my head.

  “I never talk about this,” I say quietly. “The only people who know all of it are Cree and th
e counselor assigned to me. I have to talk to her, or I don’t get my disability checks.”

  “Disability?”

  “For the PTSD. It’s bad enough that I’ve never really been able to hold a job. I do some data entry over the summer when I don’t have classes. That’s not so bad because I don’t ever see anyone, and it helps me meet the guidelines to get checks the rest of the year.”

  “You like to isolate yourself.”

  Isolate. I consider the word, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not that I like to be alone; it’s just simpler. When others are around, I know I’m supposed to interact with them, especially if they say something to me first, and I know I fail every time I try. When I fail to communicate, everyone around me gets nervous, and they back off never to approach again.

  “I’m...not good with people.”

  “Because of what happened to you?” Casey asks gently. “Because of the PTSD?”

  I shake my head a little, knowing I don’t have the right words. Even the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder seems all wrong. Stress is far too mundane a word to describe it, and it’s not all in the past—I’m constantly traumatized.

  “I...I can’t.”

  “It’s all right,” she tells me. “I don’t want to push you. If this way isn’t working, I can tie you with the ropes instead. Would that help?”

  “No.” Now that I’m in this position, I don’t want her to let go of me.

  I focus on her arms holding me tightly and the heavy bass of the music vibrating the floor below us. I hear voices from the main room. I can’t quite make out the words, but the voices are cheerful and carefree. I close my eyes, wondering why it’s so impossible for me to relax and just be when everyone else around me does it with such ease.

  “Really, Rocco. How fucked up can it be?”

  Casey’s voice jolts me out of my thoughts. I consider her question and then let out a hollow laugh.

  “Maybe start with something from your past that isn’t traumatic.” She rubs her fingers against my wrists and then grips them firmly again. “I get the idea that you spent some time in a group home, too. Can you tell me about that?”