Slave Lover by Marco Vassi Read Free Book Online Page B

without wasting time on bemoaning what can’t be helped. It’s gauche for me to point it out, but your time is limited, and you have no other viable value but to live as fully as possible while you have the chance.”
    “I’m well aware of the existential implications of the situation,” she replied coolly. “But believe me that my present distaste for your company provides me with as full an emotional complement as I could wish.”
    “I’m prepared to accept your mood because I find you attractive. You are the oldest woman we have ever had, and so add a touch of much-needed maturity to the available provender. Also, you are perhaps the most intelligent. I read your article, and then dug up earlier things you had written. You might have had a brilliant career if your lust for sensational stories hadn’t ended you here.”
    “So my article was the cause of my kidnapping.” Constance crossed her legs and lit another cigarette. She was wearing loose orange slacks and a short-sleeved blouse, and had decided to go without shoes. On the outside she had limited her smoking to three a day, but here she had no hopes for any real longevity and an extra five or ten cigarettes a day would add a pleasing recklessness to her sensibility.
    “We reasoned that after your failure to get it published anywhere but the Enquirer you would move on to something else, but we couldn’t take the chance. You would have come across more stories about disappearances and would probably have gone to the FBI or some such group. Besides, during the week we were watching you, I developed an overpowering curiosity to have you.”
    “And has it been satisfied sufficiently?” she shot out.
    “Oh, I haven’t touched you yet. And I won’t, until you come to me freely. One of my staff privileges, of course, is my pick of the women, so I could order you for the Parlor or for my private room at any time, but I’ll wait.”
    “What on earth makes you think I’d ever go to you freely?” she said. “After all, you are a murderer.”
    “Because sooner or later you will grow hungry for a relationship with a man. Something that can’t be satisfied on the gaming tables, or by your little lesbian follies. And I am intelligent, affable, warm, friendly, and good-looking. And there is another reason, one you ought to have figured out already.” He smiled at her, and the gap between the boyish expression on his lips and the deadly calculation in his eyes quite mesmerized her for an instant. “Those who are nice to me get a little check put next to their names, and when a request for a Snuff candidate comes along, those names tend not to get picked.” He waited an instant for the full weight of his words to sink in, for her to realize that he had the power of life and death over her. “Also,” he added, “I am authorized to take an occasional woman out for a sail, or horseback riding past the walls.”
    He read her expression with open delight. “Ah, I can see dreams of escape dancing in your brain already.”
    “And I get special treatment if I fuck you?”
    “No, my dear, not fuck. I can get that any time. What I want is total surrender. Real surrender. True exchange. I want you to like me, to think about me, and to look forward to being with me. When you can accomplish that, I would think that your position here would be very solid indeed.”
    “And if I don’t, then I can look forward to an early demise.”
    “Oh, you are safe for a couple of months at any rate. It takes that long for novelty value to wear off. After that, the girls get case-hardened and go through their paces in the Parlor practically yawning, like old hookers. And nothing is more displeasing to the type of customer that we get to perceive that he can inflict the most imaginative horrors imaginable upon a woman and have them be treated with distraction and ennui. This, of course, drives him to further excess. And finally, nothing will satisfy him but killing her. And so our