Corrupting Power
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Quaranteam: Piper's Prelude - Part 4
🕑 Added 2022-07-22 16:00:17 +0000 UTCPart Four
It was plain as day that Piper had tensed up, and Fiona was doing her best to keep her even keeled. They'd taken a few minutes to walk around a bit, the two of them both needing a breather before they got down to the roughest part of Piper's story.
Piper had insisted that they not shy away from the dark heart of what had happened to her, but agreed that taking a few minutes to recover and rebuild her energies before getting into the ugliest period of her life would be helpful.
Fiona had found a lot to admire about the brunette, which was good, because Piper had made it very clear that she wasn't going to let go of Andy for any reason. She had known exactly what a good man Andy was before she'd arrived, because she and Andy had shared a long, deep history before she'd agreed to move here, but it was good to see Piper felt the same way.
Andy and Fiona had been friends before they'd been lovers, lovers before they'd been roommates, and every step of the way, Andy had always put her needs above his own, to the point where she'd had to actively make sure he wasn't causing himself too much trouble for her benefit. He was selfless, often to a fault and his own detriment.
That had been quite some time ago, though, and time had a way of changing people, and not often for the better. Some of the people they'd went to college with had gone on to become the sort of folks that Andy and Fi wouldn't want to consider friends anymore – they'd been unfaithful to partners, committed crimes, exploited employees, and just generally turned into awful shits. In fact, Fiona's best friend in college, a woman named Emily Emmanuel, had gone on to become a CEO of one of the most abusive and awful companies around. She'd told Fi that she'd felt abandoned when Fi moved to Washington, and their friendship had basically died around the same time that her and Andy's relationship had broken off.
Andy, in stark contrast Fi realized, had just gotten, well, more Andy. There was something kind about the core of the man, like he was constantly trying to see the best in people, and to help them up to live up to that ideal as much as they could on a day-to-day basis. It hadn't gotten him far in terms of business, but he'd done well with friends and even better with women, as he hadn't fallen in with anyone who would take advantage of his trusting nature.
From what Ash had told her, Andy's last relationship in the Bay before the pandemic was with the kind of woman who'd nearly broken that kindhearted spirit out of him. But instead of taking the wrong lesson from it – that people were often out to hurt him – he'd taken the right one from it instead, which was that sometimes the best thing you could do with a problematic partner was to let them go, or even push them away if they just weren't the right fit for you.
She wasn't entirely certain that all of Andy's partners would be good fits for him in the long term, but Fi supposed that was why there were so many of them, so that the ones who didn't see Andy as more than a solution to their physical needs could minimize their time with him. While many of his partners seemed to have genuine affection for him, at least a couple of them hadn't really built deep and meaningful connections with him. At least not as deep as others.
For the younger girls, it just made sense. Both Hannah and Asha weren't old enough to know what they wanted to do with their lives, so how could they be expected to know what they truly wanted out of a partner? They'd show Andy a good time, certainly, and keep his libido stoked, but she wouldn't be surprised if they didn't want children with him when all the dust settled.
All of the fiancés were definitely in it for the long haul, though. They'd all seemed like they were excellent matches for him, even if some of them Fi would've considered slightly out of Andy's league, despite loving him as much as she did. But good on him for capturing the hearts of such highly regarded actresses as Emily Stevens and Sarah Washington. The heart wants what the heart wants, and if they wanted him, she would respect that.
Lauren and Taylor, by contrast, were definitely emotionally invested in Andy, but not nearly as much as they were each other. Fiona also suspected that maybe Sheridan and Tala might be the same way, but hadn't had enough time to get a good enough read on the two of them yet to make a conclusive decision. The same was true for the newest additions, all of whom probably didn't even know which season Andy was born in, much less how they felt about him. It was too early for them to have established deep feelings one way or another about Andy.
Piper? Piper had made it clear that she'd rather die than be parted from Andy, and Fiona was still coming to understand why that was, as she'd really only known Andy a few weeks now. She felt like the solution to that particular puzzle would lay in the last part of the story, but to get to that part, they'd need to get through the darkest part first.
During the walk, Piper spent most of the time in their break asking questions about Fiona's past, focusing mostly on her time between graduating from college and her arrival in New Eden. Fiona understood how Piper wanted to spend the interval getting to know a little bit about her instead of talking more about herself. It was a chance to reclaim a bit of power in the conversation, and a chance to listen instead of talking.
For her part, Fiona did everything she could to tell Piper about herself, being generous with the details and honesty, sparing none of the gory details she might have left out otherwise. While her story didn't have as many abductions, there were more gunfights and that seemed to make Piper laugh and giggle in glee.
Piper had made it clear she was as straight as the day was long, so Fiona wouldn't pressure her, but she would've been lying if she didn't admit to herself that she would've loved to have a bit of fun with her in the sack at some point.
She was easy to like, easier still to get along with, and she seemed genuinely intent on learning as much as she could about Fiona. She also made an attempt to keep Fiona's spirits up, even though it was Piper's spirit that Fiona felt they should both be worried about. It was a miracle that the woman had come through it all with her spirit unbroken.
They completed their lap around the yard and headed back towards the house. They'd been talking much of the day, barring a half an hour break during which Piper had squeezed in a quick workout while Fiona had taken Moira into Andy's office for a chat, but now the sun was starting to set and the story was taking its turn into the nightmare portion Piper had clearly been avoiding.
“Alright, can't dodge it forever,” Piper sighed as her and Fiona made their way back up towards one of the front facing balconies this time, just for a change of pace. “Time to get down to the scariest few days of my life. The important thing, the most important thing, before I get into this, the most important thing is to remember that I came through okay, and I'm here, now, happy, with a great man and wonderful girlfriends. So keep that in mind when we're talking about this.”
“I don't want to push you, Piper,” Fiona said to her. “If you're not ready to talk about this–”
“I'm never going to be ready to talk about it, but it's still something I've got to do, so let's just get on with it, shall we?”
“It's your story, Piper,” Fiona sighed. “I'm just here to write it all down for you.”
“Strap in, then. Here comes the shitstorm...”
* * * * *
With Layla removed from the room, they lightened security just a little bit, which was their first mistake, and one they'd quickly rectify. I wasn't going to stay locked up in some gilded cage like I was Rapunzel waiting for her prince to arrive. I'm the kind of woman who's willing to get her hands dirty to get shit done, so, naturally, I tried to break out.
Getting out of the room itself was relatively easy. I think they'd considered my will mostly broken, and hoped I would just roll over and play nice, so they hadn't really established all that much security around the room I was kept in beyond keeping it locked, and I learned how to pick a lock when I was like twelve, so that wasn't much of a fucking problem.
Once I was out of the room, however, I was in Covington's mansion, and let me tell you that place is one big fucking maze. I was trying to be sneaky and keep hidden, but even still, it took me much longer than I want to admit to find the edge of the building. Even when I found it, they were windows that I knew if I broke would only draw attention to me. So instead I moved along the wall and tried to keep out of sight.
A couple of minutes later, I found an external door and was surprised to find it unlocked, which let me out of the manor and onto the estate. At that point, I thought I was basically home free, which, in retrospect, was totally fucking stupid of me.
I headed out from the manor and sprinted towards the trees as fast as I could, not looking back. I didn't know where I was beyond “an hour or so away from Oakland,” I didn't have my phone and I wasn't able to see any people anywhere around me. I didn't even know which way was west. I certainly didn't have a plan. I just wanted to get out and away.
I never even saw the fence.
A minute or two into the trees, I started to hear dogs barking, and they were chasing after me. I wanted to run, but I could tell they were going to be on me long before I could get anywhere, so I made the decision to climb up into a tree, because I thought if I didn't, I was going to have a Doberman tearing out chunks from my leg.
I got high enough that the dogs couldn't get me, but the trees were far enough apart that I couldn't just jump from one to another in an attempt to get away from them. The dogs were out for blood and I was so focused on them that I didn't even notice that Hope had drawn a bead on me with a shotgun and fired a beanbag round into my side, knocking me out of the tree and onto my ass. It hurt like a motherfucker and kicked the wind out of me, but I didn't get much more than a bruise. I think I got lucky, though, because it just as easily could've broken one of my ribs, or I could've taken much more severe damage from the fall itself.
While I was trying to catch my breath, Melody sprinted over, flipped me onto my stomach, yanked my wrists behind my back and handcuffed me. “Okay, bitch,” she hissed at me. “We were going easy on you before, but no more of that now.”
They dragged me back to the house, and I do mean dragged, in that I was in a bit of shock. Melody just grabbed my ankles and hauled me towards the house, my track pants getting loads of tiny rips and tears in them from the ground. Melody obviously didn't care what shape they were in, and when we were back at the mansion itself, her and Hope lifted me up as Hope slapped ankle shackles onto me as well.
“Didn't have faith you could hold out, huh?” Hope laughed at me dismissively.
Right then and there, I vowed to wipe that fucking smug look off her face if it was the last fucking thing I ever did.
Instead of the library, they dragged me down into a parlor room with nothing much of value in it, just two big armchairs and a knee-high footrest or padded bench or something that looked strong enough to hold three or four people standing on it. The door was heavy oak, and locked from the outside, and the ceiling was high vaulted with covered recessed lighting. I know all of this, because multiple times over the following days, I thought about self-harm, and never saw any real viable way to do it. There was also a bucket for me to shit and piss into. I wasn't even given the dignity of access to a bathroom.
Once we were in the parlor room, Melody fished out a Leatherman from her pocket, snapped it open to the blade, and literally cut my clothes off me. I'd never gotten my track top back from when I tried to cover Layla with it, which meant I was just in a sports top, a sports bra, track pants and the grungiest pair of faded green panties I owned, all of which they just stripped away from me, leaving me completely naked, except for the handcuffs and their connected shackles. Then they attached the chain of the shackles to a ring I hadn't initially noticed coming out of the floor. That was when I understood this was Covington's sex dungeon.
Melody inspected me a little, checking that when I'd fallen I hadn't broken or sprained anything, and that the beanbag round hadn't done any severe damage. When she was satisfied with that, she nodded to Hope, and the two of them headed for the door.
After Melody had walked out, Hope looked back at me and sneered. “He's gonna fucking break you, bitch, and when he does, every single fucking one of us is going to spend the rest of our lives reminding you how fucking proud and stubborn you were, all for fucking nothing.” She spat on the floor, then stepped out and closed the door.
A few hours later, Hope reappeared with two dog bowls, one filled with what looked like fried rice and the other looked like water. “How do I know those aren't drugged?” I said to her. “Or that you didn't slip some of Covington's cum into them?”
“You don't,” Hope laughed. “But Master Covington has made it clear he's not going to give you any of his precious jism until you beg him for it. So he's not going to do something sneaky like that. He's going to take way too much joy in hearing you desperate to get it. But if you don't want to believe me, then go on and starve yourself. See if I give a fuck.”
I debated for at least half an hour, but eventually hunger won out and I just needed to eat and drink. Of course, I didn't have access to my hands, and so I had to eat from them like I was a fucking dog, but I learned long ago that pride isn't worth anything. Neither the food or water was drugged, but the minute I heard the door opening, I backed away from it again. I would eat their food and drink their water, but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of watching me like that.
Covington came in with Melody, Hope and Lisa in tow, and he was wearing that damn robe again, like he was too good to put on real clothes, or that maybe he didn't have to put on real clothes. I remember him strolling in, all cock of the walk, like he couldn't wait to see me broken, because the minute he saw the look of raw resistance on my face, I could see his confidence waiver. He tried to dispel it as quick as he could, but I saw it, and I think the son of a bitch knew I saw it.
“Ready to give in yet, Piper?” he said to me, his hands resting on his hips, like he couldn't wait to untie his robe and have a go at me.
“I thought I made it perfectly clear,” I said to him. “I'd rather die first.”
“You feel it, though, don't you?” he said, walking closer towards me. “That painful need in the pit of your stomach, or, more accurately, in the center of your cunt. You don't want to worship at my cock, and yet you feel like you need to, don't you?”
“No,” I said, trying to be as blustery as I could. “Whatever it is you think I'm feeling right now, I can endure it. I can outlast it. You aren't going to break me, motherfucker.”
“I don't understand why you're trying to resist this, Piper,” he told me, sighing as if he was bored with the very act of having a conversation with me. “This isn't about morals or ethics or any of that other nonsense. This is biology. This is chemistry. This is inevitable. You will have to give in. Eventually. Everyone breaks.”
“I don't have do anything but die sooner or later, you asshole, and that isn't happening any time soon,” I growled. “Once I'm out of here, I'm going to fucking making it my life mission to ruin you, and make sure you never pull this shit on anyone else ever again.”
“You have spirit, I will grant you that,” he said. “Hope, why don't you strip down and we can remind her what she's missing?”
“Yes sir,” Hope said, although the look on her face made it clear she wasn't pleased to be doing this in front of me. She was kind of a giant Valkyrie of a woman, Germanic and blonde with intense blue eyes, and when she stripped off the workman-like clothes she had on, I could see she was absolutely jacked, one of the most muscular woman I'd ever seen before. She reminded me of the sort of women bodybuilders I'd seen pumping iron with guys on the Florida beaches growing up. I think that may have been why Covington added her to his house – for the intimidation factor. She didn't have very big tits, and I could tell she was a little self conscious about it.
Her right arm had a tattoo of barbed wire wrapped around the bicep. She was also completely shaved bare. That wasn't the only tattoo she had, however, as when she turned while undressing, I could see there was a large rectangular tattoo just above the crack of her ass on the small of her back, about the size of a mass market paperback book. It was detailed, designed to look like the sort of brass plaque you see on old historical buildings. It said “Property of Arthur Covington the 4th, Bitch #7, HOPE” in stacked large letters, easily readable from a good distance. The son of a bitch had given them tramp stamps with his fucking name on them, and their fucking name so he didn't have to bother to remember them. The inkwork was heavy, and having it removed would be a long and painful process. Shit, it probably would've been easier to just blackout the whole area into one giant spot of ink.
It was hard to think of her and Rachel as sisters, purely for how visually different they were, but as I'd find out over the next few days, they were only half-sisters, sharing the same father but different mothers. Hope mentioned it in passing one day, as if it somehow excused Covington's behavior.
“How do you want me, sir?”
He grabbed the footrest and pulled it over before gesturing to it. “On your hands and knees, obviously, but let's be sure to keep our distance from Piper,” he said, his voice dripping with smug. “We wouldn't want a fleck of my cum to accidentally get into her mouth. She hasn't earned it yet.”
“Of course, Master,” she said, moving down onto her knees before placing her hands before her. The height was perfect so that he didn't have to crouch down or shove her down much to get his cock aligned up with her snatch.
“You see this, Piper?” he said. “This is what good little bitches get.”
For the next few minutes, he fucked her brains out in front of me, as she moaned and pleaded with him, a marked change of how she'd been acting before. Before she'd been proud and defiant, but the minute he got his cock inside of her, she turned into a spineless simp, begging for him to use her harder, faster, to fill her up.
That scared me more than anything else I'd gone through so far, because she seemed so broken, like a drug addict pleading for her fix. I'd seen addicts before. One of my girlfriends growing up had picked up a cocaine habit in college and when I was back in town for the Christmas holidays, me and a group of her other friends basically kidnapped her and checked her into a rehab facility, forcing her to get clean, even as she begged and pleaded with us that she could quit any time she wanted. Hope reminded me of her, willing to do or say anything to get her next fix.
I think he thought seeing Hope in the throes of orgasm was going to make me want him more, but all it did was convince me that I needed to hold out.
When he came inside of her, I saw that controlled demeanor of hers shatter, and that orgasm that overwhelmed her nervous system was clearly no less intense than the one I'd seen Layla go through just the night before. So much for thinking the story about increased potency of orgasms was bullshit.
A few minutes later, however, she recovered enough to get up, get dressed and head out, along with Covington and Melody, and this time, they turned off the lights, leaving me alone in the dark. It wasn't great, but I'm a big girl, and being left in darkness wasn't that big a deal.
To me, over the next week, it felt like they were trying to think of new ways to get me to break, to try and torture me, to try and get me to accept my situation, but it never worked. He brought Hope in with her half-sister, and had them together, making them make out with each other while he fucked one then the other, much to my disgust. He brought Layla back around. He shoved Veronica's face into the floor when he drilled her, just to show me how much control he felt like he had. He fucked Rachel in the ass in front of me, and she looked about as bored as she possibly could, as if she was trying to convince me it would be something I could just casually ignore.
They all had tattoos with numbers similar to Hope's, even Layla, whose tattoo was still raw, fresh and agitated, the flesh around it red and sore. Her number was 13. My number, Covington told me, would be 14. I suspected he hadn't made his wife get tattooed, which accounts for the difference in the headcount.
'You can get used to anything, eventually,' Rachel's expression seemed to say to me, as he tore open her asshole with a complete lack of care or grace, his cock just hammering into her for his own perverse enjoyment. Covington even made Hope suck some of the cum out of her half-sister's ass. Rachel looked unbothered and Hope looked eager to please. 'You can even get used to this.'
But fuck that.
After three days, they took the handcuffs and shackles off me and took them out of the room, leaving me mostly alone in the study that had become my cell. I'll be honest with you. Around day four, I tried to get myself off, but it was almost like my body had locked out my ability to have an orgasm, to my intense frustration. I'm a grown ass woman, and I've been jilling off since I was, like, twelve, but all my usual tricks and sensitive spots, all of it was like scratching at an itch but not getting any fucking relief from it. I jilled until I was sore from all the rubbing, at which point I abandoned it in frustration.
Melody remarked on it the next time she came into the room, telling me that if I just fucked Covington, all the pain and aching would go away. She told me that she pitied me, because I was fighting for nothing. That all my struggles wouldn't make a tiny bit of fucking difference in the end. They seemed to think it was going to break me, but all it did was fuel the resistance. There was a sort of sad resignation to Melody that I hadn't noticed before that.
After day four, they started sending Lisa in to deliver the food, partially because my energy levels were down. They could tell that sprinting through the doorway wasn't really an option for me anymore. I'd been trying to work out as I could, but by this point there was an unbearable sense of lethargy running through my veins, like my body was going to refuse to work like it should until it got what it wanted, and it was trying to tell me that struggling against it was wrong.
No pain, no gain, though, right?
I tried asking Lisa for help, tried to convince her to smuggle me out and get me away, that what Covington was doing to me was cruel and inhumane, but she never once spoke a single word to me, a sort of skittish deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes at all times. Whatever Covington had done to her had been enough to crush whatever spirit had been in her when she'd arrived at his doorstep.
Also on day four, they shackled me back up and dragged me out into the back yard, where they had opened my suitcase next to a fire pit, and slowly, item by item, they burned all my clothes in front of me. Each time they took something out, they put in a matching new item. If they burned a shirt, they put in a shirt. If they burned lingerie, they put in either a bra or panties. Everything they put into the suitcase, however, was plain white, with large black lettering on it that read “Covington's Bad Dog.” I didn't flinch an inch. They were only clothes. After they'd finished burning all the clothes I had, they closed the suitcase and marched me back into my room.
He never damaged my phone, for reasons I wasn't quite sure of until recently. Niko told me a few days ago that if my phone had been damaged or destroyed before I checked in with my family, it would've triggered an immediate investigation that even Covington couldn't stop. So that's why he didn't fuck with my phone, and kept it charging all the time I was there.
Day five, Covington had a bunch of the women from the house come into the room one at a time to spit on me and yell obscenities at me, telling me how he was punishing them now for my obstinate behavior. Rachel showed me her bruised ribs from where he'd punched her. Hope came in with a black eye. Lisa still wouldn't even talk to me, but it looked and smelled like she'd soiled her pants and hadn't been allowed to take them off. She simply stood there and cried at me quietly. Layla had pleaded and begged with me to give in, telling me that Covington had threatened to break one of her legs or arms if I didn't give in. I told her that I wasn't going to give in, and that she should tell Covington I thought he was a coward for not trying to hit me instead of all the others. I told her that while she'd given in, I wasn't going to.
She had made her choice and I was going to stand by mine.
After that, he didn't try and hurt the girls any more to get me to cave. He'd learned it wasn't leverage over me. It hurt. Jesus, Fi, I fucking hated it, knowing these women were getting beaten up and abused because I wouldn't give in, but they had chosen to accept this man for what he was, and there was no fucking way I was going to do that.
I used to wonder how abused woman could stay with asshole men who would beat and shout at them, but I got an object lesson in watching how the women of Covington's house acted. He kept them in check in various ways – fear, anger, addiction...
Did I mention this yet? Around day six or seven – the timeline of what happened when gets a lot more fuzzy towards the end of the run – anyway, Melody came storming into the room and punched me right in the gut, harder than I've ever been hit in my life. She shouted at me that Covington was refusing to fuck her until I was broken and gave in. Not getting her fix was starting to drive her crazy, she shouted at me, tears of frustration rolling down her cheeks. I told her that beating me up wasn't going to get her anywhere.
“You chose this fucker,” I spat at her from my position balled up on the floor, doubled over in pain. “That doesn't mean I have to.”
She stomped out again without saying anything else.
Not too long after that, I had my one singular encounter with Alicia, Covington's wife. She came into the room by herself, having to discourage her own bodyguard, a woman I didn't meet, from coming in. I caught a glimpse of the bodyguard at the doorway, but she stayed outside as per her orders when Alicia Covington came into the room to look at me.
She winced a little as the reek of the room hit her nose and clearly offended her sensibilities. I don't know if you've seen or heard about Alicia. She and Covington's relationship clearly predates the whole DuoHalo mess by a lot, since they have a handful of kids together. She's in her mid-forties, stunningly beautiful, I think maybe a former model or dancer or maybe both. There's a subtle shadow of an Eastern European accent of some kind when she speaks, but she's worked very hard to make sure it's just a trace. Pale skinned, dark hair, with green eyes the shade of dusty emeralds. Her tits struck me as too big to be real, but she certainly moved like she was used to them.
There was something hard and harsh about her from the very start. Like I said, I'd been told the kids were kept in a second house on the property and Alicia spent most of her time over there with them. Arthur had tried to make it sound like it was his idea when he'd told me about her, but there was something in the tone of his voice that made me think it was her decision, not his. That was only reinforced when I met her, because I didn't even want to imagine what it would be like when the two of them fought. She seemed like one mean bitch who wouldn't give him an inch unless she thought she would immediately get back twice as much. She also seemed coldly calculating, like someone who knew which battles to fight and which were just lost causes.
She was dressed to the nines in modern fashion, and she knew exactly how to make it work for her, completely comfortable in her outfit, unlike most of the other people I'd seen around the house. Her shoes alone probably cost more than all the clothes I'd brought with me that they burned. She was dressed in a respectable long black skirt and a puffy navy-blue silk blouse with an exposed red corset on underneath it, the top portion of her shirt open to her sternum, like she enjoyed showing off. She had on simple diamond stud earrings, a golden pendant and a wedding ring, in addition to her engagement ring, the cluster of diamonds on which was terrifying in size.
“So,” she said to me, not bothering to introduce herself. “You're this stubborn filly the whole house is talking about.”
By then, even standing up was difficult, but my pride just wouldn't let me go silent, so I stood up and affected a mock curtsy, bowing my head a little.
“I have to admit,” Alicia said, moving over towards the two chairs, sitting down in the one opposite of the one I slumped back down into. “When Arthur told me he'd brought in a woman who intended to try and fight off the imprinting process, I thought you wouldn't last two days. Oh, I understand you are meant to be some hot shit athlete that the world is oh so very impressed by, but this isn't the sort of thing you've spent your life training for, now, is it? I've been willful with Arthur before, and it rarely ends well, at least not without a very good long-term plan in play.” She looked me over, shaking her head. “None of that matters to you, though, does it? You are just going to carry on with your jousting at windmills...”
My voice was hoarse from having spent hours and hours shouting and screaming at the walls, but I summoned what strength I had left to put together two words. “Fuck. Off.”
Alicia smirked a little bit. “God, you're practically going insane with lust right now and yet somehow, you're still putting up a fight. I admire that. Honestly, I do. I knew what kind of monster I was marrying all those years ago, but most of the girls who come through those doors, well, they are so desperate to survive this plague that they will take any lifeline they're offered. And that's how he gets them, you see.” She nodded mostly to herself, as if considering her options in her head. “You're really going to fight this to the very end, aren't you?”
My lips hurt and so rather than trying to summon another word, I just nodded.
She nodded at me again, this time in agreement. “I thought as much. Fine. I know my husband better than any woman alive, and I refuse to let him push you completely to the brink of death without any chance of survival. The deck can be stacked, but there always must be an outside chance of winning,” she sighed, seeming to consider her options for the moment. “It's not a game if it's impossible to win.”
Breathing hurt. I was mostly held up by the back of the chair, my fingers too worn to even hold onto the arms of the chair. I wasn't sure what Alicia was thinking about, but she was deep in thought for what could've been minutes or hours. At that point, I was starting to fall into delirium and madness, the lust chewing me up from the inside out.
Eventually she spoke again. “Yes. Alright. Well then, Piper Brown, here is the end of the marathon, one way or the other for you,” she said, standing up, tugging on her silk shirt, making sure it pulled tight. “Tomorrow my husband is going to come and offer you his cock. He won't be cruel or debasing – he will simply be nude and ready for you. If you can resist him then, that one final time, I will convince him to find a different man for you, someone away from here, unaffiliated with our house. You will be taken from this property, and you will never again have to set foot on it if you don't wish to. It is, as they say, your out.”
I remember my sense of resistance, which had been on its last few embers, sparked back to life at those words. I took that single scrap of daylight and stoked it into a supernova of resistance.
“Now. I cannot guarantee that whatever man he pawns you off on won't be just as bad as him, but that's just the risk you are going to have to take. You know what this devil is capable of. The unknown man is unlikely to be as bad, but I cannot promise you that he will be what one might call good,” she said. “I'll convince Arthur to throw you into the pot of the poker game he's got going in a couple of nights. If you're lucky, you'll end up with Morrison or Gregor or Watkins. If not, well, at least you'll be able to take comfort in the fact that you will not be here, with him.”
She reached down and with one fingertip pushing my ratty hair out of my face and behind my ear, so she could look me directly in the eyes.
“In exchange I ask only one thing of you,” Alicia said to me. “It's a trifle and something I think you should be able to stomach. If you manage to find a new home, away from here, I want you to say nothing publicly about my husband for the next three months. The new president is going to be giving a speech within a month or so, announcing to the world exactly how high our death tolls are, and if you're going to document... all of this...” she said, gesturing at me, “then I want it to have a chance to be heard publicly. Fairly. Loudly. If you try and bring all this up immediately, it will get lost in the noise of the new reality. Also, I want to prepare myself and my children for the accompanying fallout, and to do that, I am going to need a few months. I feel like three will suffice. Agree to that, and resist him again tomorrow, and in two days' time, you will wake up in a new home. He's got a mother-daughter combo platter coming in tomorrow, and the only reason he won't have them both immediately is that he needs to offer them as collateral so he can try and win some movie star off of Nathaniel, simply to lord the starlet over them. Three months. Are we agreed?”
She offered her hand to me, offered a way out to me, and I grabbed it and shook her hand, smearing some of my filth onto her immaculate skin, sealing our deal. I felt it important enough to verbalize it, and even though it hurt my throat, I croaked out the word, “Agreed.”
Alicia smiled. “I admire your refusal to go lightly into that dark night, my dear,” she said to me. “Good luck to you.” Then she headed out of the room, and I haven't seen her since.
With no windows and no clocks, there was no way to tell what time it was Alicia came to visit me on day seven, but it must have been early. Either that or the long waiting was just driving me insane. My entire body felt like it was on fire, like my blood wanted to leap out of my body and escape me. It was taking every bit of willpower I had not to be scratching at my own veins.
I think I laughed insanely for like an hour at some point towards the end of day seven, but it also might have been early on day eight. I know I didn't sleep between the time Alicia left me and when Covington came to see me the next day.
Sometime in the morning of day eight, Covington entered the room, wearing nothing at all, followed by Melody, who seemed to want to make sure nothing happened to him. Hope stood watch at the door. At that point, I don't blame them for being paranoid. I wasn't in my right mind. I wasn't thinking clearly. Shit, I might not have even been thinking at all. I'm sure I looked less like a woman and more like a rabid creature, feral and dangerous.
Covington didn't say anything, but walked over to the center of the room, standing proudly, looking down at me in my armchair, confidence and pity in his eyes. Standing was difficult, but I managed to get to my feet, even with my legs wobbling and unstable, like a newly born foal. Each step towards him was precarious at best, like I might fall ass end up if so much as a stiff breeze crossed my path. He lifted one hand up and sliced it in a gesture across his waist, like he was presenting a prize of a game show, his cock pointing my direction.
The look in his face made it clear he thought he'd won.
Right up until I slapped him.
I wasn't a hard slap. I was too weak for that, but I heard my hand smack on his flesh, and I saw that look of shock, embarrassment and raw fury cross his face. I wished I could've knocked his fucking head off, but even this weak swat of my hand on his cheek was enough to make my point.
He wanted to hit me. I could see it in the fucker's eyes. But instead, he reached forward, pushed his palm against my collarbone and shoved me back into the chair. “You ungrateful whore,” he sneered at me. “Fine. I'll toss you to the fucking wolves then. I hope Jacobson takes you. Then you'll fucking learn what horror is.”
It hurt like hell, but I laughed again when he and Melody stormed back out. I must have sounded like I'd gone fucking mad.
And it had wiped that smug grin off Hope's face and replaced it with one of fear.
Once they were gone, I leaned back in the chair, and I passed out. I knew I'd passed the fucking test, and whatever else I thought about Alicia, I was certain she wouldn't break her word. If she had, I'd be stuck in the house with her, and she would treat every time she saw me as a horrible reminder that she'd lost to her husband, and that he'd gotten the better of her. That meant I could sleep, relax, try and regain a little bit of strength.
Of course, my dreams were far from restful. It was like a hundred years of pornography all being directly mainlined into my eyeballs, unstoppable, a firehose on full blast of erotic sights and sounds, beamed against my frontal lobe until it was occupying my every thought.
Everything was such a blur that I don't even really remember my first time with Andy. I have bits and flashes of memory, but nothing solid, nothing concrete. I think I blew him? I know Niko was there, because I remember her voice saying “She wants more,” and “hit her again,” which I somehow intuited meant to give me another dose of cum, and not to physically strike me. Niko told me later that the first blast of cum didn't start the imprinting process, and they've never seen that before, with anyone. I remember an intense overwhelming sensation of satisfaction and ecstasy with what I guess was my second orgasm from Andy, but it was all slightly removed, like I was apart from it, standing off to the side watching it happen to someone else.
I'm sure that there was some part of my reptile brain that evaluated to make sure Andy wasn't Covington, and as soon as it made that decision, it just decided it was go time and it wasn't going to wait, so I just took what I needed and got myself imprinted on Andy.
Niko said it was just after midnight on my tenth day at Covington manor that they pulled me out of there. I know I said nine days earlier, but what's a couple extra hours? She told me they loaded me into the car, along with Asha and her mom, and we all hauled ass, everyone wanting to get as far the fuck away from Covington as quickly as possible, not that I remember any of it. The last scrap of memory in that horrible house I have is the sensation of Andy creaming inside of me before completely succumbing to the infinite blackness of the imprinting process.
And that's the end of my time spent at Covington manor.
I survived.
What's more, my world had completely changed by the time I woke up some thirty hours later and read the letter that changed my life. All of this happened before I even remember saying hello to Andy for the first time.
Jesus, I got so fucking lucky he isn't a prick.
* * * * *
Fiona rubbed her temple. “Fucking hell, death's too fucking good for Covington. Bean bag shotgun rounds? Dobermans? A bucket to piss in? Bitch tattoos? I wanna kill the bastard myself and I've never even met the prick. What a fucking asshole...”
“I figure there's plenty of time before your book would be done so I'll uphold my portion of the agreement with Alicia since you won't be putting this out until after then,” Piper sighed. “But fuck, it feels good to have gotten it out there, to have talked about all the shit I went through in the span of just a week and change.”
“I'm a little surprised he didn't just slip you some cum and imprint you on the sly,” Fi said.
“To do so would've been admitting defeat,” Piper laughed. “He knew I would have been able to justifiably call him a loser any time I wanted while I was there. And while you haven't met Covington yet, believe you me, there isn't anything that man hates more than losing. He's probably still pissed at Andy for beating him in poker.”
“You want to take a break or finish up?”
“Let's take a short coffee break first and then we can finish and I can tell you about Andy's letter, the thing I haven't let be more than five feet away from me since I woke up...”
“That good, huh?”
“You know Andy better than anybody,” Piper smiled. “What do you think?”
Comments
SP Rupert
Piper Tilted at that Windmill and won. I have a ton of respect for the character now. And Alicia is an interesting QT wildcard now…
Chester Orland
I really like this side story for fleshing out both Piper and Fiona's characters and the horror that is Covington.
