The Upper Room Pt. 01

The Mansion swallows sound as I climb. Carpets mute every footfall like secrets eating their own echoes. I tell myself I'm not following her, but the truth drags behind me like a shadow with teeth.

She didn't speak. She didn't need to. One glance over her shoulder after breakfast, one finger curling slow as smoke, and my body stood before my mind could object. Rita saw. I felt her stare cling to my back, hot and cracked with something sharp enough to cut.

James didn't move, but his silence was a knife laid flat on the table.

Upstairs smells different. Not kitchen heat--no butter, no salt. Here it's wax and shadow, something like incense but colder, threaded with dust and velvet. The hallway narrows to a door I've never seen open. She pushes it with her palm, and it swings soundlessly, revealing a room that isn't a room. It's a world.

Dark wood panelled high, swallowing light like an oath. Curtains heavy as gravity, drawn back to bare a single tall window that bleeds a weak, grey sun. Candles spit low flames along the walls, flickering slow like the room is breathing. And the mirrors--God, the mirrors. Three of them, tall as judgment, catching angles of me I don't want to see.

In the centre: a chair. Not a throne. Worse. Thinner.

Hard lines, steel frame padded in black leather, its simplicity louder than any ornament. Beside it, a low table draped in silk the colour of bone. Laid across it: things. Objects that hum without moving--glass glinting like frozen water, coils of leather curled like snakes, a length of silk folded too neatly to be innocent.

"Stand there," she murmurs, pointing to the rug before the chair. Her voice isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. It moves through me like warm iron, bending marrow.

I walk. My knees hum with memory. My throat hums with words I can't swallow.

"Take it off," she says.

I blink. "What?"

"Everything that pretends you still belong to you."

My pulse slams. My fingers twitch at the hem of my shirt, then curl like fists. She doesn't move. She just watches, still as water in a glass you're afraid to touch because you know it will spill red when it tips.

I peel the shirt. Slow. The air bites my skin where heat just lived. My bra follows--straps slipping like whispers down my arms. My jeans fight me, denim clinging like a sin that won't confess, then puddling at my ankles with a hush. Last, the cotton scrap of underwear, damp at its centre, sliding down like shame made visible.

When I'm bare, the mirrors open their eyes. My body looks strange. Pale as porcelain, mottled with heat, slick at the hollow of my throat. I want to hide. I want to kneel. I want her to tell me which.

She doesn't. Not yet.

Instead, she picks up the silk slip from the table and holds it like a sacrament. It's white. Too white. She walks to me, slow, until the hem brushes my knees.

"Lift your arms."

I do. The fabric slides down like water blessing stone, cool against fevered skin. It pools around my thighs, whisper-thin, translucent where the light hits. My body is still naked, only prettier about it.

She steps back, studies me like she's measuring grain in a cut of wood. Then she turns to the table and takes the leather. Not the leash from last night. Something older, heavier. A collar, wide as her palm, black as a sealed mouth.

"Come here."

My feet move through honey. The rug drinks every sound, but the silence roars anyway.

"Kneel."

The word lands and I fold. Not fast. Not slow. Just inevitable, like gravity finally remembered me. The cushion beneath my knees sighs like a living thing.

She circles me once, the way you circle a fire to feel where the heat is strongest. The collar dangles from her fingers, glinting each time the candlelight licks it. My breath knots in my throat, thick as rope.

"Look at me."

I lift my head. Her eyes aren't blue anymore--they're the colour of cold glass, the kind you press your tongue to just to feel how much it won't melt.

"This isn't play," she says. "It's a vow. And a vow has rules." Her voice presses into me like ink sinking through paper.

"You don't speak unless I ask."

"You don't move unless I guide."

"You don't belong to you. Not in this room. Not in any room after."

Each sentence is a blade stroked down my spine. My skin shivers like it wants to split and let the words in.

"Say it," she murmurs.

My tongue stumbles. "I--"

"Say it," sharper now, like the crack of ice.

"I... don't belong to me anymore."

Silence swells. Her breath brushes my ear as the leather closes around my throat, buckle biting soft at the back. It's not choking. Not yet. But it hums against my pulse like a mouth tasting blood through skin.

The mirrors multiply us--her standing, me kneeling, The white slip shimmered with virtue's lie, sin veiled in bridal silk. She loops the leash through the chair arm, ties it off in a knot that looks too simple to hold but does. Her fingers skim my jaw, tilting it until I'm staring at the floor.

"Good," she says. Not praise. Judgment.

Then she sits. Slowly. Like gravity obeys her. One leg crosses over the other, silk whispering against leather, and the sound is louder than the blood in my ears.

Behind me, the door opens without warning.

Rita, the sister-in-law to Betty. Barefoot. Breathless. Wrapped in velvet the colour of spilled wine. Her eyes widen when she sees me leashed, but it isn't shock that blooms there. It's hunger.

And James Betty's brother, Rita's husband. Last. Shadow thick around his shoulders, jaw locked so hard it looks carved. His gaze flicks from me to Betty to the knot at my throat, and something in his face fractures.

"Close the door," Betty says.

James does.

It swings shut lazy, without guidance. The sound hit like a gunshot.

My eyes flew open, ragged breath snagging in my throat. James didn't flinch. Of course he didn't.

His fingers stayed poised against my cunt, his other hand curling under my chin like he was sculpting me for auction.

"Well, well," Rita's voice coiled into the room like cigarette smoke--sweet, toxic, impossible to ignore. "Is this what you do when I take a nap?"

She was framed in the doorway, barefoot and furious, wrapped in a robe the colour of pomegranate seeds. Her hair was a snarl of black silk down her back. A glass dangled from her fingertips, gin shimmering pale green inside. Her nails tapped the rim once, twice--like punctuation for the carnage about to follow.

James smiled lazily, never breaking contact with me. "Afternoon, Rita."

"Afternoon?" Her laugh was brittle crystal. "You two have got her drooling like a half-broken foal and you call it afternoon?"

My cheeks burned. Drool slicked the corner of my mouth, warm and obscene, glistening on my chin where his fingers had been. I wanted to wipe it away. I didn't move. Couldn't.

"Close the door," James said softly, still stroking me through the soaked scrap of silk that had once been my panties. "You're letting the chill in."

Rita's eyes flicked to me, slow, scalding. Her lips parted in a smile that wasn't a smile. "You think you're clever," she said to him, stepping inside. The robe slipped, revealing the slick gleam of her thigh. "You think you're the only one who knows what she needs?"

James' fingers pressed harder. My hips twitched traitorously. His voice dropped, molten and merciless: "Tell her, Lina. Tell her who brought you under."

I opened my mouth. No sound. Just a quivering exhale that tasted like surrender.

"That's what I thought," James purred. His hand cupped me, firm, commanding. "She can't even remember her name."

Rita laughed again, low and dangerous. The glass left her fingers--thunking softly onto the velvet chaise behind her as she crossed the room in bare feet, each step a soft detonation.

"Can't remember her name?" she murmured, circling me like I was prey snared in some exquisite trap. "Funny... I remember teaching her how to say mine."

Heat shot through me like a live wire. Her scent hit next--citrus and gin and something darker, bitter-sweet like burnt sugar. She crouched, bringing her face level with mine, her dark eyes huge and glittering.

"Look at you," she whispered. "Mouth open, eyes glassy... God, you're pathetic."

The word sliced through me. I whimpered. She smiled like she'd drawn blood.

James' hand clamped on my jaw, jerking my face back toward him. "Eyes on me," he snapped, his voice a velvet lash. "She doesn't speak unless I say so."

"Is that so?" Rita's gaze slid down to where his fingers were still stroking me--slow, taunting, a rhythm that pulsed in my bones. "Because her cunt's telling me a different story."

Before James could answer, her hand shot out--fast as a striking snake--closing over his wrist. For one molten second, their power locked like duelling currents. His fingers flexed against me. Her grip tightened. The air vibrated with the kind of silence that hums right before glass shatters.

Then--she wrenched his hand away.

The sound I made was animal. A broken, strangled sob of loss. Rita heard it. Oh, she heard it--and her smile curved slow and cruel.

"Stand up," she ordered.

I froze. My thighs trembled, slick with need, silk clinging like a wet whisper. James leaned in close, lips grazing my ear, his voice a low snarl:

"Don't you fucking move."

I couldn't breathe. Their words wrapped around me like chains--one dragging north, the other south. My body swayed between them, a puppet with two masters.

Rita's fingers hooked the strap of my slip, sliding it off one shoulder with surgical grace. "What's the matter, baby?" she crooned. "Lost your tongue? Or did he hypnotize that away too?"

James' laugh was a dark, rich rumble. "Oh, she can talk," he murmured, his hand sliding up the inside of my thigh, reclaiming what she'd tried to steal. "When I let her."

"Is that true?" Rita's eyes burned into mine. Her breath was gin and vengeance. "Does Daddy pull your strings while you wag your pretty little ass for the cameras?"

I whimpered again. Words scrambled like birds in a storm, in my brain. So, useless to engage my mouth. My knees gave. James caught me before I crumpled, his arm banding tight around my waist, yanking me back against his chest. His cock was a hard, hot line against my spine.

"She doesn't need you," he said flatly. "She's mine."

That tore it.

Rita lunged. Not at me--at him. Her nails scored his jaw as she slammed her mouth against his in a kiss that tasted like murder. I watched, dizzy and drowning, as his hand fisted in her hair, dragging her head back so hard she gasped.

"You want a fight?" he snarled.

"No," Rita hissed, eyes blazing as she ripped her robe open and let it fall. Her body gleamed like wet porcelain, nipples sharp as diamonds. "I want her."

And then her hand was between my legs.

I screamed. Not in protest. In shock. In molten, white-hot need as her fingers slid through the mess he'd made of me. She laughed against my ear, biting the lobe hard enough to leave a crescent.

"So wet," she mocked, her voice pure honeyed poison. "God, you were born for this, weren't you?"

James' growl vibrated through my spine. His hands seized my wrists, yanking them behind me, holding me open for her like some obscene offering.

"Tell her who owns you," he ordered.

Rita's tongue traced my throat, slow, claiming. "Don't listen, baby. He can make you come, but I can make you want to come."

Their words collided inside me, jagged, electric. My body bucked, caught between two tides, every nerve screaming.

And then--

The door clicked.

Not slammed. Not flung. Just... clicked. Soft. Surgical.

The sound froze the air. Froze them. Froze me.

James' grip loosened. Rita's fingers stilled inside my panties.

I turned my head--slow, terrified--and saw her.

Betty.

Barefoot. Backlit by the corridor glow. Wearing white that wasn't innocent. A silk robe cinched like a whisper. Her face was carved from calm, her eyes glacial fire.

She didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to.

"One word," she said.

"Down."

And my knees hit the floor before thought caught up.

The slip pooled around me like a shroud. My mouth opened on a sob that never made a sound.

Behind me, James swore softly. Rita's breath shivered against my neck.

Betty stepped closer. The robe sighed as it opened just enough to show the pale gleam of her thigh. Her fingers curled under my chin.

And she smiled.

"Good girl."

The orgasm tore through me like God's private joke.