“YOU DID WHAT?” MR. BENTMOORE’S booming voice echoed around the office, making Mr. Cox flinch.
“I locked her in a cage, nice and safe. She’s not going anywhere, and she can’t get herself into trouble. Now please, Sir, give me her file. Not just the notes—the whole thing. I need to read it.”
“You can’t just keep her locked in the cage, Cox, not against her will!”
“I just need a little more time with her, just until I figure things out. She’s hiding something, I don’t know what, and I need to find out. It’s killing me. We’ve all missed it, it’s why nothing we’ve done with her has worked so far, and I need to figure out what it is, or we’re going to lose her.”
“It sounds to me like you’ve already lost her. She’s not going to submit to you now.”
“This isn’t about submission anymore. This is psychological warfare, and I need to win.”
Mr. Bentmoore frowned and shook his head, but he walked over to his file cabinet, opened the drawer, and handed Mr. Cox a thin manila file. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in there,” he said. “You’ve been told everything.”
Mr. Cox opened the file and sat down in one of the plush armchairs to start reading. Pages began to flip as he scanned them with his eyes. Mr. Bentmoore had a seat at his desk, waiting.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Cox’s eyes lit up, and his lips spread into a grin. “Not everything,” he said, tapping the page. “Not this.”
“What? What did you find?”
Mr. Cox turned the paper around and slid it across Mr. Bentmoore’s desk. “Right there,” he said, pointing. “That’s where it started.” He rushed to the elevator and got on as soon as the doors opened, tapping the button repeatedly as if he could make it go down faster.
As the elevator doors shut, Mr. Bentmoore squinted his eyes at the page, trying to see what Mr. Cox had discovered. Then his eyes went wide.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
Ella heard the bolt unlock before the door opened. She stood up and braced herself, ready to go into attack mode as soon as her oppressor walked inside. But something about Mr. Cox’s demeanor stopped her, and her eyes narrowed as he came to stand before her.
He seemed too calm, too sure of himself—not like a man who could face criminal indictment.
“You were an intern at a local news channel,” he said. “You spent a whole year working closely with a producer. He was helping you move up the ranks. You even started getting some work in front of the camera after only six months—that’s pretty impressive.”
Ella took two steps back inside the cage. Her skin paled, and she hugged her arms around her chest. “You know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How—how did you find out?”
“Ella, we’ve always known.”
“Oh my god.” Ella felt frozen with shock.
This whole time, Mr. Bentmoore had known what she was doing there, why she had come…and he had taken her on anyway. He had been letting her pretend.
Mr. Cox, unconcerned about the bombshell he’d just dropped, continued. “Then last year, you quit your job at the station,” he said, “and very suddenly. You had no other job to fall back on, no other offers, but you quit anyway. You started working as a freelance journalist.”
“You got me,” Ella said, her voice full of biting contempt. “I’m a journalist. It’s true.”
“I don’t give a fuck, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. You’ve barely survived the past few months, Ella. An assignment here, a small job there…not enough to make it, not even enough to make ends meet. Why did you quit your job at the station? You were getting juicy assignments, spending time in front of the camera—you were on your way to the top. There was no scandal, no misconduct…or was there?” Mr. Cox eyed her guilty expression. “What happened? What did you do?”
Ella didn’t answer. She continued to gaze at Mr. Cox through the bars of the cage, feeling trapped in every way possible.
“Fine,” he said. “If you won’t tell me, maybe your old producer will. He was working directly over you; he must know what happened.” He began to walk away.
“Don’t!” Ella yelled, making Mr. Cox turn around. “Don’t call him. I don’t want him to know where I am!”
“Why not? What’s the big deal if the guy knows what you’re up to?”
“Because, okay? I don’t want him to know. I just…don’t.” Ella looked away, unsure. Her tongue came out to nervously graze her lower lip. She had no idea how vulnerable or magnificent she looked.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Cox to put two and two together. “It was this guy, wasn’t it? This producer. Your relationship with him wasn’t strictly professional. Something happened between you two.” He took in Ella’s panicked face. “Did he harass you at work?” His voice lowered. “Did he rape you?”
“No, he didn’t rape me,” Ella hissed. “It wasn’t like that at all. What we had was—special. It was amazing. He taught me so much…and he made me feel….” Her voice trailed away.
She slid down the length of the bars and slumped down to the floor in defeat, hugging her knees to her chest, and pressing her forehead into her legs. Mr. Cox came over and sat down next to her, right on the other side of the bars.
“He gave you your first taste of submission?” He offered gently. “He took control, at least in the bedroom, and you liked it.”
“Yes.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “But it wasn’t just about what went on in the bedroom. It was all the time he spent with me. God, he was so amazing. He was dynamic, this force to be reckoned with…everyone at the station admired him, but they feared him, too. But with me, he was more laid back. He was calm, always so calm, he never lost his cool, but he had this power about him, this control—”
“He was a Dominant?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.” Ella wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I don’t think he would ever label himself like that. He wouldn’t even know what that word means. But he was, and he taught me so much.”
“Then why did you quit your job?”
Ella cradled her head in her hands. “Because we fucked up, okay? I sent him an email to his work account, just some stupid note about how I couldn’t wait to see him, and he answered me back about all the things he wanted to do to me, and someone in the I.T. department found it, and told everyone how the boss was fucking the young intern, and….” She took a shaky breath. “Everyone started saying the only reason why I was getting the good assignments was because I was sleeping with the producer. They said I was fucking my way to the top.” A sob rose in her chest.
“Hey. Look at me.” Their eyes met. “Was that true? Were you just sleeping with him to get ahead?”
“No that wasn’t true!” Ella yelled, crying hard now. “I didn’t give a damn about the assignments he was giving me! I mean, I did, but that didn’t have anything to do with why I was sleeping with him! Our relationship…it was…god, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does matter. It matters a lot. Why did you quit if the rumors weren’t true?”
“Cause nobody wanted to believe the truth. They all wanted to think the worst of me. Here I was, some young hot blonde, just started out but already getting herself the good stories, the time in front of the camera. It couldn’t be because she actually deserves it, can it? No, she’s nothing but a pretty face sitting on a tight ass, sleeping with the producer. She’s not getting ahead because of her talent, she’s getting ahead cause she’s a slut.”
Her sobs became anguished, and Mr. Cox gave her a minute to calm down.
“Even my mom didn’t believe me,” Ella continued in a softer tone. “Of course, she thought I was being smart to sleep with the producer. She told me I was doing a good job, using what I got to get what I want. She even congratulated me.” Another sob rose in her throat, but she put her hand over her mouth to stifle it. “Everyone was looking at me like I was some kind of cheap whore. I couldn’t stay there anymore.”
“So you left out of misplaced shame. I get that. But Ella, why did you come here?”
Her voice rose. “Why do you think? To get inside the infamous Hotel Bentmoore, ‘where secrecy and anonymity are guaranteed.’ It was supposed to be the report of a lifetime.” She shook her head, and her hair stuck to her tear-stained cheeks. “I guess I’m not going to write that report now, am I? Mr. Bentmoore will make me sign some kind of non-disclosure form, and I won’t be able to challenge it. Nobody’s going to believe you locked me in a cage. It’s not like I have the money to get a lawyer, anyway.”
Mr. Cox ignored her accusatory tone. “Ella, I understand you wanted a good story to write about, but why did you choose this place? Nobody cares about the Hotel Bentmoore out there. It’s not on anyone’s radar. Nobody would have bought your story—and I think you know it.” He stared at her through the bars. “So why did you come here? What made you think the Hotel Bentmoore would turn your life around?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She began to rock back and forth on her butt. With her body folded up, and her hair hanging down her face, Ella looked very pitiful, and to Mr. Cox, very precious.
He sighed. “I’ll tell you why you came here,” he said. “Deep down, some part of knew you needed what your producer was giving you a taste of, and you figured out where you had to go to get more. You didn’t come here for the story, Ella. You came here for the submission, the kink, the desire to be controlled. You did your research, and you learned there’s a whole world of kink out there, and we could hand it to you in a platinum package deal. You didn’t come here to learn about us. You came here to learn about yourself.”
Ella gazed at him. “I guess so,” she said softly. “I never thought about it, but…yeah.”
Mr. Cox stood up. Then, to Ella’s surprise, he unlocked the cage, and opened the door.
“I’m giving you a choice,” he said. “If you want to leave, then leave. Nobody will try to stop you. You want to write your story, go ahead.” He squatted down to her eye level. “But if you really want to learn about yourself, if you want to learn what your submission is all about, how far it can take you, how powerful a force it can be, then stay here, with me. I’ll stay on as your host, and I’ll teach you as much as I can.” He stood back up. “But there’ll be no more lies between us, Ella, no more games. You’ll have to be completely honest with me, and trust me to do what’s right by you. That means you’ll have to submit to me completely. I will see you through this—if you stay.” He moved aside, giving her space to walk out of the cage. “Which is it to be?”
Ella remained in the cage, hugging her legs, thinking. She took a long time.
But when she began to crawl out of the cage on her hands and knees, looking up at Mr. Cox with both veneration and adulation in her clear blue eyes, he knew he had her.
“I want to stay,” she said quietly, coming to a stop by his leg and pressing her forehead into his calf. “Please. Please teach me, Sir.”
Mr. Cox wanted to shout in triumph. Instead, he walked over to the wardrobe, got out a thin leather strap, and brought it back to where Ella sat on her heels, waiting for him with her head bowed.
“You will have to obey me, Ella, at all times. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” she said without raising her head. “I understand.”
Mr. Cox walked behind her prostrating form and moved her hair away from the nape of her neck. Then he circled the soft leather strap around her slender throat, cinched it tight, and buckled it closed.
Ella took a sharp breath as she felt the leather fasten around her throat, but said nothing.
Mr. Cox smoothed down the leather, making sure it was flat against her skin. Then he ran his fingers down her silky shoulders, grazing her flesh. Ella didn’t move, not even when his fingers came around to trace lazy circles over her breasts, but held still, letting him touch her however he wanted, only shivering now and then in response.
Behind her, Mr. Cox smiled.
Now Ella’s real training would begin.
