“Bastard,” she said.
“Sticks and stones, sticks and stones—”
Braden snuffed at the sausages and decided they were cooked through. He took slices of bread from a loaf he had brought and made a crude sandwich.
A pushover. A goddamn pushover. Why, he’d never imagined he would overcome her so easily. There she was, lying on the heap of torn blankets which served her for a bed, her wrists and ankles tied, and she hadn’t uttered a word of protest when he bound her. And that must simply be because when he thought about fetters and bondage something fierce was let loose on the lower levels of his mind, emitting a sort of raw animalistic violence that her sober detachment was vulnerable to. Faced with that kind of reaction all she could do was whimper and hold out her hands for the rope.
Oh, baby, what I’m going to do with you . . . !
The memory haunted him all the while he was munching his food. Belly satisfied, he lit a cigarette and relaxed into a contented reverie against the side wall of the cave. In some ways, even if nothing else came of what he had done, it was an achievement to have actualized his favorite fantasy. Tying up a girl with no clothes on, wholly and completely at his mercy—it was the other half of his private hell, the one in which he was the victim to be bound. And because he fundamentally resented the deprivation and subservience here implied, no matter how great a thrill it gave him, he yearned for the power that control over a mind-reader would bring him, as though that would set him free from the prison in which his tyrannical father and cynical mother had enclosed him. He remembered those Saturday night encounters when his parents called him in to agree to the total of his week’s offences and to suffer without crying out the lashes that matched the number of them.
He caught himself suddenly. Thinking along those lines was dangerous. With an effort he wrenched his mind back to pleasanter ideas—he pictured a certain building in pre-Castro Havana, where a girl in high black boots with jingling spurs had passed the thong of a whip through her fingers and licked her lips lasciviously, ordering him to cringe toward her foot and kiss her toe . . .
Behind him came a splashing sound and he jolted back to full awareness. He scrambled to his feet. It was no part of his plan to have Lesley foul the pile of blankets with vomit—he had dumped her there for the time being only. Since there was nothing else decently soft to sleep on he proposed to usurp the pile himself and let her sleep on the bare stone floor. A few nights of that and she would be well softened for him.
Although, of course, since she had shown herself to be so weak already. . .
He caught up a brand from the fire and used it for a torch to light his way back into the shallow cave. As he had feared, the thoughts she had picked up from his mind had nauseated Lesley to the point of revulsion. Luckily she had missed the blankets.
He prodded her with his toe.
“Clear it up,” he ordered.
Clasping her arms around her body, she looked up at him. “I—I’m cold!” she forced out between chattering teeth.
“I don’t care,” he rasped. “You’re going to be a hell of a sight colder. Come on, clear it up before I make you lick it up.”
Shuddering, awkward for the bonds on her wrists and the hobbles he had put around her ankles, she got to her feet.
“What—what with?”
“Should I know?” Braden shrugged. “You live here in this pigsty. You must have something to mop messes up with.”
“I guess I do,” she said tiredly. “Okay, I’ll see to it. But you’d better keep your mind on something else if you don’t want it to happen again.”
“It won’t happen again,” Braden grunted. “There won’t be anything in your belly to bring up, not even water.”
“What?”
“Not until you start doing as I say.”
She stared at him in the red light of the brand he held. For a moment her mouth worked but no sound emerged. Then she seemed to crumble in on herself.
“Oh God . . . But I can’t do it with my hands tied, can I?”
He started, suspicious of a trick. But her wrists were indeed too closely bound to let her use her hands. He found a ledge to rest his brand on and warily slacked the rope to a distance of a foot or so.
“That’s enough,” she sighed and headed for the mouth of the cave.
He dashed after her, thinking that, even if he himself would not have dared to face the steep hillside in the dark, she who had lived here for years on end might be willing to risk it to get away from him. But she stopped by the screen of piled rock hiding the cave mouth and took from behind it a plastic bucket he had seen earlier and a cheap broom with most of the bristles missing, which she must have bought in the general store of the town where he had heard news of her existence.
He relaxed, letting her go past him back into the cave. Not until he had seen her clear away the mess she had made like a perfect slave, however, did he let himself assume his former confidence.
Why, all I need to do to keep her on the leash is think about things she finds distasteful! I could weaken her past the point of resistance and enjoy myself at the same time. . .
Memories leaped up, not only of the house of ill fame in Havana which he had once patronized, but of another in Los Angeles and another in New York and another and another in every city where his steadfast quest had taken him. A multiple blur of women in
