Free Boy (The Training House #2) by Eden Bradley Page B

are laced tightly behind my back, my ankles shackled with rope, and I can’t even fucking walk by myself. I don’t mind the humiliation so much—at almost any other time, I’d love it—but I don’t know where they’ll put me, or how long it’ll take me to escape. And fucking shit—what will they do to her? What if they send her away somewhere? Someplace where I can’t find her?
    But I will. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to track her down. I have my connections in the kink world, and in the underbelly of the kink world—and yes, even our world, which is an underbelly of sorts in itself, has its own anarchists. I know them, of course. I’m one of them, aren’t I? And I can find out anything I need to.
    All of this is spinning through my head at a thousand miles an hour, and I barely noticed that the goons have hoisted me onto their shoulders. But suddenly, we’re out in the cool evening air. Even now I notice the scents of rolling fog on green leaves, see the color of the sky overhead: a deep, deep blue, starless as the sun makes its final, glimmering descent over the horizon.
    They’re carrying me on my back, so I can’t see where they’re taking me. But even before I’m tossed face-down onto the boards in the back of a wagon, I hear the jangle of harnessing, then the crack of a whip as the driver starts the human ponies moving down the road. Eventually, we stop, and the goons are back, grabbing me by the shoulders and pulling me out of the cart, only two of them this time, but I need to get my bearings if I’m going to make a break for it.
    Am I? They’d come right after me, set off the alarm, and the property would be crawling with handlers and obedient slaves, like a pack of hounds scenting a fox. Fuck. When they tilt me upright and set me on my feet, I can finally see where I am. My blood runs cold.
    In front of me is the Victorian house the owners of this place live in, and in which they house some of their more important guests. I only know it because the Master has brought me here with him—in my life as a Master, which I think of as my “outside life”, I’ve been put up in one of the dozen or so guest bungalows. I have no idea what it could possibly mean that I’ve been brought here . Am I being dismissed from my contract? Have I fucked up that badly this time? I’ve done all sorts of rotten shit, but I’ve never involved another slave before. Bad Christopher. If my stupid behavior hadn’t put Aimée at risk, I would laugh at the absurdity of my predicament— me , of all people, of all slaves, being despondent at the idea of being sent away. Ha!
    Except there’s not a damn thing to laugh about right now. The goon squad hustles me up the front steps, through the double doors that are being held wide by a pair of latex-clad ponies, which I only catch in a dark and shining peripheral blur. They’re dragging me along so damn fast, down a hall and into a large room, which, I see with a quick glance, is a parlor, of sorts. Except that there’s all kinds of kink gear and furniture in here—spanking benches and examination tables are punctuated by delicately-built period furniture. At the far end of the room is a huge fireplace, but instead of a fire, a bound and gagged and blindfolded male slave is turning on a spit above a row of burning pillar candles. Of course, he’s sporting a raging erection. Very nice. The sadist in me can’t help but grin gleefully beneath my rope gag. And then I remember that I could damn well be next.
    Fuck. Fuck this place. Fuck my damn contract.
    The fury is building, and it’s that crazed beast, scratching and slobbering, clawing to get out. The more I think of Aimée left alone, chained up in the barn, the more it feels like my brain will explode. I turn and growl at the handler on my left. He shakes his head at me. When I growl again he backhands me across the face, and I lunge at him—as ridiculous as that is, given that I’m bound and hobbled. He