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If I thought Ivan’s face could look cruel when he chose, though, this man instantly struck me as brutal through and through. I felt my heart rate rise. I heard my breathing become uneven and rough.
Belkonov proved immediately that the terrifying expression on his face represented no more than what he had in his mind and heart, too.
“She’s looking at me,” he said to Ivan in rapid Russian, clearly sure that I couldn’t understand—that he could speak about me as if I were a blowup sex doll. “You’re right that she needs to learn her place.”
The way he said it—just the word place—sent another shiver thrilling through my body. To my horror, something about the situation—above all the way Ivan stood there guaranteeing, I knew, my safety—made Belkonov’s casual, thoughtless dominance terribly arousing for me.
That could ruin everything, one voice in my brain whispered.
It will make sure I’m convincing, another whispered back.
Above all, I had to make certain not to give away my knowledge of Russian. I forced myself to keep looking at Belkonov as he returned his attention from Ivan to me.
He spoke in English.
“Eyes down, whore,” he said.
I felt the operation of the compliance wand, making me do the thing I wanted to do: obey. I lowered my gaze to his shiny shoes.
“And take your hands away from your body. Put them on your head.”
I could understand his English only with difficulty, but again the wand’s operation kicked in before conscious thought: I felt my hands go up, despite the cold that seemed to wrap around me instantly. I gave a sob of abject bodily distress. I thought I might simply fall down unconscious if this went on much longer, and yet my nervous system had become so aroused I also thought I might explode.
I heard a strange sound, a sort of metallic clicking, from Belkonov’s direction. Ivan chuckled. My brain worked furiously, and I couldn’t help feeling a little gratitude for the compliance wand, because I couldn’t look up as much as I wanted to.
Then I felt the collar go around my neck, and Belkonov’s hands there, buckling the stout leather behind my head.
“This will help you learn,” he said in English.
“Answer your new master,” Ivan said, his voice so hard that I could barely convince myself my master didn’t feel the contempt that seemed to emanate from him.
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
“Yes, what?” Belkonov demanded. “Will it help a little whore like you learn, to have a collar and a leash?”
He fastened the long chain leash to a ring at the front of my new collar.
“Yes,” I said, my voice coming out as a sob. “It will help me to… to have a leash.”
Somehow I had forgotten the cold, so overwhelmingly did the emotions and sensations flood my body. Ivan had never fastened me with a leash, never even put a collar around my neck. Until that moment, when Belkonov did it, I hadn’t even realized how desperate I had become for that ultimate degradation, that sign that Heather Foster, independent young woman, was really nothing but a special sort of pet, an owned fuck toy. To have this enemy of my gospodin collar me felt much worse than being kept naked in the freezing cold.
Thankfully, they didn’t let me think about it. Belkonov clearly wanted to show Ivan that he could control me just as forcefully as my real master could. He started up the stairs, pulling me roughly after him.
I had to work very hard to suppress my impulse to yell in Russian, “You don’t have to pull, you asshole—the fucking wand’s making me follow you!”
The annoyance of not being able to express that thought cut through some of my mental and emotional turmoil at least. I felt like I could think again as the warmth of Belkonov’s beautiful home received me. He had clearly furnished it to make visitors think themselves in old Russia—the Russia of Peter the Great, even, with what must have been the house’s original chandeliers and gilt molding restored to a fine luster. I didn’t even want to think how much precious energy the man wasted heating the vast space under those high ceilings.
My breathing calmed as I followed my master and my pseudo-master, walking awkwardly with my hands still clasped at the top of my head. They walked a meter in front of me and talked about the price of vodka, Ivan seemingly at ease with the snake who held the leash attached to my collar. Simply being able to look at their faces, in the fleeting moments when they turned them slightly toward each other as they chatted, restored some of my confidence that the plan could work.
Belkonov clearly meant to appear casual, but he moved jerkily, unnaturally, as if calculating the effect of every action. I could tell he had a bad case of nerves underneath that easy front.
