Captive Heart Read online

  Captive Heart

  1

  “Azul. Can you believe it?”

  “The go-to people for exotic shades of eyeliners right now,” said Ruby, on the other side of the dining room table. “And price tags to match. You must really know how to get people's attention with that SaskiBlue persona you've created online. So how did you come up with that name anyway?”

  “Oh it's just an old nickname. Because of my eyes," Saskia said, coyly batting her eyelashes. "People say they can't decide whether they're green or blue, so some friends decided it should be a new color; and they called it SaskiBlue. Then, when I needed to, I couldn't think of an online handle to save my life, so I just went with it.”

  “Well, your eyes are definitely a great feature. I can see why an eyeliner company would want to work with you. Not to mention that every time you mention Azul, your eyes just about triple in size.”

  Saskia knew she was doing the big-eye thing - the one that had earned her the teasing nickname of “Saski-Blue” from her friends in high school back home. Despite their brief acquaintance, she knew she did not have to be self-conscious in front of Ruby. However, a corporate meeting in Manhattan would be a different story. The big-eyed gawk had to go.

  Ruby, who had been momentarily distracted by a helmeted eight year-old Boba Fett running through the room, seemed to sense something of Saskia's thoughts. She smiled as she sat back down with her newest friend, now apparently a hot Internet property, sought after by corporate sponsors. “Don't try so hard to be all poker-faced either, Saskia. Unless, of course, you've got a series of blogs planned out for how to deal with the crow's feet you're going to get from squinting.”

  “Sorry. It's just that this is Azul - a real cosmetics company with real executives. I've been after this since I moved to New York, but now that I've got a meeting, I'm afraid of them seeing some total Iowa bumpkin.”

  “That is one trap you cannot fall into, hon,” Ruby said, taking a sip of her tea. “When I was married to Zane we were all about the whole social climbing thing. We ran into plenty of people who had come out to New York from somewhere else and were trying too hard to be something they weren't. Your makeup tips are great, but let's face it, there are a thousand blogs and Youtube channels girls can go to for that information. What's driving that blog is you, and that's what's caught the sponsors' eye. Tampering with that now would be a bad idea.”

  Saskia knew Ruby was right, but the idea that Saskia Bergen was a commodity that was catching the eye of a major cosmetics company who wanted to run their ads on her page was still a little hard to get her mind around. Those big, blue-green “Saski-Blue” eyes of hers were her best feature, even if they did betray surprise a little too often. She had always been a little too short, or a little too chubby, or her golden hair just a little too dark to really qualify as one of the beautiful people. What else would motivate someone to start up a beauty blog, after all? She had been in living in the Bronx for less than a month now, and most of her possessions were still in boxes in her apartment. Ruby, the single mom next door, was the only person in her building she knew so far; the only person she knew in the entire city for that matter. And here Saskia was, already being courted by a major cosmetics firm wanting to get in on some of her sweet, sweet site traffic.

  She had wanted to see how far professional blogging could take her from the outskirts of Ames, Iowa. Now it was shaping up to give Saskia more than she had bargained for.

  ******

  “What do you have to go into the city for, Saskia? Don't companies like Azul do everything over video conferencing? Or cybernetic brain hook-ups, or some such?”

  The unboxed possessions in Saskia's studio apartment were gradually beginning to outnumber the boxed ones, but it didn't feel like home quite yet. Fortunately, her dad was just a phone call away, even at 10 pm on a Tuesday, ready to ease her homesickness with his signature wit and sarcasm.

  “No Dad,” Saskia replied with a giggle. “Business meetings still happen. But if that brain hook-up thing takes off, let me know. I can probably get a few more subscribers that way.”

  “Saskia,” Dale Bergen said with a fatherly sigh, “I still don't understand what you're doing, you know. This whole notion of getting paid to write articles on the Internet, I still have a hard time getting my head around it.”

  Saskia lay on her bed upon her stomach, legs swinging behind her in the air. Alone on a Tuesday night, she could wear her tacky pink socks without shame. “It's just a new form of journalism. Nobody tells a writer for a print magazine that they don't have a real job.”

  “Now don't put words in my mouth, Saskia. I never said it wasn't a real job. As far as I'm concerned, if someone is paying you, and you're paying bills with it, and it's not illegal, then it's a real job. Haven't I always said that? It's just a different kind of real job than what I was used to.”

  Saskia looked around her small, utilitarian lodgings. Having a real job was not glamorous. “You understand better than mom does, at least.”

  She could almost hear her father's smile through the phone. “Trust me, this thing with Azul might just be what brings her around. I know she uses their eyeliners. She doesn't like to admit when she's wrong, but you playing ball with them is gonna give her something to think about...”

  They talked for another twenty minutes about what was going on back home, and all the sweet trivialities she missed about it. Her youngest sister Alexis had gotten the lead role in her school play, a big deal to her since she this was her senior year and the last one she would be involved in. Dad didn't hear from the middle daughter Sienna as much. Her nursing classes kept her too busy, but the last he knew, she was very well. Saskia got to hear about family friends, her father's work; things that she only ever half-listened to back in Iowa, yet for which she was absurdly hungry now.

  Near the end of the call Saskia was distracted by a sound from upstairs: a front door opening and closing directly above her. The apartment building seemed to grow silent as the grave after about 8 pm or so. Any sound of human habitation was a novelty. Curious by nature, the sound set Saskia's mind wandering, and she knew it was time to bring her conversation with her father to a close. He had to work in the morning anyway, and it was getting late even if he was an hour behind her.

  Saskia stood up and paused with the cell phone still in her hand, thinking she heard voices from overhead. She strained to listen so intently that she nearly hit the ceiling when the phone chimed loudly in her hand. She realized she was acting like the heroine of a horror movie, giving herself false jump-scares, when she realized it was only a text message from her best friend Stacey.

  “Hey girl, good luck with those advertisers! Hope you're not bored in the Big Apple. If you are, don't forget about your present!”

  Stacey concluded the message with a winking smiley emoticon. In truth, Saskia had forgotten about Stacey's present. But then, Stacey always did have a one-track mind, which might explain why she was already married with a second child on the way. Her libido had not slowed down any, it never did. And for as long as they had been friends she had been trying to bring Saskia's libido up to speed with her own.

  Come to think of it, where had she put that thing? It was late to be rummaging through boxes, but whoever was upstairs sounded like they were having a heated conversation, so Saskia was confident her activities would go unnoticed. What she sought did not take long to find. She had tossed it in with the other mementos she had of Stacey. It probably said something when you can count an eight-inch purple dildo as a memento of your best friend.

  It had been a gag gift. Or, as Stacey had said with a laugh, a gift you can gag on. She had given it to Saskia as a going away present, partly just to see the look on her face. Saskia was by no means ine
xperienced, but the thought of going to town on herself with a toy had always weirded her out just a little bit. In the spirit of adventure, she had tried twice before the move to enjoy the thing but had been unsuccessful. Using a dildo given by your best friend was just strange, and the thing was also uncomfortably big.

  The voices upstairs were muffled; words impossible to make out. One voice rose more strongly than the other: a resonant male one. Although at first, it had sounded like arguing, Saskia now realized it sounded different. The male voice didn't argue, it commanded. And from the faint tone she could tell it was used to being obeyed. She spent several minutes just standing there, trying to listen, the man's voice scaring and thrilling her by turns. She got so wrapped up in it that she almost forgot she still had Stacey's outlandish gift in her hand. Looking down at it, the thought crossed her mind that if she were to imagine a cock like this attached to a real person he would probably have a voice like that...

  Saskia did not like where this line of thought was going. She hastily finished unpacking the box, placing all of her Stacey-memorabilia in and around her desk -- all except for the dildo, which she closed up in the silken pouch it had come with and stashed in the back of the closet.

  Before going to bed, she sent a goodnight text back to Stacey:

  “I actually had forgotten. Thanks for reminding me, you bitch.”

  She included lots of smileys at the end. Stacey would get the joke and undoubtedly fire back a volley of more dildo-related teasing by morning.

  As she lay in bed falling asleep, she remembered something from the phone call about Azul eyeliners. She was going to have to experiment with those for her next video blog. Above her the resonant male voice had quieted, but the mysteries it had raised worked their way into her dreams.

  Saskia's work day, such as it was, amounted to many long, tedious hours doing research about fashion trends and products. The high point of the day came around noon, when she ventured down the street to a drug store, which did happen to stock Azul brand eyeliners. She spent the afternoon playing with them and by the end of the day was able to put together a decent blog update and accompanying tutorial video. She realized it would sound like a fun, easy life to many, but it left her feeling more than a little isolated at times. By the time evening came, she was more than ready for a little company. Fortunately, her new neighbor Ruby did not mind having an extra person for supper.

  “So what do you know about him?” she asked Ruby over tea. Throughout her busy day, the mystery man upstairs had never quite left her mind.

  “What does anybody know about anybody?” Ruby said distractedly. With supper finished, her two young sons Jeremy and Kenny were ready to play once again. Jeremy, who had been Boba Fett the day before, was now ready to play Iron Man. Unfortunately, Kenny was not so ready to change storylines which meant that Iron Man's opponent was going to be Darth Vader. Once Ruby managed to herd the epic science fiction battle out of the kitchen, she gave Saskia her full attention.

  “Sorry. Zane always hated it when I gave existential answers like that. But, you get a degree in philosophy, you've got to use it when you can, right? To answer your question seriously though, that guy upstairs is an enigma. I tried to talk to him once, but he seemed really standoffish. I didn't try again. His name is Italian or something: Dario, Fabrizio, something like that.”

  About to take a drink, Saskia lowered her teacup in thought. A mysterious Italian man full of secrets... That was the kind of mystery you couldn't just pass by. Ruby apparently didn't like the look Saskia was getting in her blue-green eyes.

  “Oh, don't even start thinking about him like that. He seems like somebody you'd want to steer clear of. The few times I've seen him he's always in a suit: the kind that cost a few grand. Money like that, and he's living in a building like this, in this part of the Bronx? No ma'am, that's got trouble written all over it if you ask me.”

  It certainly put the angry tones Saskia had overheard upstairs in a whole new light. For all she knew her upstairs neighbor could be a drug dealer or a mob hit man. Or he could just be a guy who chose to dress nice and live frugally. “Come on, Ruby,” she said. “I'm the one from Iowa. I'm the one who's supposed to be scared of New York and New Yorkers.”

  “Sorry, but I was with my ex-husband long enough to see that some of the myths about the city are true. If somebody in this building were up to something shady, it wouldn't be the first time. It wasn't such a nice place before it changed ownership. You got in at the right time. There's some great folks here, like the girls across the way and Mr. Podolski downstairs. But with the way the economy's been, some of the old elements have started to show back up in the neighborhood.”

  Saskia leaned forward intently. “That just makes me more curious, though. What's a guy in tailored suits got going on that's so spooky he's got to do it in a tumbledown Bronx apartment building?”

  Ruby smiled. “With an attitude like that I can see why Iowa wasn't big enough for you. I'd still tell you to steer clear though. I can't even guess what goes on up there. He must have some kind of day job because he comes and goes at a pretty standard time. But he's got people coming and going at all hours, and sometimes it gets pretty loud up there. Maybe it's nothing suspicious, but maybe it is. Either way, speaking purely for myself, I feel like I'm better off minding my own business where that guy's concerned.”

  She got up and went to the living room to remind Darth Vader not to use his Force powers to jump off the couch. All the warnings were only giving Saskia more questions she was dying to ask. When Ruby returned, however, she had her laptop with her. “So, you keep telling me about this makeup blog of yours, but I haven't even gotten to see you all done up yet. Show me this new entry you posted.”

  The thought of sharing her work with a real person in the same room flushed the questions from her mind. The shyness Saskia never felt when she was donning makeup for the camera nearly overwhelmed her when she nervously brought up the site for Ruby's perusal. The emotion quickly vanished, however, replaced by pride and excitement. The Youtube video had only been up for two hours and already had nearly two hundred hits with the number of shares on Facebook following close behind.

  2

  The clock had crept past ten o'clock again, and Saskia could not sleep. It was the eve of her big day. In the morning she would meet with reps from the Azul cosmetics company's advertising division, and she would find out once and for all whether ad space on her blog would be a good “fit” for their particular brand. From everything that had been said through e-mails and such, it seemed like she already had the sponsorship in the bag, the meeting being a mere formality. Her father, Stacey, and Ruby had all said as much. But it still felt too good to be true.

  Lying in bed she told herself to be confidant at any cost. It wasn't like she didn't have nibbles from other potential sponsors. If Azul didn't want her ad space, someone else would. She grinned at the thought of sponsors fighting over her. Maybe the boys never had back home, but now she was becoming a hot property in other ways. It was an ambitious thought, a Saski-Blue thought. And it only increased the problem of her being too excited to sleep.

  She was thinking about getting out of bed and firing up the DVD player – she had the most recent season of Supernatural that she had been saving for just such an occasion – when the sounds began. The door upstairs opened and closed, and two sets of footsteps crossed the apartment above. An unfamiliar style of music began to throb softly above her: edgy and dark, yet unmistakably sensual. Not something Saskia would pick for a date, but music you would pick for one, just the same. So the mystery man upstairs had a girlfriend, then? She hearkened back to Ruby's description of him: Mediterranean looks and tailored suits. Of course he had a girlfriend. Saskia found herself bewilderingly disappointed. Why did she care? She had never even seen the guy.

  The music led to other sounds that led into and back out of its insistent throb. None of them brought to mind lighthearted romance. Saskia could hear the man's raised
voice, intense and dark. Was the couple arguing? She thought she had her terrifying conformation of this when she heard a loud thump followed by a woman's moan of pain.

  That sound got Saskia sitting upright in her bed and groping for her phone in the dark to call the police. She wasn't quite sure what to do. She had never had to call the police over anything before, let alone in New York City. What would happen? Would they even come? Her new Bronx neighborhood wasn't a bad one, but it certainly didn't appear to be law enforcement's top priority either.

  Another thud, another moan. Saskia found her phone in the darkness but was unable to complete her heroic rescue call as she had planned. What stopped her was a woman's voice from upstairs. The woman's voice rose high enough that Saskia distinctly heard her moan the words, “Oh yes...”

  The man's voice rose too, both in response and challenge. “You were not given permission to speak, my dear. You must be whipped for this. To the cross with you. If you're not there in five seconds, I will become truly angry...”

  Saskia knew the next thudding noises to be the woman's scampering feet as she carried out the instructions. Saskia's fear turned to a mixture of emotions: embarrassment, astonishment, disgust. She let the phone fall to her lap. The couple upstairs wasn't fighting, just really kinky. And, unknown to them, their downstairs neighbor could hear the whole thing.

  Saskia lay back down, as still as she could, not wanting to listen, yet unable to stop herself. Not daring to breathe lest they hear her too. The man was delivering on his threat. The cracks of the whip were barely audible, but the cries of the woman that carried both pleasure and pain were easy to hear. Saskia knew things like this went on in the world, and the idea had always sickened her somewhat. But now that she was hearing it, a thrill of forbidden excitement was worming its way into her, not letting her do anything that might tune it out.