“So this is where you’ve been hiding you little bitch!” A familiar, terrifying, voice fairly hissed from behind me.

The words before me on the computer screen suddenly seemed to blur as my vision darkened with panic, and I stumbled up and away from the desk, trying to whirl around to face the door. I failed, getting my legs tangled in the desk chair, and crumpled to the floor. Levering myself up I looked towards my bedroom door, and my face went white as a sheet.

Elena stood there. Like some demon summoned from the blackest pits, she was decked out in hard black leather with a cruel smile on her perfect face. My mouth fell open in some combination of surprise, horror, and though it shamed me, lust. I felt frozen. Pinned in place by the searchlight of her gaze. Elena’s smile widened at the expression, and she began to slowly stalk towards me.

“Did you really think you could escape me?”

Step.

“Did that whore tell you that you would be safe?” Elena fairly snarled.

Step.

I whimpered and tried to scamper backwards from my supine position, and I felt my back thud hard against the wall. I stared up at her, paralyzed with fear. My chest felt like it was going to explode. I felt my mouth go slack as I tried to find something, anything, to make this nightmare stop. She was close to me now. Close enough that I could reach out and touch. This couldn’t be happening to me. Not again!

“No answers for your Mistress, Bitch? No explanations?” Her booted foot came up and slammed down into my stomach. I felt the breath driven out of me, and I wheezed a garbled cry of pain out and tried to scrabble away. Her backhand caught me unprepared and sent me crashing over onto my stomach.

I tasted blood.

“Do you know how long I was locked into that training program Bitch?” Elena asked from above me. A moment later her booted foot slammed into my side. “How long you made your Mistress suffer?”

I howled as she landed two more vicious kicks, one to my hip and another to my ribs. I started trying to crawl away, my breath coming in ragged sobs. This couldn’t be happening. No, no, no this couldn’t be happening!!

That cruel laugh that I had become so intimately familiar with sounded from above me, and suddenly her weight was pressing me down. Her hands griped my wrists and wrenched them behind me. I let out a pain filled moan, and then felt the tears well up again as cold steel ratcheted shut around my wrists. A hand seized my hair and hauled my head back. I opened my mouth to scream, and a dildo gag plunged into the opening, nearly making me choke as it was pressed ruthlessly home.

“I have spent every moment since then tracking down you and that whore.” Elena’s voice dripped venom into my ear as she tightened the gag straps, “Every moment. It took a while, but that just gave me enough time to think about what I was going to do with the pair of you when I caught you.”

I flailed my handcuffed arms as best I could, trying to buck her off from behind me, but that only earned me a further flurry of blows that left me sobbing into my gag. Slumped down against the wall and staring up at Elena sneering at me. Staring at the woman who had terrorized me, trained me, broken me over the course of a brutal year. Who had somehow tracked me down. Found me. Who had taken me again with barely a fight from me.

“So listen up Bitch.” Elena drew a familiar looking leather collar into my view, and forced it around my neck, pulling it tight. “I’m going to give you just a taste of what is coming to you. I’ve decided that I was far too lenient with you the first time. My fault, I suppose, for wanting the poor little tourist boy to still realize how far I had reduced him from a man to a thing.”

Elena snarled the last few words, delivering a hard slap to my face and then jerking me forward by the collar. She leaned over me, her face filling my vision, “So let’s get started on settling you back into being my Bitch…”

Seconds later, I started screaming.

“MMmmgmgmghhhhhppphh!!!” I was thrashing around, constricted in something, flailing to be free from Elena’s torment.

“I’ve got you, it’s okay sweetie, it’s okay.”

A different voice sounded out close to my ear. My struggles were contained not by cold steel and cruel hands, but by soft leather, and a warm embrace. I wasn’t being tortured. My battered mind latched onto that fact. Blows were not landing on me, nor pain lancing through me. I was being held. Cradled really, against someone. Someone who was crooning over and over again that one soft phrase.

I hadn’t been found. Elena didn’t have me.

Madeline did.

More awareness gradually filtered into my brain. It was dark in the room I was in, clearly sometime during the night. I was wrapped up in a comfortable straightjacket, and lying nestled against Madeline in a large bed that seemed to stretch out all around me. I was gagged, yes, but a comfortable bit gag rather than the oversized dildo one from my…my dream.

More sobs wracked my body, sending trembling, almost thrashing motions to my limbs. I felt myself spasm against Madeline’s form as she cradled me in her lap. I could dimly see her now, sitting up in bed, holding me to her. And she wasn’t screaming at me for my failure, for waking her up. Madeline wasn’t cruelly mocking me for my weakness. Nor was she preparing to beat me back into silence, as Elena had on too many occasions to count.

No, instead Madeline was crooning softly above me in the darkness of the bedroom we were in, a hand slowly and rhythmically running along my head, my neck, and anywhere else she could reach. I keened into my gag, shuddering as the last flickering images from my nightmare, of Elena’s gloating face, of her…doing…things to me, all of that slowly drained from me. Not gone, and certainly not forgotten. But held at bay, for at least these few precious moments as Madeline kept up her ministrations.

“The past is done with, my pet. You are with me now.” She briefly tightened her grip on me, before planting a soft kiss on the top of my head, “Mine to keep, protect, and foster.” A hand caressed my collar, somehow managing to not convey anything apart from gentle, loving control, “No one will ever be able to harm you again.” Another kiss. “I promise.”

Somehow that comforted me. Though it sounded mad, though my present situation should have done nothing to reassure me…it did.

After all, I had tried. We both had. When Madeline had spirited me away from the hellhole that Elena had kept me in, gotten me back here to where I was safe from her vengeful pursuit, I had tried to leave. Twice. Madeline had freed me from my bondage, dressed me up in street clothes…and I had promptly collapsed into a panic that she hadn’t been able to break through. Not until, despairing of anything else, she had secured my thrashing limbs back down. Slammed a gag home to stop concerned neighbours from investigating the shrieks. And that was when we had both discovered that Elena’s programming was not something that could be lightly broken.

I had to be bound. Had to be in rubber or some other fetish outfit. That was the only way I could avoid punishment. Avoid the world of pain that had blotted away so many of my memories of the past year.

I felt a few tears running down my cheeks, and Madeline’s fingers gently wiped them away as she cradled me closer. I shuddered gratefully into her embrace, squirming against the security of my straightjacket. Madeline radiated a sense of safety. Of comfort. Security. At least, when I was awake. My dreams were still haunted by Elena’s presence, her words and face springing out of the dark recesses of my mind seemingly at will. Madeline assured me every day that this would pass with time. That eventually I would be as safe asleep as I was awake. That my nightmare would end. One day, I wouldn’t dream of torture, of Elena, of captivity.

More than anything else, I longed for that day. The day when Madeline could keep me safe in my dreams. Stop the nightmares from coming.

I moaned gratefully into my gag, and pressed myself back into Madeline. I felt her touch continue even as my exhausted brain slowly withdrew from its forced alertness. Slowly mushed itself back down into slumber. The last bit of awareness I had was Madeline continuing to croon to me. I was safe here. In her bonds, in her collar, and in her bed. I was safe. My little mantra…

Madeline continued to softly reassure the boy even as his steadied breathing slowly released the tension in her. She told him every day, more than once, that he didn’t need to be afraid anymore, certainly not of her punishing him. She assured him that he could be free of all these restraints, of the fetish outfits if he wanted. But that bitch of a woman had done too good a job. Over a year of that cold hard understanding of his existence being driven like a spike into his brain, he wasn’t budging.

Madeline ran a tired hand over his forehead and settled back into the bed, taking care to keep him embraced snugly against her. So now he was a kept thing, against her preference. Pampered as much as she could, and closely watched. It was times like these, when his subconscious tormented him and he regressed back to that terrified slave boy she had met two weeks ago, that hot rage flickered within her. She wanted nothing more than to be back in that dungeon. Back where that…that…devil of a bloody woman was bound and helpless. And give back just a tenth of the pain that she had put him through.

Damnation. Madeline closed her eyes wearily as the familiar mental curse surged to the surface. That sadistic maniac had done a real number on the boy. So much so that continuing his captivity was the only way for him to have basic function. To avoid descending into a gibbering panic that took him days to properly recover from. She still hadn’t the faintest idea of how to help him, beyond treating him as nicely as she could. Trying to coax a little more humanity back into him with each passing day. Hoping that someday being treated better would finally release him from the nightmare world his mind was still enmeshed in. That he would find himself again…whoever he had once been.

She gave a tired, but very quiet little snarl of frustration. This had so not been the plan. Her infiltration of the organization was not supposed to be a rescue mission. She had only been there to gather intelligence and exfiltrate without anyone being the wiser. But, in her search through the files, she had happened across the training dossier that Elena had kept on him and her other…toys. Madeline shivered. Even a few minutes rapid scanning had left her convinced that she couldn’t leave anyone behind under Elena’s control. Of course…

Madeline felt a small surge of guilt. Of course there had been the other impulse. That in reading some of the training reports, and in eventually seeing the boy bound in the chair…a tiny part of her had burned with lust. With a desire to know what it was like to truly own someone, as Elena had so clearly experienced over multiple victims. When she had explained to him her plan for escaping, her reasoning had been sound. Coolly calculated and logical to allow them to escape. But that other part of her had exulted in the feeling, in the reality, of leading a bound and helpless slave boy around on a leash. And of course, once they had escaped she hadn’t been all that rushed to release him had she?

She rubbed at her face, feeling shame, exhaustion, and a flickering sense of resentment at her own niggling doubts. She wasn’t Elena. She was being good to the poor boy, far more empathetic and caring than anything he had experienced at the hands of his lunatic kidnapper. It wasn’t her fault that the boy couldn’t function outside of bondage. It wasn’t her fault that he needed someone to care for and keep him. If not her, then who?

More than once she had considered just dropping him off at a hospital or a police station. Let the proper authorities handle him, get his story in the system. Get him the care he needed to get over his condition. But she had never followed through with it. The logical arguments against it were sound enough. Elena’s father was linked up with powerful people. There had been enough shady goings on in London that Madeline was fairly certain he had plenty of friends on the inside of the justice system. Enough that if she deposited the boy off with the police or a hospital it was just as likely that Elena would arrive to take him away again. What’s more, even without Elena’s search for the two of them, Madeline had revealed herself through her rescue of the boy. She couldn’t afford to give away more about herself. She couldn’t.

Which all made plenty of sense. But that wasn’t all of course, Madeline ruefully acknowledged in the privacy of her mind. Her hand softly settled atop the rubber hooded head of her rescue, her…pet. Ever since that day she had felt a protective need around the boy. He had stumbled into something he was just not mentally kitted out to grapple with, and Madeline wanted to protect him from that. And he trusted her. Trusted her to keep him bound without Elena’s sadism. And his eyes, when he looked at her. Madeline squeezed the now sleeping form of her boy to her a bit more tightly. She had seen those eyes have hope re-kindled in them again when they had finally escaped from that awful warehouse. She had seen a fragile flower of trust start to blossom over the past week of his weird, odd new captivity with her. He had attached himself to her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of tearing herself away from him anymore either.

Her original mission had to continue of course, but now she had something far more personal at stake. Taking Elena down, her father down, that whole bloody organization down, was the only way to assure the safety of her boy. The only shot either of them had at this point for anything approaching a normal life in public again, now that both of their faces were so well known to that particular criminal element.

So Madeline would help him recover by keeping him here, with her. Safe in bondage, the restraint and restriction that he needed to function. That she…wanted to see him in. Her broken boy that she so badly wanted to fix…but also adored in his need to be bound by her. Kept as her pet.

It was to be her own private struggle that she waged within herself each day while caring for him. It terrified and thrilled her all at once.

Madeline snuggled back down against her boy, wrapping herself against him and brushing a soft kiss against his hooded head. The long term problems could be confronted later, and she would have more than enough time to turn them over in her head.

For now, for these precious night time hours, it was just her and her boy.