This is to ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt in my call for prompts: “What happens when the abduction IS the rescue?”
Author’s notes a and b:
a) This is set in the Tir na Cali (LJ Link) ‘verse, where slave raiders from the West Coast country of Tir na Cali often steal American youth.
In this alternate-history world, the US is a much more rigid place in answer to what they perceive to be the godless heathen ways of their neighbor-enemy. Think stereotypical 1950’s midwest morality.
b) As per the prompt, there is implied abuse in this story. The kid has not had a good life.
The underground bondage clubs could be, if played right, a decent place to pick up new slaves. A heavy air of tolerance and anonymity permeated these places, and one more pretty set of tits in a mask and a corset really didn’t stand out all that much.
Morrigan walked up to the boy she’d been casing for three hours and four Cosmos, a skinny waif whose ID was probably fake, wearing a skintight shirt, vinyl pants, and a jingly leather bondage collar. Some of them that wore collars like this proved to adjust better to Cali’s true collars; others couldn’t hack it and broke. She grabbed the three rings in one hand and tugged, hooking a leash on the front one before he could complain, her eyes on his lips and shoulders, gauging his reaction.
He moved forward gracefully to her hand, one shoulder twitching and his lips tightening as he forced a lazy smile. “Fifty dollars for ten minutes. A hundred if you leave marks.”
Ah. She almost recoiled, but he was in her hands already. She palmed the bill and passed it to him as she took the fur-lined leather cuffs off of his belt, let him pocket the money before she bound his wrists behind his back, and lead him out to the back alley and, from there, into her van.
She thought she caught a twinge of panic as the van doors closed, but by then, he was trapped. She peeled his shirt up and off him, leaving it hanging off his cuffs, and studied his pale chest, the burns, the old bruises, the place where one rib hadn’t healed right. She pursed her lips. Not even the worst brothels in her country treated their slaves like that.
“Another fifty if you’re going to make your mark,” the boy said, his nervousness showing clearly now. She pulled a Californian c-note from her other wallet and let him see it before she tucked it in his front pocket. “Keep that,” she said gently. “You’re going to need it.”
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