Quaranteam: Piper's Prelude (Ch. 04)

A few minutes later, however, she recovered enough to get up, get dressed and head out, along with Covington and Melody, and this time, they turned off the lights, leaving me alone in the dark. It wasn't great, but I'm a big girl, and being left in darkness wasn't that big a deal.

To me, over the next week, it felt like they were trying to think of new ways to get me to break, to try and torture me, to try and get me to accept my situation, but it never worked. He brought Hope in with her half-sister, and had them together, making them make out with each other while he fucked one then the other, much to my disgust. He brought Layla back around. He shoved Veronica's face into the floor when he drilled her, just to show me how much control he felt like he had. He fucked Rachel in the ass in front of me, and she looked about as bored as she possibly could, as if she was trying to convince me it would be something I could just casually ignore.

They all had tattoos with numbers similar to Hope's, even Layla, whose tattoo was still raw, fresh and agitated, the flesh around it red and sore. Her number was 13. My number, Covington told me, would be 14. I suspected he hadn't made his wife get tattooed, which accounts for the difference in the headcount.

'You can get used to anything, eventually,' Rachel's expression seemed to say to me, as he tore open her asshole with a complete lack of care or grace, his cock just hammering into her for his own perverse enjoyment. Covington even made Hope suck some of the cum out of her half-sister's ass. Rachel looked unbothered and Hope looked eager to please. 'You can even get used to this.'

But fuck that.

After three days, they took the handcuffs and shackles off me and took them out of the room, leaving me mostly alone in the study that had become my cell. I'll be honest with you. Around day four, I tried to get myself off, but it was almost like my body had locked out my ability to have an orgasm, to my intense frustration. I'm a grown ass woman, and I've been jilling off since I was, like, twelve, but all my usual tricks and sensitive spots, all of it was like scratching at an itch but not getting any fucking relief from it. I jilled until I was sore from all the rubbing, at which point I abandoned it in frustration.

Melody remarked on it the next time she came into the room, telling me that if I just fucked Covington, all the pain and aching would go away. She told me that she pitied me, because I was fighting for nothing. That all my struggles wouldn't make a tiny bit of fucking difference in the end. They seemed to think it was going to break me, but all it did was fuel the resistance. There was a sort of sad resignation to Melody that I hadn't noticed before that.

After day four, they started sending Lisa in to deliver the food, partially because my energy levels were down. They could tell that sprinting through the doorway wasn't really an option for me any more. I'd been trying to work out as I could, but by this point there was an unbearable sense of lethargy running through my veins, like my body was going to refuse to work like it should until it got what it wanted, and it was trying to tell me that struggling against it was wrong.

No pain, no gain, though, right?

I tried asking Lisa for help, tried to convince her to smuggle me out and get me away, that what Covington was doing to me was cruel and inhumane, but she never once spoke a single word to me, a sort of skittish deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes at all times. Whatever Covington had done to her had been enough to crush whatever spirit had been in her when she'd arrived at his doorstep.

Also on day four, they shackled me back up and dragged me out into the back yard, where they had opened my suitcase next to a fire pit, and slowly, item by item, they burned all my clothes in front of me. Each time they took something out, they put in a matching new item. If they burned a shirt, they put in a shirt. If they burned lingerie, they put in either a bra or panties. Everything they put into the suitcase, however, was plain white, with large black lettering on it that read "Covington's Bad Dog." I didn't flinch an inch. They were only clothes. After they'd finished burning all the clothes I had, they closed the suitcase and marched me back into my room.

He never damaged my phone, for reasons I wasn't quite sure of until recently. Niko told me a few days ago that if my phone had been damaged or destroyed before I checked in with my family, it would've triggered an immediate investigation that even Covington couldn't stop. So that's why he didn't fuck with my phone, and kept it charging all the time I was there.

Day five, Covington had a bunch of the women from the house come into the room one at a time to spit on me and yell obscenities at me, telling me how he was punishing them now for my obstinate behavior. Rachel showed me her bruised ribs from where he'd punched her. Hope came in with a black eye. Lisa still wouldn't even talk to me, but it looked and smelled like she'd soiled her pants and hadn't been allowed to take them off. She simply stood there and cried at me quietly. Layla had pleaded and begged with me to give in, telling me that Covington had threatened to break one of her legs or arms if I didn't give in. I told her that I wasn't going to give in, and that she should tell Covington I thought he was a coward for not trying to hit me instead of all the others. I told her that while she'd given in, I wasn't going to.

She had made her choice and I was going to stand by mine.

After that, he didn't try and hurt the girls any more to get me to cave. He'd learned it wasn't leverage over me. It hurt. Jesus, Fi, I fucking hated it, knowing these women were getting beaten up and abused because I wouldn't give in, but they had chosen to accept this man for what he was, and there was no fucking way I was going to do that.

I used to wonder how abused woman could stay with asshole men who would beat and shout at them, but I got an object lesson in watching how the women of Covington's house acted. He kept them in check in various ways - fear, anger, addiction...

Did I mention this yet? Around day six or seven - the timeline of what happened when gets a lot more fuzzy towards the end of the run - anyway, Melody came storming into the room and punched me right in the gut, harder than I've ever been hit in my life. She shouted at me that Covington was refusing to fuck her until I was broken and gave in. Not getting her fix was starting to drive her crazy, she shouted at me, tears of frustration rolling down her cheeks. I told her that beating me up wasn't going to get her anywhere.

"You chose this fucker," I spat at her from my position balled up on the floor, doubled over in pain. "That doesn't mean I have to."

She stomped out again without saying anything else.

Not too long after that, I had my one singular encounter with Alicia, Covington's wife. She came into the room by herself, having to discourage her own bodyguard, a woman I didn't meet, from coming in. I caught a glimpse of the bodyguard at the doorway, but she stayed outside as per her orders when Alicia Covington came into the room to look at me.

She winced a little as the reek of the room hit her nose and clearly offended her sensibilities. I don't know if you've seen or heard about Alicia. She and Covington's relationship clearly predates the whole DuoHalo mess by a lot, since they have a handful of kids together. She's in her mid forties, stunningly beautiful, I think maybe a former model or dancer or maybe both. There's a subtle shadow of an Eastern European accent of some kind when she speaks, but she's worked very hard to make sure it's just a trace. Pale skinned, dark hair, with green eyes the shade of dusty emeralds. Her tits struck me as too big to be real, but she certainly moved like she was used to them.

There was something hard and harsh about her from the very start. Like I said, I'd been told the kids were kept in a second house on the property and Alicia spent most of her time over there with them. Arthur had tried to make it sound like it was his idea when he'd told me about her, but there was something in the tone of his voice that made me think it was her decision, not his. That was only reinforced when I met her, because I didn't even want to imagine what it would be like when the two of them fought. She seemed like one mean bitch who wouldn't give him an inch unless she thought she would immediately get back twice as much. She also seemed coldly calculating, like someone who knew which battles to fight and which were just lost causes.

She was dressed to the nines in modern fashion and she knew exactly how to make it work for her, completely comfortable in her outfit, unlike most of the other people I'd seen around the house. Her shoes alone probably cost more than all the clothes I'd brought with me that they burned. She was dressed in a respectable long black skirt and a puffy navy blue silk blouse with an exposed red corset on underneath it, the top portion of her shirt open to her sternum, like she enjoyed showing off. She had on simple diamond stud earrings, a golden pendant and a wedding ring, in addition to her engagement ring, the cluster of diamonds on which was terrifying in size.

"So," she said to me, not bothering to introduce herself. "You're this stubborn filly the whole house is talking about."

By then, even standing up was difficult, but my pride just wouldn't let me go silent, so I stood up and affected a mock curtsy, bowing my head a little.

"I have to admit," Alicia said, moving over towards the two chairs, sitting down in the one opposite of the one I slumped back down into. "When Arthur told me he'd brought in a woman who intended to try and fight off the imprinting process, I thought you wouldn't last two days. Oh, I understand you are meant to be some hot shit athlete that the world is oh so very impressed by, but this isn't the sort of thing you've spent your life training for, now, is it? I've been willful with Arthur before, and it rarely ends well, at least not without a very good long term plan in play." She looked me over, shaking her head. "None of that matters to you, though, does it? You are just going to carry on with your jousting at windmills..."

My voice was hoarse from having spent hours and hours shouting and screaming at the walls, but I summoned what strength I had left to put together two words. "Fuck. Off."

Alicia smirked a little bit. "God, you're practically going insane with lust right now and yet somehow you're still putting up a fight. I admire that. Honestly, I do. I knew what kind of monster I was marrying all those years ago, but most of the girls who come through those doors, well, they are so desperate to survive this plague that they will take any lifeline they're offered. And that's how he gets them, you see." She nodded mostly to herself, as if considering her options in her head. "You're really going to fight this to the very end, aren't you?"

My lips hurt and so rather than trying to summon another word, I just nodded.

She nodded at me again, this time in agreement. "I thought as much. Fine. I know my husband better than any woman alive, and I refuse to let him push you completely to the brink of death without any chance of survival. The deck can be stacked, but there always must be an outside chance of winning," she sighed, seeming to consider her options for the moment. "It's not a game if it's impossible to win."

Breathing hurt. I was mostly held up by the back of the chair, my fingers too worn to even hold onto the arms of the chair. I wasn't sure what Alicia was thinking about, but she was deep in thought for what could've been minutes or hours. At that point, I was starting to fall into delirium and madness, the lust chewing me up from the inside out.

Eventually she spoke again. "Yes. Alright. Well then, Piper Brown, here is the end of the marathon, one way or the other for you," she said, standing up, tugging on her silk shirt, making sure it pulled tight. "Tomorrow my husband is going to come and offer you his cock. He won't be cruel or debasing - he will simply be nude and ready for you. If you can resist him then, that one final time, I will convince him to find a different man for you, someone away from here, unaffiliated with our house. You will be taken from this property and you will never again have to set foot on it if you don't wish to. It is, as they say, your out."

I remember my sense of resistance, which had been on its last few embers, sparked back to life at those words. I took that single scrap of daylight and stoked it into a supernova of resistance.

"Now. I cannot guarantee that whatever man he pawns you off on won't be just as bad as him, but that's just the risk you are going to have to take. You know what this devil is capable of. The unknown man is unlikely to be as bad, but I cannot promise you that he will be what one might call good," she said. "I'll convince Arthur to throw you into the pot of the poker game he's got going in a couple of nights. If you're lucky, you'll end up with Morrison or Gregor or Watkins. If not, well, at least you'll be able to take comfort in the fact that you will not be here, with him."

She reached down and with one fingertip pushing my ratty hair out of my face and behind my ear, so she could look me directly in the eyes.

"In exchange I ask only one thing of you," Alicia said to me. "It's a trifle and something I think you should be able to stomach. If you manage to find a new home, away from here, I want you to say nothing publicly about my husband for the next three months. The new president is going to be giving a speech within a month or so, announcing to the world exactly how high our death tolls are, and if you're going to document... all of this..." she said, gesturing at me, "then I want it to have a chance to be heard publicly. Fairly. Loudly. If you try and bring all this up immediately, it will get lost in the noise of the new reality. Also, I want to prepare myself and my children for the accompanying fallout, and to do that, I am going to need a few months. I feel like three will suffice. Agree to that, and resist him again tomorrow, and in two days time, you will wake up in a new home. He's got a mother-daughter combo platter coming in tomorrow, and the only reason he won't have them both immediately is that he needs to offer them as collateral so he can try and win some movie star off of Nathaniel, simply to lord the starlet over them. Three months. Are we agreed?"

She offered her hand to me, offered a way out to me, and I grabbed it and shook her hand, smearing some of my filth onto her immaculate skin, sealing our deal. I felt it important enough to verbalize it, and even though it hurt my throat, I croaked out the word, "Agreed."

Alicia smiled. "I admire your refusal to go lightly into that dark night, my dear," she said to me. "Good luck to you." Then she headed out of the room, and I haven't seen her since.

With no windows and no clocks, there was no way to tell what time it was Alicia came to visit me on day seven, but it must have been early. Either that or the long waiting was just driving me insane. My entire body felt like it was on fire, like my blood wanted to leap out of my body and escape me. It was taking every bit of willpower I had not to be scratching at my own veins.

I think I laughed insanely for like an hour at some point towards the end of day seven, but it also might have been early on day eight. I know I didn't sleep between the time Alicia left me and when Covington came to see me the next day.

Sometime in the morning of day eight, Covington entered the room, wearing nothing at all, followed by Melody, who seemed to want to make sure nothing happened to him. Hope stood watch at the door. At that point, I don't blame them for being paranoid. I wasn't in my right mind. I wasn't thinking clearly. Shit, I might not have even been thinking at all. I'm sure I looked less like a woman and more like a rabid creature, feral and dangerous.

Covington didn't say anything, but walked over to the center of the room, standing proudly, looking down at me in my armchair, confidence and pity in his eyes. Standing was difficult, but I managed to get to my feet, even with my legs wobbling and unstable, like a newly born foal. Each step towards him was precarious at best, like I might fall ass end up if so much as a stiff breeze crossed my path. He lifted one hand up and sliced it in a gesture across his waist, like he was presenting a prize of a game show, his cock pointing my direction.

The look in his face made it clear he thought he'd won.

Right up until I slapped him.

I wasn't a hard slap. I was too weak for that, but I heard my hand smack on his flesh, and I saw that look of shock, embarrassment and raw fury cross his face. I wished I could've knocked his fucking head off, but even this weak swat of my hand on his cheek was enough to make my point.

He wanted to hit me. I could see it in the fucker's eyes. But instead he reached forward, pushed his palm against my collarbone and shoved me back into the chair. "You ungrateful whore," he sneered at me. "Fine. I'll toss you to the fucking wolves then. I hope Jacobson takes you. Then you'll fucking learn what horror is."

It hurt like hell, but I laughed again when he and Melody stormed back out. I must have sounded like I'd gone fucking mad.

And it had wiped that smug grin off Hope's face and replaced it with one of fear.

Once they were gone, I leaned back in the chair and I passed out. I knew I'd passed the fucking test, and whatever else I thought about Alicia, I was certain she wouldn't break her word. If she had, I'd be stuck in the house with her, and she would treat every time she saw me as a horrible reminder that she'd lost to her husband, and that he'd gotten the better of her. That meant I could sleep, relax, try and regain a little bit of strength.

Of course, my dreams were far from restful. It was like a hundred years of pornography all being directly mainlined into my eyeballs, unstoppable, a firehose on full blast of erotic sights and sounds, beamed against my frontal lobe until it was occupying my every thought.

Everything was such a blur that I don't even really remember my first time with Andy. I have bits and flashes of memory, but nothing solid, nothing concrete. I think I blew him? I know Niko was there, because I remember her voice saying "She wants more," and "hit her again," which I somehow intuited meant to give me another dose of cum, and not to physically strike me. Niko told me later that the first blast of cum didn't start the imprinting process, and they've never seen that before, with anyone. I remember an intense overwhelming sensation of satisfaction and ecstasy with what I guess was my second orgasm from Andy, but it was all slightly removed, like I was apart from it, standing off to the side watching it happen to someone else.

I'm sure that there was some part of my reptile brain that evaluated to make sure Andy wasn't Covington, and as soon as it made that decision, it just decided it was go time and it wasn't going to wait, so I just took what I needed and got myself imprinted on Andy.

Niko said it was just after midnight on my tenth day at Covington manor that they pulled me out of there. I know I said nine days earlier, but what's a couple extra hours? She told me they loaded me into the car, along with Asha and her mom, and we all hauled ass, everyone wanting to get as far the fuck away from Covington as quickly as possible, not that I remember any of it. The last scrap of memory in that horrible house I have is the sensation of Andy creaming inside of me before completely succumbing to the infinite blackness of the imprinting process.