Safe Words / Book 3: Angel's Grace / Chapter 1: Doggy Style

At 7:45 in the morning there was a knock on the bedroom door. Angel was already awake, sitting knees up to her chest in a deep upholstered chair in the pink princess room’s corner. Her phone was held to her chest, but she hadn’t used it other than to send her mom a quick Good Morning about an hour ago.

Though last night—before heading out into the garden to talk to Brian—she’d thought she would try to sleep naked, in the end, she chose the familiarity of the MCV sweats, forgoing even the promised comfort of the cotton nightgown. The sight of Grace’s ravaged back had darkened her sexual curiosity. Tightened it like the vice clamp on the end of her father’s worktable. Clamped down on it hard.

With her feet back on the floor, she called out, “Come in,” her thin early morning voice echoing in the tall chamber of the bedroom.

The door opened, and a middle-aged woman stepped foot inside, still holding the door and saying, “She’d like you to come to breakfast.”

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll just be a minute.”

“I’ll wait for you outside.”

Before Angel could answer, the woman stepped rearward and closed the bedroom door.

Angel returned to the tall door that led out to the gardens and looked out at the wintry gray sky over the ocean. A somber swath of heaving brushstrokes out there, a chortling sky in mottled shades of gray, a moving painting full of beauty and natural terror. She stepped back and let the curtain fall closed, tucked her hands into her sweatshirt’s sleeves, went to her bag to retrieve her sneakers.

Sneakers under her arm, she emerged from the bedroom, found the woman in the uniform waiting with a pleasant smile. “This way,” the woman said, and stepped lightly down the hall toward the center of the house. Angel walked a few paces behind the woman, along the marble tiled hallways, paintings and artwork in the corners and looking down from the walls. Then the woman led her through a maze of narrow hallways till she gestured into a small circular room with a table for four in the center. Grace waited at the table, one leg crossed over the other, thumbs typing away on her phone.

The woman said to Grace, “Your guest has arrived.”

Grace continued typing for a moment, then set the phone down. She thanked the woman, smiling, and the woman backed out. It was Angel alone now with Grace.

There was one small square window set in the far wall of the room, and it looked out onto a garden courtyard. The room was as ornate as her guest room, though not done in frilly pinks and whites. This was more serious and Victorian. Rich fabrics, deep dark polished wood furniture with curved legs. Gold scrollwork trim on a huge mirror on the far wall hoisted a few feet above a gray marble fireplace with no fire.

Grace said, “Come and sit, Angel.”

Angel shuffled deeper into the room, but paused.

Grace said, “Won’t you have breakfast with me?”

“I think . . . I have to run, if that’s okay . . .”

“You mean to train?”

“Yes. I have to. . . . I don’t want to be rude, but . . .”

“No, not at all,” Grace said. “There’s a gym in the basement. I can have Griselda show you the way. We have treadmills . . .”

“Can I run outside?”

“I prefer you didn’t,” Grace said.

“Isn’t there a beach?”

“Not really. There is, just down below the cliff face, but I’m afraid it doesn’t run very far. You would just be going back and forth . . .”

“Can I run through the neighborhood?”

Grace put her elbows on the table and wove her fingers together, studying Angel for a moment. “Did you sleep all right?”

Angel shrugged, looked away. The sleep was okay. It had been interrupted many times with odd dreams—fitful bursts of sleep interspersed with snapping-awake moments filled with a nameless fear.

When Angel took too long to answer, Grace asked if everything was all right, and Angel said everything was fine.

Grace said, “What can I do to make your stay more enjoyable?”

“I appreciate everything,” she said. “I really . . . I have to run. If I don’t run . . .” Thoughts of being removed from the team had her toes curling up inside her slippers, thinking of being cast out—first the track team, then without the scholarships, the school . . . Nowhere to turn, her parents powerless in the face of her failure. And her new friend Grace would be where? What would she have to trade for Grace’s friendship? Scars on her back? It wasn’t what she was here for . . .

Grace said, “You’re chewing your cheek again.”

Angel wiggled her fingers inside her sweatshirt sleeves, hugged her sneakers tighter to her side. She murmured, “Sorry,” and pushed out her cheek with her tongue, reminded herself not to engage in little girl tics.

Grace sighed, said, “If it’s a run outside that you’d like, I will make it happen. Skyler will accompany you, so you’ll have to afford him a few minutes to get ready. Won’t you sit with me while we wait? If you don’t want to eat, would you like some sparkling water?”

It seemed ungrateful to not allow Grace to provide her the satisfaction of generosity. She said, “Okay. Yes, that would be nice . . .”

***

The morning was gray and frigid, but Skyler’s demeanor wasn’t. He emerged from the mansion’s foyer in expensive running shoes, tights, shorts and a fleece zip up. He had a beanie to keep his head warm, the rest of his face protected by his dense black beard. He trotted down the steps, clapping his lobster-claw gloves together, saying, “I’m glad you wanted to go for a run.”

“You’re not mad that I dragged you out of bed?”

“Bed?” He laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“You don’t mind running?”

“A year ago I would be doing this in combat boots, so, no, this is a breeze. Unless you want to keep some crazy pace . . .”

“No,” she said, “just a straightforward 5K. No big deal.”

“You lead the way,” he said, “get ahead of me, and I’ll follow. We’ll head back through the village, do the main street, turn around and come back. It’s about 5k.”

She’d already stretched out, was ready to go, but now was reluctant. She asked, “Why do you have to come with me, anyway?”

“That’s the way Grace wants it.”

Skyler was Grace’s security, a large, imposing man who’d been a soldier. Why did Grace need security? Just the wealth? Then why would she send him to run with her? She asked, “Am I in danger?”

“No,” he said, “but Grace does like to keep her property protected.”

She smirked. “I’m her property?”

That put Skyler’s eyes on her, his beard tugged to one side, reminding her of the way his face looked when he’d shone a flashlight between her naked thighs last night, the beam lighting up that most secret and intimate space on her body. Skyler had seen her vagina as clearly as her gynecologist, and when Grace told her to show him inside, she’d obeyed and tugged open her petals.

She said, “So I’m not going to get kidnapped?”

One eyebrow raised, he said, “Who would want to kidnap you?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“You’re safe with me,” he said, then nodded his bearded chin down the driveway that led back out to the street. “So lead the way, please, we’ve got other things to do today . . .”

***

A mile into her run, she picked up the pace just to see if Skyler could hang with her. He was a big man, burly, had to be almost two-hundred-fifty pounds, but he could keep up with her. Skyler huffed air like a freight train. If she had to get away from him, she could. It would just take stamina. Then she turned it into a game, laughing, hearing Skyler laugh too, the bodyguard knowing she was playing him, running past hedges that shielded mansions, down narrow streets with a wintry wind coming off the ocean. On a long straightaway, she put her foot on the gas and sprinted. Skyler hoofed it hard after her, his sneakers stomping on the pavement while hers danced across it. He was really breathing hard now, and she could hear his exertion as he closed the distance. Then, being a hotshot, she zipped away from him, spreading them wide apart again.

At last they were back around the block, closing in on the gates to the Gravesande mansion, and she chilled, easing the pace and letting Skyler catch up. She rounded onto the path into the mansion grounds and slowed to a walk. Skyler caught up with her and flicked her ponytail as he passed. He shot ahead and then slowed before coming to a stop. He doubled over, hands on his knees, and spat in the grass, gagging for breath.

She trotted to join him, then jogged in place while he still huffed.

“You’re a . . . showoff,” he panted.

“You’re pretty fast for a big guy,” she said, now pogoing in place. The run had lightened her mood, the pumping blood had pushed away a lot of the angst over spying on Grace last night and loosened the knot in her tight stomach over being so far from home, and now so far from her dorm.

Skyler stood straight, hiding his windedness in a burly and macho way, smoothing the front of his fleece and smirking. Sweat soaked his beanie.

Now she felt a little guilty about showboating him, and she stopped taunting him with the bouncing. She said, “Thank you for running with me, I really appreciate it. I was feeling—”

Skyler’s phone buzzed in the pocket of his fleece and he held up a finger to tell her to hold on so he could answer it. He pressed the phone to his ear and then became quite serious. He wandered back a few steps from her and turned away.

Angel stretched and looked disinterested, while still trying her best to overhear. It was Grace calling, she surmised, because Skyler was telling the person on the other end that Angel had finished her run and they were both back at the mansion.

Skyler kept talking. “Where are you now? . . . Which car did you take? . . . Okay, right. . . . You want me to . . . Right, I understand. . . . Yes, I do, Grace. . . . Really? . . . No, it’s not a problem. I understand. We’ll catch up. See you soon.” Skyler closed the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

When he turned to face her again, some of that camaraderie they’d shared seemed uneasy now.

She asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Grace has gone ahead of us.”

The knot in her stomach tightened up again. “She’s not mad at me, is she?”

Skyler put his hands in his jacket pockets. “You’re trying on dresses this morning. Grace wants you cleaned up and prepared.”

Angel nodded. “Okay.” She shrugged.

Skyler said, “Follow me.”

Instead of heading up the path to the mansion’s grand entrance, Skyler led her along a path that wound around the mansion, going through hedges to enter into a dooryard that looked like it might be a servant’s entrance or a place they received deliveries. Angel followed behind Skyler, keeping herself distant. The demeanor had changed when Grace called.

Now he led her through a set of double doors in the mansion’s side, past a room filled with laundry machines. A servant was working in there, folding bedsheets. Then down the hall Skyler led her, stopping midway and opening a side door and reaching in to flick on the lights.

Angel stepped in ahead of him. The room was large and completely tiled in small white porcelain squares. Black lamp shades hung from the ceiling, round drain grates were set in the mildly sloping floor, and the far wall was a bay door that opened to the outside. The doors were closed, but light glowed in the sliver where they met. On the left there was a walk in chamber with shower spigots set high on the walls. In the center of the room there was a tiled dais with a deep tub set inside. The right side of the room held stainless carts and tables on wheels. The tables had long upright rods on the ends, and Angel recognized them as dog grooming tables.

She asked what the room was and Skyler confirmed it: “It’s the dog grooming room.”

“Grace has a room just for dog grooming?”

“She does,” Skyler said, moving to a counter against the wall, two big sinks set in it, and began opening drawers, looking for something.

Angel said, “I guess Grace has a room for everything.”

Skyler was grumbling, shaking his head, plugging a device into a wall socket above the counter. He turned aside and she could see he held a round black cylinder in one hand, the cord trailing to the socket. He turned it on and off a few times, a little motor whirring gears that ran blades against a metal comb. Dog clippers.

Now he faced her and sighed, his brow perplexed, like he was faced with a hard task.

She said, “What is it?”

“I’m afraid Grace wants you cleaned up.” He wagged the clippers at her, brow still tented. When she said nothing, he added, “Wants you shaved.”

Befuddled, Angel’s hand went to her ponytail, protective of it, thinking somehow Grace wanted her to get a haircut.

Skyler shook his head no, lips pursed. “Sorry, Angel. Grace wants me to shave between your legs.”