by Sophia Reed
Susan fit between those two descriptions. Because when she came to the spa, looking for help, everything about her screamed submissive.
Like the way she was kneeling naked waiting for me. Offering up everything she had to lash and paddle, belt and hairbrush, to fingers and erections.
Stepping into the playroom, I noted her position. Her back was to the door I had just come through, knees on the floor, arms extended in front of her on the floor. Her forehead rested on the hardwood and her hips were elevated, her ass up and open, presented, legs spread. Her whole naked body glowed with her humiliation the minute she heard me enter the room.
It was a beautiful sight.
I was moving slow with Susan. There'd been a mass flight of playmates from my compound in recent months, with Annie leaving for school and now for Quantico, with Ariel healing after years of living in the underground levels, kept safe from her own suicidal tendencies. I'd never expected her to heal, had only wanted to give her a safe place. Ariel had wanted nothing from life when she arrived.
She'd left a talented painter pursuing a dream.
Marilyn and my other masochistic playmates had also suddenly changed, unavailable. Gone off to look for new lives.
And Kie – psychotic little Kie who had hurt Annie and tried to kill both of us, she was in the wind somewhere. Her I hoped never to see again.
But the truth was, after so many years of sadistic sexual games, I could finally admit many of these women were broken. I was drawn to them because I liked to hurt them. To make them pant for the cane and beg for the belt or the strap. And after a while, giving them what they wanted, these women who were attracted to the dark lifestyle, no matter how they protested? If they were with me because they loved the lifestyle and maybe loved me, they discovered the lifestyle existed in other places, and that I wasn't going to love them in return.
They found somewhere else to go, and went.
And the ones who were broken, the ones I locked into cells as part of their punishment but also so they wouldn't die? In time, I found, they healed. After healing, after having given sexual service (whether they enjoyed it or not, it was still given) they left.
Annie had healed. Annie had stayed. I wanted her to stay longer.
Looking at Susan, I thought again of watching Annie crop her, paddle her, use my belt on that milky white ass. But Annie couldn't switch worth a damn – the idea of hitting someone else for fun was loathsome to her despite how often it happened to her. The violence of it was repellant to her. Annie had killed several men in her job.
BDSM was different. She was a masochist. She liked to receive. I was the sadist. I was tempted to make her switch and top Susan for the sheer fun of watching how hard it would be for Annie to do what I ordered her.
Because she was the slave, and I was her Master.
And Susan was our latest project.
I gestured at the exam table I'd set up in the play room. It horrified Annie – she'd been hurt too many times that way when kidnapped from me – but it wasn't for her and I would have my fun with the others. "Bend over the table. Ass high and stuck out. Give me a nice target, girl."
She whimpered, though I couldn't tell if it was with anticipation or fear.
Either would do.
I went in search of my heaviest, most pain-causing cane.
3
Annie
He'd gone to Susan. I was a little hurt and a little jealous. Even though my ass and legs and between my legs was on fire from what he'd done, the idea of Cole with someone else was unwelcome.
In the beginning I'd loved anything that distracted him from me.
We change.
The one way I hadn't changed was I couldn't get used to trying to switch. I didn't want to do to other subs, I wanted to be done to. Hard to admit, because my life is about control. Controlling myself, living with an inner discipline. I didn't need someone else's imposed discipline. I didn't want to be told what to do and be punished when I didn't.
Only? Apparently I did. I'd come back to Cole St. Martin time after time, especially for that. I knew he was afraid I'd run again with this half a year or whatever it was in Quantico.
He was wrong. Cole pushed me harder than even Quantico would be able to. He'd always be my challenge. If there were feelings lurking under that challenge, I wasn't ready to confront them. One thing at a time.
But I would be back and I suspected Cole's next steps would be to tell me to have sex with one of the subs. I didn't see that going well either. I'm not interested in women.
Though the kisses I'd shared with Lexie when held by Bevington, the ringleader of a human trafficking cell, those came back to me without conscious thought. Lexie was Black and muscular, brave and beautiful. I'd been caught in the ring on purpose, doing an undercover stint that could have gotten me arrested, because I wasn't working for anyone, no law enforcement agency. Lexie had been taken out of her own real life and held for months longer than I had. But she was the one who helped me get through it before we were able to take down Bevington, minutes before the calvary – Cole, and real law enforcement – arrived.
Maybe what I liked best of all was strength. Lexie was strong, physically and mentally. That apparently turned me on.
The spanking she'd given me once in the "harem" where we were held? That didn't discourage me, either.
I licked my lips and went about my packing. The future – and Sir – would bring about his requests soon enough. I'd deal with them and the consequences of refusing them when they happened.
Until then, I had packing to do.
4
Cole
The day spa, Rainforest Essentuals, a somewhat absurd name that nevertheless fit, was located in a downtown Las Vegas mixed use development. A sort of street mall that had grown up around likeminded businesses, there were a dozen or so newly renovated or tilt-up constructed buildings surrounding a greensward that cost a pretty penny to keep green in the summer.
Las Vegas does not lend itself automatically to green grass, especially in the summer months where long weeks pile up with the temperatures in the 100s.
I'd met John Fleet through a circle of millionaires and billionaires who, like myself, liked a little spice with our sex lives. And our nonsexual lives. And just in general. It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone who's managed to push a business into the financial stratosphere might be the type of person who has issues about controlling everything.
Everything.
So groups of us, the numbers and names fluctuating, came together for various purposes. Since St. Martin Pharma blasted into space with astronomical financials, I'd been involved in a softball team, a very strange bodybuilding circuit that had to be bought into and could have been renamed Look! We can be geeks AND fit, rich geeks!
Far more satisfying – in every sense of the term – were the groups that came together to stage orgies and, when that quickly ran out of interest, to hold lavish dinner parties and sell or rent out our subs. Or display them, humiliate them, punish them, or just use them as living, breathing centerpieces that could be molested, eaten off of, or punished if they moved too much from whatever revealing and demeaning position they'd been placed in.
Sometimes, even, the slaves and subs were decorously and beautifully posed. It didn't all have to be about their debasement. Sometimes it was about our pleasure, visual or physical.
John Fleet had showed up at some party or another and we'd started talking. His company had gone public and then gone wild with a line of salon essentials that not only relaxed and invigorated and healed a little, but I thought probably got the recipient a little bit stoned.
That wasn't really my concern. A little natural rainforest hallucinogen never hurt anybody. What hurt people were the opioids, synthetic or natural, and Rainforest Essentuals gave me a new place to find addicts looking for a cure, to work with them across the spectrum of health concerns that went with addiction. Prices were steep, but individually steep, and no one much wonde
red why a $30 a month membership covered orthodonture as well as massage, individual workout and nutrition plans, support during detox and the St. Martin Pharma detox naturals.
Of course the $30 a month plan was predicated on those people who could afford the $30,000 a month plan and who felt they recovered faster and better because of it.
That they got the same treatment was a secret.
The other thing the spa did was bring potential subs into my orbit. Those beautiful women who, like Annie, got addicted somehow and needed help, and who had anything from a hint of submission to being ready to sink to their knees during the initial consultation.
Cassie was one of my latest finds. Much too thin, tall, blond, pretty in a girl next door sort of way, she'd taken her first (medically not-so-much required) cleansing enemas with such fatalistic almost-pleasure I'd tried her on a few more things. Forced exams. A little exhibitionism. And finally told her she was a bad girl for her addiction and deserved a sound spanking.
She was over my lap in a flash.
"Good morning, Cassie."
"Good morning, Sir."
She sat in the client chair beside my desk, my office fronting exam rooms and punishment rooms and rooms so complicated (and enjoyable) we really didn't have names for them.
It was a good thing Annie had taken down the judges that fronted the trafficking ring. Because they'd have really wanted to Clean Up Sin City if they'd gotten a load of what our day spa considered essentual.
It was still a stupid name.
"Let's go over your treatment plan," I said, and for the next ten minutes we covered her workouts (too many), her calories (too few), her addiction (stable; she was healing).
"Overall, I'm pleased," I said, sitting back in my chair and observing her. She kept her head down, studying her lap. Cassie was not quite out to herself yet about what she liked. She still spent a lot of time trying not to get herself into a place where I ordered her to strip or display.
She peeked up at me from under her hair, hopeful.
"But."
She retreated behind her hair and I grinned to myself. It was always a pleasure to raise their hopes before dashing them.
"Too many workouts, Cassie. Are these all of them? Hmm? No extra runs when no one was watching?"
"No, sir. Just the ones I recorded."
"And they're too many. You're not eating enough yet." I was studying her records, and that was actually true. She was anorexic as well as addict thin. I wanted more calories in her. I wasn't above doing the opposite of feeing her if it would get her to fight back by eating.
I looked up when she shook her hair off her face, staring at me, both fists curled. "Everything makes me sick! Everything tastes metallic and I don't want anything! How am I supposed to eat?"
"One bite at a time," I said, looking back at the file. "I don't care if it doesn't taste good. In fact, if nothing tastes good you might as well use that and eat the highest calorie, best high nutrition foods you can get. What difference does it make?"
But she was staring at me with a look that said she expected repercussions for her outburst and for not adding Sir to it and because she wasn't following the treatment plan completely and she'd been warned, and because she wanted it, somewhere deep down where she wouldn't admit it to herself.
I sighed. Oh, the things I did for my clients. Putting myself out. A surge of pleasure lanced through my cock and I thought about Annie and knew I wouldn't be doing anything with Cassie, though I could.
"Please stand up and take your pants and panties down to your knees, then bend over my desk, up on your toes, and reach as far across as you can."
"Sir! I promise, I'll work harder! I'll be better! I'll – "
"Now, Cassie."
Fingers shaking, she stood and unbuttoned her pants, lowering them slowly along with her underwear, and stopping their fall with her knees clenched together. One last look of appeal that was utterly shot down and she bent over my desk, going up on her toes, putting what was too thin but still quite a nice ass on display.
I moved behind the desk, behind the girl, and said, "Count them for me, with a Thank you, sir, please continue until I'm properly punished between each."
She made a sound between protest, groan and pleasure, and I ran my hand over her ass before delivering the first stinging salvo.
When we'd reached 50, I let her stand. Sensibly she didn't reach for her pants, but put her hands behind her back, not quite falling prey to rubbing the pain in her backside.
"Get the rest of the way undressed," I told her, and had the pleasure of watching her cheeks flushed as her blue eyes opened wide.
She didn't question, though. She took off her shirt, and bra, stepped out of her pants, and left everything neatly in the chair.
"Go across the hall to the closet marked 'Supplies' and retrieve two of the red rubber enema balls."
I wasn't even looking at her, was looking toward the exam room, when I saw her start to sink to her knees.
"No," I said, and casually reached out and slapped her breasts, hard. "Do as I say. There's no reprieve here. You don't want the healthy calories you've been given to eat? Fine, we'll take care of that for you."
"Sir, please!" Her arms had coiled together between her breasts, as it to stop their being slapped again. "There are people out there. There are men out there."
I nodded. There were, and I didn't actually know who would be coming and going, though I thought John was busy with his own client, the masseuse had just started a massage, and the receptionist was already pretty much inured to whatever she saw.
"Then you'd better be fast." I tilted my head to the side, considering her coldly, and then folded my arms across my chest.
She nearly ran.
Cassie was back in record time, the two still-packaged enema bags in her hands. I'd run filtered water through the microwave – waiting for water to get hot at the faucet in water-starved Southern Nevada should be a crime – and taken a pitcher of ice water from the fridge.
"Good girl. Set them there and go lean over the spanking bench for me, legs wide apart."
She groaned as I slid the nozzle of the first bag in place.
Thirty minutes later I'd reviewed Cassie's nutrition plans, given her a supplement to take with every meal, given her an injection of rainforest treatment, and given her one more sound spanking, post-enema. Her cheeks were stained with tears. She'd go up to the receptionist to pay, blushing and shaking and positive everyone in the spa knew what just happened to her.
They didn't. The receptionist was bored and wanted to go home. The other clients were present for whatever treatments they're getting. Cassie's little illicit thrill was all in her mind.
Smiling to myself I sat back down behind my desk and waited. I was hard, but not enticed to do anything about it. The afternoon was winding down. It was five o'clock in Nevada, eight in Quantico, and when my phone rang, I answered it lazily.
"Were you a bad girl today?"
Annie laughed. Since arriving there, her calls were full of training and firearms and workouts and how much she missed the desert and missed me.
I believed all of it. She'd be back, but she was having the time of her life. I let her set the pace of the calls, the timing, and asked only that she check in once a day, texting before midnight so I knew she was all right.
I kept track of her tardiness, her misses, her phone calls when she said she'd been a very good agent but a very bad girl.
I was looking forward to balancing her behavior and her punishment when she returned. In the meantime, it was wonderful to hear her happy and engaged.
And something else. It didn't surprise me, completely. And didn't not.
Cassie's surrender was wonderful to see. She wasn't progressing as quickly as I wanted, but she would heal, I thought. She responded to punishment as well as to natural cures. Susan had been moved in to the compound before Annie left. I worked with her daily, forcing her to do things completely unnatural to her, to subm
it, to pony play – not something I cared about but something that made her compliant, just the threat of it thrilled her so much – to caning and to sharing her out at the latest dinner party. Fleet had her on the dinner table. Unsanitary but entertaining. She'd cried tears of shame even as she came so hard she nearly choked.
But it was Annie I was waiting for. It was the idea of punishing Annie's ass that made me hard as I worked with Cassie.
Not completely. I enjoyed playing with Cassie until she came, spread eagled on the exam table and chained down, or bent over my desk. I liked caning her and the other girls who came through the spa, not quite knowing what they needed but groping for it anyway.
All of them so quick to submit. I loved taking them up on it.
But I missed Annie's sass. I missed her outright refusal, her attempts to run. I missed her fighting me and being subdued, I missed bringing in one of the guards to hold her still as I displayed her or hurt or punished or pleasured her.
I missed her fire and determination and her grudging muttering of Sir, tacked on usually at the very last minute to avoid punishment.
I missed Annie.
It was a nice feeling.
5
Annie
"Your gun range results are awesome."
Meg's just about my age, ex-military and in better shape than almost anyone I know. All those courses they run, the obstacles and such, she can do without even breathing hard. And she was complimenting me on my shooting.
I just looked at her, looked at her amazing arms, looked at her again.
Meg laughed. She had some Latin American in her ancestry, giving her cinnamon hair and big dark eyes and a perpetual dusky tan. She was gorgeous.