But tonight, she wanted to wear the Discipline costume. She had no Master to whip her into a frenzy, but she could pretend.
She emptied the contents of the box onto the table. The two panels of blue gauze, four feet long by three feet wide, with an open hem on one narrow side, looked like nothing so much as sheer curtains. A second set of shorter panels were only three feet long. The final gauze panel was only two feet wide, but was five feet long. In addition to the fabric, there were lengths of fine gauge steel chain, the serpentined metal broken by half-inch loops at odd intervals. Some of the chains ended in sturdy lobster-claw clasps, which no doubt attached to the loops in patterns that the instruction manual would describe. She recognized the piece of steel mesh in the shape of a thin rectangle coming to a point at the end as the front of the panty visible beneath the Submissive model’s harem pants.
The final item had appeared in none of the photos that she could see. It consisted of two six-inch bars joined by five toggle closures. She flipped it over to check the reverse side, and saw a series of thin metal rods running the length of the bars. The central rod slid from left to right, with a small switch to lock it in position.
She frowned, wondering what it could be, and puzzled by a nagging sense of familiarity. Glancing at the instructions, she ran her finger down the list of contents until she reached the name, “Halter clasp.” Suddenly she recognized the familiar positioning of the rods. She had adjustable belts like this, whose buckle could be repositioned anywhere along their length simply by releasing the tension rods, passing a loop of the belt through, then locking the tension rods in the new location. The ends of the long, narrow strip of gauze must run through the bars, then get locked in place when it was at the right length.
Flipping the pages in the instruction booklet, she found the Discipline instructions, and assembled the pieces she needed. The six-foot chain with the ring a third of the way down its length, three six-inch chains, and one two-foot chain. Apparently, she had a choice for the medium length chain between a smooth one and a heavier one with an additional ring part way down its length.
She checked the notes below the instructions, hoping for guidance. “The crotch chain comes in two varieties—a narrow gauge for maximum penetration, and one designed to hold a dildo fully inserted during play.”
A rush of heat pooled between her legs, and her mouth went dry. Oh, God. A dildo. She’d never owned one, but suddenly she wanted one. She imagined it shoved all the way, deep into her vagina, held tight by the chains as her muscles contracted around it, every slap of her Master’s hand on her ass driving her against it.
She moaned softly. And what if it wasn’t her Master’s hand, but his cock, pounding into her ass, while she was already filled with the hard length of the dildo? How good would that feel?
She was definitely going to buy a dildo. But for now, she’d use the fine-gauge chain.
“Maximum penetration,” she whispered. The words alone made her hot. When she imagined the chain sawing against her clit, sliding between her folds and pressing deeply, she shivered with anticipation.
The long panels of gauze were threaded onto the waist chain, one on either side of the ring, with plenty of chain left over. The lobster clasp on the crotch chain snapped onto the ring, hanging down between the panels. It was starting to look like the picture. Keri’s ass tightened, eager to feel the weight of the chains.
She stripped off her work clothes, standing naked in her living room, and picked up the costume. Centering the ring on the back of her waist, the crotch chain hung down the cleft of her ass. It was cold, and heavy, and completely alien. Her vision swam with the delicious sensation, knowing it was just the beginning of the erotic invasion of her body.
The waist chain crossed in front of her then the long end wrapped completely around her waist a second time. The instructions implied the two ends of the chain could be attached at either the front or back, depending on the waistline of the slave, and which of the small rings you affixed the lobster clasp to. A sizable length of chain could be left over, if desired, and used during play.
Keri wondered how. Would the Master beat the slave with it? Tow the slave around on a leash? Run it up to the chain hanging between the breasts and keep a constant pressure on them?
She groaned, imagining that. Now her nipples ached, begging to be tugged and squeezed, while the hot flesh between her legs pulsed in needy demand.
Clipping the ends of the waist chain in front of her, she let the weight settle on her hips. She adjusted the gauze panels so that the ends met beneath her belly button, then gathered the panels so that they clustered over her hips, exposing her ass and her pubic hair.
She reached between her legs and grabbed the dangling end of the crotch chain. Slowly, she pulled it up until it touched her skin. Reaching one hand between her legs, she spread her labia, her fingers sliding over the slick flesh, and pulled the crotch chain until it slipped between the spread folds.
A pulse of pleasure throbbed through her, and she moaned, tightening the chain. She felt the pressure on her hips as it pulled down on the waist chain, taking the little bit of slack she’d left. The waist chain pulled taut, and still she tightened the crotch chain. It dug into the cleft of her ass, pressing against her anus. Her muscles tightened in instinctive response, forcing the chain to bite deeper. She thought she was going to come right then from the pleasure.
Barely able to see what she was doing, she passed the end of the crotch chain around the strands of the waist chain in front of her and clipped it in place. Experimenting, she bent down in a squat and stood again. The chain stroked her deeply, slick with lubrication and tantalizingly cool. She whimpered. Unable to stop herself, she bent and straightened again and again, until the chain burned her sensitive flesh and she wanted to beg for release. But there was no one to beg. No one was forcing her to endure this relentless torture, and no one could free her from the teasing strokes by plunging deeply inside her.
Grabbing the edge of her counter, she stood completely still, panting for control, until the frenzied need faded.
“What’s next?” she whispered.
The loose panels became harem pants by rolling the bottom edge around a short length of chain until they were the right length, then clipping the chain closed around her ankle. She very carefully lowered herself to the floor to do this, gasping when the crotch chain rasped across her swollen clitoris. But soon the “pants” were tied around her ankles.
Now she needed to attach the clips to her breasts. The backs of the silver disks were hinged, hiding a keyhole-shaped piece of brass wire.
The wires slid around her nipples, the narrow sections pinching the nipples and making them erect so that the rounded sections would cling to them. The slight pressure was just enough to keep her nipples tight.
Closing the hinges, she gasped as the disks tweaked the tips of her nipples. The small chain clipped on brass rings soldered to the back of the disks. The added weight tugged on her nipples, a flash of fire that connected straight to the smoldering crotch chain.
She walked—slowly, as each step rubbed the crotch chain between her labia and over her clitoris—into her bedroom, and faced the full-length mirror. She didn’t recognize herself.
The woman in the mirror radiated sex, from her high, pointed breasts swaying as she moved, to the visibly swollen labia showing deep pink between her widespread legs. Her face was flushed with passion, her eyes glazed and somewhat wild, and her deep red lips parted to let harsh breaths escape.
Keri tugged lightly on the chain connecting her breasts. Fire blazed across her nipples. She tipped her head back and moaned, tugging the chain again, then again.
Her world faded in a red haze. Somehow, she staggered back onto the bed, falling upon it in an ungainly sprawl. She drew her legs up, spreading her knees and thighs wide, and flexed her hips in time to her tugs. The lace of her comforter chafed her ass while the crotch chain rasped up and down over her throbbing clit. She pump
ed harder, imagining the stroke of her Master’s hands.
Sliding one hand down the slippery chain, she slipped her fingers past the teasing metal, deep into her vagina. Her muscles contracted around her fingers, and she yanked the breast chain. The climax overwhelmed her, arching her body up off the bed in a trembling bow for what felt like hours of agony as she teetered on the precipice. Then she fell.
A hoarse scream of triumph ripped from her throat. She collapsed onto the bed, too weak to move, glowing aftershocks pulsing through her body. One thought kept playing over and over in her head. If it was this good when she was alone, how much better would it be if she had a partner?
CHAPTER TWO
The next evening, Keri flicked on the television as soon as she got home. She needed the reassurance of her Charmed fix after the day she’d had.
They’d finished the bid for the Uninational account, and were going over presentation strategies for the Monday meeting, when she got the news that the lead on the competition’s bid team had changed. They’d put Andy Thibodeau in charge.
Her team had immediately gone into scramble mode. Thibodeau was a shark, infamous for his ability to destroy his competition’s bid proposals with a few well-placed questions. Their bid proposal had already been solid. But with Thibodeau across the table from them, they needed to make their case airtight.
She’d assigned two of her team to scrutinize the competition’s initial bid, searching for weaknesses Thibodeau’s team might not have solved in their final bid, or areas where their solution used back-level technology compared to her team’s solution. Meanwhile, she’d reviewed all of their competitor’s proposed efficiencies.
The first time she’d suggested the strategy of analyzing efficiencies, as a junior consultant working her first bid proposal, the team leader had thought she was crazy. He couldn’t imagine why she’d want to highlight the opposition’s benefits. She’d run the analysis anyway, doing it on overtime so it wouldn’t impact the work her team leader had assigned. When her analysis tipped the scales during the presentation meeting, she’d instantly won a convert.
Other consultants had tried to copy her strategy of spiking the opponent’s efficiencies, but they’d never equaled her success. It wasn’t surprising. She had an innate understanding of efficiency analysis that they could never grasp.
As a child, she’d fallen asleep to her father reading aloud from his efficiency reports. Combining his quality time with his daughter and the overtime reading he needed to do for work was, of course, the most efficient solution. But one of the truisms she’d quickly learned was that efficiency did not exist in a vacuum. Efficiencies, whether of time, money, or resources, were gained by sacrificing something else. It might be individual power and control, process flexibility, or something as simple as never learning any fairy tales until you were in junior high school. The trick was to give up something you didn’t particularly care about, to increase the efficiencies in an area you did care about.
When she reviewed competitors’ bids, Keri found that the underlying compromises of the efficiencies jumped out at her. She could tell at a glance what they’d be sacrificing in order to implement their proposed savings. Using the value charts her team drew up for their own proposal, she could make a grid of all the ways that their solution enhanced values that the competitors’ solution compromised in the name of “efficiency.”
With a little careful questioning during the presentations, she could find out which of those values meant the most to the customer, then play up how their competitor’s solution would sacrifice those very things the customer valued most. Invariably, the customer asked the competitor if their solution could be modified so those values wouldn’t be sacrificed, at which point the competitor would have to admit to the loss of efficiency. If they didn’t admit to it, Keri would ask clarifying questions until it was obvious to the customer.
She was rapidly developing as feared a reputation as Thibodeau’s, and she’d looked forward to someday matching her skills against his. But she’d hoped to have more than one day of warning before she was called upon to do so!
Realizing she was working herself into a totally unproductive tizzy, she sat on the couch and breathed deeply, allowing Julian McMahon’s resonant voice to wash over her as Cole lectured Phoebe on the dedication needed to fight demons.
Oh, that man looked good shirtless and sweaty. Keri swallowed, her eyes tracking his broad chest and skintight black pants. She wouldn’t mind a little hand-to-hand training from a dark demon like him.
Her thoughts skipped to the costume waiting for her in the bedroom, the costume she’d be wearing to the opera party in a little over an hour. Her imagination was a little vague on exactly what other sorts of training a slave might receive, but her blood hummed with the possibility.
Unable to sit still in front of the television, Keri abandoned any attempt to pay attention to the episode, now filled with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” style martial arts fighting, and hurried into the bedroom to dress for her party.
The Submission outfit started out similarly to the Discipline outfit, with the gauze panels on either side, but they stayed spread out, their edges meeting at the front and back. The two shorter panels were then threaded on to the long section of the waist chain, with their edges meeting at the sides, so that none of her skin was exposed. She rolled up the bottoms of the longer panels around the small chains which she fastened around her ankles, and studied the effect in the mirror.
To the casual observer, she was wearing harem pants, with a slit skirt over them. No one would know that the “pants” left her inner thighs and crotch bare, but every step she took would remind her of her secret nudity.
The crotch chain was attached similarly to how she’d attached it last night, but looser. Instead of sliding between her vulva and pressing against her clit, it hung just below her skin, teasing her with swaying metal caresses as she moved. After all, the party was supposed to run for at least three hours. She’d never make it if her clothing got her so hot she started climaxing in the first fifteen minutes.
A new addition was the chain-link modesty panel that covered the crotch chain in front. A tiny hook at the tip linked it to the crotch chain and the wider part simply folded over one of the inner loops of the waist chain. The weight of the mesh kept it in place.
Keri moaned softly when she attached the nipple clips. The firm embrace of the wire tightened her nipples into hard nubs, aching to be tugged and squeezed. The Submission outfit called for a gauze halter to be wrapped over her breasts, allowing the silvery disks covering her nipples to peak through. But she wanted more than just the occasional brush of gauze to arouse her sensitive breasts.
Opening the box her costume had come in, she found the short chain from the Discipline style, and clipped it to the disks. The added weight tugged gently at her swollen nipples. Keri groaned softly and tugged the chain twice, sending flames leaping from the tip of her breasts to her clit.
She pulled her hand away, torturing herself by not continuing the exquisite torment. Instead, she pleated the remaining gauze panel and threaded the ends through the bar clasp, locking it in place when the panel had been shortened to the correct length. She wrapped the halter around her neck, crossed the gauze between her breasts with a twist, then pulled it behind her. After a moment of awkward fumbling, she managed to link the two sides of the clasp together.
It felt like she had a bar of metal soldered to her spine, it was pressed so tightly. The gauze hugged her breasts, and pushed against the metal disks covering her nipples. She undulated, in a faux belly dance, and moaned with the pleasure. It felt like a lover cupped her breasts in his hands, kneading them gently as she moved.
She should probably avoid the dance floor at the party.
The last part of her costume was an addition she’d picked up on her way home from work. A large white, beaded domino mask covered most of her face. It allowed her to wear her slave costume in public without worrying ab
out who would recognize her, and how she’d react the next time she saw them, back in her normal role.
Tonight, she was a slave girl. Keri had even thought up a story for her slave persona. Her Master had instructed her to go to the party, and treat it as an auction block, displaying her wares so that he could sell her to a new Master. This assured that she would mingle with the maximum number of men, without worrying about how to act. If any of the men rebuffed her, it only meant they were not in the market for a slave, and she should simply move on to the next.
Checking her appearance one last time in the mirror, she reassured herself that no one who knew her would recognize her. She barely recognized herself.
She slipped on a thin pair of ballet slippers, then pulled on a beige full-length raincoat. It was nothing distinctive, nothing that other guests at the party might recognize as hers. Fortunately the nights were still warm enough that she did not need to wear her wool coat—the brilliant eggplant would give her away to the other ushers immediately.
Knowing she wouldn’t be able to carry a purse once she arrived at the party, she dumped out her pocketbook and removed her apartment key and cab fare. They went in the coat’s concealed inner pocket, where they’d be safe until the party was over. She retrieved her invitation from the magnets that had held it to her refrigerator door and slid it deep into the coat’s side pocket, then checked to make sure it couldn’t accidentally fall out.
Ready at last, she hesitated in front of the television, remote in hand. Was she really doing the right thing? Maybe she should be reviewing the proposal again, before facing Thibodeau on Monday, rather than wasting her time at a party.
Her eyes focused on the screen, watching Cole tease Phoebe by pretending to mistake her kiss for her sister’s. As if echoing Keri’s thoughts, Phoebe asked what element of their training they were going to work on next. He answered that he wanted to take her on a picnic, instead.
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