"Replace her?"
"Yes. You may find someone you would find more pleasing. I will bind her, and Lydia can take on other duties."
"You are asking me to pick another slave for you, Arianna?"
"No, Moira," she said, smiling. "I am only offering it as a choice. Perhaps you would like to find us a cook as well."
"No!" I said firmly.
"Very well," she said. "So you are willing to retain Lydia with the current arrangements until next summer."
"Yes, if those are my two choices."
"All right. Do you need me to implement a personality adjustment for her."
"No, Arianna," I told her. "That won't be necessary."
* * * *
The status quo remained what it was until spring. Corbin continued to fix up the houses Arianna bought, getting better and better at it. She made a significant profit on each house, although real estate sales were still our main source of income.
In the spring of our seventh year, things changed again. Arianna ordered me to dress up for an evening out, and then she took me to a cheap but busy bar. When we arrived, I looked at her with dismay. "I thought we were going somewhere nice. We're over-dressed."
"Not for what I have in mind," she said, smiling. "If any guys hit on you tonight, you will politely and demurely decline. You will at no time get physically forceful, and you will remain polite and demure."
"I don't even know what that means," I said.
"Submissive and quiet," she said.
"Oh god. Arianna. At this bar? Are you punishing me for something?"
"Oh honey," she said. "No. Of course not. If you like, you may model your behavior after my own."
"You are going to be submissive and quiet."
"Yes. Enough questions. Let's go have a good time."
We got out of the car. She took my arm. Clearly she wasn't going to be submissive to me. Once in the bar, we acquired a table near the pool tables and ordered wine. We got a few looks, but no one bothered us.
One of the pool tables was open, so once the wine arrived, she said, "Let's play." We claimed the table.
Two pairs of guys stopped by and asked if we wanted company. Both times Arianna spoke into my head. "Look shy and quietly tell them 'no thank you'." I did. The first guy asked, "Are you sure?" and I nodded my head "yes". Both pairs of guys left us alone.
We played two games and were racking up the third when another pair of guys started walking over. They were both muscular but looked a little sleazy. Arriving at the table, they split up, the blonde invading Arianna's space, the bald one invading mine. Arianna let both of them get away with it. She never let guys get that close to her without permission, and she was even more territorial about me.
"Hey, baby," the bald guy told me. "Looking for company?"
"No, thank you," I told him, looking down, which meant staring at his chest.
"I'm Dale," he said. "He's Abe. Maybe we can play a nice game of partners."
"No thank you," I said. "I'm here with my wife."
"Oh, your wife," he said. He looked over at Arianna. I couldn't hear the conversation she was having with Abe.
"Arianna," I thought. "Polite isn't going to work."
"I know," she replied. "Find out what they do for a living."
It was my turn to break. I moved away from Dale, but he followed me then got in the way. "You and I can be partners," he said.
"What do you do for a living, Dale?"
"Construction," he said. "But we're currently between jobs. Abe's my partner."
"Oh, so you're gay?"
"Not that kind of partner!" he said. "I'm no queer!"
"Arianna, please let me make him leave. He's an asshole."
"You're doing fine," she said. "Ask him politely to leave you alone."
"Dale," I said. "I just want to play pool with my wife. I'm sure there's another table for you and Abe to play."
"Oh baby," he said, pulling me into his arms.
"Do not resist!" Arianna said.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked her.
She didn't answer.
"Dale, you aren't my type. Please let go of me."
It was inevitable. Dale and his buddy were clichés, and the cliché was due. "You just need a real man to show you what it's like," he told me.
"Tell him you said 'no', but remain submissive."
"Dale, I said 'no'."
He groped my ass.
"Arianna! Why are you doing this?"
She moved over to me, Abe following along behind her. He had a dull expression I recognized. I hadn't even noticed her drawing magic from me, but when I checked my level, I could feel she had drawn quite a bit.
"Dale," Arianna said. She stepped up to him and caressed his cheek, wrapping her magic around him. "Tell me you can't wait to feel our magic. Tell me you want it."
"I want it," he said. "Oh, I definitely want it."
And then her magic invaded him, and he went slack-faced.
"Let's all go home," she said.
"What are you doing?" I asked her. "We don't need anyone else!"
"I do not care to listen to your histrionics," she told me. "If you do not want to be silenced, you will watch your tone very carefully."
I shut my mouth.
The four of us stepped out into the parking lot. The guys led the way to the pickup they had arrived in. Arianna gave them the rules, then she told me to drive the truck home with Dale as a passenger. Abe rode with her.
When we got home, she took all of us to a point a hundred yards from the house. She told the guys, "You will design and build two bunkhouses in this location, one for men, one for women. You will construct a path between the bunkhouses and the rear door of the main house." She continued with her directions, giving them a room in the basement to sleep in until the bunkhouse was done.
Later, I told her simply, "I thought you quit smoking."
She didn't respond.
* * * *
After that, I tried to temper her choices. I gave her me to use, to fill her needs. I was already doomed to spend my life with her; if I could prevent her from dooming anyone else, I would.
She didn't accept my silent offers.
By the end of summer, both bunkhouses were completed. Dale and Abe became the first occupants of one of them; Lydia occupied the other by herself. She remained the sole occupant for the next three years.
* * * *
By our tenth year, Arianna had acquired a gardener, a homeless man who asked for money for a meal but then spent it on whiskey. He looked old and worn down, but by the time he sobered up, we discovered he was about my age, my real age, not my apparent age.
Arianna ordered me to open a new real estate company. She and I left the old agency and went to work for the one I formed.
And then she discovered a real estate agent from another agency was trying to steal clients from Arianna by lying about her. Arianna looked young, but of course she wasn't, and she really was a very good agent. Stephanie was in her forties, divorced, and childless. The market had been bad, and she had gotten desperate. Arianna forced Lydia to pose as a client, and when Stephanie tried to steal her, Arianna had all the justification she needed to claim Stephanie.
I was severely punished for the tone I took with her that night.
Three weeks later, we hosted an open house recruitment event for new agents. Several young women appeared at the party we held, and Arianna interviewed each of them individually in her office. Two of them she did not choose to retain; the other three exited her office with the look of the recently bound.
Arianna lined up the clients, but Stephanie and the other three agents handled them. Arianna kept their commissions; they joined Lydia in the bunkhouse.
That night, I asked Arianna, "What crimes did Sienna, Terry and Beck commit?"
"They accepted their bonds willingly," she told me.
I stared at her. "I will move into the bunk house with them, then," I told her. I removed my wedding r
ing and shoved it in her hand.
"You will not!" Arianna screamed at me.
I froze where I stood.
"If you order me to that bed," I said, pointing at it. "And touch me, it is rape. I cannot stop you, but we both know it would be rape. What you have become is wrong. It is evil. It is exactly what I thought you would be ten years ago. Why couldn't it have stayed like it was at the beginning? We were happy. Why wasn't it enough? I gave you everything, willingly, trying to make you happy. And it wasn't enough. I am done willingly trying to make you happy. I am now just another of your slaves."
I stepped towards the door.
"Stop!" she yelled.
I froze in place again.
She walked around to stand in front of me. "Don't you understand? I am doing all this for you."
"No, you are doing it for yourself."
I tried to step around her, but she yelled, "Stop!" again. I stopped, and then I stepped forward. If she was trying to lock me in the bedroom, she was issuing the wrong command.
"Not another step!" she yelled. I froze in place again.
I turned my head to look at her. "You could be amazing, Arianna. You are brilliant and beautiful and usually devastatingly charming. You don't need magic for people to love you. You don't need magic to make people want to be with you. But instead you have become an evil, power hungry bitch."
"Silence!" she screamed.
So I thought my next words instead. "What you are doing is wrong, and you know it! I am no longer a willing partner. You can force me, but you are going to have to force everything you want from me. And I vow I will look for every loophole in every order you give. You are evil, and I only hope someone more powerful comes along and destroys you."
She turned away from me, shaking with rage. I'd said what I intended to say, and I held my thoughts to myself after that. We stood like that, me frozen, her livid, for several minutes. Finally she turned to me and said coldly, "You will share my bed with me, or you will use one of the guest rooms in this house. You will share meals with me unless I tell you differently. You will continue to perform all other duties you have been performing for me, and you will do so to the best of your abilities. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes. May I go?"
"You may not leave the house," she said.
I took that as permission, and I stepped past her, slamming the door behind me.
The Feud
After that, I didn't talk to her except as demanded by my orders.
She didn't order me to her bed, and she didn't abuse me, not exactly. But I spent the next several years fulfilling my vow, as best I could. I became increasingly good at bypassing her orders, and she became increasingly careful in how she phrased them.
I thought I would become such a pain in the ass that she would order me to a prison in the basement, finding someone else to take over the things she wanted me to do, but she didn't.
My rebellion began in simple ways.
Three nights after I had given back her ring, she ordered me to make dinner. I burnt it. She punished me by making me eat it, including her portion.
She didn't care for bell peppers. The next night when she again ordered me to make dinner, I cut up small bell peppers and mixed them in with everything I prepared. As soon as she saw what I had done, she ordered me to retrieve the cayenne pepper from the spice cabinet in the kitchen and add it to my food. Then she ordered me to eat every bite.
I thought I was going to die from that one.
She didn't order me to cook for two nights, but on the third night when ordered to cook, I added even more cayenne pepper to the food than what she'd made me add for punishment. When I had physically recovered from eating my share, she asked me, "Why are you doing this? You are only hurting yourself."
"I made a vow," I replied.
This went on for two weeks. I ruined the meals, and she punished me for it, the punishments becoming increasingly harsh. I didn't back down. Anyone less stubborn would have.
I also found other ways to vex her. I intentionally became far less efficient, in spite of her orders to do my best. That order was so amorphous, I was able to find ways to screw it up. Housing remodels slowed down as I ordered the wrong items or failed to order the needed supplies entirely. Corbin, Dale and Abe knew their jobs, but they didn't control the purse strings, and went through me for everything they needed. I also skipped ordering necessary city inspections and misfiled work.
I made every mistake my orders allowed.
Arianna punished me every time she managed to catch me. She caught far less than I was doing.
"Why are you doing this, Moira?" she asked after a particularly brutal punishment session. "Why are you making me punish you?"
"You chose this life," I told her. "You chose this relationship. I did not. You are making your own choices. You are choosing to abuse me. You are doing this to me. I am the victim, Arianna. Do not blame the victim."
After three weeks of bad meals, Arianna became more precise in her orders. As far as I was concerned, she was conceding defeat. She had tried to get me to bow to her authority, but had given up. I still found ways to ruin the meals, but it became more difficult to do so. The occasional edible meal made it to the table. Soon, she was so precise ordering dinner that I was only ruining it once or twice a week.
One of my favorite tactics was to start something and then find her to give her a report on one of the houses or some other duty of mine. I could then find ways to get her to keep me talking to her. A few times I acted like I honestly wanted to spend time with her, and she had been so pleased, she had let me get away with it. I was able to trick her into ordering me to stay with her while the meal slowly burned on the stove.
A few times I was so amazingly rude that she was obligated to punish me, and while she was punishing me, the meal would become ruined.
I was being punished multiple times a week, sometimes several times a day, but I didn't back down.
* * * *
This was my life for the next five years. I openly defied Arianna at every opportunity I could find. We were both miserable.
She didn't add anyone else to the household. Corbin, Dale and Abe were fixing up houses at a steady rate, although it would have been far faster without my interference. Lydia kept the household neat and spotlessly clean. The gardener made the property beautiful. And Arianna was able to keep our four agents busy selling houses.
I never did anything illegal; I didn't file false papers with the government, and I was extremely careful that our real estate clients were handled properly. And I never did anything that would force Arianna to punish anyone else. I didn't interfere with the orders she issued to them. I still had authority over them, and I did nothing to get any of them in trouble.
I kept Arianna's attention focused on me. I spent much of my time accepting some punishment or other, and I had been doing so for so long that Arianna was no longer able to easily make me cry. I remained stoic for nearly every punishment and became increasing immune, requiring her to work harder and harder to make me cry.
In spite of my obstinacy, Arianna continued to treat me as a companion. She took me to dinner, and if I weren't misbehaving, she treated me well. She could go from severely punishing me for a transgression just a few hours previously to being sweet and charming over a glass of wine.
I found it infuriating.
If she had wanted, she could have found other company. She might take one of the agents or a client to a working dinner, but when she wanted a social occasion, she turned to me, in spite of my attitude. I was in open rebellion, and she could be merciless in her punishments, but afterwards she treated me with kindness, as if she actually cared for my company.
I was doing everything I could to drive a wedge between us, but she treated me as if she liked me.
We attended movies, plays and performance. We went for walks and trips in the car. We took long weekends together, and even when I went far out of my way to ruin them, she continued to ta
ke me on future trips.
Just like I never allowed my rebellion to harm our clients or the other members of the household, I also never did anything to ruin anyone else's evening. I didn't disrupt performances or cause havoc at a restaurant. I confined my rebellion to private moments.
Once when I asked her why she didn't find someone more agreeable, she simply told me, "I prefer you."
I didn't let that dissuade me from open, if somewhat contained warfare.
* * * *
It was in February of our fifteenth year that everything came to a head. I got myself arrested. It started when Arianna made a mistake in one of my orders.
"What time will you be home?" she asked me at the office.
"I have two hours of paperwork here," I told her. "Then I should stop by Corbin's house. He found a problem he needs to show me. You may lose money on this house by the time he fixes it."
We never lost money on any of the houses we flipped.
She checked her watch. "So, three hours?"
"Yes, about," I said.
"Fine. You will be home by seven. Pick up Chinese for dinner on your way home." She placed a precise order, one so carefully worded that I couldn't have gotten around it.
But she hadn't told me to come straight home or issued any orders that prevented me from making a detour.
I finished the paperwork early. I went to see Corbin, and he showed me the problem. There was extreme rot in one wall, and it was going to be time consuming to fix. I asked for his recommendations; he had them written out complete with cost estimates. He assured me he could do all the work, but the house would take an extra two months to fix. However the cost wasn't as bad as I had feared. I told him I would report to Arianna but that he should work on other things in the meantime.
I had an hour to spare.
I drove to a bar and slammed down four shots of whisky in as many minutes. I then waited until it settled into my bloodstream, and I returned to my car.
I drove past the nearest police station. Nothing happened. So I drove past it several times before a cop leaving the parking lot noticed that I had weaved. I was pulled over two minutes later.
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